At Donald Hall's house, he talked quite a bit about formalism and style in literary traditions. He told me that a person can't really move into the contemporary unless they have read pre-1800's writing and beyond. In Charles Simic's classes, he taught a more delicate, elegant modern aesthetic. his approach was more arachnid, mysterious, dark and removed. his writing is about the hidden and therefore, he admires any approach used to unleash what one can usually only whisper about. while Billy Collins wrote to me about the meat and potatos of prose and the birds that are poetry. each man took a seperate approach to his literary style that i wanted to understand because i felt like they were different ways to speak the truth. i was curious about truth, what was my truth, how to use my voice in society; what is that voice, what is a voice? Kierkegaard, who I read and reviewed in 2009, said that a poet is an “unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music.... And people flock around the poet and say: 'Sing again soon' - that is, 'May new sufferings torment your soul but your lips be fashioned as before, for the cry would only frighten us, but the music, that is blissful.” This mirrors an essay I wrote in 2005 called Poetic Injustice, Learning to Undo the Poetic to Find the Truth of Suffering.I understand the stereotype often listed of the poet whose drive to write started from this place of suffering. the critique is that eventually, the sweetness of their own words, they way the describe this pain through poetry is so fine that it masks the horror that they actually feel, trapping it behind a veil that sounds romantic and stirring. Pain, underneath it all becomes, unconsciously, the muse the muse that drives your work. Without that pain, there is no poem and this is eventually intuited by the writer. Being tortured becomes romanticized because when the poet is tortured, the poet writes. This discourages the poet from seeking health or offering hope. This falls in line with what Plato warned: Be careful of the poet, they can make anything seem beautiful but is that beauty Just? What he meant by justice was: is it good for you? good for others? Well....What if you don't want to feel pain to appreciate beauty? What if life is hard enough, you feel plenty of pain every time you watch the news, worry about sending your kids to school, how your mother is doing, etc. What if you want to heal from past hurts? What if you want to find a voice to promote that healing process? What if you want that voice to be strong, interesting, nuanced enough to assure people you are not close-minded, friendly without being corny, smart without being condescending. What if after healing, you want to write poetry that can comment on both pain or beauty? what if you want that poetry to have depth not because it hides your pain but because you came to understand and empathize with those who suffer and in subtle ways want to share the lessons you found.On the way to the airport on two seperate occasions Billy Collins told me to remember that poetry is a bird. He says this because during his early twenties, he attempted suicide and he found that poetry was an antidote to suffering. I studied this idea for a while and found ways to implement it into my life (which sounds vague but I don't want to go into detail right now). but while donald and I shared a cigarette ("80 sucks," he said. "Don't tell anyone I bummed a smoke from you," I said)...he told me that structure provides freedom. For Charles Simic's class, I wrote an essay called No Ideas But In Things, Formalism in Postmodern Art to challenge some of the ideas of the formalists. Charles Simic took offense to some of the angles I was working on while using Robert Bly as the voice to work out these angles and he wrote a poem about Robert Bly, honesty and suffering. Simic was kind enought to give me his Kenneth Koch book and drove me to the airport to meet Billy Collins for the first time. I still wonder about it all, though. Donald Hall talked about Robert Frost quite a bit. Because I have failed to find a voice that works as evidenced by feeling still alienated, I turn once again to the formalists. Those who play by the rules. I couldn't help but quote this passage from Tobias Wolff's book. Quoted from the text:"Your work sir," Mr. Ramsey said, "follows a certain tradition. Not the tradition of Whitman, that most American of poets, but a more constrained, shall we say formal tradition, as in that last poem you read, "Stopping in the Woods." I wonder--"" 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,' " Frost said. He put both hands on the pulpit and peered at Ramsey."Yes, sir. Now that particular poem is not unusual in your work for being written in stanza form, with iambic lines connected by rhyme.""Good for you," Frost said. "They must be teaching you boys something here."There was a great eruption of laughter, more caustic than jolly. Mr. Ramsey waited it out as Frost looked slyly around the chapel, the lord of misrule. He was not displeased by the havoc his mistake had caused, you could see that, and you had to wonder if it was a mistake at all. Finally he said, "You had a question?""Yes, sir. The question is whether such a rigidly formal arrangement of language is adequate to express the modern consciousness. That is, should form give way to more spontaneous modes of expression, even at the cost of a certain disorder?""Modern consciousness," Frost said. "What's that?""Ah! Good question, sir. Well--very roughly speaking, I would describe it as the mind's response to industrialization, the saturation of propaganda of governments and advertisers, two world wars, the concentration camps, the dimming of faith by science, and of course the constant threat of nuclear annihilation. Surely these things have had an effect on us. Surely they have changed our thinking.""Surely nothing." Frost stared down at Mr. Ramsey.If this had been Last Judgement, Mr. Ramsey and his modern conciousness would've been in for a hot time of it. He couldn't have looked more alone, standing there."Don't tell me about science," Frost said. "I'm something of a scientist myself. Bet you didn't know that. Botany. You boys know what tropism is, it's what makes a plant grow toward the light. Everything aspires to the light. You don't have to chase down a fly to get rid of it--you just darken the room, leave a crack of light in a window, and out he goes. Works every time. We all have that instinct, that aspiration. Science can't--what was your word? dim?--science can't dim that. All science can do is turn out the false lights so that the true can get us home."Mr. Ramsey began to say something, but Frost kept going."So, don't tell me about science, and don't tell me about war. I lost my nearest friend in the one they call the Great War. So did Achilles lose his friend in war, and Homer did no injustice to his grief by writing about it in dactylic hexameters. There've always been wars, and they've always been as foul as we could make them. It is very fine and pleasant to think of ourselves as the most put upon folk in history--but then everyone has thought that from the beginning. It makes a grand excuse for all manner of laziness. But about my friend. I wrote a poem for him. I still write poems for him. Would you honor your own friend by putting words down anyhow, just as they come to you--with no thought for the sound they make, the meaning of their sound, the sound of their meaning? Would that give a true account of the loss?"Frost had been looking right at Mr. Ramsey as he spoke. Now he broke off and let his eyes roam over the room. "I am thinking of Achilles' grief, he said. That famous, terrible, grief. Let me tell you something boys. Such grief can only be told in form. Maybe it only really exists in form. Form is everything. Without it you've got nothing but a stubbed-toe cry--sincere, maybe, for what it's worth, but with no depth or carry. No echo. You may have a grievance but you do not have grief, and grievances are for petitions, not poetry. Does that answer you question?""I'm not sure, but thank you for having a go at it. "
OLD SCHOOL is written in the form of a fictionalized memoir of a student at an elite, circa 1960s, prep school full of "book-drunk" boys. Through a series of student writing competitions to win the prize of a private audience with a well know author, the reader of this book is treated to a profile of Carl Sandburg, Ayn Rand, and Earnest Hemingway. Along the way we are taught a lesson in how ambition disguised as passion for writing can lead to unfortunate outcomes. There is a hilarious bit of humor inserted in the story when Ayn Rand misinterprets a student's essay written in support of vegetarianism to be instead an invective against big government. I don't think the author thinks highly of Ayn Rand. At the end of the book the narrator is an adult reflecting on his school days. "Memory," he says, "is a dream to begin with, and what I had was a dream of memory, not to be put to the test." From his memories he distills a story of failed expectations and, in the end, redemptive self awareness. I am sufficiently "book-drunk" myself to appreciate this vicarious immersion into literature. I'm also human enough to identify with a story of failure to achieve the grandiose plans of youthful dreams. Reflecting back on ones past life and coming to peace with the many what-could-have-been's is, I suppose, part of achieving inner peace. And that is what happens in this book. The final words of the books are, "His Father when he saw him coming ran to meet him." Anyone familiar with the Christian New Testament will recognize where that came from. So the overall message of the book is one of forgiveness, both the giving and the receiving. Frankly, the title turned me off. Neither of the words "old" nor "school" (as in elite eastern prep) have much appeal to me. I would have never read this book if it hadn't been selected as a community-wide "Big Read" book. However, once I started the book it kept my attention. Writers such as Wolff obviously enjoy writing about students who are intelligent and love to read and write because implicitly, they are writing about themselves. Some day I hope to find a book about a young person who hates to read and write and who doesn't have the advantage of being a gifted student. Such a book would be truly a story of overcoming life's challenges and obstacles. Alas, in spite of my own apparent feelings of jealousy of gifted writers such as Wolff hinting at their own youthful talent, I have to acknowledge that this book is skillfully written. The narration crawls up the trunk of the story line while taking frequent excursions out the numerous branches along the way toward a big surprising thud. Then it's a matter of reflection on what sort of person the story's narrator must be to have lived that life.The following review is from the 2006 PageADay Book Lover's Calendar:The Critics Rave“Not a word is wasted in this spare, brilliant novel.” - People“An elegant ode to writers, and to writing, from one of our most exquisite storytellers.” Esquire“Wolff displays exceptional skill in capturing the small sights and sensations that evoke the whole rarefied world he’s taking us back to.” - The Atlantic Monthly Tobias Wolff is acclaimed for his short stories and two memoirs, This Boy’s Life and In Pharaoh’s Army. Old School is his tour de force first novel, the story of a writing contest set in an elite prep school in the early 1960s and how it causes the life of a boy there to unravel. OLD SCHOOL, by Tobias Wolff (Alfred A. Knopf, 2003)
What do You think about Old School (2005)?
I imagined as I was reading this book what a contemporary YA literary agent or editor would say upon receiving Tobias Wolff's story of a young man's experience in a New England preparatory school (one of those that can claim a U.S. president as an alumni but is way too classy to ever mention this fact outright). I see my imaginary literary agent, my imaginary editor, asking where's the conflict, the plot twists, the romance, the Big Ideas, the high stakes? And it saddens me to think that today this book might be deemed a "quiet", a "literary" book worthy, perhaps, of a personalized rejection letter to the effect "this is such high quality, so well written but, unfortunately, I just don't see a market for this now in the Young Adult publishing world although you may want to try an adult publisher where there is greater acceptance for books like this where not much happens." Do you really have to be old (as in over 40) to savor the subtle tension of a literary competition where the prize is a private conversation with Robert Frost or Ernest Hemingway? Do you need be battered by life before you can appreciate that lying about who you are is both hurtful and needed? And does it take years to understand the threads that tie personal integrity to art, to discover the truth about what it is to write with truth? The gifts this book can give can be received by young people. They won't, these gifts, jump into your lap the minute you show up. You may need to be patient, stick around, earn the book's trust before they approach, hesitantly at first, but when they do, they'll stay.
—Francisco
"Nixon was a straight arrow and a scold. If he'd been one of us we would have glued his shoes to the floor" (3)."'Rhyme is bullshit. Rhyme says that everything works out in the end. All harmony and order. When I see a rhymed in a poem, I know I'm being lied to. Go ahead, laugh! It's true--rhyme's a completely bankrupt device. It's just wishful thinking. Nostalgia'" (44).-versus this:"I am thinking of Achilles' grief, he said. that famous terrible, grief. Let me tell you boys something. Such grief can only be told in form. Maybe it only really exists in form. Form is everything. Without it you've got nothing but a stubbed-toe cry--sincere, maybe, for what that's worth, but with no depth or carry. No echo. You may have a grievance but you do not have grief, and grievances are for petitions, not poetry" (53)."They lived on the salted meat of salmon and also of bears, which greatly outnumbered the people and proved a sorrow to the unwary" (59-60)."The businessmen struck me as especially pathetic in their hats and suits and London Fogs, each with some laughable flag of individuality hanging from his neck" (70).I love his realizations after hearing Ayn Rand speak at his school, but they are too lengthy to include here."We're not here to talk about essays, he said. One can imagine a world without essays. It would be a little poorer, of course, like a world without...chess, but one could live in it...Stories, though--one could not live a world without stories" (131)."Without stories one would hardly know what world one was in. But I'm not saying this very well. Mr. Ramsey stared out over the garden. It has to do with self-consciousness, he said. Though I'm no believer, I find it interesting that self-consciousness is associated with the Fall. Nakedness and shame. Knowledge of ourselves as a thing apart, and bound to die. Exile. We speak of self-consciousness as a burden or a problem, and so it is--the problem being how to use it to bring ourselves out of exile. Whereas our tendency is to lose ourselves in the distance, wouldn't you say?" (132)."With still a month to graduation I was already damp with nostalgia" (134)."During our worst dreams we are assured by a dog barking somewhere, a refrigerator motor kicking on, that we will soon wake to true life" (146)."We know what is sacred when we recoil from impiety" (163)."And as for that, had he learned nothing from all those years of teaching Hawthorne? Through story after story he'd led his boys to consider the folly of obsession with purity--its roots sunk deep in pride, flowering in condemnation and violence against others and oneself. For years Arch had traced this vision of the evil done through intolerance of the flawed and ambiguous, but he had not taken the lesson to heart. He had given up the good in his life because a fault ran through it. He was no better than Aylmer, murdering his beautiful wife to rid her of a birthmark" (193).
—Katherine
Hot damn. I do realize this was on my 'currently-reading' shelf for one long stretch of time, but I must confess, I had only done a cursory read of a few pages.Well, last night, I visited the land of IKEA (dreadful place that I rarely venture to) and bought myself a reading lamp. Wanting to try out my latest device, I picked up this book and began to read. This was at Midnight (I'm a bit of a night owl). Well, I got so engrossed in this book that I read the entire thing! Finished around 4 in the morning and then had a dream about Hemingway where he was selling me ice cream by the side of the road while confiding to me his darkest secrets (unfortunately, when I awoke, I couldn't remember what these secrets were. boo!)So, anyway, back to the point, if there was one. This is a great book that captures the mood and spirit of a certain time and of the way it feels to be infatuated with words and literature. Now I want to put on some oxfords, a cord blazer, grab a pile of Hemingway and Faulkner, and go read in an old musty library somewhere. Delicious!
—Becca Becca
