Mark Doty has won the National Book Award for poetry for his book Fire to Fire.
Morning Edition has a nice feature on the awards here, and the National Book Foundation promises video of the awards dinner and readings soon.
Mark Doty blogs here.
Doty is an amazing poet, though I was sort of pulling for Patricia Smith for any number of reasons: because she is a woman, because she is an African-American woman, because she is a performing poet, because she is writing about New Orleans, which must not be forgotten, because Blood Dazzler a new work and not a collected, and because she is a dynamite poet.
Much optimism among the award winners that the U.S. has turned a new page with the election of Barack Obama.
Left me wondering whether, if enough people believe this change is so, it will indeed become so.
I am willing to sprinkle fairy dust, to click my ruby heels together, close my eyes, and hope that we will find it has all been a bad dream.
Let it be so.
This post was written by sherry
I have to say I agree with this opinion piece by McClatchy’s Joseph L. Galloway: Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue . Says Galloway:
With two months still to go before his inauguration as the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama and his transition team are already getting off on the wrong foot, signaling that they have no intention of investigating anyone in the Bush administration for possible war crimes.
What we’re talking about here is the torture of detained terrorist suspects in American custody in a grotesque violation of both our treaty obligations under the Geneva Conventions and our historic principles as a democratic nation.
By their own machinations and attempts to redefine and pervert both treaties and our own laws, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Attorneys General John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales, Cheney’s chief of staff David Addington and any number of lesser suspects sought to shield themselves from, or put themselves above, justice.
. . .
Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue, and its no way to begin an administration that was elected on promises of change. What it says is that if you’re one of the elite and powerful, your violations of the law will be overlooked, no matter how much damage you did to our country’s standing in the world.
But while I agree with these sentiments and I’m glad to see some one speaking out, I have no real hope that anything will be done. Not in our United States. The Democrats in our Federal government have signalled all along that they have no will for this pursuit of justice. They have, in fact, been in collusion. As Glenn Greenwald has pointed out, the government of the last 8 years has been completely bipartisan.
Galloway continues:
This signal on torture investigations says that Sen. Obama wants to start his administration as a uniter, not a divider, trying to untangle the unholy mess that the Decider and Co. are leaving behind them in the economy, in our military, in virtually every walk of our national life. It speaks to his desire to reach across the aisle to the defeated Republicans and try to bring them back into the fold as Americans.
That’s all well and good, but not if it comes at the cost of lifting the blindfold off Justice’s eyes and letting her pick and choose who’ll pay for criminal acts and who won’t. That’s no way to begin, and no way to continue.
. . .
The people of this nation have spoken loudly. They voted to throw the rascals out. They voted for a different way of governing, a different way of law making. They voted for equal rights under the law.
If their desires aren’t satisfied — if the new broom sweeps no cleaner than the old one — the next time around they may move things up a notch and throw all the bastards out — and they’d be fully justified in doing so.
I would like to think that last statement is true but I’ve become too cynical. I think the people voted to get their credit back and will be glad enough to forget about Bush’s bad behavior once he has become a (shudder) senior statesman.
I’d like to be proved wrong on this.
Do you hear that great outcry for justice?
Neither do I.
This post was written by sherry
There are some great jokes that only men can make. For example, here is the great Lance Mannion:
There are some Facebook Friends you feel fairly comfortable superpoking.
There are some Facebook Friends you would never feel right superpoking in a million years.
There are some Facebook Friends you think might enjoy a good superpoking but you’re really not sure, you’d feel kind of awkward about it if you tried, so you’re just going to wait to see if they’ll superpoke you first.
Having recently joined the happy millions at Facebook, I have a slight idea what the mighty Lance (ahem) is talking about. But I’m just not sure I’m a super-poking kinda gal.
This post was written by sherry
A friend has drawn my attention to this news story in yesterday’s NYTimes:
BAGHDAD — The government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is systematically dismissing Iraqi oversight officials, who were installed to fight corruption in Iraqi ministries by order of the American occupation administration, which had hoped to bring Western standards of accountability to the notoriously opaque and graft-ridden bureaucracy here.
The dismissals, which were confirmed by senior Iraqi and American government officials on Sunday and Monday, have come as estimates of official Iraqi corruption have soared. One Iraqi former chief investigator recently testified before Congress that $13 billion in reconstruction funds from the United States had been lost to fraud, embezzlement, theft and waste by Iraqi government officials.
Would $13 billion bail out General Motors, do you think?
Or should my post be titled “Meet the New Boss, Same As . . .” Elections are coming up in Iraq.
__________
Update: Speaking of bailouts, Matthew Rothschild says Paulson Impeaches Himself.
Update 2: This from Paul Krugman:
Everywhere you look, there’s stuff about Bill Clinton’s donors and all that, often with the implication that there must inherently be something dirty going on, because, well, just because.
But I guess that’s just the way things are. After all, do you remember all the grief President Bush got over his family’s questionable business ties?
Neither do I.
This post was written by sherry
I just learned that one of my favorite writers of poetry and short stories, Elaine Fowler Palencia, has become a featured reviewer for Bluegrass Now, an online magazine about, what else?, Bluegrass music. Her review of Willie Nelson’s novel, A Tale Out Of Luck, appears in the current issue.
Willie Nelson’s novel?? Are you astounded? So is our reviewer:
It is tempting to wonder if we are living in the End Times, when such evidence as this arrives in the mail: Yes, Willie Nelson has written a novel. According to the website of his co-author, musician and writer of Westerns Mike Blakely, the print edition is only one wheel on the juggernaut. A movie is part of the plan, with Willie to star as retired Texas Ranger Hank Tomlinson. Willie’s heroes have always been cowboys, so of course this is a Western, in which the men are strong, the women have hearts of gold, and the horses are good-looking.
And we all know what kinds of women have hearts of gold.
Read the rest of this review here.
A Tale Out of Luck by Willie Nelson and Mike Blakely is published by Center Street.
This post was written by sherry
Also via the Wom-Po list, a podcast, Poems for President Obama from the Poetry Foundation. This broadcast dates from the day after the election and features Charles Bernstein, Patricia Smith, and Forrest Gander. Each of these very different poets recommends a poem for Barack Obama to read. Their thoughts are interesting, not just for the different ways they celebrate the election of Barack Obama but for the different ways they think about poetry.
__________
Meanwhile, back in what you might call the real world, but which I won’t, this is a good sign, Obama Wrote Federal Staffers About His Goals. To quote Lambert, “restoring reason to the treatment of civil servants was always perhaps the strongest reason to vote Democrat;” I would say “vote Democratic” but then I’m a purist.
This post was written by sherry
I have learned via the Wom-Po list of a report, via Pollstar, that Odetta is seriously ill, following kidney failure.
Odetta apparently went to the Lenox HIll Hospital over the weekend for a simple IV treatment but had kidney failure Nov. 9 and is listed in critical condition. An active supporter of President-elect Barack Obama, Odetta is determined to sing at his inauguration in January, according to manager Doug Yeager.
The full statement from Odetta’s manager is a “Pollstar.
This post was written by sherry
The song is “Crawling King Snake,” which some commenter says sommers is “about sex.”
You know I’m a crawlin’ kingsnake baby, and I rules my den
You know I’m a crawlin’ kingsnake baby, and I rules my den
I don’t want you hangin’ around my mate,
Wanna use her for myself
You know you caught me crawlin’ baby
When the, when the grass was very high
I’m just gonna keep on crawlin’ now baby until the day I die,
because I’m a crawlin’ kingsnake baby, and I rules my den
Don’t you hangin’ around my mate, wanna use her for myself
You know I’m gon’ crawl up to your window baby,
wanna crawl up to your door, you got anything I want baby,
wanna crawl up on your floor
Because I’m a crawlin’ king snake baby, and I rules my den
You know you caught me crawlin’ baby when the,
When the grass was very high
I’m just gonna keep on crawlin’ now baby until the day I die,
because I’m a crawlin’ kingsnake baby, and I rules my den
I don’t want you hangin’ around my mate, wanna use her for myself
This post was written by sherry
Hill, however, is not convinced that the Western is indeed making a comeback, especially in its traditional genre form. “If you’ll forgive me, I think a lot of this talk about the revival of the Western is journalism,” he explains. “Every five years there is a series of stories announcing that the Western is back. When I was a kid, Westerns were a staple of the American entertainment film industry as well as the American mythmaking process. In that sense, they did not come back and will not come back. In another sense, you can never get rid of the Western. It is a permanent part of our tradition and it is a dramatic form that filmmakers - and I think there is some evidence that filmmakers are more attracted to it than audiences - like to take the chance to explore at some point in their career. Today you almost have to look at Westerns as period films.”
The time frame that these period films cover is short, perhaps 25-30 years, between the end of the Civil War and about 1890, the year historian Frederick Jackson Turner declared the frontier was closed. All of Hill’s Westerns are concerned with historical characters and incidents that fall within this time frame.
Maybe that is why there is such a feeling of doom in both The Long Riders and Geronimo: An American Legend (1993). Of course, there’s not a lot of hope to be found in the stories of the James Gang or the last of the free Apaches. An odd pairing, really. I guess the common link is that they were both the objects of great manhunts. But then so were Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and somehow we think of those as a comic pair.
Not much comedy in Wes Studi’s Geronimo, a scowling warrior who considers himself better dead than a farmer on a reservation. In the foreward to Britton Davis’s The Truth About Geronimo, Robert M. Utley describes the real Geronimo like this:
A powerful stocky warrior with a perpetual scowl on his face, Geronimo personified all that was savage and cruel in the Apache. Although not a chief, he built up a respectable following through force of personality and opposition to the white man’s rule. Few whites who knew him had much praise for him, and most of his own people feared and disliked him. Davis characterized him as “a thoroughly vicious, intractable, and treacherous man. His only redeeming traits were courage and determination. His word, no matter how earnestly pledged, was worthless.” History has supported this judgment.
Studi’s Geronimo is true to that characterization, finds what is positive in it: force of personality, courage, determination, and opposition to white man’s rule. The downward droop of his face makes the scowl seem his natural expression.
Matt Damon as Britton Davis, a 24-year-old West Point graduate, narrates the film. Davis did write an account of the Geronimo hunt but, though the film has a documentary feel, it isn’t necessarily factual.
It has a great cast: Studi, Damon, Robert Duvall, and Gene Hackman. I was not fond of Jason Patric’s accent but he is effective as the always soft-spoken Virginian lieutenant (shades of Owen Wister) and he does some dynamite stunt riding.
The film, critically acclaimed but a box-office failure, was nominated for best soundtrack in the 1994 Oscars and won a ton of Western Heritage Awards
It was, of course, that Ry Cooder soundtrack that drew me to it. This one came as a surprise after the slide guitar minimalism of Paris, Texas, and the guitar and banjo romp of The Long Riders. The soundtrack for Geronimo: An American Legend tends toward the lush and orchestral. Horns and snare drums mix with chants, flutes, and drones that vibrate your very gut. Orchestral martial versions of folk tunes (one sounded to me like the tune I learned for “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing”), a droning mournful “Wayfaring Stranger,” and what sounded like the strangest arrangement of “Old Dan Tucker” I’ve ever heard.
Once upon a time, I think on Amazon somewhere, a Cooder fan was bemoaning the fact that he quit making albums and turned to soundtrack work. But I think I see why he did it.
You can get a tiny little taste of what he’s done in this video clip:
The film is, of course, beautiful to watch and beautiful to hear. It has great performances, a great story, and a bit of needed correction to the John Wayne version of history. Like The Long Riders, it’s fascinating as spectacle if not for story. I recommend it.
A considerably less friendly review, but perhaps with some truth.
This post was written by sherry
and I am not so apt to be accused of picking on any one candidate or the other, I’ll share this video. It’s very funny. It’s what political campaigns are:
This post was written by sherry
