Saturday Good Reads

Many good things were on the web this week. While I was working through my blocking issues with Twitter, I’m thought about posting a few each of these each day instead of a whole bunch of them on Saturday. We’ll see.

And speaking of Twitter, my account has been fully restored. It turns out that somehow I got caught up in a spam cloud – whatever that is. Twitter apologized – it should never have happened.

I’m going to have to write a poem entitled “Ensnared in a Spam Cloud.”

Prose

An economist at the University of Chicago gives a short lecture on how we (and our politicians) use words.

“My Mother” by John Blasé at Dirty Shame.

“Monday Muse: D.C.’s Poet Laureate – Delores Kendrick” by Maureen Doallas.

“How to Craft a Great Voice (in fiction)” by agent Nathan Bransford.

“In Defense of Art and the Artist” by Don Miller.

“The Myth of Calling” by Bradley Moore for the High Calling Blogs.

“We Are Paper Snowflakes” by Billy Coffey for The Master’s Artist.

“Fishing” by Anne Lang Bundy at Building His Body.

“Thief of Something” by Stephen Parolini at Novel Doctor.

“The Solidarity of Tears” by Brian Volck at The Image Journal.

“Something happened on the road to cool: why the church will never ‘relate’” by David Rupert at Red Letter Believers.

“Purpose in Every Step” by Jennifer Dukes Lee at Getting Down with Jesus.

“Writing & Revenge” by Jessica McGuire at Jezamama.

“Paper Cranes and Wishes” by Louise Gallagher at Recover Your Joy.

Poetry

“The Jackal” and “The Last Will and Testament of…” by Pete Marshall at his own blog and “Alone in Her Dreams” at AuthSpot.

“Silence” and “Torment” by Justinian at Delight and Glory and Oddity and Light.

“All” and “Lyrics…can you hear the tune?” by Nancy at Poems and Prayers.

“Inverted Vision” by Karen Eck at Phoenix-Karenee.

“A Few Words for the Road” by Melissa at All the Words.

“Silent Cry” by Kathleen Overby at Almost Paradisical.

“Ode to a Social Network” by Heather at Madame Rubies Writes.

“Toward Dawn” by Susan Etole at Just…A Moment.

"Lamp," photograph by Nancy Rosback. Used with permission.

Liberty Hyde Bailey’s “Wind and Weather”

I’ve been reading Wendell Berry lately, primarily his short stories and poetry. I reviewed That Distant Land here and wrote a post on "Wendell Berry and the Land" over at Christian Manifesto. And then, shortly after those posts, I noticed a reference (via Twitter) to a book of poems by someone with the improbable name of Liberty Hyde Bailey, and the reference was about Wendell Berry.

I clicked on the reference, which took me to the Englewood Review of Books and a poem by Bailey, from a volume entitled Wind and Weather. From there I went to Wikipedia, to see what I could learn about the author, and from there to Amazon to see if it was available. It was, from one of Amazon’s affiliates for $12.95.

There’s a story here.

Liberty Hyde Bailey (1858-1954) was the third child of a Michigan farm family. He went on to become a professor of horticulture at Cornell University. He was one of the first scientists who urged a reconsideration of Gregor Mendel’s work in genetics; he was appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt to chair the National Commission on country Life, which urged the rebuilding of a great agricultural civilization in America; he wrote numerous scientific texts on agriculture and horticulture; he articulated a philosophy of agrarianism that echoes today in writers like Wendell Berry and in advocates for the organic agriculture.

And he wrote poetry.

His poetry, including Wind and Weather (1916), combines two themes – his strong faith in God and his strong feeling for the land. As in Wendell Berry’s writing and poetry (Berry credits Bailey as an influence), the landscape and geography seems to take on its own spirit or personality, and its own being. From the poem “Discovery:”

I went into the starlit night, I sat me by the way,
A silence overtook me there, a silence soft and gray;
I roamed into the forest depths, I wandered far and far,
The silence followed where I went, like silence of the star…

The poet finally finds the source of this silence of the landscape:

…I went into my questioned heart, my heart of hopes and fears, --
I found the perfect silence there, the silence of the years.

The poet measures time by the seasons of an apple orchard (“Apple-Year”); he considers nature gradually subsuming the remains of an old train crash (“Wreck”); he hears the voice of the wind with its promise that “All the world a poem is / To them that hearken to the wind” (“The Great Voice”); he surveys the whole of geological history (“Mt. Tom”).

Included in the volume are 15 pages of poems about farmers and farming, in which Bailey celebrates agriculture as a heroic occupation, or perhaps something more like a calling. From “It Rained:”

The plowman walks his furrowed quest
With wind and rain from sea to sea –
What bears he there upon his breast? –
He bears the Seals of Destiny.

It’s this section that contains my personal favorite from the collection, “Tile Drain,” about a tile drain lying beneath a farmer’s field and telling the stories it sees and hears: “…Calm and content / I silently lie / And carry my work / As men pass by.

The poems are old-fashioned, to be sure (after all, they rhyme). But there is something curiously contemporary. Reading Bailey is to understand some of the influences on Wendell Berry, but reading Bailey is also a pleasure in its own right.

Pilgrimage To Chicago

Last week, my wife and I did our third annual Long Mother’s Day Weekend Pilgrimage to Chicago. We go with one primary purpose – a singing duo named Chad and Jeremy. She first met them when she was 12, which was at least, uh, well, a fairly long time ago. For the last three years, they’ve performed two or three times in Chicago during the Mother’s Day weekend. This year, the Friday night concert was at Fitzgerald’s in Berwyn, and the Saturday night concert was at SPACE in Evanston. We stayed downtown, just off Michigan Avenue.

We love Chicago. We got to eat at Emilio’s Tapas in Streeterville, a short two blocks from our hotel (I had small plates – salad, grilled calamari and a black bean soup that was spectacular; my wife had grilled salmon). And a bottle of LAN, a Spanish wine that’s sort of like merlot but isn’t. Sitting at Fitzgerald’s Friday night before the concert, we were catered by Wishbone Restaurant, adjacent to and part of Fitzgerald’s. Wishbone specializes in something called “Southern Reconstruction Cooking,” and I don’t know if the reconstruction refers to how they’ve redone southern food or the period after the Civil War. Either way, I had the crawfish etouffe, which was good but I had to scarf it down in record time because the concert was due to start and we were sitting right in front.

We did shopping on Michigan Avenue (Johnston & Murphy and Nordstrom’s, you’re welcome). And we walked, oh, man did we walk. Fifteen blocks to Navy Pier, then at least that or more to the Art Institute, and then about 10 blocks home. And we walked around the huge exhibit of Matisse at the Art Institute – I had to sit and rest four times. The exhibit is worth its own blog post; it was about how Henri Matisse reinvented his art from 1913 to 1917. On Saturday, undeterred by rain and wind, we went to the Celtic Festival in Millennium Park.

Chad and Jeremy were great. The music leans to the ballad form, but these guys are professional entertainers – telling stories about the 1960s, being on television shows like Dick Van Dyke and Batman, singing beautiful love songs and occasional funny ones, like a riff on an Eagles’ song entitled “Avocado.” Chad and Jeremy are still making great harmony – and they first sang together in 1960. The two concerts in Chicago were hosted by Lilfest, which brings a lot of cool music to the city.

And yes, we drove, to, from and in Chicago. We even drove in rush hour traffic (aka motorized insanity) in 5 o’clock rush hour traffic on Friday, to get to Fitzgerald’s in Berwyn.

The most sobering sight was the Chicago Tribune newspaper on Sunday. Chicago is truly one of the great cities of the world – with an Illinois state legislature refusing to make the hard choices to avoid bankruptcy, the head of the Cook County suburban school district in a plea bargain over alleged theft charges, and the head of the transit authority killing himself by jumping in front of one of his Metra trains; he was being investigated for financial irregularities. Chicago is a neat city, but its politics make my home state of Louisiana look like a paragon of governmental virtue.

In spite of the political muck, we still love Chicago.

Painting: Bathers by a River by Henri Matisse, 1909-1916; Charles H. and Mary F.S. Worcester Collection, Art Institute of Chicago.

Related post: A Love Affair with Chad and Jeremy.

Update on My Twitter Problems

Yesterday, I posted about the problems I was having with Twitter, specifically with my main account having been deemed “spammy” by Twitter’s algorithm. “Spammy” is different from “spam,” in that spam is blocked and “spammy” is only cordoned off from the use of hashtags and showing up in Google search results.

I don’t particularly care about the Google search results; but the hashtag block is a real problem for participating in our Twitter poetry jams. There’s one tonight, hosted at TweetSpeak Poetry at 9:30 p.m. eastern time. You can participate directly from there or from Twitter, Tweetdeck, HootSuite, etc. (just make sure you use the #tsptry hashtag) (the one I can’t use).

The developer of the TweetSpeak Twitter application learned what my problem was from a developer at Twitter. I’m glad they told someone, although it would have been helpful to have also told me. The developer requested that my account be fixed, but said I would likely have to contact Twitter directly (which customers like me can only do via the U.S. post office). In the meantime, I could create a new Twitter account, so I could at least participate in the poetry jams.

I created a new account yesterday. I tweeted it a total of five times. And then I discovered this morning that it, too, has been classified the same way as my main account. I could tweet, but I can’t use the hashtag and I can’t use the application developed for TweetSpeak poetry.

The Twitter algorithm didn’t do that. Not that fast. And not for five tweets, which went to a total of nine followers. And the new account worked with the hashtag yesterday.

Not to mention the fact that my Twitter account for work functions just fine and is able to use the hashtag with no problem. I just can’t use my work account for poetry jams.

So I have now sent off a letter to Twitter via the post office. Twitter should receive it by Thursday or Friday. We’ll see what, if any, kind of response I get, and how long it takes.

Now I’m going to go do something productive. But I really hate to miss the poetry jam.

Twitter: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

A mystery has been solved.

For our last poetry jam on Twitter, something odd happened – when I used the hashtag (#tsptry) with posts, my tweets didn’t show up in the hashtag stream.

At first I suspected that something had happened when the new Twitter app developed for TweetSpeak poetry has been installed and launched. Matt Priour, the developer in Texas who did the app with Marcus Goodyear, couldn’t find a problem.

Marcus discovered that my #tsptry tweets were also not showing up in Google searches. And that was the first clue.

Matt contacted Twitter and learned that, according to the current version of the Twitter algorithm, my Twitter account is considered “spammy.” Not exactly spam, but more “spam-like,” because my tweets include a lot of links and a lot of retweets. So I haven’t been kicked off for spam; my followers can still see my tweets; but forget it when it comes to using hashtags or having your tweets available to search engines.

It’s true that my tweets include a lot of links and retweets – by design. I find a lot of good things online – articles, posts, commentaries, poems – that I like to call attention to. And according to the Twitter rules: you’re spamming “if your updates consist mainly of links, and not personal updates.” (The “if” in that statement is significant – it doesn’t mean it will happen, only that it’s possible.)

The Twitter algorithm has decided that doing that is “spammy.” Actually, the people who design the algorithm have decided that. And no one actually examined by tweet stream and applied rational human judgment. Or even human understanding.

I have to keep reminding myself that Twitter’s algorithm is designed by IT people, that it’s constantly being tweaked, that they try to protect Twitter users from spam.

(And I also have to remind myself that it was the most visionary IT I knew who told me (in 1995) that the worldwide web was a flash in the technological pan, that it would soon go the way of eight-track tapes, because the future was Lotus Notes.)

Matt asked Twitter to fix it, but he said it may require me contacting them directly.

Have you ever tried to contact Twitter?

If you’re a developer or a reporter or a policeman, there are special contact email boxes. If you’re a customer, you click on customer support on the contact page, and you get an array of boxes that relate to commonly asked questions.

But no email box. That’s a hint that Twitter thinks it has answered every question possible and so you won’t need to contact them.

But they do provide a mailing address. That’s right, the king (or co-king) of social media provides one way for customers to contact them – and that’s via the post office.

Very retro. But not very cool. Unintended or not, there’s an important message there – that reporters and developers matter more to Twitter than customers.

So I will have to create a new Twitter account for the TweetSpeak poetry jams to be able to use the #tsptry hashtag and have it show up. Which I will do.

I’m also going to be radically reducing the links I use in tweets and the number of retweets – because I could get blocked completely. (One caution – this happened about the time of my first anniversary on Twitter, so be aware if something similar happens to you.)

But my days on Twitter are likely numbered – by my choice. I’m beginning to understand why people are migrating to Facebook exclusively. I beginning to see what several of the people I followed – people who have run afoul of Twitter rules because of how the algorithm was programmed at the time (and was later changed) – rarely post any tweets now. And these were people with vastly larger numbers of followers than I have.

But a social media algorithm is only as good as the human understanding that goes into it.

Writing and Reading as Private Acts

I’ve been blogging here for more than a year, and I'm still often surprised to see what posts or articles resonate with people, and what don’t. There have been poems that evoked a major response, and ones that didn’t. There have been posts that received all kinds of comments, and those that didn’t. With very few exceptions, I still can’t predict which will be which.

One exception: if I post a photo of my new grandson, I’ll get a lot of comments. My wife says this is a cheap way to drive traffic, and I should be ashamed. (I’m not.)

But if I look at the posts with the most comments, they do have one thing in common – they tend to lean to the specific and the personal. This isn’t true only for my posts, and there’s a reason why.

In The Right to Write, Julia Cameron says that “it is a great paradox that the more personal, focused and specific your writing becomes, the more universally it communicates.” Cameron doesn’t go into great detail as to why, but I think we all know it anyway: the more personal and specific, the more the writer increases his or her own vulnerability – and it’s that sense of vulnerability that strikes a chord deep within us. In truly great writing, the pretense is gone, the public face has disappeared, and what we see is the exposed human being.

And in that exposed human being, we see ourselves.

We typically read in an intensely private way, regardless of where we’re doing the reading. We connect to the written word in a private way, and we can laugh, cry, cheer, cringe and be offended without anyone around us knowing our feelings. And this works regardless of the form in which we’re reading – ebook, hardback or paperback book, magazine newspaper, brochure – it’s doesn’t really matter.

The written word communicates in a very private and personal way, and the more private and personal the writing (the skill itself is assumed here), the more the words speak to us as if they were our own, reflecting our own experience.

Explanatory Note on 2 Poems

I posted two poems last week – “The Silence Beneath the Trees” and “Country Store” – that prompted some comments on the blog posts and even a few emails. The main question was – what are these a part of? What’s the back story?

The simple answer is that I’m using poetry to help frame a novel. The first draft of the novel is done, and I’m going through a major rewrite, using poetry to help me do that. I didn’t intend to confuse or tease (and I think I did that in some cases). I’ll be talking more about this in future weeks, and posting some additional poems related to the story, with more background provided. But thank you for the comments – they’ve been especially helpful, including the ones that talked about being “chilled” to read "The Silence Beneath the Trees."

Over at the High Calling Blogs, Laura Boggess is leading a discussion of Cameron’s The Right to Write. Take a look and see what others are saying, commenting and posting. Last week’s discussion was about “nurturing our writer.” This week's discussion is about "going deeper."

Related:

Monica Sharman's "Details, Details."

Nancy Rosback's "Just Write" at Poems and Prayers.

Saturday Good Reads

Maybe it's my imagination, but the list of good things to read on the web seems to be getting longer. Not my list -- I'm trying to get it at a manageable length -- but the possibilities of good things to read. And I haven't had as much access to online writing (and the video) this week as I usually do.

Poetry

“The April Poem” by Bob at Wilderness Fandango.

“Final Goodbye” by Lesley Moon at Moondustwriter.

“These Are Roses” and “Right Here, Right Now” by Melissa at All the Words.

“Joy” by Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper.

“The Gift” by Karen Eck at Phoenix-Karenee.

Video

Via American Digest, Leonard Cohen sings “Anthem.”

Prose

“Five Principles of Civil Dialogue” by Don Miller.

“An Expectant Uncertainty” and “I Can Fly” by Louise Gallagher at Recover Your Joy.

“Jesse Owens’ Gold Medal Friendship” by Dan Wooldridge at Inside Work.

“The Swing” by Billy Coffey.

“Via Crucis” by A.G. Harmon at The Image Journal.

“Running” by John Blasé at Dirty Shame.

“Joy Under the Covers” by Jeff Jordan at To My Children, If They Are Listening.

“Pastors as Poets” by Peggy Rosenthal at The Image Journal.

“The Writing Life” by Michelle DeRusha at Graceful.

“Meeting Jakob,” guest post by Jeff Selph at Kathy Richards’ Hey Look, A Chicken!, and then one by Kathy herself: “The Thing About Writing.”