All posts by David Todd

poetry

Reflections on the Death of Poetry

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This is a frequent topic on the poetry boards I participate in and monitor. Poetry, if not dead, is minutes away from expiring. People don’t buy it; people don’t read it; newspapers don’t print it and don’t print reviews of it. Poets no longer have influence as they once did. The debate is heated on what has caused this. Some say competing entertainments, such as movies, television, and the internet has drawn off all but the most dedicated readers. Others say that poetry is imploding, due to the dominance of masters of fine arts (MFA) programs and how they produce poets just like their instructors, who are just like their instructors, thus resulting in a similarity of poetry that is strangling. Others say that the poetry community at large is to blame, that they are writing poetry that no one but other poets (or other MFA grads) want to read.

I think it is a combination of these. Many more entertainments exist than, say, when Robert Frost and T.S. Eliot were starting their careers–pre radio, pre television, etc. Entertainment in the home consisted of reading, and little else. Poetry was among the items read. But why does poetry not compete well with television, et al? I think it’s because poetry, as the most compressed type of language, requires the greatest use of brain power of all the written arts. Prose requires less, visual arts less still, motive visual arts even less. So when faces with a choice of brain-taxing poetry reading or mindless sexually-oriented sitcoms most people choose the sitcoms.

However, I do find fault with poets for not providing a product their audience wants. I have always been partial to poems with rhyme and meter (or rhythm), but it seems poets and their marketing outlets (many of which are MFA-led “literary” journals) find fault with rhyme and meter, and go for free verse exclusively. The vast majority of the people simply don’t like free verse. Why? I think Screwtape (see my last post) answered that. People have a love of change, while at the same time a love of permanence or stability. God fulfills that through rhymthm. The seasons change, but always come back to each other year after year. Daylight follows darkness. Low tide follows high tide. In poetry, rhyme and meter in poems to specific forms seem most enjoyable to the largest group of people. Yet, about the same time radio came in, the poets en-massse began moving away from rhyme and meter. Hence, in the face of a shrinking market, the poets turned their backs on what that shrinking market wanted.

IMHO.

book reviews, C.S. Lewis

Book Review: THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS

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I first read The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis in 1975, and kept the small paperback copy I had of it until my daughter ran off with it (since returned). As a young man just starting my Christian walk, this book had a profound effect on me. Still, the years gave no opportunity for me to read it again until recently. I suggested to the co-teacher of our adult Sunday School class that this would be a good book to study. I found a study guide from Progeny Press, and we began the study last October, finishing up just today. While C.S. Lewis is sometimes very dense in his writing, everyone today said they were glad we did the study, that they got much out of it.

Now, much further into my Christian life, The Screwtape Letters has once again had a profound effect on me. I love the way Lewis puts himself into the voice of one of Satan’s helpers, the senior demon Screwtape, who is corresponding with his nephew Wormword. Wormwood is just beginning his career as a tempter, and has been assigned to a young man in England, about the time that World War 2 is beginning. We never do learn who Wormwood is tempting; his is simply identified as “the Patient”. But we learn much about him, as early in the book he becomes an adult convert to Christianity (reported by Wormwood and commented on by Screwtape in Letter 2). Screwtape tells Wormwood, “There is no need to despair; hundreds of these adult converts have been reclaimed after a brief sojourn in the Enemy’s [meaning God] camp and are not with us.”

Throughout the rest of the book, Screwtape coaches Wormwood in the art of temptation, while Wormwood, in letters that we don’t see, reports to Screwtape about what he is doing to tempt the patient and what the result is. The result is a wonderful insight into human nature, our relationship with God, and what temptation and sin are all about. When the patient’s rocky relationship with his mother does not improve after his conversion, Screwtape tells Wormwood, “It is…impossible to prevent his praying for his mother, but we have means of rendering the prayers innocuous. Make sure that they are always “spiritual,” that he is always concerned with the state of her soul and never with her rheumatism.” When the patient acquires a new set of friends, Screwtape says they “are just the sort of people we want him to know–rich, smart, superficially intellectual, and brightly sceptical about everything in the world.” When the patient meets and falls in love with a Christian woman who would be a perfect helpmate to him, Screwtape says of her, “a two-faced little cheat…who looks as if she’d faint at the sight of blood, and then dies with a smile…filthy, insipid little prude…she makes me want to vomit!”

With many such statements, Lewis keeps us entertained, while at the same time helping us to understand ourselves. In Letter 25 he talked about similarity and change, and has Screwtape tell how the world below has caused human (“two-legged vermin”) to have a horror of “the same old thing”. Humans want change, and the tempters should give it to them. But Screwtape warns Wormwood how God provides for change in a positive way. “The horror of the Same Old Thing is one of the most valuable passions we have produced in the human heart–an endless source of heresies in religion, folly in counsel, infidelity in marriage, and inconsistency in friendship…The humans…need change, [so] the Enenmy…has made change pleasurable to them….He has balanced the love of change in them by a love of permanence. He has contrived to gratify both tastes together in the very world He has made, by that union of change and permanence which we call Rhythm.” Wonder, wonderful stuff.

The main theme which seemed to stand out to me, in a way it didn’t 33 years ago, was that Screwtape advised Wormwood to direct the man into a state of confusion. Confusion is what drives people to Satan. Unsaid was that order drives people to God: orderly habits, orderly thinking, orderly praying, etc.

If you haven’t read The Screwtape Letters, I urge you to do so. Don’t just read it: study it, meditate on it, reflection on Lewis’s genius, and grow because of it.

book reviews

Book Review: NELSON’S TRAFALGAR

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With Christmas money I purchased Nelson’s Trafalgar by Roy Adkins, First American Edition, Viking. I began reading it a little over week ago, and finished it Saturday night–all except for the credits and bibliography; those came last night.

This is an excellent book, and I highly recommend it for anyone interested in naval issues (especially war), the British/French war brought about by Napolean, sailing ships, or history in general. Before reading this book, I really knew little about the Battle of Trafalgar. Oh, I knew it was an important sea battle won by the British in the early 1800s, but I didn’t really know where it was fought or who they beat. I knew Admiral Horatio Nelson was the British victor and hero, but I knew little about his career, nor that he died during the battle. So for sheer transfer of facts and increase in my knowledge base, this was a great read.

Adkins used a good mixture of his own narrative and contemporary reports about the battle. He did not focus only on the victors, but talked considerably about the combined French-Spanish fleet. He talked about the life of the sailors in the navy, and about the officers. He took several occasions to explain subjects about life at sea and how the battle was waged. Consider this segment about on-board surgeons.

It was during battle that surgeons were most effective, even though they were working in appalling conditions. For much of their time on board ship, they were involved not with battle injuries, but with the daily hazards of disease and accidental injury….As soon as a ship was under fire, a steady stream of casualties arrived on the orlop deck. In most ships the crew were taught the use of tourniquets, to reduce blood loss, and also elementary bandaging, but in the heat of battle such first aid was usually inadequate…While waiting their turn to see the surgeon, some men bled to death whose wounds were otherwise not serious or complicated…putting [surgeons] under pressure to work as fast as possible….In a matter of seconds, he had to decide whether the injuries were fatal, could be dealt with by stiching and dressing, whether amputation was necessary….Usually this was all decided in one hurried glance, in poor lighting, as the surgeon tried to stand steady on a deck juddering from the countershocks of outgoing and incoming broadsides, as well as the normal roll and pitch of the ship.

This type of information is reapeated over and over in the book, for different jobs, such as the powder monkeys or the gun crews. Even with the large amount of information given, the book is an easy read, striking a good balance of popular readability and academic information. Anyone at all interested in these subjects should read this book.

miscellaneous, technology woes

Technologically Challenged

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I received an e-mail from my son-in-law, Richard Schneberger, who said that the comments feature of my blog limited comments to team members. When Richard helped me set this blog up over the Christmas holidays, I thought I had that set to allow anyone to comment. Obviously not. That is now taken care of. Any one who drops by, feel free to make a comment on any post. I realize this blog is not really the type that will generate comments, at least it isn’t right now. Maybe in the future, if I really become published, that could change.

Richard said he added a link to my blog on his blog. I intend to do the same for his, but right now I haven’t figured out how. Several times in previous posts I tried to add a link to some web site, only to find out the link didn’t work. I haven’t learned the code using the < and > characters. On the message boards I frequent, you use the [ and ] characters for code. Substituting characters that designate code is coming should not be a problem, but the links still don’t work. So there is something else I have to learn.

I’m planning on taking a community college class in web site building during the month of March. Maybe then I’ll learn what I need. In the meantime, I hope to learn how to post a clickable link, and add a blogroll.

poetry, Writing

2007 in Poetry

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I spent little time with poetry in 2007. Having completed Father Daughter Day the year before (but with most of it written 2004-2005), I read it through once and did some minor edits, and found a few beta readers in my target audience. The year began with it under consideration by a gift book editor, but I heard in June (after three follow-up e-mails) that they weren’t interested. I showed it to a couple of editors at a writers conference in November, but as expected they were not interested in poetry. I almost looked into having the book illustrated, but decided the time was not right. So I’m letting this sit for a while.

As to writing poetry, my production this year was only seven:
– a sonnet “Yoked”, on the progression of marriage
– a free verse poem “A Far Away Look”, the first free verse I’ve tried for a while
– a light verse “Oxymoron No. 1”, about reading poetry
– a light verse epithet “For One Who Died Too Young”
– a light verse “On The Virtues Of ‘Good’ Or ‘Fine'”
– an haiku
– a sonnet “Of Bollards And Berms”, about the inner struggle to purity

Several of these I workshopped at Absolute Write or Mosaic Musings.

I just didn’t feel like writing poetry this year. Very few situations arose where I thought That would make a good poem and sat down to do it. I don’t know if this means my poetry interest is waning, or just that the time wasn’t there to do both prose and poetry, and thus I supressed, either purposely or subconciously, the desire to write it. I hope it’s the latter, and that at some point in the future my desire to write poetry–and read it–will come back.

Engineering

Vocation Rules

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Yes, you read that right: vocation, not vacation, ruled the day today, and will for the next several. Blasted day job! I could get a lot of writing done except for that.

I had a late start today due to a doctor’s appointment (lab work) and icy roads, this being the eve of one of the most important days in my job for a year or so. That pub me behind on preparations, and though I was caught up by the end of the day, tomorrow will be full with a special presentation, and then next two after will be spent catching up from that one. And, to top it off, I learned on Monday that my proposal for a paper to be presented at an engineering conference in August was accepted. I have till March 17 now to actually write the paper. No pressure.

So, writing went by the wayside yesterday, and looks like it will for a couple of more days. Except, last night I did get into the marketing of Documenting America. A small step, but one in the right direction. Maybe with a number of small steps I can conquer my array of fears.

book reviews, Health

Book Review: “;Natural Cures ‘They’ Don’t Want You To Know About”

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From time to time, I will provide book reviews in this blog, of what I’ve recently read. It will keep me sharp as I read, and maybe hone skills as a reviewer, especially of how to be honest but not insulting. Of course, blog readers will then see that a lot of what I read is ancient.

This first one is reasonably new Natural Cures ‘They’ Don’t Want You To Know About by Kevin Trudeau. Like many, I had seen bits and snatches of his info-mercials, though I never watched one all the way through. Much of what I heard him say made sense, and the entire concept of natural curse simply by using things that God gave us, rather than relying on man’s manufacturing, is attractive to me. I remember reading <url=”http://books.google.com/books?id=YqV27LGcZGMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:Jean+inauthor:Carper&sig=grfd6-2KKyYNDTK5jYzzpPlt_Hw”>Food-Your Miracle Medicine by Jean Carper some years ago, and being impressed with the whole concept of natural cures. I had been intending to purchase Trudeau’s two main books, but my brother-in-law beat me to it, giving them as Christmas presents last month.

Unfortuately, the first book is awful. I hate to say that so bluntly, but it is. If I had the time and a bit more of a masochistic bent, I would go through the book with highlighters and highlight: health suggestions, anti-government ranting, anti-corporate ranting, self-aggrandizement, and information rebeated either verbatim or almost so. The health information would be less than 2 percent of the book, anti-government rants about 15 percent, anti-corporate rants about 20 percent, self-aggrandizement maybe 5 percent, with the rest (whatever that comes to) being awful, awful repetition. If the repetition percent comes out to less than 60 percent, I’ve given too much weight to other things.

This is sad, because I suspect most of what he says concerning health is quite valid. Eat foods in their most natural, organic state, without the benefits of pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, genetic modification, homogenization, pasteurization, etc. But wading through the awful repetition is so difficult, I don’t know how to really benefit from this book.

The beefs I have with Trudeau are the same ones I have with most health books.
1. While all organic food would obviously seem to be better, a modern, urban society, with the distance from farm to market to table results in so much spoilage that full organic is not possible in massive quantities. So only the informed few could benefit from this.
2. The organic and natural way of eating is much more expensive than what we find now in stores. Thus the poor cannot really afford to participate. Only those with land and the wherewithall to organic farm, or those with sufficient means, can participate.
3. The book itself is poorly written, as I find most health books to be. Trudeau needs a ghost writer and an editor who will be honest with him. The 400+ page book could have been done in 50 pages with no loss of information.
4. The book is not so much for conveying true health information as it is a teaser, published to take you through a portal into a world of other for-profit products. Most of these health books are really for the purpose of selling food supplements. Trudeau’s is for selling website and newsletter subscriptions. Some difference.

I have read a little in Trudeau’s second book, More Natural Cures Revealed, but will not be reviewing it. To do so will be redundant.

Writing

Excuses: Fear of Commitment

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Well, another day sick at home, though I’m definitely on the mend. I cut back a bit on medicine, and don’t need a cough drop constantly in my mouth. Coughing much less, sinus drainage less. Back to work on Monday.

Which brings me to my last excuse in the fear area: fear of committment.

Right now, I’m playing with Documenting America. I get on to it hot and heavy for a week, and write three or four columns, gaging the time it take for each including reading, research, writing, editing, and finishing. I prove that in a mere three or four hours of concentrated work I can write one of these columns. That I could do every week. And, if that was the only thing needed for the column, that would be a commitment I would be willing to make. That’s what it would be if I wrote the column for a newspaper, one newspaper.

However, for self-syndication, I would also have marketing research, actual marketing, sending of the columns, billing and followin-up on billing, and organizing the whole thing. What would the time commitment be? What if I had the column in 5 newspapers? That wouldn’t be too bad, but what about 50? If I were so successful as to appear in 50 newspapers, what would the time commitment be, and could I handle it? If the column itself takes four hours a week, I suspect the marketing and business end of the project would require about that much, certainly if it appears in more than a handful of newspapers.

As I talk through this, the problem with commitment is more fear of what I don’t know–exactly what the time commitment will be. Fear of commitment, or fear of the unknown? I hope soon I will face them.

Writing

Excuses: Fear of Error

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Still sick; still stayed at home today. Thought I would go to work, but got up at 7:00 AM to a huge coughing spell, deep and painful. So I crawled back in bed and slept till 10, and got up to a leisurely day. Did a little reading, but mainly slept and slept, or at least rested. I think I’ll be back to work tomorrow.

Now to the next excuse I’ve experienced: fear of error. This came to me when I was writing a Documenting America column on a document that dealt with “common law”. I had no idea what that was. An hour of research both on-line and in books I had at hand gave me the basics–at least enough to write the column and make the points I wanted to. Four hours total, and I had a column. Yet, a nagging thought kept coming back to me: What if my research is not sufficient, and I’ve made an error. It would kill my credibility, and would kill the column. I thought that through as I wrote the column, and tried to structure what I wrote to avoid error, to indicate the limit of my knowledge. Still, the nagging thought remained.

The writer’s need to research his subject, and write what is correct and verifiable, is huge. This is true for fiction, non-fiction, magazines, newspapters. Make a mistake on a fact and you’re toast. Worse than that, though, I think, would be a mistake in an opinion, or in interpreting a fact. You might say it would be impossible to make a mistake of interpretation or opinion, but I think it is possible.

I had more I wanted to write about this, but the long day, even with the rest I had, is making my head go fuzzy. I’ll edit this tomorrow and add the rest.

Writing

Excuses: Fear of Success

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I’m out sick today, not even trying to get in a couple of hours. The way I felt this morning I was pretty sure the worst had not yet come. But I’ve had a restful day, taking my over-the-counter medication, and now am feeling much better. If things continue as is, I should be able to work tomorrow. Today I haven’t tried to write anything.

The next excuse I sometimes use is fear of success. What would happen if my column, my novels, my ideas for non-fiction books, should turn out to be good ideas, and my writing turn out to be good writing, and all these things be fantastically successful? What would change in my life as a result, and am I ready for that? Some extra money would be nice, and there is no need to fear “papazzi”-type fame, for no writer gets that, not even J.K. Rowling. Success that leads to a change of career is also pretty unlikely, and shouldn’t be something to fear.

I sometimes think this is my biggest hindrance. Then I tell myself it’s just wishful thinking. The level of success that would have a major change in my life is so far fetched as to be not attainable. So fear of success should not be a factor. Still, those dreams are hard to drive out of my mind, and the dreams then lead to that fear–of success.

I don’t know how to overcome that, other than to keep trying. Take one day at a time. Plan out a writing “career” and work the plan. Yet I’ve had these plans since June 2006. Why have I not acted on the plan? Fear of success?