End of History

Still relevant? I think so.

http://www.wesjones.com/eoh.htm

Donnie Darko

This film was recommended to me by a relative, and I can after viewing it see why it has a cult following. It's a teen movie, but it's smart enough for adults; it's a paranormal science fiction piece, kind of a souped-up Twilight Zone. Jake Gyllenhaal performs the role of Donnie with considerable skill, there are also highly enjoyable performances from Drew Barrymore as an earnest English teacher and Patrick Swayze as a two-faced self-help guru. Spoilers follow.

It's the story however that is the most compelling. Is Donnie crazy, or has he just somehow accessed a parallel dimension? At first we're not sure. He has medication to take for emotional problems, he sees a menacing 6ft tall rabbit named Frank who tells him, among other things, that the world will end in 28 days. The falling of a dangerous object from the sky provokes him into exploring the feasibility of time travel, and there is also a charming romance interwoven with the rest of the plot.

Much like the director of Ghost, (another film starring Patrick Swayze - why is Patrick Swayze always getting involved in films with emotional intensity bordering on the manipulative?) the director of this film seeks to manipulate your emotions throughout the story, in order to build sympathy for certain characters, only to reveal an eschatological gotcha! at the end. I don't mind it though because the messages are so sweet and indulgent in that let's-relive-our-high-school-drama kind of way. Ah if only for a time machine, ha ha.

I didn't have much difficulty grasping the scientific theory presented as an explanation for all the strange events -it seems plausible that the universe could have evolutionary forks that collapse upon themselves in the same way that the biosphere does. The questions would be then - how do they happen? How often? And at what speed? Speed is something often useful to keep in mind when viewing or reading science fiction of any kind. But those are good questions for the intellectually curious.

Its hard to shake the image of the rabbit in this movie as no less than demonic, since there is another film that came out about the same time in which the rabbit is a devilish figure. But does the rabbit save Donnie or want to kill him? The interplay that Donnie has with this shadowy spirit guide is less easy to explain, even when the science appears at the end of the film to sort of "explain it." (they made me do it - carved in front of the atrocious school mascot by Donnie-as-prankster: well, who? There's just one rabbit - we know he doesn't mean "they" in that persecuted-loner kind of way)

At first it appears that the story means to send a message about drug use in America - it all takes place in 1988, and there is the debate televised between Dukakis and Bush 41 in which they mention radically different approaches to drug policy and Latin America. Donnie himself seems at least mildly damaged by his own medication. Does the writer mean to suggest that the "end of the world"that Frank the Rabbit describes is the perfect rapture of the police state brought on by the imminent succession of HW Bush to the presidency, and the Left's resulting capitulation - better expressed in my opinion by the Batman films - or is this just another one of these high school "fantasies" that is expressed scientifically at the end of the film as a mere "tangent universe" along with other such fantasies that step into that universe during the film - such as an English teacher who really gets you, pranksters flooding the school until it closes, and making love to the prettiest girl in the class on Halloween night?

In other words the director means to ask us which universe is the tangent and which one is normal/better? Where is a position of manipulation, and what is just a prank? There is enough comedy in the film too so one can laugh while thinking about these things.

On Poetics

After some reflection, I have to conclude that not every exciting experience that occurs to us is suitable for poetic treatment. Some things are just beyond words to describe. I don't look at the process of writing very romantically, more so in the utilitarian sense. What right do I have to take the reader's time? some writer asked that of his own work. In the 90s I recall learning about 'switching off the inner editor' because we were supposed to break through religious conditioning into our authentic voices and so on. But since the occurrence of certain events which shall remain unpublicized, I switch the editor on more than I once did. Consequently I seem to get very little done, but I'm not displeased with myself.

caveat emporium

Noticed I've had some exotic readers.
I hope there's no author that feels maligned in any way by something I've written. I'm not vain enough to consider that what I write in my interest is also necessarily in the interest of the public, the blog is more for me than everyone 'out there' in other words.

And I do like the rhetorical flair, because much of the world, and writing, is boring to me - boring levels hi - though I don't wish to reveal the intentions behind everything written, I retain the right to be mysterious.

In general, the dog's bark is worse than the bite.

Review: Things on Which I've Stumbled

Peter Cole's Things on Which I've Stumbled presents to the reader explorations of spiritual activity in the state in which this activity normally occupies the believer, which is of an individual learning how to embrace their own attributes of confusion and ambiguity. Reading these poems one not imagines in the author a sense of guilt, or penitence necessarily, instead something more akin to reverence. Cole is a spiritual man, and takes his spirituality seriously. Yet the concepts he presents are universal; you can sit with these poems. They do not reveal “answers” but possibly hope to point to useful questions for seekers, and to life lived deeper than any question can ask for if it's asking for the floor on which all the table-legs are standing.

This work is an examination of the gaps of mystery that open up in the quest for a spiritual life, which the poet reminds us are useful to remember for their tension as well as their enjoyment. He personally writes from the nation of Israel, his life enmeshed in a region of the world that a media-saturated Western mind may have come to associate with dogmatism and all those really, really certain guys whose beliefs make the news. Cole is not as interested in these people, but more in his own relationship to God and how the vicissitudes of attempting to forge that relationship impact his other relationships, his work in poetics, and to the community in which he lives.

The poems keep a low profile and stay on the page, nestled. Most words are delicately put, contemplative - it's not a book that puts you at the edge of your seat, but you'll be glad. What is it that gives rise? What is meant by being? Cole asks. Styles vary: free verse, Sufi translations, rhymes that walk up to you slowly that you don't quite see until they say hello; then in part IV of the book there is a snapshot prose juxtaposed with the longer poem: “What Has Been Prepared”, which appears to be an investigation of judgments, ceremony-gone-wrong, distractions, aggravations. But are the distractions things that should be listened to more closely? Cole leaves all the doors open and suggests that they were either open already, or that there are no doors at all, just visions, movements, patterns, ornaments. These externals may become foci for study as a priority over personal motivations.

In his interview with Ben Lerner in BOMB magazine, Peter Cole had this to say about this piece:

... the subject is a kind of moral outrage in the face of destruction and desecration—of Palestinian society and culture, of (humanistic) Judaism, and of the land itself. “Anger management raised to the level of art” is how one poet-friend has characterized it. Sound and form are enlisted there, and listened to there, to help me make sense of a truly outrageous situation...

Total interview is available at this link:
http://www.bombsite.com/issues/105/articles/3180

There is a rich sestina on Palestine that uses the words Palestine, pain, hills, green, guests and land. There are poems looking into the results of applying words such as then and always to epiphanic moments, and what do these words mean for us? Such questions are at times valuable, since it can be deduced that the English language by itself may contribute to limitations in political or spiritual discourse. Cole is also an acclaimed translator, and ponders on the nagging effect of an asterisk and why he needs to physically return to “spiritual” locations at all.

And occasionally there is a dart thrown at the political body, such as “Israel Is”:

Israel is he, or she
who wrestles with God, call him what you will

not some goon (with a rabbi and gun)
in a pre-fab home on a biblical hill.

Succinct, and can apply in more places than Israel alone. Israel - derived from yisreh – he wrestles, and El (God) as it is noted by the poet on page 99.

The Notes on Bewilderment show the unanswered prayers, the prayers never sent, the soul twisted in on itself. These are Anti-Psalms where glory doesn't arrive, but humor sometimes does:

NoB XXII

He wanted to know how love was rewarded:
True love. That's easy, the lover replied.
the prize for that great desire comprises
the absence of any distinction between
the pain and pleasure one is accorded.

“Things on Which I've Stumbled” is the centerpiece poem in which Cole accounts a series of investigations and misunderstandings alongside a depiction of someone digging through archives, and some places that may be considered “garbage”, in search of beautiful clothing or jewelry – memories also as jewelry, friendship also as clothing. It's a highly personal piece yet no rectifying thought lingers except near the end, where he asks a philosophical question that has caused him to stumble before– tell me what man is...in the end notes he relates how the poem was composed of scraps from 11th and 12th century poets he discovered at Cambridge, kept in the geniza at Cairo. (A geniza, the notes tell us, is a store-room for Hebrew texts that are too worn to be read)

There is a bookend in the presentation – the two poems at the beginning and end have a more declarative certainty while grasping the meat of the book like two hands embracing a friend by the shoulders. The first piece is “Interpretation on Lines by Isaac the Blind,” who reveals himself to be quite the seer -endnotes tell us he was a 13th century kabbalist. Then there's the final poem, “The Ghazal of What Hurt,” which gives us an image of a person, previously injured, walking with utter health in a familiar street with acquaintances. They don't have roller-coasters in Jerusalem, so a jaunt like this may be one of the more joyous experiences one could have in public there. It shines.

Here is a piece I liked that used the word their effectively (who-? not sure what's going on, but it's lovely), also noting the repeated 'd' sounds that stop at a kind of period – at any rate – then the use of the 's' and the unexpected rhyme then opens into a wider space. The writer here does, as he often does in this work, easily move from the internal to the external.

And So the Skin...

And so their pounded hearts
were worn -
like a badge
or talisman that canceled
almost all their blindness-

creation's linkage depending
on a drive itself
derived from a kind of kindness
or desperation, the sense that one's
inadequate,
at any rate

the space for time-

water has it, flowing
(even from a faucet...)
and here the black swan glides across it

as the sunlight's suddenly on my back,
and now the skin along it's warmer,
Lord,
which lets me walk by the river...

post-coyote

I like this idea. Re-reading some things that have appeared on Ron Silliman's train of knowledge.

Sounds like it resonates with my experience of the last few years. Life post-2003 that is. Yes, there was life after entertainment. Hm..one can forget. Except that I'm not learning a foreign language currently, for shame.

http://www.longhousepoetry.com/andrewschelling.html#anchor88739

The term "trickster" is a difficulty, but I am curious about the books.

Shelley as or as not the author of Frankenstein

http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i11/11b01201.htm

linked from Bill Ectric's blog

http://billectric.wordpress.com/