... and of course Wallace Stevens. But I have spent quite a bit of time in front of quite a few Mark Rothkos and been unmoved. Nor has Simon Schama ever moved me. But, Bryan Appleyard declares that Simon Schama Moves Me.
In his Waits piece, Schama refers to ' the juvenile rhetoric of the "American dream".'
As I never tire of pointing out, the phrase "American Dream" was coined by a particular person at a particular and has a specific meaning. Here is how the coiner, James Truslow Adams, put it:
The American Dream is "that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position."
You will notice that it is this that Martin Luther King had in mind when he gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. I myself do not find the rhetoric particularly juvenile, Mr. Schama.
Two of three, slightly rotated: I am often moved by Rothkos (and was deeply moved by Morton Feldman's piece "Rothko Chapel"), and well, Tom Waits is just god. But I've had problems seeing what everyone says is so great in Wallace Stevens; I've read him several times, but it slides off my mind like butter.
ReplyDeleteWhen "Swordfishtrombone" came out, I sat up and paid attention. That's when Waits really got interesting, followed by "Rain Dogs" (my current fave for continuous Waits listening), and "Frank's Wild Years"—a trilogy that signaled his whole new direction.
I am especially fond of a couple of fairly early Waits songs - "Shiver Me Timbers" and "The Heart of Saturday Night" (the latter is especially nostalgic of my drinking days and I love the former's reference to Martin Eden). Then, of course, there's "Potter's Field."
ReplyDeleteMy problem with Rothko is that, literally, I don't see it for anything more than what it is, which seems little enough to me. Maybe it's too intellectual.
As for Stevens, just take another look at The Planet on the Table
or Of Mere Being, both written at the end of his life.
I'm not going to debate whether Schama is right about 'juvenile rhetoric,' but I do think it's fair to say that a phrase can come to be used in many ways other than the one the coiner originally intended. In other words, to argue only from that one specific meaning ignores how usage develops; current coin can be just as valid.
ReplyDeleteOrdinarily, Lee, I am fairly latitudinarian when it comes to usage. But I do think that in a case like this, where there is a specific historical reference point, a little more precision is called for - especially from a historian. And it isn't as if this view of the American dream came about spontaneously, as an ordinary change in usuage. It has been a point of propaganda for years, the product, one might say, of deliberate misinformation. So I think it only fair to set the record straight.
ReplyDeleteMy fav. Waits song is "Broken Bicycles" from the album "One from the Heart" with Crystal Gayle. And my fav. Stevens poem is "A Rabbit As King Of The Ghosts." Awesome poem!
ReplyDeleteBut you see, what you say you can't find in Rothko—that it is little enough, and too intellectual—that's precisely how I feel about Stevens.
ReplyDeleteBut then, I come much more from the haiku tradition, and poets like Snyder, than I ever did from Stevens. I find most of Stevens' poems to be about nothing, too intellectual, not grounded in image or experience. While I certainly respect that other poets find a great deal more in Stevens than I do, I find more elsewhere.
Not saying we have to convince each other of anything. I'm content to just notice the parallels. I find it interesting how a piece of art can be perceived by one person as profound and moving, while another yawns. That's what I like about the diversity of human artmaking, though: something for everyone.
'a point of propaganda for years'
ReplyDeleteFrank, isn't that precisely what Schama means by ' the juvenile rhetoric of the "American dream"'?
I don't disagree that it's useful to look at the baseline of a phrase's origin; but equally, it's important to recognise in which other ways the phrase is used. How language is conscripted for various purposes, willfully or not, is endlessly fascinating, and one of the reasons that there's no such thing as 'one book.'
First:
ReplyDeleteArt, I do find it interesting that you react to Stevens as I do to Rothko. And I agree that that is what makes art interesting. One question, though: As someone coming at poetry from the angle of haiku, what's you reaction to "Thirteen Ways of Looking at Blackbird"? As for Rothko, while there is much purely non-representational art that I like (Kandinsky especially, and also Mark Tobey), the color-field school has never grabbed me. It seems to me I have to bring a theory along to get what the point is and I prefer not to do that with any work of art.
Second:
I agree, Lee, that we should recognize the various ways in which a phrase is used, but my interpretation of Schama's phrase "juvenile rhetoric" is that he buys into the propaganda and regards the dream itself as juvenile propaganda. Guess someone will have to do what his editor should have and ask him.
But you yourself said: 'I myself do not find the rhetoric particularly juvenile, Mr. Schama.'
ReplyDeleteSo is the rhetoric juvenile or the dream itself? Or can they even be separated any more, which I very much doubt, and which is what I see as the main problem with using the phrase.
And who is it that you think has spread the propaganda, the deliberate misinformation (about the nature of the dream itself, I presume you mean)?
What I meant is that he seems to regard the rhetoric as juvenile and as such buys into the idea that the dream as such is mere juvenile rhetoric. I think what Adams - and King - were getting at, while rhetorical to be sure, is in no way juvenile. As for the propaganda, if you worked in y job and saw review after review with cliche after cliche about the faile d American dream, you would probably sympathize more with my view. But whatI am trying to get across is that there is a genuine American dream and it is quite a noble one. Color me partiotic.
ReplyDeleteThanks for explaining, Frank. I can thoroughly sympathise with the cliche after cliche headache - you get it in lots of literature too, obviously. And it's what I mean by the problem - the use of cliche tends to obscure what might be a perfectly sound underlying idea, a perfectly genuine feeling.
ReplyDeleteThere are many people out here like myself who are patriotic-- who were raised on the American Dream; steeped in it; yet realize it's now bankrupt.
ReplyDeleteVisit Detroit sometime.
I was raised in a neighborhood where we flew the American flag all over the place, even when it wasn't a holiday.
Our fathers worked hard in factories mostly while our mothers stayed home raising our Catholic families. A new car every several years. Life was good. Gradually, waves of disillusion set in among most of us.
Is "Born on the Fourth of July" a cliche?
Is it a cliche that the working class went off to fight Vietnam, while their more affluent college brethren stayed home posturing and protesting out of the guilt they felt?
(I was a kid in the 60's and remember the confusing tumult of that decade.)
(I have a D.A.V. brother-- not from Vietnam-- who still waves the flag.)
I'm just rambling here for the most part, trying to express something that can't be expressed, only lived.
Visit Detroit sometime. Walk among the empty abandoned train station and the shuttered factories, and the miles of shattered neighborhoods.
Is the American Dream alive in such cities?
Hasn't it been betrayed, by NAFTA, by union busting, by illegal immigration so that we can't even work as landscapers anymore (always the last refuge of the unemployed white male). It's been betrayed by the very people who proclaim loudest their compassion.
You won't find the story-- the real story of America now-- in any novels being written today. (Note the utter bankruptcy of the NY Times five choices.) The story might be found in great literature from past times.
In, say, Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame, whose medieval scenes are scenes of the city I'm from. (Or even parts of Philadelphia. Yes!)
In Norris's The Octopus, written one hundred years ago yet well depicting the ruthless monopoly mindset of now.
Yes, the American Dream. A great thing. A wonderful, magical thing.
Where is it?
When you find it, when you recover it from wherever it's been hiding, please let me know.
Frank, I found my way into Rothko when I realized that the theories around the paintings were irrelevant, and that just sitting in front of a Rothko for a few minutes, I responded emotionally to the fields of color and light; they also seemed to subtly change with time. i've studied enough art history to be able to forget it, and just look at the paintings again. I also read an article in "Parabola" magazine some years ago that focused on the psychological, spiritual, and (dare I say it) mystical aspects of Rothko's work. Otherwise, I completely agree with you when you say that bringing a theory along in order to understand work of art is something I dislike, and prefer not to do.
ReplyDeleteBeing expected to bring a theory along in order to appreciate a work of art is exactly what I consistently object to. it's why a lot of post-avant-garde poetry doesn't work for me. I'd rather see the art for what it is, then be expected to find "meaning" in it, as if it were a puzzle to be solved. I like Pollack not because I've been told to like Pollack but because I see some kinetic energy in the drip paintings that grabs me, kinesthetically. Lots of people keeep telling me I should like all of Wallace Stevens' poetry, but I find that I like less of it than most claim that they do.
As for Stevens, yes, I do like "Thirteen Ways," and there are a few other poems of his I like very much. But I notice that these are his more concrete, observational poems, which are largely unlike those late poems where he is writing poems almost purely about ideas, and there is little concrete embodiment or imagery in them. Coming from the haiku direction, where meaning arises from the reader's response ot the moment and the imagery, and also from Rilke, I find I often respond with indifference to poetry that is all idea, and no experience, all word-play and no emotion, all thought-form and no images, etc.
For example, I have tried several times to like John Ashbery, and people keep telling me I'm supposed to, but I just can't; I've read his works several times, and perhaps the problem is in me, but I just don't get it; I see nothing there that I can connect to. There's no THERE there. I have similar distaste for most Language Poetry, for the same reasons.
When Stevens responds to image or event or experience, he can be sublime; but he doesn't do that often enough to get me interested in reading everything else, all those head-poems rather than body-poems.
I was thinking about this again this morning, and came to articulate a realization:
ReplyDeleteI am in a mood to reassess a lot of received wisdoms. I am going back and re-reading a lot of poets with a (reasonably) fresh eye, ignoring all the things that have been said ABOUT them. I just want to read them again and form my own opinions based on readings as fresh as humanly possible. I'm just reading to see what gets to me now as good poems, with as much of the critical baggage removed as possble. I think it's good and necessary to do a periodic reassessment like this. it's one way we discover what is standing the test of time. (Of course, there will always be a few poems that remain favorites, because they personally mean something to us, even as we acknowledge that they're maybe the greatest things ever penned.)
So, part of my current response to Stevens is coming from this direction. I have been doing this with other poets, too, of course.
I think it's safe to say that all poets wrote the occasional bad poem, and we might as well call a bad poem a bad poem, when we find one. Yes, even Shakespeare.
I think you're right, Art, about re-reading poets from time to time and forgetting everything you've heard about them.
ReplyDeleteAnd I do agree that Stevens is at his best when his imagery is strongest. I also think he is at his best at the end of his life when he is so much simpler than before. After all, what is the last poem in his Collected Poems? Not Ideas About the Thing But the Thing Itself. "... A bird's cry, at daylight or before,/In the early March wind ... It was like/A new knowledge of reality."
As for Ashbery, I agree with Dana Gioia that he is great minor poet. I couldn't get him, either, until it occurred to me how much his poems are like the peripheral phrases you hear at an art opening - the poems are like a montage of snatches of conversation. His last book, which I reviewed, seemed to me to have more depth to it, because he was considering last things.