March Book Reading

     Not only have I been negligent about my general Lit Bit postings these past couple of months, but I have also been lacking in my Book Club posts. I’m going to remedy this now.

     So far we have read Out of Poverty by Paul Polak, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig (highly recommended), Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling (I personally recommend the entire series), and the club just finished reading Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison in honor of Black History Month (another good book I would recommend).

     That brings us up to the month of March. We are currently reading The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks. If you can get a copy, go ahead and start reading. By the first meeting on March 15th you need to read up to the section On The Attack which is essentially the first half of the book. We will have our online discussion in an IRC chat at 8:30 P.M. MST (-7 GMT). If you go here you will be able to access an online IRC client or you can use a desktop client (I personally use Colloquy on my iMac). The chat server we use is chat.zoite.net and the chat room name is #lit-bit. As always, if you have any problems or need help getting to the discussion feel free to leave a comment here or leave me tweet.

     For the month of April it has already been decided that we will read the book Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. If you have any recommendations, feel free to leave a comment at any time. I’m gonna make my way on over to update our list of potential books to read. Hope to see more and more people at the Lit Bit Book Club discussions.

 

Inaugural Poem

     I feel compelled as a poet to tackle the quality of writing and performance of the Inaugural poem given today by Elizabeth Alexander, “Praise Song for the Day” (the link will take you to a comments section which has the text of the poem posted a few comments down). If you have the chance to read the poem (or hear its oration) prior to reading this post, go for it, it can’t hurt – well, not a lot at least.

     My initial exposure to this poem was strictly the transcript. I read through the poem fairly quickly and found it generally unremarkable. When I returned later and read through the poem again and began picking apart the details of it, I find that Alexander’s language is generally uninventive, redundant, and occasionally bordering on archaic:
          “Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform,
          Patching a tire.”
These lines are an example of what I find as borderline archaic in the language, between the stitching and darning – there is just something bland and lifeless about this expression that reminds me of a “When I was your age” speech from my great grandparents. Followed closely behind that is the line, “Repairing the things in need of repair.” My response: Really? Imagine that. I mean what else would possibly need repairing? How about some detail here, how about something more specific. Oh sure, she preceded that statement with the darning of a hole and patching a tire, but these things are so pedestrian and mundane that there is no life to them. That’s the beauty of poetry though, the poet has the artistic license to take language and make those mundane moments, those little facts of living that keep us going and make them INTERESTING!!! It is absolutely possible. If I can do it, surely a published poet can as well? That is what I expect from a poet that has been chosen to read for the inauguration of the next president!!!

     Between the old and the boring language of the poem is the vague: “Someone is trying to make music somewhere.” All I can think of is what kind of music? what someone (or rather who)? where? I understand that Alexander is working within the confines of making accessible poetry, considering that she has an audience that may not consist strictly of poets and readers of poetry, but that does not mean dumb down the poetry and make it so common that it loses meaning. It is the details that allow poetry to be relatable and moving. If you turn the subjects into someones and everyones then NO ONE is going to want to read about them or hear about them. We like to think that we are all unique, yet connected by similar experiences and emotions, which means we want to read characters in the same light. The problem with the someones and somewheres is that they feel nothing and ground us nowhere. In a poem it is better to be specific and let the audience know where they are, whether it is by a street name, city name, a certain smell in the air. This poem has no atmosphere.

     Another problem I have with the poem is the representation of the working classes:
          “Say it plain that many have died for this day.
          Sing the names of the dead who brought us here.
          Who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,
          Picked the cotton and the lettuce.
          Built brick-by-brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.”
I get the whole “Yay for the working man (and woman)” and “They’re the backbone of our country” but I think it is a bit much for this poem to be so exclusively blue-collar (and by the way, I thought the whole “Joe the Plumber” was a McCain/Palin bit?). My dad is a civil engineer, worked his way through college for six years and works primarily in the office, designing rail runner systems and such, but he doesn’t lay the tracks down himself. Does that make his life and his work less praise worthy because he isn’t the laborer? I’m all for finally giving the working man his dues and recognizing how important he is to the infrastructure of our country, but that doesn’t mean exclude the other end. I thought our goal was equality, or is that just my mistake?

     I feel like Alexander’s repetition of the phrase “Praise song” diluted the impact of the title and the meaning she was trying to get across by naming the poem “Praise Song for the Day.” She uses that phrase four times in a very short space at the end of the poem, so by the time you get to that last line of the poem it does not have the impact or strength that it should. Instead it is simply another phrase of praise. And neither am I sold on the idea that this poem is about praise and celebration. It feels colorless and emotionless. There is no poignancy in the language or the depiction of images she gives us in the poem. It’s just plain and drab and I’m bored reading it. I find this unacceptable. I had a conversation with one of my poetry professors today about this poem and how poetry is allotted so little time in extensive exposure to a larger public. What this means is that the moments where poetry has access to a large audience we need to rock their socks off! This poem did no rocking…except to sleep. I am embarrassed as a poet that this is the impression of poetry so many people are going to be exposed to, that this poem is now unfortunately representative of poetry today when there are so many more poets and poems that exude passion and feeling, that have a knack for refreshing language and taking what we already know and making it new again. I consider this a sad day for poetry. Harsh, I know, but I feel strongly about this.

     Elizabeth Alexander also has a tendency to lean on lists in her poetry. Lists can be extremely informative and effective in poetry, but they also have a natural choppiness in their rhythm, which means if they are over-used you will get that disjointed feeling in the reading of the poem, because you just move from one list to the next. Which segues my comments on to the actual reading of the poem. If I was distraught at the text of this poem, I was near sick when I heard Alexander’s oration of the poem. This was my first impression of her performance: Is this the first time she’s read her poem out loud? Because that’s what it sounds like. I was appalled by the lack of enthusiasm in her voice. Her reading was disjointed and choppy as though she was continually looking down at the page (and continually losing her spot at that). I am being intentionally pitiless because poetry is a form of performance. Standing in front of audiences to give readings of your work comes with the territory of a poet. Which means that a poet has to be prepared to play their part, to read the poem with authority, to convince the audience not only that you wrote the poem, but that you really are the “I” of the poem, or the “dad” in the poem is your real dad. I don’t mean to exaggerate everything, but subtle inflections in the voice, an emphasis here, another there, intuitively draws the audience’s focus in on certain points. Reading a poem you wrote out loud is the opportunity for the poet to say “Hey, this is what it’s supposed to sound like, how it’s supposed to be read.” Alexander’s reading of her poem was as lifeless and colorless as the language she uses in the poem. It made me cringe.

     While I have very strong feelings about this poem and Elizabeth Alexander’s performance of it, I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. So I decided to look and see if I could find any of her work posted online, which led me to this site where there are about twenty or so poems from various books of Alexander’s. I read more than half of the poems available and found that they generally are in a similar style to the inauguration poem, but with a bit more freedom in the content and language of the poem. Even with the freedom to use words like genitalia and tit and poop, Alexander’s poems are stiff and choppy. I read a comment online today about the poem saying that the lack of any kind of rhyme robbed the poem of any lyricism, which resulted in a disjointed, choppy rhythm to the poem and the reading. While I agree that the poem had no lyricism to it (and I found that the majority of her other poems didn’t either) I was slightly offended that they attributed this lack strictly to rhyme. There are so many ways to create a lyrical quality to a poem aside from strict rhyming patterns. There are the choice in line breaks, the words you choose and the sounds of both the consonants and the vowels, the way repetition can be used, internal rhyme… so many ways. No, the lack of flow in this poem cannot be blamed solely on the absence of rhyme. But I digressed, my apologies. While on the whole I would not recommend Elizabeth Alexander’s poetry, there were a couple of poems where I thought she pushed beyond the stiffness of her other poems:
          ”At the Beach” from Body of Life,
          ”Neonatology” from Antebellum Dream Book and
          ”Emancipation” from American Sublime
While I appreciated some aspects of these three poems, even in them I was not entirely satisfied with the poet’s work. Frankly, I think there are plenty of other poets that would have fulfilled this inaugural post much better; even Natasha Trethewey would have been a better choice.

 

Go Vote!

     Welp, I’ve already gone this morning and voted. Yay me! If you haven’t gotten out there and voted yet, DO IT! I don’t care which way you choose to vote, just as long as you go vote. And don’t think that your candidate already has it in the bag and then don’t vote… that’s how candidate’s can lose the bag: people stop voting, thinking their vote doesn’t matter. YOUR VOTE MATTERS! YOUR VOICE MATTERS! So this is my “go vote” advocation post.

     The process was relatively painless and simple for this second time Presidential election voter. Being only 24, this is only the second time that I’ve been able to vote in a Presidential election, so the process can feel a little intimidating, but in reality it was very simple and straight forward, which I really appreciated, because I was at the poll at 6 A.M. after only a few hours of sleep last night. I was about ready to fall asleep standing in line as I waited. One complaint that I did have though was the fact that someone cut me in line. I mean, what is this? The grade school lunch line? Seriously, that’s just rude and immature. And I feel a bit petty bringing it up, but it really caught me off guard. I didn’t mind waiting the extra couple of minutes that the situation required of me, but I was honestly taken aback that an adult wouldn’t have the integrity to say “Oh she was before me in line” instead of just stepping in. He could clearly see me waiting and had been staring at my back for the past forty minutes. Again, I feel petty here, but it just gave me a kick-back to middle school where it was a race to get to the lunch line first. Someone should tell this dude that the poll wasn’t going anywhere and the one more minute he would have had to wait really wouldn’t have made that much difference. Okay, moving on.

     I’ve never been totally up on politics and all that jazz, but I must admit that I’m excited and nervous to see what the outcome of this election will be. Naturally I want it to run in the direction I voted.

 

Blog Action Day Follow Up

     I’m really happy with how Blog Action Day went and I just wanted to do a follow up post, linking to other posts from members of the book club that also participated in B.A.D. and discussed Out of Poverty in their posts as well. Make sure to check out Skunkie’s post “Today’s Letter is “P” for Poverty” over at Atomac.net and MegaNice9’s post “The Business Approach to Poverty” at micronicon. I’m very proud of our book club and inspired by the different results reading the same book can produce in different people. Amazing job you guys!

 

Blog Action Day 2008: Poverty

     As part of Blog Action Day’s poverty campaign, myself and others decided to read Out of Poverty: What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail by Paul Polak as a part of our new book club. We just finished reading the first half of the book and have had a discussion about the first six chapters. I think it is a really good idea to discuss poverty in a group, to tackle this issue with multiple brain powers. I found it really helpful to hear other people’s interpretations of the text. I feel that it is easy to become stuck in our own little box, in our own chiseled out perspective, and ignore the necessity to think globally, to see beyond our own backyard. I am certainly one that is guilty of such a thing and I hope to improve over time, and I think Blog Action Day is one way that I am being helped to broaden my perspective.

     So far, what I have read of Paul Polak’s book about ending poverty, I have found to be interesting and certainly eye-opening. To begin with, Polak takes a very straight-forward, matter of fact tone in his book. This book isn’t about making you feel guilty for having more than enough food on the table, for owning two computers or even one for that matter. Polak even states in the preface to the book:

I hate books about poverty that make you feel guilty, as well as dry, academic ones that put you to sleep. Working to alleviate poverty is a lively, exciting field capable of generating new hope and inspiration, not feelings of doom and gloom.

I think this is an amazing attitude to have. Polak certainly takes away the heaviness that can be associated with topics like poverty. This isn’t an add on t.v. for donations, with pictures of starving children, that work upon the guilt factor more than a person’s real sense of desire to help improve life for their fellow humans. The fact that Polak takes this positive and enthusiastic attitude toward poverty and working to change conditions, makes reading this book that much more enjoyable. Also, he doesn’t relate his mission in some wordy, academic, number-obsessive manner. I felt his tone to be very conversational and relaxed. He tells it how it is, and that’s it. No judgments passed on you, none passed on the people and communities of different countries and beliefs and social customs that he encounters throughout his work. I was very impressed by this ability of his to completely refrain from any personal subjection of the people he encountered. He is very objective and doesn’t bring any personal morals or beliefs into the book, which I really appreciated.

     What I find most interesting about this book is the fact that he strongly emphasizes how futile it is to try and donate people out of poverty. That this method has been tried ten times over and still has not produced results. In contrast to that, he goes into the details of his business, which designs products for small farmers in impoverished communities at low price points, and sells them the equipment they need. They scale down the size of the equipment, as well as the cost, to be affordable and usable for these farmers, which then increases their income. How? Because while the poor have a payment plan to pay off the equipment they have bought, the effeciency of the product at a relatively low price, increases the productivity of their crops, which increases their income and allows them to not only pay off what they have, but eventually invest in better quality products.

     I found it interesting how much Polak emphasized affordability over quality. I also felt it was very important that he pointed out that these farmers, no matter how high of quality products they received through donations, never felt a sense of ownership over this equipment, and therefore it wasn’t properly taken care of. On the flip-side, these low-quality, but affordable products, they bought from Polak’s company gave them a sense of ownership. Essentially, a sense of empowerment. This is more than just giving these people the tools they need to most effectively utilize their land. This is about giving these people a voice and a status in their community.

     Polak also encourages going out there and actually talking to the people that are living in poverty stricken conditions and listen to their needs. Sometimes what we think they need, may not actually be what is most important to them or the most immediate necessity. I really appreciated that Polak brings back the individuality to the families he encountered. Often times blanket-labeling strips away the individual and they become, simply, the poor. It is difficult to put a face and a specific need to this abstract label of “the poor”. Polak breaks down those barriers, puts names and faces to a lot of these people. Again, helping to give them a voice. He also emphasizes the importance of customizing the products to a specific regions needs. This isn’t about mass production all over the world. They take what they learn in their development of products and adapt each design for specific regions. What works in China, may not work in Africa, so they adjust accordingly.

     While I have generally enjoyed the book so far, there are some aspects that I found…well, irritating. The book is extremely repetitive. I feel like so much could have been pared down. In our discussion for the book club, some people fittingly stated that he sounded like a walking advertisement for his company. I have to agree. While I felt that he made a lot of valid points about the necessity of changing our approaches to poverty, I often got frustrated at this excessive emphasis on his company and their products and what they are doing. I think what they are doing is amazing and smart, but I don’t need to be reminded of it every single chapter. It was also difficult at this point in the book to recognize how he could pare these ideas down so that an individual person would be able to contribute in the efforts to end poverty. During our book club discussion, we began to realize that one of the ways that this book seemed to reinforce individual contribution, was by purchasing things that are fair-trade and going to farmer’s markets to support local farmers. While this hasn’t been stated outright at this point in the text, it certainly implies this connection, and coming together as a group really helped us to work toward this connection.

     At this point, I haven’t finished the book, so I can’t give a full on review, but I am planning on doing a second part to this Blog Action Day post at the end of the month. While this book isn’t perfect, and I definitely think there is room for improvement, it is certainly worth reading; especially if you are just stepping into this area and do not want to be overwhelmed emotionally or mentally.