Blotting paper

I’ve been pondering on this great adventure of ours. There is little else to do, and the creative process is always the most interesting of all human activities. Is it public, is it private, is it — god forbid — both? And does it have the potential to be collaborative? I think it does. Case in point: I’ve worked with all of you before and we’ve produced some great things. Great, by subjective standards, but great all the same, in the context we work in.

What’s going wrong this time? I realised it was the “let’s write a story together” approach. I told you this today and I still don’t think it works. But specifically, I don’t think it works because I’m there. I mean, creatively, there. I’m offering you my ideas, my sense of what art is, of how the work should be contructed, crafted, reshaped, fulfilled, produced, played out in the grand scheme of things. And it’s not commensurate with your sense of art. I know: no one’s is. We’re different. We’re individuals. We’re artists. And you are filmmakers, and I make poems.

I look to the word “artist” for some revelation, a few truths. Do truths work in colloration? Shouldn’t there be only one truth? Right now, in this moment, I think so. I think we should be artisans in the house of film, subordinate to the larger vision of the work, yet wholly and unutterably responsible for it. Responsible to it.

I suspect some of you are laughing at me now — and I can almost name you. But art is serious to me. Its system of pleasure, its creative flux, the possibility of complete, inhuman abandon held in check by the subtlest formal constraints — all of this I care for. So laugh, if you will. You will be laughing at something that’s important to me.

When a piece of art fails at every level, there is something inexusable in it. It’s like making a chair that no one can sit on. And every effort must be made to rescue it from that shame. This is my effort in that direction.

So I’m really late to pipe in about this, mainly because this is the first I heard of it. It being:

The unnamed executive, a 22-year-old from St Petersburg, had been hoping to become only the third woman in Russia’s history to bring a successful sexual harassment action against a male employer.

She alleged she had been locked out of her office after she refused to have intimate relations with her 47-year-old boss.

“He always demanded that female workers signalled to him with their eyes that they desperately wanted to be laid on the boardroom table as soon as he gave the word,” she earlier told the court. “I didn’t realise at first that he wasn’t speaking metaphorically.”

The judge said he threw out the case not through lack of evidence but because the employer had acted gallantly rather than criminally.

“If we had no sexual harassment we would have no children,” the judge ruled. Read more.

Right. But also read this:

The “100% of professional Russian women harassed by their bosses” statistic is not properly cited, nor was it properly translated into English.

The following is the translation from the Russian:

Up to 100% of Russiann women could be considered victims of harassment, if we use international standards in assessing the concept [of harassment].

How did this get twisted into the following?:

According to a recent survey, 100 per cent of female professionals said they had been subjected to sexual harassment by their bosses

Are the news sources citing separate (yet, in another way, oddly similar) statistics? Read more.

What should I be more appalled about? That it’s okay to impose your dick on other people to make sure the human (Russian?) race doesn’t die out? Or the fact that the media still aren’t doing their job, or doing it right. Okay, I’m more appalled about the first, but there’s no reason to let The Telegraph off so easy, or the Russian newspaper, whichever it is.

It is becoming a dreadful habit with me, writing these blog posts a month late or more. The problem is with writing a coherent and un-hazy review of something you read so long ago. Anyway, I’ll give it a go.

in the order in which I finished reading them

Clans of the Alphane Moon - Philip K Dick - English - Fiction (Novel)

The first Dick book I’ve read. Not even one of his best, and I was seriously wooed.

The Habit of Loving - Doris Lessing - English - Fiction (Short stories)

Again, my first experience with Lessing. Again, I was wooed. (Yes, I know, I really should write these reviews sooner so that I don’t forget what I’m supposed to say.)

Don’t Read This Book If You’re Stupid - Tibor Fischer - English - Fiction (Short stories)

In May, I read Fischer’s debut novel, Under the Frog, which is much better than this. It’s a good read though, just not as funny. It’s more conscious of itself, a little trying-too-hard.

Look We Have Coming to Dover! - Daljit Nagra - English - Poetry

Check out my reading trajectory here. Yeah, I know: pretty unimpressive.

In July I attended a reading by Keki Daruwalla, and he made a very interesting comment. He said that Indian poets who write in English should not attempt to use Indianisms in their poetry. According to him, Indianisms (such as “I went to his house afsos karne ke liye”) work in prose to infuse it with a certain Indian flavour, but in poetry, we must stick to the Queen’s English. Unfortunately I didn’t follow his argument after that, if there was any. Nagra himself doesn’t work with Indianisms so much (if so, I wouldn’t have needed his “Punjabi and Ungreji Guide”), but his is certainly not the Queen’s English. It’s a peculiar mix of Punjabi, Indian English and British English. This use of language is inextricably tied to the identities of British Indians that Nagra explores in his collection. So I’m not so swift to dismiss the use of particular dialects in poetry. Not everything has to do with “flavour”, anyway.

Statistics

4 books: 2 collections of short stories; 1 novel; 1 poetry collection

Highly recommended

The biggest problem with criticism (of whatever sort) is that often it is not used against oneself. This is what I found myself doing in Feeling “othered” - I: I was criticising the kind of Indian writing that exoticises India for Western audiences; yet I noticed my own failing while writing the blog itself, and therefore anticipated a second part to it.

My failing is this: I’ve only been published in international (either American or British) literary magazines so far. (I’m excluding college and school publications, and one terrible youth magazine of which I was, unfortunately, a part.)

I could have rephrased that and said: “I have been writing for Western audiences.” The truth is, I don’t know if it’s as simple as that, and now I rather sympathise with the same writers I criticised.

Before I continue with this worrisome journey of mine, let me sat this: in Part I, I was referring to only contemporary Indian novelists, and not poets. There are many reasons for this, one of them being that in poetry, there isn’t (or shouldn’t be) space for explanation, which is one of the ways in which the othering happens. The other reason is that I always find myself at a loss to comment on the condition of poetry today, though I suppose I could offer a decent (workshop) critique or two.

Now: have I really been addressing the Western audience? Have I been attempting an explanation of my own “exotic” (read “inferior”) culture to Western (and therefore “superior”) cultures? I don’t know. I really don’t know. Perhaps someone else can tell me. I don’t want to worry about this at the theoretical level. But at a practical level, it is true: I’ve been sending my work out only to Western magazines.

It’s true: magazines are small fry when you think of the kind of audiences Arundhati Roy has. Yet I can’t help but be self-critical about my own prejudices.

I tried to examine why these prejudices exist for me.

One clear reason I found for submitting to Western magazines is that I’ve grown up, in some sense, with Western writers. I don’t mean the kind of people I read in books, but the kind of people I read and learnt from at workshops and writing sites. I was, to my knowledge, the only Indian around, and I loved it. I was able to retain a sense of who I was (and nationality plays a huge role in that, even in this global, global world) and yet, develop my craft the way these other, fantastic writers were. This sense of community, of being able to communicate with others in the same situation (and more importantly, with those who were much, much more experienced than I), was something I had never managed to find in India, in Bangalore. The writers I knew in real life were not as serious or focussed as I thought myself to be. Many had absolutely no belief in self-criticism, craft and revision. It was difficult to learn anything. (The use of past tense is misleading here: I’m still part of these workshops and writing sites. The only change is that I do know a few serious writers in real life now.)

Later, when I managed to meet writers who were serious about their craft, the method and atmosphere was alien to me, and I didn’t pursue the relationship. I haven’t decided if this is problematic or not. I’m reminded of a piece I posted at a previous blog (which I hope has disappeared into the unreachable depths of the internet) in which I called myself an “internet writer”. I was not entirely correct then, because I completely rejected my Indian identity, but I had a point. My sensibilities seem to be Western. I don’t regret this at all. It merely means I have learnt the sort of things that are taught in creative writing courses (which do not, to my knowledge, exist in India) in smaller, scattered doses. Is this better or worse than learning without those workshops? Again, I don’t know. I don’t care. I would just like to keep working at this. If not anything else, writing/crafting is one of my favourite things to do and I hate life to be boring.

One thing that I really enjoyed about writing Part I of this exploration is that it received a lot of attention. Perhaps that does not reflect in the comments I got at the blog (there are only two or three), but I did have a lot of people tell me later on that they read and enjoyed it. One writer emailed me his thoughts. Michael is an American poet who now lives in Delhi. Here is a bit of what he wrote:

… my experience as someone who is part inside, part out (I’ve been here three plus years, I’m married to an Indian—a real writer by the way—and speak decent Hindi), is that some of what I write about everyday life is going to be taken to be “exotic” by a western readership, no matter what I do. While I try to avoid clichéd ground (e.g., jasmine, curry, angst about children begging, cows in the street), I do write about the city I live in and the people who work in it; that’s what I did in the US, and I realized that’s what I’m going to do here. (I am not one who believes that India needs to be photoshopped.)

I think one thing that helps with all this is to be clear about audience. For me, I’d like most of my stuff to work in both places. So I workshop mostly at the Gaz or The Waters in the US, but I also have Indian poet friends who help me out from time to time. I try to get published both here and in the West, as well. And I read in Delhi, whenever I can; there’s nothing like a live audience, no?

That pretty much gave me my solution — for the time being anyway. I need to change my audience, but only slightly. While sending to magazines abroad, I should also send to Indian and Asian magazines. (Heh, I just realised how confident I sound, as if to say, “It’s really easy getting an audience. You just have to send your poems to mags and they’ll publish you.”) Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find too many Indian mags. I suppose word gets around, though.

In this light, I’m happy to say I’ve had six poems published in Pratilipi, a bilingual (Hindi and English) bimonthly magazine. The best part is that I can read Hindi and understand it reasonably well. There are some excellent poets in there, which makes the experience even better. (KVK Murthy was in a previous issue.)

I suppose being aware of my own faults and prejudices is the way to go. I’m happy to say I’ve even managed to read in a couple of places, despite my fear of public speaking. So yay for me. For the moment.

This sort of yayness is always momentary. (I’m so profound.) In fact, my yayness is already waning, because I’m thinking of the numerous times I’ve faced the problem of explaining/not explaining references in my work. I hate footnotes. They don’t seem right to me. And sometimes, I’m afraid my poems are too Indian to send to mags. In a workshop scenario, people usually google, which makes it even more enlightening for me. But in a magazine? It is something that keeps me back.

Those who can’t write poetry, write criticism

Quotation 1

Scoundrels without the wit to fit
A word or two of verse together
Are daunted not a whit to sit
In judgement on the abstruse poetry of another.
Such men will listen with attentive mind,
Alert to see how many faults they find.
And if they’re vexed because they fail to grasp the sense
Of works conceived for readers of intelligence,
They naturally do not blame their foolishness:
A girl who’s less than perfect always blames the dress.

Quotation 2

Pedalling his bicycle glasses, he asks,
What’s it like to be a poet?’
I say to myself, ‘The son of a bitch

fattens himself on the flesh of dead poets.
Lines his pockets with their blood.
From his fingertips ooze ink and paper,

as he squats on the dungheap
of old texts and obscure commentaries.
His eyes peal off.

Where would His Eminence be
but for the poets who splashed about
in the Hellespont or burned in the Java Sea?’

Quotation 3

It is ridiculous for any man to criticize the works of another who has not distinguished himself by his own performance.

Quotation 4

Has anybody ever seen a dramatic critic in the day-time? Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good.

Question 5

To be a good critic, however, it’s true — you don’t have to be a good writer. This doesn’t make it any less worthy, if that’s what you’re worried about. Sometimes critics (and editors and proofreaders) are terrible or mediocre writers. But they don’t choose their profession because they aren’t good writers, they choose it because they are good at critiquing, reviewing, proofreading — whatever it is that they do. Appreciate this and respect it.

Lately I’ve been reading a lot of literature that suggests that critics are failed writers, usually bitter people, who, as in some Freudian defense mechanism, take out their repressed anger on successful writers. The word “critic” has different meanings in different contexts, so I’m going through the quotations one by one.

Quotation 1 is a translation by John Brough of one of Bhartrhari’s (Sankrit poet of the latter half of the fifth century) poems. Pretty scathing stuff. Here, the critic is not the literary critic of today, but the reviewer kind of critic.

Quotation 2 is an extract from R Parthasarathy’s long poem, Rough Passage. I don’t think I will be reading the entire thing after reading this extract: the writing is quite terrible, in my opinion. He doesn’t seem to be saying anything of significance either, and I’d rather not waste my time. In these few lines, I see the figure of the critic associated with some pretty violent activity. And in the tercets that precede this section, Parthasarathy describes the critic as having a mundane life, reviewing “verse/ written by others”, attending conferences, and being generally blind to the beauty of nature and the innocence of children (as if those were the only subjects of poetry). Like Bhartrhari’s critic, this one also was a failed poet. Now his success lies in being “articulate about nothing”.

Considering the fact that Parthasarthy teaches (taught?) at Skidmore College, I wonder if he is critiquing (read “lashing out viciously at”) the American academy, which has a tradition of rigorous research and critical thinking in the humanities, much more than say in India. My professor calls it the “publish-or-die” syndrome because of how important it is to  your teaching career to be constantly engaged in critical activity (publishing in academic journals, attending seminars, etc).

Even more distinct is the impression one gets that Parthasarathy is responding personally to criticism of his own work. He seems to be saying, “Sure, you think I’m crap. But at least I can write… crap.” All right, I’m being mean. But the whole thing is suspect, if you ask me.

Quotation 3 is something Joseph Addison said. It states the “critic = failed writer” argument quite succinctly, but also suggests that writers (the “good” ones) are the only legitimate critics.

Quotation 4 is by PG Wodehouse. It reminds me of Anton Ego, the Grim Eater/food critic, from the animated film, Ratatouille. The filmmakers managed to create the scariest food critic possible, who is, unsurprisingly, French and has a long, hooked nose. It’s very entertaining, but I was disappointed when (the rest of the sentence is a bit of a spoiler) Ego instantly loses his food critic persona when he becomes a nice person.

Quotation 5 is all me. You can tell from the childish way it has been written. The quotation is from an editorial I wrote roughly a year ago about the best way to critique writing. (It was a beginner’s guide, really.) Back then, I was thinking of the kind of critique one posts at writing workshops, not literary criticism, not reviews. However, I think the same thing applies to the literary critic and reviewer.

While I’m sure some critics are bitter about their failings as artists, that’s hardly a reason to assume that all critics are like that. The “failed writer” epithet is contemptuous, childish and unwarranted. And this vehemence comes from a writer, not a critic. I study literature and criticism, and I love to review books (though, admittedly, I’m not very good at it, if you read my last blog post), but I’m no critic. In fact, part of my desire to study Creative Writing and not Literature at the postgraduate level stems from my fear of being thought of as stupid.

The writer-critic relationship

It’s important for the writer to be critical of her own writing and those of others. This is an idea that the writer part of me has been growing up with, and I’m loathe to give it up. (Is there reason to?) In workshops, this is what we do. We critique each other. We learn. Many writers are also reviewers and literary critics. It’s complicated to consider them as two separate entities. This is nothing new, of course, and it’s an excellent argument against the kind of nonsense Bhartrhari and Parthasarathy want us to believe. As a writer, how do you know the good from the bad if you only appreciate the good? And even then, criticism is not merely about criticising. It’s careful consideration, analysis, looking within, without and in-between. Right?

Towards the critic who isn’t a writer (for whatever reason), I bear no ill will. Maybe that’s because I’ve never been reviewed before (only critiqued in workshops) and to be fair, it is unlikely that I will ever be reviewed. I wonder then: what is the relationship between the critic and poet (/writer)? Is it necessarily antagonistic and unproductive? Can it resemble the (comparatively positive) relationship between the critic and poet in a workshop? Is the critic to be feared and hated? Must we insult and deride her the way she supposedly insults and derides us back? The situation is inescapably dramatic.

This is long, long overdue. I chose to go back to college (idiot that I am) and waste my time attending classes. Shame on me!

Anyway, I read a stupendous number of books in May (seven!), of which I’m proud, considering how slow I am at reading.

in the order in which I finished reading them

April Galleons - John Ashbery - English - Poetry

I can’t remember what I want to say about Ashbery. He’s difficult, yes. It took me forever to get into his writing. Just to follow his train of thought or imagery. I began reading Ashbery with no preconceived notions, which is rare. But when I found myself struggling to access the poems, really get into them, I internetted. (What else could I do?) I found a Slate article on how to read Ashbery by Megan O’Rourke . If anyone is facing similar problems with Ashbery, I recommend reading it. It won’t solve any problems and you’ll still have to put in a lot of effort, but O’Rourke sort of guides you in the right direction. I remember finding the use of pronouns very annoying, because I had no idea what they were referring to at points. This is what MOR says:

[...] don’t be confused by all the pronouns encountered in a single poem—the procession of shifting “you,” “we,” and “I” that is a hallmark Ashbery tactic. Traditionally, the different pronouns in a lyric poem are important because they fill in the latent narrative, helping you figure out whether the person being addressed is a lover, a daughter, the self, etc. But in Ashbery the pronouns are generic rather than specific. The “we” is an expression of the poet’s flickering sense of solidarity with his fellow citizens, a stand-in for what he takes to be marginalized participants in American capitalism: those who love its products (the movies, T-shirts) but are suspicious of its processes; it represents the cautious identification of the individual with his society. The “you” is often a kind of companion self, a figure the speaker, in moments of feeling exiled, can address himself to. A typical Ashbery move is to retreat from this pluralistic “you” or “we” of identifying with others to an intensely singular “you”—the you of the self suddenly and ruefully alienated from his surroundings, the one we address in private. Read the entire article.

Obviously, Megan O’Rourke’s opinion isn’t the only valid one, but it certainly is valid — as well as interesting, helpful and well written.

There is an absolutely exquisite prose poem towards the end of the book, called The Ice Storm. If anyone wants to read it, let me know and I will email it to you (yes, I bothered typing up all 3 pages of it).

Under the Frog - Tibor Fischer - English - Fiction (Novel)

Every book I read teaches me something, either about the world or about me. Sometimes both. One of the most important things I learnt after reading Fischer’s debut novel was that I should never try reviewing books. I had glimpsed this knowledge a year or so ago, when I had been commissioned to review two books for a magazine. I sucked at it, but so did the magazine, and we suited each other so well, it was too good to be true. It was because of this semi-knowledge about my lack of reviewing skills that I decided not to post elaborate reviews at this blog. These “Reading list” posts are really just my way of recording responses to the books I’ve read. Once in a way, if I convince someone else to read a book I like, there’s no harm done. Really.

Reading Fischer completed this knowledge. Never shall I think, “Oh, maybe I was wrong. Maybe I can write a decent review.” The truth is, if I hate a book, I will hate it with a vengeance. Ever seen the face I make if anyone mentions Arundhati Roy? It’s the face of someone who just witnessed maggots crawling out of an animal carcass. That’s the facial expression that gets transmitted into words and I’m rarely witty about disgust.

Similarly, if I like a book, I will rave about it like a lunatic. Right now, I’m examining my practices as a reviewer and reader just to keep myself from raving about Under the Frog. It’s that awesome.

First off, the humour is just divine: black, mean, sharp, fun. Secondly, it’s intelligent. I know: it’s such a cliché to call something intelligently funny, but remember that I said I was a crap reviewer.

Fischer takes one of the dreariest bits of Hungarian history (1945 - 1956), when the country was under a communist regime, takes all the miseries of the characters, and makes you laugh about it, while keeping a hold on your sympathies. The novel is filled with the crazy exploits of Gyuri (I think that was his name) and his friends, who are members of a basketball team. I wish I still had the book with me (can you believe that libraries actually expect me to return the books I like?!), so I could quote some of the lines. I loved this bit where G and his friends feel really irritated about “the Imperialists” warring with every communist nation but their own. And the bit where Gyuri’s English teacher tries to convince his commie lodger to have a shower because he smelt so bad.

I’m nostalgic about reading the book! It’s the sort of book you read despite Salman Rushdie recommending it to you on the cover. And believe me, he does.

Fear of Flying - Erica Jong - English - Fiction (Novel)

O man. What did I learn when I read this? Probably that I am very, very, very picky about the kind of fiction I like. Which is a good thing, because I don’t want to find myself liking this sort of writing in an alternate reality, you know? I found so many things wrong with it:

• It gets ranty every second sentence.
• Jong keeps throwing in these annoying literary references (”Anna [from Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook] could never orgasm unless she was with a man she loved!” “For so long, women had to understand their own sexuality through the point of view of male writers, like DH Lawrence. Onoes!”). I wanted to reach in and tell Isadora (fat bummed, erratic, confused protagonist) that I don’t fucking care how many books she’s read or what great conclusions she’s made about them; I just want to know what happens in the story!
• The blurbs and review snippets on the cover all claim that Jong is witty. Nuh huh. She’s merely whiny. And the humour is trying too hard. Trying too hard to be witty, that is. Humour with an identity crisis, or something.

Yet, after all these criticisms, I can’t help but say, “Don’t dismiss this book.” Isadora (still the protagonist) is married (for the second or third time, I don’t remember) to a psychotherapist, but she’s not happy. She goes in search of a “zipless fuck”/anonymous sexual encounter that would really satisfy her.

The book has been lauded as a work that redefines female sexuality. And I think that, being written in 1973, it probably did. Today, I don’t know. I really don’t know.

You can probably sense my ambivalence here. Ordinarily, if the execution is poor (in my opinion), I dismiss the book without any hesitation. But there’s something about the attempt to explore the liberation of sex that makes me admire Jong.

The truth of the matter is, if this were an essay, I’d enjoy it. Jong’s questioning of Lawrence and Lessing and whoever else is perfectly valid. The problem is that the literary references come off as pompous and know-it-all — it didn’t matter to me that Isadora had studied literature (which would explain the allusions); it just mattered that she was irritating. But in an essay, all this would have come off as research and scholarship, and possibly come up with some interesting (semi-)conclusions. But then, how many people will an essay reach, as opposed to a novel about sex? At the end of the day, Jong’s novel is a message novel, an I-want-you-to-think-about-this-dammit novel. Or isn’t it?

I think I’m complicating the whole thing.

La Seconde¹- Colette - Français - Fiction (Roman/Novel)

J’ai tout oublié. Et c’est dommage parce que c’était un roman bien intéressant, bien écrit.

(Translation: I’ve forgotten it all. And it’s a pity because it was quite an interesting novel, and well written.)

Piano - Jean Echenoz - Translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti - Fiction (Novel)

Max is an alcoholic concert pianist who has stage fright. One day, he dies. On waking, he finds himself in a bizarre place that seems to be both a hospital and a hotel. Here he is taken care of by a nurse that looks just like Peggy Lee and an attendant that looks just like Dean Martin. At the end his stay, he is told whether he is supposed to spend his eternity in the urban or rural zone. These zones are heaven and hell, but one doesn’t know which is which. As you might’ve guessed by now, it’s a kind of modern-day retelling of Dante’s The Divine Comedy. Good stuff.

Emma - Jane Austen - English - Fiction (Novel)

Re-reading Austen for fun. I’ve always loved her.

The only change was, I read this while watching Douglas McGrath’s film version of Emma (with Gwyneth Paltrow as E) in bits and pieces, which was great fun. I got to see what he was eliminating and what he wasn’t, how the dialogue and characters changed here and there. I would put this above the much lauded BBC miniseries of Pride and Prejudice because the film interpreted the novel instead of merely re-rendering it.

Mansfield Park - Jane Austen - English - Fiction (Novel)

Fanny Price is really, really annoying. But it’s a fun book.

____

¹ I’m reading Anaïs Nin’s A Woman Speaks (a collection of lectures, seminars and interviews, edited by Evelyn J Hinz) and she seemed to remember better about Colette’s La Seconde. Here’s what she says about it at the Esalen Seminar, San Francisco, February 12, 1972:

Colette has a beautiful story, especially beautiful in this respect [turning jealousy into love]. It’s about two women: one is the wife and the other is the indispensable secretary to a very famous playwright who is terribly egocentric and terribly spoiled by women. The secretary is always there with the woman, sister-like to her, indispensable. Then the woman suddenly discovers that her husband is having an affair with this woman. But she needs her. She says: ‘Who am I going to sit here with in the evening waiting for him to come back?’ So they sit together and knit together. She really created a relationship to this woman which was more human than her relationship to the impossible, primadonna husband, and her feeling toward the woman is marvelous. So the jealousy disappeared because she really had a great human need of this woman, a caring and tenderness. It was marvelous, especially when she decided: ‘What will I do? Send her away? And then I’ll sit here and wait for him alone. We used to both sit and wait together.’ I know it’s sort of old-fashioned in one sense, the acceptance of the man, the enslaving by the husband; but still the relationship between the two women is beautifully and delicately expressed.

Statistics

Woo. So let’s check out my stats. (Yes, I’m obsessive. Shamelessly obsessive.)

7 books: 6 novels; 1 poetry collection

Highly Recommended

Some very interesting discussions are going on at The Gaz:

Read me!

Read me too!

My question is simple: if a writer is “immoral” (quotes, because I don’t like the word “moral” or feel that there is a universal definition of it), does that colour the way in which you view his or her writing?

In the above discussions, Eliot is the example.

I think Eliot was a sick bastard. I think his poetry was the product of a diseased mind. I think he had the animal magnetism of a mass murderer. I think he was afraid of anything dark, which, for him, would include the sex of women, Jews, dark skinned people and the night. I think Eliot’s embrace of Christianity, and his refutation of Modern Physics, was pathological. I also think he was disgusted by everything unkempt, untidy, smelling of life.

Does this make you despise Eliot? Or do you only despise him as a person, not as a poet? Do you not care? Are you indifferent to Eliot being a “sick bastard”? Do you have other examples?

*

Also, I need to write up a couple of blog posts: 1. Part II of my no camels in the Koran discussion 2. May Reading List

So I’m experiencing brief — very brief — flashes of fame. Not fame exactly — that’s too fancy a word.

I’ve been getting notes from people who recognised me from the Hindu article (the embarrassing one that is linked somewhere here, but I don’t want to relink it here, ’cause you know, it’s embarrassing and stuff) or from the poetry reading itself. This, I think, explains what happens when you don’t have enough poetry readings in a city as big as Bangalore.

Anyway, here’s the creepiest message I got.

“hey saw u in the hindu recently……u r cute………..r u a published poet………..whts name of ur book…………..”

Thanks, weirdo. All this while I thought I was pomo.

I think that I’m cruel. Or else very cynical. Or else the world is foolish.

Last night, I found that the May issue of The Chimaera was out, in which I have two poems, dealing with the theme of belonging. I was very happy with this publication particularly, because the poets I’m in with are quite brilliant (to be fair, TC has always been an excellent mag), and also because I had themed poems in. I’ve often made the mistake of sending poems that aren’t what editors are looking for, even if the poems aren’t too bad themselves. Gotta learn sometime.

Anyway, I thought the occasion was worthy of Borges:

The first mention we have of the Chimera is in Book VI of the Iliad. There Homer writes that it came of divine stock and was a lion in its foreparts, a goat in the middle, and a serpent in its hindparts, and that from its mouth it vomited flames, and finally was killed by the handsome Bellerophon, the son of Glaucus, following the signs of the gods. A lion’s head, goat’s belly, and serpent’s tail is the most obvious image conveyed by Homer’s words, but Hesiod’s Theogony describes the Chimera as having three heads, and this is the way it is depicted in the famous Arezzo bronze that dates from the fifth century. Springing from the middle of the animal’s back is the head of a goat, while at one end it has a snake’s head and at the other a lion’s.

The Chimera reappears in the sixth book of the Aeneid, ‘armed with flame’; Virgil’s commentator Servius Honoratus observed that, according to all authorities, the monster was native to Lycia, where there was a volcano bearing its name. The base of this mountain was infested with serpents, higher up on its flanks were meadows and goats, and towards its desolate top, which belched out flames, a pride of lions had its resort. The Chimera would seem to be a metaphor of this strange elevation. Earlier, Plutarch suggested that Chimera was the name of a pirate captain who adorned his ships with the images of a lion, a goat, and a snake.

These absurd hypotheses are proof that the Chimera was beginning to bore people. Easier than imagining it was to translate it into something else. As a beast it was too heterogeneous; the lion, goat, and snake (in some texts, dragon) do not readily make up a single animal. With time the Chimera tended to become ‘chimerical’; a celebrated joke of Rabelais (’Can a chimera, swinging in the void, swallow second intentions?’) clearly marks the transition. The patchwork image disappeared but the word remained, signifying the impossible. A vain or foolish fancy is the definition of Chimera that we now find in dictionaries.

- The Book of Imaginary Beings; Jorge Luis Borges with Margarita Guerrero; Revised, enlarged and translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni in collaboration with the author

Hardly complimentary to the Chimera/The Chimaera, but still entertaining to read. C’est Borges. Je n’en attends pas moins. (Too literal a translation?)

*

I was reading Elizabeth Barrie’s Preface (Belonging and Alienation) and felt the timing utterly strange. For one, it relates slightly to my “Feeling othered” exploration, which I have yet to complete. And secondly, I had been writing in my journal just before logging on to check my mail, when I found that TC was out. Here’s an edited version of what I had written:

31 May 2008, Wednesday

Until the poem is ready — perhaps for publication or simply for readers (as many as possible) — it is like a child. It must be groomed, taught to behave in public, not to be offensive to human sensibility, and yet, to be unique, exciting, wholesome. I want my poems to be both maniacal and dependable. That is when I can let them go, proud that I had something to do with them, hopefully ashamed of only a few.

Then you can make of my poems what you will. They should not be taken as a reflection of my being — at least, not all the time, and not as complete reflections. And I will want to defend them once in a while.

Otherwise they are free to be their own selves.

So that’s how I write in my journal: style slightly influenced by whoever I’m reading currently (Jane Austen), self-important, declarative, romantic, serious. Personal. You’ll have to forgive me that.

My thoughts on “otherness”, Barrie’s thoughts on belonging and alienation, and my diary entry have come at an interesting time, because reading my poems at The Chimaera, I experienced the strange sensation of not caring for them much anymore, as if I didn’t want to spend time with them anymore, as if I just wanted to be alone with my thirty (imaginary) cats, and think of what it would be like to have children again, or write poems.

(Isn’t odd how, after such a tradition of kookiness among writers, you don’t want to be kooky yourself, but can’t help being it, after all?)

This strange sensation was not altogether novel, however. I’ve felt something similar when I saw my poems published at other magazines. Except maybe Kabir. I’m still invested in Kabir, and that may be because he is still not “ready”. The opinion of him differs, so I still have a little work left to do. Or a lot — who knows?

What is the connection between these experiences? Is it merely that the poems have been published — is that why I don’t care anymore? Is it because they are “done”? Or is it because I don’t think any of those to be my best work yet? Am I disappointed in the choice of the editors? Would it have been the same if they had picked other poems from the lot I sent them? Am I fickle?

This bothers me.

… of deviantART’s April mini-chapbook contest.

The contest was hosted by yours truly for deviantART’s version of (National) Poetry Writing Month, and was judged by Jon Stone, poetry editor of the roundtable review. And the best part is, Jon agreed to publish the winners in rtr’s May 2008 issue. Do check them out.

In other poetry mag news, Fuselit has a new blog: Cut Out & Keep, which “is a blog that forges, muddy-goggled, through the volatile terrain between Poetry’s cold, isolated territories and the rich kingdoms of Claptrap, Paraphernalia and Pop Culture.” Haha, inimitable Fuselit style.

From Jon’s dA journal:

“We’re keeping it updating with wonderful things, such as:

* A free, downloadable Make Your Own Fuselit: Straddle set.
* Reviews, some by guest reviewers.
* Poet top trumps.
* Notable calls for submissions.

“There will also be, forthcoming, the inside scoop on making Fuselit, a preview of Fox, and, fingers crossed, an occasional audio show…”

In general, Fuselit has had a website revamp, which is a must-see, and they’re latest issue (Fox), will be launched on the 14th of June.

*

C’est tout. Oh no, wait! I bought poetry (Daljit Nagra’s) and Nin, and I’m in love with Mr Shanbhag again. There’s a better article (duh, it’s written by Ramchandra Guha) here.