What Makes Poz Special

Joe Posnanski is a sports writer. He published a wonderful book this year called "The Soul of Baseball" about Buck O'Niel and the negro leagues. He writes a regular column for the Kansas City Star. And he just re-started his fantastic blog, cleverly named Joe Posnanski. There's a link over there on the right.

I'm a baseball fan, so I check several baseball blogs almost every day. Each has its own appeal, about which I have written before (see the entry for September 4, 2007). Posnanski sets himself apart, though, because he blends an astonishing knowledge of the game's history, an appreciation for and understanding of the more advanced metrics used by stat geeks (and even some general managers), a wide-eyed fan's genuine enthusiasm, and a writing style that's just plain fun to read.

Joe's posts are usually very long -- no short bursts or journal entries like many blogs. I don't know when the guy sleeps, but I'm awfully glad he shares his skill and humor and insight with the rest of us.

If blogs had dust jackets, his could quote me (and many others) saying "Highly recommended!"

This is Not an Artist's Statement

I make pots as a hobby (see photo). Some people call it art, others may say it’s a craft. I’ve had a couple pieces in some gallery shows and the galleries always ask for an artist’s statement. The request makes me uncomfortable.

When visual artists write about their art, I fall asleep. Part of the problem is that most of them don’t write well, but the simple truth is that I don’t much care what motivates or inspires them. I’m not especially interested in their explanations of what their art means. I want the work to speak for itself; it shouldn’t need some tortured exegesis.

When musicians are interviewed about their music, I mutter, “Shut up and play!” And if they don’t, I quickly switch stations. Joni Mitchell -- who has a reputatiion for being hard to work with, driven, intense, opinionated -- doesn’t need an artist’s statement. Her music IS her statement. Just listen.

There’s an exception to this rule: when writers write about writing, I read. Annie Dillard’s “The Writing Life” was revealing and instructive. Paula Granquist, a writing teacher at The Loft and at the Northfield Arts Guild, provided me with some wonderful essays by writers on writing.

I like what Willie Mays said about his considerable baseball skills: “They throw the ball, I hit it; they hit the ball, I catch it.” Or what Willie Sutton told the judge who politely inquired as to Mr. Sutton’s occupation: “I’m a thief.” Or Willie Nelson when asked if he listened to his own songs: "No, not really." **

At the same time, I will not begrudge any artist for writing such a statement. It may help the artist, it may help the viewer, it may help a curator. Just not me.

So. I make pots. Hope you like them.

** I'm not sure if any of these quotes is accurate, but you get the point.

Holm the iconoclast

"The Music of Failure" is one of Bill Holm's masterpieces, although he would cringe at the use of that word. The book is a meditation on the hazards of success and the many ways in which failure can be defined and be useful, even necessary.

He describes his first piano teacher -- a spinster with arthritis, living on a hardscrabble farm, poor. By most definitions, a failure. But it was that teacher, on her out-of-tune upright, who introduced Holm and others to the beauty and mystery of music, especially the European masters. This a wonderful failure, if failure it be.

Holm, Howard Mohr, and a couple of others organized a group called Poetry Out Loud. They toured small towns reading W. H. Auden, Wordsworth, and their own poems in libraries, churches, town halls, and nursing homes. In "The Music of Failure," Holm writes a kind of critique or post mortem after each stop. Here is one:

DAWSON

The poets read. There is a faint stink of excrement, ammonia, scented candles, and sugar cookies. She sits quietly for the first stanza, but then screws up her toothless face...

"Shit! It's all shit! They're crazy! Crazy! Why do we have to sit here and listen to this shit?"

The dignified Norwegian lady sitting next to her is so used to boredom that she would sit quietly listening to The Congressional Record read in Urdu by a computer. She has survived sermons for ninety years, after all. She reaches discreetly for her ear to disconnect her hearing aid.

The crank goes on: "Shit! Nothing but shit!"

She will do no such thing as go gentle into that good night. She gets louder and crankier during my poem. I like her even better. I want to kidnap her, first to Minneapolis, then New York, and wheel her into committee meetings, cocktail parties, congressional hearings, celebrations of the mass, and serious cultural occasions. I may even marry her.

-----

I enjoy Holm because he is blustery, opinionated, cranky. But he is also compassionate and self-deprecating. And funny.

Your Attic Is Ticking

This is a Brautigan-themed blog. Loosely. But it's really just stuff I like, and I really like Bill Holm's work, so you'll be seeing more of it here. At some point.

I think Mr. Brautigan would have enjoyed Bill Holm and Howard Mohr. Not just their poetry but their company, too. I was fortunate to have lunch with Howard Mohr some years ago and I once met Bill Holm very briefly at a small-press book show.

Mohr and Holm used to tour the small, isolated farming towns of Southwestern Minnesota, reading their poetry in churches and retirement homes and township halls. Here's one of Mohr's, from his collection "How to Tell a Tornado."

RALPH NADER VISITS MY HOUSE

Coming home late one night I find him
under the kitchen sink with a flashlight
taking down the names of canned goods.
I know it's him.
He shines the light in my face.
He reads from his list:
"Artificial colors, bulging tops,
barbiturates and chemical garbage.
And this is only the beginning.
Sit down please."
I sit down, shielding my eyes,
trying to make out his face.
"Crawling between your walls
I discovered mice nesting among the wires.
The water heater has no safety valve.
Your attic is ticking."
"But..." I say.
He smiles. "The fully documented account
of the accidents you will have
is to be published in Friday's New York Times."
The chair collapses when I stand,
light bulbs pop out of their sockets,
my shoelaces burst into flames.
"Your wife is also defective," he sneers,
climbing out the window
avoiding my dangerous doors.

---------------

Mohr is known around these parts for writing "How to Talk Minnesotan," which was turned into a long-running musical comedy. Haven't heard much from him lately.

Box elder bugs

Bill Holm is a brilliant poet and essayist from southwestern Minnesota. His book called "Box Elder Bug Variations" is a favorite of mine. I think of it today because the annual box elder bug invasion has begun. Bugs by the thousands have converged on our front porch, looking (apparently) for someplace to hunker down for the winter.

The story, which may be apocryphal, is that Holm, teaching at Southwest Minnesota State University, got disgusted with the poems his students were writing, in part because the students were trying too hard to be profound -- choosing weighty subjects like love and death and beauty and war. Holm was in mid-rant when a box elder bug crawled across his desk. He said he could write a great poem about a goddamn box elder bug. And, by gum, he did. It turned into a whole book of poems.

Here's my favorite.

THOUGH DIFFICULT, IT IS POSSIBLE TO KILL BOXELDER BUGS. IF YOU ARE INTERESTED, YOU MIGHT TRY THIS METHOD

Take two bricks.
Creep deliberately up
Behind the boxelder bug,
Being careful not to sing --
This will alert him.
In a graceful flowing gesture,
Something like a golf swing
Or reaching for your lover in the dark,
Gather up the boxelder bug
On the surface of the left brick
Bringing the right brick
At the same time firmly down
Together with the left brick.
There will be loud crashing,
Like broken cymbals,
Maybe a breaking of brick, and
If you are not careful,
Your own voice rising.
When the brick dust has settled
And you have examined your own hands
Carefully, You will not see the boxelder bug.
There is a small hole in the brick
And he he is exploring it,
Calmly, like a millionaire
In an antique shop.

Holm is is one of a small cabal of writers and raconteurs from southwestern Minnesota (Montevideo, Minneota, Luvern) . Verlyn Klinkenborg is one. Another is Howard Mohr. Tomorrow, a selection from Mohr's "How to Tell a Tornado."

Taking over the airwaves

Our eldest son had a show on the student radio station at Augsburg College in Minneapolis.

Our daughter has a show on KOXY 104.7, the student radio station at Occidental College in Los Angeles. If you're inclined, you can listen via streaming audio at 7:00PM every Wednesday -- just use the link above and click "listen."

Our youngest son has a show on KRNL 89.7, the student radio station at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa. The station is temporarily off the air because of a dead main control board, but should be back up in a week or so. He's on Saturdays at 7:00PM.

When I was an undergraduate at Indiana University many eons ago (shortly after the invention of radio), I had a show on the student radio station.

I guess we all like the sounds of our own voices and want to share them with or inflict them upon others. Makes a daddy proud.

Patience

Rob Hardy posted an excellent poem on his blog about learning patience. It's zen-like, it's funny, it's instructive, it's Hardy.

It reminded me of Brautigan's piece about standing in line at the bank. That piece, from "Revenge of the Lawn," is reproduced here.

Complicated Banking Problems

I have a bank account because I grew tired of burying my money in the back yard and something else happened. I was burying some money a few years ago when I came across a human skeleton.

The skeleton had the remains of shovel in one hand and a half-dissolved coffee can in the other hand. The coffee can was filled with a kind of rustdust material that I think was once money, so now I have a bank account.

But most of the time that doesn't work out very well either. When I wait in line there are almost always people in front of me who have complicated banking problems. I have to stand there and endure the financial cartoon crucifixions of America.

It goes something like this: There are three people in front of me. I have
a little check to cash. May banking will only take a minute. The check is already endorsed. I have it in my hand, pointed in the direction of the teller.

The person just being waited on now is a woman fifty years old. She is
wearing a long black coat, though it is a hot day. She appears to be very
comfortable in the coat and there is a strange smell coming from her. I think about it for a few seconds and realize that this is the first sign of a complicated banking problem.

Then she reaches into the folds of the coat and removes the shadow of a
refrigerator filled with sour milk and year-old carrots. She wants to put the shadow in her savings account. She's already made out the slip.

I look up at the ceiling and pretend that it is the Sistine Chapel.

The old woman puts up quite a struggle before she's taken away. There's lots of blood on the floor. She bit an ear off one of the guards.

I guess you have to admire her spunk.

The check in my hand is for ten dollars.

The next two people in line are actually one person. They are a pair of
Siamese twins, but they each have their own bank book.

One of them is putting eighty-two dollars in his savings account and the other one is closing his savings account. The teller counts out 3,574 dollars for him and he puts it away in the pocket on his side of the pants.

All of this takes time. I look up at the ceiling of the bank again but I cannot pretend that it is the Sistine Chapel any more. My check is sweaty as if it had been written in 1929.

The last person between me and the teller is totally anonymous looking.
He's so anonymous that he's barely there.

He puts 237 checks down on the counter that he wants to deposit in his checking account. They are for a total of 489,000 dollars. He also has 611 checks that he wants to deposit in his savings account. They are for a total of 1,754,961 dollars.

His checks completely cover the counter like a success snowstorm. The teller starts on his banking as if she were a long distance runner while I stand there thinking that the skeleton in the back yard had made the right decision after all.

------


Hardy's verse has the line "Why don't we do more damage -- or more good?" That is a question on which the entire apparatus of the criminal justice system is built. A fundamental question. It is wonderful to find it in a poem (ostensibly) about standing in line at the grocery store.

My favorite line in the Brautigan piece is "My check is sweaty, as if it had been written in 1929." The ominous and the whimsical side by side. That's a Brautigan trademark.