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grew up in the 1950 s and 1960 s john updike was an up and coming novelist and critic i first encountered his work as the author of two light verse collections yoked together in a fawcett paperback entitled simply verse 1965 verse reprinted the carpentered hen 1958 and telephone poles 1963 updike had begun somewhat unexpectedly as an aspiring cartoonist he went to england to study drawing and seems to have begun writing almost as an adjunct to his interest in humor the poems he began to publish in the new yorker were right in the tradition started by f p adams in the 1920 s a forum which attracted other early practitioners such as e b white dorothy parker etc but it was actually james thurber s work which most clearly served as the model for updike s early efforts but unlike thurber and more like white updike had a more serious side and as his career progressed he turned away from the cuteness and whimsy of light verse to serious fiction first in short stories and later in novels the first novel of updike s i read was rabbit run from the first words of that novel updike announced himself as the singer of sensation the poet of physicality of close observation the slippery qualities of tactility of primary feeling the writing was also frank about sex about relations between the sexes and about the vicissitudes of lower middle class american life a world which i knew well rabbit angstrom was a lot like the high school basketball players i knew and i could see just how their futures could come to resemble the character in that book my first efforts at writing poetry were imitations of the poems in verse alongside the poems we read in high school english class which included the likes of shakespeare browning wilfred owen and rupert brooke for instance updike s flip glib hip witty pirouettes were a refreshing breath of oxygen they talked about everything nothing was too trivial too mundane as subject they took nothing too seriously and seemed to glide on a roller ball of excelsior it wasn t until later that i picked up the poorhouse fair 1959 updike s first novel poorhouse fair read like a very pretentious piece of unpretentious emulation of william maxwell or the sort of novel that someone who liked henry green or william sansom might have dreamed up it wouldn t take updike long though to throw off the yoke of that polite literary society and throw his ribbon into the ring as a major novelist with the centaur 1963 and couples 1968 the last an unrepentant and unforgiving explication of the hedonistic sexual relationships in a small new england town in the free wheeling sixties brought updike into the bestseller circle as well as the fame which his earlier books could not command as the years went by and updike continued to pile up novels short stories reviews autobiography and more poetry in a burgeoning surfeit of prolificity i began to lose interest in his work i enjoyed the bech books which seemed to be both a celebration of his contemporary jewish competitors and a sly thought not very subtle really dig at their peccadillos as well but by and large i found his later novels dull as if he had gone on writing them out of habit rather than necessity we went to hear him read from the terrorist when he toured on the west coast in 2006 i d never seen him in the flesh before he was cheerful polite patient and witty to a fault he clearly wanted very much to be liked yet underneath the good cheer there was an undercurrent of cynicism a little stream of despair which i always caught just beneath the surface of his prose unmistakable in the end i find i admire his poetry and his essays the most he was a polymath he could talk about any kind of writing and had a good familiarity with most of the world s literatures he taught himself such a lapidary mastery over the materials of his craft that it may almost have become a hindrance to conviction and curiosity and yet curiosity was the essence of his intelligence seemingly he had read about everything and could tell you about it and if he hadn t he could imagine it for himself and for you the reader his kind of literary dexterity is rare at any time there s no one else presently who seems capable of filling his shoes i will miss him posted by curtis faville at 11 21 am 2 comments thursday january 29 2009 on donald justice s american sketches american sketches by donald justice crossing kansas by train the telephone poles have been holding their arms out a long time now to birds that will not settle there but pass with strange cawings westward to where dark trees gather about a water hole this is kansas the mountains start here just behind the closed eyes of a farmer s sons asleep in their work clothes this is the first of two poems under this title somewhat uncharacteristically these are free verse forms clearly under the conscious one might even say self conscious influence of william carlos williams his characteristic american gothic theme the spare angular economic use of blank description cleanness simplicity homespun modesty rather like a folksy mood piece by aaron copland justice had gone to school with strict forms and the conservative approach of the 1950 s attending the iowa workshop when it was dominated by traditional dogmas when lowell berryman penn warren major figures of the post war period worked as instructors and the prevailing influences of the new critics the fugitives etc held sway justice had thrived inside this crucible carving out a niche for himself as a latter day southern descendent of crowe ransom and tate growing up in florida he had shown talent both as a composer of serious music as well as a poet it is in this in this dual role of justice s as poet and musician in the french sense of that word that i like to think of with respect to these poems here is the second part poem to be read at 3 a m excepting the diner on the outskirts the town of ladora at 3 a m was dark but for my headlights and up in one second story room a single light where someone was sick or perhaps reading as i drove past at seventy not thinking this poem is for whoever had the light on both poems reflect aspects of a middle american landscape flat empty whose only verticals are buildings trees telephone poles signs farm animals this lonely forlorn prairie country is the purified embodiment of open space that primordial characteristic of the american psyche which charles olson named as primary for our poetry justice s versions of the perfect spring all poem is a summation of williams s methodology of stripped down construction not one plank not one nail too many no decorated cornices no curlicues unpretentious a kind of shaker plainness useful pragmatic the first poem of 20 lines is comprised of two sentences enjambed at line 13 hole this is seamlessly transitioning from bland but satisfying description telephone poles birds trees water holes to a more mysterious country behind the closed eyes of a farmer s sons where the mountains start in only 56 words justice has managed with the most meager of means to evoke the imagined landscape of the american dream a master of the crafted classical formality sonnets villanelles etc justice here brings to bear on a form that superficially one might have expected him to disdain gifts of economy and elemental reduction which would belie the nature of his gift not a single word is wasted in addition rather than falling for the easy pretense of naked description he brings a human dimension in in each poem in the first the farmer s sons in the second the anonymous inhabitant of a hotel room in ladora iowa just west of iowa city at 3 a m trumping the very emptiness which this distilled tradition usually signifies both poems remind me of famous photographs but most particularly of the one at the head of this entry by minor white 1908 1976 entitled simply vicinity of danville new york ca 1955 something of the starkness and gloom of this landscape is what s being evoked in justice s poems a summary of a kind of the sort of quality which justice a child of the depression wpa the dustbowl the migrations westward described in steinbeck s the grapes of wrath walker evans etc felt deeply especially as he grew older justice reflected increasingly on memory nostalgia of his childhood of the barrenness of the thirties the decayed gentility of the south where he d grown up these poems written in mid career were also influenced by french models in particular those of the poet eugene guillevic and were collected in his second book night light 1967 we will have more to say about justice s work in future i had the privilege of studying briefly with him at iowa in the early 1970 s a charming courtly amusing gentleman who understood as one whose opinion i highly valued once said the insides of poems posted by curtis faville at 6 07 pm 16 comments sunday january 11 2009 the taser controversy in the late 1990 s following some years of research a scottsdale arizona firm called taser named after a fictional weapon thomas a swifts electric rifle began marketing a pistol sized gun designed to incapacitate humans through electro muscular disruption emd technology by causing severe muscle contractions through involuntary stimulation of both the sensory nerves and the motor nerves originally intended for police use taser international is also marketing a civilian model tasers were introduced or marketed as less lethal weapons to be used to subdue fleeing belligerent or potentially dangerous subjects where the use of traditional instruments such as batons pepper spray or tear gas or guns with live ammunition would have been otherwise used tasers work by firing small penetrating darts into a subject connected by wires to the electronic charge some augmented models also function as stun guns intended to cause intense debilitating pain anyone who has suffered an accidental electrical shock through ordinary household current or even a strong snap from a static electric source knows how terrifying this can be any electric shock strong enough to cause an individual to go into involuntary convulsions belongs high on the list of dangerous instruments once introduced into the criminal law enforcement community tasers have rapidly gained support and popularity among front line police officers and their advocates what greater thrill could there be than to zap a disorderly or uncooperative perp on the street how much less strenuous and problematic than physically subduing someone using a baton or threatening deadly force with a pistol so clean and neat zap but tasers aren t safe several studies have shown that the charge used in tasers is sufficient to cause cardiac or respiratory arrest in some people and to cause others to go into physical shock there are documented cases of people actually dying after being tasered it is impossible for a policeman or anyone else for that matter to know what kinds of medical conditions or susceptibilities a stranger may have who can we trust with the authority to use tasers when their potential danger is so great especially for those who may be at risk for serious injury because the technology is so new there are no laws governing when and under what conditions these new weapons can be used in addition there hasn t been sufficient testing done to determine what the actual affects and risks are of routine police use on the street one can imagine that tasers might be of use for instance in prisons where large groups of hardened types might not otherwise be manageable historically tools like high pressure water tear gas rubber bullets etc have been used to control crowds but these new toys constitute a completely new development in the use of technology to terrorize and bully individuals and the communities where they live tasers have most often been used to intimidate and punish individuals who aren t sufficiently compliant and obedient with tasers at their disposal police officers are tempted to provoke and engage irresponsibly believing that possession of these new space age short cuts will shield them from the risk of charges of police brutality or provocative behavior it s only a matter of time despite assurances from the manufacturers that these devices will fall into the hands of criminals and others in the general population once the technology has been developed it s difficult to keep the lid on their proliferation and abuse hybrid forms of the new technology are now being marketed directly to the general public stunning pink pictured above a new personal safety device works this way when deployed 950 000 volts of electricity flow through the prongs on the end of the stunning pink into the body of the attacker the initial shock interrupts the signal between the attacker s neurotransmitters in the brain and their muscular system the interruption of this signal causes the attacker to immediately drop to the ground the delivery of this level of electricity to the muscular system causes the insulin to vacate the muscles leaving only lactic acid behind the lack of insulin in the muscles will cause the attacker to be temporarily immobilized with no long term lasting effects it isn t hard to see how the use of such powerful devices could and would be used inappropriately or with malice by anyone normal or deranged wanting to flex their gadget muscles as a matter of public good these devices should be outlawed by all jurisdictions their use cannot be properly monitored and the risk of serious injury is too great to leave to casual chance posted by curtis faville at 5 26 pm 17 comments sunday january 4 2009 a tribute to ronald johnson 1935 1998 part one plant forms arthur dove 1912 ronald johnson has long been considered by the compass rose as being one of a handful of poets writing in english since the second world war whose work deserves to be included in anyone s list of gifted and innovative writers his earliest work collected in a line of poetry a row of trees jonathan williams highlands north carolina 1964 was a refreshing departure from the majority of academic versifying on the one hand and the self conscious rhetorical gestures of the avant garde on the other which characterized the competing camps of poetry writing during the 1940 s and 1950 s working directly from quotations and relying on a specificity of source place and time johnson s work was a wholly original approach to pastoral one informed by a deep and reverent reading and by a circumspect response to his ambient mental landscapes kansas the english countryside as well as to the graphic prophetic visions of blake palmer dove etc it was modern and brisk and confident but measured and unpretentious our favorite johnson poem is three paintings by arthur dove here is the beginning of part 1 i plant forms dove once pulled up a cyclamen tore it up to show how the color went down in the stem on into the root color is a condition of the plant color of the flower pod embedded in the bud noti...