Stephenie Meyer Ate My Baby!

...no, just kidding. I don't even have a baby. But wouldn't that be an unbelievably interesting news piece?

Anyways, now that I have your attention: Claire sent me this awesome article (though I think Olivia sent it to her first?), entitled How Twilight Is Destroying America and Harming Our Nation's Youth. Read it now!

Of course, I don't really think that Twilight is severely harming our children; to be honest, while I think the messages in the book are negative at best, I'm much more concerned about the effect the book's poor writing will have on the writing skills of our teen girls.

But I do have to agree that the book sends some pretty terrible messages.

Take this one, for example: the relationship between Edward and Bella is pretty durn abusive. As Lucy Mangan says:

"It sounds melodramatic and shrill to say that Bella and Edward’s relationship
is abusive, but as the story wears on it becomes increasingly hard to avoid the comparison, as she gradually isolates herself from her friends to protect his secret, and learns to subordinate her every impulse and movement to the necessity of not upsetting Edward and his instincts (”I could quite easily kill you, Bella, by accident”), until by halfway through she is trying to suppress her very pulse (”my blood was racing and I wished I could slow it, sensing that this must make everything so much more difficult”) and planning her movements like a chess game - “I worried that it would provoke the strange anger that flared whenever I slipped and revealed too clearly how obsessed I was.” Whenever she responds physically to his kisses, he immediately draws away and berates her. Supporters will call this the erotics of abstinence. I call it fear and distaste for female sexuality and a poisonous message to be feeding young women."

I'm also upset by the message that Bella herself sends to girls. Bella starts off the first book as a very bright young woman; she reads Jane Austen for fun, she's already read all the books for her English class and done all the labs in her biology class, and she is dismissive of the vacuousness of high school in general. By the end of the series of novels, though, Bella has become her father's personal cook and housekeeper, and has (over her parents' objections) refused to attend college, preferring to marry at 19 and have a baby with her high school boyfriend.

Now, I don't think books cause people to do things. I don't think that allowing any daughter of mine to read Twilight would make her run off with some dashing stranger named Edward, and I don't think it would make her a misogynist in an instant. I think kids are smart, and I think kids are a lot more in touch with reality than grown-ups like to think. In fact, I often think that adults ascribe innocence to children because they themselves wish they were that innocent. I can't tell you how many kids in my elementary school classes pretended to believe in Santa Claus so as not to hurt their parents' feelings.

But I do think that kids need context when they read books that present sexist, racist, or disturbing material, because such material can be really confusing when reflected on later. The problem isn't that kids have access to shocking books— it's that once they read these books, they don't often have anyone to discuss them with, anyone to help them frame the books in the right ways. I don't think the kids who got hurt imitating Jackass or WWE wrestling did so because they watched the shows— I think they did so because they watched the shows and their parents or guardians weren't around to tell them, "Now, remember, that's not something you should be doing on your own, because it's very dangerous and not meant for you to try at home."

I would not expressly recommend Twilight to my daughter, mostly because I feel it's poorly written and fairly boring, but also because I think the things it says about the role of women in society are disturbing. But if my daughter discovered it on her own and wanted to read it, I would never stop her. I would simply request that she come talk to me after she'd read each book, so we could discuss which elements weren't acceptable in real life. "Edward does these things because he's not a human being," I'd say, "But it would never be acceptable for a real boy to camp outside your window and watch you sleep." Or: "Edward and Bella's romance lasted forever in the book, but that's because this is a fairy tale. Real high school romances hardly ever end in marriage and happiness, because you're not completely developed in high school— you change in your twenties a lot. And even people who do marry their high school sweethearts usually wait years to do so, and sometimes date other people in those intervening years." Or: "Real romance is based a lot more on character than on looks. The author of this book doesn't have time to show you how real romance develops, so she has to skip over a lot of stuff and concentrate on the physical attraction. But people who are really in love, like your father and I, are in love with what's inside the other person, not just what's on the outside."

This is kind of like what my mom did when I was younger. I was allowed to read anything I liked— in fact, my mom exchanged some heated words with a librarian who insisted that I should have a kids' card (which wouldn't let me check out any books that weren't in the juvenile section) rather than an adult card. Lemme tell you, she got that adult card for me, and I used it. And I read vociferously, and that's why I was so good in school, and why I'm so good with language today.

But she always made sure to talk to me about the books I was reading, even if it was just at the dinner table or while I was watching TV. She'd tell me about the author, where he or she was coming from, why certain characters did certain things. She helped me subtract from the equation the confusion that comes with entering the adult world. She gave me the context I never could have discovered on my own. And I hope I can do that for my child one day, too.

Twilight: Adding Insult To Literary Injury

As it seems we're all kind of in Twilight-craze mode here at PNN, I thought I'd provide the lighthearted balance to all the lovelorn PNN posters who seemed to enjoy the novel. I'm reposting here my original review of the novel Twilight that I first posted on LiveJournal on August 18— and I don't think I ever posted it here.

Remember, this review is all in good fun (read: I don't want to get hate mail from teen girls), and I certainly don't advocate discouraging young people from reading such tripe. I simply would encourage them to read other, more interesting, pieces of literature.

Also, I'm not saying I dislike or think poorly of anyone who DOES enjoy Twilight— to each his/her own! I know there are people who despise some of my favorite novels (my husband is one of them; any time he reads a book on my recommendation he always regrets it), and I respect their opinions completely.

~*~

Twilight: Run Far, Far Away

The next Harry Potter? No way. Twilight isn't even on the same continent.

Please, please, please don't waste your time on this terribly hackneyed piece of literature (and I use the term "literature" very loosely here). It's an awfully cheap book, with static characters, a predictable plot, and more teen angst than "Degrassi: The Next Generation" and "The O.C." combined. What's worse, the apparent "romance" that has been so heartily admired by teen girls across the country is both nauseatingly sentimental and disturbingly obsessive— so much so that you'll fling the book down in disgust at least ten times before you're finished with this rag.

First off, I found the principle character of Bella Swan— a name that should already hint at the book's romance-novel quality of writing— to be so silly and weak and clumsy and stupid and whiny that it was difficult not to tear the book to shreds whenever she opened her ditsy little mouth. Despite her first-person narration assuring us that she's a clever girl who enjoys books and hates rumors and idle chatter, Bella is never anything but a foolish figure, a klutz whose antics are sympathetic and human for the first few chapters, and then gradually become more and more irritating and outlandish as one reads on.

On the other hand, the character of Edward Cullen, her vampiric lover (and here I apply yet another term liberally, since somehow, Bella and Edward manage to become undyingly devoted to and obsessed with one another without sharing any more physical contact than several brief snuggles and a handful of momentary liplocks), is so absurdly Byronic as to approach caricature. Physically perfect, constantly noble, and unendingly tortured, Edward as a character causes an unsuspecting reader to rip his or her hair in desperation and scream, "Oh, for crying out loud, just EAT her already, and be DONE with it!" Edward is not only Byronic in the sense that he seems to strongly desire to emulate the mopey, misunderstood heroes of Lord Byron's poetry; he's also Byronic in the sense that he treats women like shite, just like Lord Byron himself often did. Edward is so busy "taking care" of hapless, helpless damsel-in-distress Bella that he manages to fling her about, force her to do things she doesn't want to do, control her movements and her whereabouts, watch her while she's sleeping, manipulate her acquaintances, and generally become every misogynist's wet dream: a man who mocks, sneers at, patronizes, and controls his lover, and is adored all the more for it.

The plot holds no surprises for anyone who has ever read Anne Rice's novels, seen any episodes of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," or written escapist short stories in his or her sixth grade English class. Bella moves to a town she hates (for completely the selfless reason that she wants to give her mother some alone time with her new husband, an action that is intended to garner our sympathy and admiration and instead makes us wonder if Bella will ever develop a backbone) to live with her biological father Charlie, who is (quite conveniently) an unobservant, unobtrusive, and uninterested man. Without any real justification, we are asked to believe that Bella, who was considered homely and awkward and unpopular in her old school, is suddenly the most popular girl in Washington State, and has dozens of guys falling over themselves for her.

Of course, Bella is only interested in Edward, who pretends to hate her for awhile in order to protect her from his bloodlust (insert eyeroll here) but who ultimately confesses his eternal (literally!) love for her after saving her from a bizarre and seemingly out-of-the-blue gang rape attempt. The two "love" (read: are infatuated with) one another, but Bella is constantly in danger from Edward's need to drink human blood, and while she is still human she will always be danger of being killed by his uncontrollable thirst for her tender young neck, blah blah blah. It's all been done before, only this time it's done with teenagers, which makes the whole thing take itself too seriously for its own good. The story even manages to end at THE PROM, for Chrissakes, with the injured heroine's leg in a cast and everything. Subtract from "Buffy" all the self-effacing humor and good-natured shtick of that delightful program, add a generous helping of the borderline-insulting, feel-good aura of an after-school special, and voilà! You've got Twilight.

I'm almost tempted to read the other three books in the series just so I can observe firsthand the creepy anti-abortion allegory that is apparently embedded in the last volume. Then I remember how desperately I had to force myself to finish the first one, and I think, "No WAY am I putting myself through that again."

I give this book five stakes, straight through its cold, dead heart.

EDIT: I found a hilarious review on Amazon, which summarizes the book's pathetic themes in the perfect (albeit occasionally grammatically incorrect) fashion:

"If there was ever a book that deserved the medal for Worst Messages of All Time to Send to your Teenage Audience, then this is the one. Girls, life is not worth living unless you have your man. It's okay to have no dreams, ambitions, hobbies, interests, goals, ideas, friends, etc... as long as you have your man. It's okay, and in fact desirable that you stay with a man forever, even though he may very likely kill you, or at least injure you, in the future. Growing into mature adulthood and eventually old age is a fate worse than death. True Love is based on appearances and physical aspects. And the list goes on."

~*~

Picture credit: Icon by Michaela of TwilightSucks.com.

Another New Poem

I wrote this poem a couple days ago, and I'm trying to think of a better title. Suggestions are totally welcome!

Unemployed

Lie awake. Listen
to him breathe in deep, soft pants
beside you. Winos

in the parking lot
are loud tonight. Looks like
more snow. Less bright moon.

Dream about the way
your hair looks, just washed. How it
feels smooth, dangerous,

a rope to climb down.
How it smells just like nothing,
like a known absence.

You could hide him there
in shining folds of brown hair
that waves like wheat.

Dream about your hair
hanging down from the window.
A curtain of stars.

Poetics and Politics

Now that Obama is president-elect, the poet in me is considering such vital questions as, "What poem will they read at Obama's inauguration?"

Oftentimes poems by famous poets have been read at presidential inaugurations. At Clinton's first inauguration, Maya Angelou read "On The Pulse of Morning", and Robert Frost recited "The Gift Outright" from memory for JKF's inauguration because he couldn't see the text of the poem he was going to read due to the sun's morning glare.

There are so many poems by so many poets that could be recited at this inauguration! Some have suggested using Obama's past speeches as poems, since they often sound like eloquent poetic pieces. (And check out that link above to see a Wordle picture of Obama's "Yes We Can" speech!)

I think that might be my challenge this week— to write a poem that would be appropriate for a presidential inauguration. I'll post it up here and you can see what you think!

In the meantime: what poet/poem would you like to have at Obama's inauguration?

And...Another Sestina!

Wow, I'm on a sestina roll here! I think when I apply for the Rose Fellowship, my proposal will be centered around a sestinas-only book I'd like to do this year. I think the sestina really works well with my personality and writing style (thanks for introducing us, Claire!), and I'd like to develop my prowess in the form as far as I possibly can.

This one is of lower quality than the others, owing mostly to the fact that 1) I started it a week ago and was interrupted mid-poem, and couldn't come back to it until now (a writing situation that rarely produces good poetry on my part), and 2) when I sat down to finish it, I had (and have) a splitting headache. Ow ow ow ow ow. And I suspect I may have seriously abused the rules of grammar in the tercet, but oh well.

Sestina: A Bookworm Attends a Football Game With Her Husband

“Each team must try to get across the field,”
he said, pointing out sections at each side
called “endzones” which sounded rather fatal
for a game played by zit-faced teenage boys.
I tried to memorize all the new words:
touchdown, safety, quarterback, penalty,

flag, defensive penalty, penalty kick—
or wait, is that just soccer? On the field
the band formed unrecognizable words
and lopsided circles while on each side
of the stadium stood lines of young boys
for whom an incomplete pass was fatal,

watched by parents for whom loss was fatal,
and for whom a referee’s penalty
meant misplaced anger. If I were a boy,
seventeen, I’d rather lie in a field
and read books than warm the bench on the side
of someone else’s dream, but maybe words

aren’t enough for everyone, maybe words
don’t fill everyone up the same. Fatal
injuries and long practices aside,
who wouldn’t want to learn of penalties
and victory upon the tiny field
of battle? For all men were awkward boys

once, and under these uniforms, these boys
cultivate grown-up hearts, though sometimes words
fail to describe what’s at stake on the field,
the way a dropped ball can be so fatal
to what you hope to become. Penalties
come not in the game but on the sidelines,

or in the locker room: “You were offsides.
That was stupid. Lame. You idiot.” Boys
know that the real serious penalties
are in possibilities, in the words
used to describe you: fast, deadly, fatal,
or slow, clumsy, talentless. Off that field

they are just teenaged boys, but on that field,
they decide with which words they will describe
themselves. How fatal each penalty will be.

A New Poem!

I came up with the title quite suddenly, and so naturally, the poem isn't quite as nice as the title is. Nevertheless, I think it's a fun concept, and I might even write a whole series of love letters from The Misanthrope.

The Misanthrope’s Love Letter

I used to have faith
that everything would work out
eventually

and that people are,
in general, good, and smart.
Then I met people.

The diversity
of humanity is such
that most of us do

not like most of us,
and this is fine. Let’s just love
who we love, and try

to watch the sun rise
out of morning clouds without
bitterness— for each

of us is someone
else’s small hope, no matter
how silly, how frail.

Philosophy Walker: A Primer

So I'll be posting a lot of my own stuff here in this section, since I'm a poet and all. If you want an introduction to my work, check out my senior thesis, a collection entitled In Vivo.

Here's a new poem I wrote this week-- I've been working on driving, and it's been dredging up memories of a friend of mine from Pittsburgh who died in a car accident when I was seventeen.

If you like the sestina form and would like to learn more, check out this sestina page.


Sestina: On Getting My Learner's Permit at Twenty-Three

Driving: everything is slow, like a dream.
My father teaches me to back the car
into parking spaces using two old
lamps, the theory being they're hard to hit.
I swerve around a lamp and firmly back
into a stop sign, which lists to the side.
 
He swears, then gets out. He's been on my side
about this even since he had that dream
where I drove away and never came back,
says I don't have to learn to drive a car
until I'm ready, but each time I hit
something his face gets tighter. He looks old

as he knocks the sign back into place, older
than most men teaching children to drive. Side
by side, we try again, this time hitting
an apple tree, and a few fruits fall, dreamy,
heavily, hitting the rear of the car
with a final sort of sound. In the back

of my head, in the quietest far back
place in my brain, I wonder if that old,
leaden sound is always present with cars--
maybe, before she died, she heard inside
her that sad thump, maybe she's still dreaming
of it endlessly. Or maybe the hit

of steel against steel, that scalpel-sharp hit
of life into life, threw all that weight back
into the other car, whose driver dreams
always of her, even as he gets old.
As he drives through cornfields, she is beside
him in the front seat, she is in the car

when he drives to work, she is in the car
when he rocks out to someone's greatest hits
on his way to the store. He stands outside
of that car, twice totaled, and she looks back
with the calm love the dead all have. He's old,
by now, I'd imagine, but when I dream

her back into life, he comes to the dream
still twenty years old-- he's not yet hit girls
with cars. He's not yet seen death from inside.

If Only Writing Could Be More Lucrative Than Burger-Flipping

I don't know how many of you listen to Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion on PBS, but let me direct your attention to POEM: The Professional Organization of English Majors.

It reminds me so very much of myself, and of all the other writers/poets/literary nuts I've ever known.

Billy Collins

I had forgotten about this video until now, but someone made a delightful little animation set to a reading of Bill Collins' poem "Forgetfulness"— which also happens to be one of my favorite poems.

It's a great little video. Check it out!

Chocolate and Poetry

I managed to rediscover Chocolove Chocolate Bars during my trip to the Ypsilanti food co-op this past weekend.

The bars come in all sorts of delicious flavors, from crystallized ginger or chilies and cherries in dark chocolate to toffee and almonds or hazelnuts in milk chocolate. But that's not the point— the reason poetry lovers will enjoy them is the love poem printed inside the wrapper of each bar.

I used to collect the wrappers when I was in boarding school, and I made a sort of poetry collage with them on the wall of my room. I'd forgotten about them since then, but when I saw them on the shelf at the co-op, I knew I had to buy one for Adam.

The poem we got was from Byron's "Don Juan":

And then she had recourse to nodes, and signs,
Ands smiles, and sparkles of the speaking eye,
And read (the only book she could) the lines
Of his fair face, and found, by sympathy,
The answer eloquent, where the soul shines
And darts in one quick glance a long reply;
And thus in every look she saw exprest
A world of words, and things at which she guess’d.

And now, by dint of fingers and of eyes,
And words repeated after her, he took
A lesson in her tongue; but by surmise,
No doubt, less of her language than her look:
As he who studies fervently the skies
Turns oftener to the stars than to his book,
Thus Juan learn’d his alpha beta better
From Haidée’s glance than any graven letter.

In the case of longer poems (like “Don Juan”), excerpts are printed on different wrappers of different kinds of chocolate, so that you can eventually collect them all. For example, the wrapper informs me that the two stanzas before these were printed on the Pure Milk 33% wrappers with the “best by” date of Jan. 2009, while subsequent stanzas were printed on Toffee in Milk Chocolate wrappers with the same “best by” date. Therefore, if I wanted to know what happens in the poem, or if I wanted to read the previous stanzas, I’d know which bars to buy!

If you’d like to read the entirety of “Don Juan” (it’s VERY LONG— I mean, it’s Byron, so duh), check out the free Project Gutenberg version here.

Public Service Announcement

I just wanted to remind everyone (and enlighten those who might not already know) that the work of poet and columnist Katha Pollitt can be most entertaining. Her poetry is always delightful, especially her work on Biblical subjects, including "The Expulsion" and "In The Bullrushes". If you're looking for some good summer poetry reading, check out her book Antarctic Traveller!

She's always been one of my favorite poets, and I actually got to meet her this past year. As I'd expected, she was a splendid woman.

The Strangely Controversial Month of Poetry

First surprise: Did you know that National Novel Writing Month (otherwise known as NaNoWriMo, which begins this November 1st) has a poetry counterpart, National Poetry Writing Month (with the equally adorable abbreviation NaPoWriMo)? It's in April, to help celebrate National Poetry Month, a month in which English teachers and avid readers and writers band together to celebrate poetry in all its forms and from all its sources.

Second surprise: did you know there are actually people who strongly oppose National Poetry Month? One of them is writer Charles Bernstein, a man who, in my honest opinion, could use some National Poetry Month exposure, since I've never heard of him. Bernstein argues in this piece that National Poetry Month dumbs down great poetry and chooses only those poems with a "moral" or "uplifting" message, so that the general populace won't be threatened or bored. He claims this is insulting to most people, as it assumes that they are stupid and can’t figure out poems for themselves. And of course, like all snooty "art" poets, Bernstein blames this all on the recent push for accessibility in poetry, which I've always thought is best illustrated by our two most recent Poets Laureate, Billy Collins and Ted Kooser.

I heartily disagree, of course— first off, I don't in any way think that showing people simple or one-note poems assumes that they are stupid. I think it assumes they had crappy teachers in school who spent all their time teaching their students how to dissect poems into similes and metaphors and assonance and consonance and imagery and symbolism, and never properly explained to them that you can't write a sentence about what a poem means because most poems are written to explain things that can't be said in only a sentence. And of course, this is usually the case. I went to public school, and I hated poetry until I started reading it on my own and was free to think that it represented whatever I wanted it to represent. I went to public school, and, incidentally, this is the reason I resolutely refuse to teach: because all my English teachers were so spectacularly bored with their subjects, so splendidly miserable about what they were being forced to do, that until I was about eight or nine I thought teaching was a punishment for committing minor crimes and misdemeanors.

Hence, I don't think that stashing the Wallace Stevens under the desk for the time being and breaking out the ee cummings or the Sylvia Plath is really all that horrible, because to use the Wallace Stevens is to ignore the fact that most people have had a spotty and disgraceful education in poetry, and therefore to ignore the fact that, as smart as they are, these people have no idea what the poems are whispering to them. Forcing difficult poems on people is like taking a child who only speaks Chinese and abandoning him in a bus station in Spain. It's mean, it's petty, and it's pretty durn insensitive.

And we all know my take on the accessibility movement: IF YOU DON'T COMMUNICATE SOMETHING IN YOUR POEMS, THEY AREN'T WORTH SHIT. In other words, if you want to write poems that only you understand, then that's fine, but it's not art. Art is a communication between the artist and the audience, and the message being communicated is always one that cannot be summarized or sequenced or essentialized. That's why we write: if we could say what we wanted to say in a simple sentence, then there would be no reason to write a poem or a story or a novel in order to say it. But the things you say in your writing must be able to be understood by others on some level, or else you are making up your own language, and you can't expect anyone to want to converse with you in it.

Long story short: Communicate effectively in your poems. Otherwise, you're just wasting our time.