Thank you Virginia Fellows

When there is an established body of knowledge with supporting institutions  supplied by a steady flow of new talent that demonstrates, teaches and promotes an industry based on  that body of knowledge change is not only unlikely it is resisted.

Virginia Fellows and her publisher has crossed the line, has taken up the banner with book that tells the most incredible and dramatic story Dan Brown couldn’t rival. She has challenged the Queens authority to tell the  truth to open the private life of Sir Francis Bacon a genius for the ages.

I  wonder if the casual reader can understand the significance of her well written and magnificently poignant biography that has been hidden and suppressed for 400 years. The information has been there for well over 100 years. Many great authors have come and gone in that time but Virginia Fellows is the one to roast the sacred cow of literature.

She nicely captures the wars Francis Bacon must have waged within himself. She brings him out into the light of day after centuries of being entombed by bias and pedagogy. If you listen to both sides of the controversy you might thing it a religious war. Virginia Fellows would have none of that. The Shakespeare Code is straight honest easy to read and passionate biography.

The info necessary for “The Shakespeare Code” has been there for over 100 years and place the story that should make all biographers salivate over

Even though change is the only thing that doesn’t change in our world people fear change and institutions not only loath change but ignore it unless  realistically threatened.

Take American football, for example, There was the money and interest in new football teams in the major cities  but for many years the National Football League refused expansion.  Then the rival American football League was formed in 1960 which  grew and soon played on an equal par with the NFL resulting in a championship game.  NFL was forced to recognize the power of the AFC and merged with it.

Examples like this could fill volumes, but the volume I want to fill is about the Bacon-Shakespeare problem. When I became aware of the problem a few years ago I thought censorship because the evidence linking the author Bacon with  the name  Shakespeare was clear and convincing. To my knowledge no new evidence has come forth in decades because the subject was thoroughly researched around the turn of the last century and before.

My amazement and astonishment that Baconian spear-shaking hasn’t exploded on the literary  scene decades ago has made me suspicious of censorship in higher institutions of learning. That mystery man is one who we should all strive to understand but never will. Francis Bacon left us more than the wonderful plays. He seemed to had been part of most of Elizabethan Literature.

They are a lot of people involved in the Stratfordian bureaucratic system no one has wanted to challenge it from within until now

Dominant Stratfordianism is unfortunate but understandable if you understand human nature and Virginia Fellows does. The average Stratfordian, I believe, loves the truth as much as the next person but to truly wade into the vastness that is Bacon where they have nowhere to go and nothing to hang on to was unlikely until now.

There have been partial biographies but “The Shakespeare Code completes the circle.

Where-as William Shakespeare has mountains nay worlds of material and warm opportunities Bacon offers the cold raw evidence and that’s just about it and  expects the average  Shakespeare fan to jump into an abyss without a bungi chord.

Now we have a safety net compete with the Santa Shakespeare.

“The Shakespeare Code” is a break-through biography because Virginia Fellows uses all the relevant and available information to create a coherent, new, and exciting biography of the man behind the Shakespeare mask.

We need more people like Fellows and other scholars to put their pen where their mouth is and analyze the plays from a Bacon point of view. We  need more interest in Bacon-as-Shakespeare because I believe the staleness of the current Shakespeare standards will continue to foster the marginalization of Shakespeare and literature

I fear Shakespeare will slowly fade away but not if Virginia has anything to do with it.

For the public and Hollywood to ignore the incredible drama that went on in the last Tudor family shows true disinterest.

For the publishers of textbooks to ignore the Northumberland Manuscript as well as the plain logic of Twain and others shows true disinterest.

That there is a controversy at all shows true disinterest because of the lack of knowledge of the simple fact that Shagspur died to soon. DeVeres died way too soon and shouldn’t be an afterthought.

That there is an abundance of information connecting Francis Bacon with the plays shows true disinterest.

For a biographies filled with few facts and little relevant information and an abundance of distortion for one to considered a Pulitzer Prize finalist shows true disinterest.

Education? In school we were introduced to the plays and the sonnets using old worn out concepts but did we care if we were taught falsely? It doesn’t appear to be. Concerning the Sonnets, My son’s teacher said to formulate his own interpretations. What else is she going to say?

The Shakespeare plays are a must for every library but who reads them? Not many.

Virginia Fellows aims to change all that.

I believe the disinterest is caused not by the author but how the information has been handled. The Queen is dead. Long live a new Queen.

Almost every American kid has played soccer but Americans don’t watch soccer for the lack of scoring. The average educated American thinks Shakespeare is great as long as he/she doesn’t have to read it because it’s tedious and lacks scoring.

Virginia Fellow scores.

She has started the AFC of literature with a competitive product which is the start of a new league, one that will score points and will make lots of money for the industrious. The NFL of Stratford will be forced to merge and then the Super bowl of Literature, Science and Art  will result for everyone’s benefit.

The riches Virginia has uncovered is unfathomable and I hope many more of her books are forthcoming.

Just thinking about it makes me hungry for a B.L.T.E. (Bacon, Leicester,  Elizabeth Tudor and Essex – the last Tudor family).

Can you find all of the following items in this picture?

1. An afghan, keeping all of me but my fingertips warm, because the thermostat drops the heat in the middle of the day and I’m too lazy to fix it.

2. Three cups of coffee, represented by one mug.

3. Three books on Ben Jonson.

4. Five journal articles on child loss poetry, bereavement, Katherine Philips and again, Ben Jonson.

5. One Dollar store short stemmed wine glass that has seen the suicide of three therapeutic candles.

6. One page of scrawled notes.

7. One phone in the hopes that someone might call, text, or distract in some other way.

8. General other messiness, indicative of 1 month of no de-cluttering.

9. One laptop that is my life and contains a 7.5 page essay that just won’t become 8 pages.

Earlier this month Kellvin Chavez at LATINO REVIEW asked filmmaker Roland Emmerich to discuss his movie project ANONYMOUS (formerly SOUL OF THE AGE) about Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford as “William Shakespeare” and he replied:

“Well, for me there was an incredible script that I bought eight years ago.  It was called ‘Soul of the Age,’ which pretty much is the heart of the movie still.  It’s three characters. It’s like Ben Jonson, who was a playwright then.  William Shakespeare who was an actor.  It’s like the 17th Earl of Oxford who is the true author of all these plays.  We see how, through these three people, it happens that all of these plays get credited to Shakespeare.  I kind of found it as too much like ‘Amadeus’ to me.  It was about jealousy, about genius against end (sic?), so I proposed to make this a movie about political things, which is about succession.  Succession, the monarchy, was absolute monarchy, and the most important political thing was who would be the next King.  Then we incorporated that idea into that story line.  It has all the elements of a Shakespeare play.  It’s about Kings, Queens, and Princes.  It’s about illegitimate children, it’s about incest, it’s about all of these elements which Shakespeare plays have.  And it’s overall a tragedy.  That was the way and I’m really excited to make this movie.”

Last I heard, the cameras are expected to roll next March in Germany.  Oh, Roland, you may have been controversial before, but just wait!  As they say, you ain’t seen nuttin’ yet!  What will the Folger do?  How will the Stratford tourism industry react?  The Birthplace Trust!  How will teachers and professors handle the upcoming generation and its students who will be eager to investigate one of the great stories of history yet to be told?

I predict that once those floodgates open, there will be more material about this subject matter over the coming years, in print and on video or film, than on virtually any other topic.  Why?  Because much of the history of the modern world over the past four centuries will have to be re-written!  Just think, for example, of all the biographies of other figures — such as Ben Jonson or Philip Sidney  — that will have to be drastically revised to make room for the Earl of Oxford as the single greatest force behind the evolution of English literature and drama, not to mention the English language itself.

In the end, it’s not just the Literature and Drama departments that will need to change; even moreso, the History Department will be where the action is.

Onward with those floodgates!

Jonson’s Ambition

No other Elizabethan poet was more cognizant of his legacy than Ben Jonson. Jonson’s rivals were not just his peers – Shakespeare, John Marston, Tho. Dekker, or Tho. Middleton -  but the great poets of ancient Rome – Seneca (4 BC-65 AD), Catullus (c. 84–c. 54 BC) and Martial (AD 40–103). In writing poetry and drama, Jonson adopted many of the tenets and poetic forms of these great classical poets.

After all, the English language of Jonson & Shakespeare had no literary past. With the exception of Chaucer and Gower (who few poets emulated), the great literature of the past was the great literature of the Romans and the Greeks. So it was that when other Elizabethan poets were enthusiastically adopting the new-fangled sonnet form – Spencer, Shakespeare, Sidney, and Daniel – Jonson adopted the epigram (the form that Catallus and Martial had developed and established over a thousand years before). What better way to establish yourself as the inheritor of a great tradition than to write within that tradition?

Jonson was the scholar among Elizabethan playwrights.

He was also a bricklayer’s son and because of it he was more sensitive to questions of class and status. In 1598, Jonson killed another actor, Gabriel Spencer, who (according to Jonson) had insulted both him and his dramaturgy. Jonson only saved his neck by pleading Benefit of Clergy (meaning he could read). The episode was a sign of things to come.

His rivalries, both literal and personal, became the stuff of legend. To my knowledge, The Poet’s War refers to only one thing: The rivalry between Jonson, on the one side, Marston, Dekker and eventually Shakespeare on the other. In fact, in one form or another, the rivalry eventually netted just about every poet and dramatist writing during the day. The rivalry appears to have been mostly good natured but, as with all such rivalries, there must have been some bloody noses too.

The theatergoers took tremendous pleasure in the jibes and taunts, and the plays of the time are full of references to the rivalry. Whole books have been devoted to it and it makes for very entertaining reading. No surprise, for instance, that Jonson endlessly ribbed Shakespeare for the latter’s gentlemanly pretensions. When Shakespeare finally obtained a coat of arms(the only extent sketch being above right 1), Jonson was quick to pull the rug out from under his rival – satirizing Shakespeare’s motto.

Here is how Katherine Duncan-Jones sums it up in her book Ungentle Shakespeare [p. 96]:

Duncan-Jones explanation of Jonson’s jibe, the joke behind mustard, is as convincing as any I’ve read. (No one really knows and there are different explanations). James Bednarz, in his book Shakespeare & The Poet’s War, (which I’m just reading) explains Shakespeare’s response in the following paragraph.

Indeed, this quip might have sparked Touchstone’s jest about a knight who did not lie when he swore that “pancakes” were “good” and “the mustard was naught,” although the pancakes were bad and the mustard good, because he swore “by his honor,” and “if you swear by that that is not, yoiu are not forsworn” (1.2.63-77). Shakespeare’s joke about honor and mustard turns Jonson’s critique on its head and mocks the social pretension Shakespeare had been accused of exhibiting. [p. 113 ]

Not only that, but Bednarz goes on to detail his case for just how and when Shakespeare “purged” Jonson (which was apparently the beginning of the end of  the whole imbroglio). Shakespeare’s portrayal of Jonson as the slow-witted  Ajax in his play Troilus and Cressida (the name Ajax in Elizabethan times was a pun on latrine) must have brought the house down.  Many scholars consider Troilus and Cressida to be a “problem play”, but if it is read and understood as, perhaps, the final salvo in the poet’s war, the play makes a good deal more sense.

Anyway, this is going far afield.

There’s lots to say about Jonson. He was one of the most irascible, ambitious and colorful personalities in Elizabethan drama. And possibly because of his literary ambitions, Jonson’s love poems are few and far between. It’s likely that he didn’t consider them to be worthy of great poetry. So, instead of writing sonnets to real or imagined lovers, he resurrected the epigram. Encyclopedia Britannica writes that the epigram was…

…originally an inscription suitable for carving on a monument, but since the time of the Greek Anthology (q.v.) applied to any brief and pithy verse, particularly if astringent and purporting to point a moral. By extension the term is also applied to any striking sentence in a novel, play, poem, or conversation that appears to express a succinct truth, usually in the form of a generalization. Catullus (c. 84–c. 54 BC) originated the Latin epigram…

Jonson’s epigrams are full of pithy one liners, wicked satire, scathing quips and  pointed praise. The enjoyment of them  takes a certain kind of reader – one who enjoys the finely chiseled line for the sake of it and someone who has some knowledge of the Elizabethan period. Jonson is rarely rapturous or “romantic”. He’s Elizabethan through and through: intellectual, ambitious, and always ready to deploy reason, rhetoric and a stinging jest.

But when he lets his guard down, one senses tremendous tenderness and vulnerability. It’s in this light that I like to read his most famous poem – Drink to me, onely, with thine eyes… The poem has the feeling of a genuineness and immediacy that characterizes Elizabethan poetry at its very best. (To me, the later Romantic poets frequently fall short of the honesty and directness which the Elizabethans were capable of.)

Of Fonts, Handwriting & Secretary Hand

The lines are simple and straightforward. For the fun of it (and since I’ve already gone so far afield) I’ve printed the poem using a brand new font – P22 Elizabethan. The font was created for a historical novel and reproduces a kind of script that was called Secretary Hand. All Elizabethans who could write, could write Secretary Hand. It was the formal hand of record keeping, the scribal book and court documents. Jonson would have been capable of Secretary Hand but, like most other Elizabethans, wrote a more italic style when writing informally. If this poem had appeared in a scribally published book, however, this is how it might have looked.

• And what follows below is another poem by Ben Jonson as it appeared in a scribally published book, in actual Secretary Hand (but not Jonson’s handwriting). The image comes from the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Digital Collection [MS V.b.43] and the entire page can be viewed in Christopher Ivic’s Essay: Ben Jonson & Manuscript Culture.

If it looks like I’m having fun with fonts, it’s because I am. The Folio Font can be found for free and is intended to mimic the typeset used in Shakespeare’s Folio, which was probably the same as that used in Jonson’s. Before I move on to Jonson’s Drinke to me, I want to have just a little more fun. Below is the handwriting of Shakespeare, John Donne, Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson.

• The first image is of Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More, or rather, his contribution to the play. The writing is believed to be the only extent sample of Shakespeare’s handwriting. His handwriting is considered to be old-fashioned (Tudor) and idiosyncratic – like his spelling. This undoubtedly reflects his schooling which, for one reason or another, was conservative and somewhat behind the times. It may also reflect the possibility that he  was privately tutored  or self-taught, but that is sheer speculation. If you want a closer look, you will have to do two things: First, click on the image, then enlarge it using the zoom feature in your browser (Firefox is CTRL + to enlarge CTRL- to diminish). Clicking on the image may also suffice.

• Next is an example of Ben Jonson’s handwriting. Compared to Shakespeare’s, it’s almost legible. Notice also the italic style – which gradually all but replaced Secretary Hand.  The sample comes from an Epistle to his Masque of Queens. The image is one that I found on-line and mildy colorized. Here is what he wrote:

By the most true Admirer of your Highness’s virtues
And most hearty celebrator of them.   Ben Jonson

And if you want to see more from Jonson’s Epistle, click on the image and enlarge.

• The next example is from Christopher Marlowe’s Massacre at Paris. It looks as though the foul paper (Marlowe’s handwritten text) doesn’t match the printed example I found on-line. It’s possible that the final version of the play is different – or I simply can’t read Marlowe’s handwriting. The sample comes by way of Wikimedia Commons – which itself comes from the Folger Shakespeare Library [MS. J.b.8].

• The final sample is of John Donne. Donne’s handwriting is legible enough to not need a parallel text. Donne’s handwriting is thoroughly modern as compared to Shakespeare’s, reflecting a very different education. Not only did spelling vary from writer to writer, but handwriting as well. The English Lanaguage, in every conceivable way, was in flux.

This image also comes form the Folger Shakespeare Library [MSS L b 1712].

Drinke to me, onely, with thine eyes

As I wrote earlier, Ben Jonson’s poem is a study in simplicity. It reminds me of Robert Frost’s best poems – simple and yet profoundly effective and affective. The poem is split into two octaves (eight lines each), and the octave are themselves, divided into two quatrains, each quatrain.

The lines alternate between Iambic Tetramater and Iambic Trimeter – a ballad meter known as Common Meter Double – though I’m not sure the form would have been known as such in Jonson’s day. (Jonson’s poem To Celia – see below – was made into a song by Alfonso Ferrabosco.) There are three trochaic feet and none of them are wasted. They nicely and appropriately stress words in a way that adds to the meaning of the poem – the mark of an experienced  and skilled poet.

Where the dilettante might let a variant metrical foot slip by without regard to its context, the great poets seem more concerned that the disruption of the meter coincide with the emotional and intellectual content of the poem – not always, but more so.

Why is this poem so famous? It appeals to our sensibility both by its simplicity and through the subliminal pattern of its rhyme and meter. The poem appeals to us for the same reason nursery rhymes appeal to children. But more so, consider the straightforwardness of the imagery – how original and evocative it is:

“leave a kiss in the cup”
“the soul doth rise, /Doth aske a drinke divine “
“I sent thee, late, a rosie wreath… But thou thereon didn’t onely breath”

More so, consider that this little poem is really a narrative poem. It tells a story in a few quick, simple lines – and tells us all we need to know. (The poem, incidentally, exemplifies what Jonson prized in classical poetry – balance and unity of thought.)

There’s a lesson in this poem for the modern poet. A great poem can be the simplest poem, like Jonson’s Drinke to me or Robert Frost’s The Pasture. There’s a place and readership for the modern poem, but the supremely simple and masterfully written short poem of traditional poetry has been all but forgotten.

• In the scansion below, all unmarked feet are Iambic.

Wines in Elizabethan England

The Elizabethans didn’t drink water the way we do. It was poison, in large part, unless you lived far from an urban center. The sewage system was above ground and every last drop of it flowed into the sludge of the Thames. A useful website containing, among other things, Elizabethan recipes (when British food could still be called food) had this to say about the wine Jonson might have been drinking:

Honey was used to make a sweet alcoholic drink called mead which was drunk by all classes. Wine was generally imported although some fruit wines were produced in England. A form of cider referred to as ‘Apple-wine’ was also produced. Ales were brewed with malt and water, while beer contained hops that held a bitter flavor.

Another site called simply, Elizabethan Recipes, offers among things: Fartes of Portingale – Spicy Muttonball Soup. (I wonder if they meant Tartes?)

And here’s a modern brew that claims to be as stout as the original Elizabethan ales. They write:

It is comparable in strength to the beer produced by Tudor brewers during the reign of Elizabeth I. It has won many prizes and, at the International Brewers’ Exhibition 1968, was awarded the Championship Gold Medal. Regular drinkers simply asked for a ‘Lizzie’.

The website Life in Elizabethan England, offers a description of the bread that might have accompanied Jonson’s wine. Of the wines, they write:

Most wines are sweet and rather heavy. They probably have to be strained before you want to drink them, and may still have solid matter floating in them.

What was Jove’s Nectar? The drink of the gods, by implication, unmatched by anything produced or consumed by mortals and yet, says Jonson, her prefers Celia’s mortal kiss to an immortal drink of Jove’s nectar. There may also be the hint of Ichor of which,  Wikipedia writes:

In Greek mythology, ichor (pronounced /ˈaɪkər/ or /ˈɪkər/; Greek ἰχώρ) is the ethereal fluid that is the Greek gods’ blood, sometimes said to have been present in ambrosia or nectar.

It’s worth mentioning that ichor was considered poisonous to mortals.

Jonson seems to say:

The soul thirsts for immortality, but I would change that immortality for a different kind of eternal joy – a kiss from Celia.

Roses were a symbol of love and Jonson sent not just a rose, but a wreath. Roses were also a symbol of a woman’s virginity (or maidenhead). I think it might be reading to much to read ribald connotations and double-entendres into the latter octave of the  poem (though one could easily do so). That said, Jonson’s intentions (in sending the wreath) involved far more than innocent love.

The poem strikes a nice balance between the romance of love and the desires of the lover.

It’s a small masterpiece.

Useful Links

• Poems of Ben Jonson
• English Literature Early 17th Century
• The Holloway Pages Ben: Jonson Page – The Epigrams

More Poems by Rare Ben Jonson

• To Celia

Come my Celia, let us prove,
While we may, the sports of love;
Time will not be ours, for ever:
He, at length, our good will sever.
Spend not then his guifts in vaine.
Sunnes, that set, may rise againe:
But if once we loose this light,
‘Tis, with us, perpetuall night.
Why should we deferre our joyes?
Fame, and rumor are but toyes.
Cannot we delude our eyes
Of a few poore household spyes?
Or his easier eares beguile,
So removed by our wile?
‘TIs no sinne, loves fruit to steale,
But the sweet theft to reveale:
To be taken, to be seene,
These have crimes accounted beene.

• And lastly, Jonson’s translation of the Roman Poet Gaius Petronius. (The Elizabethans. Always delighting in both sides of the coin.)

“Doing, a filthy pleasure is, and short”

by Gaius Petronius

I went out to a Cornish Guy Fawkes, bonfire and fireworks party last night, organised for a local charity. The fire was well a-blaze by the time I got there, delayed by Yoda the cat, who insisted on “seconds”. If there’d been a “Guy”, he’d have been long gone but perhaps there hadn’t. The custom of burning his effigy has fallen out of custom in recent years, although one can easily imagine the effigies of a few latter-day Fawkes that might be ceremoniously sacrificed.Perhaps we could start a new custom of writing our victim’s names out on paper planes and launching them into the fiery furnace?

I placed a few pictures of the event on Facebook and an American friend responded immediately with the words, “Wish it was celebrated here.” She couldn’t quite remember the name of the song. “What is it?,” she texted, “Gunpowder, treason and… what?”

She said she couldn’t understand why the “Brits” would want to celebrate an attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament. I pointed out that it was an excuse to burn an effigy of Guy Fawkes, one of the plotters who were caught attempting it.

We British are a strange breed and when the Houses of Parliament actually did burn down in 1834, tens of thousands of London’s good citizens turned out to marvel and cheer at the event. Given the nature of recent scandal in the House, I’m sure there are those unkind enough to want to see the present buildings razed to the ground so we could all make a fresh start.

Some of the gunpowder plotters of 1605 were, as Shakespeare afficiandos know,distantly related to his Warwickshire family who, like so many people at that time were what we might now call “closet” Catholics. Although the Shakespeares were not proven to be directly implicated.

Often in his life, Shakespeare proved to be a slippery customer in what were dangerous times. But, by then, he was well established amongst the Elizabethan elite and protected by his patron, the Earl of Southampton and as my friend , writer Patricia Rogers has written, possibly by Queen Elizabeth’s love of the theatre and his plays.

An example of his slipperiness shows up during the events surrounding Lord Essex’s Rebellion in 1601. On the night before the event, Shakespeare’s Company were asked by some of the Essex supporters to perform Richard II, a play which deals with the deposition of a King, a very dangerous topic in Elizabeth’s lifetime. The relevent scenes had often been performed but never published. In fact when Elizabeth saw the play she remarked that it was really about her. One can almost hear the cries of, “Oh, no it’s not your Majesty.”

Essex’s ill-organised rebellion failed and he later paid with his life

Shakespeare’s Company were duly hauled up in front of the authorities and asked why they’d performed the play, given the nature of its content. They argued their way out of it by saying that they were poor players and could neither refuse the lords who asked them, nor the fee offered. They hadn’t played it for ages they said and even wondered whether they could remember all the words.One can almost imagine the phrase, “We wuz only following orders, guv,” escaping from their lips. Shakespeare didn’t put in an appearance at the hearing and, as far as we know,escaped public censure. But his patron, the Earl of Southampton spent a year in the Tower for his involvement in Essex’s rebellion.

The transcripts of the inquiry into the Richard II performance are preserved and still viewable. As, indeed, is much information from Elizabeth’s spys thanks, one imagines, to the thoroughness of the Queen’s spymaster and member of the dreaded Star Chamber, Sir Thomas Walsingham who was mainly responsible for turning the country into what we would call, “a police state”, rather like East Germany before the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall.

The outspoken writer, Ben Jonson a contemporary of Shakespeare’s did get into trouble for some of the views expressed in one of his plays and only escaped having his nose and ears slit ( a relatively minor Elizabethan punishment ) by the gallant intervention of his mother. They branded Jonson with the letter “T”, for the  Tyburn gallows, on his thumb, to remind him where he’d probably be heading the next time.

Shakespeare was one of the few, some claim the only, play-wright of his period to escape some form of punishment. The definition of treasonous statements in those days was a broad remit.

Shakespeare slipped a crafty reference to the Cambridge  University educated, homosexual playwright/”spy”, Christopher Marlowe into  his play,”As you like it,” referring obliquely to Marlowe’s suspicious murder as, “A great reckoning in a little room.”  Nothing came of it. From the pen of Ben Jonson it might have meant a trip on a tumbril.

To be openly homosexual, a playwright and more than likely, a spy, couldn’t have been easy. But then it’s never been easy to remain an un-masked spy at Cambridge as 20th century history tells us gay or otherwise.

A settled, ordered life was never going to be Marlowe’s lot.

Certainly, Shakespeare’s wasn’t. But, touchingly I find, the shepherd’s life was the one he portrayed often as the life to aspire to. Romantic memories, perhaps, of a bucolic Warwickshire childhood walking across the fields to visit his grandparents in Snitterfield?

He even puts that lovely speech about the simple life into a melancholic Henry VI in Pt 2 Act 2 Sc 5 which begins,”O God! methinks it were a happy life, to be no better than a homely swain.” He always wrote of his shepherds, young and old, with affection, love, respect and humor.

You could, as the saying goes, take the boy out of Warwickshire but you couldn’t take Warwickshire out of the boy. He even went home to die there, having become rich and famous enough to buy one of the biggest houses in Stratford-on-Avon and even acquire a coat of arms for a family brought low by a father’s disgrace.

Like  his character,King Lear I hope he had moments when he felt free of all that Court intrigue and had time to laugh at the Court’s “gilded butterflies” and of “Who loses and who wins; who’s in, who’s out.”

A million miles away from gunpowder, treason and plot.

P.S. The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford has, on display, the lantern being used by Guy Fawkes when he was caught.

Ben Jonson (portrait by Abraham van Blyenerch)

In 1616, Ben Jonson published a book of epigrams. Among my favorites, for whatever reason, has always been the one reprinted below, which takes the form of a single couplet: “On Groin.” It so happens that the Wikipedia entry on Jonson offers an accurate and succinct account of the genre, which was based on classical models (the Latin poet Martial, e.g.; for an interesting essay on whom, incidentally, click here):

“Epigrams (published in the 1616 folio) is an entry in a genre that was popular among late-Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences, although Jonson was perhaps the only poet of his time to work in its full classical range. The epigrams explore various attitudes, most but not all of them from the satiric stock of the day: complaints against women, courtiers, and spies abound. The condemnatory poems are short and anonymous; Jonson’s epigrams of praise, including a famous poem to Camden and lines to Lucy Harington, are somewhat longer and mostly addressed to specific individuals.”

The epigram quoted below takes, in Jonsonian fashion, a physical attribute (the groin) and personifies it (a practice familiar to any reader of his plays). For reasons obvious enough, in the early 17th century the “groin” was regarded, as the Oxford English Dictionary reminds us, as “the seat of lust.” In support of this sense, the dictionary quotes none other than Jonson himself (from his play Staple of News III. ii): “Who can endure to see / The fury of men’s gullets, and their groines?”—where the reference is to the mortal & furious sins of gluttony and lust. In any case, here is the text in question (where ’state is an elided from of “estate”):

Epigram CXVII: On Groin

Groin, come of age, his ’state sold out of hand
For his whore: Groin doth still occupy his land.

The epigram takes the form of a paradox: How can a man both sell and still “occupy” his land?—the answer to which is of course provided by the O.E.D. In the 16th and 17th centuries, “occupy” could mean (though it wasn’t always used in this sense): “To have sexual intercourse or relations with” (a sense the O.E.D. regards as obsolete, the last recorded instance of it dating from 1811): “1598 J. FLORIO Worlde of Wordes, Trentuno: a punishment inflicted by ruffianly fellowes uppon raskalie whores in Italy, who cause them to be occupide one and thirtie times by one and thirtie seuerall base raskalie companions. 1648 H. HEXHAM Groot Woorden-boeck, Genooten, to Lie with, or to Occupie a woman. 1683 Last Will & Testament Charter of London 2 To Enjoy & Occupy all from the Bawd to the Whore downward. 1719 in T. D’Urfey Wit & Mirth V. 139 For she will be occupied when others they lay still. 1811 Lexicon Balatronicum, Occupy, to occupy a woman, to have carnal knowledge of her.”

In Henry IV Part 2, Shakespeare has Doll Tearsheet make sport of what she considers an abuse of the word “captain” by likening it to the abuses done to the word “occupy” (of course, she is herself a prostitute). Here she is, rebuking Hostess Quickly, owner of the bawdy house & tavern in which so many of the comic scenes in that play are set:

Falstaff. No more, Pistol; I would not have you go off here. Discharge yourself of our company, Pistol.

Hostess Quickly. No, good Captain Pistol; not here, sweet captain.

Doll Tearsheet. Captain! Thou abominable damn’d cheater, art thou to be called captain? An captains were of my mind, they would truncheon you out, for taking their names upon you before you have earn’d them. You a captain! you slave, for what? For a poor whore’s ruff in a bawdy-house? He a captain! hang him, rogue! He lives upon mouldy stew’d prunes and dried cakes. A captain! God’s light, these villains will make the word as the word ‘occupy’; which was an excellent good word before ’twas ill sorted.

But there is more to be said about Jonson’s couplet. The wit turns not simply upon the paradox just described, and upon the meaning of the word “occupy,” but also upon another idea: instead of “husbanding” his estate, as any good landholder should, Groin is simply “screwing” it, so to speak. And the satire then extends beyond any one man—Groin is obviously representative of a type—to the whole of the landed aristocracy, or at least to that part of it which Jonson held in contempt. (For a poem on that part of the landed aristocracy he didn’t hold in contempt, see his widely anthologized “country house” poem “To Penhurst.”)

Another, albeit less certain possibility, is that Jonson has in mind what good “husbandry” of an estate involves: making its lands fertile, productive. Quite possibly available to him would have been the lewd sense of the word “plow” now commonly in use (to have sex with a woman), which dates, according to the O.E.D., at least as early as the mid 16th century: “1664 T. KILLIGREW Parsons Wedding II. vii. 107 Is’t not a sad sight to see a rich young Beauty subject to some rough rude Fellow, that ploughs her, and esteems and uses her as a chattel?” In short, instead of husbanding and plowing his lands, as he ought to do, Groin chooses to sell them off and, well, plow them—in the person of “his whore.”

I would add, finally, that the association of plowing with sex is an ancient one. Here is Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex: “[Man] wishes to conquer, to take, to possess; to have a woman is to conquer her; he penetrates into her as the plowshare into the furrow.” And she cites certain ancient images engraved by the Kassites, a people who dwelt in Babylon in the 10th century B.C., in which the plow is likened to the phallus. Hence (among other things) the dual agricultural and sexual senses felt, even today, in the English words “husband” and “husbandry.” But that takes us rather far afield, and I can say with no certainty that these further ranges were somehow in Jonson’s mind when he penned Epigram CVII: On Groin.

Você já viu um único lírio crescer?
Antes mesmo que mãos rudes o tenham tocado?
Você já andou pela neve,
Antes que a terra a tenha maculado?
Você já sentiu o pêlo de um castor,
Ou as penas de um ganso, alguma vez?
Já cheirou o botão de uma urze
Ou sentiu o nardo no fogo?
Você já provou a bolsa de mel da abelha?
Tão branca, tão suave
Tão doce ela é.

Ben Jonson, 1572-1637

The pram in the hall may well be the enemy of creativity, in that long stretches of uninterrupted time to work are a thing of the past. However, having a baby is easily the most creative thing I’ve ever done; as Ben Jonson has it, she is my best piece of poetry. On a more practical level, the need to snatch ten minutes here and there for work exactly suits someone who can procrastinate for England unless lashed to a deadline.

She and I are now nine months into our shared adventure; a nicely hinged moment, nine months growing inside, nine months out. We both begin to look out more, though our days still revolve around each other. I have pieced together a hasty essay on the Pro Murena, and have enjoyed it immensely. Having a baby takes your life and turns it on its head, and I am still sorting out the pieces; and now working out how to fit classics into this new pattern.

Not amused: the scribbler.

Candid readers, it seems Ana Castillo, the learned subject of my Oct. 2 post, got wind of it and unwisely elected to counterpost, to the best of her limited abilities.  Below, therefore, I’ve cut and pasted the Oct. 9 blog entry from her website, verbatim, with one exception.  (I here elide the full name of the Berkeley grad student whose spelling/usage boner triggered my original post, a person whom Señorita Cosa gracelessly outs by name in her blog post — as my own post, you’ll recall, did not and still won’t.)

At the outset, let me note that Castillo includes, in her limp tissue of wet complaints, at least one bald-faced lie: that your faithful servant called the First Draqqueen a “gorilla” in a June 18, 2009 post.  Bullshit.  On the contrary, I used it to chastise those who do so call her, on the ground that Miss Hell Obomber doesn’t remotely resemble an ape, only a garden-variety, butt-ugly human being.  So get it straight, mentirosa.  Or did she just misread the post, as would be in keeping with her limited skill-set?  If so, I retract mentirosa and say she’s babosa.

My own reflections on Castillo’s devastating riposte follow.

———————————————————–
Friday, October 09, 2009

http://deanswift.wordpress.com/

This morning the world wakes to our the news that our president has been awarded the Nobel. But no doubt it has further fueled the ignorance the racism that has reared its very ugly head since his election in this country–just like the above link that went out yesterday about my reading last night.

By the way, it was extremely well attended.
And while I am not a size 42 (and nothing wrong with that) and don’t pump out books like the white privileged mystery writer she referred me I personally took no offense.
Anyone who calls Sara Palin ‘divine’ is in some serious need of soul saving.
It is true that people come to listen to my reading but what this hateful ’student’ can’t appreciate (but probably would understand if her hero Sara Palin came to Berkeley) is that my long time readers also come to SEE me.
Reading further on this white reactionary blog–she has referred to the first lady as a ‘gorilla’ and to those who must obviously be objecting to this hateful nonsense as ‘anti-white’? Whatever happened to Berkeley?
I’ll have to say it recalled the last time I was on this campus–as a Regent’s lecturer. As I began my reading at the Latina conference ’somene’ set off the fire alarm. the building was evacuated immediately, fire department called, program over–I went off to have Chinese food with friends. I asked Rosa M——z–the target of the hateful blog entry yesterday to read it beforei introducing me at the program. There are two emotions that motivate the human spirit, I told them afterward. One is love (the reason I have been invited, the students who helped to organized, the professors who teach my books and the community people who came out) and fear–the blog entry.

—————————————————

[October 23, 2009]

My, what a deft close reader Castillo is!  She sloppily infers that your faithful servant is herself a grad student, and at Berkeley, inter alia, because Sweet Thang, my source, is.  (Sorry to embarrass you, baby — I know you’ve gone all monkish on our collective ass the last year or two, but remember, there were times when you used to spoil me ROTTEN.  You know you did.)

As if I’d be caught dead in either the profession or the place.  Baby, when you write you need to get paid for it.  And living anywhere but Silver Lake (with the possible exception of Williamsburg, as I remember it anyway) sounds to me like hideous exile in the sticks.  I won’t even cross the line into Los Feliz, kids — that shit’s bourgeois.

And let’s not even start on Castillo’s syntax and usage boners — I guess your faithful servant was on to something after all, huh, mean old bitch that I am, as you Beaming Betty Crockers out there are forever complaining.  (Can’t a girl be tough and respected?  Spare me your sugary, femmy, nurturing, first-wave feminist kitsch, ladies of the Left.)  And, holy cow, her smug, insecure, posturing screed of a post’s just rotten with typos — if I dared hand my editor a piece in this shape, let alone tried to post it as a finished article, she’d throw it back in my face.  And rightly so.

Poor dumb creature — Castillo earnestly volunteers, with more rhetoric than sense, that “there are two emotions that motivate the human spirit,” love and fear.  Er, I submit she’s forgetting the third, much more interesting one: amusement, which very vitally motivates my blog entry.  My own amusement, that is — I don’t claim it’s objectively witty, just subjectively, and gives me the relief of shouting, or at least bitching, when confronted with yet another instance of fools swindled by knaves, a capsule formula for the university literature departments these days.

And I assure you, I continue to be amused, rather than angered, by this scribbling ideologue: Could Castillo’s wrapping herself in the flag of Obama bin Laden and his dragqueen spouse be ANY more cloying and fatuous?  I almost puked at her servile, abject “our president” — what’s with this hushed tone of reverence?  Lick boots much, chica?  And how about her frantic, fawning haste to point out “Look, look, I’m important, I was a Regent’s Lecturer at Berkeley!” (long since a hollow credential, alas, after literature in the mainline universities was defined down to include the pulp fiction of agitproppers like Castillo).

There, there, don’t cry — have a nice cup of Insecuri-Tea, dear, you’ll feel better.  And maybe just a bit of cheese with your whine?  Gross!  It’s unseemly — she’s like a needy puppy, yapping and whining as it runs back and forth to trip you in the hall, peeing on itself and your shoes in eagerness to be validated.

Above: A portentous littérateur reads, to an adoring claque of spectators, at Berkeley.

And how ’bout that pompous, overblown mandarinism?  (Pretty sad day for the mandarinate, if this mis-speller and sentence-fragmenter’s what they’re reduced to revering.)  Castillo and the quasi-literates who buy her printed effluvia exhibit a suffocating, lifeless deference to social authority and received opinions that would make Alfred Lord Tennyson and Queen Victoria blush for shame.  “My books are taught in the universities!”  (Cut to extreme close-up of celestial mandarin strolling through Hall of Mirrors, making heavy-lidded, purse-lipped faces to the glass, huelepedos nose held skyward in paroxysm of smarm.)  Oh, madam, I do apologize — please, your ladyship, say no more, we’re all terribly impressed out here in the trenches, where literature, if it’s to be made at all, will actually get made.

Actually, if she wants to read what might very well, after a few decades of cool judgment intervene first, be judged literature, by a first-tier intellect and first-tier stylist who happens to be Mexican-American but isn’t, mercifully, far gone in terminal self-adoration, or a bought-and-paid-for political hack, Castillo has much, much to learn from the deft Richard Rodriguez, especially his essay collection Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father (best on style points) and Brown: The Last Discovery of America (best on substance).

Actual talent: Richard Rodriguez.

But, horrors!  To admit the greater merits of another writer like Rodriguez, whose writing, both as form and substance, soars out of the abysm of self-reference in which Castillo’s screeds are sunk, would be to move beyond squalling self-absorption, to grow a pair and quit blaming “society” for the fact that you can’t write, and that nobody but the closed circle of the professionally aggrieved, and the repressed white ladies in the English departments who enjoy missionarying and condescending to them, wants to read your prose.  If it’s only because Castillo’s a “minority” (and she’s sure as shit not a minority here in majority-Mexican L.A.), or if it’s only because “society” is holding her down, that she can’t write her way out of a wet paper sack, then how do we explain Rodriguez?

For Rodriguez’ writing transcends, rather than wallows in, the disadvantages he was born into.  In his marvelously complex life, the past isn’t disavowed, or lost — but neither is it sentimentalized, nourished, fostered, in a perennial bile of resentments, grievances, and unforgiven wrongs (Lucifer, anybody?) in the belly you croon to, day in, day out, that’s long since risen up your gorge and into your head and yellowed even your eyes, so that for decades you haven’t seen anything, anything at all, even the stars or the flowers, except through the jaundiced prism of your hatreds.

No, in Rodriguez that past is instead neutralized, sweetened, absorbed, turned into something rich and strange that no one’s quite sure of yet (but we’re sure that we like it, ’cause it’s stylish).  The narrative arc he began in Hunger of Memory, a mesmerizing account of how Rodriguez, like all of us who manage to write prose people not part of our clique care about, achieved escape velocity from private language and rocketed into public speech and citizenship, is still curving upward (let’s hope there’s a book-length sequel to Brown).  Rodriguez like all Americans worthy of the name is a self-fashioner where Castillo is a self-pitier; he long ago left the dank, close air of Berkeley, in whose English Department he did his grad work — apparently without ever writing an e-mail to colleagues beginning “you might of heard…” — for the bracing air of the city.  Was it inborn talent, or lots and lots of hard work?  Both?

Either way, Castillo’s camp of critical race theorists and moldy Marxists, forever blaming bad character on social and economic conditions — as if poor people were so poor they can’t pick up their yards — will live and die petulantly refusing to accept any explanation for inequalities of outcome that doesn’t always, suspiciously, circle back to mean, old, rich, male whitey.  (What pity I’m none of the above — well, okay, maybe I’m a little mean, just around the edges).  ‘Cause that might require these professional resenters, if only imaginatively, to exit the warm, solipsist womb of the university hall of mirrors, and this, we can infer, the comfortable charity-case scribblers, cozily cocooned in praise from the Lilliputians of the lit departments, will never bestir themselves to do.

Rodriguez, you see, was exposed to, and then eagerly immersed himself in, writers of times, places and situations other than his own — Gawd, he even read Protestant theology at Columbia — those crazy nuns, you see, trusted him to learn and generalize beyond his own parochial experience.  And now it’s paid big dividends in his subtly-toned, allusive, impersonal prose, and in a smart, well-balanced cultural criticism which may before long stand comparison with Carlyle’s and Arnold’s — because Rodriguez long ago disdained and bypassed the horrible self-ghettoization of “ethnic studies,” championed by soft-bigotry-of-low-expecations types like Castillo and her enablers in the lit departments.

Rodriguez’ great master Arnold: they share the long, bony, handsome head.

Speaking of which, shouldn’t having her deathless fictions put on a university lit syllabus be the kiss of death for little Miss Piss-on-the-Canon, in whose dim, dim horizon of expectations the horrid Barbara Cartland probably does loom as some “white privileged mystery writer,” a veritable mass-market Patricia Highsmith?  But don’t expect logical consistency or rhetorical coherence from this shameless self-promoter — Castillo’s blog post is far too busy tripping over itself in her haste to run and hide behind the skirts of (secular) Respectability, Piety and Orthodoxy, rushing to shut down any debate that might unsettle her and her claque’s easy, shallow certainties — and I’m reactionary?  Oh, this is too good!

Who’s the pious old fraud trying to convince, anyway?  I don’t think it’s really me, or you, candid reader — more like herself and the cowed claque of coffee shop radicals, parochial hippies and ugly introvert fat girls who turn out for her “readings.”  How exactly should I fear Castillo when she can’t even close-read another girl’s blog post, let alone a literary text?  Or excise the typos, solecisms and just plain infelicities from her own?  First cast out the beam from your own eye, hocicona, and then you’ll see clearly how to pull the mote outta mine.

Oh, and by the way: It’s not me but you, dear, who need some “soul-saving” — tsk, tsk, sounds rather Christian and reactionary of you, and don’t lefties pretend all human behavior’s caused by material condtions? — about Sarah Palin.  (Note the “h,” dim bulb — I only used the Italian spelling locally to cohere with “la divina.”  And must we hilariously infer that you took the epithet literally?  Oh dear; the dullness is just too painful.)  For as everyone on the right knows, and as all of you on the left dread, Sarah Palin has the body of a goddess (not the blood-drinking pre-Columbian ones you posture to revere, dear), and the raw energy and crowd appeal of a rock star, and she’s going to be the next President of the United States.

But then, you were probably just exercised ’cause you couldn’t construe my Latin about her.  That’s pretty embarrassing, no?  Shouldn’t a Latina be Latinaloquens?

Remember Dipthong?

How about the artist formally known as Prince?

Know why he changed his name? Because he was trapped in an onerous contract with the label who “published” his music. Here’s how Wikipedia sums it up:

In 1993, during negotiations regarding the release of Prince’s album The Gold Experience, a legal battle ensued between Warner Bros. and Prince over the artistic and financial control of Prince’s output. During the lawsuit, Prince appeared in public with the word “slave” written on his cheek. Prince explained his name change as follows:

“The first step I have taken towards the ultimate goal of emancipation from the chains that bind me to Warner Bros. was to change my name from Prince to the Love Symbol. Prince is the name that my mother gave me at birth. Warner Bros. took the name, trademarked it, and used it as the main marketing tool to promote all of the music that I wrote. The company owns the name Prince and all related music marketed under Prince. I became merely a pawn used to produce more money for Warner Bros… I was born Prince and did not want to adopt another conventional name. The only acceptable replacement for my name, and my identity, was the Love Symbol, a symbol with no pronunciation, that is a representation of me and what my music is about. This symbol is present in my work over the years; it is a concept that has evolved from my frustration; it is who I am. It is my name.”

Warner Bro. finally severed its contract with Dipthong and the public cheered. This year, Dipthong is self-publishing his songs from his own website:

On January 3, 2009, a new website LotusFlow3r.com was launched, streaming some of the recently-aired material (“Crimson and Clover”, “(There’ll Never B) Another Like Me” and “Here Eye Come”) and promising opportunities to listen to and buy music by Prince and guests, watch videos and buy concert tickets for future events. On January 31, Prince released two more songs on LotusFlow3r.com: “Disco Jellyfish”, and “Another Boy”. “Chocolate Box”, “A Colonized Mind”, and “All This Love” have since been released on the website.

Dipthong isn’t alone. A number of better known bands, like Radiohead, are increasingly severing their ties with the music industry (their publishers). Meanwhile, up and coming garage bands are “publishing” themselves on You-tube, distributing their own MP3s, promoting their own digital albums and printing their own CDs.

So, back in 2006, while Slushpile.Net can write a post entitled Why People Hate Self-published Authors, the responses to the post oddly sidestep the question of perception (which is what the post is all about). Whether or not Slushpile believes Indie publishing, for example, is the same as self-publishing, the perception of most listeners is not so refined. People don’t hate self-published bands or musicians even when they, mistakenly or not, assume they are self-published. Readers don’t hate self-published authors or poets. That’s sheer nonsense. Readers, if they hate anything, hate bad music, bad literature and bad art, but that’s separate from self-publishing.

The public s is always ready for good music and good literature.

They don’t care how it ends up in their hands.

So why the double standard? No one sniffs about “self-published bands” and yet that is precisely what many musicians are doing. They are self-publishing. Their version of  self-publishing might be a couple hundred dollars worth of studio and audio software, and maybe a decent webcam. And where, I ask, are the patronizing posts by bloggers and other musicians warning them that, without a producer and label, they’re headed for mediocrity at best, or worse, derision? They may be out there, but they’re drowned out by the public. Maybe times have changed since 2006?

Substitute editor for producer and publisher for label.

You get the idea. While bands are eagerly exploring ways to publish and disseminate their own work, poets who self-publish are treated like wayward children.

Meanwhile, the irony of bloggers sniffing about the self-published seems to be an irony universally (from what I’ve seen) unacknowledged and unexamined. How many self-published articles are there about the pitfalls of self-publishing? I can’t be bothered to count. They serve as their own best examples of what can go wrong.

The way it used to be

In the old days, the Elizabethans for instance, there was no established copyright law. Any play or poem that was popular and unpublished was a prime target for a printer. Many scholars assert that Shakespeare’s sonnets were published without his permission, by Thomas Thorpe. Plays by Jonson, Webster, Middleton and others were frequently printed without their knowledge or approval. A playgoer (or actor), with a good memory, might transcribe a play for a printer. Many “corrupt” copies appeared. The most famous example, perhaps, being from the Bad Quarto Shakespeare’s Hamlet:

Hamlet To be, or not to be, I there’s the point,
To Die, to sleepe, is that all? I all:
No, to sleepe, to dreame, I mary there it goes,
For in that dreame of death, when wee awake,
And borne before an euerlasting Iudge,
From whence no passenger euer retur’nd,
The vndiscouered country, at whose sight
The happy smile, and the accursed damn’d.
But for this, the ioyfull hope of this,
Whol’d beare the scornes and flattery of the world,
Scorned by the right rich, the rich curssed of the poore?
The widow being oppressd, the orphan wrong’d;
The taste of hunger, or a tirants raigne,
And thousand more calamities besides,
To grunt and sweate vnder this weary life,
When that he may his full Quietus make,
With a bare bodkin, who would this indure,
But for a hope of something after death?
Which pusles the braine, and doth confound the sence,
Which makes vs rather beare those euilles we haue,
Than flie to others that we know not of.
I that, O this conscience makes cowardes of vs all,
Lady in thy orizons, be all my sinnes remembred.

While some scholars argue that this was an early version, most ascribe this passage to poor memory. The bad quarto comes from 1603, published by the booksellers Nicholas Ling and John Trundell, printed by Valentine Simmes.  (See Wikipedia for more information.) The printer, no doubt, was eager to make some profit from a very popular play.

A Note on the Folio introduction by Heminge and Condell: What’s so fascinating about the brief introduction to Shakespeare’s first folio (and something that, to my knowledge, no other scholar has commented on) is the implication, possibly, that had “[Shakespeare] himself… lived” he would “have set forth, and overseen his owne writings.” One frequently hears scholars question why Shakespeare showed no interest in publishing his own works, seemingly disinterested in his own literary heritage. But this impression may not be true. Shakespeare would surely have known of Jonson’s effort to publish his own folio. They were friends, colleagues and rivals. The impression that Heminge and Condell give (men who knew Shakespeare intimately) was that Shakespeare intended to self-publish his works. His death seems to have been unexpected by all.

For all intent and purposes, a writer’s work was public domain the moment his words spilled from his brain. Anything he wrote was fair game if he did not, himself, self publish. Shakespeare’s friend and contemporary, Ben Jonson, wasn’t about to let his hard labor become the catalog of an unscrupulous printer. The loss of profit to Jonson and his troupe was bad enough, but Jonson had other reasons. He was proud of his work. Jonson lavished tremendous care to make sure the text of his plays were clean and elegant. He was a bricklayer’s son but he wanted to be remembered as a great poet and dramatist. And Ben Jonson was, as far as I know, the first self published poet to issue a collected edition of works and who wasn’t also a member of the nobility. Ben Jonson’s folios, published in 1616, treated his plays as serious literature, rather than ephemera. His folio possibly and probably served as an inspiration to whoever subsidized the publishing of Shakespeare’s plays (1623) – most scholars credit Shakespeare’s colleagues with the effort, but Germaine Greer argues that while Shakespeare’s colleagues may have assembled the plays, it was Shakespeare’s widow, Anne Hathaway, who actually subsidized the printing of the First Folio (an argument that appeals to me). In any case, the first folio was effectively self-published. Jonson knew that if he wanted his text printed cleanly and professionally, he had to do it himself.

Here is how the Encyclopedia Britannica sums up the free-for-all:

Publication of drama was left, along with much of the poetry and the popular literature, to publishers who were not members of the Stationers’ Company and to the outright pirates, who scrambled for what they could get and but for whom much would never have been printed. To join this fringe, the would-be publisher had only to get hold of a manuscript, by fair means or foul, enter it as his copy (or dispense with the formality), and have it printed. Just such a man was Thomas Thorpe, the publisher of Shakespeare’s sonnets (1609); the mysterious “Mr. W.H.” in the dedication is thought by some to be the person who procured him his copy. The first Shakespeare play to be published (Titus Andronicus, 1594) was printed by a notorious pirate, John Danter, who also brought out, anonymously, a defective Romeo and Juliet (1597), largely from shorthand notes made during performance. Eighteen of the plays appeared in “good” and “bad” quartos before the great First Folio in 1623. A typical imprint of the time, of the “good” second quarto of Hamlet (1604), reads: “Printed by I.R. for N.L. and are to be sold at his shoppe under Saint Dunston’s Church in Fleetstreet”; i.e., printed by James Roberts for Nicholas Ling. For the First Folio, a large undertaking of more than 900 pages, a syndicate of five was formed, headed by Edward Blount and William Jaggard; the Folio was printed, none too well, by William’s son, Isaac.

What’s interesting is that it wasn’t until the 19th century that publishing became the industry that we recognize today. Britannica states:

The functions peculiar to the publisher—i.e., selecting, editing, and designing the material; arranging its production and distribution; and bearing the financial risk or the responsibility for the whole operation—often merged in the past with those of the author, the printer, or the bookseller. With increasing specialization, however, publishing became, certainly by the 19th century, an increasingly distinct occupation. Most modern Western publishers purchase printing services in the open market, solicit manuscripts from authors, and distribute their wares to purchasers through shops, mail order, or direct sales.

Walt Whitman came of age during this transition to modern publishing. Nonetheless, he self-published Leaves of Grass, and though he never became wealthy as a result, he became a nationally recognized poet. Today, he’s known as one of America’s greatest poets. Emily Dickinson didn’t try to court editors or publishers after her initial negative reception. After she died, her family friend Mabel Todd, and niece, Martha Dickinson, edited and published Dickinson’s poetry — in essence, they self-published. The first nationally known African American Poet, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, also self-published.  And here’s a list from John Kremer’s website, the the self-published hall of fame.

Margaret Atwood, L. Frank Baum, William Blake, Ken Blanchard, Robert Bly, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Lord Byron, Willa Cather, Pat Conroy, Stephen Crane, e.e. cummings, W.E.B. DuBois, Alexander Dumas, T.S. Eliot, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Benjamin Franklin, Zane Grey, Thomas Hardy, E. Lynn Harris, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ernest Hemingway, Robinson Jeffers, Spencer Johnson, Stephen King, Rudyard Kipling, Louis L’Amour, D.H. Lawrence, Rod McKuen, Marlo Morgan, John Muir, Anais Nin, Thomas Paine, Tom Peters, Edgar Allen Poe, Alexander Pope, Beatrix Potter, Ezra Pound, Marcel Proust, Irma Rombauer, Carl Sandburg, Robert Service, George Bernard Shaw, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Upton Sinclair, Gertrude Stein, William Strunk, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Henry David Thoreau, Leo Tolstoi, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, and Virginia Woolf.

The tradition of self-publishing is longer (if not richer) than the history of modern publishing. So when Slushpile.Net can ask the question: “And what is the ‘long and valued tradition’ exactly?” The answer is in that list of authors. Readers are reading self-published poets and authors every day.

The mediocrity myth

So, given self-publishing’s history, why do so many bloggers and pundits act as though self-publishing were a new development? — a modern day smear on the “tradition” of publishing? Why do they wring their hands warning us against an inevitable onslaught of mediocrity?

Probably because, along with examples of great literature, there are many examples of abject mediocrity.

But self-publishers hardly corner the market on mediocrity. Editors and publishers have published gobs of proof-read, clean and well bound mediocrity. There seems to be an unspoken assumption that if one has the title editor, then one is qualified to publish literature and naturally knows the difference between good literature and bad.

History disagrees.

Being a good editor is like being a good poet or novelist. Great editors elevate their profession to an art form. However ( just as there are only a handful of truly inspired poets and novelists in any given generation) there are only a handful of truly inspired editors and publishers. All the rest range from qualified to truly mediocre. (The same is true of critics, by the way. Many critics probably wouldn’t recognize a great author or poet if one bit them on their derrière.) Birds of a feather flock together. A mediocre editor, unable to perceive the difference between mediocre and good literature will publish reams of mediocre literature fully convinced that his dossier of poets and authors is the creme de la creme and that his or her judgment is unparalleled. A mediocre critic will sing the praises of a mediocre author and poet. A committee of editors is no better. If committees were insurance against poor judgment, the USSR would have conquered the world. While a good editor can be indispensable, they can’t transmute lead into gold (if they can even recognize gold).

“Between 1908 and 1930 the Rev. E.E. Bradford published some eleven volumes of verse in praise of adolescents and young men, each of which received respectful, if occasionally guarded, notices from the national and provincial press. Dr. Bradford was, I suspect, a uniquely English phenomena, in that no only had he managed to convince himself that courting adolescent boys was the purest activity known to man (much purer than pursuing women, for example), but he succeeded in getting the press to enter into a conspiracy of polite silence as to the obvious tendency of his verses. ‘His books were widely reviewed and widely praised, never, as far as I can judge, with the slightest hint of irony’, writes Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy. Here is The Westminster Review, but it is absolutely typical, on Passing the Love of Women: “Friendship between man and youth form the theme of many of Dr. Bradford’s poems. He is alive to the beauty of unsullied youth as was Plato.” [The Joys of Bad Verse p.293]

This is what happens when a mediocre author is met by mediocre critics. The book, The Joys of Bad Verse, is replete with other examples. And the collusion of mediocrity with mediocrity is as vibrant as it ever was. A reader can look at the back matter of any book, at any number of reviews, and be forgiven if they conclude that the literary world is awash with geniuses.

It takes herculean mediocrity to break through this morass. William Topaz McGonagall was one such poet, lovingly discussed in Parson’s book and elsewhere. It has been famously said of McGonagall: “He was so giftedly bad that he backed unwittingly into genius.”

• Just because an author is published by a publisher doesn’t mean their work is any less mediocre.
• And just because an author is self-published doesn’t mean an author’s work is any more mediocre.

All the while self-published authors are treated like wayward children. They are warned against sloppy editing and told  that they will have to promote their books without the aid of a publisher’s deep pockets. ‘Don’t expect easy success’ – they say.  (As though this thought had never occurred to the self-published author). If one is going to spend hundreds (sometimes thousands of dollars) publishing ones own work, these issues have indeed occurred to them. On the other hand, in fairness to bloggers, they don’t necessarily have to think about quality issues or “return on investment”. Most bloggers self-publish for free. They can afford to be mediocre, so maybe these constraints really are news to them.

Will there be mediocrity? Yes.

But so what? Great art, whether in poetry, music or art, was and is inspired by mediocrity too.

And, to be honest, for the majority of readers, poetry doesn’t have to be great to be enjoyed. Novels don’t have to be works of art to be enjoyed. The dread (that authors and poets might not be vetted by an editor) is based on an uninformed knowledge of literary history and an unfounded faith in the talents of editors and publishers. There are good editors and there are bad editors.

Why spend so much time discussing mediocrity? Because the idea of mediocrity and self-publishing is tightly interwoven and false. One frequently hears that the only reason an author choses to self-publish is because they couldn’t be “legitimately” published (they’re mediocre). Even a cursory glance at a list of the well-known authors who have self-published should dispel this myth. There are a variety of reasons an author may chose to publish his or her own work. And just because an editor rejects an author’s work  doesn’t mean the work is mediocre. It may mean the editor is mediocre. Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time was rejected more than 26 times.  There’s a balanced view to be struck. While self-publishing has bequeathed the world plenty of mediocre literature, so has “legitimate” publishing.

Types of Self-Publishing

Rather than reinvent the wheel – here is Wikipedia’s overview as of October 8, 2009:

Vanity publishing

Vanity press

Vanity publishing is a pejorative term, referring to a publisher contracting with authors regardless of the quality and marketability of their work. They appeal to the writer’s vanity and desire to become a published author, and make the majority of their money from fees rather than from sales. Vanity presses may call themselves joint venture or subsidy presses; but in a vanity press arrangement, the author pays all of the cost of publication and undertakes all of the risk.

In his guide How to Publish Yourself author Peter Finch states that such presses are “to be avoided at all costs.” Because there is no independent entity making a judgment about their quality, and because many of them are published at a loss, vanity press works are often perceived as deserving skepticism from distributors, retailers, or readers. Some writers knowingly and willingly enter into such deals, placing more importance on getting their work published than on profiting from it.

Subsidy publishers

A subsidy publisher distributes books under its own imprint, and is therefore selective in deciding which books to publish. Subsidy publishers, like vanity publishers, take payment from the author to print and bind a book, but contribute a portion of the cost as well as adjunct services such as editing, distribution, warehousing, and some degree of marketing. Often, the adjunct services provided are minimal. As with commercial publishers, the books are owned by the publisher and remain in the publisher’s possession, with authors receiving royalties for any copies that are sold. Most subsidy publishers also keep a portion of the rights from any book that they publish. Generally, authors have little control over production aspects such as cover design.

True self-publishing

True self-publishing means authors undertake the entire cost of publication themselves, and handle all marketing, distribution, storage, etc. All rights remain with the author, the completed books are the writer’s property, and the writer gets all the proceeds of sales. Self-publishing can be more cost-effective than vanity or subsidy publishing and can result in a much higher-quality product, because authors can put every aspect of the process out to bid rather than accepting a preset package of services.

Print on Demand (POD)

Print on demand

Short run printing is also called Print-on-demand (POD) or Print Quantity Needed (PQN). POD publishers generally do not screen submissions prior to publication, and many are web-based. They accept uploaded digital content as Microsoft Word documents, text files, or RTF files, as printing services for anyone who is willing to pay. Authors choose from a selection of packages, or design a unique printing package that meets their requirements. For an additional cost, a POD publisher may offer services such as book jacket design with professional art direction; content, line, and copy-editing; indexing; proofreading; and marketing and publicity. Some POD publishers offer publication as e-books in addition to hardcover and paperback. Some POD publishers will offer ISBN (International Standard Book Numbers) service, which allows a title to be searchable and listed for sale on websites.

Many critics dismiss POD as another type of vanity press. One major difference is that POD publishers have a connection to retail outlets like Amazon and Books in Print that vanity presses generally do not.

• Another comparison is offered at Self-publishing.org.
• For a more thorough treatment than either of these (and with links to other articles) try Writer’s Digest.

Which do I recommend?

I don’t.

Let others who have had more experience do the recommending. There are some helpful websites I have listed below. None of them are ideal. The best information is from those who have actually gone through the process, and I’ve included some of their comments from Slushpile.net. (I self-published but that was almost ten years ago.)

I’m also attempting to create a new website, Self-Published Poets, devoted to poets who have self-published. It’s still in a formative stage. The purpose is to provide a centralized catalog where poets can find each other, find each others work – and readers can find us. The poetry of academia has its own network. Self-published poets need theirs. The point of this post was to spell out why self-publishers shouldn’t be embarrassed. I’ve self-published. I’m proud of it. I have books to sell and I consider myself to be in damned good company. Ben Jonson? Walt Whitman? E.E. Cummings? Mark Twain? Count me in.

I do think that self-publishing should be strongly considered by poets, perhaps more so than by authors writing in other genres. If a novelist is a good novelist, national ambition isn’t unreasonable. The broader public still seeks out and enjoys a good novel. I can’t imagine that the self-published novelist could ever match the promotional heft of a real publishing house – or realize the same financial gains.

The same can be said for children’s writers and YA novelists. If writers in these genres choose to self-publish, I’m all for it, but self-publishing should probably be considered a starting point rather than the end game. Again, nothing matches the reach of a traditional publishing house. They want to make money. And if you demonstrate that your writing can make money, they will want your work.

• Self-publishing is a business decision.

That’s the bottom line, or so it seems to me. If it makes sense to self-publish from a business standpoint; if you have a plan and the commitment to follow through, go for it.

As for poetry…

The reading public is still buying lots of poetry, but not the verse of contemporary poets. Contemporary poets like to blame the public, but I blame the poets. In either case, a nationwide audience for a given book of poetry is a long shot.  If you have that ambition, I recommend genius – either as poet or self-promoter.

Short of that, if you can land a job in academia (a college or university), that’s probably the best way to advance your career. You have an instant audience (your students) and you will be expected to give readings. (The college or university will, in effect, promote you if they think you’re an asset.) And being a poet in academia has the added benefit of an instant network (both good and bad).   Another common option is to submit your book manuscript to contests. Many new poets see their first book published by winning such contests. Alternately, a small press might consider you if you have made a name for yourself in poetry journals and chapbooks.

These are all legitimate and time consuming ways to pursue a published book. But no matter which route you pursue , small presses reach a comparatively small audience. Don’t expect to make a living from your book’s proceeds.

If you can afford it, think about self-publishing. It’s a reasonable option for poets. If you’re energetic and committed, you can probably do as much for your poetry as any small press.  But don’t take my word for it. Check out the poets at Self-Published Poets. See what they say and take a look at their books.

Noteworthy Websites and Comments

• Of all the links provided (and if you only read one) read Robert Bagg’s  essay, the last one listed.
  

Elderberry Press

“The prejudice against a writer who dares take the initiative with his book after a thumbs down from folks who never read a line of it also makes selling self-published books and small press books difficult.

Naida is right. The system is corrupt as is the world. Merit has nothing to with what is published. After spending a year sweating blood to write a novel, tossing it into a sock drawer isn’t easy if you know it’s good.

I published my own novel years ago and have since published two hundred books by other authors. It’s been a great adventure and I’m always looking for new writers to read and publish.” (…)

Bridge House Books

“THE TERM ‘SELF PUBLISHER’ MISSES THE MARK FOR MANY. My company has 5 titles in print – books written by me as well as others. I pay all costs. My books are distributed nationally. I hire professional editors and graphic artists. I use offset printers, not POD (used it once but the inflated price/unit hurt sales). My income after expenses is far more than most mid-list novelists in big houses. I spend beaucoup on printing and reprinting, but I’ve been in the black since the first six weeks. I employ an associate to handle much of the business. Despite these costs, a substantial savings CD informs me that readers like my books. To my other writers, I am a publisher (are they supposed to say, “I’m published by a self publisher?”—that would mean themselves). After I launch the 3rd novel in my trilogy, Bridge House Books will continue to publish fine literature.” (…)

Self Publishing

I unsubscribed from a trade author’s posts to my Amazon Plog today after he quoted from and linked to the blog post of another trade fiction writer beating up on self publishers. I’m not giving either of their names because I don’t want to generate publicity for them, but I thought the basic phenomena is worthy of comment. Why would a couple of successful trade authors feel they have the either the need or the expertise to write about self publishing? (…)

Self Publishing 2.0

“[I] recently published a blog post on why trade authors, in particular, hate self publishers. Part of it is sincere in the sense that they are trying to prevent people from getting ripped off by author services companies, but a lot of it has to do with the belief that self publishers haven’t earned the right to call themselves “authors”.

I’ve done both, and self publishing is more work and often more rewarding than being a trade author. Everybody needs some lucky breaks along the way for either career. Too many trade authors come to believe that they could start over tommorow with another name and no phone numbers or e-mails of editors and agents, and be right back on top in no time. They forget that timing is everything and times change.” (…)

Ben Jonson
A good life is a main argument.

After reading Jonson’s “On My First Son,” determine what the speaker means by “why / Will man lament the state he should envy,” and does the speaker truly wish for death?

A sad story, this saint’s by all acounts: he was one who came to an especially grisly end, making him thereafter identifiable in mediaeval sculpture by a figure of a man holding his own skin in folds over one arm. Not an especially cheerful image, so let’s move on to happier ones.  St Bartholomew, patron saint of tanners (that skin again – sorry; but it’s hard to escape it) and also the sick in certain circumstances (relax, we’re not going there). His jour de fête falls on the 24 August, and in London a great fair was held to commemorate it in and around Smithfield and the neighbouring Spital of Saint Bartholomew for centuries until its suppression in 1855. Ben Jonson’s play, Bartholomew Fair (1614), deals with one such event.

In France the Festival has tragic and bloody associations, as it was on the Eve of Saint Bartholomew that the massacre of Huguenots began in Paris in 1572, the beginning signalled by the steady tolling of a bell with the atrocities continuing into the next day, the Saint’s Day itself, and beyond. For from Paris, the carnage spread into 10 other cities during the following couple of months. Patrice Chéreau’s vivid and masterly 1994 film, la Reine Margot

Isabelle Adjani as Marguerite de Valois in La Reine Margot

(based on the novel of the same name by Alexandre Dumas) covers the period from the lead-up to the massacre to its aftermath.  The parallels with Bosnia are implicit, but never overdone.  It was one of those seismic events in history which, later, appear to mark a crucial turning point. Things were certainly never quite the same again.

But we are not here to discuss the gruesome turbulence of the 16th century.  And happily the fact remains that this festival day is – and otherwise usually has been – one where producers and buyers meet, friends and neighbours gather, good food and drink is bought and consumed, and there is music and dancing.  Congeniality and conviviality meet commerce.

And that’s definitely the interpretation and the practice of observing this festival in Nice. Here an entire weekend has been devoted to a fair showcasing both local produce and patrimoine, ‘la Fête des Produits du Compté de Nice’ – la Fiera de la San Bertomieu,  if you’re a resident of Nice or the arrière pays.  For two days Vieux Nice turned into one great marketplace,  a riot of colour and display.  All this variety merged into one great shout of joy and pride in what the area has to offer and celebrate.  And there’s an awful lot!  Food for the body, with olive oil; honey;  cheese; charcuterie; bread; socca, and

les vins de Bellet

finally les vins de Bellet - it’s been a good year for them, with a cool, wet winter and spring followed by a long, hot summer.   Food for the mind, with books on local history, language and culture, and the many and varied offerings of  local assocations.   Handy, decorative items handcrafted by local potters or wood turners,  adhering to William Morris’s dictum that a house should contain only that which is both useful and beautiful.  The riches on view are staggering.

streetcorner in Vieux Nice

Easy, then, to wander for hours, viewing, tasting – buying, even!  Stopping for a chat with stallholders at a moment creux, learning about their life’s work while they await further custom. And throughout the music of the mountains is a constant accompaniment to the stallholders’ hopes, the prospective customers’ caprices.  The sounds are rich and varied, ranging from the soulful singing of male voice choirs to the jauntiness and energy of dance music.  Dancers are out in force, including the wonderful troupe Nice la Bella, composed of handsome men and women in colourful traditional costume performing with smiling gusto the dances of the region to the thump of drumbeats and the swirl of accordeons. They draw huge – and hugely appreciative -  crowds everywhere they go, always finishing off their show with a heartfelt rendition of Nissa la Bella, the local anthem.

And that does, indeed, seem a fitting – and fittingly upbeat – end to a celebration of all that is real, authentic, natural, bio ...  ours! Nissa la Bella, a hymn celebrating the land and life itself.  So, all together now: “Nissa! Nissssaaaaaaaaaaaa! Nissa la BELL-AAAAA!”

The names listed above are members of the Franklin/Starnes, CAP Goliath Team committed to the extermination of the Task Force for the Homeless. They will have to wait a little longer for homeless people to be without water at the Peachtree-Pine shelter. The next payment of $5,338.90 is due on July 25. By nothing short of a miracle, the $8,400 due on July 16 was paid. A minister wrote a personal check of $1000. A business person sent $2000. A committed young woman raised $2500 from her Buckhead neighbors. A prominant church through the diligence of its senior minister electronically mailed $5000 to the city’s Department of Water Mismanagement. An additional $1000 came through the Task Force’s PayPal. Incidentally, four donors were Task Force staff who have not been paid for the last three months.

The first time the city turned off the water at Peachtree-Pine was the first week of December 2008, Christmas season. Central Atlanta Progress’s David E. Wardell upon hearing that the water had been cut off, exclaimed, “Great news!” Wardell sets the tone for Team Goliath. To a person the team members are giddy knowing 550 homeless people have no water to drink. CAP contradicts itself in its philosophy of panhandling when it gives us permission to give a bottle of water, never money, of course. Sadness, yea moans, rippled through city hall when word came that the water would NOT be turned off on July 16. The bankrupt city needs every dollar it can steal; however, more than stealing its greatest thrill for Team Goliath is witholding water from thirsty homeless people. These leaders fulfill Isaiah 32.6, “For the fool speaks folly…the hungry he leaves empty and from the thirsty he withholds water.” Why Bonnie Ware, the memo writer was seen to wipe a tear as she groaned, “And those nasty people will use our water to flush; it’s just outrageous.”

Recent developments reveal Shirley Franklin and Debi Starnes to be pawns on CAP’s chess board. They are the cupbearers of Central Atlanta Progress who in turn obey the good ole boy power structure that has ruled Georgia and Atlanta since Sherman did his thing. The chilling truth that the sickness of the Franklin/Starnes yoke (and they are sick) when gone will be replaced by other cupbearers. A sweet irony: the Task Force has gumpteen deep throats in the bowels of City Hall. Oodles of city workers even right there under Rachet Rob’s nose deplore the actions of their own department, the Department of Water Mismanagement. Words of encouragement like “We’re pulling for you.” come regularly from city workers.

The word “cupbearer” brings to mind a scene in literature that clarifies the city’s oppressing the poor. Mark Twain depicted Elizabeth I’s court in a piece he called, “1601.” This satirical piece is narrated by the Queen’s cupbearer. Believing himself to be of noble blood, the cupbearer is appalled that the Queen has invited low-lifes to gather in the court. These undesireables are writers, actors, swashbucklers such as Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Francis Bacon and Walter Raleigh. Members of the court are worthies such as the Duchess of Bilgewater and Lady Alice Dilberry.

The cupbearer voices his repulsion: “I being her majesty’s cupbearer, had no choice but to remain and behold rank forgotten, and the high having conversation with the low as though they were on equal terms. And the world will hear of this great scandal.”

The cupbearer in Twain’s “1601″ makes everything clear. CAP’s initiating the plan to turn off the water at a shelter on Peachtree Street is not about water. It’s about the Duchess of Bilgewater. It’s cupbearer philosophy. It’s about CAP exclusionism. It’s about the high loathing the low. It’s about plantation thinking assessing the fact that 550 African-American males have a Peachtree Street address. Throw in “homeless males” and appears the perfect storm. This CAP zeal is about the privileged never having to stoop for the unwanted. Could we not safely add to Rachet Rob “I’ll turn your water off” Hunter the title of the Duke of Bilgewater. God rest you Mark Twain. How you would love Team Goliath.

Ben Jonson’s birthdate –
a rogue, playwright, and poet –
“O Rare Ben Jonson”

Word: inure [in-yoor, i-noor] v. 1. to accustom to hardship, difficulty, pain, etc.; toughen or harden; habituate (usually fol. by to): inured to cold 2. to come into use; take or have effect 3. to become beneficial or advantageous

Birthday: Ben Jonson (1572), Richard Strauss (1864), Vince Lombardi (1913), Gene Wilder (1933), Frank Beard (1949), Joe Montana (1956), Hugh Laurie (1959), Peter Dinklage (1969), Ryan Dunn (1977), Joshua Jackson (1979), Shia LeBeouf (1986)

Quotation: Just because everything is different doesn’t mean anything has changed. – Irene Peter

Tune: Just got Noble Beast by Andrew Bird. So far, I’m digging “Anonanimal” the most.

Gallimaufry: Trent Reznor, one of the most active musicians on Twitter, may be hanging up his social networking spurs. On the official Nine Inch Nails website “Forum” section, Reznor had this to say, “I will be tuning out of the social networking sites because at the end of the day it’s now doing more harm than good in the bigger picture and the experiment seems to have yielded a result. Idiots rule.” Indeed they do, but did he really need Twitter to grasp that concept? ∞ The NFL (National Football League) is ready to play hardball with the NFLPA (National Football League Players’ Association).  With relatively-new NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and brand new NFLPA head DeMaurice Smith not wanting to look weak in their first head-to-head matchup, it should be fun to watch as the two groups square off over revenue sharing. Because, really, in a terrible economy, I can’t imagine what people would love to see more than insanely rich people fighting over money. My advice? Settle this one quickly and quietly, fellas. ∞ It’s hard to believe 10 years ago this month, Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker released Napster. I caught onto Napster really early, completely by accident. (A girl at a bar told me about it.) Once I found it, I was completely hooked. Sure, by today’s standards, it was clunky and time-consuming, but for a music junkie like me, it was internet crack cocaine. The day it got shut down, I didn’t light a candle or anything. But still. It sucked. I’ve never been able to bring myself to try the new pay version.   

Incoming: Relax, will ya? Be patient.

• October 14 2009 – New Post John Donne: His Sonnet IX • Forgive & Forget
• May 18 2009 – The explication of the sonnet, hopefully, has been tweaked and improved.

UnDonne

I was looking for another poem to analyze. Since there’s been so much interest in my post on Donne’s Death Be Not Proud, I thought I would  look at another of his Holy Sonnets, the famous Batter My Heart. The first thing I did was to Google the sonnet. And here’s what I found out: All of the sites I have looked at so far, offer readers a “modernized” version of the sonnet. Not only is the spelling modernized, but also the punctuation.

This is a disaster.

Here’s why: The Elizabethans used spelling and punctuation as signposts (spelling hadn’t been standardized) indicating how their lines should be read. Unfortunately, modernizations of the sonnet overlook this, misunderstanding the reasons Elizabethans wrote and spelled the way they did. It wasn’t haphazard. The end result is that all the modernizations I’ve seen so far, completely and devastatingly erase the clues to Donne’s intentions.

So, I’ve used an Oxford edition of Donne’s Poetical Works which retains the original spellings and punctuation. It falls just short of being a facsimile edition. This is the version I’ve scanned and once we go through it together, it will all make sense.

• Note: [June 4 2009 - As I sit at the Dartmouth Bookstore] Another edition which respects Donne’s punctuation and your ability to get it, is the Everyman Library’s edition of The Complete English Poems. Astonishingly, the Norton Critical Edition of John Donne’s Poetry does not. Dickson edits the poem inconsistently, choosing to note some of Donne’s markings while ignoring others, all while giving the reader no indication that he is doing so. I don’t recommend this edition and if instructors want you to buy it, point out the poor editing or point them to my website.

Note, if any of this terminology is unfamiliar to you, you might consider reading my post on Iambic Pentameter and the Basics, first. I’ve also spent aless time explaining the reasons why an Iambic Pentameter poem should be read as such. My previous posts, such as my previous post on Donne, go into more of the historical reasons for conservative readings of meter.

Donne

First, by way of comparison, here is the modernized version (as typically found on the web) side by side with the “facsimile”. I’ve highlighted the crucial punctuation, in the original, missing in the modernization.

In each of the highlights, the apostrophes indicate the use of Synalopeha, a form of elision where, “at the juncture of two vowels one is elided” [Sister Miriam Joseph: Shakespeare's Use of the Arts of Language p. 52]. Without these indications no modern reader of poetry, having grown up on free verse, would suspect that something was missing. They would simply read the lines as anapests, completely ignoring the meter and Donne’s intentions. So, they would read third line as follows:

That I| may rise, |and stand, |o’erthrow |me, and bend

When it should read something like this:

That I| may rise, |and stand, |o’erthrow |me’nd bend

There’s room for debate as to whether this sort of slurring or elision works. There were readers in Donne’s own day who frequently scratched their heads. But what’s indisputable, is that Donne intended us to elide these words. He was writing Iambic Pentameter – still a new meter. So many anapests in the span of a single sonnet would have been derided as incompetent. In my last post on Donne, examining his other Holy Sonnet, Death be not Proud, you’ll find the following:

Ben Jonson was quoted as having said: “Donne, for not keeping of accent, deserved hanging.” Even two hundred years later, literary historian Henry Hallam considered Donne the “most inharmonius of our versifiers, if he can be said to have deserved such a name by lines too rugged to seem metre.” Right up to 1899, Francis Thompson was describing Donne’s poetry as “punget, clever, with metre like a rope all hanks and knots.”

Thomas Carew, a contemporary, wrote in his elegy to Donne:

Our stubborne language bends, made only fit
With her tough-thick-rib’d hoopes to gird about
Thy Giant phansie

Carew praised Donne’s meter for it’s “masculine expression”.  Dryden, on the other hand, wished that Donne “had taken care of his words, and of his numbers [numbers was a popular term for meter] eschewing in particular his habitual rough cadence. (For most of these quotes, I’m indebted to  C.A. Partrides Everyman’s Library introduction to Donne’s complete poems.)

The Holy Trinity Masaccio, 1426-27 Fresco, Santa Maria Novella, Florence, Italy.

In Donne’s 14th Holy Sonnet, “thick ribb’d”, spondaic lines like “but knocke, |breathe, shine“  or “to break, | blowe, burn” were  the lines that troubled readers the most. Yet lines like these are what Donne needed to convey the energetic emotional conviction behind his rhetoric – anger, contempt, desperation, etc…

Back to the differences between the old and new printings:

Notice how Donne spells usurped as  usurpt. This wasn’t because he didn’t know how to spell. He was telling us that the word was to be treated as bi-syllabic, not tri-syllabic. In other words, it shouldn’t be pronounced usurpèd.  He apostrophizes betroth’d for the same reason. He doesn’t want us to pronounce it as betrothèd. Now, you might object that since no one pronounces it like this anymore anyway, why preserve this spelling. The reason is that you will miss the words that he does want us to pronounce tri-syllabically – like “beloved fain”.

Yet dearely’I love you,’and would belov|èd faine,

So, it’s not that he remembered how to spell beloved, it’s that he wanted us to pronounce the -ed ending. And it’s the reason why “responsible” modern editions add the accent grave over the è when they modernize the rest of the spelling. Now, on to the sonnet. Here it is:

The Sonnet

The First Quatrain: Batter me!

As with modern day religious leaders, Donne’s carnality and spirituality were never far removed. Donne, at least, wasn’t hypocritical about it. He made great poetry out of the conflict.

Batter my heart, three person’d God; for, you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow mee,’and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new.

Three-person’d God refers to the holy trinity. The battering ram was an old, if not ancient, weapon by the time Donne wrote his sonnet, but it was still a very effective and violent weapon – possibly the most terrifying weapon of its day. If the battering ram was out and it was battering your portcullis, and if you were out of hot oil, you were in a lot of trouble.  So, Donne’s battering was probably the most violent and terrifying weapon he could conjure. No battering ram, by the way, could be effectively used by one person. Donne remedies that by referring to God as three-personed. In the illustration at right, though the perspective is somewhat confused, you will notice that three soldiers are using the first of the battering rams.

“Segalanya yang memperbesar cakupan kuasa manusia, yang menunjukkan bahwa manusia mampu melakukan apa yang disangkanya tidak mampu dilakukannya, adalah berharga”
BEN JONSON

Talking and eloquence are not the same: to speak, and to speak well, are two things.

— Ben Jonson

 

Alright for you purists out there you may not want to read this post because I actually didn’t read the full 24 hours.  I became very tired and got the starts of a headache so I decided it was best, for my health, to make my way to bed.  I must say that I think it was a great decision, I really needed that rest.  But I must also say that I still feel tired as I think about it.

There is a meme on the Dewey’s Read-a-Thon site that I feel compelled to answer the questions.  

1. Which hour was most daunting for you?  
Well, I would have to say 1pm when I finally made my way to bed.  I just was too tired, if I would have gone to bed earlier the night before and didn’t have to get up early to work I probably would have made it longer.

2. Could you list a few high-interest books that you think could keep a Reader engaged for next year?
I really don’t feel comfortable answering this.  There are books that I’ve taken recommendations and wondered afterwards why anyone would recommend such a book.  So I’d just say pick something light and short, make that a lot of short books that are light.  Have a few that are different to keep your interest throughout the day.

3. Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year?
I really don’t know, if you’re looking for a short answer. If you’re looking for a longer one I think what I’d like to do is organize a local read-a-thon and have a group of people read together at the time. I enjoy reading with others around and if we’re together we could encourage each other to get through the day. And we could pass books back and fourth that we enjoy.

4. What do you think worked really well in this year’s Read-a-thon?
I think it was great to have several books sitting in front of me. They were all very different from each other which allowed me to read what I felt like when it was time to select a different book.

5. How many books did you read?
I got two and a bit read.

6. What were the names of the books you read?
I finished two books:
The Man Who Forgot How to Read by Howard Engel
La’s Orchestra Saves the World by Alexander McCall Smith
I also got a few books started:
A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami
Bartholomew Fair by Ben Jonson

7. Which book did you enjoy most?
I really enjoyed Bartholomew Fair and La’s Orchestra Saves the World.

8. Which did you enjoy least?
I really couldn’t stand Howard Engel’s book. I finished it right away because I thought if I put it down there would no way I’d pick it up again and finish it at another time. It was reading it for the CBC Book Club.

9. If you were a Cheerleader, do you have any advice for next year’s Cheerleaders?
I was not a Cheerleader but I think next time I would like to take the opportunity to be a Cheerleader for next year. I also want to take this time to thank all the Cheerleaders that came by to encourage me while I was reading. I truly appreciated all that you did. Three cheers for the Cheerleaders!
Hip hip Hurray!
Hip hip Hurray!
Hip hip Hurray!

10. How likely are you to participate in the Read-a-thon again? What role would you be likely to take next time?
I would be inclined to participate in the read-a-thon again. I’d be a reader and I would also take the time to be a Cheerleader for an hour or two.

This was the first time I participated in the read-a-thon and I must say I had a lot of fun. Hopefully next time I won’t have to work that day and can spend the whole time reading. And I’ll also go to bed earlier the night before and hopefully make it through the full 24 hours. Thanks for a great time everyone!