Amber Stewart

“…but we must remain firm in our conviction that hymns to the gods and praises of famous men are the only poetry which out to be admitted into our State. For if you go beyond this and allow the honeyed muse to enter, either in epic or lyric verse, not law and the reason of mankind, which by common consent have ever been deemd best, but pleasure and pain will be the rulers in our State.”

The Republic (Book X)–Plato

Plato favored kicking poets out of society because, he believe, in essence, we are all liars. I do not agree with Plato in his Republic, but I do believe poets are liars. Language is an artifice, perhaps the most important one we have, but it is still constructed in an imperfect mind. Everthing is falliable. Even as I write you these words, I could be lying.

It’s been a long time since I’ve attended this blog. I apologize. Summer was dull. But I’m learning to read Tarot cards, and I’m understanding my astrology better. School’s back in full swing now, and even though I love it, I sometimes question its purpose. Sometimes it’s better to stop thinking and just be happy. And I am. I’m carving out a place for myself in the world, and I’ve decided I like feeling small.

Poetry in its short form intrigues me. I feel like I could write a thousand little poems, but they may not mean anything. Or they’ll be epic in their five lines. I’ve met some resistance against this form. But I’ll keep writing them anyway.  

There are two qualities that make fiction. One is the sense of mystery and the other is the sense of manners. You get the manners from the texture of existence that surrounds you. The great advantage of being a Southern writer is that we don’t have to go anywhere to look for manners; bad or good, we’ve got them in abundance. We in the South live in a society rich in contradiction, rich in irony, rich in contrast, and particularly rich in its speech…[W]hen our patterns of speech are absolutely overlooked, then something is out of kilter. The writer should then ask himself if he is not reaching out for a kind of life that is artificial to him.

-Flannery O’Connor (”Writing Short Stories”)

Flannery O’Connor believes that you cannot write a good Southern story without including Southern dialect, a lion even she had to tame. I say that a good Southern story is the story of our food. On the table the South’s whole history can be set out before you.  Consider what sustains your body. Consider where you got it from, and why you eat it.

Southern Cross

I wanted you, nameless Woman of the South,
No wraith, but utterly—as still more alone
The Southern Cross takes night
And lifts her girdles from her, one by one—
High, cool,
wide from the slowly smoldering fire
Of lower heavens,—
vaporous scars!

Eve! Magdalene!
or Mary, you?

Whatever call—falls vainly on the wave.
O simian Venus, homeless Eve,
Unwedded, stumbling gardenless to grieve
Windswept guitars on lonely decks forever;
Finally to answer all within one grave!

And this long wake of phosphor,
iridescent
Furrow of all our travel—trailed derision!
Eyes crumble at its kiss. Its long-drawn spell
Incites a yell. Slid on that backward vision
The mind is churned to spittle, whispering hell.

I wanted you . . . The embers of the Cross
Climbed by aslant and huddling aromatically.
It is blood to remember; it is fire
To stammer back . . . It is
God—your namelessness. And the wash—

All night the water combed you with black
Insolence. You crept out simmering, accomplished.
Water rattled that stinging coil, your
Rehearsed hair—docile, alas, from many arms.
Yes, Eve—wraith of my unloved seed!

The Cross, a phantom, buckled—dropped below the dawn.
Light drowned the lithic trillions of your spawn.

-Hart Crane

King Cotton is finally, completely dead, according to this. The Mississippi Delta, home to so many songs, myths, and battles, is culturally and agriculturally turning into the Midwest. They’ve started planting more corn and soy products because nobody buys clothes anymore. The economy has driven King Cotton into exile. And I find this to be sad. It is not only losing a part of Southern legacy, but if cotton is not worth anything, what does it mean to shit in tall cotton?

As I flew in to Nashville, you could see the clouds of humidity gathering around the lampposts. I decided to leave New York on short notice–as soon as I finished my finals I was out. I sat next to a drunk man from Rhode Island on my flight to Charlotte, and he had never been on a plane. We talked about his ex-girlfriend and what wines went with what dishes. Two Gin and Tonics later he told me he was flying to Palm Beach to go to rehab. He asked me what he would do if he fucked it all up. I told him he would just have to go back, start over, until he got it right. Or mostly right.

It’s been good to get out of the city. Everyone keeps telling me my accent has changed. Maybe I believe them.

As school was ending, I wrote a paper about  Flannery O’Connor: about how I have her figured out, about how I’ve lost the mysticism, but found my respect for her. And I wonder how her writing changed when she wasn’t living in Georgia? How did Iowa or Connecticut change her writing. I find it very difficult to write about the South while I’m here. Perhaps it’s just a different process you have to learn.

From my horoscope: As you shift back and forth between reality bubbles in the coming week…keep clearly in mind that the laws of nature in one bubble may be quite different from the laws in the others.

Women are different here. I’ve learned how to pick out Southern women in airports. Most of the women here are strong, but not in ways my third wave feminist mind expects. I have to remember that there are different types of strength. I saw Adrienne Rich read the other night in Brooklyn. She was strong in the most basic definitions: she was able to read with a steady voice (that voice that women poets of her generation seem to have), and she, at 90 years old was still able to walk to the mic by herself, leaning on her walker. Her words are still weighty, and probably will be until she dies. She was so beautiful and frail and steady that I wanted to cry when she was reading. That’s what old women should be like: no matter where you’re from.

From my horoscope:

“Here’s what I’m looking for,” said a personal classified I read online. “Someone who can tear me away from living inside my head . . . who sees things in me that I don’t see myself.” That’s exactly what I want for you right now, Scorpio. Whether this someone shows up in the form of an ally or enemy or beloved animal or invisible friend, I don’t care. The important thing is that he or she awakens you to certain mysteries about you that you’ve been blind to, and helps free you from the unconscious delusion that all of reality is contained inside the boundaries of your skull.

-Free Will Astrology

Don’t you ever hate being yourself? I mean like the times when you wake up suddenly and say I am I and you feel smothered. It’s like everything you do and think about is at loose ends and nothing fits together. There ought to be a time when you see everything like you’re looking through a periscope. A kind of colossal periscope where nothing is left out and everything in the world fits in with every other thing. And no matter what happens after that it won’t—won’t stick out like a sore thumb and make you lose your balance. That’s one reason I like chess because it’s sort of that way. And music—I mean good music. Most jazz and theme songs in the movies are like something a kid like Mick would draw on a piece of tablet paper—maybe a sort of shaky line all erased and messy. But the other music is sometimes like a great fine design and for a minute makes you that way too. But about that sort of periscope—there’s really no such thing. And maybe that’s what everybody wants and they just don’t know it. They try one thing after another but that want is never really gone. Never.

Untitled Piece (Carson McCullers)

I’ve been writing in form. I can’t decide if I love the idea of the accomplishment or resent the process. I’m tiring of patterns of stress and un-stress. But if feels good when I finally push it out of me. It feels good to have a form holding you down. But these poems have been long. They’ve had the word quantity of about three of my regular poems, microscopic. I want to go back to the small poem. I like the brevity of it.

I’ve begun trying Chinese medicine and listening to more records. Because if this doesn’t work, I don’t know what I’ll do next. The idea is to just keep on keepin’ on. Sometimes, you need cheesecake to do this. Sometimes, you need liquor. Sometimes, you need a good dinner with friends.

February has been a tough month. I believe it is the toughest of the year. Because you’re battling through the end of winter, having come through November, December, January. And there is no hope of spring. Every time it gets warm it snows afterward. March will come in like a lion and out like a lamb, and I will get a new apartment in April. One that does not attack me as I walk in the door.

I need to find new topics to be interested in. I have a political disposition. I always have. I think people are tiring of listening to me talk. Okay.

You’ve heard the “I have a dream” speech. So, I’m not going to quote it. Instead, go here for a video made last MLK day documenting some other quotes.

I’m not going to belabor the links between Martin Luther King and the Inauguration tomorrow. They’re obvious. But I will say that racism is not over in this country just because we are about to welcome a black president into office.

The bare cherry tree

higher than the roof

last year produced

abundant fruit. But how

speak of fruit confronted

by that skeleton?

Though live it may be

there is no fruit on it.

Therefore chop it down

and use the wood

against this biting cold.

 -William Carlos Williams

It has been cold here. So cold that I do not want to leave my bedroom and get out from underneath the covers. I do, occassionally, if only for the reason that I cannot enjoy the city in which I live from my bed sheets. I just got back from Tennessee a few days ago not wasting any time reaquainting myself with the company I keep.

It’s funny to think of the way I view home when I’m not there. And then I arrive and I’m not sure what to do. And so now I want to concentrate on being here and doing the things I came here to do, on not having my mind split. How do you give relationships the respect and distance they deserve?

My grandfather always keeps the house so hot you can’t stand it. He still uses a wood burning stove to heat, and the air is so thick in the main room that you can hardly breathe. But then I thought of the my cold Brooklyn apartment decided to sweat it out, to enjoy the moments of heaviness and pillows and good pie.

When I got back here, though, my apartment was also warm, the first time I’ve ever felt it that way. But it was almost too hot to stand. I had to open the windows the whole next day to let some of the air out.

Having Refused to Accept the Bitter with the Sweet

I don’t want honey or the honey bee.

-Sappho

 Thanksgiving was one of the best that I’ve had. I did not go home. I stayed here and had dinner at the school and later with a crowd where most did not speak English as a first language and where Americans were a limited bunch. Mexico, Equador, France, Belgium, Macedonia, Thailand were all represented in this group. Yet there was still a turkey and stuffing along with Belgium crepes and stuffed potatoes from Equador. There were red and white wine, and Mexican candies that are spicy and salty and sweet, all at the same time.

 Then there was Thanksgiving at my apartment. For those that did not go home, and for those that did and traveled back in, we had in on a Friday. Jenny and I cooked our families’ recipes. I made fried squash and cornbread. The cornbread did not turn out quite right. “Not the same type of cornmeal.” my grandmother said. I only know how to cook with oil and cornmeal and salt. I did not make sweet tea. But I missed it, a little.

 On Black Friday I did not go shopping, but I did venture to the Met, because Jenny had an extra ticket. We saw Tristan und Isolde. The stage was sparse and during the second act it became difficult for me to stay awake. I wore a black dress and knee high boots. It was cold and I had no tights. The only ones I do own are brown. Jenny: “Brown tights would have been about as classy as that cigarette.” It was hand-rolled and seemed out of place with the older, richer crowd that fled the orchestra seats. We were up top, a perfect place for people watching. The opera was very long, but during the second intermission I grabbed a cup of coffee and was revived for the third act which is when I understood the weight of the play, and why Nietzsche loved Wagner so much. Tristan could not even die because of his love but was brought back because of Isolde’s magic and love potion. They always referred to themselves in the third person. Tristan did not look like he should be playing a young warrior.

 Now I am in the rush to get papers and final projects completed. There will be performances, something I’ve never felt completely comfortable doing. There are two weeks left in this semester. Next semester, I’m taking a class on Wagner.  

A new blog about what it means to be a writer, especially one in a BFA program. Show Don’t Tell is written by Gillian Walters, a friend and student at Emerson in Boston, and me. Please drop by and tell us what you think.

It’s a mystery. A man’s at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with. He can know his heart but he dont want to. Rightly so. Best not to look in there. It aint the heart of a creature that is bound in the way that God has set for it. You can find meanness in the last of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And an evil that can run itself a thousand years no need to tend it. You believe that?

I dont know.

Believe that.

From Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)

There are always two sides of everything. The yin and the yang, the Apollonian and the Dionysian. Apollo ruled all things logical and orderly, and Dionysus ruled all things destructive and chaotic. When the two modes of thought met, tragedy began. Have you ever had a Dionysian moment? Have you ever looked into the chaos that infiltrates the earth and just let yourself become part of it, without regret?

How many ontological levels do you believe in? Is it tragedy to only believe in one? Or is it self-reliance. I may believe in two.

And the hookah bar owner was hacking and coughing when we passed. Adrian stuck her head in the door. He stopped smoking and coughing and said, “yeah, we’re still open.” And because I had been feeling displaced we were here, on the Lower East Side, surrounded by mattresses and pillows and nobody else in the bar. Sophie drank Turkish tea and we read her leaves. We don’t really know what the symbols mean.

I turn twenty tomorrow.