The words to the writer

It's November again, I am writing a poem a day. Or rather, I am purposefully typing words every day. So far, I have some promising beginnings. It's not elation, but I feel satisfaction that I am trying a thing that is hard for me. I regret that it's hard for me. I am dismayed when I forget the word for internal rhymes. Assonance.

I'm re-reading Richard Hugo's, "The Triggering Town," because I remember it being a book that warped my mind where poetry was concerned.

He writes in chapter 2:

"In the news article the relation of the words to the subject (triggering subject since there is no other unless you can provide it) is a strong one. The relation of the words to the writer is so weak that for our purposes it isn't worth consideration.

Since the majority of your reading has been newspapers, you are used to seeing language function this way. When you write a poem, these relations must reverse themselves. That is, the relation of the words to the subject must weaken and the relation of the words to the writer (you) must take on strength.

This is probably the hardest thing about writing poems."

I have essentially lived inside news articles for so many years. It explains a lot that this would be my problem. Unearthing 'I' is a bewildering business. 'I' feels forbidden to put to print. I have no trouble finding myself in ordinary life. But writing it down is another swamp entirely.

The Gulf of Mexico disaster as BP would like you to see it

It's very hard not to look at pictures from the Gulf of Mexico and feel like some flavor of "the end of the world as we know it" is approaching. The red muck on the open sea, the smoke and flames. The diagrams of enormous potential "plumes" suspended deep underwater, and all the maps of surface oil, like Rorschach blobs or tea leaves spelling out, at this point, a dismal but still unknowable future. The wetlands, already browning. The expected but haunting oiled birds, who are, for all their charismatic woe, still luckier than everything we can't scrub off one at a time because it is either too small, too fragile, or still an unknown problem.

If you go to BP's spill response website, though, it's easier to be cheerful!


Wow, look at all that scrubbing! I don't know what that white thing is or why it needs to be cleaned off, but those workers in their hazmat suits definitely look effective.

And look! BP is crunching a lot of data in a fancy war room! Surely they must know exactly what to do to fix everything, after crunching all of that data with their multiple flat-screened computer monitors.

BP doesn't tell us what is in those bags, but there are so many of them. And they look so clean and white! If they're full of oil, then surely that oil can't be so bad, either, because otherwise the bags would be all saggy and hydrocarbon-colored.


All this picture needs is a rainbow where that caution tape is. Look how blue that sky is. And we can't see much of the ocean, so it must be fine. There's some brown mucky stuff in the lower right, but those workers (again looking very efficient in their clean biohazard suits) who are probably actually displaced shrimp fishermen being paid far too little per day, will have that right-hand corner cleaned up in no time. There are so many of them, so just chill, everyone.

And if you read the short version of what they have to say about Operation Top Kill, you still have to wait until the very last clause of the very last sentence to understand that the operation failed. A very good use of inverted syntax, first taking you past all of the very good things they did in attempting this failed operation. The Columbia Journalism Review has a damning list of their other informational sins re: this disaster.

I'm just saying, thank thank thank thank somebody for journalists.

Interviewing techniques

Truman Capote: "Before he began the research for In Cold Blood, he had memorized a seven-hour monologue by Marlon Brando... Capote eventually revealed that he began the interview by talking in very open terms about himself. Brando later said: "The little bastard spent half the night telling me all his problems. The least I could do was to tell him a few of mine."

(Source: "The Literature of Journalism," edited by R. Thomas Berner)

The inside scoop on state government

I was on the floor of the Wisconsin State Assembly for about an hour yesterday for a 10-minute ceremony honoring a man whose death was a big loss to Baraboo. Which was lovely, but I should not have worn the shoes I did.

Of the Assembly, I observed --

1. “will convene at 10:30” actually means “will take role once at 10:50 and again at 11 and still say we convened at 10:30 and then introduce a visiting kindergarten class and give someone a plaque and hear a few symbolic resolutions and then break for coffee by 11:45.”
2. Those absent had other representatives asking them to be excused. Like high school when another kid faked a dentist note for you, except representatives don’t need to give an excuse because they are the government.
3. Phones at their desks. One rep gets a call. Laughs, says a few quick words, puts down the phone. Makes a face at another rep across the aisle, who is apparently the caller, because he makes a face back. They clearly have an elaborate inside joke.
4. One very awkward co-ed legislator hug. Like, you could see them calculating exactly how to articulate their joints through the entire process, including precise number of back-pats before withdrawing.
5. One of the reporters who clearly is there often because he has his own seat at the table (I’m guessing Jason Stein) has the same style of notebook that I prefer. Steno rules, guys, because it’s small enough that you can hold it steady while writing standing up, as well as turn pages pretty quickly, AND it fits in my shoulder bag, but it's still big enough that you can fit lots of meeting notes onto each page if you happen to be lucky enough to be writing sitting down. The only downside is you can’t fit it in a back pocket like the "reporter's notebook" style. Yeah, this is boring.

I'm fixated on this particular disaster

MSNBC reports,

"Haiti seems especially prone to catastrophe — from natural disasters like hurricanes, storms, floods and mudslides to crushing poverty, unstable governments, poor building standards and low literacy rates."

I'm sorry, what? I'm new to this game, but I'm pretty sure you do not sweep systematic social problems with a whole history of causation including abuse by foreign powers into the same sentence as natural catastrophe, using only a flimsy "seems to be prone to" for context. And then move on to another subject sans any further elaboration.