What do you want the U.S. and the U.S. President to be like 20 years from now?

 

What do you want the U.S. and the U.S. President to be like 20 years from now?

Americans often vote for President on how we’re feeling that day (not even, say, two or three months ago, often enough). One thing I’ve seen though is how long a Presidency shapes the future U.S. and future U.S. Presidents, an influence that can easily last 20 years or more. The social and economic issues will change; war and global issues will change; but the tone you hear now is a tone you’ll still be hearing 10 and maybe 20 years from now.

Carter influenced the Clinton Presidency (Southern Democrat); Reagan influenced Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2, even Obama with neoliberal economic globalism; Clinton influenced the political centrism of Bush 2, Obama, and Biden; Bush 2’s legacy of lying openly regarding Iraq and Afghanistan clearly influenced the all-lies-all-the-time Trump assault on democracy and freedom; Obama has obviously shaped what we see in Biden and in the current candidate Kamala Harris, and Biden has (obviously) influenced Harris too.

 So: 20 more years of contempt for truth and democracy, of racism and sexism and homophobia and hatred for anyone who isn’t a rich white man or a wife who serves him? Or 20 more years of the tone that Harris presents: respect for others, mutual aid, and a belief in opportunity for all, not just those who have historically owned and run the U.S?

And that’s one big reason why, however the country and the world and the crises we see are going to change, I’ll be voting for Harris and Walz. I want to see what’s going to come after them. I don’t want to face endlessly a Trump-style contempt for human rights and democracy and basic human dignity and respect.

Some Brief Reflections on The Collected Poems of Anselm Hollo

 

Well, I’ve read all of these poems now (the last one is on page 1048), over the seven months since I first had the book.

So. I don’t think anyone is going to call Anselm Hollo (1934-2013) the greatest American poet of the 20th century. Surely he’s the most important Finnish American poet, whatever the competition might be. He’s not going to be called the most extreme poet, the most outrageous, the most experimental, the most challenging, the darkest, the most troubling or desperate, the most dense or high-flying, the most obscure, the most filled with pressure that can be barely articulated, the most culturally incisive, the one whose despair is unmatched. He’s not the most original, as his sense of line remains closely connected to Ted Berrigan, not the most musical although his lines are often amazingly musical. He’s probably not the most ironic, although he’s close here because he’s certainly ironic. He’s probably not the most learned although he sure knew plenty. He doesn’t stand on the extreme outside edge of anywhere, calling us into the wilderness.

What he might just be, if such a thing can even be considered, is the most well-adjusted American poet of the 20th century. Maybe he’s the most ready to live with the challenges of each day and with others in a way that remains open, curious, involved, interested, eager for dialogue. Does anybody care anymore, at this stage of our all-knowing, all-orchestrated human world, about a poet who’s excited and fascinated at being in the world without being motivated by huge complaints against it, whatever huge complaints are inevitable for him and anybody else? Is it possible to care about poetry that seems motivated by enjoying and engaging the possibilities of living, to the point of keeping enthusiasm for the whole fact of it, although never losing sight of things that have gone wrong?

The poems never feel ambitious except to the extent that they consistently deflect ambition. They seem aware that a reputation for greatness turns too often into a game of who can outmaneuver the other poor suckers who happen to be more involved in other parts of life. It adds up to a kind of profound anti-ambition.

And there he might have an edge. A poet who is more anti-ambitious in his ambitions than most other poets who have thrown more than a thousand pages of poetry at the many walls and down the many dead-ends of contemporary life. A poet who finds more that’s worthwhile in living than many other writers who are laboring hard, very hard, to get somewhere.

But as he surely knew, comparisons are odious. And while challenges are good, devoting one’s life to being better than other human beings at something is surely not the most impressive, or even original, goal. So what would be the value in being more anti-ambitious than anybody else either? It’s much interesting to start noticing what’s around you and instead of saying important things at it, try to make your writing part of it.

The Alabaster Hand (1949) by A.N.L. Munby

 

M.R. James remains the greatest writer of the classic British ghost story. He also influenced a whole group of writers in what is often called the Jamesian tradition. Except for those by James himself, I haven’t read many better short stories in this tradition than those by A.N.L. Munby in his collection The Alabaster Hand (1949). Like many ghost stories in the Jamesian tradition, these stories are about England’s bad history. It won’t stay dead and keeps revealing its ghosts, with unpleasant consequences for the present.

As the brief foreword makes clear, all the stories were written while Munby was a prisoner of war in a German POW camp. Several of them first appeared in a magazine produced in the camp called Touchstone. I imagine that writing about dangers in the history of your own country might help take your mind temporarily off being imprisoned in the dangers of the present in another country.

The stories maintain a high level of quality throughout. A few of the ones that made the most impression on me are “Herodes Redivivus,” “The Alabaster Hand,” “The Topley Place Sale,” “The Tudor Chimney,” “The Negro’s Head” (nearly the only classic British ghost story that deals with racism), “An Encounter In The Mist”  (with one of the more original ghosts in this kind of tale), and “The Lectern.”

Sadly, I can’t recommend the quality of this $15 2023 Incunabula edition. It’s poorly copy-edited, in an obvious rush for whatever small cash grab might be found from reissuing a dusty book of ghost stories. Typos are everywhere, several a page sometimes, although none of them really make the stories less possible to read. But they’re very annoying. Still, this is the only edition of The Alabaster Hand that’s currently easy to get, and I’d rather read these stories in this flawed volume than not at all. They are a very significant piece of the history of British ghost stories.

The Politics of Hope (After the War): Selected and New Poems by Dubravka Djurić

 

My review of The Politics of Hope (After the War): Selected and New Poems, by Dubravka Djurić, edited and translated with an interview by Biljana D. Obradović, and a foreword by Charles Bernstein, Roof Books, 2023, can be found on Jacket 2:

The Politics of Hope

A Plaque for My Father from Students at the Virginia Theological Seminary, 1981

 

Lutheran theological seminary humor from 1981, on a plaque for my father that I never saw before or heard him talk about. I discovered it in storage with some of his belongings only recently, after his death more than three years ago now.

Below is the text.

__

This is to certify that

The Rev. Dewey Diaz Wallace

Presbyterian Divine and Church Historian Extra-Ordinaire

Has Been Designated

An Honorary, Middle-of-the-Road Anglican

By the Church History 3 Class

Virginia Theological Seminary

Spring Semester, 1981

In Recognition Of

His abilities as an erudite, entertaining lecturer with an amazing grasp of the first, middle, and last names of all sorts of churchly notables, both historical and hysterical.

An uncanny ability to mention a certain seminary in Princeton, New Jersey, in every lecture, at least once.

And

His recall of, and willingness to share, as writer’s cramp sets in at noon on Fridays, his fund of stories regarding most unforgettable evangelicals and long-dead theologians.

Engaging in “The Jerks” and various other holy awakenings.

____

I discarded the plaque with its humor that is not even remotely like my father’s humor. The description in it though certainly does sound quite a bit like my father, which is why I have posted a photo of it here, and the complete text, for the sake of any relevant posterity.

Someone Is Awake All Night by Beth Joselow

 

I really enjoyed the poems by Beth Joselow’s always surprising and inventive new book, Someone Is Awake All Night. Each poem is its own room. The mood is a fascinating combination of frightened and calm, overwhelmed and steadfast. The subject matter changes and slides within the poems and between poems in a way that’s sometimes oblique yet also feels grounded in good sense. The poems can be dark or funny or both. They don’t avoid human pain while also refusing to make pain the point.

The book shows the importance of contemplation as a useful response to distress, how aging can’t be avoided but doesn’t have to define everything about experience. The poems feel oddly comforting even when they don’t really offer comfort, if we can imagine that comfort can come from being alive to the awareness of what we sometimes cannot do. There are no platitudes in Someone Is Awake All Night. There’s just the reality of waking again and looking at oneself and others and figuring out how to stay present in the world in whatever time we have left.

Why a King is Anti-American But Socialism Isn’t, or, The Internet is Filled with Misinformation (American Government History 1)

 

Although George Washington discussed with some men the possibility of his becoming King, the idea was rejected, and the U.S. was founded as an anti-monarchical country. To be in favor of a King is to be against the founding values of the United States. The United States government has always been based on the idea that no leader should be above the law.

The United States was not however founded as an anti-socialist or anti-communist state, since the rise of ideas associated with socialism and communism did not happen until the 19th century.

In fact there were a number of 19th century American groups, most often Christian groups, who practiced socialist ideas. So being an American or a Christian does not mean that one has to be against socialism or communism.

In the 1920s and 30s, during the early development of the Soviet Union, many Americans became anti-communist or anti-socialist, but many Americans were also pro-communist or pro-socialist. In fact a significant rise in socialist ideas in the United States comes in the Progressive Era of U.S. history (roughly 1896-1917). And Franklin Roosevelt,  the U.S. President who led the country through the depression and World War II, instituted many socialist ideas into the practice of the U.S. government and helped the country get past the depression.

Roosevelt’s U.S. government made some reprehensible decisions, of course, the internment of Japanese Americans most especially. Being a socialist doesn’t mean making no mistakes.

The rise of anti-communism in the United States begins in earnest with the U.S. government of the 1950s, while the 1960s and 70s saw a resurgence of socialist and communist ideas among the people of the country.

At no time in the history of the U.S. government has a desire for kings and monarchy been a significant part of the government, although the Confederacy did believe to a significant extent in the idea of a white aristocracy.

All of which is to say: if you are in favor of the U.S. President being like a King who is above the laws, your values are historically anti-U.S., anti-American.

If you believe in some degree of socialist or communist ideas, you are simply part of one ongoing tradition in U.S. life, one that has been sometimes loved or hated by different Americans.

The Supreme Court decision earlier this week to make “official” Presidential acts beyond the reach of the law can be said to be a fundamentally anti-U.S. attempt to give the President some powers like those of a King, while at the same time they granted themselves (the Supreme Court) some powers of an aristocracy, something that is also anti-U.S.

Support of the Supreme Court decision is to be against the founding principles of the United States. Donald Trump has come out in favor of that deeply anti-American decision.