If we refuse to ignore the margins of the page, if we no longer observe the sanctity of white space, if we break the borders of the page, perhaps we can learn to recognize those in the margins of society, to share our wealth and resources to the excluded, and to demilitarize our national borders.
One of the most important advances in farming technique that contributed to the British Agricultural Revolution, dated variously by scholars from sometime between the late 17th and early 19th centuries, was a simple one: farm laborers used a rotation of turnips and clover instead of letting their fields lie fallow. Turnips can be grown in winter, and are deep-rooted, allowing them to gather minerals that are unavailable to shorter-rooted crops. Clover fixes nitrogen from the atmosphere into a form of fertilizer. This permitted more intensive cultivation, and provided fodder to support an increasing number of livestock, whose manure further added to soil fertility.
Because the fields were more productive, there was a population explosion. As the population increased, farm laborers also became more efficient. Since there was far less need for farm laborers, there was suddenly an extensive urban workforce. And it is this workforce that enabled the Industrial Revolution in Britain.
There are about 400 manuscripts in Old English known to us. All together those manuscripts come to about 30,000 lines. Though poetry was an integral part of the Old English culture, we know of only 12 of their poets by name. Of those 12, the work of merely 4 has survived.
Never believe you have nothing to write about. If you feel that way, you simply haven’t discovered what it is you can write about. Keep looking—in other places, in other people, but most importantly, in your own self and life.
“The momentous historical shift from the view that the making of a work of art is a supremely purposeful activity to the view that its coming-into-being is, basically, a spontaneous process independent of intention, precept, or even consciousness, was the natural concomitant of an organic aesthetics.” —M. H. Abrams
“The book has somehow to be adopted to the body, and at a venture one would say that woman's books should be shorter, more concentrated, and framed so that they do not need long hours of steady and uninterrupted work. For interruptions there will always be.” —Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, 135
Is it surprising to anyone that the Supreme Court has taken an unethical position on its lack of an ethics policy?
I’ve begun reading Shakespearean Negotiations by Stephen Greenblatt. This passage from the first chapter, “The Circulation of Social Energy”, expresses perfectly something I have been trying to understand myself over the last few years about the nature of art:
I propose that we begin taking seriously the collective production of literary pleasure and interest. We know that this production is collective since language itself, which is at the hear of literary power, is the supreme instance of a collective creation. But this knowledge has for the most part remained inert, either cordoned off in prefatory acknowledgements or diffused in textual analyses that convey almost nothing of the social dimension of literature’s power. Instead the work seems to stand only for the skill and effort of the individual artist, as if whole cultures possessed their shared emotions, stories, and dreams only because a professional caste invented them and parceled them out. In literary criticism Renaissance artists function like Renaissance monarchs: at some level we know perfectly well that the power of the prince is largely a collective invention, the symbolic embodiment of the desire, pleasure, and violence of thousands of subjects, the insturmental expression of complex networks of dependency and fear, the agent rather than the maker of the social will. Yet we can scarcely write of prince or poet without accepting the fiction that power directly emanates from him and that society draws upon this power.
Did a dinner for 24. First professional cooking I’ve done since my second wrist surgery in 2021. Fairly basic stuff but hopefully as I get my skills (and ability to stand on my feet for 12 hours) back I can also continue to push myself as I used to do every day. Here was the menu:
Almonds toasted with sumac and marash
Local Halibut tartare in Little Gems cups with radishes, chives, and ginger vinaigrette
Sourdough toasts with sweet pea puree, pickled artichokes, and mint
Citrus and fennel salad with cresses and Lucques olives
Northern halibut with new potatoes, Riverdog Farm asparagus, and Meyer lemon aioli
Lemon–olive oil cake with candied kumquats
You have to be as patient with changing your poetic style as you are with changing your body.
Sir Walter Raleigh—knight, courtier, defender of the British realm against the Spanish armada, colonizer, explorer, popularizer of the myth of El Dorado, probable lover to Queen Elizabeth (who secretly married one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting without permission), after whom the capital of Virginia is named (though he never travelled to North America and the colony he funded there was a failure)—was considered one of the greatest men of his age during his age. In the 19th century there was a theory, still held by a minority of scholars now, that he was the actual author of Shakespeare’s plays.
A proponent of the so-called “plain style”, which resisted the elaborate constructions influenced by the Italians, Raleigh is little read today, but he was a writer of particularly brilliant poems in an era known for its brilliance. Here is one of my favorites:
Epitaph on the Earl of Leicester, died
September 4, 1588
Here lies the noble warrior that never blunted sword;
Here lies the noble courtier that never kept his word;
Here lies his excellency that govern'd all the State;
Here lies the Lord of Leicester that all the world did hate.
Of course one of his best poems is his response to Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”, one of the most famous pastoral poems of all time. To get the full sense of Raleigh’s poem, here is Marlowe’s:
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
Come live with me, and be my love;
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.
And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
And I will make thee beds of roses,
And a thousand fragrant posies;
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;
A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair linèd slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;
A belt of straw and ivy-buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And, if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.
The shepherds' swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May-morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love.
And Raleigh’s:
The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd
If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy love.
Time drives the flocks from field to fold
When Rivers rage and Rocks grow cold,
And Philomel becometh dumb;
The rest complains of cares to come.
The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
To wayward winter reckoning yields;
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall.
Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten:
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.
Thy belt of straw and Ivy buds,
Thy coral clasps and amber studs,
All these in me no means can move
To come to thee and be thy love.
But could youth last and love still breed,
Had joys no date nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee and be thy love.
From the diary of Virginia Woolf, Jan. 9, 1924, as she and her husband are about to move out of the home they had lived in for the previous twelve years:
“I’ve had some very curious visions in this room too, lying in bed, mad, and seeing the sunlight quivering like gold water on the wall. I’ve heard the voice of the dead here. And felt, through it all, exquisitely happy.”
Eirōn
Our word “irony” derives from the Greek “eirōn”, meaning “dissembler”. Eirōn was a stock character in Ancient Greek Comedy. He was the clever, unexpected hero who by pretending to be unintelligent was ultimately able to defeat his enemy, the Alazōn character, who was a braggart. An example of this would be Xanthias, from The Frogs by Aristophanes—who though a servant to his master, the god Dionysus, always proves to be smarter and braver than his master.
Some writers—the proclivity is most interesting when it occurs in poets—achieve their effect not through precision or power but through accumulation. Their works do not operate on the level of the line, but as a unit. A reader may not necessarily wish to quote any particular line from a piece, and yet, they are still moved by what they have read and would happily read it again.
Oakland’s unhoused population has increased by 24% over the last three years. The city has spent over 12 million dollars evicting people from their homeless camps in the last two. How many meals could have been bought for that much money? I see people being pushed off areas that no one else even wants to walk down—under highway overpasses. Among the rats. And yet I see new high-cost living units being built all over the Bay Area. As I walk by them, many of these high-cost units appear at least partially empty.
Lowering the standard rent and raising the minimum wage is the only way to diminish the housing crisis. But landlords don’t want to lower rent. They want to drive it up and up and up. And what can the renters do? What can they do but crowd more and more people into smaller and smaller spaces? People hold onto their units for as long as they can, even though they might like to move. They are afraid to complain to the landlords because they might raise the rent.
Someone I know had a tree die in their front yard. They notified the landlord. A week later the landlord raised the rent.
People I know are in a constant state of anxiety because of debt. Yet some landlords raise the rent whenever they can, and others raise the rent to whatever the standard price seems to be. People can work 40 hours a week and not have enough money for rent and food. There is a greater disparity between the wealthy and the poor than at any time in America’s history since the so-called “Gilded Age”.
Hunter S. Thompson said, “It’s a strange world. Some people get rich. Other people eat shit and die.”
I don’t know what to do or how to do it, but I’m going to find a way to help those I can. Even writing about the disparity is a beginning. Hopefully it helps people consider their own position. And the positions of others.
If you do not wish to repeat yourself, the essential thing may be not to worry so much about what you’re writing, but what you’re reading and experiencing. As you continue you to learn you continue to change. As you change your style will change. As you read things you haven’t read before, by authors you haven’t read before, in styles you haven’t read before, your understanding of what can be possible in literature will constantly expand. During the last few years, expanding what I read has dramatically changed me as a writer.
Sometimes I feel that in art, focus is more important than intelligence, just as dedication is more important than talent. Perhaps that’s just what I need to tell myself. But it seems to be true.