Sherry Chandler

Since 1995, Curt Tofteland, a man to whose training in a one-week workshop, I largely owe the freedom with which I read my poetry, has conducted a program called Shakespeare Behind Bars. In Luther Luckett Correctional Facility, which we locals call LaGrange, Curt directs a troupe of inmates in one Shakespeare play a season. This year’s production will be Measure for Measure.

Hank Rogerson’s documentary film, also called Shakespeare Behind Bars, follows the troupe through its 2003 season. The play is The Tempest. Interviews — more accurately, perhaps, personal monologues — with the players are interspersed with scenes of rehearsal and character development. We are allowed to see the way in which developing their character for the stage leads to introspection about their own pasts and possibilities for their futures. It is a wonderful thing — in the Shakespearean sense — to watch these men find links in their own lives to this 400-year-old play about a magician’s growth from revenge to forgiveness and redemption.

Each of these men in his own way seeks redemption, forgiveness, self-forgiveness. Some fail miserably in the quest. None succeeds fully within the course of this film. But with others — Sammie perhaps or Hal — we see a glimmering of hope.

Watching the film, we are with them in this struggle, we want them to suceed, we hurt with them when they fail.

These men are amazingly willing to show themselves open and vulnerable. To be an actor, one must be open and vulnerable, and some of these men are remarkable actors. It must take great courage to put on costumes and play these roles before their fellows in “the yard.”

Consider Red, a man convicted of armed robbery. By necessity, the troupe returns to the Shakespearean tradition in which all parts are taken by men. Red is chosen to play the 15-year-old ingénue Miranda. He didn’t want this part, says it is “put on him” by the others because of his looks. But by the performance date, he has found within himself remnants of innocence and vulnerability so that he can convincingly speak those famous words “Oh brave new world that has such people in it.”

A film, even a documentary, is a crafted thing, an artifact. It is necessary to remember that what we are seeing within the ninety minutes of this film is not the whole of these men’s lives and that these men do not necessarily exemplify the huge population of prisoners in the United States. Luther Luckett is an exceptional prison and these men are exceptional within Luther Luckett Those chosen to be players must be model prisoners. Nevertheless, this film will shred prejudices. For me, the first was that convicted felons are by definition ignorant, illiterate, and without self-knowledge.

Curt Tofteland says it is not his place to judge these men. Society has already done that. The mission of Shakespeare Behind Bars is stated thus:

Shakespeare Behind Bars embraces restorative justice. Of the 2.4 million inmates incarcerated within the prisons of the United States, 90% will at some point in their lives return to society. The program was designed to allow the adult prison population an opportunity to examine relevant personal and social issues within the structure of an aesthetic experience. This drama-in-education approach offers participants the opportunity for ‘safe’ encounters with complex issues. This approach encourages the development of the interpersonal life skills that will contribute to the inmates successful reintegration into society.

The virtue of this film is that it allows us also — those of us who by some luck have managed to live our lives without commiting acts of violence — to share in the experience of restorative justice, to see these men in the full complexity of their human condition. If we are lucky, it will help us, too, to develop some empathy, tolerance, and compassion.

Louise Glück is a small woman. Short and thin. Somehow I had not expected that.

She wore a black long-sleeved top that covered her right shoulder but bared the left shoulder and arm to the top of the bicep. Her collarbone is long and fine. She wore black trousers with a slight bell that covered all but the toe of her tight-fitted black boots. When, occasionally during the reading, she would stretch her left leg out behind her and rest her foot on the toe, the line looked like a snippet of a James Thurber drawing.

She read in an aggressively quiet voice. It forced you to listen hard — even though she was wearing one of those clip-on microphones. She read long poems in her quiet voice. It was almost as though she were challenging the listener. Or spurning (though she was not haughty). The room stayed very quiet.

Questioned about this, she answered, “I do not read loudly.”

“Reading is a terrible brutal constriction of the work,” she said, and she is not comfortable reading. The high flush on her cheeks attested to her truth. “The page can do so much more than can the voice.” Reading a poem aloud adds an element of time, “a chronology,” but on the page a poem is more like a web. “No reader can do for the poem what the page can do.” And again, “I fear accomplishing with my person what the words on the page can do.”

And yet, in her reading, I noticed interconnections between the poems, all from Averno, that I had not noticed when I read them in the book.

Questioned about the darkness of one of her lines, a line that speaks of hope that defies perception, she quipped “And I’m still alive.”

[Added: I suppose I should mention that I saw Louise Glück at the University of Louisville as part of their Axton Reading Series. I'm not sure why it didn't occur to me to mention this event on the blog. I've been very solipsistic lately.]

from Petting and Being a Pet

…Have you ever felt forlorn
looking at a cat in someone else’s lap, wishing
the cat was you? Look how an animal is passed
from lap to lap in a room, so many wishing
to hold it. We wish to be in the vast
caress…

— Molly Peacock, Cornucopia (Norton, 2002)

…and weighs in:

Now a federal judge has inspired hopes that this destructive nonsense can be brought to a halt. In a case argued by two advocacy groups, Earthjustice and the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment, Judge Robert Chambers of Federal District Court halted four mountaintop removal projects on the grounds that the Army Corps of Engineers — which issued permits for the projects — had failed to demonstrate that the damage would not be irreversible. He also said the corps had failed to conduct the necessary environmental reviews.

Local residents who have watched the destruction of their landscape hope the ruling will lead to tighter regulation of other mountaintop mining proposals. The greater hope is that the government can be persuaded to stop the practice altogether.

This commentary by linguist John McWhorter was broadcast on All Things Considered on Tuesday (March 27) but it is still worth bringing to your attention. It considers the use of the word troop, especially in news coverage of this current conflict, to refer to an individual soldier.

Troop means a group, a company, a band, or a unit of at least 5 Boy Scouts. An indivudal member of a troop is sometimes called a trooper. It is what we in the editing business refer to as a collective noun. It is plural in meaning but takes a singular verb, like herd or jury.

The use of troop to mean an individual soldier, Marine, sailor, flyer has annoyed me from the beginning. McWhorter has made me understand why:

One cannot refer to a single soldier as a troop. This means that calling 20,000 soldiers “20,000 troops” depersonalizes the soldiers as individuals, and makes a massive number of living, breathing individuals sound like some kind of mass or substance, like water or Jell-O, or some kind of freight.

…The Democrats are seeking to bring soldiers — persons — home, not troops. Mothers do not kiss their troop goodbye as he takes off for Anbar Province. One will never encounter a troop learning to use her prosthetic leg.

Using a name for soldiers that has no singular form grants us a certain cozy distance from the grievous reality of war. Meanwhile, it serves no purpose: It certainly isn’t clearer than soldiers, and in fact is less clear, because one may wonder whether squadrons are meant rather than individuals.

Our national conversation about this war would be more honest if the usage of troops when one means soldiers was considered clumsy, and even rude. Our position on this war must be based on direct consideration of the fact that we are sending human beings to Iraq. After all, we do not designate the contents of a body bag as a troop.

This distinction is not just fuss-budgeting. Poets must respect words. Precise use of language is important. It is by debasing language that demagogues rule. Consider this AP report of testimony Kyle Sampson plans to give before Congress today:

“The distinction between ‘political’ and ‘performance-related’ reasons for removing a United States attorney is, in my view, largely artificial,” said Kyle Sampson…

asks Deborah Bloom in the NYTimes:

… Pesticide contamination, not just in China but globally, occurs because we operate, deliberately, in a world of poisons.

We kill lots of animals — the ones we find annoying, destructive or unsafe. We regularly employ toxic substances against rats, insects, prairie dogs, coyotes and invasive fish, and yet we are shocked when those same lethal substances affect us.

We’ve been learning and forgetting this lesson almost since we began using industrial pesticides:

I fear that, in the end, we’re going to find our poisoning of the bees much more important than our poisoning of Fido.

Addendum: It should be noted that on March 30, the Food & Drug Administration announced that the toxin in the pet food was not rat poison but melamine, a substance used to make plastic and also as a fertilizer in China.

Here is the patch of trout lilies at about 6:30 last night:

All this spate of photography posting reminds me that I’ve been meaning to tell you, gentle readers, that I think I’ve got all my graphics back up on the blog posts. I apologize for the length of time it has taken me, especially to those of you who shared photographs with me that I was slow in getting back up. It is difficult to go back and re-create. Life and the creative impulse don’t wait for you to catch up.

Also, the graphics turned out to be scattered all over the place. Some I never could find again. I’ve taken steps to prevent that from happening again (the new WordPress software helps). Though, I must say, I thought I was being very organized from the beginning. Maybe I should be consoled by the discovery that I was not. Creative people are not usually hyper-organized.

If, by chance, you find a post that still has a missing graphic, please let me know. I am especially concerned about some photos that we posted to the comments.

Meanwhile, here’s another shot that I’m sharing just because I sort of like it. It’s the burgeoning dogwood in the foreground, the Virginia bluebells in the middle distance, and of course our good old faithful daffodils in the focus.

Oh, that dark mass to the right is the perpetually dying redbud with, I just noticed, a ladder propped up in it. Oh well, adds an extra dynamic and a little post-industrial discord to this sylvan scene.

Speaking of Pocahantas County Fare, Rebecca has been planting peonies and talking about her heirloom peonies. I was reminded of her on the weekend when I was cleaning the winter’s debris from our big peonie bed against the south wall of the house. I don’t know whether they’re heirlooms — they’ve been there for the 35 years I’ve known the house and the bed is huge.

Here is the state of our peonies in Bourbon County (Pocahantas is such a nice county name); the greenery is from “magic lilies,” which I also didn’t plant:

Rebecca also reported that she found trout lilies blooming on Saturday. She’s a little ahead of us, probably a good bit to the south and maybe not as exposed to weather there in the mountains as we are here on the open plateau. She posted a couple of really nice photos that I suggest you click through to see.

Our trout lilies have made a sudden appearance with the 70 degree days we’ve been having. Here’s what they look like here with a couple of twinleaf buds:

And also in the big patch with a struggling little patch of Dutchmen’s britches:

But while I can’t compete with flowers, perhaps I can with fauna. Though so far we haven’t had any wildlife in the kitchen, unless you count our superannuated cats, I’d say we’ve been providing the good life for a possum as well as a raccoon this winter. This one showed up this morning to nibble seed under our bird feeder. He didn’t seem too nervous about it, either.

No skunks yet.

All these photos were taken in early morning or evening light, so they’re a little dim. The possum photo was taken through the window so it’s also a little screen-blurred.

The greenery there in front of the possum are the Virginia bluebells coming up.

In a recent post about yewberries, Geof Huth says:

Everything is poetry, everything is fruit, everything is poison.

For some reason, I was reminded of that statement when I read the Pocahantas County Fare post on knots, which in its turn links to this long Washington Post article on the same subject.

The Post article in its turn links to The Knotplot Site, where you can download a software package that will allow you to create graphic knots right on your own computer. Or, if you click to here, you can see Knot 2234 from The Ashley Book of Knots in 3-D image.

You will also find a PDF file there with instructions for crocheting a Lorenz attractor. The creator wanted to crochet something useful. But my life is chaotic enough. I think I’ll stick to afghans.

Rebecca is interested in knots, of course, because she knits. The image above is American needle lace, also a form of needlework knotting.

I know a square knot from a granny and can tie myself up in simple yogic knots. I knit a little, crochet more easily, and once upon a time I taught myself tatting from a book. I wanted to do it because I was given a handkerchief for which my great-aunt Ruth had tatted the lace border. “Tatting,” thought I, “I never heard of tatting. How exotic to learn it.” And so I set off in search of instruction.

Alas, it was not a success because, while I could teach myself the way to run the shuttle under and over to form the lace — it’s like making a buttonhole stitch around a thread — I could never figure out how to keep my thread from snarling up like a mistreated telephone cord.

Perhaps snarled thread is the “poison” of lacemaking.

My son, who loves all things Celtic, from Enya to Granuaille, loves Celtic knots.

And my husband, the wood carver, loves Welsh spoons.

Knots, of course, are associated with calligraphy and gnarled graphics were used to illuminate manuscripts such as the Book of Kells. Perhaps that’s why all this reminds me of words. Or specifically of words as Vispo. Take a look at Geof Huth’s the drunken E. Or f.r.o.g.p.o.n.d.

But I’ll tell you, this is a knotty business. No end to the associations of knots. My head is spinning through loops and braids and bends. I feel as drunk as an E. I think I’ll make this sentence the bitter end.

Via War and Piece, from today’s Washington Post: GSA Chief Is Accused of Playing Politics:

Witnesses have told congressional investigators that the chief of the General Services Administration and a deputy in Karl Rove’s political affairs office at the White House joined in a videoconference earlier this year with top GSA political appointees, who discussed ways to help Republican candidates.

With GSA Administrator Lurita Alexis Doan and up to 40 regional administrators on hand, J. Scott Jennings, the White House’s deputy director of political affairs, gave a PowerPoint presentation on Jan. 26 of polling data about the 2006 elections.

When Jennings concluded his presentation to the GSA political appointees, Doan allegedly asked them how they could “help ‘our candidates’ in the next elections,” according to a March 6 letter to Doan from Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

…On Wednesday, Doan is scheduled to appear before Waxman’s committee to answer questions about the videoconference and other issues. The committee is investigating whether remarks made during the videoconference violated the Hatch Act, a federal law that restricts executive-branch employees from using their positions for political purposes. Those found in violation of the act do not face criminal penalties but can be removed from their jobs.

And who is this J. Scott Jennings:

Jennings’s name has recently surfaced in investigations of the firing of eight U.S. attorneys around the country. He communicated with Justice Department officials concerning the appointment of Tim Griffin, a former Rove aide, as U.S. attorney in Little Rock, according to e-mails released this month. For that exchange, Jennings, although working at the White House, used an e-mail account registered to the Republican National Committee, where Griffin had worked as a political opposition researcher.

Jennings is a longtime political operative from Kentucky. He served as political director for Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in 2002 before joining the White House

Ah, a good old Kentucky boy. I’m so proud.

Here’s another little thing I was about McConnell this morning, via Huffington Post:

You probably didn’t notice it (since readers of The Crypt have actual lives), but late Friday afternoon, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) tried to get Senate Republicans to allow former Vice President Al Gore to stage a global warming concert on Capitol grounds. But Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) objected to Reid’s request, and the resolution authorizing the concert, for now, remains stuck in the Rules and Administration Committee.

Addendum: $27 million anti-evolution museum to open soon

PETERSBURG –
Tyrannosaurus rex was a strict vegetarian, and lived with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

There were dinosaurs of every kind aboard Noah’s ark. Some dinosaurs managed to hang around until just a few hundred years ago. The legend of St. George slaying the dragon? That probably was a dinosaur.

Exhibits showing all this and more will be at the Creation Museum, a $27 million religious showcase nearing completion in Northern Kentucky.

I am so embarrassed.

On the other hand, I don’t think Mitch McConnell had anything to do with this, so I guess the man has one virtue anyway.