A nice, small, and fun gathering with the narratives group tonight. It was a great cap to John’s demos of Deus Ex and Medal of Honor. Thanks, John.

Good to see Josh, Kasandra, Neha, Susan, Barbara, and John around the table.
At the narratives meeting, we read some great work, had nice conversation, and missed our absent friends. Excellent to spend some time with Neha, too. I continue to wish her well. Susan, thanks for the work, the poetry, and the coffee.

The master and his translator at work on two visions of time and space

But what lay beneath us was even worse than the products of the shade. Under the water great riddled leaves waved like dominoes of ocher velvet, lures and traps. On the surface floated clusters of dirty bubbles, varnished over by reddish pollen, which a passing fin sent drifting off into the eddy of a pool with the wavering motion of a sea cucumber. A kind of thick opalescent gauze hung over the opening of a rock teeming with hidden life. A silent war was going on in those depths bristling with hairy talons, where everything seemed a slimy tangle of snakes. Strange clicking noices, sudden ripples, the plash of waters told of the the rush of invisible beings leaving behind them a wake of murky decay. One felt the presence of rampant fauna, of the primeval slime, of the green fermentation beneath the dark waters, which gave off a sour reek like a mud of vinegar and carrion, over whose oily surface moved insects made to walk on the water: chinch-bugs, white fleas, high-jointed flies, tiny mosquitoes that were hardly more than shimmering dots in the green light, for the green, shot through by an occasional ray of sun, was so intense that the light as it filtered through the leaves had the color of moss dyed the hue of the swamp-bottoms as it sought the roots of the plants. (160-161)

and

Each plateau had its own morphology, consisting of groins, sheer drops, straight or broken edges. The one not adorned with the incarnation of an obelisk or a basalt headland had a flanking terrace, beveled edges, sharp angles, or was crowned by strange stone markers resembling the figures in a procession. Suddenly, in contrast to this severity, a stone arabesque, some geographical flight of fancy, conspired with the water to give a touch of movement to this land of the unmovable. A mountain of reddish granite poured seven yellow cascades over the battlements of its crowning cornice. Or a river hurled itself into space and became a rainbow on the cutback stairway of petrified trees. The foam of a river boiled over enormous natural arches with deafening echo before it divided and fell into a series of pools emptying into one another. One sensed that overhead, at the summit, in this series of stairsteps to the moon, there were lakes, neighbors to the clouds, whose virgin waters had never been profaned by human eye.

There were morning hoarfrost, icy depths, opalescent banks, and hollows filled with the night before twilight. There were monoliths poised on the edge of peaks, needles, crosses, cracks that breathed forth mists; wrinkled crags that were like congealed lava–meteors, perhaps, fallen from another planet. We were overawed by the display of these opera magna, the plurality of the profiles, the scope of the shadows, the immensity of the esplanades. We felt like intruders who at any moment might be cast out of a forbidden kingdom. What lay before our eyes was the world that existed before man. (186)

Carpentier’s description has an incredible momentum and sense of disciplined precision. This is rock-hard control, image to image. The Lost Steps, from start to finish, is a lesson in narrative relentlessness.

This is Carpentier’s “unexpected richness of reality,” his realization of the “Baroque as human constant,” his “proliferating nuclei.” What strikes me in the novel is the way Carpentier lays the language over even the roughest of things like gold or silver foil, brushing it into the creases, molding it into the folds.

A few comments on “Indian Rain,” a poem in progress by Neha Bawa. At a recent writing group, we had a nice dicussion of Neha’s poem. What stood out to me was the underlying image “for” longing in the piece, brought home by the final line, which is:

Someday I will be home again.

Home in the poem is exotic and erotic in its descriptive suspension, a place with

Drops of silver lolling
on soft white flesh

The past and its images are suspended in memory; but there’s always a suggestion for the “exile” that the light of memory can be corrupted. Is this poem, therefore, a means of “keeping” the memory of home close, a form of active remembering?

Regardless, I’d love to see the author dig past some of the abstractions, as seen here

I have seen days when the clouds rolled in
thick and black as the desert night;
Clouds that made the peacocks sing
and spread their feathers in majestic dance.

Unfortunatly, I don’t understand “majestic dance.” Here the image is arbitrary. We could, in other words, interchange “majestic” for “beautiful” or “amazing.” The poet sees an image remembered, but “majestic” is interpretive rather than experiential. Nobody sees “majestic.”

But what an overall sense that the poem conveys. Neha has a keen sense for the honesty of poetry.

In fiction writing, we never know when an idea will come or what’s waiting “around the corner,” as Tobias Wolff examines:

I was on a bus to Washington, D.C. Two days I’d been travelling and I was tired, tired, tired. The woman sitting next to me, a German with a ticket good for anywhere, never stopped yakking. I understood little of what she said but what I did understand led me to believe that she was utterly deranged.

She finally took a breather when we hit Richmond. It was late at night. We rounded a corner and there beneath a streetlight stood a white man and black woman. The woman wore a yellow dress and held a baby. Her head was thrown back in laughter. The man was red-haired, rough looking, and naked to the waist. His skin seemed luminous. He was grinning at the woman, who watched him closely even as she laughed. Broken glass glittered at their feet.

There is something between them, something in the instant itself, that makes me sit up and stare. What is it, what’s going on here? Why can’t I ever forget them? Tell me, for God’s sake, but make it snappy–I’m tired, and the bus is picking up speed, and the lunatic beside me is getting ready to say something.

Interesting things penetrate the crazy world of the everyday. It’s an amazing image. It makes us think about “what’s around the corner.”

Everyone knows that breathing is important, but can reciting poetry increase health? Of course. From October Scientific American

Cardiovascular and respiratory responses are not normally in sync. Rhythmic fluctuations in blood pressure take place naturally in 10-second-long cycles known as Mayer waves, whereas spntaneous breathing normally occurs at a rate of approximately 15 breaths per minute.

Dirk Cysarz of the Herdecke Community Hospital and Institute of Mathematics at the University of Witten/Herdecke wanted to explore the connection between these ocsillating mechanisms, which are known to couple weakly at times. The type of poetry was a key aspect of the study. Cysarz and his colleagues specifically used Homer’s Odyssey translated into German, which maintains the original hexametric pace of the verse–that is, six meters, or rhythmic units, per line. . . .

For this study, healthy subjects practiced three activities: hexameter reading, controlled breathing at six breaths per minute and spontaneous breathing. They recited while walking, breathing and lifting their arms. The researchers found increased synchronization between heart rate and breathing during the poetry readings but not during the spontaneous breathing. Controlled breathing also boosted synchronization, though not to the extent of recitation . . .

Last night’s narratives meeting was a smash hit in terms of workshop and gathering. We had nice numbers and a good planning session. We miss those who weren’t able to make it and those who are at a distance. Hopefully, some of the regulars can get back into the action and that schedules come together. Thanks to Susan and to those who came for the encouragement and the help.

Over at Wanderlust Neha is struggling with the third stanza, which is cut and pasted thusly:

Drops of silver on soft white flesh
like sparking diamonds under a golden sun
rolling down twisty branches, weary of weight
carried through endless nights and endless days
Onto quivering hidden lips
waiting to sprout green once again.

I’m sort of partial to an “oval” diamond in line 2 because I can’t really see a “sparking diamond.” The first line would seem to set up the metaphor. Would leaving diamonds without an adjective be enough? I don’t know. Then I fix on the “golden sun.” I’d love to see the sun work a little harder. The “rolling” image is nice. The “weary of weight / carried through” seems long too. I’d suggest some wrestling with syntactical arrangement. I really enjoy the first stanza, but I wonder what would happen to the poem if the last line of stanza 1 were cut?

Great work.

Read the rest here.

I had a great time at Narratives. Good food, good talk, good friends. And we’ll be missing one of our members as she moves on to other hopefully fulfilling enterprises. We had a discussion in the midst of which I had to leave about publishing issues. Aside from the process, the subject got me to thinking about basics, storytelling at the biological level, although biology might be a little breathtaking.

The question goes to need. Humans are animals who need the company of others; they need friends, talk, sharing, conflict, some measure of society. Story meets many of those needs. A story develops during the card game, a thread that makes the time mean something, good, bad, in the middle. We need the narrative to get the punch-line, the story. We need to experience stories because without them the world wouldn’t make a lot of sense. “What happened” is a basic question that goes to making sense of events. From explanation to analysis to description to demonstration–all can or may manifest as story narrative. But kinds of story (narrative poems, ballads, flash fiction) really aren’t what I’m hinting at here. The telling is what matters: the form is the way we experience.

Some people I know love telling and writing stories. I have a good friend who tells “true” stories about his life that run the range of human experience and story forms. Nobody asked him tell them, although he was often encouraged. “Tell him about the time that . . . ” one friend says to another, and then the listeners listen, laugh, or react with a shake of the head at the the sad end of the protagonist. Circumstance dictates.

“Hey, remember when . . .”

“Yes. Tell me.”

Mythological space is vast. This is where publishing comes in. The industry, the profession, the byline. Publishing is a necessary means of getting the story, the message, the letters out; it’s linked to the industry, the machine, the network of the existence, distribution, and storing of creative thought, a manifestation of social organization, political form, media, and tradition. No publishing without letters or a means of recording voice. “Something” has to be published. The “something” has to be transferred from one hand to the next. We worry about it, want it, like it, and profit from it in many ways. It’s a method of meeting human need and investment.

There are a lot of things we don’t need. Blue toothpaste, for example.

But discussion of markets, publishing, papers, prestige, and the business of storytelling and media will always lead the writer and the reader back to the basics. Without story we can’t live. We need to hear stories, need to tell them, whatever their forms. Bravo to the audience.

Everybody wants the good guy to win. But not everyone will agree on the criteria. The audience wants Odysseus to make it home and drive off the suitors. Luke Skywalker aims and fires, and does anyone wish for a glancing blow? Out there under the purple clouds (you can just see the twinkle) is a flash of light. You begin to move toward it. The hero sets off to find that grail so needed for salvation. We have the departure, the test, the return, the protagonist slimmed by fire and cold. The hero rises then falls. The search, the fall, the rise, the winning and the losing.

Same old story. And keep ringing it.

This is just really tight and “up,” if you know what I mean. As in this cluster:

Rarer still, this sudden ache for brush and paint and paper when the popcorn puffs and lines and swirls go by. Cluster clouds are best for finding faces, gargoyles easiest of all because they lend themselves to all the frilly frowns and hairdos.

I’ve been thinking a lot about voice recently in writing as the driving vision of a particular piece. In this Spinning entry, Susan’s definitely finding “a voice” through which to “tell.”

Voice is one of those unteachable elements of observation and telling and is interwoven into the thing in itself. It’s an impression, an echo, the personality of a speaker. A voice says things a particular way. For example “Cluster clouds,” “finding faces,” “easiest of al” don’t just sound right, they’re the voice of the speaker, the mind of the thinker. For the writer, voice is the thing we have to climb inside and ride.

Right on. Read the rest. It’s a tight post that does everything in a compressed amount of time.