Generic Love Poem. by Kirsty MacDonald

The Internet tends to crap out a lot of worthless refuse -- and the world of Internet poetry is no different from its brothers. If it's not endless amounts of regurgitated e.e. cummings, it's something much worse: "original" poetry, which, as the irony quotes probably give away, isn't very original at all.

Yet, sometimes a gem falls out, proving once and for all that, if you eat enough, without restriction, you will eventually crap out a precious stone -- or at least something worth one read. I found this poem through StumbleUpon, on a site called Hello Poetry. I liked it because, while it is ostensibly a love poem, it calls itself a generic love poem, thereby accepting and embracing the popular concept of the generic. Less grandly, it takes a simple hook, a little gimmick, and takes it to a satisfying and clever conclusion. Ta-da:

Generic Love Poem. by Kirsty MacDonald
Call a doctor/ plumber/ priest*
My heart is broken/ leaking/ deceased*
My life is worthless/ so much better/ over*
I'm going to kill myself/ tell your wife/ Dover*
How could you leave me/ not know/ lie?*
I hope you return my stuff/ come back/ die*
I'll never forget you/ forgive you/ go away*
I need closure/ a DNA test/ to tell you I'm gay*
Your face/ crotch/ top of your back*
Is so beautiful/ lumpy/ unusually slack*
Your ex/ mother/ best friend from school*
Always made me great coffee/ feel inadequate/ drool*
I will miss you/ kill you/ stalk you forever*
That way we can be friends/ get away with it/ be together*
I'm sorry you did this/ I did this /we failed*
I promise to pay you/ dye it back/ get you bailed
Please don't leave me/ show the Polaroids/ write or call*

(*delete as appropriate, just delete it all.....)

8 Nifty Books I Read in 2009

2009 was a good year overall, especially for reading. I read a little over a hundred books in that fabled land we now call Last Year. You can see the entire list on my Goodreads bookshelf. Or read about the 8 stand-outs below. Why 8? Well, it was going to be 15 -- then 10. I guess I just got lazy. Or maybe I like the number 8. Maybe I like the way it looks: like a sideways infinity sign. Maybe...

Chicken With Plums, by Marjane Satrapi (graphic novel) - This is the story of Satrapi's great-uncle, a famous Iranian tar player, who decides to lay in his bed and never come out. He holds on for eight days, as we look at the ups and downs of his life. Then it's over -- the book and his life. It's gloomy, it's powerful, and it's written and illustrated by the author of the two Persepolis books, and Embroideries -- all of which I also read this year. This one is not her most popular work but it is my favorite.

Ego & Hubris, by Michael Malice, Harvey Pekar, and Gary Dumm (graphic novel) - A libertarian businessman and professional A*hole, Michael Malice tells us the story of his life with the help of American Splendor's Harvey Pekar and Gary Dumm, writer and artist, respectively. My family and I visited Mr. Dumm at his house, in August '09. He's a very nice guy and I've been meaning to write of the visit for some time.

The Gum Thief, by Douglas Coupland - Two Staples employees, a middle-aged failure named Roger, and a 24-year-old goth girl heading for the same fate, Bethany, begin a solely epistolary relationship. There is absolutely no sex or even sexual tensions -- just two mundane people trying to grope their way (in the cleanest sense) to something better. And there's a novel within a novel: Glove Pond, written by Roger and displayed to us in fragments in-between the letters. A Goodreads friend recommended this to me.

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë -After years of poo-pooing these "girly" and "stuffy" Victorian novels I finally decided to read one. A sallow, oppressed, middle-class English orphan gradually grows into a woman. When she leaves boarding school, after many years and chapters, it is to take up a position as governess for a young French girl, Adele -- who just happens to be the ward of the dark, brooding, and decidedly hunky Mr. Rochester. Then things get really exciting. I don't want to spoil the ending, yet I feel the novel's most famous line, "Reader, I married him." does it for me.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mr. Mark Twain - An illiterate boy from Missouri takes a long raft ride with a black guy. That description leaves us all doubtful, yet I will always love this book. It is the only book I am certain I will want to read again, even on my death bed.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, translated by Simon Armitage - Yuletide at King Arthur's court is interrupted by a green guy, on a green horse, who challenges someone to chop off his head. Sir Gawain takes the challenge and promptly cuts off the guy's head. Then, when the guy carries his head off, Gawain bound by honor to seek out this man in a year's time, to accept a similar blow. Much merriment, chivalry, questing, morality, and symbolism ensue. Armitage's Modern English translation -- accompanied, side-by-side, by the original Middle English -- really makes the poem sparkle and perhaps does for it what Seamus Heaney did for Beowulf.

Y: The Last Man series, by Brian K. Vaughn (graphic novel) - OK, this is really a mini-series, compiled into eight graphic novels. But it's still something you shouldn't miss! One day, all the men and male animals mysteriously and instantly die -- except for a dopey New Yorker, Yorick Brown, and his pet Capuchin monkey, Ampersand. A great comic book adventure. I have yet to read the last two volumes (Soon!).

Review: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce

NB: This review contains spoilers.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I read this on an impulse; "impulse" has become a magical word for me. This mysterious force is what lead me back to Shakespeare and later introduced me to James Joyce; now here I am, finished with Portrait, working my way through Dubliners, and occasionally glancing warily over at those other two Joyce novels. I'm convinced: Impulse is a type of magic for the man who doesn't believe in magic.

There is something magical about this book, too. At least the combination of impressive passages that I could understand, and the sections that seemed just out of my grasp, together form something that I perceive as magic. Joyce created a brew of imagery and collage-like features that I can sometimes admire, sometimes only gawk at in awe and stupefied wonder.

Several words, no doubt, have been thrown about to describe this and other Joyce works: "fragmentary," "mosaic," etc. -- I prefer the word "collage." He has a style that loves to weave together seemingly unconnected scenes and paint gorgeous pictures. I was always amazed to see a thread of imagery weave its way from scene to scene, seamlessly. There is much art in blending images into a complete collage, one that has many, varied elements that somehow combine to form a continuity over the entire work.

Portrait is a "coming of age" story: it starts with a boy, naturally secretive and rich in imagination, and, through the steady processes of a good education, Catholic guilt, and Irish nationalism, gradually leads to a man. That man is either James Joyce or his literary alter-ego, "Stephen Dedalus." I have no idea where the boundary line sits, though I tended to think of the man/boy in the book as Joyce -- I received a jolt, on at least two occasions, when I suddenly found the name "Stephen" on the page.

It was fun to watch the steady progress of the boy into the man, the dabbler into the artist -- and to also watch the style morph and grow. Across the book's five parts, the reader sees the superficially Victorian beginnings transform gradually into the "real," full-grown Joyce-ing of Part V.

The beginning reminded me, at least superficially, of Jane Eyre: middle class child fallen on difficult financial times, boarding school, a childhood friend catches a disease and slowly fades away. I felt his childish fear and exhilaration when he made the trip to the rector's office; his imaginative twisting of The Count of Monte Cristo; and his excitement and confusion while sitting at dinner with the adults in his family, an onlooker to political debate.

The sense of Part II was more difficult for me to discern. Though the word "Admit." certainly has a chillier feel to it now -- uttered as it is by a schoolmate who harasses Stephen, a scene made even more chilling through the playful demeanor of the offending boy. Then there is the depressing, demeaning, even entropic, visit to Cork. His father tries to remember the good 'ol days as the rug slips out from under him. And then there is Emma, his "beloved" whom he never gets to know -- only a symbol of pure womanhood on a far off pedestal.

In the middle, my interest began to sag. Religion dominates: with the never-ending sermon, the "wicked" acts of Stephen, and the subsequent repentance. It certainly was not my favorite section, though I did like the description of sin as a "torpid snaky life feeding itself out of the tender marrow of his life and fattening upon the slime of lust" -- among other dire, Catholic images. And, despite his seeming happiness while living the "good life" of complete devotion after repentance I couldn't help but think how awful it must be to be Catholic.

Things pick up again when he is asked to join the Church, but declines. We get a small peek into the family cottage, and the full extent of his nuclear family. His relatives are simply "sister" or "mother" -- the distant between the main character and his world, not just his family, is always evident. At least twice he refers to the outside world as just so much noise, often an inconvenience. The book is remarkably self-centered, reflecting the title, as well as the author's natural introversion.

The last section of Part IV, in my mind, is the pivotal and best scene, in which he walks along the beach, ready to head to University, becoming a man before our eyes. The last line of the scene, for some reason, has stuck with me: "and the tide was flowing in fast to the land with low whisper of her waves, islanding a few last figures in distant pools." I'll let anyone reading this experience it, in whole, for themselves.

Then there is Part V, the shining gem and achievement -- the full man. We are bombarded with learned talks of esthetics and politics and theology, with loads of Latin (oddly, without translation in my edition), and many literary allusions. I began to strongly sense the tension between the three languages: English, in which Joyce will always feel a foreigner; Irish, newly revived among the upper class due to a surge of nationalism, though Joyce avoids it; and Latin, still the trusty and ancient language of the educated.

I don't quite perfectly recall or understand the ending. I'll get back to ya...

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New Year's Greetings

I wonder where these guys shop...