Poetry at Work, Chapter 9: The Poet in the Culture of Control

For most of the 20^thcentury, the structure of corporations was based on the technology of mass production. It was a command-and-control model, with managers directing workers, who had a very specific task to accomplish. It was not unlike the military.

In the 1970s, that structure began to break down. It was almost odd – an organizational model that had survived two world wars and the Great Depression was breaking down for what appeared to be smaller factors. Inflation raged almost out control (I remember a prime lending rate of 21 percent); oil embargoes were turning major industries like petroleum refining, chemical manufacturing, and automobiles on their heads. National psychological blows happened as well, contributing to the disruptive environment – the Watergate crisis, the end of the Vietnam War, and the Iranian revolution that led to Americans being held hostage for more than a year. The reckoning started in the 1980s, as company after company reorganized (over and over again), laid people off (over and over again), and often went out of business altogether. At the end of the 1980s, Tim Berners-Lee invented what would become the worldwide web.

It was an unsettled time to work for a large company.

To continue reading, please see my post at Literary Life.

“Robert Graves” – A Biography of a War Poet by Jean Moorcroft Wilson

I have a personal definition of what makes a good biography. Solid research and an understanding of the subject are a given, but what separates exceptional biographies from good ones is whether or not I find myself believing that I’m there with the subject, living the scenes, and experiencing the trials and triumphs. A simpler way to say it is, do I identify with the story being told about this person’s life?

Robert Graves: From Great War Poet to Good-Bye to All That 1895-1929 by Jean Moorcroft Wilson is one of those exceptional biographies. Almost all I knew about Graves was that he was the author of I Claudius and Claudius the God, written in the 1930s and popularized on PBS in the 1970s. Derek Jacobi starred in the title role. I was so mesmerized by the TV series that I read both books, learning that Graves had based his fictionalized story on the gossipy account by the Roman historian Suetonius, The Lives of the Caesars. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

"Before the Fall" by Noah Hawley

What a story!

Scott Burroughs lives on Martha’s Vineyard. He has a small cottage with a barn, where he paints. At one time, he had hoped to become a great painter. But he’s now in his late 40s, his painting career demolished by self-doubt and alcoholism. He’s reached deep down inside to find what may be a last burst of effort, and it looks to be paying off. He’s painting some of the best pictures he’s ever done.

He has to go to New York to meet with a gallery owner. A woman he’s met at the local farmer’s market, Maggie Bateman, invites him to fly with her and her family back to New York. Her husband, David, is head of a network that sounds a lot like Fox. They have two children, Rachel who’s 9 and J.J. who’s 4. Also on board are a banker and his wife and three crew members. Scott’s taxi doesn’t show, and he takes the bus, almost missing the waiting plane.

The short flight turns out to be a lot shorter than expected. Eighteen minutes after takeoff, the plane crashes into the ocean. Scott, disoriented, finds himself in the water. He doesn’t remember what happened but he knows the plane has crashed. It’s night. He knows he must be miles from shore. He starts preparing himself to swim. And then he hears a cry. There’s one other survivor – four-year-old J.J., who’s clinging to a seat cushion. Scott will make his swim, with J.J. clinging to his back. He becomes a national hero.

But the lead news commentator on David Bateman’s network is suspicious. So are some of the government agents involved, especially the FBI. The news commentator begins to make insinuations and accusations. And what grows increasingly clear is that the plane crash wasn’t due to mechanical problems or failure. 

Noah Hawley

Before the Fall by Noah Hawley is a riveting, can’t-put-it-down novel published in 2016. Haley tells the story using backward and forward looks at the people on the plane – a powerful network mogul and his wife; their daughter Rachel who was kidnapped (and found unharmed) when she was 2; the banker and his wife who had just discovered he was to be indicted for money laundering; the Israeli-born bodyguard for the Bateman family; the pilot, co-pilot, and flight attendant; and the painter. Somewhere in the stories of these people lies the reason why the plane crashed. And the author spools the story out like scenes from a movie.

A sub-plot and sub-theme of the book is contemporary journalism, or what passes for journalism. Published before the 2016 national election, the book quietly focuses at how news is made and how it’s often manufactured by the very people who are supposed to be reporting it – something often referred to today as “fake news.” The FBI agent also doesn’t come across as completely professional, either.

Hawley has published three other novels: The Punch,The Good Father, Other People’s Weddings, and A Conspiracy of Tall Men. He is also a screenwriter and producer, best known for being the creator of Fargo. He’s received Emmy, Golden Globe, Critic’s Choice, and Peabody awards for his work.

Before the Fall is something of a popular fiction contradiction. Not only is it fast-paced and a terrific read, it’s also profoundly thought-provoking. It raises questions about what news is, how it’s reported, the biases of investigators, and the free rein given to so-called news commentators. And it’s a story of how a lost, broken man finds himself again. 

Crowding the table

After Luke 14:1-11

We crowd the table, jostling

each other for the best seat,

the seat closest to recognition,

to acceptance, to honor,

to acknowledgement. As we

crowd we’re told the first 

will be last and the last

will be first and we stop,

confused at the inversion,

the words becoming

dissonance, why do this,

it was easier before 

he came; now he turns

everything on its head.

He poses the question

(he’s always posing 

questions): better to gain

immediate honor or

better to be recognized 

and moved up or be

recognized and moved down?

No wonder they hated him.

Photograph by Gades Photography via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Saturday Good Reads

In late January, when the news media, its friends in Hollywood, and even assorted conservative outlets like National Review piled on the Covington High School kids, I surprised myself with how angrily I reacted. I know why I did. Everyone expressed outrage over the smile on the one boy’s face as the native American chanted in front of him. I had seen that smile before, on the face of my own grandson when he was suddenly thrust into a situation in which he didn’t know how to react. And all the virtue signalers, progressive ideologues, and “objective” reporters pounded that Covington kid into the dirt.

The Washington Post had joined the onslaught. And then came the $250 million lawsuit, filed in Kentucky. A few days ago, the Postfinally got around to acknowledging the errors in its story. They didn’t apologize, and they didn’t retract. They simply issued an “editor’s note” that had “lawyer-approved” stamped all over it and posted it at 5:17 p.m. on a Friday afternoon to make sure it missed the network nightly news cycle. There had been some mistakes. A tweet had to be deleted. Terry Mattingly at Get Religion asks if this was a wise move on the Post’s part or not. 

Because I spent a career saturated with words, I tend to pay attention to language and how it’s used. Some years after the Roe v. Wade decision, the news media paved the way for broader public acceptance of abortion when the more clinical “fetus” was substituted for “baby” in news accounts, and “pro-life” became “anti-abortion.” Greg Morse at Desiring God looks at how we use language to justify abortion, and he puts that look in a historical context that's more than disturbing. Jake Meador at Mere Orthodoxy considers how the Senate bill on what bill author Ben Sasse called “fourth-trimester abortions” exposes fault lines in American society that can’t be bridged. 

A news media factoid on the Sasse bill vote: it was ignored by NBC, ABC, and CBS. To paraphrase the Washington Post’s motto, democracy does indeed die in darkness, especially when the darkness is brought on by the news media itself.

More Good Reads

British Stuff

In Search of the Real Arthur – Tim Walker at English Historical Fiction Authors.

Winchcombe & Its Anglo-Saxon History – Annie Whitehead at Casting Light upon the Shadows.

American Stuff

Some Reservations: Thinking About Native American Spirituality – Mischa Willett at Front Porch Republic.

Mary Edwards Walker – Only Woman to Receive the Medal of Honor – Emerging Civil War.

Life and Culture

The Green New Deal Comes Home – John Murdock at Front Porch Republic.

The Geography by Partisan Prejudice and The Least Politically Prejudiced Place in America – The Atlantic.

Faith

In Particular – Jennie Cesario at Dappled Thoughts.

This Time – Sam Van Eman.

Desert Wanderings: Six Questions for Lent – Charity Singleton Craig.

Heroes – Bill Grandi at Cycleguy’s Spin.

Why Social Justice is Killing Synagogues and Churches – Joel Kotkin at Tablet.

Writing and Literature

When Grahame Greene Met Ernest Hemingway on the Set of 'Our Man in Havana' – Christopher Hull at CrimeReads.

On Loving Bookstores – Bradley Birzer at The Imaginative Conservative.

Waste Not, Want Not – Eleanor Parker at History Today on Piers Plowman(Related: Twittervillusby Eleanor Parker at A Clerk of Oxford.)

Write to Discover What You Really Want to Say – Ann Kroeker. 

Art and Photography

Unknown – Susan Etole.

Poetry

The last shall be first – Michael Spence at New Criterion.

Ash Wednesday – Chris Yokel.

Note to a Prospective Runaway at Bedtime – John Nieves at 32 Poems.

CityAlight: But Not I But to Christ in Me

Painting: Man Reading, oil on canvas by Don Jarvis (1946). 

Drop-kicking dropsy

After Luke 14:1-11

He is the point, or the example:

the man with dropsy, standing

there as they sit for a meal,

a man proven unclean,

it must be some sin

for otherwise he’d be well,

and he stands there

in his suffering until

the question is asked:

it is right, it is lawful,

is it legal to heal this man,

to heal him on this day,

this sacred day. No one

answers because to answer

is to shatter a belief,

a system, a culture.

In the silence he heals

the man, who’s sent away

but the silence remains,

a silence profound,

a silence burning.

Photograph by Rob Curran via Unsplash. Used with permission.

"The Gathering Murders" by Keith Moray

It’s perhaps inevitable to compare the Inspector Torquil McKinnon mysteries by Keith Moray to the Jimmy Perez mysteries by Ann Cleeves. Both are set on islands off northern Scotland (the Hebrides and Shetland, respectively). The heroes of both have small police forces (a sergeant and a constable). Both have rather gruesome murders committed generally in isolated places; remote islands have a lot of isolated places. 

But there is a major difference. The Torquil MacKinnon stories, at least as demonstrated in The Gathering Murders, seem to have an element of humor running through them, including a hard-drinking, motorcycle-riding Catholic priest who is MacKinnon’s uncle and who raised him from childhood.

Serious crime doesn’t seem to happen in a small town like West Uist in the Hebrides, until the annual Gathering and Literary Festival happens. As the festival begins, a local poet with an eye for the women, unmarried or not, whose major claim to local fame is his unregulated whiskey still, is found dead, the apparent victim of an accident. Then Fiona Cullen, the young woman already called “the queen of Scottish crime writers” who returns to her home island for the festival is found dead, and there’s nothing apparently accidental about it. She also happens to be Torquil MacKinnon’s old girlfriend who was strongly indicating her interest in rekindling their romance.

Keith Moray

MacKinnon discovers that his dead girlfriend had a tendency to write roman a clef mystery stories – thinly disguised accounts of people she knew and didn’t particularly like. From that literary perspective, suspects abound, and the inspector discovers that his once and future girlfriend not only got literary revenge against people she believed had hurt her, she also slept with just about anyone who could still breathe.

Moray has published five Inspector MacKinnon novels, with a sixth scheduled for later this year. He’s also published three historical novels, The Pardoner’s Crime, The Fool’s Folly, and The Curse of the Body Snatchers; non-fiction books (under the pen name Keith Souter); and several westerns as Clay Moore. When he’s not writing, he practices medicine as a part-time doctor and medical journalist (he studied medicine at the University of Dundee). He lives in Yorkshire in England.

The Gathering Murders has a bit of rapid plot development toward the end, but that doesn’t detract from the overall enjoyment of the story.

Top photo: the island of South Uist in the Outer Hebrides, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.