One for the Ages

Sorry for the long hiatus. I'm not dead yet.

But this blog is likely to remain dark for a bit. My job is sucking a huge amount of my writing energy, and I'm trying to focus what little juice remains on a bigger project.

I will be popping up now and then when the news is worthwhile or the Muse comes knocking.

***

In the meantime, though, before I go back to radio silence for a while, I feel compelled to give a shout-out for a book I have recently been re-reading. For the sake of full disclosure: The author, Andrew Kozelka, is a friend of mine. We went to grad school at Hollins together, though I think we shared only one class, a theory seminar on short fiction. And while most of us young grad students were spending our nights hanging around, drinking, bantering wittily, hoping to show enough intellectual ankle to get us intellectually laid, this guy was burning the midnight oil in his little apartment in downtown Roanoke, churning out two novels and many of the first poems in the book below.

Every time I pick up The Ages, I am struck by a complex roster of emotions: The first is a rueful sense of irritation with the state of poetry publication in this day and age. Here is a book, dear readers, which was a finalist for the National Poetry Series in 2005. A finalist, but it did not win, and then when Kozelka got tired of the ongoing slings and arrows of the contest submission system, he finally did that horrible, shiver-inducing thing which can draw hushed gasps of disgust even from those who know the meaning of the slang term "Dirty Sanchez": He self-published it.

While the innocent among you are googling the term (I tell you now, you'll be happier if you don't), I ask the rest: Has Kozelka, by dropping into the self-publishing well, dipped himself in tar which can never be peeled away?

Maybe he could have gone on playing the game. Maybe he should have. Every time I pick up the book, I argue with myself about it, the angel on one shoulder soothing, It's out there, the devil on the other seething, No one will read it.

Oh, but that's just the first emotion. The second one comes on as I start reading: envy. Deep, lustful envy of these poems. The kind I very rarely experience, that Why the hell aren't I smart enough to write this? sort of feeling. Then, as I read further, the envy vanishes and turns into excitement. Excitement at their ambition, their leaps of imagination, their historical scope, their black humor, their multiplicity of form, their willingness to scavenge through the darkness and bring up gold and icons and drowned slaves and dead czars and heroes who are known as heroes because they killed many, many people.

I realize I am waxing all slobbery here, but I cannot help it: the cumulative power of these poems taken together is hard to overstate. Every time I read them, they make me want to write more, and read more, and simultaneously they make me want to throw every book in the room onto a pyre and light it and go be a throat-slitting pirate somewhere. Really. It is that good.

I'm going to just shut up now and drop a couple of my favorites below. Kozelka's dirty, filthy, self-published book of brilliance is available through Amazon. Buy it, and have a little source of dark light to put on your shelf.

***

The Age of Fable

From the village below the castle

The serfs can see the knights

Cavorting with pale ladies;

They can smell the delicate muttons,

They can feel the blatant unfairness

And what the priest tells them

Doesn't really help.

As for the Revolution

It's at least five hundred years away,

And so they make up stories.

In one, they're strong with rage.

An axe is in their hand. They go

Up to the castle and rape and kill

Everything that breathes.

Then they sit down at the great table

And stuff themselves.

They lay a tax upon the village.

The prettiest boys and girls

Are brought to their bed.

They sleep in. They kill off

Anyone who seems ambitious.

All the serfs in the village know this story,

Though not one has ever told it.

***

The Vision of St. Francis

in the Year of the Plague

Some children undertook

Another crusade

To stop a war their parents had made

But along the way they grew up, had children

Of their own,

And had to protect them with arrow and stone

And had to settle and build a fort

Where soon their children were asking the same sort

Of questions they used to:

Why the need for the wall?

Why even have enemies at all?

Why do we work? Why elect a prince?

It just doesn't make sense.

And so they went off on another crusade

To stop the war their parents had made.

But they didn't want it to be like before

And just end up fighting the same old war

And so when they saw the marauders approach

The children didn't go into a protective crouch

But instead ran out to the desert holding hands

And took to kissing in the sands.

Soon it had gotten dark out and the children couldn't see.

All of this was told to me

By my fever.

***

Teaching Japanese Children English

Not Far From the Hiroshima Peace Park

We the guilty form a wall around innocence,

Killing and being killed where we stand or attack

And there is nothing else between love and the dark,

No wall not of our making, no free-taken home,

And no consolation for the myriad displaced

But to pass briefly through pitiful gardens.

My Lizard Brain is Amish

A friend of mine pointed out that Vegas is the best place on earth to surrender to your lizard brain. Thus my conclusion above, reached after only a few hours of wandering from Bally's to Paris to the Bellagio to Caesar's Palace. Brain ... can't ... handle ... any ... more ... neon ... lights ... must ... milk ... cow ... and ... raise ... barn ...

We rotate cities for our annual conference, and Vegas definitely pulled in the crowds this year. (It struck me that hosting an animal welfare conference in Las Vegas is a little ironic. Here we are pushing a movement that works to encourage people not to give in to their base instincts—suggesting that there are ideas that trump the pleasure principle, radical ideas like, "Maybe you shouldn't beat your dog, even if it makes you feel good," and "Perhaps you could eat something other than veal, even though it's tasty"—and this year we held it in a city that whose modus operandi is to encourage people to indulge every instinct they've got.)

Here's the most depressing thing I saw in Vegas, familiar to anyone who's been there: On the strip at regular intervals, there are lines of Hispanic adults, mostly men but a few women, none of whom seem to speak more than a few words of English. They stand on the sidewalk, all wearing bright t-shirts that say "HOT GIRLS STRAIGHT TO YOUR DOOR IN 30 MINUTES!!" They're all holding stacks of small cards, and as the tourists pass, they slap the decks against their hands, making a snapping sound to get the attention of passersby. The cards, which they'll hand over in piles to anyone who holds out a hand, are all of oiled naked girls, most of whom will come see you for $35 (Vegas regulars: Is that recession-pricing, or is that standard?). You can get two for $99, though the cards don't specify what these girls will do for those prices. Maybe they'll iron your shorts.

Can we make an Exploitation Flow Chart here? The prostitutes are exploiting the immigrants, the johns are exploiting the prostitutes, the city is exploiting the johns ... I feel a chorus of "Proud to be an American" coming on!

On our way back from a show at the MGM Grand, a friend and I saw a woman who must have been 70 passing out these cards. She was about four feet tall and had more than a few missing teeth, and the kind of wizened, ancient face you usually see in photos accompanying National Geographic articles about lost Amazon tribes. This is the global economy: Instead of selling baskets to Ten Thousand Villages, Grandma's helping sling bargain sex to tourists in tracksuits.

Vegas is like a big red glowing clown nose stuck onto an ancient, craggy, dignified face. From the top of the hotel and from the plane on the way out of the city, I could see the desert surrounding the city—empty, arid, weirdly beautiful. I wanted to be there instead.

Triptych: Portraits of Doubt

My sister and I grew up Catholic, and when we were kids, my mom would frequently suggest we give up something for Lent. My suggestion that we give up homework never seemed to be appreciated.

Like most kids anticipating Easter, I looked forward primarily to searching our yard for plastic eggs and consuming puke-inducing amounts of chocolate. But the religious significance of the day was not lost on me. I grew up going to Sunday school and Mass and reading illustrated Bible stories that alternately fascinated and terrified me (there was an image of Absalom, his hair caught in a tree, that I still remember being upset by). Back then, both Easter and Christmas induced a sense of wonder, of unmooredness and mystery, that I no longer experience. I miss it, especially at Christmas.

Was I a believer then? I probably would have professed to be, into my early teens. But at some point, doubt entered the picture. When I went to Mass and it came to the time to recite the Nicene Creed, I started to be silent for the parts that I didn't believe anymore. I would mouth the words and hope my parents didn't notice. The part about "one baptism for the forgiveness of sins" was the first to go, because it struck me early how unfair it was that unbaptized kids in distant heathen lands who'd never even been exposed to Christianity would go to hell. It didn't seem like the kind of thing God—at least snuggly, post-therapy, New Testament God—would endorse. Gradually other pieces of it dropped too. These days, my performance of the Nicene Creed would probably resemble a Milli Vanilli concert.

My mother blames herself for this. My sister and I spent most of our formative years at good secular schools overseas and here in the U.S. It wasn't until we moved to Australia that we were chucked into a Catholic school, not due to any misbehavior, but simply because St. Clare's was the best educational option in Canberra. My mom sometimes mutters self-criticisms about how she should have put us into Catholic school earlier, because then we'd still be practicing. I think she's nuts: Nothing did more to tip out my dregs of religious piety than Catholic school. The first first day, I left class to go pee, and in the bathroom, a pack of feral adolescent girls were leaping around, shouting at a crying fifth girl and pelting her with feminine hygiene products. Imagine the shower scene in Carrie meets Lord of the Flies. I'm not saying that it was enough to make me question the existence of a benevolent God, but it was certainly enough to make me question the value of Catholic school in shaping good little Catholics.

Along with the picture of Absalom (lesson: When riding a hysterical mule away from service in your father's army, always put your hair in a sensible bun), a scene I remember seeing many times is that of "doubting" Thomas checking out Jesus after the Resurrection—the Caravaggio above is probably the best known. I always thought this was one of the weirdest stories in the Bible: Thomas says he won't believe Jesus has risen unless he checks out his wounds for himself, and when Jesus comes back, he makes him do it. Imagine having belief forced on you in that way! It's almost like fraternity hazing: Oh yeah? Well, here: stick your finger in this, pal, and tell me what you don't believe.

The poem below consists of portraits of Thomas and two other central figures of the crucifixion story, each grappling with what they did and why they did it; it appeared in Tar River Poetry last spring. The most interesting thing I learned while researching to write it was that the "good thief" crucified next to Christ had a name.

TRIPTYCH


I. Pilate

What did he want—me to declare him innocent,
set him free to pull lepers out of hats?
I am not comfortable with the insinuation of miracles.
Torchlight laddering up a woman’s back,
the bruised figs brought to me by servants,
the sea-scent of olives and sweat—
already more than I expected.
Too much, perhaps—but worth protecting
against riff-raff sorcerers and all they might imply.
I washed my hands not to show my innocence.
The cloth and water were all I could be sure of.
My hands that night smelled not of blood, but lemons.


II. Dismas

The good thief, they called me, leaving out
excellent tax cheat, superior adulterer.
I’d spent time in the company of whores—
in this, our strung-up party of three, I was not alone:
I’d seen him before, threadbare and muddy;
long before he hung bloody beside me,
there were always women around, enraptured,
their dusty hair unbound, poor locals
drawn by those purpled eyes, that green garden
he claimed to have the keys to. My buddy
smarted off. But I was a good gambler
as well—I did not show my tell. I said:
Remember me when. Pain had blurred
my mind, breath and sweat were peeling
away from me in veils, I saw my death
elbowing through the seething crowd,
not a one of them was there to grieve it.
You’d do the same: Say the grace.
Kiss the kingdom. Hope to wake up and believe it.


III. Thomas

Unless I see the wounds, I said. Unless I stick
my fingers in his hands. Around us in the room
the faces of our friends
hung slack as sails on a windless day.
Fresh from the tomb, he parted his robe,
drew my hand to his side,
then parted flesh rough cloth had uncovered,
to open in his battered side a small door
my hand slipped through. There were the ribs:
spines of books I could not read;
beneath, the fat hot ropes of his intestines.
I had not known the stuff that made a man:
here was the form of my friend who’d sat by fires
with me, eaten, laughed—died? Yet, not him
at all: I pulled my hand out, terrified,
tried to hide my blush, my fingers still sticky
with that other, inner world. I think he blushed
as well—though for himself inside that flesh
or me inside my doubt, I couldn’t tell.