Ben Sen's Open Salon Blog

The Reluctant Poet

Thu, 17 May 2012 12:05:02 -0400

My father died when I was in my early 40's. He'd been sick for over a decade so every time we saw him we thought it would be the last--until one year it finally was.

His was the "closest" death I'd known so it still took me by surprise. To deal with the grief, I started to write poetry. I'd written it before, haphazardly, knocking out a few lines when it seemed nothing else would do, but this was different.

It started to pour out of me. I'd sit every night at the table or in front of the TV banging it out. I'd loved poetry in high school, but intended to become a fiction or non-fiction writer. Who read poetry? What "future" was in it? Who paid money to buy it? If you didn't have a job teaching what good was it?

Reminiscence about my father soon turned into an attempt to recapture childhood itself, and that into an exploration of the great themes and topics. I recall handing in a few to my writing teacher at the time and he responded succinctly: "No poetry permitted." I'd picked him knowing that, but couldn't keep it in mind. My own intentions were lost.

I therefore picked for my teachers the poets. In no particular order, I gobbled Yeats, Lorca, Whitman, Ginsberg, Corso, Rimbaud, William Carlos Williams, Eileen Myles, Ted Berrigan, Rilke, Blake, Anna Akhmatova, the Sufis, Phil Whalen, O'Hara, William Stafford, Antonio Machado, C.P. Cavafy, and on and on. It was during this time I discovered my great grandfather was from the same town as Robert Burns, and for many years travelled throughout the Midwest reciting his poetry to anyone who'd listen. At least, there was a precedent, so maybe it wasn't prelude to a psychotic break.

The most special living poet is Robert Bly, who I got to know, and took classes from around the country. He became my guide and provided not only a style, but a methodology. Robert teaches by example that a poet is more than someone who plays with words, as the academics so often imply, but cultural architects. It's no accident they're often the last line of defense against tyranny and oppression--even now in our so-called "advanced age."

The secret is in the sound and how one "looks and opens." Another influence was Ken Macrorie, a former teacher at colleges across the land, who wrote the only real analysis of my work and it wasn't bad. He didn't charge either.

Yet I couldn't quiet shake that it was a useless exercise and on occasion tried with all my might to "give it up," but within a few days found new words popping into my head complete with a cadence that made it a crime not to write down. Okay, I was hooked. It was horrible, relentless, non stop, a curse, and a savior. It didn't help that a revival was going on at the time, and there didn't seem to be a church, coffee house or bar in the city that didn't have "poetry night" and I lived one block from St. Mark's Church, which was pretty much at the center of the kabob.

I found getting published in the many papers poets produced for each other wasn't hard, though getting into the so-called "professional" mostly university sponsored publications was nearly impossible. Surprise! Poetry comes with politics too! When I couldn't get on the schedule for the St. Mark's, I fell back on my own resources, rented the place for a night, and asked some friends to help put on a reading. We were in a large organization at the time, so there were plenty of people to invite.

Truth be told, I didn't exactly know what I was doing, or why, but with enough lead time I was committed and could make it up. My life became centered on it. So as not to bore my guests with poetry I wrote a couple of short plays, and scoured the subway platforms and waiting staffs of East Village restaurants for musicians and actors.

There was a flyer with a picture of me in a bathtub wearing fly fishing gear. I called it "an evening with me." The event became, of its own accord, a testament to the reasons I thought life was worth living and learned I wasn't the dark prince after all. I wore costumes to that effect, my mother came, along with 150 brave souls who had no idea what they were getting into yet I personally didn't see any walk out.

We videotaped it, or two thirds of it, and the tape is still somewhere in the apartment, I think. Midway through, unscripted, it came to me to say, "I'm a poet, always have been, always will be." But I didn't add the "damn it" part that plagued me. I went on after that to produce an evening of short plays, but that's another story.

Today, I still write poems because I can't help it. I don't send them out to journals any more. What's the point? I publish them occasionally on Open Salon and sometimes get two thousand readers and sometimes two. I'm not sure that makes much difference either, unless the "magic" happens and someone is actually moved by what I've written.

In any event, after a satisfactory poem is written, I'm compensated by the sense of relief from the pressure that led to the writing in the first place, and the fact that I'm liberated from it and can move on.

You can judge for yourself by clicking the tag "Ben Sen's Poetry" beneath this post. You can't erase them, but you can rate, comment or use them to reflect. It's free.

Club Med at My Age

Wed, 2 May 2012 18:05:04 -0400

You walk into the bay filled with giggling bathers splashing water at one another.

It's a nice day, like in the brochure, the sun shines, the club packed with fresh guests and lots of rum.

Why are they all congregated here? Why not go where nobody can see them? Where they can be alone to enjoy the sea and air?

You see the beautiful young man you once were, but he turns his back to you walking ashore. Will you ever be him again?

What has been taken from you? Who took it and why?

You're not ready to take the trip up the river, but you're free to leave the bay. The island has plenty of secluded spots where you can lie in the sand under the palm trees, watching them sway and ponder.

How and Why to Plant Petunias

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 12:04:21 -0400

This is the time of year she'd take a drive on a Saturday morning by herself. I don't know where the place was, but she knew it from days gone by.

It was her job, nobody elses, all those springs after the snow melted and the dirt in the cement pots on the walls and steps of the porch soft and wet.

Usually, she planted white petunias, but sometimes they were pink or streaked with red. I must have helped because I remember the words "flats," "annuals," "perennials," and the rusty hand held shovel she used to dig out the decayed roots and plant the tender shoots.

I thought that's what all grandmother's did, watering them after church, waiting and wondering what kind of year it would be.

Would they cascade like fat curtains of pure velvet flesh down the worn bricks ? Or wouldn't the water be enough, or the sun too hot and the blooms dwarfed and gnarled, afraid to open, until the year came we stood in awe and her precious hopes were fulfilled.

(Almost a Petunia)

Planting petunias isn't a sure thing. It takes patience and constant care to welcome the summer's guests, to sit on the porch surrounded by their soft elegance on the rocking swings sipping cold lemonade.

Grandma showed us we knew who we were and where we came from, where we were going, and what we would do when we got there.

_{Illustration: TLC}

_{Technical credits: Mercedes Arnao}

I Am A Writer

Wed, 4 Apr 2012 14:04:01 -0400

On trips hitchhiking through Europe in college, whenever they picked me up in France and asked what I did, my answer was "Je suis un ecrivain." (I am a writer.) It was the first thing I learned to say in the language.

It was a lifetime ago for most intents and purposes. My "brilliant career," as somebody once said, didn't happen--though the intention has never left me, nor have I stopped writing manuscripts of one sort or other.

In conscious memory, it began when I was perhaps twelve and a branch scraped my aunt's window on a sleep over. It could have been a form of madness--but it sounded like words, so I wrote them down. There were other signs. In the third grade the nun told my mother I read with "great feeling" and in the tenth I was picked to read the section in religion class about masturbation; (the no-no of no-nos) Sister Renella O.P. knew I was the most likely to keep a straight face.

When I escaped Catholic school in the 12th grade I ran with a pack in public school who read each other their poems. Ow, ah, the wind, wrote Frank. Rather evident, like a nail driven through the head, or a ton of garbage on the bed, wrote Douglas. It was run by a teacher who seduced us, but it was a small price to pay. At least, I learned I wasn't entirely a misfit and it was okay to read books and keep them on my own shelves instead of the library.

About that time, I recall reading an article in Time Magazine, drapped over a footstool, about how the best artists were the masters of all the "styles" in their art, and orginality meant doing what hadn't been done before. It didn't make the best impression, because it meant I had to learn the hard way 94 per cent of "art" is imitation, and the rest luck. Otherwise, they mark you down as a nutter, and even the geeks have trouble taking you seriously; originality is a double edged sword.

In college, I met teachers who encouraged me, people I will never forget, of course, which is true of all artists regardless of the medium since they're so few and far between. I took the bait hard, way too hard for anyone's well being and had nobody to consult. Plan "B" was a difficult birth. I never really wanted to do anything else, and still don't, even after 30ty years in another business.

I am a writer.

Whenever I got a few bucks ahead, or even if I didn't and the idea was too good, it would overpower me and I became a slave until writing "the end" so I could begin living again. Writing provided stability in times of chaos, hope in times of despair, and the occasional exposure often at the exact moment when I might have beaten the curse if my byline hadn't appeared.

There have been times when I've hated myself for it, and still occasionally do, but my record away from the typewriter, or processor as the case may be has only been three years, and it took a breakdown to cause it. I've prayed for something to take its place, but nothing has. Envy at those who dance merrily to the tunes played by the marketeers and hacks, and reap the rewards, strikes on occasion but then flies off without delivering the final blow. Damn it. I'm well aware few know the difference.

Writing is my "discipline." It's how I clean house, sweep away the terror, provide a purpose, a center, a raison d'etat. It makes me unable to care about what anybody thinks, relieving me momentarily from the need to please, putting me both on a pillar with a limitless view and beneath the sea where I find squirming creatures to lift from the muck at the bottom.

It also protects me from the vicissitudes of sloth and aimlessness: I'm a guy who always has something to do--a dream that will not die--and filing cabinets full of rotting corpses. I've written hundreds of poems, a half dozen novels, plays, screenplays, short stories, memoirs, reports, reviews, travel articles, processes, and keep a journal compulsively as if my life depends on it, which I believe it does, and am particularly addicted to the feeling of my pen floating across a pristine piece of paper. Ow, ah, the wind indeed Frank.

What I am NOT and what I think all writers are NOT is a polemicist. I don't write a word for the purpose of arguing a particular, preordained or ideological point of view. "Formulas for success" give me gas. The "genres" are a necessary evil, and most writers will tell you that. That is the writer in the service of the collective, the conventional, and the dull. Literature is a gift from god like childbirth and death.

It has amazed me since I began blogging to learn so many have no recognition whatsoever of the distinction. They are the slaves of the headlines and controversy, egoists--analysis or any frame of reference beyond that is an intrusion on their fantasies and insecurities. They're not engaged in the search for truth, but of their own self-righteousness. They may quote Orwell or Huxley, for instance, but haven't got a clue what they were really saying. Their "isms" rule them.

I think a writer takes the issues as they come with the purpose of providing a perspective that is not polemical, or if controversy can't be avoided to let them know not everyone is so stupid, naive, or easily bullied. I believe the history of those who are considered and admired universally as writers proves the point.

The percentage of my work that has ever been published or performed is too small to measure. (No, I don't think it's a coincidence either.) If you don't fit into the box it can be hard to find those who will listen. I neither have a PhD. a degree from Harvard, nor had a break, and am running out of time. I give up selling in a flash. I have a bad attitude. The joy of creating is my joy. I figure the rest is up to you.

I am a writer.

When I complete a project I'm filled with satisfaction and excitement though I know the battle has only begun. When young, I'd organize my assaults on the marketplace, keep track of who I sent what, but no more. I've lost what little patience I had. I can barely deal with my own madness and the madness of the world is beyond me.

I say only: this is what it is about--check it out. And once you have and liked it tell me, otherwise do not waste my time or yours. The evidence is before you; it's in your hands and before your eyes. That is the test or the pretense, you decide.

I am a writer. I love finding the exact spot where every word in the dictionary belongs. I've "unlearned" all the lessons the nonwriters taught. I arrange the words in the required order and spell the best I can, but know that is not writing, and if it is the only criteria they are more lost than I ever imagined being. That is the death of writing. That is the bearer of the fear that kills the impulse, as are the little notes that say, "I'm sorry, your work is not right for our list."

Dear Gatekeeper: I looked at your "list" and want to thank you for the laugh. I don't care any more who you are or who you know, or why you buy what you buy, or what odds you play. At best, it's a game for the innocent, at worst it's run by the narcissistic few. As moms used to say, It's all about connections kid, and moms was usually right. Yet I cannot wait for the next reincarnation, I care about this one, nor can I be fooled into thinking they read what I wrote with this feeble dismissal.

I have revealed this most intimate portrait to you, now it is your turn. I know the odds of coming in cold. Nothing I've ever written is comprehensive or complete--you cannot beat me at this game--you are no more critical than I. What do you think took me so long to say this to you? My illusions are so far behind me I can't smell them any more regardless of the weather.

I am a writer. I do this because I must. I do this so those who know me know who and what I am. A work is only ever brought to a conclusion due to the writer's fate, and then it is disseminated or will burn with their body or get thrown out with the trash. So far this is what will happen with everything I've ever done. That's the risk I take. What is yours?

I am a poet. I am a novelist. I am a playwright. I am a screenwriter. I am an essayist. I am a cultural arbiter. I know who my heroes are and why. I'm the guy who didn't get the job but still wants it. I know a good book or script when I see one, even if it has the misfortune to be written by me. I wish someone hadn't said we are what we write. What else is all this experience for?

It's all neatly and precisely contained in the words: I am a writer. This is who will know me who does not know me. Je suis un ecrivain, mon ami, je suis un ecrivain.

I am a writer.

You cannot take this away from me.

Book Review: Thinking the Twentieth Century

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 13:03:57 -0400

What a relief to find a contemporary, incredibly informed writer who is not in the grips of the prevailing ideologies, and actually provides analysis. I "discovered" Tony Judt hiding in plain sight in the pages of the New York Review of Books.

I'm now ashamed to admit I'd been reading his material for years, but never fully grasped the full nature of his contribution until I read the series of articles he wrote while on his death bed from ALS in 2008 and 2009. They were among the most compelling essays I've read in years, stopped me in my tracks, and I'm no exception. He died in 2010 at the age of 62 not long after completing Thinking the Twentienth Century with Timothy Snyder. It's basically an "as told to" book, since Judt could no longer write with the wry and insightful Mr. Snyder egging him on.

Tony Judt was the child of Eastern European Jews who migrated to England prior to the Second World War. He worked his way diligently through the English school system arriving at its very pinnacle, Kings College, Cambridge, in a time that he thinks won't come again.

He became a historian by trade and an academic by necessity, the author of 14 books, an expert on French and Eastern European history. His most acclaimed and read book is Postwar, on the aftermath of WWII in Europe. He eventually arrived at New York University where he established the Eric Maria Remarque Institute in European Studies in order to train a new generation of independent minded scholars like himself. He lived and taught only a few blocks from my door, but I never met him.

It's hard to pick a place to start to enumerate his virtues and review this remarkable book. It makes it clear within the first few pages how we live in an era where most of what passes for "political" discourse and writing is mostly drivel. It's hard to see how global communications and the instant access to information has made the situation any better. Judt takes that "deeper cut" where those in the service of the marketplace dare not tread. Anyone whose paid any attention whatsover to my blog, can instantly see why I'm so readily attracted.

Judt's most controversial position, since he was Jewish, a Zionist, and former Kibbutz resident for two years of his young life, argued that Israel, the land he loved, took a self-destructive imperialist right turn soon after the Six Day War, and hasn't come back. Under considerable pressure Judt stood by that view for the rest of his life in and out of the public eye. Try this quote on for size:

In a serious discussion of the Middle East and Israel, someone is going to ask you whether the time has come to distinguish Israel from the Holocaust, since the later should not be allowed to serve as a Get Out of Jail Free Card for a rogue state.

Can you imagine him dropping this grenade at the table with Charlie Rose and say, Bibi Netanyaho? Judt's article, Israel: the Alternative published in NYRB in 2003 suggested a "one nation" solution to the problem in Israeli occupied Palestine, to the consternation of perhaps everyone but his friend Edward Said, the professor at Columbia who was his friend and perhaps the most hated Palestinian intellectual since that war over 45 years ago. That's chuptzpa. (I'd never dare say something like it since I'm not Jewish and fear the line that would be crossed could never be uncrossed.)

Judt brings insights long precluded by conventional views, and provides a solid perspective on many of our problems both economically and politically. He's just as good on Keynes and as he is on Hayek, and Marxism, whose template he notes was Catholicism. He's emphatic in his observations related to the "culture of fear" that has taken over our national discourse and in fact places our democracy at risk.

We have re-entered an age of fear. Gone is the sense that the skills with which you enter a profession or job would be relevant skills for your working lifetime. Gone is the certainty you could reasonably expect a comfortable retirement after a lifetime of work--the paralysis of fear...was why so many Americans were willing to throw in their hat with Bush for eight years, offering support to a government whose appeal rested exclusively upon the mobilization and demogogic exploitation of fear.

I find the truth refreshing and to find it still has a place in the dialogue gives me hope. As does the revival of the role of the "public intellectual" which has died. As much, for instance, as I disagreed with Normal Mailer at least that's what his credentials genuinely made him--and now who is there to replace him and his arch enemy Gore Vidal? The chippies, male and female, with their bright shinning teeth vying for the anchor job? For the meantime, we can at least say what we think in the blogosphere, but one wonders who is listening and how long will the bubble last?

How does one explain a nation and middle class that votes against its own best interests, again and again and again? Where are all those millionaires who believe in the dream yet never will partake it in except in their imaginations? Yet they complain at providing a safety net for themselves rather than more military expenditures. How did this nation become so confused?

Its reached the point where seeing anyone who challenges the status quo find a platform is an delight, but when they do it so well it's something else again. The screech of the ideologues has become a deafening roar, and the anti-political culture is getting worse. If there's a way out it seems some application of reason to the issues is necessary in the future, hopefully without recourse to the wars that marked the 20th century. I know that marks me as a "liberal" but at least not a faux liberal since I vote.

But I'm not going to let Judt off easy--not as a native American and member of the diaspora of the city of Detroit. I don't think he fully understands the role race plays in this country, though he certainly does in the case of Europe. His view of Obama is mixed, as is expected, and while he was clearly encouraged the nation finally found a competent politician and representative for the middle class, he knows it was by default--the right was taken by surprise.

What he doesn't see is how his race has influenced Obama's choices and tactics, at least until the time of his death. There's not one mention of the fact in the book, and not one black American author in the index. I don't think dismissing it as "the race card" in this country works any better than it did in Europe. The fact that America's racists have learned to conceal and deny their prejudices doesn't mean they have gone away--not to anyone paying attention to our "foodstamp" President.

What would Judt say if in fact Obama is re-elected with the plurality he has been lacking? He doesn't or didn't yet see it as a goal at the time of dictating the book. But I think it only would have been a matter of time. Here's the hint:

The choice we face in the next generation is not capitalism vs. communism, or the end of history vs. the return of history, but the politics of social cohesion based around collective purposes versus the erosion of society based on the politics of fear.

In other words, it is not the old that needs to be displaced, or the rhetoric of the new, but the present that needs to be faced as it is rather than ideologies that no longer address the issues for anybody.

Liberals can't allow each other to default from the political process any longer, and need to recognize the necessity and duty to vote for the candidates who most closely approximate their interests without throwing that vote away. This isn't "evil," their souls will not be besmirched. It's how the political process works in a democracy, and dare I suggest it would be a good idea to do so in the next election.