"All things fall and are built again"

Anyone who chases the muse with energy ends up on a narrow, solitary path. Long ago, I slowly grew to understand that I was opposed to a good deal in contemporary work and the realm of the avant-garde. Then a clearer sense of what I desired to do emerged, in part from rejection of certain books and choices; in that I was no different from any other writer.

My little row of books stands in peaceful opposition to an arts culture that has--in my opinion--embraced quite a few false gods of late. These idols include: a clinging to the ever-diminishing returns of Modernism, once forceful and alive; money as the prime measure of artistic success; decadent, feeble content, often deliberately destructive and scornful of past folk and fairy tales and literary heritage; nihilism; irony; personal navel inspection; popularity as more important than achievement; the stripping-away of vital subject matter and soul; a kind of fascinating tedium; an insistence on so-called "progress" in art, as though art meant merely the advancement of factual knowledge; the radical breakage and abolition of traditional forms; groupthink; the replacement of art and thoughtfulness by relentless entertainment.

Are false culture-gods new?  No, though I think we may have a few extra packed in our bags.

This morning I read Robert Merry's article, "Spengler's Ominous Prophecy." I recall seeing The Decline of the West in my academic father's office when I was child, but have never read Spengler. I found Merry's summation and analysis interesting, in light of our current military forays around the world and domestic events at home, and for what it says about the arts and the flowering and fall of cultures. It is well worth a little rumination, though one may not agree with his conclusions.

My response was mixed; Spengler is inspiring on spatial and mathematical issues and how they relate to a given culture and result in certain kind of architecture, stance, etc. In fact, his ideas about the unity of ideas in a culture fascinate. Was he a pessimistic sort, a melancholic, though? He certainly sees no avenue for escape from his wheels of fate. And as a mother of three children and a writer, I am one small argument against his ideas about the modern "Ibsen woman." His healthy culture seems to be populated entirely by figures like Cather's Antonia, robust peasantry with many children. I rather doubt that his larger argument is built entirely on rock--do we not know a great deal more about the civilizations he studied a century ago? How does new knowledge shake his argument?

As a thinker, he is as mythic as Yeats in his view of history, and as Romantic. His refusal to be sad about what he sees as inevitable decay also reminded me of Yeats and his gyres and his bold world-rebuilders. I found it curious to look through Spengler's Romantic time-telescope. Do I believe him? Sad as I am about some recent world and national events, I have a mustard seed of faith in renewal and rebirth and grace and so identify with the phoenix.

We have yet our beautiful liberty to act.

Artists are likewise, and must preserve their freedom to go a singular way. All quests involve a choice and have a price that must be paid. All things worth doing involve phoenix-like rebirth. And "All things fall and are built again," as Yeats wrote.

Here's a Merry-sample:

The passion for creative expression and new strains of culture knowledge runs on for centuries, generally a thousand years or more unless interrupted by external forces. But eventually it peters out. Then begins that civilizational phase, characterized by the deterioration of the folk traditions and innocent enthusiasms of the culture. Its cultural essence, once of the soil and spread throughout the “mother-region” in town, village and city, now becomes the domain of a few rich and powerful “world-cities,” which twist and distort the concepts of old and replace them with cynicism, cosmopolitanism, irony and a money culture.  

Thus, Spengler draws a sharp distinction between culture and civilization. The former is the phase of creative energy, the “soul” of the countryside; the latter is a time of material preoccupation, the “intellect” of the city. As Hughes elaborates, “So long as the culture phase lasts, the leading figures in a society manifest a sure sense of artistic ‘style’ and personal ‘form.’ Indeed, the breakdown of style and form most clearly marks the transition from culture to civilization.”

Most questions answered, no. 2

More answers to the series of questions left at the "Huswifery" post from a few days ago...

The Return of the Pot Boy,
who has received the following question:

DAVID R. said... Dear Potty [sic] Boy--I wash my dishes in a sink and use the standard drying apparatus. Now, why is there always gunk accumulating in the bottom of the utensil drying bin though I just washed the pieces?

Note from Marly: As David R. is part of a lively group of fb-teasers, I hope he will not take it amiss that the Pot Boy teases him in return...

           Dear David R.,

Have you never darkened the door of a church, temple, lovely fane of columnar trees in the woods to learn about this matter of dust? Judging by your impertinent address to me, I fear not, and detect that the courtesy of the South has been (woe!) lost on you. Still, some wholesome truths may set you, if not right, then a little less askew--rumors of your shenanigans have reached even The Scullery. Dust thou art, man, and to dust thou wilt return! (Not singling out you in particular, mind, but still....)

The world is faintly silted over with this fine matter, dust, and even the water from your (possibly execrable--look to it, man!) faucet contains dust (as does even the very whitest snow.) Your clean dishes are not so clean but dripping with wetted dust and minerals and possibly, from what I have heard of you, lemur and cat dander.

Moreover, your feeble efforts to cleanse the world of dirt and dust only make the situation in your Standard Drying Apparatus more dire. Soap, dear man, soap makes gunk. I myself prefer an un-standard apparatus made of wire as being less of a soap collector, although metal is hazardous to fine china and glassware--there's nothing like a dish towel or mat for those.

Lastly, the issue of drying: do you put forth your manly effort to dry these dishes, or do you let them dripdribbledrip into your Standard Drying Apparatus? I contend that such dripdribbledrip fecklessness is responsible for much of the gunk in the world and Apparati. Blot out that soapy, dirty water with a clean absorbent cloth, David R. The world and your dinner guests (cats, Loretta the Lemur, facebook friends) will thank you, or at least will not leave in disgust, making strangled outcries.

Yours, from the Scullery--
The Pot Boy

P. S. Kindly ascertain that the above absorbent cloth is not marred by cat fur.

P. P. S. For a review of what sorts of questions I answer in my role as P.A.C., please refer to this page.

P. P. P. S. To return your Standard Drying Apparatus to its pristine state, perhaps a good soak of the noxious article in chlorox--perhaps even a judicious application of Lime Away or some other mineral remover?

Most questions answered, no. 1

Paul Digby said... 
I'd like to see a post that discussed how your approach to writing might differ if there were no such things as publishing houses and ebooks and the like. How would you write for hand-bound limited edition stuff (as though 'literature' were no longer published or read). 

Would there be changes to your approach? Would there be differences in the way you completed work if there were never any deadlines. 

In other words - How would you write if your work were purely for your own joy, and that of those you know? The same?

And then I'd like to know what on earth David R is doing here and how did he slip through your very thorough screenings?

If no longer read at all, there would be no need for me, but since you ask about "hand-bound limited edition stuff," I suspect you mean exactly that. The answer is that I'm already pretty close. I broke up (sweetly, mind you) with my second agent and have depended entirely on requests for my work for publication ever since.

This method does not smack of "savvy" behavior, but it pleases me, in all but matters of distribution and wider sales--please go and buy some more copies of my books and give them out on the street corner! Better and easier, just assist Lady Word of Mouth in her much-needed work of sending out little messages when you like my books.

All this change means that I have been publishing with some of the houses who asked me to submit because they liked my writing. It has been a great relief to me to find that publishers and presses do ask for work, and that I don't have to go hunting for a publisher (though I may hunt for one for a children's book eventually.)

I have lately published with a range of these publishers: university press (as, my 2012 novel, A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage, and my 2011 collection of poetry, The Throne of Psyche); houses that knew me well through prior requests for my work for their anthologies (novel Val/Orson and collection The Foliate Head); and small press (Thaliad, where the publisher knew an excerpt before asking for the whole poem.) Several of those publications were labors of love by artist and designer and writer in a way that approaches the hand-bound aesthetic. Three of the books appeared as limited editions in hardcover. (See tabs above to read more about any of them.)

Deadlines aren't usually much of an issue because I appear to be what's considered fast in the world of writers, though I am slowed down by other commitments at times (my three children, the NBA judging stint, etc.) To me, the way I work does not seem fast and is often punctuated by times empty of writing . . . But I can say that if it took me 14 years to complete a book, I would not bother. It's really unfair, isn't it, how time spent and years of labor don't always help and do not mean some greater virtue in the work?

I do write for my own joy and can't say that there's another way for me with poetry and for many passages of fiction. Nonfiction and blogs are not that way but have an interest of their own. Fiction demands workmanlike bridges and ladders that are sometimes less than joyful, of course. Re-writing and tinkering are oddly satisfying. My joy comes from playing with language and also from the splendor of a flooding pleasure that comes with bringing something out of nothing--the influx of creative spirit, delicious and vital.

In the end, I look at all this in a simple manner. I have a gift that I did nothing to earn. What matters is what I do with the gift, and that I turn it into further gifts to go out into the world and live. For me, it feels magical and like a return gift that out there in the world, somebody is reading my words and so completing a story or poem.

P. S. I almost forgot that important matter of David R and the ongoing facebook tilts and tourneys and occasional friendly wars. The Balrogs have become very fat on spam and do not guard the gates any longer but lie around burping extravagantly (the borborygme!) and letting out tiny moans. Feel free to pop over and let out a lusty You shall not pass! when David R wanders by with his pack of cats and lemur.

Salmagundi for the New Year

LISTEN TO A CASSANDRA?

Thanks to Beth Adams (editor, publisher, writer, artist!) of The Cassandra Pages for listing a novel of mine among her favorites of 2012: "Particular standouts written by friends included Marly Youmans' evocative and poignant novel of an orphan boy-turned-hobo in the depression-era South, A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage. The whole list and discussion is worth a look.

LAST CHANCES: VAL/ORSON

Val/Orson appeared in several hardcover editions, one of which was quite limited and rather expensive. That one, the jacketed hardcover, is still in print. Originally priced at £24.99, the remaining copies are now on sale at £7.99. It was, by the by, editor John Wilson's Book of the Year at Books and Culture Magazine.

YEATS, I LOVE

Stauffer:  "Yeats believed in courage. His commitment to life was as unequivocal as it can ever be in a poet. there was no room in his living for world-weariness, and everyone has noted the miraculously increasing youth and vigor in his writings as he grew older. It is as if life for him were a heady drink, and long quaffing could only increase the frenzy and the Dionysian affirmation." The Golden Nightingale, p. 18.

"Poetry delights us as a manifestation of energy." p. 81

MISSED THE MAYAN MAYDAY MELEE?

For those craving the apocalyptic: Thaliad in all its frabjous beauty, with art by Clive Hicks-Jenkins and design by Beth Adams. Paperback and limited edition paperback links summed up here.

NOTE TO BOOK FOLK IN 2012

This year has got to be the year to banish the horrid view of book as product. Stacks of boxes of Brillo pads. Even painted Warholian stacks of Brillo boxes. Enough!

NOTE TO SELF AND BEES

"Like the bees, [the artists] must put their lives into the sting they give." -Emerson

HOPEFUL THOUGHT FOR A NEW YEAR

George Herbert: "Do not wait; the time will never be 'just right.' Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along."