Ruin Value

Syllabus of Errors

2011-08-15T00:30:00.001-03:00

Since I started teaching, I seem to have gone inexorably in the direction of pop culture. I first taught courses on mystery novels. Even though it was my first choice among the classes I may teach as part of my grad school requirement, I'd never really been a reader of mysteries. In fact, I'd read just about every genre but, spending most of my undergraduate life reading over serious novels and poems of the literary variety, and most of my life since reading sci fi, fantasy, horror, etc. When I was a teenager I read angsty bildungsromans and Stephen King. The last "literary" novel I've read (that I wasn't teaching) was probably A Prayer for the Dying, by Stuart O'Nan. That novel was set in the 19th century told to (2nd person, y'all) a combo preacher/mortician/sheriff about his town being on the brink of devastation from diphtheria and fire. And though it is certainly literary (it's experimental p.o.v., the lyrical sharpness of its sentences, the depth of characterization, etc), it was more or less a western. A really awesome western. I read it as quickly as I read the latest Harry Dresden novel Ghost Story. Which was really fast.

Other novels I have loved in my adult life: The Brothers Karamazov, White Noise, Confederacy of Dunces, etc. But I don't need to make a case for them. If nothing else, it seems pretty pretentious to list them as my "favorites." And truly, they're not. When I fell in love with reading was when I immersed myself into Midworld of the Dark Tower Series. This was freshmen year of high school, and my life was perfect. I had an older girlfriend, a job in Cocodrie, which is the "exotic" end of the road in Louisiana on the marshy coast of the Gulf of Mexico. This was before I started smoking or even started drinking alcohol. I listened to Nine Inch Nails's The Fragile everyday. I read the Stephen King novels every night and wanted to be a postapocalyptic gunslinger who found himself in a Browning poem. Now, I read George R. R. Martin and Jim Butcher, Kelly Link and Margaret Atwood. Stuff that's speculative and engaging.

When I began writing poetry, I wrote in an ars poetica essay (assigned--I'm not quite that full of myself, not even when I was 19) that talked about how I wanted to create a world that I preferred to the real one. It doesn't have to be one that is full of fantasy, but it has to be good. I'm still looking for a world to believe in. And so I teach worlds.

But what I'm actually teaching, seems to be up for debate. Despite the fact that Buffy was clearly on the syllabus of the class, I was critiqued by a student that I spent valuable class time "gossiping about Buffy." OK, fair observation. We did spend three to four weeks on Buffy. And despite the fact that pop culture texts (and not just Frankfurt school theory) have been taught since at least the 80s (see White Noise), some students still don't recognize the richness of the texts that we navigate everyday. They want the class to be more utilitarian, they want me to be the vendor of a useful sort of knowledge that they can consume and lose once a satisfying final grade is delivered. Well, I'm calling bullshit.

As a writing teacher, I teach that to write, one must be a hungry reader. Surprise! You don't learn to write because of a formula a writing teacher gives you, some handout that reminds you on where to place a thesis sentence, on how to introduce your arguments. I'm guilty of giving handouts like that, but I can't believe in them. Students expect them. As does the department. But do they transform writing from unsophisticated to stellar? Do they give essays or whatever some kind of fire that you can read by?

They don't. And so, I design my course around subjects I'm passionate about, and we discuss that content in the hopes that the students find something that wakes them up to something other than the everyday reality of being an adolescent and a college student. Something that makes them want to be ambitious in their imagination. Along the way, we deal with craft, making sure that students avoid obvious errors so that the wealth of their thoughts actually has a chance to do something, whether it is to tell a story, argue a point, or make some kind of emotional speech act.

And so in my freshmen writing seminars, I teach what I love--pop cultural texts. This fall, I'm teaching Wonder Woman, Promethea, Jean Grey, and, of course, Buffy. The class has the word "superheroines" in the title so maybe there will be no confusion as to what we'll be gossiping about. And hopefully, these characters will inspire my students, not just to live some kind of ideal (though that can be right sometimes), but to write worlds of their own. Ones that might be as simple as their own. The class is an essay class, but an essay class that is all serious can make for some pretty lackluster writing. For me, the main goal of pedagogy is to create a context where students create for themselves, come to realizations on their own, to do for themselves.

Kingdom of Madness

2011-05-20T19:10:00.007-03:00

I just clicked on my computer to discover sad news: Randy "Mach Man" Savage is dead. He died from a car accident, having had a heart attack then losing control of his car. His wife, Lynn, had minor injuries. From all reports, he was happy, having just celebrated his one year anniversary with his wife.

While Hulk Hogan gave wrestling the cross-over appeal in the 1980s to become a global entertainment form, Savage was one of the few wrestlers who kept fans ringside, whether in their homes or at arenas, glued to the action in the ring. He was the technical half of the Superpowers, the man who stole the show the night Hogan slammed Andre in a beautiful match with Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat. He was Shawn Michaels before Shawn Michaels. He made us believe that a little man could take on all of Hulkamania and hence the world.

While Savage was stellar in the ring, he was the champion of the mic, delivering insane promos that bordered on the poetic. He was a wordsmith as much as he was a matsmith. He taught me the importance of the "larger than life," the creative break with reality, the ambition to chase the dragon of inspiration, to bow down before the kingdom of madness. To say he will be missed will be to say we will miss a part of ourselves, the generation whose childhood hero wore cowboy hats, sunglasses, and entered the arena to "Pomp and Circumstance." He lives on as the part of us that's willing to go beyond the realms of possibility, in art and in life, the part of us that's cocky but loveable, the part of us that will do anything for his lover.

And as you knock on the gates of the kingdom of madness, know that you've left behind a legacy in and out of the squared circle. I hope they crown you prince, for you've done your service, shown each of us how to be a little more mad too. Oh yeah.

Redemptive Sacrifice and Spoilers.

2011-05-19T21:37:00.006-03:00

Lately, everything I watch or read ends in a redemptive sacrifice. After becoming enchanted by the character of Doyle in Angel (my wife and I finished marathoning Buffy and had to move on to something), he throws himself in the mortal-killing light of a machine to save Angel, Cordelia, and a bunch of half-demons. The night before, I watched an episode of Supernatural where Sam's fling had to die because she was a werewolf. This one was more complicated because she chose the death (unlike Oz in BtVS), but Sam also chose to be the man with the gun. So to save others, he killed the woman he loved (at least for the episode), and she, to save others, asked for death. This episode doesn't even touch on how many times the Winchesters sell their soul to save someone or another. And then there's the plot arc of The Astonishing X-Men that ended with, spoiler alert, Kitty Pryde phasing herself into a gigantic missile to save Earth but doom herself to death or worse. At least in that situation, I have the comfort in knowing that in comics, no one really dies.

These instances come after I planned a screenplay that ends in redemptive sacrifice. I certainly had no illusions that this trope is novel. Hell, it started Christianity, right? But the use of the death as a model for redemption sinks its teeth deep into the heart of humankind. Just sitting here, writing this blog, I can name hundreds of narratives that end the hero's journey with a plunge into the abyss, especially one big novel to film adaptation that ends this summer (if you're concerned with not knowing the end of huge narratives that are immensely popular, don't dwell on this sentence!). But many of these, previous sentence and the largest Western religion included, don't actually end in the cemetery, but when the hero triumphs one last time over death. Buffy did it. Twice.

The sacrifices I'm haunted by lately, ones of my own devising included, don't have that I'll be home for Christmas endings. Doyle really died. And he doesn't come back, not even in spectral form. In fact, the actor, Glenn Quinn died a little over two years after his onscreen death from a heroin overdose. When I read that bit of news from 2002 (I'm catching up!), I transfered my emotions concerning Doyle onto Mr. Quinn, and felt doubly the pain of not seeing him banter with Cordelia, of knowing that he'll never have dinner with her, that he'll never save the world again. What this says about the state of literary tropes, I don't know.

But I do know that we invest a lot into our fictional friends. And when they're gone, another kind of abyss opens up and we have no choice but to populate it with more characters. I've become a sort of character junkie lately. And while reality is our nation-wide addiction, I still sentimentally clutch to the moments when someone's scripted behavior moves me. I wonder if it's always been this way, whether in the 19th people were outraged at the, spoiler alert, death of Anna Karenina or even Miss Havisham. Or whether once they'd read the fictional last rites of these people, that they immediately sought to find new books and plays to fill the gap left by the characters the way when my family's dog, Kal, died when I was in 9th grade, we immediately bought another Kal.

I hope they did.

RE: Blogging

2011-05-14T02:32:00.002-03:00

Wow. It's been two years. If I had any readers before, they're gone now. But I'm starting afresh, same topics as before: culture, the disintegration thereof and how that can become beautiful too, poetry, pop culture, and the like.

I'm about to finish my second year teaching at Cornell. I'm just waiting on final projects from both my creative and expository students. I'd like to point anyone who arrives here to the blog that my students have been maintaining all semester: Barbaric Poetries. In it, you will find posts about video games, classical art, professional wrestling, Osama bin Laden, Blood Meridian, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, among other topics. The goal of my expository writing class was to explore our relationship to aestheticized violence, and my students did a marvelous job extending that conversation outside the classroom. In the fall, I'm teaching a course on Superheroines and Gendered Violence. In the spring, I'm teaching that course and a course on Contemporary Poetry and Hip Hop. Both of these writing seminars will use Barbaric Poetries to explore different topics that come up.

It's good to see students this way, and I hope other teachers begin to see the value of blogs in pedagogy. Instead of forcing students to comment of subjects they're half-interested in, they have the opportunity to write about what they want to, keeping them interested in a class they chose to sign up for. They're more at ease, more engaged. The best part is that I get to see them in their own element, seeing what interests they have, what preoccupations trouble them. My first summer teaching, while explaining existentialism, a student had said something along the lines of "I don't know what's the deal with all this existentialism, teach. I'm pretty happy with the way things are." That statement and dismissal gave me the false impression that my Cornell students were nothing like me. This blog teaches me that my assumption was wrong, that not only are my students like me, but they are concerned, critical thinkers.

Also, that experience has inspired me to take up the mantle and cowl once more and write in the darkness of a Newark night. Or whatever. But I hope to spew forth my words in this venue for a little while longer.

A Few Publications and a Performative

2009-09-25T17:47:00.003-03:00

A little updating. The most recent issue of Prick of the Spindle includes two of my poems and a host of edgy, poignant stuff. The poem that mentions Tunguska is a poem that I've revised substantially every two years for about six years. The other one is about the razed St. Thomas housing projects in New Orleans that is now a particularly useless Walmart.

Also, a poem of mine will be forthcoming in The Colorado Review, either this fall or in the spring.

My first essay publication, dealing with my favorite topic--professional wrestling, will appear in this fall's Louisville Review. It mentions suplexes in a swimming pool, the retirement of Ric Flair, and Shawn Michaels at a house show in Baton Rouge.

One interesting thing I've been reading about is the supposedly performative aspect of poetry, a proposition based in reaction to/against Austin and Searle's speech act theory. In Austin's posthumous work, How to Do Things with Words, he describes a number of performative utterances, i. e. words that enact what they say. Examples would include naming ("I hereby name this boat the Mademoiselle Fazie."), loving ("Duh I love you."), and betting ("I bet you that more people will attend a Cajun party than a party in the USA."). One notable act Austin puts aside is poetry. If an apparent speech act arrives in a poem, you can bet that Austin would consider it "false." Searle prefers to call it "pretend." While speech act theory is actually as old as the desert fathers, if not older, Austin's presentation had its value, namely in a type of codifying of the phenomenon and an introduction of the topic to nonCatholic audiences. The ommission of poetry by him and subsequently by Searle, though, is shortsighted.

I propose that poetry itself be considered a type of speech act, albeit one that takes a bit more preparation than either christening or gambling. One thing that it does not need more of is convention. Speech acts are only felicitous or successful, as Austin tells us, when done according to certain socially defined conventions. Likewise, poetry does not operate well too far from conventions, especially if one considers that language is a huge set of historically determined conventions.

What poetry does not do is pretend. As my professor for my Theory of the Lyric course, Jonathan Culler, asks, what would Keats be pretending to do when he addresses the wind in "Ode to the Western Wind?" Although I'm not sure what he is really doing, let alone pretending to do, I can wager a guess. In the act of his poem (whether the reading or presentation of it, and I err on the side of reading here), the poem enacts its own creation, specifically the creation of a world where it is appropriate to apostrophize the wind or exist in surreality or experience the sublime. This might stretch the definition of poetry a bit, but why not?

OK, enough poetics for today. Maybe tomorrow you will get rap.

Get Me Out of this Monastery

2009-09-20T14:03:00.003-03:00

One interesting thing I can do now that I am in grad school: The other night I had an inconsequential dream which was basically a mirror of a waking wish fantasy. I woke immediately afterwards and told myself, well that's a pretty straightforward dream, wish fulfillment in plain terms and images. And then I reminded myself that that was not what Freud what want me to think! So I re-evaluated my dream in the span of a minute or so, searching for spatial analogies, linguistic slips, condensation, displacement. Afterwards, I completely reinterpreted my dream, not only problematizing the initial wish fantasy but also arriving at a completely unrelated tension. Satisfied with myself, I fell back asleep and forget everything.

Return, return

2009-06-12T19:17:00.005-03:00

Alright, so now it is time to get a summer schedule started. I begin intern/teaching not this Monday but next. It will be The Moviegoer not No Place, Louisiana due to difficulties locating enough copies. I think a reissued edition will come out next year, which you can buy then. It is really an amazing, troubling, and quiet novel. Luckily, so is The Moviegoer, and may be more relevant to the course title ("Natives and Strangers") due to the strangeness of being a native.

My wrestling essay will make it into the pages of The Louisville Review this fall under the title "The Thrill of Choreographed Violence." Turns out it wasn't as autoportraity as I thought and is now more streamlined thanks to the wonderful guest creative nonfiction editor there. Linda and I got the chance to watch the Extreme Rules PPV live in New Orleans. If there was any doubt in my mind that wrestling is a perfect entertainment form, I believe it now.

This blog is rather aimless, but after visiting Louisiana this last week, I've finally decided what I want to do, what I want to really do. Linda and I are going to snag some PhDs if we can at Cornell and return to the bayou. There, we will create opportunity, not only for us, but for people in Barataria who right now can basically chose between offshore, the shrimpboat, or moving. And so it will be a private institution. Linda will run a school (I mean K-12, private, full imaginative education curriculum), and I'm going to run a cultural center. This will encompass and make possible a lot of my father's ambition (he wants a genealogical/Chauvin culture/Cajun industrial museum on Bayou Petit Caillou) in addition to mine. Hopefully one day it will be a think tank style institution that can do everything from granting postdoctoral ethnology fellowships to summer internships to coastal erosion and agricultural sustainability awareness to educating tourists and locals alike on the varieties of life in Southern Louisiana. In essence, if anything else, you'll see that here.

I'm back in Ithaca, but I realize that my heart's in Chauvin. And it will always be there.

Reviewing Reviews

2009-05-06T20:59:00.003-03:00

There is a great (overall, some of the responses are bunk) round table discussion over at MayDay magazine which discusses the phenomenon of Jason Guriel's exhortation to write negative reviews of poetry books. Personally, I think Guriel is a master of cheap shots and sensationalism, but his opinion may stem from a passion for literature and the promotion of great stuff (at the denunciation of the shit). It may not. The larger issue is that reviewers of poetry books are poets. And so due to an assortment of reasons (from thinking that the best way to criticize an awful book of poetry is ignore it and promote stuff you're enthusiastic about, to not wanting to insult people you will invariably run into, have taught you, or are otherwise important in our small, nervous community), most reviews of poetry are positive and blurbesque.

In my life, I have no problem mixing the poet and the scholar (though these roles remain compartmentalized for the most part). But being a poet and critic is something I want to avoid as much as possible. And emotionally, if I have to do a review, I'd rather be excited about something good or exploratory in what the poems do regardless of my tastes (for instance, when writing my sole published book review, which was of Circadian by Joanna Klink, I never lauded nor insulted the work: the careful reading I did, articulating the themes or whatever, was laurel enough, I thought). In other fields, artists criticizing other artists constitutes a "diss" and is always personal.

This leads me to my second point, which I will wait until next time to share: my newfound appreciation of pop culture, specifically hip hop. I will tell you that I am starting a project writing in a hip hop voice, the first poem of which is titled, "Elegy to the Saint Thomas Projects."

Beginning again and again

2009-04-19T17:48:00.005-03:00

First, I would like to apologize. I have been away, both from writing and reading blogs. The demands of the MFA program and my own sanity have definitely taken their tole on the exhilaration of instantaneous publication. But here I am, for how long who knows!

To find the ruination in these blogposts will definitely be more esoteric work than before, as my main research interests are now eroticism, Cajana, and professional wrestling. Welcome to grad school, thank you for making my interests as schizophrenic as a Facebook account.

Right now, I am in the midst of working on portrayals of mystical jouissance and female sexual experience in the films of David Lynch and Peter Greenaway. So yes, I have come around to not only reading but kind of liking Lacan. You may get some psychobabble out of me now. And my writing may no longer make sense.

As for professional wrestling, I am preparing an essay called "Autoportrait with Choreographed Violence," hopefully for publication soon. I am quickly becoming a wrestling historian and have even turned the Ivy League establishment on to chair shots, DDTs, color commentary, and, especially, cutting promos. If I keep this blog up, it may be observations working out my feelings and connections to "sports entertainment."

I begin teaching courses at Cornell in June. The summer deal is a course about Natives and Strangers (a Freshmen writing seminar). I think I somehow conned the course leader into letting me teach my portion (it is a complicated learning to teach but still teaching internship of sorts) on Cajun literature. So if I can find a bulk supply of the amazing but out-of-print No Place, Louisiana, I'll be teach Martin Pousson. In the fall, I teach Mystery in the Story, which I will be able to design to include neo-noir films, Thomas Pynchon, Umberto Eco, Slavoj Žižek, and horror fiction. Needless to say, I am pretty much happy with this assignment.

Ithaca's cutting out of winter finally. I've been writing decently, I think. So there's that as well. Next time I post, it will be a post of some substance. And probably about the squared circle.

Welcome (back) to the now

2009-01-17T22:51:00.004-04:00

Ok, I've been totally lame and not updated since September. I could say I was busy, which is true. But lazy is probably more accurate.

I just finished my final project for my City in Ruins course, which was a 60 page chapbook of poems, lyric essays, and photographs about ruins. The photos where taken by Linda and me (and one by my dad) of ruins in Louisiana both flood related and not. The poems were sort of persona/erotic/ruin poems, which can be said about all my work, probably.

This does not mean that I'll quit rambling about ruination. But I can probably throw a few non-academic things around, occasionally.

Semester starts this week and will be taking Erotics of Visuality, which is about portrayals of desire and sex in film, I guess. Workshop and poetry reading. Etc.

Because I've been such an asshole, I leave you with a photo from my project:

This was taken in Dulac, Louisiana. It is an abandoned boat filled with marsh grass.

Talking Statuary

2008-09-16T13:43:00.004-03:00

In Medieval Italy, there was a fragment of a statue the Romans dubbed Il Pasquino. It was the head and torso of a male, badly damaged with basically a missing face, arms, legs, next to another even more fragmentary masculine torso. The Romans, for whatever reasons motivate a Roman, began scribbling bits of verse and attaching them to Il Pasquino--often irreverent satire aimed at the clergy and the politicians. What happens is that though fragmentary and though unnerving (especially because of the eerie non face), Il Pasquino began to be reconstructed, not through a physical refurbishing of the statue, but through a textual reconfiguration of both the statue and the Roman people. In essence, they saw ruin, but rather than becoming paralyzed by the morbidness of the mutilated human body, they elevated it and themselves and created something entirely new.

It is a common trope, especially for the Romans whose culture we inherit: the resurrection of the gods of the mystery cults (Mithras, Osiris, Dionysus, Jesus, etc), the myth of the phoenix, even the cliché of the reverdie during spring. But it is a trope that is nevertheless and unflaggingly interesting to us as humans. We are obsessed with our own mortality, right?

But as an artist, this age-old narrative becomes not only an easy fallback when creativity lacks, but also and especially an ars poetica. To create something out of the ruins. To never repair what is broken, but to reconstitute and rearrange. And also to revise.

For me, I go under a constant revision--not necessarily in my work, but in my life. There are memories that have caused me to recreate my past in my mind, first effacing both the good and the bad. One must work with a blank medium, so I thought. But now I am revising my methods, or at least acknowledging what I've been doing all along: pulling the voice out of the ruined face of my past. And now, I am rejuvenated in my work, having been inspired.

Il Pasquino is not as famous as other, more silent, ruins, such as the Belvedere Torso or the Venus de Milo. But he functions more as the bawdy and entertaining emblem of the community, rather than the classical and polished icon of a society. He uses foul language (did you know that shithouse is cacatorium in Latin?) and references sodomy, pederasty, and genitalia with wanton abandon. He even uses clever grammatical construction to attack grammar. But he is also the voice of the city and the patron saint of writers (this quote is taken from Barkin's Unearthing the Past):

pastore,
avendo per armento ogni scrittore [119, year 1516]

a shepherd,
who has every writer as a member of his flock.

In any case, this is all to say that ruins, even of your emotional history, are good, especially when you have the chance to reconstruct them and change them into something new.

----

Also and Attention: I will make an appearance, poem in hand, at a concert of Bárbara Ohana, on the 27th. And she will be performing a song that she made of one of my poems. She is also performing on the 24th and in Washington, D.C. this weekend. Details will be forthcoming. Email me if you want more information.

City in Ruin Value

2008-09-06T22:25:00.004-03:00

It has been a busy and long week as you may have guessed. I began coursework at Cornell two Fridays ago. And my home town and parish were ravaged by Hurricane Gustavo (my family and theirs are more or less fine, minor roof damage chez mes parents, no utilities until God knows when, the standard). But to avoid getting too personal, at least at this moment (although I do want to extend sympathy and prayers (of whatever sort) to those who've had to experience these such storms), I want to talk about a possible shift in topic for this blog based upon a seminar I'm taking.

The course is called City in Ruins, and the ultra-sexy course description includes readings from Mesopotamian and Hebraic lamentations of cities (think Ur, Babylon, and Jerusalem), paintings by Piranesi and others, poetry by Byron and Spencer, urban redevelopment by Haussman, urban warfare in London and Paris during WWII, speculative texts by Benjamin and Derrida, and a host of things that I cannot remember probably because I haven't actually heard of them until the syllabus was whisked into my hand. Basically, the course is to explore the aesthetization of ruin.

And as trite and removed as it possibly can be with posturing doctoral candidates and over emotional MFA students and a sharp emeritus professor from Johns Hopkins, this class is right up my ally and right up this blog's ally. So don't be surprised if I use this space for a sounding board of ideas and reflections on my readings and on my semester work, whether that be creative or critical. Such things as how in the destruction of Jerusalem, "even her lovers have deserted her" (Lamentations), or that each city lamentation ends with a regenerated hope and a transfer of grief onto the next city, who's about to get hers. Or how about how according to Jacques Ellul, whackjob theologico-philosopher and anarchist, all cities are necessarily doomed because the concept is a priori cursed and not of God regardless of the individual acts of the citizens and that in fact, doing anything to help the needy or improve life within cities is cute, but always futile and ridiculous.

As you can see, this will be fruitful and ire-inducing and a great horror class.

The End of Culture? Pop edition.

2008-08-16T11:05:00.005-03:00

For a long time, I've been dubious about culture. You know that. But now I mean what most media (think television and blogs) define as culture: pop culture.

That's right. It started at the beginning of the twentieth century with such external artifacts as jingles and jazz and comic books. It essentially meant what normal people were interested in if they weren't academics, the rich, or criminals--although there is some looseness to those rules. Later, specifically after World War II and most strongly in the mid fifties, pop culture began to take on the qualities that we know and love today.

The dialectic of counterculture. First there was rock and roll which was overtaken by late sixties psychadelia, then punk came and was thought to be the end of established culture. Then there was glam, post punk, and heavy metal. Then hip hop. Then grunge. Then hipsters. Could this be an example of ruin value in culture, becoming more beautiful as it becomes more fragmented?

Nope. And I would like to link to a few things and then continue my point. The first is an article about hipsters calling it the end of western civilization, undoubtedly ironically. The second is not a rebuttal so much as an eloquent "Who cares?" by my friend Catherine Lacey. And what CL says is true: Hipsterism, especially that group defined by fashion and obscure music, is insignificant. But to stretch this further, so were all of the other "movements."

Hear me out on this. I know you are thinking, but punk, those people were really trying to do something. Or you can't say the children of the sixties were insignificant, look at the protests, etc. And I'll even concede that some of those movements did have more of the traits of a culture than the movements do now.

But curiously, none of these subcultures have really passed on to the second generation. They only exist within the context of their times. Whereas culture, in terms of external signs of the qualities of a specific group of people, such as Black New Orleans or Cajun or whatever, tend to last. These cultures are taught to children who then embody those traits or suppress them and still embody them subconsciously.

This can be explained away fairly easily when you look at what these counterculture movements really are: they are just the placeholders for an archetype that must be repeated each cycle of years. They can be an agent of change, but for the most part, only change in a superficial sense--that of pop media. There will always be decisions made by established authority that must be rebelled against. Punks, hippie protesters, grungy people in the nineties were all protesting specific acts either by the government or society. Their music and fashion were contingent upon those attitudes. Did their behaviors rock society to its foundations by overturning established norms? Not a chance. Prod society into greasing its huge clogs in order to move inevitably in the direction it moves? Perhaps. But the importance we place upon these cultural events is mostly a product of a consumer society. Which is to say, they are not very important at all, at least in terms of lasting cultural significance in and of themselves.

We seem to forget also that this behavior is not a product of post WWII attitudes. Consider the Dolcinians of the 14th century who were a counterculture within the church which advocated the abolition of private property and protested by burning down church property. They undoubtedly had a certain style, certain artforms to entertain themselvees--but it would be weird to consider the followers of Fra Dolcino a culture. Incidentally, they were all killed as heretics, so I can't say as to whether their "culture" could have survived a generation or not.

I would think that culture is the set of signs and attitudes that allows one to live comfortably with ample entertainment within his or her group of people. If we use that definition, then these countercultures are merely signs within the real culture of American society. That is to say, the culture of America includes being obsessed with media entertainment and the unfolding of the pop culture dialectic. The difference between pop culture one hundred years ago to now is that cultural artifacts are now demassified and so pop culture is more defined by the ability to find a niche in fashion or entertainment than any unifying piece of art or media. This is our culture: finding something to consume.

Prodigal Blog

2008-07-19T14:32:00.003-03:00

I haven't posted anything since the end of my tenure as a Fulbright in Moncton, but I guess it is time to refigure my blog to accommodate that change. Here is the relevant personal information:

On June 20th I married my lover, Linda Rigamer, in New Orleans. Three days later we drove across the country to our new home in Ithaca, New York. We've been here since.

Now I am living through summer with new interests and old projects. I am working on translating some Acadian poetry for The New Orleans Review. I am working on revising Evangeline. Considering writing the third part. "Studying" professional wrestling as a cultural and significant art/entertainment spectacular. Considering how I can integrate that in poetry and/or everyday life. Considering watching The Dark Knight again. Every night this week. Until it closes. Cooking often. Figuring out what to do with a dearth of closets. Being either with my wife or alone.

Busy enough. Orientation for Cornell will start on the 25th of August, so as much as I want/need a job, options for a month long job are limited at best in tiny Ithaca.

So what of my blog? I had a reasonable idea with the cultures of Acadie and Cajana in their present form as a demonstration of Ruin Value. Although I am sure I didn't express that except cursorily. That's saved for my poetry and life. But of course, ruin can be applied to anything. The evolution of revolutionary democracy to today's circus of politics. Poetry as demassified and worthless cultural relic. The shift from long, boring scientific wrestling bouts to the high-flying sports entertainment/totem worship ceremony of today.

These things and more, friends and citizens.

Frye Jam

2008-04-29T15:49:00.003-03:00

As promised, here are some videos from Saturday night's reading.

This first one is of me performing "Offshore."

This second video is two poems: "Canto Incorruptible" (performed in French) and "New Orleans" (which is the final show-stopper, in English, and begins at about 2:19).

Both videos were shot by Lee Thompson.

Moncton Finale

2008-04-28T13:09:00.003-03:00

My Fulbright stay in Moncton has formally ended. And the Frye Festival was the perfect way to do it.

From Wednesday to Friday, I entered the anglophone highschools on the Moncton area and essentially read poems to teenagers. You would be surprised how much poetry still can affect people. The kids were engaged and shocked and were thoroughly moved, I think, which was energizing and validating and anything you need as a writer. I couldn't have asked for a better audience in many cases. Also, I received cool highschool schwag, such as a leather portfolio (from Moncton High), a cookbook (from Caledonia High), and a t-shirt and mug (from Harrison Trimble).

Wednesday night I saw the Zachary Richard concert, where I met the artist. We were just two Cajun anglophones talking to one another in French in Acadie.

Linda came Thursday night just in time for the last poem of my reading, "New Orleans [kudzu king]."

On Friday I conducted my first radio interview, with Radio Canada, and totally in French.

The final event of the Frye Festival (for me at least) was the Frye Jam on Saturday Night, which features readings by authors with musical accompaniment from the band, Les Païens. This was the highlight of the festival. I "performed" four poems quite theatrically while the band played amazing and genre bending music from and industrial rendition of "Offshore" to the Saint James Infirmary behind "New Orleans [final]." It was surprising how well I fell in to adapted the rhythm of my speech to the pulse and melody of the songs. For the first time in my life, I felt like a rock-star.

Incidentally, I feel like I want to cut an album of my poems now.

I didn't stay long after my performance because Linda and I had to drive to Rhode Island, which Linda bravely led--I was burned out after the week of visits and packings and endless endless goodbyes.

Mixing Memory and Desire (brief)

2008-04-21T23:44:00.003-03:00

Last night Chuck threw a party for me. We ate Fricot, Bouillée, and Poutine à Troux. You know you're finished when they throw a party for you. And with a few revisions on my final report, the Fulbright committee will know I'm finished too.

I am looking forward to meeting and talking with friends for hours and drinking and laughing and most of all being with Linda again. I'm afraid this hermitage up north has made me socially awkward and that I won't be able to talk to someone outside of the context of the "cultural artist" topic.

Later this week is the Northrop Frye, as I've mentioned. I'll be interviewed and perform readings. I will give Acadie a taste of what's to come.

This I know is a slightly more personal and laconic post. The theory and intellectually melodramatic questions were I know getting out of hand, and it's hard to think that way all the time. In truth, I don't think about culture or art all the time. Mostly I think on specific instances of communications, bits of correspondence, waiting for the time--the era--to pass, missing home, wishing I were with others/away from others, being nostalgic for the future.

Evangeline is being revised and guess the title for the section about Louisiana:

Elegies for a Paradis Terrestre.

The New Art and a Barbaric Yawp for Teens (and Adults!)

2008-04-18T16:20:00.002-03:00

I would say Spring is really here in Moncton, after being surprised that the thermometer in my car read 15 degrees C (about 62 F or so). Walking is easier and sweatier. People are milling about downtown as if for the first time in their lives. This is my first spring in a winter city.

I have a project for this week before the Northrop Frye Festival: figure out how to make poetry thrilling for high school students. You heard right--this coming Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, I will be giving lectures and workshops at Moncton's premier English high schools. I have anywhere between one and two and a half hours to stand before twenty to thirty 17 year olds and state my case. In the words of the early nineties: gag me with a spoon!

Seriously, this is a good opportunity to reach lots of people, continue (at least on a small scale) the influence of poetry, which as you know is waning about as fast as Louisiana's coastline. So this weekend I am rereading old favorites and my own catalog to find the most compelling poems for young adults (that won't get me thrown out of Atlantic Canada).

As I was talking to my friend Kimberly about this over lunch, she and I were discussing which poems teenagers would be interested in, to which I suggested, "Only ones with the word ipod in the title." She said, "Or cellphones." While this was all sort of a joke, there is an inherent truth to the changing of the guards in art--and not only in thematic.

Weirdly enough, some of the best art that I've seen recently have been advertisement campaigns (especially billboards in the Paris metro). Movies have certainly replaced live theatre (sorry). And even pop music, those bastards who stole not only the fields of music but also of poetry (kidding, I listen to pop music), is not so much on the decline so much as relegated to another consumable that people can use to "identify" themselves to others with similar "tastes."
I read an article recently on a student at Yale who's senior art thesis is video tapes of her inducing miscarriages, which she obtained through artificial insemination and then herbal arbotificants, and then smearing the blood from these episodes in vaseline coated plastic wrap. Needless to say, this is ghastly and shocking to most people (who are human), regardless of what side of the abortion debate they're on. But consider, in 1863 at the salon in Paris, Edouard Manet unveiled the Olympia, which scandalized art viewers and critics by showing for the first time an unadorned and average nude whore, staring directly at the observer. But now, what it takes to shock us needs no subtlety: we are the shock and awe culture, we've seen it before.

Recently I saw the acclaimed film No Country for Old Man, something that everyone considers hyper-violent and not in a Kill Bill/300 kind of way. But for me the most shocking thing was not the gore or the captive bolt pistol or even the ultra-menacing Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh, it was how human I felt after I watched the film, how much I appreciated life, and how much I felt like we were all "in it together." Out of violence, there grew empathy.

And maybe this is the solution to both finding something to move children who live in seven minute periods between commercials and to the lack of soul in art today. Much writing, art, film, music, etc has nothing to do with a real connection with the Other, and its only communicative intent is to impress and sell. Great art now must shock you out of the consumerist loop, it must return you to a primal state wherein people are capable of caring for one another. And this extends well beyond the petty trappings of culture, demographic, writing movement, and any other dimension. This is why at least I do art. It is another ambition question, but one that holds an ultimatum: are you in with us humans or are you out?

Ambition value

2008-04-14T12:42:00.002-03:00

Yesterday I went to a writers' meeting in Grand Barachois with Lee Thompson. There I met many people I had met already with the addition of the great Acadian artist and poet Roméo Savoie. We read our own work, etc. I read my poem titled "Ruin Value" which obviously touches on that same concept of architecture.

This was excellent because Roméo was himself an architect before he became a famous Acadian figure. He said that Acadie created a ghetto for itself. That it will be a hundred years or so before the culture can move beyond the issue of the culture. He is the first Acadian to present this mindset to me, that culture is irrelevant, that the only thing that matters is life--not the homeland, not the language, not the cultural artifacts dressed out to confirm any lingering stereotypes from outsiders.

Meeting him and of course Herménégilde has been a breath of fresh air here. Because they understand more acutely the ambition of the artist. In the end, ambition is the real question. The ambition to communicate and reach the Other.

People don't write for themselves, solely. If anyone tells you this and then shows you his manuscript, he is looking for acceptance, one form of communication. He wants to show you this extension of himself, something he came up with. The qualifications of "personal" writing are a facade. Of course. But the point is that artists are trying to say something.

But this something is less important than you think. It is more in the manner, the style, and the technique of the communication. The concept is well less important than the execution. To quote J. Robert Lennon, "You can write anything you want, just don't write it shittily."

There was incidentally a bit of contention this week over a "movement" of new minimalist writers. I don't want to go too far into it, but most of the writing itself is unreadable and laughably self-conscious in an adolescent, look how cool I am kind of way. But the real problem with this writing was not topic (which though banal cannot be bad in and of itself) but with the lame prose and conceited, ironic tone.

In any case, I am 12 days until I leave Canada for good. In the meantime, I have to figure out what I am going to tell high school kids during my school visits for the Northrup Frye festival and pack and see what I want to see before I go. Linda will be here in 10 days for my readings and to help me pack.

Culture Wars

2008-04-07T17:05:00.003-03:00

Culture. What is that? My friend and landlord, who by day is a psychologist, claims that it is "a system of laws to check instinct." But this is conflating culture with institutions--which is no surprise from my friend, who "hates" them all, especially Organized Religion. But there is also his culture--upper middle class academic/professional, atheist, permissive, purveyor of both fine and folk art. There is also my culture(s). Cajun, yeah yeah yeah. But moreso, I'm a twenty-something writer, cultural (at least) Catholic, permissive, consumer. I dabble in many arts and am well "versed" in many subjects. I avoid opinions I find distasteful--racist, mysogynistic, homophobic, conservative. Both of us has "culture."

But you could say the same with any demographic, and now I'm conflating "culture" with "demographic group." (I can't help but think that's what culture is now, sorry.) But maybe I should look more toward what separates humans and animals. I don't buy the feel-good idea that animals somehow have culture, one of the defining things, I think, that cleaves that chasm between us and Those Others Who Live. One great big advance that humans made in evolutionary history is of course the capacity to engage in symbolic discourse.

Symbols. Signs for something else. Is this what culture is? In Cajana, there is of course the music, symbolic wailing and complaints not unlike Medieval French poetry. There is also symbols that have come to represent the people--the crawfish, the bayou, the French language, etc. There is also literature.

But for my purposes, can there be any culture? I am an artist. And as I've stated before, I am not doing this just to be the world's biggest Cajun. I really don't think I'm that exotic. And continuing in my writing and in my reading, what is there but culture? What is there that but what has nothing to do with culture?

Culture may be something only valuable to the two jobs offered by an MFA in creative arts: artists and marketing people. But maybe when either is address directly, the only thing that can happen is a war of generalizations (read tautologies) and the dehumanization of the individual. New postmodern dictum: you can have a culture / but have it slant.

Countdown

2008-04-04T18:59:00.002-03:00

Okay. I am back in Moncton. This is my last stretch in Canada. In three more weeks, I'll be preparing for the great move back South with Linda. I officially accepted Cornell's offer and already have an apartment in downtown Ithaca. I cannot wait to start the next chapter.

Traveling here and being here is increasingly difficult. There is so much I want to do and see, but not here anymore. I am justing waiting it out. I've even received the rest of my grant money, as if even Canada wants to push me out: you've been a vile and regressive hermit, Christopher, and it's time you go soil your own country. This is welcome. I want to be back in the world, which here, I fear, I am not. Certainly, people have been nice and some are even friends to me, but I am sure that even they can see how being tied here cuts into my wrists and ankles.

In anycase, I hardly have anything to say with this post. I just know that if I am going to keep a blog, I better not wait until I have something clever or important to say.

Shoeless on Claiborne

2008-03-23T00:59:00.003-03:00

Among other things, last night, I picked up a hitch-hiker at three in the morning. Before you get hysterical, let me explain.

I was leaving the apartment to pick Linda up from the casino. There was almost no one out: the night of Good Friday, the early morning darkness finally winning over the ambient city-light. At the bus station at the corner of Broadway and Claiborne, there was a ghostly figure. She had no shoes on. She wore a cocktail dress. Her eyes were coal smudges onto her face. There was no indication, other than her standing and breathing, as to whether or not she was alive.

Naturally, I looked away. Living in cities, you find this action easy, if a little embarrassing.

Out of my peripheral vision, I saw her arm jut out, thumb up. I was the only car on the road, but pretended she was not signaling for me. The light was red and I stayed there transfixed for an eternity. She looked at the dearth of oncoming traffic and crossed over to my little car in the middle lane.

Normally, I'd have waved her off. But she was frantic and young. I rolled down my window. "Can you please take me home?" I noticed the pallor and death stain from before was her mascara smudged about her face. "I'm a law student." "Please." I waited until I saw both her hands holding nothing. "Please."

I opened the door. I said, "My fiancée's going to kill me."

Turns out, she was more afraid than I was, though less of a coward. She cried and tried to make small talk. As far as I could tell, her story was true: her boyfriend left her on her 28th birthday, somehow stranding her on the side of Claiborne. When I dropped her off at the Garden District mansion she lived in, she was incredulous that she had no shoes.

--

Afterwards, I was exhilarated as I told Linda. But what I was thinking the whole time is this: why don't we stop for anyone? Often I see accidents or people with car trouble, and the most I do is feel guilty. Same goes for chairs in the middle of the road, abandoned animals, and certainly hitchhikers. Something's changed here. Maybe it's New Orleans, maybe it's America. But you don't stop anymore.

I think to myself, what if I hadn't stopped this time? But worse, what about all the times I haven't stopped?

In terms of culture, New Orleans bills itself as the big easy, right? A place where people can get along and help one another. Cajuns think this of themselves too. So does about any culture I can think of. But the truth of the matter is that something's gone awry. Nothing is safe. Except maybe the lone hitchhiker, a 28-year-old blonde in a cocktail dress sans shoes.

Final cantica: the lyric essay

2008-03-20T14:54:00.004-03:00

So I think I am going to try to finish Evangeline in lyrical essays instead of poems. This way, it puts pressure off of living up to some of the dramatic lines that so tore me apart in the first two cycles, allows me to incorporate more factual and cultural information, and gives me a new form to practice.

Part of this reason is me shying away from the confessional in my work, but still incorporating personal stories and images that I directly witnessed. The first part of the manuscript is largely lyric cantos directed at a lover, whether that lover be place or person, with the knowledge of exile still delayed. The second part is more of a travelogue in verse, attempting to destroy the sense of rootedness established in the first. Both use images and bits of language culled from my life and imagination and remain more or less stylized accounts of sex and nostalgia as applicable to geography.

But this last section has to be something different. My emotional connection to Acadie is largely artificial. I've lived there since August, suffered the inwardness of poetry and of regression. Now I am travelling, in transit, once more. Acadie is not my home. It is my foil but also it is a type of redemption for me--an extended long, dark night of the soul. I think it has outgrown my line breaks and imagined encounters, and especially, outgrown my memory.

Next Wednesday, I will be in Ann Arbor for U of Mich's admitted MFA student's "weekend." That Saturday I will be back in Moncton for the final four-week hitch, which will culminate in several readings during the Northrop Frye Festival. Then I will be through with my obligation to Acadie.

The Real Meaning of Poetry, with temperature and supreme fictions

2008-03-14T17:54:00.003-03:00

So in New Orleans, the temperature is very high. I would say hot, being that Sunday when I left Moncton it was snow-storming. Not an awful snow storm however. Spring is here.

Two days ago, I was in Dartmouth, Massachussetts giving lecture/readings on my poetics and Cajun poetics and Southern poetics--which provided an interesting/bizarre experience for me and my audience, who were, as you may have guessed, barely a few years younger than me.

The first class I spoke in was a Southern Literature course, where I discussed some of the main issues of the American South in poetry, i.e. sense of loss, bewilderment with contemporary society but a longing toward it, sublimity in nature qua token of a past long gone. Then I read my section of Evangeline about leaving the South. I talked about how Komunyakaa and Ammons left the South. I talked about how postmodern poetics require that the poet be at once the ambassador of a specific cultural element but must remain elliptical in his relationship to said culture. Etc. Etc. In any case, the students were impressed when I referred to the Acadian diaspora as le grand dérangement and my characterization of Pigeon Forge in Tennessee. Which could be, as one student described, "wicked hot!"

The second class was Culture and Language, to which I addressed the obvious Cajun elephant in the room. Everything was quiet, etc, until I read the entirety of my Rougarou sequence, which as you may know, is a murder mystery/epic poem told mostly from the perspective of a young gay male prostitute. The class was hushed and engaged. They even debated among themselves the ambiguous outcome of the end and their favorite voice (between the working boy narrator and the extratemporal Rougarou). Students came up to me afterward to compliment me for giving them something entertaining and touching. Students who maybe never read poetry were enthralled by a poem with admittedly hard-sell qualities (controversial characters, huge length, etc). And while the offers from U Mich and Cornell are flattering, validating, and chanceux (and the "apologies from other schools disappointing), this is really what poetry is about. Touching. Moving. Thrilling. And for this reason, I am proud to be part of a literary tradition.

The final class was more informal with me discussing the creation of a Supreme Fiction from the shards of modernism, ruin value, and Cajun culture and history. The course title was Advanced Writing and Thinking. I read from both completed sections of Evangeline and essentially answered questions about craft and poetics.

Now I am living the high life in New Orleans--visiting and wedding planning and eating. A welcome change, believe me, after being in total transit for almost 100 hours in the last two weeks.

The Borders are Illusory

2008-03-10T01:51:00.002-03:00

Presently, I am in the Charles Hotel of downtown Bangor Maine, which is affordable and has free Internet. I was told by the receptionist that famous novelist Stephen King lives just around the block (it's a little farther than all that!). I briefly contemplated going to Mr. King's mansion and asking if he would come to dinner with me, which I decided against. According to the receptionist, whom I am beginning to suspect is the owner: "We here in Bangor protect his privacy." I decided that I would not voyage into Bangor for a picture of his stylized gate, although if I weren't alone, I probably would have.

In the nearest and most open of the three Irish pubs in walking distance, I ate a burger and a hoppy beer while reading a study of how Cajuns (and all other ethnicities) appropriate the views of outsiders as their own, creating a social fiction of their qualities. Such as "Cajuns like to dance." Which is patently false. I know many Cajuns who hate to dance. And many who hate Cajun music. But they are no less Cajun than I am.

In terms of this, what can one's culture even be, if not the stereotypes one becomes proud of? I asked my waitress about the drink that I read in Esquire is responsible for 90 percent of Bangor's crime (Incidentally, I opted not to eat at the bar the writer of that article went to, which is the other pub, which although open, seemed too neighborhood and was sort of physically underground). She wasn't sure until I showed her the article, which described the drink as a "poor man's Kahlua." She said, "Oh that must be {insert brand name of liquor here}, that's very Maine."

Is it? Is it very Cajun that I have a wry sense of human that is often inappropriate? Or that I do, in fact, love to dance? My brother wants to move to Germany. I know countless kids from my hometown who want to draw comics about cars, play pop songs on guitar, get laid, get a career, begin a family. I do know one or two who champion French as a culture saving machina. But are they more Cajun than the others?

The article is interesting in its postmodernity. Because if cultures disappear, if we settle for the fact that we compile our cultures from the tatters and ends of observations that outsiders use to generalize our ethnic groups, what do we have? The fact that people are inherently alike, that Italians aren't even that different from Blacks and that Acadians are have more in common with les maudits anglais than not.

I for one do not want to eradicate culture for this or any other reason--though I feel it important to recognize that cultural boundaries can fall away like any oversized, second hand pair of pants. And besides, differences are in place--though these generally have to do with mores and ideological attitudes, rather than artistic or industrial inclinations (or disinclinations). Recognizing the limitations of culture can free us from all sorts of bonds--the insecurity of fulfilling or rejecting certain cultural stereotypes, the pull of xenophobia which is often more pronounced within insular, ethnic enclaves, and most importantly, the impass which makes us view other humans not at singular entities but the sum total of our expectations.

Ithaca and Moncton to leave again

2008-03-08T00:36:00.003-04:00

I just returned to Moncton from my trip to "gorges" Ithaca. Cornell has a beautiful campus which may fulfill all of my Ivy League dreams. There is a dairy bar (Cornell has an agriculture school!), waterfalls I can swim in during the summer, and the certification of being part of a tradition that includes Vladimir Nabokov, Thomas Pynchon, A.R. Ammons, Robert Morgan, and Toni Morrison. The workshop is stimulating and constructive and has a window that is 150 years old looking out into the Arts Quad. The one poet I met, Ken McClane, is fascinating and hilarious, while being one of the quickest and sharpest wits I've seen.

I also was accepted to University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, which as you may know, is another top school for creative writing. They offer a similar, though slightly smaller, financial package. The program is larger and also has a world-class faculty. Anne Carson teaches there, though not in English. Lucky for me I've studied Greek and Sanskrit! I visit their campus at the end of the month.

After this process is over I am no doubt going to suffer guilt over the decision. I've been rejected so far by Syracuse and Iowa.

In other news, Nine Inch Nails released an album online called Ghosts which is frankly and utterly amazing. It is totally instrumental and the non-corporate release is absolutely subversive.

I am in Moncton until Sunday, when I leave for Massachusetts and Little Compton. I should not have come back just for two days because I have no real reason to be here and it makes the travel longer. Oh well. I will see Linda thank God on Thursday. We will be do some heavy wedding planning then.

I know this is more record keeping than anything, but I am going to slowly transition this blog into something more open than just observations and exegeses on Acadian culture so that I can have a continuous blog into grad school.

the imagistic and sentimental lives of humans

2008-03-01T22:28:00.002-04:00

To be taken seriously is a difficult thing--people see you as fat, skinny, with curly hair, with thin hair so that your scalp comes through, with an accent from "deep" in the South as if your very language was something vaginal, meaning to be hidden, behind layers of undergarments that you invariably clothe yourself when speaking to outsiders. You are a person whose aspirations, fears, humiliations, nostalgias, sentimental attachment to objects, scraps of paper, ticket stubs, old pictures with captions scribbled in blue ink on the back, and other bits of emotional marginalia are voided, unwarranted, moot, and perhaps meant to be ridiculed by others, especially the Other.

This of course has significance relating to ethnic literature. I choose not to use a messy orthography to capture the phonetic behavior of Cajun speech. I choose not to write about the nature of the French language in Louisiana. I choose not to marginalize myself any more than I do by breathing.

But beyond this, to be taken seriously is what all humans want from a relationship, any relationship. You don't want to be the fool, but more you want your feelings justified. The problem is that others are not willing to justify them for you--unless it means justifying their own private lives.

I recently had lunch with the major living poet of the Acadian canon, Herménégilde Chiasson. Generous in conversation and approachable, he suffered through my French for several hours as we discussed many things--poetics, aesthetics, art history, socio-cultural linguistics, Acadian and Cajun identity, etc. But the best part of meeting with him was the undeniable feeling I got that he was a human and that he recognized and catered to others as such.

This confirmed my suspicion from reading his most recent collection, Béatitudes, which following a rough formula of the beatitudes of Jesus, makes a litany of "those who.." (ceux qui...) and sometimes follows the result and sometimes doesn't, which is always into beatification. Although this beatification is not necessarily the one of spiritual salvation (although it can be read that way), and in a few occasions the text uses a critical tone against organized faith and traditional concepts of heaven. The salvation that can be culled is the salvation of being human, of knowing that everyone has little fears, anxieties, hopes, joys, and ritual actions that seem meaningless, trite, etc to others but define the borders of life. I wish I had the work in front of me, but I jetted it off to Linda as soon as I finished it.

This is the success of contemporary phenomena like Post Secret, reality television, and blogs. People want to see the glimmers of the human they can relate to, hold sacred, feel connected. This is too the success of literature, of music, of art, of poetry. To take humans seriously.

Insécurité Linguistique

2008-02-15T17:03:00.000-04:00

Today I watched a film called Éloge du chiac, which was basically a documentary featuring an argument between fourteen year olds (in 1969) over linguistic primacy in Moncton. I've mentioned chiac before, comme c'est un right weird way de parler si vous autres l'avez pas entendu. In Cajun English, there is, of course, a similar phenomenon: the mixture of English syntax with Cajun locutions, such as "Mais, I went to the bar me, and I got casséd." It is a less extreme version of some of the more pronounced forms of chiac here, yet like chiac, it is a source of both cultural pride and insecurity.

This ambivalence toward one's dialect creates a fierce communal situation which is one of the links between the Acadian and Cajun cultures. The people within both cultures strongly identify with their heritage-or at least make a strong showing for it. Many critics have descried the fact that Cajuns have more or less lost their French as evidence that they are assimilating into mainstream American culture. This is a harsh and ignorant stance.

Cultures evolve, and one cannot fault another for learning the language of the land in order to feed his or her family. But nevertheless, the Acadians qui parle chiac can teach the Cajuns something about dynamism.

For instance, the primary pro-chiac girl in the video, a Melançon, said, "Si je rencontre un français, je vais sortir mon bon français., pis chez nous autres, on parle du chiac. Pis s'il y a des anglophones, je peux parler tout en anglais. Ça montre qu'on est pas mal smart." (If I meet a francophone, I pull out my good French, and at home, we speak chiac. And if there are anglophones, I can speak completely in English. It shows us to be pretty smart.)

There is a code-switching that demonstrates that the culture is ready to play ball, but will not forget the intensity of the heritage experience, the secret language of the initiated.

This is interesting when it comes to regional poetry as well, because here à Moncton, many writers write in chiac or variations of Acadian French. Yet I have my own linguistic insecurity. I don't alter my orthography to math the phonetics of Cajun English. My syntax, yes. Do I throw in French words, occasionally. But whereas poets from Guy Arsenault to Georgette LeBlanc feel comfortable writing "ej" for "je" and "rinque" or "yinque" for "rien que," I will not write "dis" for "this." In English, this looks comical, sort of ridiculous, and nearly impossible for someone to take seriously on a poetic level. In Alma by Georgette LeBlanc, I see nothing of the over-quaintness of orthographically modified regional slang. But apparently, les québécois might, and almost certainly les français.

I still feel a need to both embody and rupture my culture, my psyche, my poetics in this. For right now, I need other anglophones to take me seriously, and so I

Valentines and Cultural Success

2008-02-14T21:33:00.000-04:00

This afternoon I witnessed an extraordinary event: the release of a book by David Adams Richards at the gallérie d'art à l'université de Moncton. Besides the author in question, the matriarch of Acadian letters, Antonine Maillet, was there and said kind things about him. She called for the amicable coexistence of the two literary traditions in New Brunswick, one English and the other French, noting that she herself needed the work of someone like David Adams Richards.

Mr. Richards, what one would describe as a poetic realist, gave an interesting account of humanity, of not placing oneself apart from it, and to not become lost in a world of books so much so that you ignore the humanity of others. This, I feel, is indeed a very important point. And the magnanimity of Tante Tonine was astounding, especially for someone so learned and so iconic. May I note here that Richards lives now in Toronto (not in his hometown of Miramichi) and Tonine lives in Montreal (if I am not mistaken).

This brings me to my real point--the role of the writer who leaves and further, the role of the writer in his community after he meets with success.

I personally have left Louisiana in many ways. I don't plan on living there for at least the next four years, and who's to say from there. I'd like to think I'll move back to be close to my families and culture, but for right now, I am content to be away. Furthermore, I will not attempt to fashion my oeuvre as a closed, ethnic work. But does this mean I've betrayed my culture?

I'd hope not, but I am doubtful. I already see the phenomenon of people undercutting the success of their own here in Moncton. It almost seems as if people would rather the artist to never rise to more success than a single community can give. For instance, the musician Zachary Richard is derided a bit (not necessarily vehemently) in Louisiana whereas Acadians here love him. Although people may say it is his arrogance (which I cannot comment on having never met him), I believe that it is more his attitude of I am an artist who will not be bound by even my own culture. I personally think his renditions of the Cajun standards, while not reflective of the folklorist version of our heritage we sell to tourists, are very interesting, as is his ability to produce new music.

There are many parallels here in Moncton: those who have reached fame and validation outside of Acadie who are now considered vendu (a sell-out). This I feel is awful. The success of artists outside of a close-knit community is the sign that the culture is making a lasting hold in the artistic tradition of the world--meaning that it will avoid what all art wants to avoid: being forgotten.

By the way, Happy Valentine's Day!

The weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful

2008-02-12T13:22:00.000-04:00

It's time to boast a little. I've had possibly the best poetry two weeks I can imagine:

I gave my reading at the Attic Owl, which was a success. Everyone was very receptive and entertained, I think, even though I may have read a little too long. Even two professors from the university came and enjoyed themselves.

I met Linda in New York, where we went to the AWP bookfair and met with friends. I got a lot of good information from journals and got to see some Bucknellians after too long a delay. Most importantly, I got to see Linda.

I finished the second cantica of Evangeline.

While in New York, I received an email from the co-director of the Northrop Frye festival, which is the biggest literary event in Atlantic Canada. He invited me to do two readings and a school visit, for which I will be paid.

I received another email there from The Louisiana Review, who will be publishing two poems of mine ("Feu-Follet" and "Searching for the Grave of Walt Whitman") this spring.

Linda and I returned to Moncton where I received a message from Ken McClane. I was cooking a Cajun feast and could not answer the phone. Mr. McClane is on the creative writing faculty at Cornell University and called to notify me that I was accepted as 1 of 4 poets in the MFA program with full funding (tuition and stipend) and a two year lectureship after I graduate. Cornell is the most selective school in the country and consistently ranks at the top of the list for every criterion. There is almost no way that Linda and I won't be moving to Ithaca right after the wedding.

This will make this semester travel more quickly Thank God. I will visit Ithaca in three weeks. Then I will see Linda in New Orleans right before Holy Week. After Easter, I'll have less than a month in Canada. This leaves me with little time to finish the rest of Evangeline, but that's fine. I probably need a little more distance from Moncton to really write about it, as I did with New Orleans, Chauvin, and America.

Nothing's Going to Change My World

2008-01-19T01:09:00.000-04:00

It's been over one week since I've been in New Orleans. Today, for instance, I trekked over a mile across snow in my jungle combat boots to the university. I now live Downtown, with a new address, which I'll happily give to anyone willing to pay postage for communication.

Mostly what I do is look at my watch, which has two beautiful timezones on it. It keeps me steadfast. I know that no matter what I do here, it will be a form of waiting. Winter, I've heard, is long in the northern lands. You've ruined me, Wallace Stevens.

I am an artist here. Specifically an American artist in Canada. A Cajun artist in Acadie. But what I really am is an imposter. An artist in artifice. I am not a cultural martyr. And although this project is for making a link between these two cultures, their burden will not be my yoke.

I am saying this as I come to a close on my second sequence within Evangeline, which is the great journey North. I have three or four poems left to it, maybe eight or nine pages, depending on my stamina. Again, Stevens, o picture of the poet as a virile youth. You might as well hang me for redundancy.

In any case, I have a reading in Moncton on the 24th. A week later, I will be in New York, preparing for Lent.

You say you want a revolution?

2008-01-05T15:34:00.001-04:00

The last I posted, if I recall, was about a hurricane, a storm, barrelling through Moncton, barrelling through my life, my work. And now, I am writing this on borrowed time in New Orleans. Don't worry: I will be back on my tour of duty later this week. It is probably forty to sixty degrees colder in Moncton right now than it is here. I would bet.

I honestly don't know what to say since I've last written. The last few months have given new meaning to the idea ruin value, at least for me. The idea of beautiful dissembling, the shards of a former reality shown to be nothing but dissimulations, just gaudy façades of a former, more idealistic era. I, of course, finished the first third of Evangeline. Now I write about the great exile North, a voluntary sequestering, a minor conquest, a minor treasure. I will begin the deconstruction of Acadie soon.

As far as travel goes, maybe I've lost myself in it. The idea of home doesn't quite exist the same way in French as it does in English. There is no direct translation with the nuance and aplomb of home. With the variegated images, the smell of vanilla, the warmth of flesh on flesh. Right now, it's as if I want to echo Duras's screenplay: ELLE: J'ai tout vu à Hiroshima. LUI: Non, tu n'as rien vu. I don't know anything.

Perhaps this is what le Grand Dérangement means afterall: the loss of knowledge, the annihilation of all the former myths you told about yourself, the endless and endless waiting for the next thing to define you, give you shelter, give you repose, devastate you. This will be the title for my second sequence in Evangeline, the part about driving to Canada: Le Grand Dérangement, the great upheaval, the great moving, the diaspora, the exile. You see, the difference in my telling is that the threat of exile is never from without, but from the self, the oblivion of the love relationship, and the comfort in thinking you know what the right thing to do is. The threat is volition.

If this is not indication enough, let me be clear: I am back in action.

Hurricane in Canada

2007-11-07T01:38:00.000-04:00

You may never believe it, but this last weekend, a hurricane--or at least a tropical storm--passed over my apartment in Moncton. It was very cold. The wind howled all night. Even when the sun was out did the wind howl.
Now, it is still windy. It rained a bit today. I am unsure if it will ever be sunny again.

In other news, this is difficult. I've finished my first cantica of Evangeline. 33 poems. I am more or less alone all the time. I've met the literary community here. Something is strong missing. My parents will be here in 8 days. Linda in 12. My time.

Evangeline, virgin and martyr

2007-11-01T15:14:00.000-03:00

There is an Acadian essay that begins with the sentence, Evangéline porte mal la mini-jupe (Evangeline wears a miniskirt poorly). She is the essence of holiness, you see, sanctified, what one would want the Acadians to be. The chosen people. Evangeline's white face is untouchable in the same way a magnolia bud is untouchable. You wouldn't want it to darken, be stained with the grime on your hands, the very filth of your skin-oil.

In Longfellow's poem, he shows the Acadians to be martyrs. All you Greek scholars will know that μαρτυρ or μαρτυρος does not mean to be persecuted, but to give witness. I wonder what the Acadians give witness to? What does Evangeline give witness to? Note this passage in the French translation:

Parfois elle venait, se croyant sans témoin,
Faible et lasse, s'asseoir au fond d'un cimitière.

(Sometimes she came, considering herself without witness,
weak and weary, to sit on the graveyard floor. [my translation])

This sentiment is not exactly the same in the original, which is:

Sometimes in the churchyards strayed, and gazed on the crosses and tombstones.

This admittedly is not Longfellow's finest verse. The difference is striking because the French version, which essentially brought about the renaissance acadienne in the 19th century, portrays Evangeline in despair. She is in despair because she looks only toward the past.

But it makes fine poetry, doesn't it, looking toward the past? This is the nostalgia of art, the regression I spoke of, passéisme. What else can we do in art?

I propose to force Evangeline into a miniskirt. I don't hide the fact that my poems are not about making anyone chaste. Maybe decadence is the only way to treat art. The realists sullied the delicious curves of Ingres. The impressionists distorted even these raw images. The modernists fragmented what was impressionistic. We've reached a point where it seems all art has been made or written. This is not true.

There will always be depravity and sentimentality. This is my currency. Art and literature has become too safe once again, obsessed with its own irony, its own cleverness. I deal only in the marginalia of relationships, torn papers kept to remember that lovers were once together, sexual awakening, liminality, the presence of the divine not trapped but freed in the confines of dirt and flesh. And so this is my Evangeline--a symbol of dolorous and ecstatic and shameful love, the passéisme of love. That is my μαρτυρια, my witness.

Art as Everydayness

2007-10-19T17:49:00.001-03:00

I know I haven't posted in awhile, but I trust you understand the way time gets away from a person writing fulltime. The last two weeks have been extremely prolific. I have written poems and have almost reached the forty page mark on my novel. Linda has come and gone, bringing with her a respite and passion that is refreshing and sorely missed now that I am here alone with my creation and hermitude.

Acadian culture still swirls about me. My traveling poem sequence will now follow a reverse of Evangeline, whereas the narrator ends not in the Acadie Tropical of Louisiana, but in the Acadian homeland, more alone than ever with history contrasting with his newfound solitude. Then I will tackle the contes populaire.

I have seen a production of Don Juan, staged by Atlantic Ballet Company, with Linda and Frank, le Garçon Boucher, an adaptation of Francis McCabe's The Butcher Boy. Here, there is modern theatre with all its hysterics, surreality, and comedy. It is new art, being produced regularly by locals.

I will have something more theoretical to state later. I've been in such a rush to write everything down that there is little left for exegesis.

The Beginning of Autumn

2007-10-06T17:47:00.000-03:00

After my last post, all I've done is write. I go to ethnology classes. I go to events, if I can. I pick Brady up from work. I watch French television and movies dubbed in French. I live a life I'd wanted to live.

Now I mostly live a life on page. There isn't much to say, really. Ernest Hemingway said a writer should never speak too much, he should save it for the paper. Well, I am writing here, but I am also apologizing, explaining, bringing on the bright lights upon a private shameful act: that of creation. It is not nearly as interesting as you might think.

I've written more poems. I've even started a novel--I've fallen in love with the characters. I write with a dip pen: I like the scratching it makes on the page. I like the way the air changes in autumn--I am in my prime. The trees are like fireworks. Life never ceases to surprise me.

As far as place, I am in the right one. I spoke at length with the directeur d'études françaises yesterday. He showed me different outlets for my poems and translations of my poems. We discussed our uncanny cultures. He will be attending a colloquium about the Cajun/Acadian diaspora in Austria. I didn't realize the Austrians were so concerned with American Francophone culture.

This post is more record keeping than anything. Just a friendly reminder that I am still in the game. Scroll down for something meaningful.

Regression as Poetics

2007-09-28T18:33:00.000-03:00

Regression is the passéisme of the individual. Active nostalgia--maybe a kinder way of saying regression--is what fuels poetry. The corpus of any poem is littered by observations, memories, synesthesias, bits of conversation or language that have stuck. In the workshop, we would call these things images. Poetic creativity has nothing to do with creation, the spontaneous generation of language, but is really re-creation. It is the past, dressed up to be made presentable, enjoyable, cathartic, ruinous.

Perhaps this is a new phenomenon, with an origin in confessional poetry. The poet of today is obsessed with herself, even if this is not apparent from her work. Those images have to come from somewhere. We are no longer content, as readers, to deal with grand symbols, the metaphors of society, or historical tropes. This bores us. We want something shocking, moving, obliterating. At least we want cleverness.

This creates a bit of a problem for me in Moncton. I've written tons since I've been here, but nothing that takes into account the Acadian diaspora. All I've written about is homeland. Furthermore, I am obsessed with my own regression. I love reliving all of my emotional extremes, being hurt and elated all over again. I glorify the excreta of memories. This is my own sentimental scatology.

My project so far swirls around the schema of place. I've written poems with a day number and a place name, such as "Day One: Chauvin." I've covered a lot of ground. The aim is to finish in Moncton, or perhaps Port Royal, the former city (it is no longer as such) of my ancestors. In these poems, I am addressing the cities as lovers, and in doing so personify them, metamorph them into the bruised memories of lovers I've had in those places. Being with a poet is indeed a bad thing, because your life is now on display. Or at least the small details of your life: your movie ticket stubs, your birthday gifts, your manner of speaking, your flaws and infallibilities.

With the exception of one poem called Chicago, I haven't left Southern Louisiana. As my regression takes a firmer and more fatal hold, I may never.

Passéisme

2007-09-24T11:11:00.000-03:00

There is something in cultures that invariably turn them into Passéisme. This word, I've encountered in a manifesto by contemporary Acadian artists, is used to attack the obsession of a culture with its own past. In Acadian letters and art, it is evident by the constant referral to three events: the idyllic origins of Acadie, the deportation, and the renaissance of Acadian heritage in the late 19th century with the founding of Collège Saint-Joseph.

This phenomenon does not limit itself to my small community and her culture. Take for example the culture of New Orleans, which obsesses over the idea of a decadent, bohemian port city that thrived until about the end of World War II. The truth in New Orleans today has been unveiled and laid naked under horrifying light by Hurricane Katrina. The city has a 70 percent poverty rate, structural incompetence, and ghastly crime, yet people still talk about this magical and fictional version of the city. Perhaps this is a good thing--afterall, it keeps the morale up. But it can only be truly useful if it urges the people of New Orleans to rebuild her city and change their attitudes about justice, social sustainability, and everyday life. Although I am skeptical, because I see the simulacrum of New Orleans competing with any valuable progress.

Likewise, in Acadian (and by proxy Cajun) community, a lot of the cultural energy is spent on tableaux of the past. I will recount my first encounter with this, when I traveled to Bouctouche for the exhibit, Le Pays de la Sangouine.

Sangouine was a character in the work of Antoinine Maillet, the mother of modern Acadian literature and theatre. In the park, one can listen to monologues by people who are dressed as Maillet's characters and who perform them in little buildings decorated for the period, which I guess is either right before or right after the deportation.

The land there is truly beautiful and most of the spectacles occur on a little island accessible by a foot bridge (although there is a golf cart that drives people back and forth, driven by a Lirette whom I had not the pleasure of meeting). When I went there, it was a clear, windy day.

When I arrived on the island, I went directly to where I could hear music, coming from a bar. The band was energetic and talented. They sang songs in French, even some from Louisiana. Afterwards I wandered. I met a guy, a Girouard, who was the inhabitant of the lighthouse. In the light house there was a statue of a monk with a mirror suspended over his head. The head was cocked all the way back so as the monk could view his face. The statue was at one point the masthead of a boat.

This Girouard and I talked about a few things--the presence of Lirettes in New Brunswick, the plight of the Acadians and Cajuns, his trip to Lafayette. He said that after driving 2300 miles to Louisiana, "it was like coming home." He also discussed black culture with me, a conversation I tried to avoid. He told me the Cajuns, "That's blacker than nigger." This is an example of ethnocentric passéisme. Apparently, he is also a clairvoyant.

I went back to the music.

Identity and Hockey

2007-09-18T23:11:00.000-03:00

What does it mean to be an American? A Canadian? I just returned from an orientation in Ottawa, the capital of Canada. This, of course, was the main question. I am, afterall, on a "cultural exchange" in this fine country.

For starters, there are the stereotypes: Americans are straightforward, Canadians deferential. Americans start a speech with a story or joke, Canadians with an apology. Americans are fool-hardy and individualistic. Canadians are rational and cosmopolitan and consider community something important.

The stereotypes tell little more than what the country as a whole is perceived as, combined with its own self-perception. It doesn't, for instance, elucidate what one of either country does on long lonely evenings. It doesn't name passions and hopes. It doesn't delve into the sexual politics within relationships or otherwise. In essence, the stereotypes are sort of useless in determining identity.

As far as policy, the countries have defined themselves by their differing political acts. Yet not every American carries a gun and wants to impose her ideology upon all others. Not all Canadians are safely smoking hash with their same-sex partners.

I personally think hockey is a much more elegant and violent sport than American football. But I also believe that ambition is to be valued as a cardinal virtue. I've spent time with other Fulbrighters and with Killam fellows from both countries and can attest to the multiplicity of personalities. But maybe we are in a society we've created, the between-national scholar vagabonds, the thrivers of another's culture. We've come to this point because we have become obsessed with the other. Scientists, fashionistas, academes, actors, and poets. Some of us are more glamorous than others. But you wouldn't guess that the glamorous girl was from North of the border. That the Long Island boy was a shy Canada studies major. That the 40 year old American undergrad was the most cosmopolitan and subdued. That one law professor drew during lectures and another was an Irish aviation enthusiast. That the heroic professor who would spend his retirement philosophizing on organization and business was not only not American born, but British. That the francophone was a triple minor (none of them french) and was A+ at hockey. That the professor running the Fulbright show was a former hockey champ. That the American poet was the one who scored the winning shot.

This is all to say that I really feel bonded to the people I met this weekend (not just the ones alluded to), that we have at least some society among us. This brings me farther away from the question of what it means to be Canadian or American, but brings me closer to what it means to be a human. Which may be the point of cultural exchange afterall.

In other contemporary news, Brady has arrived.

Hub City

2007-09-11T22:16:00.000-03:00

A little about where I now live--Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada.

This city is the epicenter of today's Acadian heritage. This may come as a surprise to you who think immediately of Nova Scotia as the heartland. Historically, Port Royal was the capital of Acadia before the deportation. That fort is where at least the Chaillou branch of my family lived and died. After its seizure and transformation into Annapolis Royal and the foundation of Halifax, the Acadians were no longer in Nova Scotia, the anglo title for Acadie.

When Acadians returned, they settled in what is today New Brunswick. After a "renaissance" in the late 19th century and the foundation of Collège Saint Joseph (today's Université de Moncton), Moncton became the hub for the patrimony.

This being said, the city of Moncton is like a bilingual Houma, although with a lot more energy. The downtown area is vibrant with restaurants, entertainment, interesting architecture, etc. The rest of the city is variously consumerist, collegiate, and high tech. These facts are nothing particularly interesting--the real asset of this city is her people and their interactions.

The first restaurant Linda and I ate at in Canada was a Mediterranean restaurant called Graffiti on Main Street. The hostess told us "Assiez-vous n'importe où." From then on, we were addressed variously in English and in French. At the table next to us, a party of eight typified the linguistic schizophrenia, as each person ordered in her language of choice.

Of course, at the university, everything is in French. Although at the library, I did overhear a conversation between two students: "Tu vas aller au concert ce vendredi?" "Ouais, ça va êt' right la fun!" This is a dialect calle Chiac, which does to French what the Cajuns do to English.

The Acadians remain a vibrant, enduring minority in Moncton--a far cry from the assimilated Cajuns of Houma. The Acadian flag is ever-present, French is partout. There are artists, poets, novelists, essayists, academics, and politicians all fighting to preserve an identity so ingrained in a people, that it doesn't matter whether they physically remember the deportation 250 years ago. These people have ammunition against assimilation.

In a way, it is because they are surrounded by anglo-mania. Signs, government, and the US aside, the Acadians are a minority in Acadia. But they've persisted and show no signs of dying out, of losing their language, their literary tradition, their music, or their faith.

Best of all, the last names of all the luminous figures in Moncton have the last names LeBlanc, Chiasson, Boudreau, Arsenault, Theriault, and Forêt.

The Mountain to the Border

2007-09-09T23:41:00.001-03:00

The rest of the trip was spent in the car and with friends. We visited a poet and a novelist in Lancaster, PA, a town more sinister than it seems. My friend, KF, gave me a book of Herbert Zbigniew. He wrote poems that address history coming out of World War II. He was obsessed with human dignity. We ate hoagies in Philadelphia, a better city than it seems.

In New England, we visited a friend who is a musician, professor, and novelist. We visited a rocky beach, our first. Linda recorded some vocal tracks.

Crossing the border was a hassle. The customs officer decided that my sea turtle boots were potentially illegal and a threat to the national security of Canada. She and a much more imposing and malicious woman searched through all of my belongings. Eventually, they concluded that there is a statute that allows me to bring in sea turtle boots if they are, in fact, clothes or personal items.

This post is not meant to illumine, but for record keeping. I won't go in too deeply as to this part of the journey, because it is nothing but private conversations between friends. You understand.

We made it to my apartment in Moncton after midnight, moved everything in, and exhausted, collapsed until morning.

First Night on the Road

2007-09-08T16:47:00.000-03:00

Before I can even begin the story of here, I must relate the voyage--if at least to give reference.

Linda and I left mid August with my worldly possessions (and Brady's) stuffed in the back of a more or less reliable Ford Explorer. Although gratuitous gas consumption is not kind on either my morals or checkbook, it made more sense than facing the journey North in a 1970 MG Midget, which was the only other available option. We packed bologna sandwiches, plums, nectarines, peaches, chips, salsa, Coca-Cola, and lime-flavored LaCroix. We brought books on tape. We brought one another.

Driving is essentially an uneventful activity, at least if all goes well. We made excellent time and gas mileage, arriving near our destination at Crosby campground in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. Right on the precipice of the park exists one of the most bizarre pair of "cities" in all of America: Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

Jean Baudrillard, recently deceased French theoretician, devoted much of his career to explain what he called "hyper-reality"--evidently a reality above reality, fantasy qua reality. This hyper-reality is especially well illustrated in Baudrillard's schema of the procession of the simulacra, wherein in a sign mirrors basic reality, begins to distort it but nevertheless remains faithful to the original, departs heavily from reality, and finally exists instead of reality (the basic reality no longer exists). Baudrillard could have written this work on a single visit to Pigeon Forge.

The sign reads, "Welcome! Pigeon Forge: Family Vacation Hub." Even today the population is no more than 5000. The main drag there is completely zoned for tourism. This all began in the 60s after years of being little more than a settlement on the outskirts of Gatlinburg. The first attraction, Rebel Railroad, brought tourists on a confederate train under attack by the Union army. Pigeon Forge with its limited resources, both in population and in economy, hardly played in the American Civil War, although a few residents did enlist on the Union side of the skirmish.

When Linda and I passed through, it was all we could bear not to jam into the stand still Friday night traffic on US-441 as we named the litany of attractions with uncontained awe. A theater dedicated to one evangelical musical called The Miracle Theater. Countless "Old West" shows, saloons, and theme restaurants. Sky diving. Dinosaur Walk Museum. The Pigeon Forge Gem Mine. A strange upside down building--stately columns included--called WonderWorks. Fiddler's Feast Tennessee Shindig, which according to the website, seats 900 for its nightly supper shows. Black Bear Jamboree. And the diamond in the diadem, Dollywood.

We barely noticed when all of a sudden the lights were out and we were surrounded by dense mountain trees on a road that took more and more daring turns up the mountain. We were in the midst of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Alarmed, we crept up toward a summit, in the wrong direction. Eventually we backtracked along the road, and figured out the way to Crosby thanks to a "friend of the park." We pitched a tent and so ended our first night on our tour of America.

The Journey Has Already Begun

2007-09-08T01:39:00.000-03:00

In 1936, Albert Speer defined ruin value in architecture. This concept is that one should strive to make buildings that, if they were to collapse, would decay beautifully. Great stone structures, columns, anything carved deeply, etc. The Romans knew this but did not name it, like the Greeks before them.

In North America, our youth has stifled our ambition. We see history as ephemeral (as indeed it is). We are shortsighted. I am under the impression that Jean-Baptiste Colbert, finance minister to the sun king, planted the trees in field in front of Invalides in Paris so that in 200 years, the French would have a fine supply of lumber for their navy.

Cultures are by their very nature mutable. New situations arise which must be dealt with, for instance technology, modernism, consumerism. But what is culture anymore anyway? I am a Cajun, born in Southern Louisiana. But what does that even mean? I did not learn French, the language of the Cajuns, at home. In fact, I speak a Parisian French that I learned at the Sorbonne. What else is there? Food, music, good cheer, talking flat? Is that what makes a culture?

I am writing this as an introduction to what I am doing. I study culture, specifically Cajun culture and its mother Acadian culture and beyond that French culture, and these cultures in opposition to American, e.g. of the United States, culture. My precise job at the moment is to write poems under the auspices of a Fulbright grant while I live in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada's premier bilingual city and epicenter of Acadian arts and culture. Maybe if I figure out what culture means, I will describe it here.