The Real Meaning of Poetry, with temperature and supreme fictions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.