September 22: Fragment of a Shell, MacArthur Genius Grant, Nobel Prize in Literature

At the seashore you often see a shell, or fragment of a shell, that sharp sands and surf have thinned to a wisp.  There is no way you can tell what kind of shell it had been, what creature it had housed; it could have been a whelk or a scallop, a cowrie, limpet, or conch.  The animal is long since dissolved, and its blood spread and thinned in the general sea.  All you hold in your hand is a cool shred of shell, an inch long, pared so thin it passes a faint pink light, and almost as flexible as a straight razor.  It is an essence, a smooth condensation of the air, a curve . . .

Dillard is talking about something hard and rough turned into something beautiful and translucent over time.  A seashell turned into pink light, and essence of air and curve.  That's really what art is all about, taking ugliness and transforming it into poetry or dance.  It takes hard work.  Talent.  A gift.  Sometimes, genius.

The recipients of the MacArthur Foundation's genius grants were announced today.  There were scientists and teachers and activists.  Playwrights and poets.  One of the winners was one of my favorite writers, Maggie Nelson.  She writes nonfiction, sort of.  A crazy blend of poetry and prose that defies classification.  One of my favorite books of hers is Bluets, which is her examination of the color blue, in all its permutations and meanings.  It's weird and frustrating and gorgeous.  Genius?  Probably.

Every year around this time, I wait to read about two things--the announcement of the MacArthur awards and, right around my birthday, the announcement of the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.  Like the selection of the MacArthur genius grant recipients, the Nobel is shrouded in secrecy.  Nobody knows, until the doors open in the Swedish Academy and the Permanent Secretary comes out, who will receive the Nobel diploma.

For some reason, I've always had this dream that, one day, I will receive a phone call in late September, telling me that I'm a genius, and then, on my birthday a few weeks later, my name will be spoken by the Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy.  I know, I know.  It's unrealistic.  Hell, it's more than unrealistic.  It's a friggin' hallucination, an acid trip, a psychotic break.  But it makes me happy when I think about it.

Now, I am not a MacArthur genius.  Yet.  Japanese writer Haruki Murakami is currently on the top of everybody's list for the Nobel Prize in Literature this year.  Oh, well.  When I go to sleep tonight, I will still be dreaming of the double knockout.  Maggie Nelson.  Maybe Murakami.

And maybe, one year, Saint Marty--the first blogger to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

September 29: Look of Devastation, Sad Day, Ellen Bryant Voigt, "A Marriage Poem," Adventures of Stickman

And he'd tapped Ives' shoulder thoughtfully and, maintaining his composure, had marched out of the office, shoulders back, chest out, a look of devastation upon his face.

It is Christmas time, and Mr. Mannis, Ives' boss, has suffered a tremendous loss.  His son is seriously  wounded in Vietnam and later dies.  Mannis is in a state of shock, searching for some source of comfort, and he turns to Ives.  In about a year or so, Ives will lose his own son, but, at this point, the two men are drawn together by friendship and respect.  Grief and sadness will come later.

For some reason, I felt a lot like Mr. Mannis today, walking around with a pall of devastation hanging over my head.  For the first time since the day of my sister's funeral, I visited the Website of the funeral home and read my sister's page.  Several more people had added tributes to the guest page.  Then, I clicked on the file containing the audio of my sister's Mass.

I simply wanted to listen to my eulogy, since I have no real recollection of what I said.  But, after 15 minutes, I was completely undone.  Sitting at my computer at work, after everyone else left, weeping.  It's my own fault.  For the past month, I've tried to keep myself busy in order to avoid the messy business of grieving.  Tonight, I realize that was probably not the best course of action.

So, my nerves are a little raw this evening.  I'm tired of dealing with the troubles of the world.

Today, the MacArthur Foundation announced the winners of the 2015 Genius Grants.  One of the lucky recipients was poet Ellen Bryant Voigt, whom I once named as Poet of the Week for this blog.  That's right.  On top of being a Saint Marty Poet of the Week, Voigt is now also a MacArthur Genius.

I know money is not the key to happiness, but I truly can't imagine receiving the kind of stipend that accompanies this award (currently $625,000 over five years).  Doing the math, that's a little over $100,000 a year, no strings attached.

As I said, money cannot make the troubles of the world vanish.  It certainly can't bring my sister back or take away my sadness.  It would, however, allow me to grieve in a house with a finished attic, a repaired kitchen ceiling, and maybe a second bathroom.

In honor of Ellen Bryant Voigt's award, I have decided to include one of my favorite Bryant poems.  You be the judge if it's genius.

Saint Marty needs to get to sleep now.  He's not a genius and needs to work in the morning.

A Marriage Poem

by:  Ellen Bryant Voigt

1.

Morning: the caged baby

sustains his fragile sleep.

The house is a husk against weather.   

Nothing stirs—inside, outside.   

With the leaves fallen,

the tree makes a web on the window   

and through it the world

lacks color or texture,

like stones in the pasture

seen from this distance.

This is what is done with pain:

ice on the wound,

the isolating tourniquet—

as though to check an open vein

where the self pumps out of the self

would stop the second movement of the heart,   

diastolic, inclusive:

to love is to siphon loss into that chamber.

2.

What does it mean when a woman says,   

“my husband,”

if she sits all day in the tub;

if she worries her life like a dog a rat;

if her husband seems familiar but abstract,

a bandaged hand she’s forgotten how to use.

They’ve reached the middle years.   

Spared grief, they are given dread

as they tend the frail on either side of them.   

Even their marriage is another child,   

grown rude and querulous

since death practiced on them and withdrew.

He asks of her only a little lie,

a pale copy drawn from the inked stone   

where they loll beside the unicorn,   

great lovers then, two strangers

joined by appetite:

                              it frightens her,

to live by memory’s poor diminished light.   

She wants something crisp and permanent,   

like coral—a crown, a trellis,

an iron shawl across the bed

where they are laced together,

the moon bleaching the house,

their bodies abandoned—

3.

In last week’s mail,

still spread on the kitchen table,

the list of endangered species.

How plain the animals are,

quaint, domestic,

but the names lift from the page:   

Woundfin. Whooping Crane. Squawfish.   

Black-footed Ferret. California Least Tern.

Dearest, the beast of Loch Ness, that shy,   

broad-backed, two-headed creature,   

may be a pair of whales or manatee,   

male and female,

driven from their deep mud nest,

who cling to each other,

circling the surface of the lake.

Adventures of STICKMAN

February 6: Dream a Lot, Terrance Hayes, "Candied Yams"

I dream a lot.  Imagine wild scenarios where I'm suddenly struck with good fortune.  I'm checking my e-mail, and there's a message from a publisher that wants to offer me a book deal.  I'm sitting in my office at school, and the president of the university walks into my office and offers me a full-time, tenured position.  I'm working at the medical office, and somebody with a Swedish accent walks in and tells me I've just been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Or it could be something like what happened to poet Terrance Hayes.  Terrance was in a coffee shop with his wife, and his cell phone rang.  It was somebody informing him that he'd been awarded a 2014 MacArthur genius grant.  He will receive $625,000 over the next five years.  He was given the grant because "he is a poet who reflects on race, gender, and family in works marked by formal dexterity and a reverence for history and the artistry of crafting verse. … In creating works that seamlessly and meaningfully encompass both the historical and the personal, Hayes is extending the possibilities of language and pushing the art of poetry toward places altogether new."  Whatever.

Saint Marty has a Terrance Hayes for you tonight.  The lucky bastard.

Candied Yams

by:  Terrance Hayes

3 boiled whole yams unpeeled and sliced,
into a saucepan
1 stick melted butter
2 big tablespoons nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 cup brown sugar

1 brown-sugar woman
quietly slices yams
at a wicker table.
She does not melt
into the ruckus of
a rumbling house.
2 boys who never stop
to listen.
Listen. Listen.
She gives each
1 brown yam topped
with marshmallows;
gives each a love
for the impossible;
for the majesty
of soul food;
a love
for remembering.

I want to write
something about that:
the saucepan's infinite scent,
the dip & tenor of tablespoons,
the brown hands blacker
than these scratches I make.
I want to write something
about my mother's yams;
I want to make magic
magic.

Cartoon by a MacArthur genius.  Whatever.

September 17: James Thurber, Jealousy, Colleagues

In March 1927 a new writer came on board at The New Yorker, a tall and nearsighted, bespectacled and mustached thirty-two-year-old named James Thurber.  He had considerably more journalistic experience than Andy.  He had already worked as a newspaperman in his native Columbus, Ohio, as well as for the Chicago Tribune in Paris alongside other expatriates such as William Shirer.  Thurber was serious about his career as a writer, but like Andy [White] he couldn't remain solemn for more than an hour at work.  In Paris, Thurber liked to sneak in fictional filler paragraphs, including one quoting President Coolidge as having said to a religious convention that a man who does not pray is not a praying man.


E. B. White worked with great writers at The New Yorker, Thurber being one of them.  Despite Thurber's greater success and fame, White harbored no jealousy against his new colleague.  They shared an office.  White championed Thurber's cartoon work at the magazine's art meetings.  He thoroughly enjoyed his friend's humor and talent.

Any long time reader of this blog knows I have a small problem with jealousy.  It comes from years of watching people teach classes I wanted to teach.  Get jobs I wanted to get.  Write and get published books I wanted to write and get published.  Life in higher education is sometimes thrilling and challenging, and sometimes it's just plain challenging.  I have generally fallen on the challenging end of the spectrum.

I have friends and colleagues whose writing I truly admire.  They deserve all of the accolades and rewards their talent provides.  That doesn't mean my little, mean-spirited side remains silent.  No.  It whispers things in my ears like, "What the hell?  Who did he screw to get a MacArthur Genius Grant?" and "She can't teach poetry.  She can't even spell 'poetry.'"  It's my nasty secret.  Intense envy, bordering on sociopathic.

I'm sitting in my office at the moment, waiting to teach my Wednesday night Intro to Film class.  It has been a long day, starting at 4 a.m.  I just walked down a hallway of the English Department, reading the names of full-time, tenured professors on the office doors.  I've been teaching here longer than most of them.  In fact, I've been teaching here longer than the majority of the full-time English faculty.  That's a little depressing.  Sometimes I feel like the red-headed stepchild of this little academic family.

I'm not complaining, though.  Well, maybe I am a little.  I simply wish I would feel a little more accepted than I do.  Unfortunately, I carry the descriptor "contingent" in front of my academic title.  That marginalizes me in most professor's eyes.  I'm "temporary."  After 18 years, I could just leave because I'm not invested in the success of the university.  I'm only in it for myself.  I stick around for the (ahem!) huge salary and (gag!) incredible benefits.  Not to mention the (cough!) respect.

So, you'll excuse Saint Marty's attitude tonight.  He's just wondering when the MacArthur Foundation is going to recognize his genius.

I can spell "genius":  S-A-I-N-T  M-A-R-T-Y