Sunday, December 25, 2011
Harold Bloom and me
I don't know how I just learned this, but I was greatly honored to discover that my 2001 critical essay "Phoenix has no Coat: Historicity, Eschatology, and Sins of Omission in Eudora Welty's 'A Worn Path'" was anthologized in an edition of Harold Bloom's influential series Modern Critical Views, this one devoted to Eudora Welty, which Bloom edited and for which he wrote the introduction. Even though Bloom and I diverge widely in our view of literature and interpretation, I am honored to have had my work selected for his anthology. A great holiday surprise.
Friday, December 23, 2011
For anyone interested, Amazon.com has my article "Phoenix Has No Coat: Historicity, Eschatology, and Sins of Omission in Eudora Welty's 'A Worn Path," for download from The International Fiction Review. At the risk of egotism, I do think the piec offers a very different view of a beloved and frequently taught story.
http://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Has-Coat-Historicity-International/dp/B0008IBRMY
http://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Has-Coat-Historicity-International/dp/B0008IBRMY
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Autumn in New York
A fabled season in a fabled city, autumn in New York is that rare phenomenon that actually exceeds the hyperbolic adoration that it generates (and the one horrific film that bears the same title as this blog. Richard Gere, Winona Ryder, burn in hell). Despite bizarre October snow, this fall has been unusually warm (today, Nov. 20 the temperature will rise to 60 degrees and the city is suffused with sunshine) and lovely. This is even more the case in my neighborhood, East Harlem, aka El Barrio, aka Spanish Harlem.
The long rays of afternoon sunshine that characterize autumn everywhere are especially lovely here, their radiance stretching down Harlem's narrow, apartment-rimmed streets and brushing the buildings, which in El Barrio are typically splashed in Caribbean pastels, with soft golds, ambers, and yellows. The confluence of warm sunlight and vivid paint, the collision of the tropical and the coming cold here, produces an effect unlike any I've seen elsewhere.
Unseasonably warm days like today seem to interject a kind of reflective thoughtfulness into the constant conversational energy that is as much a part of El Barrio's atmosphere as oxygen. I don't understand more than 3 words of Spanish, the dominant language here, but whether it's the few snatched words of Twi, the Ghanaiain language I know a few terms of (including the phrase for "Enormously tall gigantically huge white man," a comment I heard often as the only 6'5" white man in sight while visiting there), or the Senegalese residents speaking Wolof, which I recognize only as such, everyone seems to me more bemused, thoughtful, pensive -- appreciative of the reprieve in the weather, but aware that this interval will be brief indeed.
On the Harlem Meer's always beautiful waters, its constant residents the Mallards have been joined by migratory Northern Shovelers and Buffleheads, the former large skimming ducks, the latter teeniny diving fowl, and both beautiful beyond description. The Shovelers, the males arrayed in blazing green, white, and buff colors, circle with their mates while skimming the lake surface for food in a graceful dance that seems clearly and intricately orchestrated; the madcap Buffleheads, the males and females sharing a gorgeous white patch on their temples, with the males' coloring augmented by a formal tuxedo of black and white, dive randomly and explosively for their dinner.
Today I first heard and then was lucky enough to see a lone Mockingbird, a hardy soul apparently determined to stay out the winter -- what a wonderful compensation for New Yorkers, and how grateful will I be on that sunny frigid day when I hope to chance upon his spontaneous outbursts in utter defiance of the cold. Judging from the bird's incessant singing today -- I recognized expert imitations of six different bird songs in less than a minute -- this year-round New Yorker is a male. How Mockers survive a Northeastern winter is a mystery to me, given that they are dependent on insects and berries, but especially so in Manhattan, even within the perimeters of Central Park.
Keats famously wrote that "A thing of beauty is a joy forever/Its loveliness increases; it will never/Pass into nothingness..."
But less well known is his clarification of that renowned passage: in order to be fully human for Keats, we must develop bonds to the beautiful aspects of the human, natural, and cultural world so that they
"Haunt us until they become a cheering light/ Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast/That, whether there be shine, or gloom o'ercast/ They always must be with us or we die."
Keats optimism would be easy to dimiss as childish naivete, given that he was barely into his twenties when he wrote these words. But he was a singular prodigy, not only in the mechanics of poetry, but also in the existential truths of mortality. He was dead a few years after he wrote those words, and he knew the tortuous death that was coming for him.
So at a time of especially profound loss in my own life, of confusion, conflict, and doubt, I am doubly blessed to have had a golden autumn day of East Harlem sunshine enriched by the winged denizens who live here with me. Nothing is solved, no mystery resolved, but solace and comfort were given unforeseen. And for that I am grateful.
The long rays of afternoon sunshine that characterize autumn everywhere are especially lovely here, their radiance stretching down Harlem's narrow, apartment-rimmed streets and brushing the buildings, which in El Barrio are typically splashed in Caribbean pastels, with soft golds, ambers, and yellows. The confluence of warm sunlight and vivid paint, the collision of the tropical and the coming cold here, produces an effect unlike any I've seen elsewhere.
Unseasonably warm days like today seem to interject a kind of reflective thoughtfulness into the constant conversational energy that is as much a part of El Barrio's atmosphere as oxygen. I don't understand more than 3 words of Spanish, the dominant language here, but whether it's the few snatched words of Twi, the Ghanaiain language I know a few terms of (including the phrase for "Enormously tall gigantically huge white man," a comment I heard often as the only 6'5" white man in sight while visiting there), or the Senegalese residents speaking Wolof, which I recognize only as such, everyone seems to me more bemused, thoughtful, pensive -- appreciative of the reprieve in the weather, but aware that this interval will be brief indeed.
On the Harlem Meer's always beautiful waters, its constant residents the Mallards have been joined by migratory Northern Shovelers and Buffleheads, the former large skimming ducks, the latter teeniny diving fowl, and both beautiful beyond description. The Shovelers, the males arrayed in blazing green, white, and buff colors, circle with their mates while skimming the lake surface for food in a graceful dance that seems clearly and intricately orchestrated; the madcap Buffleheads, the males and females sharing a gorgeous white patch on their temples, with the males' coloring augmented by a formal tuxedo of black and white, dive randomly and explosively for their dinner.
Today I first heard and then was lucky enough to see a lone Mockingbird, a hardy soul apparently determined to stay out the winter -- what a wonderful compensation for New Yorkers, and how grateful will I be on that sunny frigid day when I hope to chance upon his spontaneous outbursts in utter defiance of the cold. Judging from the bird's incessant singing today -- I recognized expert imitations of six different bird songs in less than a minute -- this year-round New Yorker is a male. How Mockers survive a Northeastern winter is a mystery to me, given that they are dependent on insects and berries, but especially so in Manhattan, even within the perimeters of Central Park.
Keats famously wrote that "A thing of beauty is a joy forever/Its loveliness increases; it will never/Pass into nothingness..."
But less well known is his clarification of that renowned passage: in order to be fully human for Keats, we must develop bonds to the beautiful aspects of the human, natural, and cultural world so that they
"Haunt us until they become a cheering light/ Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast/That, whether there be shine, or gloom o'ercast/ They always must be with us or we die."
Keats optimism would be easy to dimiss as childish naivete, given that he was barely into his twenties when he wrote these words. But he was a singular prodigy, not only in the mechanics of poetry, but also in the existential truths of mortality. He was dead a few years after he wrote those words, and he knew the tortuous death that was coming for him.
So at a time of especially profound loss in my own life, of confusion, conflict, and doubt, I am doubly blessed to have had a golden autumn day of East Harlem sunshine enriched by the winged denizens who live here with me. Nothing is solved, no mystery resolved, but solace and comfort were given unforeseen. And for that I am grateful.
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