Old poem revised

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE JESUS TORTILLA

When I found Christ's face in the supermarket
burned into a tortilla I didn't phone the newspapers
or hang it in the nave of a church behind glass
illuminated by candles and camera flash. Hid it
in my cart instead among canned, secular vegetables
and paid cash. Then drove home, where I dipped it red
in a jar of salsa, let it burn and cool my tongue and asked
good Lord, make me more than a photographer.



UPDATE 1/30/06

Here's the previous version of the poem for comparison, as per Jonathan's request.

THE JESUS TORTILLA

This morning in the wilderness
aisles of the supermarket I spied Christ's face
burned across a tortilla canvas.

I nestled it among the canned,
secular vegetables and disposable
gallons of milk, took it home;

dipped in the shockingest red
salsa I chewed it carefully, eyes closed:
I didn't take it to the papers

or hang it under glass in a church
to light the candles of the faithful
or the cameras of the merely curious.

I prayed with each bite to be more
than a photographer. I prayed
to eat death and the life everlasting.

# posted by Daniel at 1:02 PM.

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An hour of America
plus, Canadian federal politics through Texan eyes

Sunday I spent an hour in America.

No, seriously. I won't bore you with the beaurocratic details, but for reasons related to my student visa it was necessary to take the ferry across to Port Angeles and back again. The whole experience was rather strange. The trip was conceived maybe 18 hours before I stepped on the ferry. Walked around a block or two of Port Angeles, stopped and had a cup of coffee and a bowl of soup. Thought to myself I could get a job here. Just fill out an application, show them my Social Security Card. No hassle, no hundreds of dollars in fees and forms. Of course, my wife would not have been the least bit happy about such a decision, and I'd rather be with her anyway. Then I climbed back on the ferry and returned to Canada.

These legal hoops grow tiring. I still can't believe how damn difficult it is to permanently relocate to another country. And the sad thing is that coming from the U.S. to Canada is probably about as easy as it gets, immigration-wise. A bit of advice--whenever possible, be born in the same country as your wife. Don't let seperate nationalities stand in the way should it come to that, but all other things being equal its a hell of a lot easier to have the same passport as your significant other.

In other news, yesterday was federal election day here in Canada. Stephen Harper's Conservative party unseated Paul Martin's government after something like 13 years of Liberal government. My observations on the whole process for the edification of my Texas readers (Canadian readers feel free to correct me).

Canadian politics is dominated by two parties, Liberal and Conservative (also called the Tories--seems to have been consolidated out of a variety of conservative/Western regional parties several years ago). There are, however, two additional parties that have a substantial presence in the House of Commons (compare U.S. House of Representatives). The first is the Bloc Quebecois, which exists only in Quebec. The other is the New Democratic Party (NDP), for whom I would have voted had I been eligible.

Regional tensions seem to determine quite a bit of Canadian politics. First, there's the French/English thing. Since the sixties Quebec has developed a strong cultural and political identity. There have even been a couple of referenda on Quebec independence, the latter of which (in '95) only failed by a percentage point or two. Quebec is one of the most populous provinces, and so while the Bloc only runs candidates in Quebec it still manages a big chunk of votes in the House of Commons (51 of 308, as of last night I believe). Quebec has 75 ridings (Canadian term for electoral district), so 2/3 of the province voted with the Bloc. Which is actually less than in recent elections.

There's also the East/West thing. Ontario is by far the most populous province in the country, which means it traditionally dominates national politics. It's also the most liberal/Liberal. Contrast the western provinces, which are politically and socially more conservative, and where the Conservative party is strongest. British Columbia is less this way than Alberta (the Texas of Canada), but still elects a lot more Conservatives than Liberals.

Anyway, there's been a growing sense of disatisfaction with the Liberal governement over a series of scandals and a sense that the Liberal party has come to take its power for granted. This came to a head back in November, when the House of Commons called a vote of no confidence.

This was (and is) all very interesting to me. One of the many differences between the Canadian and U.S. systems is that the government is headed not by an independently elected executive, but by the leader of the political party that gets the most seats in the House of Commons. The government is the legislative branch. There is an executive, the Governor General, but she's appointed by the Queen or King of England and doesn't seem to do much (this is due to the fact that Canada evolved into nationhood, like most of the British empire, rather than rebelling, like the U.S. did).

To put this in U.S. terms, imagine that the Speaker of the House of Representives is also the President. Now call him the Prime Minister instead. Add stronger party loyalty, and four parties with seats in Congress, and you're Canadian.

The Conservatives didn't win a majority government, though, so we have what is called a minority government, which means that Stephen Harper has to negotiate with the other parties to govern. It also means that we'll probably have another election in the next couple of years rather than the "usual" four or five year election cycle. I put "usual" in quotes because this is the same situation we just had--Paul Martin's government was minority as well. A minority government is open to a vote of no confidence should the opposition parties collaborate, which brings up an early election.

Fascinating stuff for this American. I'm interested to see how Harper puts together his government. But for now I've got to get to class.

# posted by Daniel at 11:37 AM.

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His reading log

Sean just unveiled a new project of his, a free online reading log available at http://www.myreadinglog.net. Lets you keep track of books you've read and want to read, as well as compiling statistics. Want to know how many pages you've read in a year? There's also feeds available that allow you to post your information on a blog or website. Check it out.

# posted by Daniel at 10:37 AM.

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Poetry and autobiography

(Warning: wonky poetic technicalia ahead.)

Randy's comment on the last poem, "A Perfect Posture," have touched off some thoughts I'd like to put down. People have a lot of different expectations or insights into what happens (or ought to happen) in a poem, and it's interesting to see how these change the way one approaches a specific poem.

Randy wrote, "I found it warmly autobiographical. I think I would find it dishonest if something substantial did, in fact, 'happen' in this poem."

Interesting.

(For the record, Randy, I'm not talking dirt on your comment. It's an entirely legitimate observation. It also happens to make for a great digression on my part.)

There is, of course, an autobiographical element to the poem. I wrote this because I have memories of this sort, of fumbling into some kind of understanding of prayer at about this age. Which age, you might ask? Well, that's a tricky question.

The memories associated with the poem are from our family's attendence at a Baptist church we started attending when I was in third grade--eight or nine years old, I think (since both of my parents read this blog they can correct me if I'm off).

So the kid in the poem is eight or nine years old, right?

Well, no. See, the kid in the poem doesn't have an age. His only age is what the poem tells you--old enough to no longer be coloring during the service. It isn't just that you don't know his age--he doesn't have one. He only exists in these twenty or so lines. He ain't me.

Autobiographical information is a mixed blessing when it comes to literary texts. People have a tendency to read something they know about a writer's life back into a text, to insert information into the text that simply isn't there. The church in the poem isn't a Baptist church. The kid isn't nine years old, and the poem isn't set in west Texas, even though all of these statements are true about the writer's experiences that led to the poem.

Any (halfway decent) poet allows details into poems for the sake of the poem, not for the sake of her memoir. This is something that happens frequently in undergraduate writing workshops. Someone brings in a poem based on a personal experience (which is itself a little silly--every poem is eventually based on personal experience). Criticisms are made (you should take the bridge out, you should change the number of people in the scene, you should change the color of the flowers, etc). The writer responds, "But that's how it happened!" As if fidelity to autobiography carries artistic merit. It happened a certain way in life. It can happen in the poem however you decide to write it.

Poetry (at least of the 21st century lyric variety) isn't journalism. It doesn't exist to tell what happened. John Dewey in Art as Experience (great book, btw) describes the artist's experience as the raw material of art. If my poem is a house then my memories are the bricks, boards, cement, etc that go into building it. But I arrange them however I want. (Quick postmodern aside--they are always arranged. Some arrangements may attempt straight history more than others, but they never flow directly from the world through memory to the page.)

There's another quote that makes the point more succinctly: "Never underestimate the creative potential of the lie." I think it's James Dickey, although it might be William Stafford. Dr. Jones, if you read this I heard it in one of your classes.

There is of course the possibility that the poet will choose to be autobiographical for personal reasons, which is fine and entirely acceptable. But that's an extra burden she places on herself. The poet has no obligation to be factual about things, because poetry as such isn't concerned to report (at least not in the strict journalistic sense). Poetry is concerned to create aesthetic experience (the aha! feeling you get when a piece of art, poetry, fiction, music grabs you--if you've had one you know what I mean), which is another matter entirely and sometimes demands distortion. When painters want to create a sense of distance they create arbitrary points on an imaginary horizon and draw their lines pointing in that direction. It's a distorition. Characters further away are made shorter than those close to the viewer. We take these for granted, but it took artists centuries to develop tricks to make the viewer think he's looking at something with depth. Likewise with poetry.

I wrote a poem years ago called "Movie" which is "about" driving home from a movie. My sister and I had gone with some friends to see The Royal Tenenbaums in a theater in Austin, and there was a certain quietness in the car on the way home that I wanted to capture. The first draft of the poem had four characters in the car, as had been the case in coming home from the Tenenbaums. The poem was too unwieldy with four characters, however, so in subsequent drafts I knocked off a couple and made it just two. The sharper contrast between two people made for a more poignant quality.

Now, to get back to the comments on Perfect Posture. Randy said, "I think I would find it dishonest if something substantial did, in fact, 'happen' in this poem," responding, I assume, to Sean, who said, "ending it with "he's decided" still feels curiously anticlimactic -- like nothing actually happened over the course of the poem. At least if he stayed with the same verb tense ("he decides"), we'd get to be witness to that decision. I guess that happened earlier, though -- it just seems an oddly insubstantial note to end on."

Sean's right. "He's decided," is anti-climatic, and deliberately so. Changing the verb tense right there (always pay attention to tense shifts!) disassociates the reader from the action in the poem. The speaker steps back from the kid in the pew a little bit. The kid's convinced about this new method of prayer. The speaker? Not so much.

Randy's right too, although I do need to qualify his comment, which links the autobiographical aspect of the poem to the honesty of the poem. That isn't the case--whether or not I ever sat in church and prayed as a child has nothing to do with the way this poem works. The quality he's referring to (I think--I'm sure we'll hash this out over breakfast tomorrow) as honesty comes not from the failure of anything substantial to happen. Remember, a kid has just figured out that God lives in his head! And if he holds his head just right he can talk to Him! That's about as Big as News gets. The failure of anything to happen is at the level of the speaker, whose report of the scene betrays some doubts about it. This is percieved as honest. To grossly oversimplify, the aesthetic experience here is not the experience of the kid. It's the experience of witnessing the kid and knowing better.

Thanks again to Sean and Randy, whose permission I have not sought for the use of their comments, and to everyone who leaves feedback. Anyone have comments on this?

# posted by Daniel at 10:53 AM.

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New post

Not here, but over at Weeds of Contmplation. After much urging my lovely and talented wife has broken her lengthy silence. Go read.

# posted by Daniel at 11:31 AM.

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Quebec Recap

We flew out of Victoria early in the morning on December 28th and arrived in Montreal in the middle of the afternoon. Despite having done a fair bit of travel by air during the last three years I'm still amazed at the thought of shooting across an entire continent in a morning; every time I fly I think of settlers a hundred and fifty years ago taking months to cross the Great Plains. Unoriginal thoughts, sure, but persistent. How different the experience of land and distance is when traveling by air versus car--no vertical sense in the plane, no enclosure in the landscape like there is on the ground. Of course, even when traveling earthbound the interstate differs from state highways and backroads, and those differ from bicyling or hiking.

Guy and Francyne, Fanny's parents, met us at the airport and drove us back to their house on the south shore of Montreal. We opened presents (scored a digital camera, which explains the presence of pictures in this post) and went to bed early. Toured Montreal the next day and took some pictures from the top of Mount Royal, as well of the Oratorio, an enormous church built during the last century.

The major themes of the week were snow (more than I've ever seen) and French (more than I've ever heard). The visit began and ended in Montreal, which is a bilingual city (though French dominates). We spent three days up in and around Quebec City, though, where no one speaks English, including the fifty some-odd members of Fanny's extended family who I met. Fortunately her parents are both familiar enough with English for us to get along. And there was beer at all the family gatherings, which is of course the universal language. We also spent an afternoon in the historic parts of Quebec City, which was (I think) the original French settlement in North America and has what is purportedly the oldest street on the continent.

The highlight of the visit as far as I'm concerned was the final night, when Guy and I watched the Rose Bowl and I instructed him in the ways of college football and the love of the Longhorns. He showed me my first complete hockey game the night before, a Canadiens/Penguins match, so we're even. Cultural exchange at its finest. The story gets even better--the next day Fanny and Francyne went out for a last round of shopping before we had to leave for the airport. She found (in Montreal, mind you) a belt buckle with a longhorn head in front profile against a bunch of flowers that very well might be roses. If she'd found it the day before I would've taken it as a sign; as it is, we've embraced it as the celebratory Texas Championship belt buckle (which probably cost about one fifth as much as any official belt buckles minted for same occasion).

Here's some pictures of the trip.


Ice and snow on trees on Mount Royal.

Montreal from Mount Royal.

Ferry crossing the St. Lawrence at Quebec City. Notice the ice on the river. This was new to me. Call me a gawking provincial if you must, but I'd never seen a frozen river before.

Street in the lower city in Quebec City.

Nice shot of some condos in Stoneham, north of Quebec City, where we stayed with some of the family. I can't get over those icicles.

Guy, myself, Fanny, and Francyne ring in the New Year in traditional Quebecois headdress. No really.

This was one of many games we played with the larger family on New Year's Eve. It was sort of like Hot Potato, only instead of a potato we passed around a bag full of idiotic hats, and if you got caught holding the bag when the music stopped you had to fish around in the bag and find something to wear.

# posted by Daniel at 6:30 PM.

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41-38

Fanny and I got in from Montreal last night. I might post more about the trip to Quebec later, but for the moment I want merely to gloat about Texas' win over USC in the Rose Bowl on Wednesday. Our first national championship in something like 35 years, and the best football game this (not particularly knowledgeable) fan has ever seen. Had the special pleasure of watching it with my father-in-law, for whom the game was an introduction to college football. Hook 'em Horns.

# posted by Daniel at 4:17 PM.

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