tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-317307382024-02-02T13:10:31.258-05:00Mnemosyne's MemesA compendium of literary, political, and cultural ideas.RHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18132797421986659081noreply@blogger.comBlogger126125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31730738.post-21561594968919729672014-05-02T22:31:00.003-04:002014-05-02T22:31:38.482-04:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTQVahsdH5iqzZYpEiqFiYurDuhq_7AOl0Zmx3AVLgD7XCrJRCWttkRYO80EgCOKmk6fVg2gGIMOOrk_2AffoAnLGLccgClWKIVmOEBY8HZJf2HZEQPPMrkCENJSvbEjvynspn/s1600/migrating-birds.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTQVahsdH5iqzZYpEiqFiYurDuhq_7AOl0Zmx3AVLgD7XCrJRCWttkRYO80EgCOKmk6fVg2gGIMOOrk_2AffoAnLGLccgClWKIVmOEBY8HZJf2HZEQPPMrkCENJSvbEjvynspn/s1600/migrating-birds.jpg" height="200" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
WE'RE MIGRATING!<br />
<br />
This entire blog has flown over to my new website. Please look for us <a href="http://richardhoffman.org/blog/" target="_blank">HERE</a>. Thanks.RHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18132797421986659081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31730738.post-11108769367469427622014-03-04T11:54:00.001-05:002014-03-04T11:54:37.103-05:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh22VcIkYzvXbvdwu8-0n1sh3WiWuz5xuaFDDut0qkpr87rg5kRQ3v9ENWuSyAgJuhMT_J2YN6nKQ326_kaRE_w6eAt87rSfugKg4X4gEe-pGy5tjV618uj4yRIwI3gjsGJ5dwI/s1600/writing-graphic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh22VcIkYzvXbvdwu8-0n1sh3WiWuz5xuaFDDut0qkpr87rg5kRQ3v9ENWuSyAgJuhMT_J2YN6nKQ326_kaRE_w6eAt87rSfugKg4X4gEe-pGy5tjV618uj4yRIwI3gjsGJ5dwI/s1600/writing-graphic.jpg" height="214" width="320" /></a></div>
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<div class="_wk mbm" style="line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 10px;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Very pleased to be the most recent in a long line of distinguished guest bloggers on <a href="http://www.mjsteinberg.net/blog.htm?post=948001" target="_blank">Michael Steinberg's Blog: The Art and Craft of Creative Nonfiction</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Mike's blog is a polyvocal treasury of good advice on craft and strategy for essayists and memoirists. As the editor of the literary journal <a href="http://msupress.org/journals/fg/" target="_blank">Fourth Genre</a>, and co-editor, with <a href="http://www.rootwriting.com/index.htm" target="_blank">Robert Root</a>, of the canonical textbook <a href="http://www.rootwriting.com/the_fourth_genre__contemporary_writers_of_on_creative_nonfiction__6th_edition_53269.htm" target="_blank">The Fourth Genre: Contemporary Writers of/on Creative Nonfiction</a>, Mike Steinberg has been, in addition to his own work, midwife to many of the finest essays, memoirs, and works of literary journalism of our day.</span></div>
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RHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18132797421986659081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31730738.post-2119686250874838462014-02-21T12:34:00.001-05:002014-02-21T12:35:55.141-05:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://aboutplacejournal.org/" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihnABu9UghPzmpdeX-oQZ88ZmOMqfPqxfv26tlMgAy3p05aXJY2hVORhyX1UK_oQls-VAjQyOIFAjG1OoNvQOKS4oUPmPyDOiDaN1P8meNFxy6dlWBmCzKBZ6P1MtjUIgEbsr1/s1600/ABOUT+PLACE-From_a_Birmingham_Jail+(Quilt).jpg" height="400" width="308" /></a></div>
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<h3>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">From the Black Earth Institute, <a href="http://aboutplacejournal.org/" target="_blank">this remarkable treasury of writings and art assessing Civil Rights in America</a>, edited by writer, activist, and independent scholar Richard Cambridge.</span></h3>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 26px; text-align: justify;">From the assassination of Medgar Evers and the Birmingham Church bombing that killed four children in 1963 to the re-election of the first Black president, this issue contains challenging, provocative, compelling, and prophetic contributions in essays, poetry, lyrics, song, short fiction, photography, art, and video that reflect on a particular or general aspect of the ongoing struggle for civil rights. How far have we come as a country, and how have we regressed?</span></div>
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RHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18132797421986659081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31730738.post-18479590656127505832014-02-17T23:40:00.001-05:002014-02-17T23:44:42.915-05:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG6irZgYgl7ChvJdpxJGvOpK-v37ahRE7PuZD5OO6V617rwsnjW0QBhiNvL_OxGu6QjK3iw05mPNfP4h8zf0ZlWqTuTVrIkD4O7kTb0be447KP6kjFH2urLRm-0MMCZamkZlOD/s1600/Kathleen+Aguero_0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG6irZgYgl7ChvJdpxJGvOpK-v37ahRE7PuZD5OO6V617rwsnjW0QBhiNvL_OxGu6QjK3iw05mPNfP4h8zf0ZlWqTuTVrIkD4O7kTb0be447KP6kjFH2urLRm-0MMCZamkZlOD/s1600/Kathleen+Aguero_0.jpg" height="320" width="213" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I am posting a link here to the book trailer for Kathleen Aguero's latest, <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B2NlZ9BSrwwXczFHWF8wVUxfckU/edit?pli=1" target="_blank"><i>After That</i></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Here is the title poem from that fine collection, her fifth:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<!--StartFragment--><span style="font-family: inherit;">AFTER THAT<br />
<br />
she wouldn’t leave the house, or she’d be gone for weeks and return smelling of cigarettes and bleach.<br />
She’d say what anyone would, but, like thunder in winter, it didn’t sound quite right.<br />
When she thought we weren’t looking, she tied knots in her hair. <br />
She wouldn’t eat anything white, hid money in the refrigerator, wore five pairs of underpants at once, cringed at butterflies. She covered her ears when she talked and was afraid of the telephone.<br />
She threw away her plants, collected fruit pits. She stopped biting her fingernails after that, but she wouldn’t let anyone cut them either. She wore a hat, but never a jacket.<br />
Her dog wouldn’t go near her.<br />
She wouldn’t answer the doorbell, but she never closed the door.<br />
She refused to go near the windows.<br />
After that, she never drank tea. She hissed at her dead mother, standing in the doorway.<br />
She ripped her good dress into pieces and cut her father’s photograph in half.<br />
We didn’t know how to think about her after that.
<!--EndFragment--></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>After That</i> is available from A<a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=after+that%2C+aguero" target="_blank">mazon</a>, <a href="http://www.spdbooks.org/Search/Default.aspx?SearchTerm=After+That" target="_blank">Small Press Distribution</a>, or the publisher, <a href="http://www.tigerbarkpress.com/" target="_blank">Tiger Bark Press</a>.</span>RHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18132797421986659081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31730738.post-12189130133024158752014-02-15T18:20:00.000-05:002014-02-15T18:22:18.130-05:00I have taken a good, long while off from this blog while I poured my time and energy into the new memoir, <a href="http://www.randomhouse.com/book/229018/love-and-fury-by-richard-hoffman#praise" target="_blank">Love & Fury</a>. Yesterday, Valentine's Day, I found myself tinkering with this poem:<br />
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<div class="MsoToc1">
AGAINST COOL</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">When you pretend you’re
not but know you are,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">you suffer worse than if
you just confess you are in love.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">The rain falls right
through your umbrella and the sun<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">and moon deny the whole
cold day and night they are in love.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">All winter blinding white
flakes rise up into the sky.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">You start to think the
shutters and the windows are in love.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">The wheel and the road,
the wrench and the bolt,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Palatino;">made for each other,
hurt, but they are not in love.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">That sometimes she
frightens you with her clarity<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">or angers you with her
reserve are proof you are in love.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">It’s one thing to
dissemble in the fiercest heat of ardor<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">but better to play dead
than pretend you are not in love.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">Underground, earth and
ice, igneous rock and lava<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">long ago accepted that
the past and future are in love.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">Play spout to the water,
act a chimney to the smoke<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">and admit once and for
all to everyone you are in love.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">Come on, Richard, what’s
so hard for you to understand?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">That yours is the kind of
misery men feel when they're in love?</span></div>
RHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18132797421986659081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31730738.post-88250610738718397542012-12-30T10:45:00.000-05:002012-12-30T10:45:01.516-05:00<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLVgjpusxpNiP9q3ZueRtjjj5UFbXypbh8csYehk8RWOAILUngOHXHGIehvx_KrgyjZCDTlnBM83fPLif-3y3wYh7ldI9OBDzw274QhU_S5yNxRtX0q7d0m5ZzBbsW8fAkLiAg/s1600/Feature_gamble02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLVgjpusxpNiP9q3ZueRtjjj5UFbXypbh8csYehk8RWOAILUngOHXHGIehvx_KrgyjZCDTlnBM83fPLif-3y3wYh7ldI9OBDzw274QhU_S5yNxRtX0q7d0m5ZzBbsW8fAkLiAg/s1600/Feature_gamble02.jpg" /></a></div>
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The year winds down.... This poem is from <a href="http://www.barrowstreet.org/" style="color: #445566;" target="_blank">EMBLEM</a>:</div>
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<h1 style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=31730738&postID=1744402152151327943&from=pencil" name="_Toc156129865" style="color: #445566;"></a><span style="font-weight: normal;">DECEMBER 31st</span></span></h1>
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All my undone actions wander</div>
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naked across the calendar,</div>
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<br /></div>
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a band of skinny hunter-gatherers,</div>
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blown snow scattered here and there,</div>
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<br /></div>
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stumbling toward a future</div>
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folded in the New Year I secure</div>
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<br /></div>
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with a pushpin: January’s picture</div>
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a painting from the 17<sup>th</sup> century,</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 1in; margin-top: 0in;">
a still-life: skull and mirror,</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 1in; margin-top: 0in;">
spilled coinpurse and a flower.</div>
RHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18132797421986659081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31730738.post-8059518167102154492012-10-08T08:46:00.002-04:002012-10-08T08:46:34.436-04:00A poem from <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Emblem-Richard-Hoffman/dp/0981987656/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1349700255&sr=1-1&keywords=emblem+hoffman" target="_blank">EMBLEM</a></i> for Columbus Day:<br />
<br />
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<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">EVERYONE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">Columbus thought he had discovered
the Indies so he called the people he encountered Indians, but he was wrong; he
had discovered the working class.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">He took their sage,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">not their advice;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">it smoldered like rage<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">but smelled nice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">One of the Santa Maria's
crew, avaricious and schooled in flattery, suggested to Columbus that he try
calling them "the middle class." They seemed to like that just fine.
They smiled. Why not? Sure. Sounds good.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">Columbus ordered them
given naugahyde and vinyl. Then he watched to see what they would make of it.
It stuck to sweaty skin in summer and in winter it was cold as metal. It
cracked, and several cut their buttocks on it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">Eventually they came
around, though, when the buffalo were shot to hell, the beaver damned, and the
deer and the antelope played out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">Like the real Indians,
the real middle class was a world away.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">Soon after his return,
Columbus was imprisoned for his errors. The King and Queen concurred that these
new subjects must forget their names, and never know their purpose to the
empire. Thus, an edict went forth that there were no classes in the New World
because<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Palatino;">in the New World,
everyone is Middle Class. Everyone.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->RHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18132797421986659081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31730738.post-88757105350621699312012-09-21T14:10:00.000-04:002012-09-21T14:23:37.451-04:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQzJKkOJ-KbhB0TGmI0iw6HihjQq2yY3G_aMx9jXzH3tsD0shjOBxG_6G65IEoWfno7vdG4C9HgWSn0AM6fPN8I6IfZ_eer5mdNZg8H72BRz0Q0w1Knyx2FmWW966PY3ronooM/s1600/RH&LC.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQzJKkOJ-KbhB0TGmI0iw6HihjQq2yY3G_aMx9jXzH3tsD0shjOBxG_6G65IEoWfno7vdG4C9HgWSn0AM6fPN8I6IfZ_eer5mdNZg8H72BRz0Q0w1Knyx2FmWW966PY3ronooM/s320/RH&LC.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Happy 78th Birthday, Leonard Cohen!</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">If I remember correctly, we were talking about his friend and mentor, the poet Irving Layton, whose work I encountered as a young man at a time when I really needed it. His poems of grief and anger showed me a way forward in a dark time. And of course Cohen's poems, which represented an alternative to the canonical modernists on the one hand and the Beats on the other, whom I found overbearing and loud. We talked a good while about poets and poetry and later about being grandfathers.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">This photo was taken by Rick Friedman and belongs to the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I've recently reread Cohen's <i>The Book of Mercy</i> to see if it would still move me as it once did. It does.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">(Layton's work, admittedly older, often feels dated to me, as if arising from a cultural context, especially with regard to masculinity, that has passed.)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Look at Cohen's hands in the photo: time and again, in </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>The Book of Mercy,</i> head and heart come together in just that way. I close that book not with an urge to paraphrase or otherwise talk about it, but with gratitude.</span></div>
RHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18132797421986659081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31730738.post-2313335139417060892012-09-14T21:00:00.001-04:002012-09-14T21:00:13.967-04:00<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Today's <a href="http://web.ncf.ca/ek867/2012_09_01-15_archives.html#September%2014,%202012" target="_blank">wood s lot</a> has a good deal more depth in its treatment of Robert Bringhurst. Thank you to Mark Woods. </span>RHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18132797421986659081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31730738.post-69716587784884612702012-09-13T21:33:00.001-04:002012-09-16T17:33:07.366-04:00<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQkqB_6mZ_vGPFM8IVQIF_IfI4uZZ2C5uv301MTNghw2YthI_8Akl8HZmkopqSXQldfG45v1GTQtaxqAjgLE7JVvAdDAvAVX2MHY84E4FYyxoDDGM30kLrsQYHm1Zb680ZAA-e/s1600/reykjavik44.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQkqB_6mZ_vGPFM8IVQIF_IfI4uZZ2C5uv301MTNghw2YthI_8Akl8HZmkopqSXQldfG45v1GTQtaxqAjgLE7JVvAdDAvAVX2MHY84E4FYyxoDDGM30kLrsQYHm1Zb680ZAA-e/s1600/reykjavik44.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
I want to dedicate this post to the work of the
Canadian poet, <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/robert-bringhurst" target="_blank">Robert Bringhurst</a>. It is either the perfect example of our
xenophobic poetic culture in the US, or else my own narrow-gauge attention to
what is — in this case so gloriously — being written elsewhere in North America
that I had not heard of him until recently. Now I am reading his <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Selected-Poems-Robert-Bringhurst/dp/1556593910/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1347586105&sr=1-1&keywords=selected+poems+bringhurst" target="_blank"><i>Selected Poems</i></a>
from Copper Canyon, and I am completely in thrall to this body of work: serious
and playful, political and spiritual, formal, lyrical, learned, and sublime.
Here is his “These Poems, She Said”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">These poems, these poems,<br />
these poems, she said, are poems<br />
with no love in them. These are the poems of a man <br />
who would leave his wife and child because <br />
they made noise in his study. These are the poems <br />
of a man who would murder his mother to claim <br />
the inheritance. These are the poems of a man <br />
like Plato, she said, meaning something I did not <br />
comprehend but which nevertheless<br />
offended me. These are the poems of a man<br />
who would rather sleep with himself than with women, <br />
she said. These are the poems of a man<br />
with eyes like a drawknife, with hands like a pickpocket’s <br />
hands, woven of water and logic<br />
and hunger, with no strand of love in them. These <br />
poems are as heartless as birdsong, as unmeant <br />
as elm leaves, which if they love love only <br />
the wide blue sky and the air and the idea<br />
of elm leaves. Self-love is an ending, she said, <br />
and not a beginning. Love means love<br />
of the thing sung, not of the song or the singing. <br />
These poems, she said....<br />
You
are, he said,<br />
beautiful.<br />
That
is not love, she said rightly.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
According to <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/sep/19/robert-bringhurst-selected-poems-review" target="_blank">Kate Kelloway, writing in <i>The Observer</i></a>,
Bringhurst “has
the curiosity of a scientist. He never overindulges in emotion. His writing is
at once lyrical and spartan. And yet he is witty. And while he has no taste for
lamentation, many a poem catches, calmly, at the heart.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
You can find him reading on YouTube <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ2Ohf8WK80&feature=player_embedded" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_gumjnlc-8&feature=related" target="_blank">here</a>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
Bringhurst is, as it happens, also the foremost
typographer of our age, and his <i>Elements
of Typographic Design</i> is considered mandatory reading for book and, now,
web designers.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->RHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18132797421986659081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31730738.post-91525326129621507692012-07-10T17:13:00.000-04:002012-07-10T17:17:14.286-04:00<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Here are three poems of mine from the most recent <a href="http://www.themanhattanreview.com/" target="_blank">Manhattan Review</a>:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">COROLLARY</span><br />
<div class="Section1">
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The body,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">six feet</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">underground,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">requires</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">six days</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">to break down.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Bulbs must wait</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">in warming loam</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">six months</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">or more. And so</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">the earth is vast,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">love urgent.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">PATRIMONY</span></div>
</div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br clear="ALL" style="mso-break-type: section-break; page-break-before: always;" />
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">1.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">He is out of work.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">We are out of money.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">My mother's patience</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">makes him feel worse.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">He has lost his temper</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">again and he is sorry.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Priests have told him</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">ever since he was a boy</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">to stop touching himself.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">He hides the magazines,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">thinks himself weak.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">In the doorway of a plane,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">you jump, you do not</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">shake and shit yourself,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">kicked into the flak-lit</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">night the stench of you</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">like a thing already dead.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">It is a long way down.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">A lot can go wrong, so</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">he pretends to know</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">what a man and death is,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">nothing under his feet</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">as percussive waves</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">of light explode around him</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">like shots of whiskey.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Later he makes believe</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">he is still the man he</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">can't remember, the boy</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">he can't remember.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Maybe there is another</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">life he was to have.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Maybe he was lazy</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">and missed his chance.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">He wants to be the man</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">he imagines his wife</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">loves, the god his father </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">was to him, the god</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">he hopes his sons think</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">him. Complexion: Ruddy</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">it says on his license.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">A doctor diagnoses him</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">with hypertension.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">He loves but still believes</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">he is pretending. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">2.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">A son might hold a father </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">to account for certain</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">memories, for certain</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">understandings, to desire</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">anyone, or anything at all.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">A lot can go wrong, so</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">he pretends to know</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">what a man and love is.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">He may have to help himself</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">to his father's shame</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">for a time to understand.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Sometimes a long time.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">And then, even if he turns,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">if he rises and bathes</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">and dresses and shaves</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">and takes up his life at last,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">he cannot say if that is</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">or is not forgiveness.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The much he must learn</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">becomes his life. There is</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">no might have been, no</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">otherwise or if only, only</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">the ground under his feet.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Elsewhere men continue</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">falling from the sky.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpLast" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="RHNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: normal;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="RHNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">GLIMPSE AND RUMOR<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="RHNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="RHNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">See them before the door<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="RHNormalCxSpLast" style="line-height: normal;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">closes, doing their jobs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Style1CxSpFirst" style="line-height: normal;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Papers to sign. Making<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Style1CxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">laws making money.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Style1CxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Changing the names<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Style1CxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">of streets, buildings, bridges.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Style1CxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Writing plausible tales.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Style1CxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Quick before the door closes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Style1CxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Style1CxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Word is he’s back,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Style1CxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">baptized in our amnesia.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Style1CxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Cain. Cain.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Style1CxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Wasn’t he one of Eve’s boys?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Style1CxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Yes, I heard that. Which<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Style1CxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">is his cubicle? He might be<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Style1CxSpLast" style="line-height: normal;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">a good man to know sometime.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>RHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18132797421986659081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31730738.post-50433123258438572582012-06-29T15:01:00.001-04:002012-06-29T15:01:50.184-04:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgegbNyGE-GWpZO3GzY8LVir_B0GvMOZKvAl5fa1oLDIjrwDYuwxd1B96ocT60MJXErq_G8CTulS4tsVpPN8xfmUwp97yyogNBu3DejzdEzoKVti0C9BJOILcLd9zs7f6SnaDjF/s1600/christopherlydon_medium.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgegbNyGE-GWpZO3GzY8LVir_B0GvMOZKvAl5fa1oLDIjrwDYuwxd1B96ocT60MJXErq_G8CTulS4tsVpPN8xfmUwp97yyogNBu3DejzdEzoKVti0C9BJOILcLd9zs7f6SnaDjF/s1600/christopherlydon_medium.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
This from Chris Lydon today. Reposting it here. These are conversations that shed light, serious inquiries into what has befallen us and speculations about how we might survive with our humanity intact.<br />
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Dearest
Ones:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The
ghost of <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><a href="http://e2ma.net/go/11074857834/208923182/234454944/1408224/goto:http://www.radioopensource.org/tony-judts-social-democracy-in-america-a-call-for-help/">Tony Judt</a>, </span>historian and prophet, hovers over
the best conversations we've recorded this spring -- for all the reasons that <a href="http://e2ma.net/go/11074857834/208923182/234454945/1408224/goto:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/books/17book.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all"><i><span style="color: #001ee6; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Ill Fares the
Land</span></i></a>, Judt's parting sermon, hovers over the 2012 campaign and
American life this Fourth of July.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The
connecting thread that Tony Judt spun brilliantly is the common dread
underlying both the Occupy movement and the Tea Party. It's an unfamiliar,
almost unnameable anxiety -- that we don't recognize our country any more; that
our imperial illusions are crashing and we're the last to get the joke; that
the rough-and-tumble egalitarian premises we grew up with are being mocked by
legislated inequality that must get worse; that the public conversation has
died, and that all the semi-private buzzing on the Web doesn't make up.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">"We
cannot go on living like this," Judt wrote, and worse: "We simply do
not know how to talk about these things any more."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Three
main points stick out of the Judt diagnosis: (1) the enfeeblement of
"social democracy" in the American Dream -- the slashing of taxes
that enabled a distributed prosperity; (2) the old cult and social disease of
private wealth which has infected the culture and the curriculum of the rising
generation; and (3) the collapse of a reasonably inclusive and "ethically
informed public conversation." Most people, he wrote "don't feel as
though they are part of any conversation of significance."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Judt's
prescriptions were all over the place. He said we must "theorize our
better instincts," but also: "we need to act upon our intuitions of
impending catastrophe." We need to recast our public conversation around
measures of human well-being, and we need a new crop of defiantly self-reliant
dissenters to keep it honest.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Ill
Fares the Land</span></i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> -- from Oliver Goldsmith's couplet:
"Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey / Where wealth accumulates,
and men decay" -- reads to me like the missing manual of the malaise in
the land, a perfect outline for the Obama-Romney debates. On the chance that we
won't hear these angles on the stump, we're taking Tony Judt's themes as a
framework for conversations about the American condition in 2012 --<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Happy
Fourth!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Yours
ever and ever,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Chris Lydon<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><a href="http://e2ma.net/go/11074857834/208923182/234454946/1408224/goto:http://www.radioopensource.org/tim-snyder-and-tony-judt-another-narrative-for-campaign-2012/"><span style="color: #001ee6; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><o:p></o:p></span></a></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;"><b><a href="http://www.radioopensource.org/">http://www.radioopensource.org/</a></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;"><b><br /></b></span></div>RHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18132797421986659081noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31730738.post-66034101986613405082012-04-21T23:28:00.002-04:002012-04-21T23:45:56.653-04:00<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">These are my remarks from today's panel on "The State of Poetry" at The Massachusetts Poetry Festival in Salem. Several people asked me for a copy of the talk so I promised I would post it here.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Good afternoon. Let me start with a poem I wrote for a fellow poet, Baron Wormser. Baron and I are about the same age and have been writing a long time, and for a number of years we were teaching together in Maine, right next to a cow pasture. This is called AT WOLFE’S NECK FARM:<br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Some days a poet<br />
is like a cow, a yellow<br />
tag: N365 affixed<br />
to a twitching ear,<br />
shit on its haunches,<br />
flies on its eyes,<br />
who thinks, “If only<br />
I’d been born<br />
in India I’d be a god.”<br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">And so, “The State of Poetry.” Looking out at this room full of people, I’d say that the state of poetry, the interest in poetry, is pretty healthy. The fact that we are here at a three day poetry festival speaks for itself. And so I really want to talk about poetry, not “the poetry business.” I warned Jennifer that I would do this. I hope you will also indulge me, because the fact is that I am the wrong person to give any advice about a career in poetry. I am not a successful poet, at least not in the usual sense. Like most poets, my books are published by a small press, seldom reviewed, and never in those few publications that seem to matter. You won’t find my work in anthologies or in discussions of contemporary poetry. This is not a complaint, only a way of offering you my credentials for NOT talking about a career in poetry: I don’t have one.<br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">But I have a life that is largely made of poetry, of the poetry of others, both the dead and the living, and the poetry I try to write. I would not exchange that life, that ongoing education, that continual growth, for anything. Poetry returns to me the things I know and have forgotten, and among those things there dwells the deepest and oldest and least distorted version of myself: that consciousness that first looked for the right words, the right nouns, verbs, adjectives — the right sounds — to make sense of the world. <br />
</span></span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
<!--StartFragment--><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">ALL the words that I utter,<br />
And all the words that I write,<br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> Must spread out their wings untiring,<br />
And never rest in their flight,<br />
Till they come where your sad, sad heart is,<br />
And sing to you in the night.</span></span></span>
<!--EndFragment-->
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px;"> --W. B. Yeats</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I don’t quote these lines to suggest that poems are merely personal communications; they are that, at least often they are, but there is a larger social and political dimension to that intimate exchange. I believe it is this special kind of colloquy — one author to one reader, one heart and mind to another— that Czeslaw Milosz meant when he wrote that poetry is the last rampart against tyranny. It is this exchange that affirms us as individuals. In the words of Max Horkheimer, a German social critic of the 1930’s, later put to death by the Nazis: “To organize people as objects, you must first disorganize them as subjects.”<br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Another way of putting it is to think of the poet’s work as peeling people one at a time from the mob, steering them by the elbow to a table where, just the two of you, you find the radical quiet to honor that desire to be understood, that yearning to communicate one’s experience of being alive to another, which is the antidote to the massive, poisonous, ongoing objectification sweeping the planet today.<br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Poets are as archaic as candles to some people. Still, they’re useful when the power is out. Poetry is a handmade art, one that doesn’t require wealthy investors, costly materials, tools, and equipment. And so it has the potential, requiring no agreement from the powers-that-be, to say what must be said – to bring us back to the truth, to a consciousness of what we need, to those deep desires for justice and meaning, for respect and commonality, for freedom from debt, from the monomaniacal ideology that creates the plantation and calls it the world. I believe it can be the foundation for a real culture, an alternative to the pseudo-culture around us that is only a by-product of corporate profit-seeking. <br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Poetry is also a living tradition, a deep broad river of other human voices who have lived and thought about and felt life before us. An ongoing tradition that, if you are a poet, or a reader of poetry, you are a part of. It is full of agreements and arguments, celebrations and misgivings, blessings and curses and laments. It is a tradition that does not require belief, or ideological purity, or even reverence. Respect for its complexity and variety is all that is required, and that is only, after all, a respect for one’s own humanity, one’s own human potential to live life fully and fully aware. To drink from this river, whether as reader or writer, is to be refreshed by the reunion of head and heart, if only for one thirsty moment, and to be returned to a state of wholeness which we all feel was ours once as children when thought and feeling, mind and body, head and heart, did not feel separate, before the demands, legitimate and inexorable, of ego and socialization, required us to learn how to use first one then the other.<br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">There are moments when I’m writing a poem — when a poem is coming to be on the page and I am trying to assist it — when the language, which has been evolving for millenia in order to better engage the complex world as it is, calls forth that part of me that has also been evolving for millenia in order to better engage the complex world as it is, and those moments are powerful, rejuvenating, and reassuring on the deepest level.<br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Poetry, both reading and writing it, can keep the spirit supple and viable in a time of rigidity and despair and helplessness, insisting on the importance and integrity of the individual consciousness in a time of mass delusions and sociopathic politics, clearing a little quiet space in the din for that singing in the night that I, for one, with my sad, sad heart, could not live without.<br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> <br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> <br />
</span></span></span>RHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18132797421986659081noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31730738.post-74357127481565593962012-04-08T10:06:00.000-04:002012-04-08T10:06:46.144-04:00<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And here is the final poem in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=hoffman+emblem" target="_blank">the book</a>:</span><br />
<br />
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<div class="MsoToc1">INSTRUCTIONS</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">Say I was filled with regret<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">because I always fell for the future,<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">and that I learned that hope, like the rain,<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">can make the wrong things grow.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">Explain I would have mourned<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">much longer if the world had let me.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">Say that I hope to be remembered,<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">and that I wish I had forgotten less.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">Set right the rumor I was ever<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">a believer: a story was told to me<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">as knowledge and I loved it once,<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">an arrangement of premises on which<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">I learned to build all you recall of me.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">Belief has nothing to do with faith.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">The first I lost early and all at once,<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">the second later, one loss at a time.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">Tell them that, a sailor, I knew fog<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">was no excuse and certainly no comfort.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">Assure them that when I had nothing<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">to say I said nothing, kept still,<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">and let things come clear in their time.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">Because I spoke clearly does not mean<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">I remained unlettered, simple, or naïve:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">tell them I saw all there was to see.<o:p></o:p></span></div><!--EndFragment-->RHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18132797421986659081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31730738.post-29649655183386628572012-03-31T09:52:00.000-04:002012-03-31T09:52:15.142-04:00Just a little taste... the first poem in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_9?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=emblem+hoffman&sprefix=emblem+ho%2Cstripbooks%2C233" target="_blank">EMBLEM</a>, published in December.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1sst4RiglleKRpHU4aWJUPw-5KFwBFizn3WcJd3xCxHgD4iFIKQi812fSThee1q3WUr05MkwF6ogctcH_IyxsJ-7JxzcjkLM870-NCefI-wF5vLUIg2qGFKm8wZVabrBGeAOH/s1600/l089.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="314" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1sst4RiglleKRpHU4aWJUPw-5KFwBFizn3WcJd3xCxHgD4iFIKQi812fSThee1q3WUr05MkwF6ogctcH_IyxsJ-7JxzcjkLM870-NCefI-wF5vLUIg2qGFKm8wZVabrBGeAOH/s320/l089.gif" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">adapted from Alciati's Book of Emblems<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=31730738#_ftn1" name="_ftnref" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[1]<!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style="font-family: Palatino;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">Emblem 89<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">AGAINST THOSE WEALTHY VIA PUBLIC MISCHIEF<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">Avarice in check, the country at peace,<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">does not please everyone. Those who fish<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">for eels, for example, who know how to slice<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">one into segments thin as paper dollars<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">for sushi or paste, must find some way<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">to roil the placid water and churn the bottom<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">to be successful. (To stir the muck religion<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">makes a good long stick, or bogus history<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">wed to rhetoric.) They know just how.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino;">They have fished for eels a thousand years.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="mso-element: footnote-list;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><br clear="all" /> <hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" /> <!--[endif]--> <div id="ftn" style="mso-element: footnote;"> <div class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=31730738#_ftnref" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[1]<!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Andrea Alciati's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Emblematum liber</i> or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Book of Emblems,</i> </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 10.0pt;">a </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">collection of 212 Latin emblem poems, </span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">was first published in 1531, and was expanded in various editions during the author's lifetime.</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></div></div></div><!--EndFragment-->RHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18132797421986659081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31730738.post-43136528309244018302012-01-12T10:36:00.001-05:002012-01-12T10:37:06.948-05:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLh8-VHgpGIEhsL3fNbmdI1IV25Ui5gja9eS2NDwoERlLT2tWIAb9_s7Xro_kFS7NaIcCI91spTcoqhnoq9O4tMyDzHHkZredBY9sjnHkOI9SRpkVQBNTjVh4aj-pPxjGzhyphenhyphen6X/s1600/picture-159.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="260" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLh8-VHgpGIEhsL3fNbmdI1IV25Ui5gja9eS2NDwoERlLT2tWIAb9_s7Xro_kFS7NaIcCI91spTcoqhnoq9O4tMyDzHHkZredBY9sjnHkOI9SRpkVQBNTjVh4aj-pPxjGzhyphenhyphen6X/s320/picture-159.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 19px; font-variant: small-caps; line-height: 28px;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 19px; font-variant: small-caps; line-height: 28px;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 19px; font-variant: small-caps; line-height: 28px;">ARBOR VITAE</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 10pt;">"Trees are Earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven."<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 1.0in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"> — Rabindranath Tagore</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-variant: small-caps;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-variant: small-caps;">My neighbor across the street</span><span style="font-family: Palatino;"> wants to cut down the tree in the front of her house; she says its roots are compromising her foundation, and besides, she wants more sun so she can grow flowers in her front yard. I try to talk with her about it, but find I am surprisingly emotional. A few years earlier my neighbor next door took down a row of white pines between our houses because they were dripping sap on his car in the driveway. I loved them for the way they held the snow in the winter; the windows on that side of the house were like Hiroshige snowscapes. I tried to argue with him when the arborist’s truck pulled up and I saw what they were about to do, but I lost. The trees were on his side of the property line, if only by a foot, and he had made up his mind. I steamed about it for a couple of days, but we’re a tight little urban neighborhood and holding a grudge was never an option. But here I am nearly begging my neighbor across the street to spare the red maple in front of her house, and I’m surprised at the strength of the feelings that have been stirred in me. I get on my bike and head for the park nearby where I can sit by the lake under a favorite willow and think about it.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;"> The truth is I was feeling a little embarrassed by the whole thing. It was undeniably sentimental; what was the point of arguing about a single tree? I had enjoyed the pines next to my house; I understood my reasons for wishing they’d been left standing. But the truth is that I never really paid the tree across the street much attention. Still, it seemed worthwhile to try to figure out why I felt so desperate on this one little maple’s behalf.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;"> Our relationship to trees is a conspiracy, literally. We breathe together. It is symbiosis on a grand scale. Every schoolkid knows this. We take in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. In comes the good air, out goes the bad. Trees are our very life support, and we, along with the other animals, are theirs. We sustain one another, we conspire for the common good of carbon based life. It only remains to be said that the “spire” in conspire is, etymologically, spirit, the breath without which we would die, and not only metaphorically.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;"> So I see the relationship of people to trees as a conversation that involves quiet, attention, listening. What people have always done with breath, with spirit, is make stories, and I have no reason to believe that trees don’t similarly shape their breathing. Trees listen, then they tell their side of the same survival narrative. We have this conversation continuously on the molecular level. When the trees speak they tell me of course of water (they even sometimes make the sound of it quite convincingly.) They also talk about light. When I breathe in deeply in a forest, a light brightens just behind my eyes as surely as I see a canoe when you say the word canoe or conjure my daughter when you speak her name. Trees tell me other things as well; they seem to know me. Sometimes they tell me things that I don’t know I’ve heard until a long time after. Our breathing, I imagine, tells the trees of joy and desire, anger and injury, and is often shaped into the long sighs of sorrow. We tell it all, in every chemical flavor, storytelling virtuosos who by now, after a couple of million years, know how by heart.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;"> It may be that trees have given us language itself. According to Robert Graves, our alphabet, descended from ancient runes, derives from the patterns of branches against the light of the moon; Anglo-Saxon runes were called by the names of trees: elm, beech, birch, locust. I am unwilling to dismiss the idea — it occurs to me too often — that trees are a superior species. According to Andreas Feininger, there are trees on the planet right now more than four thousand years old! Trees may have been the presences who called us from the waters long ago, breathing life into our brachiating lungs, then as now our beckoning siblings, body to body, need to need, gift to gift.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;"> This is why, when I am dispirited, I like to sit in the woods.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;"> And yet, I know that others find this essential conversation elsewhere. My wife prefers to walk the beach in colloquy with water, waves, and tides. She is someone who finds her renewal in motion. “I’m exhausted,” she says, “I need to go for a walk.” She can walk the sand by the waterline for miles and return somehow unburdened, happy. I suspect this has to do with the years she spent in Sicily as a little girl, and on ships in the Mediterranean, and crisscrossing the Atlantic (her father is a retired ship’s engineer); the first whiff of salt and she gets that half-smile on her face and the look of a woman listening carefully for something she can almost but not quite hear.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;"> And under the willow, there by the lake, in the moment just before the feelings are right there with me, fully now, a surge of mourning, a hot splash in my chest, I get it: my spirited defense of my neighbor’s tree is not about my metaphysics, but my grief.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;"> The house where I lived, with my parents and three younger brothers, until I was thirteen, was a narrow brick rowhouse that still had one of the old slate sidewalks. The slate was heaved and cracked by the roots of a huge tree that shaded the front of the house. My brother Bobby and I, along with our gang of kids from up and down the street, had always enjoyed it as a challenge, first on our tricycles — you had to get up a good head of steam and you had to lean hard as you crested and bumped over the crack or you’d spill over sideways — and later on our roller skates. My father called it “that damned hemlock” because the roots were working their way into our cellar, threatening the foundation.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;"> So I grew up thinking that the tree was a hemlock, but it could not have been because a hemlock is an evergreen, and this great tree, home-base for all our streetgames, was deciduous. I realized this only in adulthood, and many years after the tree was cut down. It made me wonder what kind of tree it was that I had leaned against so many times, forehead against the rough bark, hands over my eyes, looking into the dark and counting backward.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;"> The bark was deeply furrowed, coarse enough to tear your knuckles on, and black, but if you broke off a piece it was a burnt orange color and light in your hand like cork. I went to the arboretum. I went to the library. From what evidence I could gather, I decided it was a black walnut. I remembered the hard shrivelled nuts and the twigs with their pith like white styrofoam that I carved with my thumbnail. I remember using a hammer to smash open the nuts and more often than not finding the cases mysteriously empty inside. I remember the thrill of discovering, later and all by myself, that a little hole in the shell meant a worm had bored its way inside to eat the nutmeat. Then it was fun to bet with Bobby, for a baseball card, or five penny candies from the corner store, and shatter the nut with a hammer, find it empty, and collect.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;"> But it turned out I was wrong. The black walnut I had remembered was somewhere else on the block. The tree in front of our house, whose roots wormed their way into our cellar, was a linden.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;"> I discovered my mistake years later, using a handbook to identify a tree that grew by the house where I lived then. It was the shape of the leaf that changed my mind. Two memories convinced me. The first was of the branch outside the bedroom Bobby and I shared: the leaves were not the walnut’s pinnate frond, but crooked hearts, simple and sawtoothed, that had fixed themselves in my consciousness, bobbing and tossing in the wind through years of now forgotten daydreams. The second memory was of the rusty imprint of a leaf on the smooth slate sidewalk when the ice that had trapped it there melted, a kind of snapshot fossil.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;"> One day I came home to find it had been cut down. I believe I was nine because Bobby, a year younger than me, had just been diagnosed with Muscular Dystrophy, the reason he had become so weak, the reason he fell down all the time and why we couldn’t play together outside anymore, why he had been moved from our bedroom downstairs to the first floor, and why he would die before we could be adults together. The stump was nearly two feet across, with a six-inch hole in the middle filled with water and ringed by darker marrow-wood. My feelings surprised me. My father had mentioned it would be cut down. He wanted to be rid of it. “It busts up the sidewalk and that’s all we need is for some old lady to fall on her ass and sue us.” No doubt I had shrugged.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;"> But seeing the stump, surrounded by sawdust and woodchips, was a different matter. It was shocking and sad at a time when I believed, for reasons it has taken me decades to understand, that it was a betrayal of my family to feel sorrow. I almost cried. I almost mourned. I would have if I had let myself look up to see the blank sky and the looming eaves and the black wires lined with bewildered sparrows.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;"> When the tree was gone, the slate was taken up, the offending roots were cut and removed, and a concrete sidewalk poured. The stump remained, darkening and softening, rainwater held in its hollow center, black as the pupil of an eye. In that dark mirror you could stare directly at the sun, moving among gray clouds, a dull coin pale as the moon.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;"> “Well, you don’t have to worry, Rich,” my neighbor calls across the street to me while I’m putting out the trash. “The tree belongs to the city. They sent a guy out here, a watchacallit, an arborist, who says I’ve got to live with it.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Palatino;"> What would she think if I told her to try listening to it?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div>RHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18132797421986659081noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31730738.post-17444021521513279432011-12-27T12:38:00.003-05:002011-12-27T12:42:04.649-05:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPsW1iK539qPFO6qW4M9625Q-bun5Dgtrz2IOmrMWb6UjPwtH6v6jXVOPS4Qf4GXhHYiG7JzTija4JSALH0B27VXaE0m81Tw9zuGMB96rzNcJ46OAr5owPFhbHkykN6m7tOMHk/s1600/2011-calendar-december-printable-large-date.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPsW1iK539qPFO6qW4M9625Q-bun5Dgtrz2IOmrMWb6UjPwtH6v6jXVOPS4Qf4GXhHYiG7JzTija4JSALH0B27VXaE0m81Tw9zuGMB96rzNcJ46OAr5owPFhbHkykN6m7tOMHk/s400/2011-calendar-december-printable-large-date.gif" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The year winds down.... This poem is from the new collection, <a href="http://www.barrowstreet.org/" target="_blank">EMBLEM</a>.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"></div><h1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=31730738&postID=1744402152151327943&from=pencil" name="_Toc156129865"></a><span style="font-weight: normal;">DECEMBER 31st</span></span></h1><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 1.0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">All my undone actions wander</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 1.0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">naked across the calendar,</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 1.0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 1.0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">a band of skinny hunter-gatherers,</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 1.0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">blown snow scattered here and there,</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 1.0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 1.0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">stumbling toward a future</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 1.0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">folded in the New Year I secure</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 1.0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 1.0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">with a pushpin: January’s picture</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 1.0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">a painting from the 17<sup>th</sup> century,</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 1.0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 1.0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">a still-life: skull and mirror,</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 1.0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">spilled coinpurse and a flower.<br />
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</div>RHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18132797421986659081noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31730738.post-24420649030969086162011-12-16T00:05:00.002-05:002011-12-16T00:08:50.232-05:00Publication Day! EMBLEM<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR4iyBXWINQVAGP0bwqmsqCJM6bDbuPmp6QhjkpyvZVTCars40GlTWNTw6gjj8Fhd91CRIrwv-M9Uvettt6a4WtFloGi7rETMxs7-qjryqmrCGn-fB6OdDiorz8hNUeFPv2Hv0/s1600/EMBLEM+cover+for+web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR4iyBXWINQVAGP0bwqmsqCJM6bDbuPmp6QhjkpyvZVTCars40GlTWNTw6gjj8Fhd91CRIrwv-M9Uvettt6a4WtFloGi7rETMxs7-qjryqmrCGn-fB6OdDiorz8hNUeFPv2Hv0/s1600/EMBLEM+cover+for+web.jpg" /></a></div><br />
My new collection of poems, EMBLEM, is now available from <a href="http://www.barrowstreet.org/" target="_blank">Barrow Street Press</a>. Poems from this collection appear online at Janus Head, <a href="http://www.janushead.org/12-1/Hoffman.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>, and <a href="http://www.janushead.org/10-1/Hoffman.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>, at Agni, <a href="http://www.bu.edu/agni/poetry/online/2009/hoffman-107.html" target="_blank">here</a>, and <a href="http://www.bu.edu/agni/poetry/online/2009/hoffman-152.html" target="_blank">here</a>, and at Solstice Literary Magazine, <a href="http://solsticelitmag.org/fruit-in-season/" target="_blank">here</a>, and <a href="http://solsticelitmag.org/what-good/" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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It will also be available from <a href="http://www.spdbooks.org/Search/Default.aspx?SearchTerm=emblem" target="_blank">Small Press Distribution</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=emblem+hoffman&x=0&y=0" target="_blank">Amazon</a> any day now.<br />
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Here's what others have written about it:<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; tab-stops: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">If Anton Chekhov returned as a modern-day poet, Richard Hoffman would be his name. His poems reverberate with the same lucid witness and precision. Bridging histories local and cultural, they draw on literary traditions while simultaneously heralding experiment and invention. Both rooted and transcendent, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Emblem</i> is a marvelous new book.</span><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 5.0pt; tab-stops: .5in;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">— </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Terrance Hayes<br />
author of National Book Award winner, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lighthead</i></span><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Richard Hoffman is a fiercely gifted poet whose stanzas revel in the infinite possibilities of language, and jolt, surprise, and satisfy at every turn. Each syllable in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Emblem</i></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> is stamped with the poet’s signature, a heady combination of skill, vulnerability and unerring wit. This is work to be savored and embraced.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">— </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Patricia Smith</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">author of National Book Award finalist, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Blood Dazzler<br />
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</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Richard Hoffman’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Emblem</i></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> is an extraordinary book. Hoffman knows poetic forms, and he handles them deftly. His poems move beyond form to inhabit the places where our human selves reside, the country of the heart, the city of the mind. I admire this poet for his verve, and I follow where he leads.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> — Pablo Medina</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">author of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Man Who Wrote on Water<br />
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</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Richard Hoffman earns highest praise for brilliantly resuscitating emblems, a genre that flourished from the Renaissance until the 19th century. His point of departure is Andrea Alciati’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Emblematum Liber</i></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> (1531), the earliest and most important emblem book. Like Alciati, Hoffman begins each with a motto, and the range of his subjects is broad, bearing on aspects of life that seem to be, in his words, “either immutable or peculiarly contemporary.” Readers will relish them, and all of Hoffman’s poems, and return to them time and again.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;">— </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Seymour Slive</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Professor of Fine Arts Emeritus, Harvard University; former Director, Harvard Art Museums</span>RHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18132797421986659081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31730738.post-6692329316956765892011-12-09T17:56:00.000-05:002011-12-09T17:56:11.198-05:00New poems up at Agni<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Two new poems of mine, "Inventory" and "Good Boy" are up at <i><a href="http://www.bu.edu/agni/" target="_blank">Agni</a>.</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Hope you enjoy.</span>RHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18132797421986659081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31730738.post-17591462494654172532011-11-13T12:16:00.000-05:002011-11-13T12:16:30.185-05:00prompted by Penn State's Criminal Conspiracy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjZvIXD6OAJ5MBFw79Mq_Z3IYonzVtSTu35EaQsi-u8PjKHmuRWY6hyphenhyphenZA_GOW-nf2Z2g0NqDmktUFZKVd7XbLYp2EraJRW9X_Z0n_TQvoQ8ZmKbYCqtIJSuMQqx2oRAsgOh1cq/s1600/Boysphoto.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjZvIXD6OAJ5MBFw79Mq_Z3IYonzVtSTu35EaQsi-u8PjKHmuRWY6hyphenhyphenZA_GOW-nf2Z2g0NqDmktUFZKVd7XbLYp2EraJRW9X_Z0n_TQvoQ8ZmKbYCqtIJSuMQqx2oRAsgOh1cq/s320/Boysphoto.jpg" width="279" /></a></div><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">The following essay, Pictures of Boyhood, may be of use to those who are asking the hard questions about the relationship of American sports culture — some would say the American cult of sports — to the sexual abuse of boys. It first appeared in <i>T<a href="http://www.theliteraryreview.org/">he Literary Review</a> </i>Vol. 45 #4, in 2002, where it received their Charles Angoff Award for Best Essay of the Year. It was later adapted to become a second "afterword" to the New Rivers Press edition of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Half-House-Richard-Hoffman/dp/0898232287/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1321203706&sr=1-1">Half the House: A Memoir</a>.</span><br />
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<div class="MsoHeader" style="text-align: justify;"> <!--StartFragment--><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">Pictures of Boyhood<br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 21px;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 21px;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> <br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Virtue consisted in winning; it consisted in being bigger, stronger, handsomer, richer, more popular, more elegant, more unscrupulous than other people—in dominating them, bullying them, making them suffer pain, making them look foolish, getting the better of them in every way. Life was hierarchical and whatever happened was right. There were the strong, who deserved to win and always did win, and there were the weak who deserved to lose and always did lose, everlastingly. </span><br />
</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 21px;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> <br />
— George Orwell, <i>Such, Such Were the Joys<br />
</i></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> <br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 21px;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 21px;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> I have tried to be done with this.<br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 21px;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> I am one of five boys in the picture. There is a ballpoint arrow coming down from the sky, from outside the frame of the photo, and it points to me. I don’t remember the names of two of the other four boys. We’re all in baseball uniforms. Although the photograph is black and white, I remember that our caps were black with orange letters — NE for North End — and that the trim on our uniforms was a thin black and orange brocade. I don’t remember this particular day although I know the spot where the photo was taken, just behind the handball courts at Jordan Park in Allentown, Pennsylvania. It is 1960 or 1961.<br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 21px;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The coach of the North End team, Tom Feifel, the man who fixed us here, forever 12 or 13 years old, was arrested, convicted, and incarcerated largely as the result of the publication of my memoir, <i>Half the House</i>, published in 1995. He had been arrested twice before for sexually assaulting young boys but had never been sent to jail. This time, with a number of boys and their families determined to testify, and with corroborating phone calls from men in their 40’s, 30’s, 20’s whom he had also victimized as children, he agreed to a plea-bargain of 8 to 15 years in the state penitentiary. He was 68 at the time. It has been determined that he violated upwards of 400 boys during his nearly four decades of coaching.<br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 21px;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> On June 20, 1997 Dateline NBC aired an eighteen minute segment on <i>Half the House</i> and its impact. The program, shaped by Dateline correspondent John Hockenberry, was several weeks in the making and included lengthy interviews with me, with my father, and with a twelve year old boy named Michael, one of Feifel's most recent victims. The segment was completed nearly a year before it finally aired, a year largely given over to the O. J. Simpson trial.<br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 21px;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">On the third day following the broadcast, I came home to a message from Detective Gerry Procanyn saying, simply, "I thought you should know that Mr. Feifel died yesterday morning after two days in the hospital." In other words, he had been admitted to the prison hospital the morning after the Dateline broadcast. He was soon transferred to the local hospital, where he died. <br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 21px;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> I was immediately suspicious. I have worked as a volunteer in prison substance-abuse and violence prevention programs. There isn't much to do in most prisons: lift weights, watch TV, and brutalize child rapists known as "skinners," "short-eyes," and a number of other terms.<br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 21px;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> I traveled to Pennsylvania to talk with Detective Procanyn who suggested we get together for breakfast. I thought I remembered where the diner was where we agreed to meet, but I left extra time in case I got lost. After all, more than thirty years had passed since I lived in that town. I got there early, of course. I sat in a booth where I could see the parking lot.<br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 21px;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> Gerry Procanyn was as I remembered him, short and stocky, sporting a trim VanDyke. He was wearing a suit and tie a little out of fashion and cowboy boots. As he approached the diner from his car, he ran a comb through his white hair and patted it on one side.<br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 21px;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> We ordered our breakfasts and Procanyn wanted to talk about “the TV show,” what he thought was good about it and what he wished they hadn’t left out. “I showed them all the evidence we had, all the stuff we collected from his house,” he said. “I think there’s a real story there. You heard anything else from those guys? Because when they were here a couple of them were talking about a movie. I think this would make a great movie. Nobody said nothing to you about that?”<br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 21px;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I shook my head.<br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 21px;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">“You don’t hear from them at all anymore?”<br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 21px;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I shook my head again. <br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 21px;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> He talked about his passion for restoring antique cars. Our food arrived. He asked about my dad whom he’d met at Feifel’s sentencing. He talked about his girlfriend, said he thought they might come to Boston one day and would it be okay to give me a call. Eventually I was able to ask him if he could find out how Feifel died.<br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 21px;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> “The death certificate from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania says that the deceased Mr. Feifel suffered heart failure.” He was cutting a piece of ham; as he leaned forward and brought the fork to his mouth, he looked up as if to see if I’d noticed his change of tone.<br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 21px;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">“You don’t buy it,” I said.<br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 21px;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">His mouth was full. He shrugged, made a face. “That’s what it says.”<br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 21px;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I poked at my homefries. I imagined Feifel watching the broadcast and understanding, really understanding, the nature of his crimes against children. Viewing his entire monstrous career compressed and focused in an eighteen minute account, I told myself, might have been too much for his heart, stripped of the denial that had allowed it to go on beating. I wanted his depravity and his death to be instructive. I wanted to conscript his disfigured spirit to squat eternally, a gothic grotesque shouldering one pillar of a better future. I wanted to believe in a justice not administered by men but by conscience itself. I wanted him dead from the force of unobstructed truth, not a victim of murder.<br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 21px;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">“Remember that Mr. Feifel has living relatives.” Gerry was holding his tomato juice in front of him as if he was about to make a toast.<br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 21px;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">“What do you mean?” It took me another moment before I understood what he meant: there was no way the state was going to invite a lawsuit from Feifel’s family.<br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 21px;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">He drank his juice. “Richard, my friend.” He wiped his lips on a napkin and leaned forward, gripping the table. “One day every person in this diner — you, me, everybody — will die of heart failure. Come on, finish up.” He raised his hand and looked for the waitress. “We’ll go up the station. I want to show you something.” <br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 21px;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">At the station I saw for the first time the evidence the police had assembled for Feifel's trial. In addition to the pornography you'd expect, and the sex toys, (including a long, clear plastic tube I first thought was a bong, but was really a "penis pump") there were the "adult" comic books I remembered: Popeye and Olive Oyl, Dagwood and Blondie, even Mickey and Minnie Mouse. There were pictures of women with animals, and women penetrated by guns. I was about to turn away, to tell Gerry I'd had enough. What was the point of this anyway? Then he directed my attention to a long narrow box. "Have a look in there," he said. "I'll bet you find that interesting."<br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 21px;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> The box was filled with index cards. Each card had a picture of a young boy on it (unless the photo had fallen off), name, address, parents' phone, height, weight, and on the back, a coded system of notations about what acts Feifel had committed on each boy — when, where — amounting to, I guess, a card-catalogue of masturbatory memories, or else a kind of trophy case. (Later, trying to tell my brother Joe about it, I said that maybe if Feifel could have had each of us stuffed and mounted, he would have. That was the feeling anyway.) <br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 21px;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> Thumbing through the cards, which were chronologically ordered, I started to recognize names. I was shaking by the time I came to my card. I wasn't halfway through the box, not even close.<br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 21px;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> "What do you think?" Procanyn asked me.<br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 21px;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> I couldn't speak. I squeezed his arm, turned, walked out, and drove back to my father’s house. Think? I have been thinking about that box for nearly five years now. It is the truth about child sexual abuse. In the face of talk about "man-boy love," about "child-abuse hysteria," about "witch-hunts," about "false memories," it is the truth. Inside it, in the darkness, are hundreds of boyhoods; inside it, in the silence, are hundreds of stories.<br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 21px;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> That is also how I came to have this photograph, printed for me by the police department’s photo lab. The copy has a greenish tint to it that I don’t remember from the original and is much larger. I don’t think I can say why I asked for a copy; that arrow started me to shaking when I first held the small snapshot in my hand. I knew I should have it; simple as that.<br />
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 21px;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> Wanting to be done with this story is a kind of denial. To “move on” seems, at least to me, to suggest that an entire chain of events, having come to some resolution, has now become inconsequential, as if the hard fruit of those branching consequences does not arrive over and over in its season. To hold that a return to silence now would not also have consequences is denial as well. In fact, I believe it would be a kind of suicide to so radically refuse the story of my life.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> A journal entry from the month after publication of my memoir, well before Feifel’s arrest:<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> The danger for me, after <i>Half the House</i>, is to retreat in fear and stop remembering, to strike a pose toward the past that calcifies it, as if it has now been successfully packaged, boxed, wrapped, with no further pain nor wisdom for me. The danger is that I have sealed the well, or re-sealed it, put the lid back on it and walked away. It doesn’t matter when you seal the well, or even if you have ever unsealed it; when the well is sealed, you either begin your version of dying — a jerky choreography of compulsions and rationalizations — or you go off looking for someone else’s water to steal.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> I have, in fact, moved on; what I have not done is try to move <i>back</i>, to a time before I understood the truth of my boyhood. Slowly and uncertainly, I am moving forward, trying to understand the ways in which my own boyhood is representative of many others’, how it was shaped by ideas and institutions that continue to enforce men’s estrangement first from one another, then from themselves, and finally from women and children. To the extent that “manhood” is a set of anxieties not congruent with the needs and concerns of women and children, to just such an extent is manhood dangerous, even death-dealing.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I learned this from the men in the prison where I ran a weekly substance-abuse group for two years. Working toward release to a half-way house, many of these men were at last ready to face their lives honestly. They had much at stake. Many of them had been violated as boys. They were at the time living in an environment in which the threat of sexual violence was very real. Yet, sitting around a table in a windowless, cinder-block room, they spoke of women in ways that objectified and demeaned them, turned them into prey. Unable to move beyond the wall of gender, unable to empathize, several said that to be sexually victimized would mean that the abuser had robbed them of their <i>manhood</i>; others nodded silently. The idea of "manhood" was so strong that they could not see that sexual violence is the most elemental violation of one's humanity, regardless of one’s gender.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">When I first agreed to lead this group, the program was designed as an 8-week course called “Tools of Recovery.” About the sixth week, after a great deal of grief expressed as anger, as blaming, as fantasized violence, one man, thundering and rising from his chair, suddenly became silent, sat, and head in his arms on the table, wept. As if it were a signal of some kind, a permission granted, a brave act that could only be honored by honesty, the men began to talk about boyhood.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">With each new group of men, I lengthened the program, until the course ran for twelve weeks. I learned to wait. Usually the tears and the truth arrived together.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The other boys in the photo are my teammates but not my friends. Of the four of them, I remember the names of only the two taller boys. I’ll change them here and call them Kenny and Phil. It would not be improbable for either or both of them to have turned, immediately after this picture was taken, and thrown me to the ground right there on the asphalt parking lot, one or the other crying out, “Cherry belly!” while they sat on me and pulled out my shirtfront and smacked my stomach while I kicked and yelled until it was a mass of red welt. One or the other might finish by spitting down on my face, even saying, “What are you going to do about it?”<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> I have talked to many men who remember both getting and giving these “cherry bellies” and who seem to have accepted them as a normal feature of boyhood. That these assaults, which happened to me frequently, were a kind of rape is borne out by an incident a couple of years after this photo was taken, in 9th grade, on the bus to an “away” baseball game.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> I had been subjected to the usual bullying, I suppose, because I can recall very clearly that my right arm hurt that day, my “pitching arm” I would have called it, though I was by no means one of our main pitchers; in fact, Kenny and Phil were our starters. I can see each of them on the mound. Nobody ever threw more overhand than Phil. His was a bizarre windmill of a delivery, more like a pitching machine than a baseball player. Kenny was what we called a “sidewinder”; he had a wicked fastball that cut across your body from left to right if you were a right-handed batter. <br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> I can recall that painful knot between elbow and shoulder from their once again refreshed mark on me, kept black and blue and sore by knuckle punches there at every opportunity. To soothe the bruise by touching or rubbing it was the signal that would invite a fresh punch there.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> Some time into the ride I discovered my glove was missing. Kenny and Phil were sitting two seats behind me, along the back bench of the bus.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> “Hey, Hoffman. Where’s your glove?” No way I was going to turn around. There was a lot of laughter. “Should we give him his glove back?”<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> Kenny’s voice: “Can’t you see I’m not finished with it yet?” <br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">“Me next! Me next!” More laughter.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">After a while my glove came flying at me, smacking the side of my face. Something wet, viscous on my cheek. At first I thought they had all spit in it.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> Now I see that I was targeted in a different way. After Feifel’s violation I seemed marked in some way that was visible to other boys. I’m reminded of that Far-Side cartoon of the two deer; one has a target of concentric circles on his chest, and the other says, “Bummer of a birthmark, Hal.” Boys do not walk up to other boys who are passive, cringing, and sad and ask what’s the matter. Not the boys in this picture; not the boys, adjacent strangers, with whom I passed my boyhood. I had a target on me.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> The boys on the back of the bus knew that the adults riding up in front — our freshman baseball coach and the assistant principal, a priest — would have to disapprove if their behavior came to light. They also knew that their aggression was congruent with a set of manly virtues, martial virtues, really, that they had learned, chief among them the ability to nullify empathy. “How would <i>you</i> like it?” the outraged question asked by a woman — in our case most often a nun — asking us to take some lesson from our transgression, would be missing from the response of the aging warrior who was our high command, sitting up next to the driver, talking to the priest, his boss, and studiously not turning round. In fact, his ignorance was dependable. From time to time, if things got too loud, he would bellow, “Don’t make me have to come back there!” What would he have done had their cruelty and my ignominy been brought inescapably to his attention?<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> On the day this photo was taken, if Feifel had offered me a ride, I would have hesitated before saying no. I would have had to find another way to avoid Kenny and Phil, some way either to placate or elude them. Maybe this was the day, the day of this picture, when I was dragged to the creek and thrown in so that on my way home I had to make up a story about going deep for a fly ball in right field, running it down so intent on robbing the opposing batter of a home run, that I kept right on going, right over the retaining wall into the creek just as the ball smacked into the pocket of my glove. It seems I already understood how stories push against others’ expectations, desires, needs: what they want to hear; not to mention how they might be made to take the shape of what I want to be true.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I don’t know, can’t know, whether I am imagining or remembering the sting of my own sweat in the corners of my eyes, the invisible cloud of heat when the big round trunk of the car is opened and the musical clinking and clonking of hickory baseball bats as the canvas duffel is thrown in, the fine brown dust in my nostrils as the trunk is closed — <i>whump.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The park where this picture was taken was the closest thing I ever experienced to paradise. These days I go there when I return to Pennsylvania to visit my father. We walk his dog there. I have written about this already, about the creek, about the white roaring rapids above the bridge at 7th street, the trout fanning in pools and eddies. Have I mentioned the benches along the creek, and the weeping willows’ long fronds trailing on the surface of the cloud-capturing water? The red and blue damselflies we called matchsticks? The cool darkness under the bridge, the lacework of trembling light on its walls? The way that the echo there taught me that silence is sound stretched thin by time?<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> But paradise is a myth made necessary by its loss. Paradise was simply the world, the real one. By the time this photograph was taken, however, I could only enjoy it alone, and after a while I even started to believe that my love for these sensual things was unmanly, that I was wrong to find pleasure in them. Certainly in the shrunken world of boyhood’s approved concerns there was no place for simple delight. Sneers were in ample supply.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> All summer you could find Tom sitting in his car, a ‘51 Chevy, in the lot near the swimming pool, not far from where this picture was taken. The radio played — <i>Come on, let’s twist again, like we did last summer</i> — while Tom sat, left arm out the window, aviator sunglasses on, watching. Watching. I think now that down below the angle of our vision he was stroking himself, recalling encounters with some of us, fantasizing — and planning — encounters with others.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The boy in this picture, the boy I was, hands covering his crotch, seems to be asking “Why me?” Psychologists who study the behavior of men like Feifel suggest that the world of such a person is both obsessive and opportunistic. Far from simply stumbling into temptation, those who assault children generally position themselves where they will have continual access to them, and their crimes are the result of a single-minded calculus. <br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Our uniforms, the finest of any team in town, came complete with those baseball undershirts, white with colored sleeves, and major league style baseball socks with the high thin stirrup of the big leaguers, not those two-tone, low-down little league socks that the other teams wore and that looked like the kind of socks Ty Cobb or Roger Hornsby wore back in ancient times. Tom bought the uniforms, clothed us, with what he earned at his foreman’s job at the nearby shirt mill. He bought our bats, balls, catcher’s equipment. We were his team. We wore our hats with NE on them proudly, unaware that we had been bought, too. Every kid in town saw those uniforms and wanted to play for us. Parents, thankful that “somebody cares enough to do something for these kids” mistook Feifel’s reticence, his lack of eye contact, for modesty, or as embarassment at their expressions of gratitude, and this meant to them that “his heart’s in the right place,” that he wasn’t trying to make a reputation for himself, wasn’t asking for their votes, their business, their money. “He does it for the kids.” In our black and gold spiffy uniforms (“your baseball suit” my mother called it) we flacked for Feifel as surely as the other teams who had the names of banks and beer distributors and bowling alleys stitched across the back of their shirts. The man knew his business, even if nobody else did.<br />
<br />
</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoHeader" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Anna Salter, in her landmark study, <i>Transforming Trauma</i>, p. 67, quotes one predator as saying,<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">"I guess it’s hard to, it’s really hard to say how you decide what child is appealing to you because, say, if you’ve got a group of 25 kids, you might find nine that are appealing, well, you’re not going to get all nine of them, but just by looking you’ve decided just from the looks what nine you want. Then you start looking at the family backgrounds. You find out all you can about them, and then you find out which ones are the most accessible, and eventually you get it down to the one that you think is the easiest target, and that’s who you do."<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> There is no question about it. I am, in the photo, hardly there. My posture shrinks from the camera’s attention. I had contracted; somehow I no longer came all the way to my skin. I saw the world as if from deep within a cave. I was like a gangster who will sit only facing the door with his back to the wall. I mean this as a metaphysical position I’d assumed: call it mistrust, call it fear, call it alienation. I am hardly there. I had been emptied, gutted like a fish. I had forgotten myself. I had begun to assemble myself, piecemeal, as I would be thereafter, trying on this man’s scowl, that man’s walk. <br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">As a boy, I loved the story of the child martyr Tarsisius. A Roman boy, he had been entrusted by the persecuted early Christian community to carry the consecrated Eucharist to a catacomb where, among the hidden faithful, the word made flesh would be consumed. On the way there, he was accosted by thugs who demanded to see what he was carrying under his cloak. “Next to his heart,” the nuns said. The bullies beat him savagely but he would not surrender the tiny incarnation of the divine that had been entrusted to him.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> I was trying to be good. I was devout in my prayers, obsessive in my observance of the liturgy (gilded pages of exquisite thinness, purple grosgrain ribbon, every single day with its feasts and prayers and colors of the priest’s vestments and place in the seasons of the liturgical year) trying to be the best altar-boy at St. Francis of Assisi school. “What are ya, buckin’ for sainthood?” my father would say, a locution that makes me smile but also opens the doors of history to me, the world of my parents, the scarred consciousness of their generation with its critical mass of trauma survivors, raised in the Great Depression, sent off to the butchery of World War II, ready, on their return, to settle for any rung in the hierarchy except the bottom-most, any drug for the pain, any empty promise about the future.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> I remember my ninth grade music teacher, a former bandleader in the Marines. One day when I was especially pleased with having mastered The Merry Widow Waltz on my trombone, he leaned into my face with his teeth gritted and a sneer curling his lip. "You think you're some pretty bird. Oh you’re so smart! Oh you can do it all! You preen all day because you can sing. Because you think you can fly. Well let me tell you. Your song's the same as any other: you sing for your supper. And you aren't flying anywhere. You're right here in the cage. With the rest of us. Get it?" <br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I learned nothing the year this photograph was taken, not even the things that mattered to me, like how to throw a curveball or how to pop a wheely on my bicycle or the Confiteor and Suscipe in Latin that would qualify me to serve at the altar even though I knew I was unworthy. Nothing would stay in my head. There was nothing wrong with my eyes, but the world was out of focus. I was the kid walking down the street staring into the middle distance, waking when a car-horn warned me to snap out of it. I’m lucky I didn’t get killed. <br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> Worse, I could no longer play baseball. Oh, I could field all right, and throw; but at the plate I “stepped in the bucket,” down the third-base line instead of into the pitch. To some extent I think my debilitating fear was in response to a physical injury, although my constant state of distraction may have been the cause of it. I’d been beaned was the problem. I hadn’t been wearing a helmet and the ball hit me on the left cheek and I went down and then oh man it hurt. It hurt like hell even with an icepack on it. So after that, no matter how many fantasy homers I hit in my backyard, no matter how much excited commentary I supplied for my imaginary triumphs — <i>And the crowd is on its feet! It’s going… going… gone!</i> — I kept “stepping in the bucket,” down the third base line, afraid; "bailing out” we sometimes called it, and I struck out over and over again. I went from the starting line-up to the bench and stayed there. Finally, I quit and joined a rag-tag team without uniforms run by the Police Athletic League<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> Marty Romig was a cop, although I didn’t know anything about him in that respect. I seem to recall something about his having had a motorcycle accident on a slick road and that’s why he was no longer in uniform. Instead he ran — he <i>was</i> — the Police Athletic League, or PAL.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> He spent Saturday mornings gathering us together from all over town, collecting bundles of old newspapers and rags in the process. It was a big, dark blue delivery truck with the PAL insignia on the side, a police badge with PAL inside it, the same badge sewn on the peaks of our caps. This ongoing paper-drive was how the program bought balls and bats and caps. I remember the stamped metal floor of the truck, and how we spent all morning wrestling one another on its waffled surface as the space shrank, filling with bundles of newspapers and magazines.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> Marty was no baseball player. I remember him pitching batting practice with no form or grace to speak of, no <i>oomph</i> on the ball, and not much control either. Marty was a bowler. His right forearm looked like Popeye’s. That whole right forearm and hand were so hypertrophied that his left looked withered by comparison.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">This was around the time that some kids were starting to throw a roundhouse curve, and it was humiliating when I ducked or stepped away from a ball that curved down and across the plate for a strike. I had had enough jeers. I was primed for self-hatred, and now I turned it on myself. I was a disgrace. I was a coward. I was a phony.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">One day Marty asked me to stick around after practice. Just me. I remember I was bringing in second base. That was always the signal for the end of practice, when Marty would call out, "Okay, that's it; bring in the bags!"<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">He squeezed my shoulder. "Don't go anywhere. We're going to try something, just you and me."<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I dropped the dusty base, picked it up, dropped my glove, bent to pick it up and tripped on the canvas strap hanging down from the base. My face was hot and dust was in my eyes.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">"I can't, coach. I have to get home." My throat was tight as when I put my fingers down it to make myself throw up so my mother would let me skip school.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The next Saturday, he ended practice just as I was about to embarrass myself again at batting practice. "You stay," he said.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> When the other boys had gone, he took me by the elbow, walked me to home plate. “Tell you what,” he said. “Put the bat down a minute.” Then he drew a line with the toe of his shoe. (He didn’t wear baseball spikes, or even sneakers, just plain black oxfords and sagging trousers he stepped on at the heel.) “Now when I throw the ball, I want you to step down this line with your left foot. That’s all. Just step. Ready?”<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> He backed up only about 6 or 8 feet before he lobbed one past me. Underhand. Then another. And another. At first it was easy. I didn’t look at the ball. I looked down at my foot. After a while I looked at the ball and still managed to step along the line, toward the pitcher, not the third-baseman. Marty backed up a little each time. Every 15 or 20 pitches I gathered up the balls and threw them back to him.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> “Okay,” he said. “Pick up your bat. Don’t swing though. Not till I say. Just keep stepping along that line.” The ball went by at nearly a normal speed. I stepped along the line. Again. Again. I wanted to swing so badly I could have screamed. Finally, he gave his permission.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> “Crack!” I had forgotten how good it felt to hit the ball. Again, “Crack!”<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> I might easily have been left, if it were not for Marty, believing that adults all wanted something from me, no matter how they presented themselves, and that whatever I wanted or needed I was going to have to get for myself, without help, and probably at someone else’s expense. I don’t know anything about how he helped other kids though I believe he must have. What I know for sure was that he cared about a frightened eleven year old boy enough to help him overcome one fear that he knew about, and at least one other that he didn’t. <br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> That Fall I showed up for football, of course. It was one thing to quit Tom’s baseball team, quite another to quit his Downtown Youth Center Bears, perennial champs of the 110-lb. league. To lack the “balls” to stick it out on Tom’s football team was a disgrace impossible to live down.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> There was a drill most of us were unwilling to admit we dreaded called “bull-in-the-ring.” Twelve or fifteen players would form a tight circle and count off. Then Feifel would call out a number and that boy would jog into the center of the circle. Then he would bark out another number and that boy would charge and try to knock the boy in the center down. As soon as one charge was over, sometimes as the boy was still getting to his feet, Feifel would call out another number and let another “bull” into the ring. The boy in the center would have to whirl and be ready or he would get slammed, blindsided. You were there, in the ring, until Feifel decided you’d had enough. Often, after he’d administered the coup de grace by calling the number of a particularly ferocious favorite positioned directly behind the player struggling to his feet, he would step into the ring and help the boy up, taking off the kid’s helmet, grabbing him behind the neck and pulling him forehead to forehead with him. “Damn good job. Damn good. Ya all right? Good. Get your helmet back on.”<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> Disgrace loomed over us, always. One flinch or cringe and Feifel was likely to blow the whistle. “You’re done. You don’t wanna play. Turn in your uniform.”<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> “No, coach, please. Please, coach. Give me another chance!”<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> “All right then. Show me what you’re made of. Get back in there.”<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> On only one occasion do I recall a boy who decided for himself that he’d had enough. He staggered away with Feifel yelling after him, “You come back here now or don’t come back at all! You hear me?” The boy kept walking, weaving and wobbly, until he sat down under a tree near the parking lot, took off his helmet, and put his head in his hands, waiting there, an emblem of shame for the rest of us, for his father to come and pick him up. We never saw him again.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> By the time I became a high school senior, I had remade myself, or at least constructed a new version of myself that hid the target. Looking back, the process seems no more complex than the ten or twelve panels that made up the cartoon ad for the Charles Atlas chest-expander on the back of nearly every comic book (on the inside back cover were mail order offers for telescopes, sea-monkeys, Chihuahuas, genuine rattlesnake rattles, jumping beans, and ant-farms.) The skinny guy with the rounded shoulders and concave chest is on a towel at the beach with a dazzling young woman in a two-piece bathing suit. The bully comes along and kicks sand in his face and unlike most of the women I have had the luck to know, the object of this poor scarecrow’s affections sneers at him and goes off on the arm of the grinning, armor-plated Neanderthal. Of course you know the story: our antihero buys the Charles Atlas chest-expander and transforms himself in the space of two panels into a radiant beachboy with an adoring young woman on each arm.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> Before you decide that deconstructing an ad on the back of a comic book is a silly exercise, know this: I believed it. I believed it as surely as my mother believed a television and screen actor named Ronald Reagan who flacked for the Chesterfields that killed her at the age of 55. I believed it as surely as I believed that our spiritual father, Pius XII, whom we would later learn had betrayed the Jews of Rome to the Nazi ovens, was the benevolent presence of Christ-like gentleness whose countenance graced every classroom I’d ever sat in. I believed it as surely as I believed that I was responsible for every sin and shame, for keeping my own soul pure and innocent, from the age of seven, as I was instructed in accordance with the Baltimore Catechism, 3rd edition, memorized and delivered flawlessly upon examination under threat of being cracked across the knuckles with a wooden stick. <br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> For two years, from 15 to 17, I daily disappeared into the basement where, in what had been the coal-bin, I weight-lifted myself into an armored pose. My barbells were concrete poured into coffee cans, the bar between them a length of pipe. I constructed a system of pulleys to lift other cans of cement. I went at it with religious devotion. I gained forty pounds, all of it muscle.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> In the final panels of the comic-strip ad, the young man stands up to the cruel bully and regains his self-respect. Authenticated by a female caricature — “He’s a REAL man!” she squeals — he beams with self-satisfaction. More often than not, however, the story unfolds differently.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> Anybody who came out for the high school team for early practice in August and made it through the double workouts, the dozens of laps, the thousands of calisthenics, the blocking and tackling drills, the boot camp presided over by coaches riding the blocking sleds with whistles clenched between their teeth, growling at us that we were weaklings, queers, sissies, made the team. Anybody could wear the uniform of which we were so proud if he were simply tough enough to not quit.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> I knew Teddy. He had once played, briefly, for Tom’s football team, the Bears, but after having his lip cut open one day at practice, he quit. The word was that he’d needed stitches and wouldn’t be back for a week or so, but that stretched out until it was clear he wasn’t returning. Teddy was a chubby kid, knock-kneed, nervous; Feifel had always teased him mercilessly for having “titties.”<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> “Sweat, you lard ass. You got titties like a sow. We’re gonna buy you a brassiere for those titties.”<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> I believe I was in college or had just graduated when my mother told me, on the telephone, that Teddy had taken his own life. “I don’t know if you knew him. It said in the paper that he was on the football team the same year you were.” I think I must have thought at the time that suicide was simply the final evidence of Teddy’s cowardice or lack of character. I don’t know, but I believe now that that is what I would have thought then. I don’t remember having any feelings about it. Now I believe that he “came out” for football compromised by his having been a “quitter” and trying, as I was, to regain or recapture his self-respect and the respect of others. He was no good at football. He was not at all aggressive. He was soft and sweet. He simply refused, as a point of honor, to quit, no matter how many double-teamed tackles flattened him, no matter how many times he took a deliberate blow from someone’s forearm to his Adam’s-apple that left him gasping and choking, no matter how disdained he was by the older members of the team. No doubt he consoled himself with the myth that he was simply being “hazed” by the upperclassmen on the team and that it was all a part of coming, eventually, to belong. But Teddy never belonged, and I believe now that the day when he found himself on the floor of the shower, pissed on by his team mates, the fuse of his ultimate despair was lit, a fuse that in his case was only a few short years long.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Too simplistic? Please, offer me another explanation. I pissed on that boy. I pissed on him to not be seen, to buy insurance, to not be him.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Could it be that every single one of us in the solitary storm of the shower felt the same need to not be the one victimized, each of us with a fear whose roar could drown out any scruples we might have had? Even Kenny, the cruelest among us? No. He was the instigator, but he was no more cruel than the rest of us. The evil, the ugliness, the cruelty arrived there that day carried by Kenny, our Lieutenant Calley, but we all took part.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Our collusion and our memories of the event, along with any questions about what it meant, or meant about us: about who we were, pretended to be, wanted to be, feared we were, coursed down the single drain in the center of our circular assault where now I remember Teddy sitting, face in his hands, sobbing as we left the showers, all of them, for him to turn off. “Last one out turns off the water!”<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> Our moral education requires that we feel shame about the things we have done to others, but a child who is made to feel shame <i>constantly</i> has no choice but to inhabit a defiance that refuses shame entirely. In this case the work of learning, of becoming a more sophisticated moral agent, is undermined and replaced with a slavish adherence to rules on the one hand, or a renegade sociopathy on the other, unless the child can find, and take, the difficult path of art with its balance of ritual and experiment, its satisfactions of symmetry (a kind of justice) and improvisation (a renewal of courage).<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> As a boy, I loved to paint and draw. My first paintings were the paint-by-number kind you could buy at the same hobby shop where I bought model planes, ships, cars to assemble with a tube of Testor’s cement that you opened with a straight pin. All the scenes were exotic: a woman wearing a mantilla, a pagoda viewed through a foreground of cherry blossoms. It required an even more <br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">obsessive obedience than the schematic diagrams of the model aircraft carriers and submarines with their tiny people who had to be painted with a brush like a single eyelash under a magnifying glass held in a vise.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> But I wanted to paint the things I had drawn, either from nature or memory, things that conveyed — if not accurately then at least satisfactorily — something I was either looking at or recalling. I might have continued in this vein — drawings and paintings of trout streams and weeping willows and the covered bridge that crossed the Little Lehigh, using the little plastic containers of paints from the paint-by-number kits and throwing away the numerical map, but one day my father brought home for me a bird’s eye maple case of real oil paints. Weber colors they were called. They came in tubes, maybe fifteen of them, and you mixed them to make the color you were after, not a color that had a number and was on a sort of jigsaw puzzle drawing by someone else. It was a miracle in my life. The smell of it, the smell of oil paint, of linseed oil, of turpentine, remains one of the sweetest scents in the world to me. I envy painters the scent of their studios and I don’t understand why anyone would choose to paint in acrylics which only seem to me to be a kind of scentless, denatured oil paint.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> Some of these paintings have survived and remain in the attic of my father’s house. Among the landscapes and sports figures are religious paintings derived from the art instruction we received at St. Francis of Assisi School, especially a painting I did around the same time this photograph was taken. As an artifact of my childhood, it is as stunning to me, in its way, as this photograph. The painting is the precise expression of my deepest wish at the time. It is a panoramic landscape: three crosses on a hill, Jerusalem in the distance, soldiers and crowd tiny as the sailors on the model atomic submarine I’d painted the year before. The sky, swirls of gloomy gray, is full of angels — weeping and winged toddlers, really — and the father, the ancient-of-days, a white-bearded wizard, Rex Coelestis, is apoplectic with rage. Yellow bolts of lightning tear the clouds around him where he glares from on high at this atrocity:<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> How DARE you do this to my son!<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> I can recall hearing, when I was 12 or 13, that some coach or scout leader was arrested for “contributing to the delinquency and corruption of a minor.” What this meant to me was that the world, if it ever discovered what Tom had done to me — and what he had convinced me <i>we</i> had done together — would see me now as a “juvenile delinquent.” A “JD,” as we called them, was someone who was headed for his just destiny — jail: first juvenile detention, then prison.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> I was not about to admit I was such a character. In fact, I told everyone — my parents, my neighbors, the priest, the nuns — that I had a vocation and was going to be a priest. I had been “called.” The nuns taught us that even among the many who wished to give themselves to God, “Many are called but few are chosen.” A little bit, I have to say, like an arrow coming down from the sky and pointing at your head: <i>this one. There’s something about this one.</i> <br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> In any case, I hoped that this assertion on my part would cover the stench of my corruption. The charge suggested that an exploitative adult like Feifel only <i>contributed</i> to a minor’s delinquency, meaning, I supposed, that there was something, some predisposition to delinquency that already existed in the child, something underway to which the adult was merely contributing, in relation to which the adult was merely an accomplice or accessory. In other words, the minor was responsible; the child was wrong; the adult had only abetted him — the crime was the child’s and had less to do with any specific action than it did with a state of being: delinquency and corruption.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> In a similar way, I set out to prove that I had not been changed by Feifel. The prevailing view, vile in its impact on innocent men, was that men who preyed upon young boys were attempting to “recruit” them to homosexuality. In fact, if you scratch the word corruption in this context, you will find this hateful misapprehension beneath it. <br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Feifel was booked on a charge of “sodomy and involuntary deviate sexual intercourse.” The sodomy laws have since been struck down, at least in most states, because they are the chief instrument of persecution aimed at gay men. The charge of sodomy equates the rape of a child with gay sexuality, stirs biblical connotations, and cedes categorical ground to homophobes. To my horror, as Feifel was led away after his sentencing, the father of one of his young victims shook his fist and roared, “And we’re going to get the rest of you faggots, too!”<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The consequences of such hatred include the continuing risk to all boys of sexual violence. Boys who are routinely using the term “faggot” as a slur by the time they are eight or nine years old cannot be expected to disclose that an adult male is exploiting them sexually, even if they do understand that something is wrong. Homophobia teaches them that the something that is wrong is them.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Those of us who are appalled at the criminalization of consensual adult sexual activity wince when anyone is charged with a crime of “deviance.” So when the serial rape of children is seen as a kind of sexual deviance, a situation exists in which a person who has wielded immensely abusive power over one weaker than himself can somehow be viewed by those of liberal conscience as a kind of underdog persecuted by the state. Most people, fair-minded and tolerant, are paralyzed by this way of configuring the issue. Most people haven’t thought very much about it at all, but when they do, when events demand that they do, they can’t get very far, because these premises, the roots of the discussion, the way the issue is framed, the way the disk is formatted if you will, allows only the most circular “yes, but” thinking and the wringing of hands and helplessness we have seen time and again.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Almost daily the newspapers offer us demoralizing reports of children forced to bear on their bodies, and in their souls, a bitter knowledge that adults, with their state-of-the-art denial systems, refuse. The stories — of convicted coaches, teachers, priests — are brief and buried mid-paper, between the front page pictures of men in dark suits with red ties planning conquest and the millionaires in Sports. To ask such men to turn their attention to the welfare of children feels like asking a tree to uproot itself, a stone to lift itself, a bomb to defuse itself. Still, I have no choice but to wait, though with much less confidence than I felt when counseling prisoners, for men to begin to tell the truth about boyhood.<br />
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</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Looking at this photograph, one might think that these boys in their baseball uniforms, in front of a handball court, with a Chevrolet behind them, are emblematic of that golden age of America, the years of prosperity after the Second World War. Their uniforms are spiffy. It’s summer. Their coach is taking their picture.<br />
<br />
They are studying how to choke off empathy. They are getting the hang of hatred. They are dividing the world into victors and victims. They are running a phallic gauntlet. They are dying inside of fear.<br />
<br />
They are learning the national pastime.<br />
</span></span></span> <!--EndFragment--> </div><div style="font-size: small;"><div id="ftn" style="mso-element: footnote;"> </div></div><!--EndFragment--><br />
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<div style="mso-element: footnote-list;"><div id="ftn" style="mso-element: footnote;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> </span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> </span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> <!--EndFragment--></span>RHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18132797421986659081noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31730738.post-71217468210002646982011-11-11T23:29:00.002-05:002011-11-11T23:34:04.653-05:00Penn State Criminal Conspiracy<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: .5in; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I have been getting a lot of email from people who want me to, expect me to, write about the recent revelations at Penn State. I cannot. That whole world, that whole milieu, is still very real to me. I have tried to parse it out over and over again: the linkages between hypermasculinity, locker rooms, coaches as models of manhood, misogyny, homophobia, repression, secrecy, loyalty, and obedience. It’s a knot. In the bowels of our culture.</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> <br />
In any hierarchy, especially those with a king on top, obedience and loyalty are primary virtues. Everywhere else they are secondary to honesty, compassion, and justice. Obedience and loyalty are only primary virtues if you’re a dog.<br />
<br />
I shouted myself hoarse about this for ten years, at conferences, on commissions, on TV and radio programs, in op-ed pieces. People would rather continue to make minor adjustments and be able to keep the structures of power and money in place, structures that depend upon...you guessed it: obedience and loyalty, secrecy and silence.<br />
<br />
The best writing I did about this was the two “afterwords” to <i>Half the House</i>. If I could, I would buy a copy myself for every person at Penn State. Hell, the NCAA.<br />
</span><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: .5in; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">What I <i>can</i> do right now is post a speech I gave to a conference in 1999. Even typing that date is disheartening. When nothing has changed since then, why would I have anything new to say?</span><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: .5in; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">"ALL ONE STRUGGLE": KEYNOTE ADDRESS<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: .5in; mso-pagination: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: .5in; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">by RICHARD HOFFMAN <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: .5in; mso-pagination: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: .5in; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">TO TELL THE TRUTH Conference 1999,<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: .5in; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Rhode Island College, 7 November 1999<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: .5in; mso-pagination: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-right: .5in; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Good afternoon. Like many of us here, I am a survivor of sexual violence in childhood. I am also a father, a husband, a teacher, and a writer. When my memoir, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Half the House</i>, was published in 1995, it became instrumental in the arrest, conviction, and incarceration of the man who raped me when I was ten, a revered youth sports figure who, it turns out, victimized nearly 500 boys over a forty year period. He died in prison last year.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-right: .5in; mso-pagination: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-right: .5in; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The whole experience of the arrest, the court proceedings, the media attention, the meaning the book has come to have for others, has been an incredible education for me. Although I haven't used the word since the sixties, I would have to say it "radicalized' me; that is, it made me begin to think about the deep roots of sexual violence against children in our culture. This afternoon I want to try to share some of those thoughts. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-right: .5in; mso-pagination: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-right: .5in; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Like many of us here, I have been trying to understand the enormity of this evil for a long time now. I have come to few conclusions except that we have to begin with a different set of terms if we are to avoid the same fear, helplessness, and despair that have incapacitated us so far and continued to place children at risk.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-right: .5in; mso-pagination: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-right: .5in; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I believe we have been misled by the language we use, by the way we talk about those who would harm our children. We speak of them as “sick”. We use names that accept their denial and distortion. Our words are important. Words are how we think. Too often we become tangled in language that does not reflect reality, but hides it until, over and over, child after child, it is too late.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-right: .5in; mso-pagination: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-right: .5in; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Let's begin by refusing to use the word "pedophile." The word comes from Greek and means, literally, “one who loves children.” What an Orwellian inversion! To use this word to describe those who violate children, and in many instances kill to silence them, is to help the wolf into his sheepskin.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-right: .5in; mso-pagination: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-right: .5in; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">This term, pedophile, is more than a poor word choice; a clinical—that is, pseudo-medical—term, it asks us to see such evil as arising from disease or illness, evil in its effect, perhaps, but no more intentional than other natural misfortunes such as diabetes or muscular dystrophy. This makes the violation of children a part of the natural order and the perpetrator one who cannot help himself.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-right: .5in; mso-pagination: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-right: .5in; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In place of the term pedophile, then, let me offer an alternative: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pedoscele</i>, from Latin <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">scelus</i>, meaning “evil deed.” Try it. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pedoscele: one who does evil to children.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-right: .5in; mso-pagination: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-right: .5in; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">And let's stop calling them "sex offenders," as if their crimes had anything to do with sex. If a man assaults me with a baseball bat, it is not about baseball. If I am stabbed through the heart with a bread knife, it is not about "baked goods."(Perhaps Jeffrey Dahmer was a "food offender.") As the poet Linda McCarriston once pointed out, "Saying 'the man had sex with the child' is like saying, 'The man had dinner with the pork chop.'"<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-right: .5in; mso-pagination: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-right: .5in; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The rape of a child is a violent act of contempt, not an expression of sexuality or affection. Pedosceles want us to believe otherwise. This is why they talk of “love” between men and boys. This is why, after Nabokov's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lolita</i>, pubescent girls are called, winkingly, "nymphets." All too often we fall for it. For example, in a newscast about the man who had devastated the childhoods of several generations in my hometown, including mine, a TV commentator said that the defendant had "admitted that he is overly fond of young boys." (The word "pedophile" is there, in the shadows.) At that pre-trial hearing, one boy said the man had threatened to cut off his genitals if he told. Another boy testified that the man threatened to shoot his little brother. Overly fond indeed. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-right: .5in; mso-pagination: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-right: .5in; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Not long ago a pedoscele named Thomas Hamilton massacred a kindergarten class in Dunblane, Scotland. He had been driven, unwelcome, from one community to another for decades, it seems, but police were not able to find parents unashamed to take a case to court. Instead, he was shooed along, referred to as a "misfit," and became, each time, the next community's problem. The subsequent slaughter, like the murder of Jeffrey Curley in my home town of Cambridge, unmasks the real nature of sexual child abuse. At its core is a hatred of that naivete and vulnerability we call innocence. Men like Thomas Hamilton, or Jesse Timmendequas who killed Megan Kanka, or Salvatore Sicari and Charles Jaynes, the murderers of Jeffrey Curley, cannot stand that quality and must defile it. Failing that, they must kill the child who represents it. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-right: .5in; mso-pagination: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-right: .5in; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">While we’re at it, let's retire the word "molest." Look it up. It means to bother. Excuse me, sir, you're bothering my child.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-right: 1.0in; mso-pagination: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Even speaking informally we communicate mostly ignorance, discomfort, and confusion. I have heard the word diddle used to describe (and dismiss) the violation of children, as in “He likes to diddle little boys.” It is a word that seems made to order, silly sounding, sniggering, naughty. Diddling, fondling, fooling around—great foggy euphemisms into which real children vanish.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">There is language that sheds light, and language that hides reality in fog. Honoring the truth means matching words to things as honestly as we can so the listener or reader sees what we are referring to, not an abstraction that has taken its place. Honoring the truth means not using language to evade responsibility.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Honoring the truth is a political issue, just as it is everywhere else in the world, whether it is in Chile, Cambodia, Guatemala, South Africa, or post-holocaust Europe; in fact it is THE political issue of our time since we live in such a mediadrome that reality can be processed, denatured, distorted, polished, and recycled almost as soon as something has happened. Psychology that uses terms like “the incest family,” “inappropriate touch,” and “the cycle of violence,” plays its part in that snowballing untruth. Psychotherapy that restores victims to the truth of what happened and helps them to regain their power to make change in the world is part of the solution. Psychotherapy that pretends neutrality, that offers palatable euphemisms for what is a great evil, is part of the problem.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I was not "fondled." I was not “loved.” America was neither “discovered,” nor "settled." Guatemalan peasants were not "pacified." Kosovo was not "cleansed." <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Orwell had it right about language. It's always first of all about language. That's what it means to "come to terms" with something. Some people use euphemisms to make the intolerable tolerable, others to sow confusion and rationalize their actions. I understand that, for many, calling anything evil in our psychocratic age is blasphemy; nevertheless, when language masks reality, instead of revealing it, then we traffic in delusion and create suffering.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">As you can see, I am reluctant to talk about the sexual abuse of children as if it were in each case a private tragedy, a kind of accident.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Much of the time, when we talk about recovering from the trauma of childhood sexual abuse, we talk about healing. The metaphor of healing a wound is only so useful, however - the truth is even simpler and more terrible: the sexual violation of a child is a violation of the child's history, not merely the child's psyche. It is a lie told to the child about his or her worth, a lie that disrupts the story as it had been unfolding and establishes new premises that engender a different narrative or make a coherent individual story not congruent with the master narrative, the story of power over others, nearly impossible. The psyche, with its grief and outrage, is exiled, and there is no spirit left, no power, to withstand the profferred false narrative telling you who you are and what you must become. This is the story of childhood in patriarchal culture. This is the sacrifice of Isaac, complete with his initiation and induction into the bloody warrior's covenant with the god of conquest, a covenant sealed by means of a genital wound (which, compared to what <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">almost</i> happened, and to what happened to that hapless ram, by now looks like a good deal.) This is the story of Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon, sacrificed to the gods in return for winds to sail warships to Troy.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In the case of boys, this toxic proto-narrative, inscribed, tattooed as it were, on Isaac’s psyche, seems to be that the whole of the world is an arena in which one strives, and in which there are necessarily winners and losers, and that all the others one encounters there are either adversaries or allies against one's adversaries. This is the uber-ideology of “manhood.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">To the extent that manhood is a set of anxieties that are not aligned with the worries of women and the welfare of children, to just this extent is manhood dangerous and indefensible. When men remember their boyhoods, their childhoods, really, before they became enchanted by the dream of power, they grieve for the time they have lost to delusion, and they begin to work for justice.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">This same violent disruption of a child's authentic unfolding story, in the case of girl children, teaches them their unimportance. And offers the delusion of beauty, of becoming once again valuable by transforming themselves into objects, sacrificial objects subordinate to the enterprises of powerful men.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In neither case is the child any longer the protagonist of his or her own story. Both boys and girls are, from then on, in uniform, so to speak; what's more, they are convinced that they are wearing it by choice. "If I feel isolated and alone, I can at least <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">appear</i> to be the same as everyone else.” Perhaps that is the same reason everyone wears a uniform. It certainly explains the terrible loneliness of crowds.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">What I'm suggesting is that this induction into a culture of abusive, hierarchical power, a world of winners and losers, victors and victims, is accomplished in large part through sexual violence. It is not necessary that every child experience this violence explicitly and directly for it to be a constant feature of childhood. We are learning, as disclosures mount, that somewhere between a quarter and a half of all children, girls and boys, are explicitly violated by a trusted adult.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; tab-stops: .5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">We shall come to see, if we keep our eyes open, that all ways of gendering the sexual abuse of children are wrong; what's more, they are beside the point. I remember a group of men with whom I worked as a volunteer in a prison. Members of a substance-abuse group working toward release to a half-way house, many of these men were at last ready to face their lives honestly. They had much at stake. Many of them had been violated as boys. They were now living in an environment in which the threat of sexual violence was very real. Yet many of them spoke of women in ways that objectified and demeaned them. They were unable to see beyond the wall of gender, unable to empathize. When I asked what it would mean to be sexually violated, several said that it meant that the abuser would have robbed them of their manhood; others nodded silently. The idea of "manhood" was so strong that they could not see that sexual violence is the most elemental violation of one's humanity, regardless of gender. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; tab-stops: .5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It may be that a similar blindness hides the reality that children, both boys and girls, are also sexually abused by women. Once again gender stereotypes serve only to bewilder us. And once again, those who refuse the stereotypes, those with the courage to shatter the silence that allows continuing ignorance among people of good will, are those who represent children's best hope.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; tab-stops: .5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The abuse of a child is a lesson in power. It defines power for the child: it says that power is making others do your will. This message is congruent with many other lessons we receive from our culture. Real power, however, is what was taken from us, not only by acts of violence and violation, but by lies about the nature of, the meaning of, and the responsibility for those acts, lies about who we are. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; tab-stops: .5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Truthtelling is the arduous process through which we recover real power and free ourselves from the tyranny of the past. This liberation, this difficult extrication from lies, shame, and silence, this grief, anger, hope, and truth, has the potential to restore not only the souls of those of us who have suffered abuse and betrayal, but also our common life. The violation of a child, after all, is an offense against the community. It is a crime against the future. Through the cumulative effect of many separate acts of truthtelling, encouraging others to follow suit, we help to regenerate in our communities a respect for truthfulness, for honesty as a primary value. And THAT will make the world a safer place for children. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Some days I see hope in the actions of brave truth tellers who refuse to pipe down in the face of sneers and threats. Other days I feel that asking this culture to fight for the protection of children and against their exploitation is like asking a tree to uproot itself, a stone to lift itself, a bomb to defuse itself. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Society still responds to instances of child sexual abuse as if each were an exception from the way things are, generally; no doubt the vast majority of people find such acts repugnant in the extreme and so believe that their incidence is exaggerated, probably by well-meaning but overly zealous, and terribly damaged people. This position allows one who takes it to feel a mildly patronizing compassion, not unpleasant for being so "reasonable" in the face of potential "hysteria". The sexual abuse of children is, however, not only commonplace, but lodged at the intersection of certain cultural assumptions that, taken together, shield its prevalence from view. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">1. sexual abuse of children is rare<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">2. sexual abuse of children is something only “those people” do<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">3. sexual abuse of children is perpetrated by a few sick, mentally ill persons<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">4. if a child is sexually abused by a priest, coach, caregiver, it’s the parents’ fault for not being more vigilant<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">5. children wish to be sexual with adults<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">6. most adults are focused on making the world a better place for kids<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The necessary myth is that our society exists in order to sustain its members and to create health and abundance for coming generations, beginning with our children and grandchildren. This may indeed have been the function of pre-industrial, agrarian cultures, but it is emphatically not the purpose of our late capitalist consumer society. Ask any primary school teacher how much of their time is spent debriefing their charges, trying to countermand the toxic messages about their self-worth that indoctrinate entry-level consumers.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Now consider the corollary myth: that those who prey upon children are different in kind from the good middle-class souls who work hard to keep the wheels of commerce, religion, and politics turning. This myth insists that predators are out of alignment with society's values regarding children. This myth bodies forth in the form of the wild-eyed deviant in a trenchcoat lurking in the suburban shrubbery. (In the service of this myth, every child abuser who owns a trenchcoat will be photographed in it a thousand times, preferably with playground equipment in the background.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It was Freud, of course, who helped supply this myth because he gave way to his own quite human need, and that of his colleagues, to make something safely "other" of what he rightly saw as vile and criminal. He decided, under pressure from his colleagues, that of course the good burghers of Vienna couldn't be exploiting their daughters and nieces in this unconscionable manner (let alone their sons and nephews.) We have been living with the consequences of that evasion for a century now, and we are accustomed to a conceptual framework, or at least a phraseological one, that cannot allow the truth, that in fact reflexively dismisses it whenever it appears. Unless, of course, it involves a guy in a trenchcoat.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">With the North American Man-Boy Love Association marching in the gay Pride parade, crying out, wrongly, "we're gay too, and persecuted for our sexual preference," and, on the other, right wing homophobes busily scapegoating gay men for crimes against children, it becomes difficult to get anyone to see that these violations are first of all crimes of abusive, oppressive, exploitative power, and that they are a human rights issue. Add to that such psychobabble as "the incest family," "the cycle of violence," and statistically inaccurate representations that suggest to the public that those who are violated as children go on to violate children, all that "kiss of the vampire" crap, and you have a paralyzing confusion about who is responsible and what, if anything, can be done.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I believe this is similar to the confusion that reigned in our culture right up to the latter half of the 19th century on the question of slavery. People walked around wringing their hands and saying they were of course against it but what could they do? It was "too complex," "too politicized;" its opponents were "too fanatical." Many debates were held to discuss whether in fact slavery was "evil" or just an unfortunate economic and historical development. Some maintained that blacks were better off than they would have been in Africa. Others, saying they shared the same goals, but saw no reason to call good Christian gentlemen of the south "evil," created "African Colonization societies" that did nothing to interrupt the slave trade, but bought up slaves, mostly the sick and elderly, and resettled them in places like Liberia.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Those who argued on behalf of slaveholders contended that the Greeks had slaves. They argued that not all slaveholders treated their slaves violently. They argued that some slaves were thankful to their masters for educating them. They argued that truly sadistic masters were a tiny minority. I have heard every one of these arguments applied to the latter day “peculiar institution” of child sexual exploitation.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It took William Lloyd Garrison to say, unequivocally, that slavery was evil, and that while a man held slaves, there was nothing that could be placed in the other pan of the moral scale that would balance it out. Through his efforts, and in the face of accusations that he was preaching hatred, the entire north finally came round to his position. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Those who violate children are slave-masters, tyrants, especially when the child can make no escape from their sphere of influence. And while a person continues to harm children, there is nothing that can be placed in the other pan of the scale — nothing — that can balance it. It doesn’t matter if you are a winning coach, an inspiring teacher, a great provider for your family, a beloved priest, a pop star, or a poet. And to condemn the actions of tyrants is not hatred, but love.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">As for the question of abusers who were themselves victimized — I am not sympathetic to those who have violated children even though they were violated themselves. Please note that I say “even though,” and not because. I know too many decent honorable men whose boyhoods, if we were to adopt this mechanistic theory, would qualify them to be axe-murderers.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Neither do I condemn anyone who is willing to look hard at the consequences of his actions, and make the penitential journey to restored wholeness. One would be a fool to do so; the literature of every land provides stories that attest to the possibility of redemption, and to the fact that even the most horrible torturers can once again find their place in the human community. But no one can make that journey while they are minimizing the horror they have inflicted, and I think it the very worst kind of "help" to offer them the debased and distorted language that allows them to do so.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; tab-stops: .5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">For what shall they feel remorse? For doing evil? Or for "being inappropriate?” For "fondling" a child? (Most of us like being fondled!) For “offending?” Last week I was "offended" when a friend gave his Celtics tickets to someone else. When I was ten my coach raped me. I have been bitten by both dogs and fleas, and I know the difference. But then I am not invested in softening the language to accommodate some new pseudo-enlightened view that dispenses with evil as a category to describe the selfish exploitation of the vulnerable.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I suppose that here is the part where I should talk about forgiveness. Over and over again, I am asked if I forgave coach Feifel. The answer is yes — I forgave him for thirty years; that was the word I used: forgiveness. I knew nothing about denial during those years while it was having its corrosive effect on my life. Forgiveness had a nice virtuous ring to it. And during the thirty years that Feifel enjoyed my virtuous amnesty, over three hundred more little boys were raped.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Those of us who were victimized by this ongoing atrocity, this pervasive secret institution in our culture, have only recently found the strength to claim, understand, and come to terms with what was done to us when we were at our most vulnerable. I am not alone when I say that not only do I refuse to be anesthetized any longer by the culture’s prescribed anodynes of booze, drugs, constant entertainment and distraction, but that I also refuse to be "amnesthetized" by bogus versions of forgiveness based on a no-fault ethical system.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">If a man burns down my house, I do not owe him anything — certainly not the chance to do it again after I’ve rebuilt, and least of all forgiveness. On the contrary, he owes me. He owes me a house, along with a great deal more for the trauma and devastating interruption of my life his act has caused. He also owes the community for infecting it with fear and mistrust. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I believe that there is a dimly lit, demanding way that, followed, might lead not only to real safety for our children, but the reestablishment and strengthening of a community, a body politic, a nation, torn apart by deep moral divisions in other matters. Surely we all agree, across those divides, that adult sexual exploitation of children is wrong. (By the way, contrary to what some people would like us to believe, there is no nation on this planet where the sexual violation of a child is legally permissible. None.) So why not begin there, where we agree?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">If we cannot come together across the barriers of race, class, religion, and politics — including the politics of sexual orientation, abortion, and capital punishment — to search for a way to protect our children from this scourge, then truly all is lost. Then we will have failed as a people no matter what else we may accomplish.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">We will have to rethink things, rename things, reconsider positions with which we've become comfortable. We will have to be willing to admit ignorance, feel foolish, relinquish worn pieties. We will have to be fearless.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Which of our children doesn't deserve this? And what are we as a society if our first goal is not to protect our children — not your children or my children, but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">our</i> children? Who are we if we turn our backs?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">According to the Czech writer Ivan Klima, "The dreams of the powerless are either to flee to safety or to gain power." Looking back at my own life, it seems to me that its entire course, until recently, could have been plotted using those two coordinates.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I fled my home town, scene of my shame. I fled the working class background that marked me for sneers and dismissals. I fled the church that further shamed me. I fled the self whom I was taught to see as a loser. I looked for safety in muscular strength, weightlifting myself into an armored pose. I looked for safety in womens' arms. I looked for safety in the bottle's anesthesia.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The alternative dream, of wielding the same kind of power I had suffered under, was abhorrent to me. Stuck, I settled for a life in which time passed, meant little, and accrued to nothing.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Only when I'd understood that there was another kind of power -- not abusive power, not power over other people, but the power to speak the truth -- could I admit that the dream of safety is part of the problem. To feel the kind of safety the first dream promised would require me to betray what I knew just as surely as the second dream, the dream of power, would require me to deny the pain of my boyhood. Both dreams are one and the same: the first says "Now I can never be hurt again"; the second shrugs, "Better you than me." Both are as sterile and solitary as dreams must be.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">When you speak the truth, you wake from this terrible delusion. At first there is pain, like the blood returning to a numb limb when we've slept too long, too drunkenly, too deeply. You wake to a world where others are suffering from the onslaughts of abusive power and where shame still drives the deadly machinery of disempowerment and disintegration. But it is also a world where, once you commit yourself to the struggle for wholeness, recovery, and justice, there is joy, solidarity, and strength.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">More and more of us are coming forward, and coming together, not because anyone would want to claim such a history, but because with each new voice the need for continuing denial is diminished. What's surprising is that when the silence is broken the sound we hear is only briefly the sound of pain; soon after there is laughter, which any comic will tell you depends on knowing the truth and seeing the incongruous. And soon after that there is joy. The whole process is like drawing water from a pump: the terrible rumbling and gurgling sounds, the clay-colored, rusty sputter, and finally the water, cold, clear, life-giving: the honest, revitalizing truth drawn up from deep in the willing earth.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">This gathering — and others like it — represents the stirring of a sleeping giant, the authentic spirit bequeathed us by our forebears but anesthetized by childhood violence, betrayal, and despair. May it be for each one of us more than a stirring, but an awakening.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I'd like to end with a poem of mine called MESSENGERS since I believe that's who we are, all of us here, bearing witness to the truth. It begins with a quotation from the tragic poet Aeschylus, from his play <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Agamemnon</i>, written in about 450 B.C.E. —<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br clear="ALL" style="page-break-before: always;" /> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: 1.0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">MESSENGERS<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 2.9in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 2.9in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">"The house itself, if it had a voice,<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 2.9in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">would speak out clearly. As for me,<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 2.9in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I speak to those who understand;<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 2.9in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">if they fail, memories are nothing."<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 2.9in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 3.5in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Aeschylus: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Agamemnon</i><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">We say what we know because we must.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">You can cheer us or run us out of town.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It's nothing at first, like rain on dust,<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">a hairline crack in the faultline's crust,<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">a tentative first-person plural pronoun.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">We say what we know because we must<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">recall, recount, redeem, and readjust<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">all that we've known, not for renown.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It's nothing at first, like rain on dust,<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">or the first few tiny flecks of rust<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">on barrels buried underground.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">We say what we know because we must<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">talk back to histories we do not trust,<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">relearn our own, and set them down.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It's nothing at first, like rain on dust.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">What does it mean to fear what's just?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">You can cheer us or run us out of town.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">We say what we know because we must.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It's nothing at first, like rain on dust.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">THANK YOU.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>RHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18132797421986659081noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31730738.post-22733460704745478762011-10-04T20:52:00.002-04:002011-10-04T22:52:26.402-04:00Another poem from <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Without-Paradise-Richard-Hoffman/dp/1891812335">Without Paradise</a>:<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=31730738&postID=2273346070474547876&from=pencil" name="_Toc498834943">THE BACKYARD STUFF’S ESSENTIAL</a></span><br />
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> after A. R. Ammons<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">There’s a small hill in the tall grass in the backyard<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">that’s a perfect pillow. Summer’s my lazy time if lazy’s<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">understood the way I mean it: wagging fingers, dirty<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">looks be damned. Implied utility’s a constant<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">in a view, even up through birdshook foliage<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">or looking at clodhopping robins hunting worms,<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">spotting a split-second rabbit, or reflecting<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">on the house that costs so much to live in (nothing<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">much: 2BR, bath, eat-in kitch, den, lvng rm):<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">nice portion of an acre though and privacy preserved<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">by hemlock hedges, cedar, and rhododendron:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">comfortable terrain around the nest: good sleeping.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Yet like everything else alive I have competitors<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">and predators (creditors): presently I carry a balance<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">due on several past accounts: their statements, in-<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">voices they call them, flimsy tissues, flush with alarm<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">at repercussions, service interruptions, spotty<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">ratings, garnishings, and heavy levies on extra time<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">and on my quietude. My neighbor’s mower has the power<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">of a motorcycle and its hypertense demeanor, growling<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">at a distance, makes the stiff grass on my sweaty arms<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">stop itching: now it’s a delicate tickle. Why do choices<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">seem to come in twos? I don’t want to go anywhere<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">or do anything right now although a bright idea<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">might occur to me watching a squirrel in the oak<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">lie full-length on a limb and stretch out like a cat,<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">or staring into the effulgent redscape of my eyelids<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">(where the will is situated, surely) with the bright sun<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">free a while between the slowly counterearthwise clouds<o:p></o:p></span></div><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: x-small;">and I’ll get up and do it then or go there.</span>RHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18132797421986659081noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31730738.post-27764741331134107022011-09-05T23:26:00.003-04:002011-09-05T23:32:09.862-04:00<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7EhBL2DuJuAyt1EN750pvYzPh2THK259BoF4SAz5Vdh79vn9xhOIUaZK9edJBpZCQ_2DiyuQigRucC9JhNR_N4XFIF8PoKcItsSEsvkGdwf5Xn-gUJUIoyWDm_i9ycN-DmCQh/s1600/mr.+stevens.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 298px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7EhBL2DuJuAyt1EN750pvYzPh2THK259BoF4SAz5Vdh79vn9xhOIUaZK9edJBpZCQ_2DiyuQigRucC9JhNR_N4XFIF8PoKcItsSEsvkGdwf5Xn-gUJUIoyWDm_i9ycN-DmCQh/s400/mr.+stevens.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5649082894570090466" /></a><br /></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;">A poem from my first collection, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_nr_p_n_feature_browse-b_mrr_0?rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3Awithout+paradise%5Cc+hoffman%2Cp_n_feature_browse-bin%3A2656022011&bbn=283155&keywords=without+paradise%2C+hoffman&ie=UTF8&qid=1315279676&rnid=618072011">Without Paradise</a>:</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span></div><div> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:documentproperties> <o:template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:revision>0</o:Revision> <o:totaltime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:pages>1</o:Pages> <o:words>176</o:Words> <o:characters>759</o:Characters> <o:company>vero</o:Company> <o:lines>13</o:Lines> <o:paragraphs>2</o:Paragraphs> <o:characterswithspaces>1235</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:drawinggridhorizontalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:drawinggridverticalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:displayhorizontaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:displayverticaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:dontautofitconstrainedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u style="text-underline: words"><span style="font-family:";"><br /></span></u></b> </span><h1 style="margin-right:-.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;"><a name="_Toc458147780"></a><a name="_Toc498575648"></a><a name="_Toc498590766"></a><a name="_Toc498601241"></a><a name="_Toc498781203"></a><a name="_Toc498834724"></a><a name="_Toc498834854"></a><a name="_Toc498834944"><span style="mso-bookmark:_Toc498834854"><span style="mso-bookmark:_Toc498834724"><span style="mso-bookmark:_Toc498781203"><span style="mso-bookmark:_Toc498601241"><span style="mso-bookmark:_Toc498590766"><span style="mso-bookmark:_Toc498575648"><span style="mso-bookmark:_Toc458147780">STEVENS ASTRIDE THE HEMISPHERES</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></a></span></h1> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:-.5in;margin-bottom: 0in;margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;">— for Thom Salmon<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right:-.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:85%;" >Mnemosyne upreared amid atrocity concurs:</span></p><p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right:-.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:85%;" >this looking backward is a not so accidental</span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right:-.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;">death and dismemberment policy after all,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right:-.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right:-.5in"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right:-.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;">appended to one’s life and health; however,<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right:-.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;">squat caryatids, resentful though proud,<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right:-.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;">agree that, whether a bequest or metaphor <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right:-.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right:-.5in"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right:-.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;">(those fixed, equivocating lions), history<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right:-.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;">is more than books and books of big stuff and<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right:-.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;">(roaring leonisimus or sleeping as you pass)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right:-.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right:-.5in"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right:-.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;">requires no notice in advance to change the plan.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right:-.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;">Believe me, there are times,<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"> semblable</i>,<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right:-.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;">when such rays are visible slanting through<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right:-.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right:-.5in"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right:-.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;">our covenants and riders that a calendar<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right:-.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;">might just as well, for all the useless fear<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right:-.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;">it tries to ease with seasonal photos, be<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right:-.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right:-.5in"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right:-.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;">that grove of birches, each benignly slashed to<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right:-.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;">individuality by no one, it depicts so earnestly.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right:-.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;">You never know. You can’t. But you may trust<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right:-.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right:-.5in"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right:-.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;">it fits together, boy, without a physical exam,<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right:-.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;">harmoniously, though all seems otherwise,<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right:-.5in"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;">and no one has ever been denied. Call now.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <!--EndFragment--></div>RHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18132797421986659081noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31730738.post-38552218790920958942011-08-06T10:36:00.006-04:002011-08-06T10:49:07.216-04:00<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0rGXZsuSAw3qPBMoBkfoEOcC-SMdnC_wbtXhaEqupguCFkPlXMg1zVNQxhETYtqRq0YVOETAQAKpSxSrape5SsMANoY71fweVDtKFzjWQflaEMwlRuRY8-jptIGz6Z1oYbR3l/s1600/Whitman-leavesofgrass.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 228px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0rGXZsuSAw3qPBMoBkfoEOcC-SMdnC_wbtXhaEqupguCFkPlXMg1zVNQxhETYtqRq0YVOETAQAKpSxSrape5SsMANoY71fweVDtKFzjWQflaEMwlRuRY8-jptIGz6Z1oYbR3l/s400/Whitman-leavesofgrass.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5637752434694602194" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-large;"><br /></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-large;">YAWP</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-large;"> <!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoBodyText2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Palatino;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:-webkit-xxx-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoBodyText2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Palatino;"> <!--StartFragment--><span style="font-family:Palatino;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">Walt, under my bootsoles you smell like napthalene and paint<br />whenever the water table rises, and no one is held accountable</span></span><span style="font-family:Georgia, Times New Roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family:Palatino;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><br />Generalists with cell phones selling wellness products on the<br />beltways of America at eighty miles per hour beli</span></span><span style="font-family:Georgia, Times New Roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">e</span></span><span style="font-family:Palatino;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">v</span></span><span style="font-family:Georgia, Times New Roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">e<br /></span></span><span style="font-family:Palatino;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><br />they are the first to ever want a life that’s more than labo</span></span><span style="font-family:Georgia, Times New Roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">r</span></span><span style="font-family:Palatino;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"> and<br />have made that aspiration a creed. Their pr</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">ayer: May I ge</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><i>t</i></span></span><span style="font-family:Georgia, Times New Roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><i> </i></span></span><span style="font-family:Palatino;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><i>m</i></span></span><span style="font-family:Georgia, Times New Roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><i>i</i></span></span><span style="font-family:Palatino;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><i>ne.</i><br /><br />Your beautiful roughs have been trained to kill a dozen ways,<br />contractors n</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">ow,</span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">not</span> c</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><i>amerados</i>, and none can </span></span><span style="font-family:Georgia, Times New Roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">b</span></span><span style="font-family:Palatino;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">e</span></span><span style="font-family:Georgia, Times New Roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"> </span></span><span style="font-family:Palatino;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">heard<br /><br />above the mating calls of money sounding in t</span></span><span style="font-family:Georgia, Times New Roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">h</span></span><span style="font-family:Palatino;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">e air now<br />everywhere instead of the flocks of sparrows you heard</span></span><span style="font-family:Georgia, Times New Roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"> </span></span><span style="font-family:Palatino;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">i</span></span><span style="font-family:Georgia, Times New Roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">n</span></span><span style="font-family:Palatino;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"> Camden.<br /><br />Do I sound bitter? Very well then, I sound bitter</span></span><span style="font-family:Georgia, Times New Roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">.</span></span><span style="font-family:Palatino;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"> I am large.<br />I contain the entire betrayal of our country, Walt, it</span></span><span style="font-family:Georgia, Times New Roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">s</span></span><span style="font-family:Palatino;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"> </span></span><span style="font-family:Georgia, Times New Roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">f</span></span><span style="font-family:Palatino;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">eudal lords<br /><br />for whom democracy is an obstacle, for</span></span><span style="font-family:Georgia, Times New Roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"> </span></span><span style="font-family:Palatino;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">whom humans are<br />resources, a cost of doing business, regretta</span></span><span style="font-family:Georgia, Times New Roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">b</span></span><span style="font-family:Palatino;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">l</span></span><span style="font-family:Georgia, Times New Roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">e</span></span><span style="font-family:Palatino;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"> expenditures,<br /><br />and I’m not feeling especially amative, lo</span></span><span style="font-family:Georgia, Times New Roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">a</span></span><span style="font-family:Palatino;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">fing here, my soul<br />so far declining my invitation, maybe becaus</span></span><span style="font-family:Georgia, Times New Roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">e</span></span><span style="font-family:Palatino;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"> </span></span><span style="font-family:Georgia, Times New Roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">a</span></span><span style="font-family:Palatino;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"> camera in a tree<br /><br />is beaming my image to a satellit</span></span><span style="font-family:Georgia, Times New Roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">e</span></span><span style="font-family:Palatino;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"> tracked by a monitor<br />in a subterranean office somewhere deep </span></span><span style="font-family:Georgia, Times New Roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">i</span></span><span style="font-family:Palatino;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">n</span></span><span style="font-family:Georgia, Times New Roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"> </span></span><span style="font-family:Palatino;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">These United States.<br /><br /> — RH 8/2011</span></span> <!--EndFragment--> </span></p> <!--EndFragment--> </span></div>RHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18132797421986659081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31730738.post-44458433766579893102011-06-27T16:32:00.002-04:002011-06-27T16:40:29.076-04:00<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIhGjmWmUrYulc1jAxDXaHBFryOT2rmYxIcVot3Dt3owEkD8-FRkZgroEiOyS4hxIJ4ytadmCVTjahyPNExvrmqNZ2LGveySakzS4uIuJ4d0qXbauj5OlD4bUZZdYfF3BW_FF1/s1600/912-teaparty-dc-we-came-unarmed-this-time.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIhGjmWmUrYulc1jAxDXaHBFryOT2rmYxIcVot3Dt3owEkD8-FRkZgroEiOyS4hxIJ4ytadmCVTjahyPNExvrmqNZ2LGveySakzS4uIuJ4d0qXbauj5OlD4bUZZdYfF3BW_FF1/s400/912-teaparty-dc-we-came-unarmed-this-time.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5623000301483285634" /></a><br /><br />Below is an essay by Erica Schweitzer on the historical and cultural roots of "The Tea Party." Erica is a graduate student at Emerson College. I am posting this because I believe it should have wide circulation: she has cut through the smoke and mirrors and offers us a context for understanding this recent phenomena, only the latest version of a faux-populist movement. Illuminating and disturbing, it offers a level of honest analysis that you won't get from the usual pundits.<br /><br /><!--StartFragment--> <div class="Section1"> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">America’s Tea Party Movement:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">The Rhetoric of Patriotism and the Politics of Whiteness</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">Standing before a crowd of more than a thousand Bostonians and flanked by buses bearing the slogan “Just Vote Them Out!” Sarah Palin called for all “liberty-loving Americans” to “sound the warning bell.” Almost every line she delivered during the April 14, 2010 rally on Boston Common was met with cheers from the crowd of Tea Party supporters packed against the stage and boos from the large group of Anti-Tea Party protesters amassed on the fringes. “We know what the problem is,” she said, “and now we’re going to fix that problem.” <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>Though the word “problem” was articulated with both clarity and a palpable intensity, a clear explanation of the nature of the Tea Party’s actual problems seemed to go unstated. Moving through the crowd proved to be little help when attempting to determine the central goals of the movement. Many pro-Tea Party signs featured Obama’s face paired with the word “Socialist” or phrases like “We Know Our Rights” and “More Freedom, Less Tax.” Notably, numerous protestors also carried signs for “Palin 2012.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>While the grievances of its members seem to encompass a litany of issues, the umbrella of the Tea Party Movement has become what <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">New York Times</i> journalist David Barstow calls an </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family: Arial">“amorphous, factionalized uprising.” With leaders like Palin who continue to call for Americans</span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""> to “fight for God, Pride, and Prosperity,” the rhetoric of revolution seems to hide any well-supported explanation of the movement’s motivations. Given the rapid expansion of the Tea Party Movement, the fervor expressed by its members and the multiplicity of its messages, it is necessary to take a closer look at the ideology behind the organization. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>Throughout American history, racial and political rhetoric has often been used in tandem and been widely employed as a means of masking the vested economic interests of white America. For this reason, any large scale movements, especially ones that utilize such loaded and polarizing rhetoric as “patriotism” and “true America,” warrant a close inquiry that seeks to understand which individuals benefit most from the movement’s success. To understand the danger implicit in the establishment of organizations such as the Tea Party Movement, it is also critical to view its origins in relation to America’s history of racial discrimination. Furthermore, one must view the movement with an understanding of the way in which white America has consciously sought to maintain economic dominance since the establishment of slavery. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>When exploring the development of white economic power in the United States, it is necessary to first look at the establishment of slavery in North America and the way in which its abolition upset a long standing culture of white dominance. Regardless of the social, cultural or religious beliefs that could arguably provide an ideological grounding for the enslavement of Africans by whites, slavery is–at its deepest roots–an economically motivated institution. In his essay “White Atlantic? The Choice for African Slave Labor in the Plantation Americas,” Seymour Drescher contends that the potential for relatively fast and significant economic growth in the New World was the primary motivation behind the slave trade (32). As English settlers moved westward, “The opening of the Atlantic invited the creation of a virtually unconstrained form of capitalism, whose beneficiaries created and dealt in human chattels from Africa as their labor force” (Drescher 32). With a virtually “free” source of human labor, white slave owners were capable of farming seemingly boundless capital from their new land.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>While economic motivations were undoubtedly the key factor in the development of slavery in North America, it is also important to at least note that the subordination of non-white races was a practice supported by the Anglo-Christian ideology. Rooted in the religious dichotomy between white as good and black as evil, Mab Segrest suggests that the Christian belief system “led the English to see Africans as both ‘black’ and ‘heathen’ and to link them immediately with barbitary, animalistic behavior and the devil” (191). This type of underlying racism could, in the case of the white slave owners, be presented as a superficial form of justification for the involuntary servitude forced on Africans. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>Looking at the marginalization of non-white groups in America during the era of the first English settlers, George Lipsitz, author of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">The Possessive Investment in Whiteness</i>, expands on the superficial justification for slavery when he asserts that the desire for slave labor and the subsequent economic prosperity it made possible was reinforced by the notion that Africans, as well as Native Americans, were “by nature” suited for the humiliating subordination of slavery. This belief was further supported by the early colonial legal systems, which “established a possessive investment in whiteness” by encouraging settlers to attack Native Americans and appropriate their lands (Lipsitz 2). The Anglo-Christian ideologies about racism provided a surface level validation for settlers’ internalization of white supremacy for the purpose of economic gain. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>In the years preceding the civil war and before the abolition movement gained significant support, the framework of oppression became deeply engrained in the American way of life, especially in the South. In his book </span><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family: Arial">The Highest Stage of White Supremacy</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"">, John W. Cell describes the way in which the institution of slavery guaranteed that power remained in white hands. “Imposed by power, enforced by law, legitimized by religion and by social theory, the vertical patterns of dominance within the system of chattel slavery were normally quite sufficient to guarantee the security of the white ruling class” (Cell 83). It was not until calls for abolition began to gain volume and the threat of Civil War seemed eminent that the carefully constructed system of white dominance was called into question. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:13.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family: Arial">Though slave-owners were a minority amongst the white southern population, in order to continue exploiting slave labor and thus maintaining their source of wealth, members of the white elite actively sought to align lower class whites with their pro-slavery cause. Illustrating the action taken by ruling class whites, George Fredrickson, author of </span><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family: Arial">White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:13.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">, asserts that “Only by stressing the non-slaveholders social and psychological stake in slavery as a system of racial control could they hope to maintain a united front against the Republican-dominated government that was thought to be bent on the ‘ultimate extinction’ of the institution”(161). The livelihood of the wealthy, politically active slave-holding southerners then became contingent on presenting the institution of slavery not as enabler of economic superiority, but as one that reinforced the supposed social or psychological dominance of the white race.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Those seeking to counter the growing Republican push for abolition in the late eighteen hundreds “pandered at once to the democratic sensibilities and the racial prejudices of the ‘plain folk’”(Fredrickson 155). Thus, employing the manpower of the lower class has been a key strategy used by white elites to maintain economic dominance for more than a century.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Arial"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">Digging deeper into the governing ideology of white supremacy as presented by white elites and the politicians who represented their interests, Frederickson highlights how the spreading assumptions and misrepresentations of the abolition movement also functioned as a way to mobilize the white lower class.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>“Charges that abolitionists promoted inter-racial marriage or ‘amalgamation’ set off two of the most savage riots of the tumultuous 1830’s...”(Frederickson 153). Though “amalgamation” was not a distinct goal of abolitionists, its association with their movement helped motivate the misinformed white lower class to oppose abolition in general. While the white lower class did not benefit from slavery in the same way as their elite white brethren, their ability to oppose abolition based on a socially constructed belief system was critical for ensuring the upper class’ maintenance of power.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">Despite the still widespread support for slavery across the South, defeat in the Civil War and the creation of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 led to Reconstruction, a period in which black slaves in the South rapidly gained citizenship and the right to vote (</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">Lynch 7</span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">). With their newly earned rights, black citizens could hypothetically seek education in the North and pursue careers as educators, clergymen, and even lawyers. Perhaps more importantly, black citizens were capable of owning property and working for wages, meager as they may have been (“Reconstruction and It’s Aftermath”).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The freedom to become literate, coupled with the ability to obtain land and hold paid positions suggested a new potential for upward mobility that had previously been unattainable to blacks. While this period likely seemed full of promise for African Americans, the rights were short lived. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>It is not surprising that the newfound freedom of millions of previously enslaved blacks had an immense economic and psychological effect on the white population of laborers who had previously been the only paid workforce in the South. Because black laborers were in most cases willing to work for less pay and produced on average more tobacco and cotton, “white tenants were often replaced by black, a trend that seems to have increased during the depression of the 1890’s” (Cell 115). Not surprisingly, the competition for jobs resulted in strong tensions between the white lower class and the newly freed black labor force. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>The explosion of racism amongst lower class whites can be seen as deeply rooted in economic displacement, but fueled by the same ideologies that functioned as the superficial justification for slavery from its onset. As John W. Cell points out in his text <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Highest Stage of White Supremacy</i>, “The racist culture was constantly being replenished and reinvigorated by the evolving structure of contemporary social and power relations” (118). Since money and the upward mobility that enables individuals to obtain it are so closely linked in a capitalistic society, the rabid racism that lower class whites harbored for their black counterparts was directly related to the fear of more equal power within society. This fear of the white race being unseated can be directly linked to what Lipsitz calls “the possessive investment in whiteness that is responsible for the racialized hierarchies in our society” (1). The seed of this possessive investment in whiteness had been planted during the years in which abolition was a threat, yet now that the slaves had been freed, the need to remain superior would have to be achieved through systematic, economic discrimination. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>The establishment and organization of white supremacist groups and the emergence of the political elite who sought to gain power by representing the disenfranchised white lower class are events that should be investigated side by side because their origins are inextricably linked. The equality between blacks and whites that was promised during Reconciliation ignited a flurry of economically rooted, racially motivated fears amongst lower class whites. However, without organization, the poor whites would lack the potential to gain enough political momentum to reverse the equal rights promised in the Thirteenth through Fifteenth Amendments. John Cell contends that “Unless economic forces or interests are organized and articulated they will not long survive, much less succeed in dominating a literate, sophisticated, conscious society. Once organized, however, these interests at once cease to be merely economic and become political forces”(104). Thus, if the white elite who benefitted the most from black oppression could unite the white lower class, they would ensure the development of policies that could counteract black economic equality. With the support of the masses, the white elite could then find the necessary backing for a more absolute, government mandated form of discrimination. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">Many of the white politicians that gained power in the wake of Reconciliation worked on the local and state level to take back the economic potential that had been promised to black citizens. On a local level, white officials such James Cobb in Macon County ran for office and, when elected, pushed a racially motivated agenda. In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Memoir of a Race Traitor</i>, Segrest admits that in 1874 her predecessor Cobb, “did his part to restore white rule to his county, sentencing two Black legislators to the chain gang for larceny and adultery” (208). Thanks to widespread support from the white lower class in the South, government officials on the national stage also turned their backs on newly freed slaves. Though the Federal Government initially stationed troops in the South to ensure that Reconciliation policies remained in place, in 1877 </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:13.0pt;font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Trebuchet MS"">Rutherford B. Hayes withdrew his last troop, an act that ended the last semblance of governmental support for equality (</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt;font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">Lynch 7</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS"">)</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:13.0pt;font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Trebuchet MS"">. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">The largest government-instigated act of discrimination came in the form of the Jim Crow Laws, which stood in place from 1880-1960 and imposed a series of punishments on African Americans for “consorting with members of another race” by requiring segregated bathrooms, busses, schools, and the separation of many other social services (“Jim Crow Laws”). Though these laws varied from state to state, they systematically provided greater opportunities for whites, especially in the South where the laws were more stringent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>These laws, which often assured that whites would receive far superior services such as schools and public facilities ultimately “widened the gap between the resources available to whites and those available to the aggrieved racial communities” (Lipsitz 5). <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>While white supported politicians attempted to bar blacks from utilizing their rights from a policy-oriented standpoint, a series of newly established white supremacist groups in the American South were simultaneously working to employ tactics of fear and violence as a means of suppressing black power. Though the Ku Klux Klan–undoubtedly one of the most well known white supremacists organizations in the United States–was founded in 1865 for “social and entertainment reasons by young men who were rather bored,” the self proclaimed “sons of light” quickly saw their secret society as a means of maintaining supremacy over the newly freed black population (Dobratz & Shanks-Meile 35). This first coming of the Klan employed a hooded, ghostly costume and engaged in night-rides, beatings, and even murders to frighten the black population into complacency. Even from its earliest stages, the Klan was closely aligned with elite, white political figures, calling on General Nathan Bedford Forest, a famous Confederate cavalry leader, and General Albert Pike, a well-known officer for leadership. (Dobratz & Shanks-Meile 36).<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>The collective effects of the Klan and other political tactics that sought to keep blacks intimidated and thus out of the voting booths significantly stripped the power that African Americans had gained in the Fifteenth Amendment. In 1875, just five years after African Americans gained the right to vote, eight members of 44<sup>th</sup> Congress were black. However, after years of intimidation, which led to dwindling numbers, not a single black representative appeared in the 50<sup>th</sup> Congress of 1887 (Taylor). As a result of the threats and violence the Klan enacted, white power was largely restored to many areas of the South. The white dominance achieved by the use of the terror tactics of the 1870’s made the need for a prevalent anti-black society as the Ku Klux Klan to diminish accordingly (“Ku Klux Klan”). </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Trebuchet MS"; color:#333333"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>Though the turn of the century was marked by a slight decrease in white supremacist activities, the second surge of the Klan was thanks in a large part to the increasing influence of mass media and its pro-Klan message. According to historians Betty Dobratz and Stephanie Shanks-Meile, the Klan’s following resurged largely as a result of the film <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Birth of a Nation</i> (37)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">. </i>Many considered the motion picture, which presented the Klan as influential in “saving” the South and preserving the southern white identity, “the spark which helped ignite the flame of the Klan in the 1920’s” (Dobratz & Shanks-Meile 37). Mass media and the dissemination of an anti-black, pro-Klan message was therefore a pivotal factor in building the ranks of the white supremacist organization in the early part of the twentieth century. When looking at white supremacy, it is important to note that the upswings in hate group enrollment correspond with both increased rights for blacks, as in the case of the first wave, and increased dissemination of a racist message, as seen in the second. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>As the second wave of the Klan spread upward from the South to include greater membership, so too did the organization’s influence align more closely with prominent political figures. In their text <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">“White Power, White Pride!” The White Supremacist Movement in the United States</i>, Betty Dobratz and Stephanie Shanks-Meile reference a study conducted by John Zerzan that estimated Klan membership in the second wave included between two and eight million Americans (39). Perhaps equally surprising, Dobratz and Shanks-Meile note that Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black was a KKK member and even President Warren Harding was initiated into the Klan at a ceremony in the White House’s Green Room (39). Staying true to the pattern laid out in the first wave, white supremacy quickly found a way into the political structures of the United States. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>When trying to understand why millions of Americans would flock to the Klan during its second rising in the 1920’s, it is necessary to look closely at who, exactly, constituted the Klan’s leadership and following. While the vast majority of the Klan’s followers were whites of lower class or average means, </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:13.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Trebuchet MS"">“Leadership, though, historically belongs not only to more intelligent people but to those who are called, to those who have a date with destiny” (</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family: Arial">Fredrickson</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Arial; mso-bidi-font-family:Arial"> </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:13.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Trebuchet MS"">172).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Intelligent and capable of employing powerful rhetoric, leaders of white supremacist groups use this ideology of destiny to put an Aryan spin on the American foundation story, suggesting that the nation is “blessed by God to achieve a brilliant destiny” and thus argue that all whites must live up to their holy calling (Fredrickson 172).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>This mentality of being entitled to great power and God-given privilege aligned almost perfectly with the patriotic propaganda put forth by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Birth of a Nation</i>. Therefore, the second wave also marks the first instance when Americans not living in the South or not immediately threatened by the equality of blacks in their own town could be caught up in the vigor of what might have appeared to be a patriotic message. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>Taking a closer look at the demographics of Americans who considered themselves to be members of the Klan around the 1920’s only helps to reinforce the assertion that white supremacy was gaining a broader appeal. While it may be tempting to entertain the idea that all Klan members were rural, “rednecks” on the fridges of society, Dobratz and Shanks-Meile report that “Many Klan members came from urban areas, and although they were Protestant, they often were not fundamentalists…The Klan thrived in places that had a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">small </i>percentage of minorities” (40). According to these historians, the second wave’s members were often motivated to join in the hope of attacking local politicians who failed to enforce the laws of Prohibition and who did not adequately fund schools. These concerns did, however, still align with a racist attitude toward minorities. “The Klan’s racism fit into the white Protestant culture of the Midwest that valued religious and racial homogeneity and distrusted outsiders” (Dobratz and Shanks-Meile 41). <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">In his book </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana">Blood in the Face: The Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nation, Nazi Skinheads and the Rise of a New White Culture</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:13.0pt;font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana">, James Ridgeway suggests that white supremacist groups actively recruited across American by winning over the favor of ministers and sympathizing with Americans about rising crime rates and the evils of alcohol (36). Klan members suggested that the white supremacist movement would be the answer to the deterioration of America’s moral society. </span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">Thus, unlike the first wave of masked night riders, the second coming of white supremacy was a movement that appealed to huge numbers of religiously minded, socially concerned white Americans. While racism was, at all times, central to of the Klan’s ideology, other, more socially acceptable messages were often placed at the forefront.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>Though the Klan’s activity decreased in the years following its 1920’s surge, the Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s once again encouraged American citizens to support a white supremacist ideology. As was the case in the years immediately following the Civil War, it become clear that racism towards blacks and other marginalized populations was directly linked to the prospect of those populations upsetting white economic dominance. Just as the Thirteenth through Fifteenth Amendments had promised blacks freedoms that would lead to greater economic equality, so too did the 1954 Supreme Court ruling on Brown vs. The Board of Education in Kansas make room for the possibility of greater upward mobility within the black population. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">In his book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents</i>, Waldo E. Martin Jr. highlights the effects that the decision to desegregate schools would have on the black population by explaining the poor conditions of segregated schools in the middle of the twentieth century. In Clarendon County, South Carolina, one of the five cases that joined the Brown vs. The Board of Education trail, Martin reports that “For the 1949-50 school term, the county spent $43 per black child and $179 per white child”(2). When looking at the unequal distribution of resources, it becomes clear that segregation barred the black community from equal socioeconomic opportunities. Ideally, the desegregation of schools would make possible more equal opportunities for blacks. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">In addition to desegregation, the civil rights movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s brought to the forefront leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, who sought to give African Americans the same social and economic rights available to their white counterparts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>In his famous “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, King stated “</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:13.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana">We've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice”(1). Though King was speaking somewhat figuratively in this case, the Civil Rights Movement, which sought for equal wages among other rights not previously afforded to blacks, was again a call for greater economic equality. Not surprisingly, the fear of white economic displacement was met with racism. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana">While this exploration has focused largely on the Ku Klux Klan because of its historical significance and its widely accepted position as one of the oldest and most well known white supremacist groups in America, it is important to recognize that the Civil Rights Movement marked the establishment of many other groups with similar aims.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>In response to the equalities called for by King and other black leaders, numerous militia-minded organizations such as The Minutemen, The John Birch Society, The American Nazi Party, The Liberty Lobby, and a series of more locally organized chapters of the KKK sprung up to oppose an increase in African American rights (Ridgeway 14-5). Bound by an anti-black, anti-Semitic, and anti-immigrant ideology, the third wave of white supremacy was also characterized by a higher number of localized organizations. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana">The relationship between white supremacists and politics also became more complicated in the third wave of white supremacy. Groups like The National State Rights Party and The American Rights Party began to employ patriotism as a means of attracting membership instead of the overtly anti-minority message used in the first and second waves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>In a pamphlet described by Dobratz and Shanks-Meile, the America First Party identifies itself as, “American’s new Third Party with a platform of ACTION to protect the rights of the majority. The two major parties have become the captives of political action committees, special interest lobbies and of the organized minorities” (43). As seen in this statement, words like “white” and “black” or “immigrant” were suddenly replaced with the more political-sounding terms like “majority” and “minority.” Similarly, the pamphlet calls for “action” in all capital letters, instead of overtly inciting violence or discrimination. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana">The significance of the shift from overt racism in the first and second wave of white supremacy to a more politically oriented, racist rhetoric in the third is one that should not be overlooked for a number of reasons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Most notably, the alignment of white supremacist organizations with “patriotic” messages is problematic because it allows white supremacist groups to invoke national pride and love for one’s country as a means of masking the underlying call for violence and discrimination. In employing this strategic move, the groups attract Americans who might not be overtly racist, but who support the ideology of patriotism. This third wave of supremacists can be seen as even more dangerous than the previous two, largely because the racist message in embedded in the rhetoric of political propaganda. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana">The close alignment of racism and militia-like, nationalistic fervor continued to be present in white supremacist organizations through the 70’s and into the first decade of the twenty-second century. In the last forty years, white supremacist groups existed in largely localized chapters across much of the country and lacked the type of united membership more present in the second wave. In 2009, the Southern Poverty Law Center was actively tracking 932 hate groups in the United States, many of which had white supremacist motivations. Though each group embodies a slightly different identity, in general<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>“Racist right-wing movements have been traditionally linked to nativism, featuring hatred of immigrant groups, calls for a closing of U.S. boarders, and support of strict adherence to the Constitution in its most literal sense, shorn of equivocating amendments, as a remedy for unwanted social change” (Ridgeway 19). As was the case during the civil rights movement, white supremacist groups continued to present their racist message in alignment with conservative ideals. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana">In addition to emphasizing the political nature of the white supremacist campaign, Mab Segrest illustrates the conscious effort of white supremacist groups to wed their racist rhetoric with a more politically charged message when she highlights how Glenn Miller, a well known KKK leader, consciously distanced himself from the title Ku Klux Klan in order to bolster support. Miller is quoted as saying, “We want to reach the hearts and minds of Our People, and we cannot do so under the name Ku Klux Klan” because of the “un-American Jewish Controlled liberal media” (Segrest 74). Miller’s statement illustrates two important characteristics embodied by contemporary white supremacists: a conscious attempt to mask overt racism with a political message in order to appeal to a wider audience and the belief that America’s supposed liberal-leaning government and media are to blame for the degradation of the white race.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Considering the ideologies supported by white supremacist organizations, it is not surprising that the hatred felt for African Americans during the early part of the white supremacy movement quickly expanded into a disapproval of immigrant and minority populations.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana">Given the history of white supremacy in America and the way in which contemporary hate campaigns have become increasingly subversive in their ability to align with the conservative far-Right, it is critical to look closely at what factors instigate the establishment of any new “patriotic” parties.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The desire for whites to maintain power by means of preserving greater economic opportunity has acted as the basic ideology of white supremacy throughout its various stages. Even though racist rhetoric, anti-immigration politics and strictly nativist mentalities become the characteristics used to define many contemporary white supremacy groups, when looking at the way in which white supremacy has functioned throughout American history, the role of an economic investment in whiteness is ever present. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana">During the Reconciliation and the first years of organized white supremacy, the white lower class was systematically united by white elites whose economic power depended on the marginalization of blacks. This marginalization proved to be increasingly important during the second wave to ensure that blacks remained in segregated, impoverished communities and in lower paying positions that would guarantee the wealth remained in white hands. In the third wave, economics again came into play as the opportunity to attend desegregated schools incited fear and racism in white Americans who were previously privy to greater economic potential.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Therefore, if we look back on the history of white extremist reactions to proposed equality, it becomes clear that white supremacy has often flared in the face of better schools and increased social services for minorities. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana">Keeping in mind the trends of minority empowerment and the white supremacist backlash, Barak Obama’s presidential campaign can be seen as an attempt to provide many lower class and minority Americans with greater access to social services. Running on a slogan of “Hope and Change,” Barack Obama promised the improvement of public schools and the implementation of universal health care. Thus Obama’s rise in </span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">political power could be seen as having the potential to actively empower members of the minority and working class on numerous levels, most notably health care and education. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">When focusing on education, a statement on the president’s official website, <a href="http://www.BarakObama.com"><span style="color:windowtext;text-decoration: none;text-underline:none">www.BarakObama.com</span></a>, asserts that “we will reform No Child Left Behind so that we are supporting schools that need improvement, rather than punishing them” (“Education”). Though the supposed intention of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind campaign was to reward schools that showed an increased proficiency in a series of subjects as determined by standardized test scores, the campaign’s implementation has also systematically weeded out minority populations who simply cannot face the stringent tests. A recent study of more than 271,000 students conducted by Rice University found a direct link between No Child Left Behind and an increase in dropout rates. The study found that in Texas </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">60 percent of African-American students, 75 percent of Latino students and 80 percent of ESL students failed to graduate, largely due to what the researchers call “high-stakes, test-based accountability” (Rice University). By its nature, No Child Left Behind also bars funding to schools with scores below the goal, often schools in urban areas with larger minority populations. Thus, by implementing an educational system that does not “punish” school systems, such as those in Texas where minority populations suffer from the standardized testing, the Obama administration seeks to provide more racially and socio-economically equal educational opportunities. </span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana">The explanation for why an increased investment in minority education can be seen as jeopardizing white power lies in clear link between education and economic success later in life. A study conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2002 concluded that access to education is directly correlated to future income, finding that high school dropouts earn on average almost $70,000 less than graduates with professional degrees (</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 7.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Times">Cheeseman Day and Newburger 2)</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:13.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana"> Since greater education often makes possible increased upward mobility, the white monopoly on high paying corporate positions also weakens when better educational opportunities are provided for minorities. A study conducted by Microquest Corporation of California found that in the late nineties 90% of management positions at Fortune 1000 companies were held by white males of European ancestry (“</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">Shattering the Glass Ceiling</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:13.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana">” 1). Thus, by increasing equal access to education, the current administration allows for the potential of greater economic equality among races. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">Similar to the economic potential that better education makes possible, access to greater health services would also systematically empower a class of people whose economic growth is at least partially linked to an inability to seek adequate care. Synthesizing the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2007 investigation of uninsured Americans, <a href="http://www.webmd.com/daniel-j-denoon"><span style="color:windowtext;text-decoration:none;text-underline:none">Daniel J. DeNoon</span></a> reported that of the ethnicities surveyed, minority communities had the highest number of uninsured citizens with approximately 32% of Hispanics and 20% of African Americans uninsured. In contrast, only about 10% of non-Hispanic whites were uninsured. Not surprisingly, the difference between those with coverage and those without was also divided on socioeconomic lines, with the highest number of uninsured (24.5%) coming from households that made less than $25,000 annually (DeNoon). The data clearly illustrates that policies seeking to provide universal health care would most directly affect the minority and lower income communities. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">In much the same way as education, offering health care to a previously uninsured minority population allows for increased economic potential. While examining the characteristics of those Americans without healthcare–taking into consideration</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:Arial"> current access to racially diverse care providers and those individuals most vulnerable to health problems</span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">–</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-weight: bold">John Karl Scholz and Barbara Wolfe</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Arial"> concluded in an article for the Institute of Research on Poverty that “Health and education are the building blocks for human capital. Hence, changes in these factors over time undoubtedly play an important role in the evolution of economic inequality” (<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">Scholz and Wolfe 1)</span>. Better care leads to a higher quality of life, which is directly related to economic potential. The health care reforms laid out during Obama’s campaign, if implemented, would undoubtedly bolster the potential for upward mobility among a large number of America’s minority populations. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align: none;text-autospace:none"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:13.0pt;font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">As was the case throughout much of American history, the prospect of increased social services for non-white communities, now coupled with the inauguration of a multi-racial president, was met with a surge in white supremacist activities. The Southern Poverty Law Center reported that in 2009 alone, 363 new hate groups were founded. Of those new groups “Militias–the paramilitary arm of the Patriot movement–were a major part of the increase” (“New SPLC Report”). While the localized chapters of white supremacist hate groups are no doubt incredibly dangerous, the development of a unifying force, largely supported by white supremacist groups could prove to be of an even greater danger.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:Arial"><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>In addition to the numerous hate groups that have sprung up in the last year, the Tea Party Movement has also found its origins in the wake of Obama’s inauguration. According to “The Official Headquarters for the Tax Day Tea Party” the movement was founded when “</span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica">Last year on April 15, 2009, millions of hardworking Americans stood in unison in over 800 protests around the country” (</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><a href="http://www.teapartypatriots.org/"><span style="color:windowtext; text-decoration:none;text-underline:none">http://www.teapartypatriots.org/</span></a>). The website, which is one of two that claims to be “the official” headquarters of the movement, identifies the organization’s clear mission statement as, <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:22.5pt;margin-bottom: 0in;margin-left:.75in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align: none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica">Tea Party Patriots, Inc. ("TPP") is a non-partisan, non-profit social welfare organization dedicated to furthering the common good and general welfare of the people of the United States. TPP furthers this goal by educating the public and promoting the principles of fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government and free markets. (</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><a href="http://www.teapartypatriots.org/"><span style="color:windowtext; text-decoration:none;text-underline:none">http://www.teapartypatriots.org/</span></a>)</span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica">These three central tenants </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"">can be seen as a common mantra of the movement, repeated in the mission statement of <a href="http://teapartypatriots.ning.com/"><span style="color:windowtext; text-decoration:none;text-underline:none">http://teapartypatriots.ning.com/</span></a>, of the other website claiming to be the “</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Georgia">Official Home of the American Tea Party Movement.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";color:#222222"> </span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica"><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>While the words </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"">fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government and free markets may appear to be wholly unrelated to the racism embodied by white supremacy, an exploration into what these tenants actually mean in terms of the Tea Party’s goals proves to be slightly more problematic. On <a href="http://teapartypatriots.ning.com/"><span style="color:windowtext; text-decoration:none;text-underline:none">http://teapartypatriots.ning.com/</span></a>, the first and most prominent piece of content is headed “REPEAL THE BILL” and features a link to a text box where members can “sign” an online petition (featuring </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:20.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:Georgia;mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">135,272 signatures as of April 18, 2010). By placing the most attention on the petition to repeal the Health Care Bill presented by the Obama administration, the Tea Party Movement clearly takes a negative position on the proposed increase in social services. Opposing a policy like universal health care is by no means a racist act in and of itself; however, because opposition for policies that could lead to greater upward mobility for minority communities have often anchored their roots in an economic investment in whiteness, the Tea Party’s motivations and membership deserve close investigation. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:20.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:Georgia;mso-bidi-font-weight:bold"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1"> </span>An exploration of </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:Georgia">Tea Party Movement via </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman""><a href="http://teapartypatriots.ning.com/"><span style="color:windowtext; text-decoration:none;text-underline:none">http://teapartypatriots.ning.com/</span></a> provides key insights into the organization’s motivations, based primarily on what information is shared and what details about the movement are virtually absent. If visitors click on the first “Sign the Petition” link in the aforementioned “</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:20.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:Georgia;mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">REPEAL THE BILL</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"">” center column, they are taken to another window that features a montage video entitled “</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">American People Oppose Health Care Bill, But Democrats Move Forward Anyway</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"">.” The short clips, taken primarily from Fox News are spliced together to tell a narrative of the American people protesting and White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs fumbling over his words in an attempt to respond to questions from the media. The actual content of the bill is not discussed beyond mentioning that some states would receive “special deals” that were construed as being negative by a Republican commentator. </span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">Even if the visitors choose not to view the video, the “steps” for necessary action are laid out in bold font on the top of the page: “Step One: Sign the petition, Step Two: Help get 1 million signatures by sharing with everyone on your facebook pages, Step Three: Use the 'I Signed The Petition' image on your facebook and twitter profiles.” Aside from the described video and a link for “Repeal the Bill Bumper Stickers,” there appears to be no information on the actual content of the Bill</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"">. Only after the video finishes does the sponsorship, Republican.Senate.gov, flash across the screen and illustrate the party’s alignment with Republicans. </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:20.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Georgia;mso-bidi-font-weight: bold"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:20.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:Georgia;mso-bidi-font-weight:bold"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1"> </span>Though the Tea Party Patriot’s “Official Headquarters” fails to overtly give a reason for opposing universal health care, the Tea Party members whose photos are featured on the website seem to suggest a litany of more problematic causes for the opposition. The website does not allow non-members to view full photo albums, but a constant loop of thumbnail sized images on the upper left hand corner present a collage of photos, primarily made up of snapshots from rallies, head shots of members and stock “patriotic” images, such as the eagle, American flag, and Constitution. After monitoring the slide show for a short five minute interval, a viewer would observe four images of individuals shooting or holding firearms, four signs calling Obama a socialist and one image in which Obama’s face is superimposed on Hitler’s above the words “Hitler gave great speeches too.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>These photos, which appear directly next to the “REPEAL THE BILL” feature, seem to suggest that the Tea Party’s opposition toward healthcare or the increase of social services is rooted in a more ideological problem with the Obama administration as a whole. However, like the website, none of the signs provide more than an unfounded critique as to why the policies are ardently opposed. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align: none;text-autospace:none"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">This lack of evidence to support the anti-social services position of the Tea Party makes its true motivations more difficult to identify. In his article </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"">“Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right” David Barstow emphasizes the seemingly undefined goals of the movement when he characterizes the rallies as </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">“a platform for </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 15.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Georgia">conservative populist discontent.” He further highlights the divergent interests of members by reporting, </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">“S</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:15.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Georgia">ome have a basic aversion to big government, or Mr. Obama, or progressives in general” (Barstow). Barstow’s suggestion that an underpinning of the movement is against “Mr. Obama and progressives in general” proves to have a great historical significance, especially considering the role of the white upper class in the Tea Party.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align: none;text-autospace:none"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:20.0pt;font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Georgia;mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">In a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">New York Times</i> article published on April 14, 2010, Kate Zernike and Megan Thee-Brenan </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:24.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia">shed light on the makeup of the Tea Party’s members when they reported that according to the latest <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">New York Times</i>/CBS News poll, “</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:15.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Georgia">Tea Party supporters are wealthier and more well-educated than the general public.” The article goes on to explain that the 18% of Americans who consider themselves as Tea Party supporters, “tend to be Republican, white, male, married and older than 45”(Zernike and Thee-Brenan). The largely white, upper middle class Tea Party following proves that those most ardently opposing health care are not the individuals who would personally benefit from the availability of equal care for the currently underserved, largely minority communities. As established above, white upper and middle class males are actually the cross-section of the population that has benefitted the most from America’s tradition of a possessive investment in whiteness. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align: none;text-autospace:none"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:15.0pt;font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Georgia">Interestingly, of the nearly 1,600 Tea Part Members polled during the </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:24.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:Georgia">New York Times</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 24.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Georgia"> investigation in early April, </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:15.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Georgia">“More than half say the policies of the administration favor the poor, and 25 percent think that the administration favors blacks over whites–compared with 11 percent of the general public” (Zernike and Thee-Brenan). The finding, which more clearly defines the Tea Party Movement as a whole, seems to suggest that many members are concerned about reverse racism or economic discrimination against the wealthy. This fear associated with minorities gaining greater power, which could potentially cause upper middle class whites to lose a monopoly on better education and healthcare, is one that can be traced through each of the supremacist movements since the abolition of slavery. Therefore, given the history of wealthy, white opposition to the increase of social services for minorities, it appears that the Tea Party embodies many of the same anxieties associated with losing white dominance that were present in all of the previous waves of white supremacy. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">It is clear that some of the ardent fervor exhibited by white, Republican, middle class Tea Party supporters is attributed to an opposition toward a government that seeks to provide greater social services and an increased potential for equality; however, even a brief glance at any of the many Tea Party rallies that have been held in the last year illuminates a second key talking point: taxes. Highlighting the issue of taxation was clearly emphasized when the Tea Party’s unofficial spokeswomen addressed citizens on Boston Common on April 14<sup>th</sup> with “on the day before tax day, the day that the tax man’s comin’, on top of tax cuts expiring, in the town that the sons of liberty call home” (Palin). By mentioning increased taxes and the prospect of more taxation numerous times throughout the speech, Palin brought the issue of taxation to the forefront. Members of the crowd, many of whom were toting anti-taxation signs, seemed to react most strongly to Palin’s comments that the Obama administration should be “expanding freedom and opportunity for all, not the intrusive reach of government into our lives and <a href="http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MGI3N2U1MjAxZjdhNDU4MGExNjc3OTlmYzYxYzNmYzI="><span style="color:windowtext;text-decoration:none;text-underline:none">businesses</span></a>." While Palin’s rhetoric could be seen by some as moving, a closer look at federal taxes in America suggests that the message may be rooted more deeply in political aspirations than facts about taxation under the Obama administration. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">Though </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:13.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">Congress cut individual federal taxes in 2009 by more than $173 billion shortly after President Barack Obama was elected into office, there appears to be some confusion within the Tea Party Movement about the state of taxes (<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">Ohlemacher)</span>.</span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""> In his article “The Misinformed Tea Party Movement” Forbes journalist <a href="http://search.forbes.com/search/colArchiveSearch?author=bruce+and+bartlett&aname=Bruce+Bartlett"><span style="color:windowtext;text-decoration:none;text-underline:none">Bruce Bartlett</span></a> explored just how accurate the Tea Party’s perception of taxation in America really is. By polling Tea Party supporters at the March 16<sup>th</sup> demonstration on Capital Hill, Bartlett discovered that Tea Party Patriots “</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family: Arial">thought that federal taxes were almost three times as high as they actually are.” When the demonstrators were asked to estimate how much federal tax a person with $50,000 taxable income would pay in a year, on average the Tea Party members believed that the individual would owe about 12,700 in federal taxes, when in reality the individual would only owe about $8,700 if single and $6,700 if married and filing jointly under the Obama administration (Bartlett). This data clearly suggests that Tea Party members may at times be basing their protests more on the rhetoric of the speakers backing the movement than the tax situation itself. This observation however, raises an important question: Why would Sarah Palin and other prominent Tea Party Patriots use false information about taxation to unify and incite the American people under the guise of “patriotism” and “protection of the constitution?”</span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>When listening to Tea Party speeches and viewing the movement’s website, </span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica">it becomes clear that those speaking on behalf of organization seek to downplay any possibility that the Tea Party Movement was founded with political or personal gains in mind. The website </span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><a href="http://www.teapartypatriots.org/"><span style="color:windowtext; text-decoration:none;text-underline:none">http://www.teapartypatriots.org/</span></a> claims that “</span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica">Tea Party Patriots have not endorsed candidates for public office.” While these messages seem straightforward, it is impossible to deny the vested interest that conservative Republicans have in the mobilization and unification of middle class American voters. If voters can rally around the idea that the Obama administration is responsible for the over-taxation on Americans, the benefits for Republicans running in state elections and the candidate for the 2012 presidential campaign would be undeniable. This Republican investment in the Tea Party is even reflected in </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"">Republican.Senate.gov</span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica">’s creation of the abovementioned video “</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-weight: bold">American People Oppose Health Care Bill, But Democrats Move Forward Anyway.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"">” Furthermore, the Tea Party’s far-Right support can be seen through its sponsorship by the Republican, conservative news outlets Red State and Red Country. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align: none;text-autospace:none"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Times New Roman"">Despite Sarah Palin’s admission at the Boston rally on April 14 that “it’s not about one individual politician; it’s about the people,” looking at the Tea Party Movement on a slightly more personal level suggests that the support of an affluent, conservative and largely white middle class is actually both politically and economically beneficial for the Party’s leadership. Though the exact monetary amount Sarah Palin has been paid to speak at Tea Party rallies has not been publically disclosed, a number of Independent Washington papers have estimated her check as being between $30,000-$100,000 for a single speech (Weigel). Judging by the numerous “Palin 2012” signs visible at the Boston rally, the former governor’s desire to remain a political fixture can be seen as strategically beneficial, should she choose to pursue a presidential nomination. The nature of the Tea Party may be touted as “for the people” however, those individuals who seem to benefit the most once again prove to be members of a white, conservative and politically elite governing class. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align: none;text-autospace:none"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Times New Roman"">In addition to the physical support from citizens, the Tea Party Movement is capable of reaping a great deal of revenue from its membership. From selling T-shirts, yard signs and bumper stickers to charging members $10.00 to become part of the “1<sup>st</sup> Brigade,” the Tea Party appears to be cashing in on multiple revenue streams through its website www.teapartypatriots.org. Similarly, tickets to Tea Party events can range from $25 dollars to upwards of $549, as was reported to be the case when Sarah Palin spoke at the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville (Helling). In addition to bolstering support for the kind of economic policies that would continue to give white upper middle class Americans education and healthcare-related advantages, the Tea Party is itself a massive money making machine. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align: none;text-autospace:none"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Times New Roman"">By supporting a movement that seeks to maintain a possessive investment in whiteness, the Tea Party’s central motivations align closely with many of the ideologies that have underpinned white supremacy throughout the last two centuries. A seen in the investigation above, the vast majority of the racism imbedded in the Tea Party Movement is covert and rooted in political rhetoric. However, in addition to this covert racism, another more flagrant demonstration of racism, which harkens back to earlier white supremacist movements, has also found a platform for expression within the Tea Party. The overt and highly deliberate discrimination that has received a great deal of press as a result of the Tea Party Movement can be seen as equally, if not more dangerous than its covert economic forms, because it actively unifies a series of white supremacist groups that would otherwise be largely ignored by the media. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align: none;text-autospace:none"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Times New Roman"">In small letters at the bottom of its website http://www.teapartypatriots.org/ the organization states that, “</span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica">TPP does not condone and will not tolerate discrimination of any kind.” However, looking at reports from numerous Tea Party rallies suggests that many white supremacists are enjoying greater media access to disseminate their racist messages as a result of the Tea Party protests. In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">A Critical Analysis of White Supremacists Use of the Mass Media: The Spreading of Hate</i>, Roger C. Aden asserts, “Media coverage, in fact, is the prime weapon in the white supremacists’ public relations fight”(56). Throughout his text, Aden illustrates how increasing recognition through greater coverage on televised media outlets and the Internet is ultimately the most central goal of contemporary white supremacists. Therefore, even though the leaders of the Tea Party Movement claim to “not tolerate” racism, the widespread coverage promised to racist groups as a result of the Tea Party protests ultimately gives white supremacists exactly what they most desire.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align: none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>A <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Washington Post</i> article published soon after the health care legislation protest on Capital Hill highlighted the overt racism visible in the Tea Party Movement</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">. During the rally “racial epithets” were directed at members of the Congressional Black Caucus and one Black congressman admitted being spit upon. In addition, openly gay congressman Barney Frank was met with anti-gay chants and heckling (Kane). This type of flagrant and violent racism is undoubtedly reminiscent of the kind of threats made toward black Americans during the Civil Rights Movement on the 1960’s. </span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;color:#111111">Though Amy Kremer, the coordinator of the Tea Party Express bus tour stated that "I absolutely think it's isolated” when discussing the racial outbursts displayed in Washington D.C., an investigation of rallies across the United States suggests that overt racism among Tea Party Patriots is far from only existing in a few isolated occurrences (</span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Courier New"">qtd. in </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">Pergram).</span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:#111111"> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align: none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:#111111">Perhaps the most flagrant and visible racism can be seen in the many discriminatory signs that have received a great deal of press at Tea Party rallies. The images featured in the Appendix each illustrate visual protests against the current president and administration that are largely rooted in racial discrimination. Figure 1, the image of Obama as a witch doctor above the phrase “Obama Care: Coming Soon to a Clinic Near You” is particularly problematic, given its resemblance to early racist cartoons. Figure 2 provides an example of an American cartoon, featured in the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University, which demonstrates the way in which African Americans were represented as savage, apelike witch doctors that posed a danger to the more civilized white population. The white character in figure 2 tells the black character in tribal garb to “Just leave that cigar with me! Leave go of it you chimpanzee.” Pairing figures 1 and 2 together provides a clear indication of how the Tea Party Movement has become a nationally televised forum for the kind of derogatory representations of African Americans that were commonplace during the era of Jim Crow Laws. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align: none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:#111111">The sign featured in Figure 3 also reflects the white supremacist belief that black Americans do not deserve to stake an equal claim in white America. By requesting to “‘Cap’ Congress and ‘Trade’ Obama Back to Kenya!” the sign suggests that even though the president is an American citizen, his black ethnicity makes him worthy of deportation. Similarly, the emphasis on the word “Trade” clearing insinuates that African Americans are still somehow worthy of the objectification that was placed on their race during the slave trade.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align: none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:#111111">While some of the Tea Party members’ signs closely mirror propagandized images associated with African Americans that were widely employed during the early part of the twentieth century, others seem to use Obama’s race as a means of evoking fear and distrust along racial lines. Figure 4, which contains the sign “Obama’s Plan. White Slavery” articulates the way in which the greater equalization of power amongst whites and minorities by means of the healthcare bill incites a great deal of panic for the white class that is currently holding a greater economic advantage. Signs such as these are rooted in the economically discriminatory ideology of the Tea Party, but express their message by calling upon key racist images that had not recently been given mass media coverage.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:#111111">The racist action of select Tea Party Members does not suggest that all individuals associated with the movement are inherently racist; however, the high frequency of racist signs and epithets present at rallies are clearly problematic because they allow previously marginalized white supremacist groups to unite on a mass media platform. In their documentary <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">White Power USA,</i> </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:13.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana">Rick Rowley and Jacquie Soohen went inside the white nationalist movement to investigate its expansion </span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:#111111">in the year following Obama’s inauguration. When describing the Tea Party specifically, the filmmakers characterize it as a “</span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">new populist movement that white nationalists see as their best chance in decades to cross over into mainstream American politics” (Rowley and Soohen). Because of its investment in white economic dominance, the Tea Party Movement has the potential to bring together a larger contingent of otherwise relatively isolated hate groups. Given the violence and discrimination that has historically grown out of large and unified white supremacist movements like those previously described in the second and third wave, the Tea Party Movement has the capability to recreate a climate in which racialized violence is more likely to increase.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>When asked on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Meet the Press</i> about the racist slurs voiced at Washington D.C.’s Tea Party protest, Republican National Chairman Michael Steele claimed, </span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:#111111">"It's not a danger. It's certainly not a reflection of the movement or the Republican Party when you have idiots out there saying stupid things"(</span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Courier New"">qtd. in </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">Pergram).</span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:#111111"> To agree with Mr. Steele–to believe that the presence of racism in the Tea Party Movement is not dangerous–is to ignore the long and painful history of discrimination in America. The history of white supremacy is one rooted in economics, but put into action by </span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">dynamic, media-savvy individuals who have learned to reframe their message and manipulate their image in order to make white supremacy more appealing to Americans in each decade. It would be false to<span style="color:#111111"> assume that every person carrying a racists sign is a member of an organized hate group like the KKK; however, by reinforcing the racist messages so central to hate groups, Tea Party members are </span>actively mainstreaming hate and supporting the most central goal of the white supremacy movement. The people that Steele refers to as “idiots” managed to bring about three violent waves of white supremacy in America, so to suggest that they can be disregarded is to dismiss the lessons of the last<span style="color:#111111"> century and to assure more Americans that it’s “okay” to join the Tea Party’s cause.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:#111111">The nature of racial discrimination has changed significantly since the days of chattel slavery, yet the root cause for the marginalization of non-white races remains the same. Regardless the surface level ideologies that have frequently been voiced as the cause of racism, American history and specifically the history of white supremacy proves that maintaining economic dominance is the key factor in upholding a possessive investment in whiteness. Though the Tea Party Movement encompasses a wide variety of people and interests, it is–at its core–a model of how the politically and economically elite members of society are still capable of mobilizing white Americans in order to maintain the dominance that could only be challenged by the rising up the country’s minorities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:#111111">On all levels, the Tea Party becomes a lucrative opportunity for far-Right, white Americans. The leaders of the movement benefit personally from six figure pay checks and politically by leveraging the supposed Obama tax increases as a means of garnering support for Republicans. Similarly, the largely white, affluent membership of the Tea Party Movement also benefits from opposing progressive social services that could allow currently underserved minorities to gain more potential for upward mobility and equality. Finally and perhaps most problematically, the Tea Party Movement provides white supremacists with a means of unification and with mass media coverage that ensures a captive audience of Americans upon which to impose their racist messages.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:#111111">While many economic influences, political motivations, and historically racist attitudes toward minorities provide the basis for the Tea Party, the movement’s ability to present this possessive investment in whiteness under the guise of patriotism provides at least some explanation of why this movement continues to gain membership. To conclude her speech on Boston Common, Sarah Palin invoked the kind of violent, revolutionary rhetoric that has become so common at Tea Party rallies by saying, “Our forefathers fought and died to make this country exceptional </span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">and it’s our<span style="color:#111111"> turn to stand up and fight for one America under God.” Though Palin’s statement may seem like straightforward “love” of her country, the implied message speaks directly to the Tea Party’s aims. The “one America under God” that “our forefathers” fought for was a white America under a Christian God. To many Americans, and especially those who have enjoyed the benefits of more than two centuries of white privilege, the Tea Party Movement is advertised as a chance to stand up and revolt against “higher” taxation and “unnecessary” social services. However, to literally “buy in” to the Tea Party is to further the history of white, socioeconomic dominance that has motivated hate groups and politicians alike since the days of the first American patriots. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> </div> <span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:#111111;mso-ansi-language:EN-US; mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><br /> <br /> </span> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center;text-indent:.5in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">Works Cited</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:#111111"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:-.5in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:-.5in;mso-pagination:none; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">Barstow, David. “Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right.” <i>www.nytimes.com</i>. 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Web. 16 Apr. 2010.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:-.5in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:-.5in;mso-pagination:none; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">“Racist Cartoon.” Cartoon. <i>Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia</i>. Ferris State University, n.d. Web. 22 Apr. 2010.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:-.5in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:-.5in;mso-pagination:none; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">“Reconstruction and Its Aftermath.” <i>The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship</i>. Library of Congress, 21 Mar. 2008. 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N.p., n.d. Web. 7 Apr. 2010.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:-.5in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:-.5in;mso-pagination:none; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">“Tea Party Patriots: Official Grassroots American Movement .” <i>www.teapartypatriots.org</i>. Tea Party Patriots, Inc., 2009. Web. 17 Apr. 2010.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:-.5in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:-.5in;mso-pagination:none; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">“Tea Party Patriots: Official Home of the American Tea Party Movement.” <i>teapartypatriots.ning.com</i>. Mark Meckler on Ning, 2010. 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PDF file.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:-.5in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:-.5in;mso-pagination:none; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">Weigel, David. “Is Palin Getting $100,000 to Speak at the Tea Party National Convention?” <i>The Washington Independent: National News in Context</i>. The Washington Independent, 7 Jan. 2010. Web. 16 Apr. 2010.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:-.5in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:-.5in;mso-pagination:none; mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">Zernike, Kate, and Megan Thee-Brenan. “Poll Finds Tea Party Backers Wealthier and More Educated.” <i>www.nytimes.com</i>. The New York Times Company, 14 Apr. 2010. Web. 16 Apr. 2010.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <!--EndFragment-->RHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18132797421986659081noreply@blogger.com0