Gone Fishin'

This is the text of a sermon I delivered this morning at the Twinbrook Baptist Church, in Rockville, Maryland.

Gone Fishin'

Luke 5: 1-11

Good morning.  Sally Ann and I have been members of Twinbrook Baptist Church for almost a year now, joining in early June of last year just before we departed for our summer hiatus in Maine, something we have been doing for over a quarter of a century.  We can’t tell you how much it has meant to us to be a part of the Twinbrook family and we thank you all for welcoming us among you.  When it was announced that I would be speaking this morning, a number of you came up with words of encouragement, and I was even asked if there might be a little fire and brimstone in my message.  I am afraid that is not my nature and so I can only hope you won’t disappointed in what I have to share with you today.  It was also hinted that I keep it short and sweet; to paint pictures with a few well chosen words.  Some wondered if I could talk for 15-20 minutes.  That has never been a problem; you only have to ask Sally Ann about that. She’ll tell you the truth of the matter.  Brevity has not always been one of my better qualities when it come to speaking.  So I am happy to see everyone here this morning.  I will keep it short and to the point . . . I promise.

Just a week ago I participated in what has become an annual rite of spring.  Gathering with good friends on Tilghman Island, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, we set off before dawn for a day on the Chesapeake Bay in search of trophy rockfish.  It is a time to celebrate friendship and camaraderie on the fantail of a 46-foot fishing boat as we trolled our lines over fishing grounds that have been good to us in years past. We have always caught fish.  Always . . . but not this year.  The time of season was right, the weather was right, there was plenty of baitfish, but the usual plentiful rockfish were nowhere to be found.  Perhaps early onset of warm weather this spring upset their biorhythms.  Who knows?  But such is the nature of fishing.  Sometimes they are there; other times they are not.

I am reminded of Isaiah 19:5-8.  Israel was confronting an invasion by the Assyrians, and there were proclamations calling for the destruction of Assyria, Babylon, and Egypt.  There was change; the ebb and flow of history.  In the latter, reference is made to the Nile, Egypt’s lifeline.  It is written that the waters from the sea will fail, and the rivers will be fouled, wasted and dried up.  And the fishermen - those who cast hooks and spread nets - will languish and lament.  By the very nature of their work, fishermen have learned to expect disappointment for there is always famine between times of rich harvest.

During his early ministry, which was then centered in and around Capernaum, Jesus was walking one morning along the shores of the Sea of Galilee when he chanced upon two fishermen, Simon Peter and his brother Andrew, cleaning and drying their nets after a fruitless night of fishing, busy at their task and unaware of the multitude who had gathered along the shoreline to hear Jesus speak. They were accomplished fishermen and the fact that they had not caught a single fish was not due to their lack of ability or industriousness.  Sometime the fish just aren’t where and when they are suppose to be.  Jesus certainly sensed Simon’s and Andrew’s disappointment and recruited the two men to row him a short distance from shore so that he might better address the crowd who had gathered to hear his message.  After addressing the crowd and while still standing in the boat, Jesus bid Simon Peter to lower his nets into the water, which he did although he had yet to catch a fish. However, when he gathered his nets back into the boat they were filled to capacity causing them to begin breaking under the sheer weight of the catch.  A neighboring fishing boat manned by two brothers, James and John, came to the aid of Simon and Andrew and they also gathered so many fish that both boats began to sink.  The four fishermen are amazed and astonished by the sea’s bounty.  Who was this man who could command fish to appear where there were previously none?  Jesus told them to fear not, for henceforth they would become fishers of men, and the four men left their boats and nets behind and walked in the footsteps of Jesus as his first disciples.

In this manner, Jesus eventually gathered around him twelve faithful disciples, literally “those who learn,”  whom he charged to go forth as apostles, as teachers, and bring God’s word and promise of a new kingdom on earth to all people, to force out evil spirits and to heal the sick.  Jesus also warned his new disciples that their task would not be an easy one for there would be those who would threaten them and attempt to silence them.  Keep the faith, he told them, for God would guide them, give them wisdom, and tell them what to say. 

Jesus’ invitation to the disciples was a simple one: “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will fish for people.”   Yet, it was an invitation that would alter their lives forever.  Jesus took these simple Galilean fishermen and transformed them into the apostles that would tell the world of the coming of the Kingdom of God. He would teach them that every life matters to God regardless of whether a person is rich or poor, sick or healthy, a believer or a skeptic.  They all matter, and Jesus loved them all and hoped to win them all over to that promise of a better world ahead.   Jesus told his disciples to go into the world, to make certain their nets were tight and firm, and then to cast them wide and deep.  If they did, they would be amazed at the bounty they would gather in. 

If you think about it, all of us here at Twinbrook Baptist Church, as we practice our own discipleship as individuals as well as members of this congregation, can take a lesson from Jesus’ message to his earliest disciples, especially during this time of transition when we look at the life of our church and its congregation and wonder what the future holds for us.  We are all fishers of men (and women).  The lives we lead, and our dedication to the future of this church, are our small yet important contributions to spreading the good news.  We, too, are in the business of casting our nets in everything we do and say, and everywhere we go.  Just as Christ and his disciples shared their message everywhere they went, so, too, we go about our daily lives trying to follow His lead.  He used every situation as an opportunity to talk to someone about the promise of a better life to come.  And isn’t that what we are trying to do as members of Twinbrook Baptist Church?

And we are not alone in this effort.  We have each other and we are working hard together to find a future course for our church.  No one person, no small group of people, can alone do the heavy lifting that is required of us as we cast our nets wide and deep.  For there is a rich bounty to be gathered in.  It is no use to believe that one person, or a small group of people, can haul a net full of fish on board.. They are not going to be able to do it any more than Simon Peter and the early disciples were able to land their catch single-handedly. And even when they worked together, there was the threat that their boats might sink from the weight of their catch.

Last weekend, as my friends and I trolled our dozen and a half lines at a variety of depths and back and forth across the fishing grounds of the Chesapeake Bay, we knew that we covering every conceivable place where the fish might be.  If there were fish down there, we were going to catch them.  Maybe we did not catch them that day, but it was not for a lack of ability or hard work.  There is an inherent truth in what we were doing.  Fishing boats manned by a decent sized crew are always going to catch more than a person fishing off the end of the pier.  

This same truth holds when it comes to the matter of growing our church by living the life God has taught us to lead.  We have to heed the words Jesus spoke to his disciples.  We are going to go where the fish are.  We are going to have to go outside the walls of Twinbrook Baptist Church, we are going to have to go into our community, into our neighborhoods, with our nets mended, strong and ready.  God will guide our steps to those places where the fish are biting!  He will send us to the right places if we will follow Him and fish how and where He tells us to!  There is a possibility He will send us to fish in a place we feel might not be the best place to cast our nets.  But we have to cover every conceivable spot where the fish might be, and there we must cast our nets wide and deep.  At that moment, we face a decision.  Will we follow Jesus and fish where He says, or will we do it our way and come up empty?   There is so much to be learned from the lessons of the past.

Let me repeat something I said earlier.  “By the very nature of their work, fishermen have learned to expect disappointment for there is always famine between time of rich harvest.”   Our Twinbrook family has been dealing with disappointment in our recent history.  Yet amid the disappointment there is always a reason, many reasons, to hope.  There has been a great deal of soul searching going on and a variety of options have been brought to the table and discussed openly and honestly.  But the simple truth of it is - just standing around the tackle shop talking about fish doesn’t put any fish in the boat.  There is that old saying.  It’s time to fish or cut bait.  Friends, it is time to go  fishin’!  Our patience and our determination will eventually overcome any disappointments in the past.  Our nets will soon be full and we will be amazed and give thanks.

H Street, 11:45 P.M.

H STREET, 11:45 P.M.

I sit here alone in an alcohol haze,
the evening quickly succumbing
to those final minutes before midnight.

I listen as the night’s stragglers retreat
to darkened corners, leaning together
and speaking in shadow whispers.

I watch the barmaid move as if floating
across the floor. Her face looks tired
as she ferries beers to secreted tables.

I stare at the glass she sets before me,
considering the condensation on curved glass,
glistening like the sweat on her lover’s thighs.

Patrick Hart

Happy St. Patrick's Day! It seems appropriate to share the following poem which I wrote back in 1972.

I was walking through St. Dominic's Parish Cemetery just up the road from where my parents lived in Brookfield, Wisconsin, outside of Milwaukee. It was around this time of year as I recall.
The small cemetery is the final resting place for many of the Irish immigrants who settled in this area in the latter half of the 19th century. I discovered two gravestones belonging to Patrick and Mary Hart, from County Sligo, who died in 1871. Between the two monuments was a very small tree barely as high as the stones. This visit inspired the following poem.

Three years ago I revisited the cemetery for the first in over thirty years and found that the small tree had grown into a stately maple. I returned again last weekend and was happy to see that it is still there, right beside Patrick and Mary Hart. I stood there for a moment and listened to the wind.

PATRICK HART

Do you remember the wind?
Watching as it blew ships out to sea
to what awaited them beyond the horizon.
We lived in a small world, just dreams
and the visions of sailing ships.

Remember the wind in Enniscrone?
We looked out over gorse to Killada Bay.
How could such beauty exist
when so many stared outward in hunger?
A bad time - for some it ran out.
We were lucky, you and I –
those sailing ships carried us away.
Do you remember the wind?

Far from Ireland we found new lives
deep in the American heartland. We forgot
the sailing ships and the hunger,
the broken dreams of those left behind,
those who have no memory of the wind.

It now blows through the leaves of a tree
growing beside these marbles stones,
roots clutching at our dust, nourished
by the years we spent in this new land.

Listen to it rustle the leaves.
Do you remember the wind?

A Collector of Blues

I found it and I named it, being versed
in taxonomic Latin; thus became
godfather to an insect and its first
describer – and I want no other fame.
Vladimir Nabokov "On Discovering a Butterfly"

He wandered the Hamburg Trail through switchbacks,
along high ridge lines bridging islands of sky.
He crossed over the wind-swept San Pedro Basin
below the Huachucas rising high on the horizon.
He descended onto the moist and cool canyon floor,
along a stream beneath sycamore, maple, and columbine.

Later, perched up on a stool in an adobe tavern
he leaned against the bar and spread before him
the small translucent envelopes, each containing
a different species of butterfly, each a different color,
a different size and dimension. Others were tucked
into a metal Band-Aid box meticulously recorded.

He has chased his little butterflies since a young boy,
first the great white-banded black cheriomukha
in the marshlands beyond the River Oredezh,
hoping one day to capture an unknown Eupithécia,
that delicate creature blending into its environs,
the swamps deep in thick pine groves and scrub alder.
His researches took him to the Grunewald near Berlin,
to Stromovka Park in Prague, to the Bois de Boulogne,
to Le Boulou and the Ariège-Saurat in the south of France.
There he found a new species of lycaenids above Moulinet,
where the cold winds blow at the foot of the Pyrenees.
He explored the English moor country and the Finger Lakes,
and later the high Churicahua Desert above Portal.

One morning armed with a tarlatan bag he netted
a brown and gray-stippled wood-satyr as it skittered
over the banks of a spring-fed stream running
through Ramsey Canyon’s hushed solitude. Quickly
stepping over a succulent carpet of yucca and agave,
with a deft twist of the wrist and the wide sweep
of a gauzy muslin netbag he captured his enigmatic prey.
A brief agonizing moment and the cyllópsis pyracmon
was dispatched with an expert pinch of its humming thorax.
Now it rests in its glazed casing among the many scattered
on a stained wooden bar table. Some of them were similar
to satyrids found farther north, in the Wasatch canyons,
but this one was new; he had never seen one of these before.
Later that evening, in a quiet cottage beyond the canyon;
each relaxed specimen was removed from its small envelope,
each mounted on the setting board in a supine attitude
to display its delicate undersides for careful inspection, .
only its sculptured sex revealing its genus and species.

These discoveries would speak loudly to him in later life,
while climbing among the old vineyards above Montreux.
As in childhood during expeditions beyond Vyra, the Oredezh,
his remaining years were spent in search of soft-winged blues,
before his own life was extinguished by unforgiving fingers
and he joined his little butterflies pinned in sleep under glass.

Pumpkin Tattoo

Here is my most recent poem, written in the waning days of our summer sojourn in Maine.
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PUMPKIN TATTOO

In the portraits of that house, the windows
are eyes or pieces of the soul almost.
Andrew Wyeth

I am feeling autumnal.

Traveling those Pennsylvania back roads
a dozen times or more I wandered over
the Brandywine’s tranquil oxbows,
looking high and low for the Hill Girt Farm,
thinking that October’s flaming cedars
would lead me to that elusive pumpkin patch.
You told me where to go, when to turn
and where. But where was it? I was lost.

It was far easier to find this old house
among Cushing’s saltwater farms,
here on the foggy margin on Hathorn Point.
We stare deep into the St. George River,
studying the subtleties of the blue distant sea,
the smoky approaches of a sou’wester.
It helps having you here this time around, you
who know all the stories of his time here.
You called him Old Bones, he wanted you to,
and you recall him in his younger days when
he would wander these dry, dusty upstairs rooms.
We look through twelve-paned window at the field
where he watched Christina slowly crab-walk
from the small graveyard down on the point, here
to this weather-worn house encased in clapboard,
grown winter gray-scarred and summer burnished.
There, on the point, her bones now find final rest
in hard-scrabble soil through the seasons of forty years.
The day before they buried her he returned here
in January darkness, wandering these empty rooms,
trying hard to ignore the clatter of the jackhammer
opening her frozen grave, perhaps pondering that day
when frost would heave his own bones next to hers.

And now I watch you wandering through the old
and desiccated house, past the long cold Glenwood
stove, beyond the blue door scratched and rub by age,
I see the pumpkin tattoo etched above your tail bone,
the one you wanted since you were a young girl
wandering those Pennsylvania byways in autumn,
reminding me of my own search for Hill Girt Farm,
that pumpkin patch with the haunting faces carved
in stacked jack-o-lanterns, their bright orange slitted
eyes and tilted smiles glowing as if beacons from
beyond that grave down on the point, the old man’s
bones home to rest though his soul still wanders here.
In these darkening upstairs rooms we sit quietly,
together we watch the gentle sea breeze trifle
with the same moldering muslin through which he watched
her drag herself through the summer timothy, with each
hint of wind the dust of eternity settling over us.

Consent of the Governed

We are spending our summer in a small town in Maine. We have been coming here each summer for almost a quarter of a century, yet only now am I beginning to appreciate its wonderful history. In 1736, a group of citizens of Gloucester, Massachusetts petitioned the colonial governor to settle land near the coast in the Province of Maine (it would not become a state until 1822). The petition was granted the following year, and in 1739 a group of settlers cut a road from Yarmouth, on Casco Bay, through the intervale to the headwaters of the Royal River at what is now Sabbathday Lake. A blockhouse fortification and palisades were erected on high ground in 1753-1754 during the French and Indian War. The town of New Gloucester was eventually incorporated in 1774 at a time when the thirteen American colonies were organizing to express dissatisfaction with their treatment by the British crown. Upon incorporation the good people of New Gloucester made it known that it would gladly contribute to the common defense of the united colonies in support of full independence.

So today I went to the town meeting house, dating from circa 1772, where members of the local historical society gathered for a reading of the Declaration of Independence. This commemorates the 235th anniversary of the ratification and announcement of that most eloquent of documents which gave birth to the American republic. Strangely I cannot recall the last time I read it, or heard it read, and I had forgotten how long it is. Sitting there and listening to those words, and contemplating their full meaning and intent, I realized, perhaps for the first time, that there is more to the 4th of July than fireworks, family picnics, and a day off from work. The Declaration of Independence is America in a nutshell. It expresses what we as Americans feel we deserve and why. I had forgotten this until I sat there this morning and listened to what it sounds like when we as a people stand up for what we believe in. I think a lot of us have forgotten what wonderful and beautiful music this can be.

OMG

A BBC commentator based in Washington, DC recently made a farewell visit to some of his favorite haunts in that city before being posted back to the UK. They are all places I know well as a result of living and working in and around our nation’s capital for the past 36 years. He took his trusty tape recorder with him and at one of these establishments he decided to engage some of the people around him in an informal current events quiz. If I had to give this exercise a title it would be “well-informed Brit meets uninformed Americans.” It was a sad testament to an all too common fact. Many, if not most, Americans have very little knowledge (or interest) in the world around them. No, that’s too kind. They have little regard for their immediate surroundings. Asked who George Washington was (and I will remind you he lives and works in the city named in his honor), one individual knew that it was the guy who chopped down a cherry tree. He had no idea that he was the first President of the United States.

Several were asked, if President Obama were to die, who would take his place. One thought it would be his wife, Michelle. Maybe she could do a better job, but still, that is not the correct answer. Another thought that Congress would have to go into a special session to decide who would be most qualified for the job (a thought that is almost scarier than the answer is stupid). Only one individual knew the answer . . . the Vice President. I breathed a sigh of relief until this same person did not know who the VP is. OMG!

When asked who would be next in line should both the president and the vice president (whoever he is) be incapacitated the answers were just as varied. Thanks to Al Haig, a number of individuals thought the Secretary of State is number three in the order of succession. Close, but no cigar. Thankfully, more people did know that the correct response is the Speaker of the House. Unfortunately, only a few knew this person’s name. “Starts with a ‘B’ I think,” one chimed in. “Nancy somebody?” came another response. Another came close. “Boner, right? Isn’t that how you say it?” When the inquiring Brit provided the correct pronunciation, the person added “I don’t know, I think it’s pronounced ‘Boner.’ It sounds better.” Where I might agree with that, it is still just a little distressing to consider that this person, like Mr. Boehner, might be making important decisions that affect my life.

Finally, folks were asked to identify the president of France. Most people just gave an embarrassed giggle and admitted they did not know. Another at least knew that Nicholas Sarkossy is married to a beautiful model. Yet another answered, “Who cares about the French?” I’m betting it was the same dunce who did not know who George Washington was. I’ll say it again . . . OMG!

So why is it that so many Americans are ignorant of the world around them? That is putting it mildly. Perhaps they have become so independent and self-possessed that they seem to have knowledge only of their immediate surroundings; if they can’t see, touch, smell or taste it, why do they need to know about it? Nathan Willis, upon encountering his fellow Americans in Paris during the first half of the 19th century, wrote of their “inquisitive, sensitive, communicative expression which is the index to our national character.” We read and hear how little interest or concern our country’s leaders have for the current state of our education system. Perhaps we are seeing the payoff right here. Americans are taught to believe that our’s is great country, one that others look to as a model. Then how is it that so few of our citizens have any idea how this country really works? What has made us great? I sometimes feel that our leaders see this Ignorance as bliss, or so the old saw goes. Don’t believe it. If we don’t know, it’s our own fault. We should be asking and answering the hard question and not excusing ignorance with a guilty giggle.

After listening to the BBC commentator sign off there was a news story on how both China and India will pass the United States as the world’s top economies by 2030. Did you ever stop to wonder how this might be possible? This goes against everything we were taught to believe about our country and ourselves. Perhaps all you need to do is visit one of your favorite haunts and ask those around you if they know who George Washington is. You might be surprised by the answers you get. Then again, maybe not.

Members Only

Frankly I am getting tired of all the wiener jokes and double entendres in the news lately. It seems like everyone is fixated on male genitalia these days. At the moment, I guess we can point the finger (or whatever) at Anthony Weiner, the now disgraced former member of the House of Representatives from New York, who thought it might be clever to post explicit photographs of Big Jim and the twins on his Twitter account. And what is it about some New York politicians? Who can forget Eliot Spitzer, the disgraced former governor whose own private parts and an affair with a big city grisette got him into hot water. At the same time it launched him into a new career as a CNN commentator which allowed him to offer his own cogent thoughts on Mr. Weiner’s wandering wiener. Does anyone else see the irony here?

And doesn’t the different spelling of the current culprit’s name and the phallic euphemism associated with it bother anyone else? They should not be pronounced the same, yet they are. Following rules of proper German pronunciation, “ei” = “ī” and “ie” = “ē” So not only does Mr. Weiner have a problem keeping his in his pants, he has been mispronouncing his last name for his entire life. Geez!

And what about this “wiener” expression? Do people still use that word today for anything other than a hot dog served at a picnic or the ballpark? I don’t think so. I know my buddies and I used it as kids in the Midwest, and novelist and poet Jim Harrison, who is from Michigan, still uses it occasionally in his writings. But really, I thought that one went out with “winky” and “peter.” I can think of so many more imaginative euphemisms used today, none of which, for the sake of decorum, I will share here. Let me leave this to your imagination, something the media is having trouble with these days.

This is not to say that there have not been a few entertaining items born of this rather sad episode. A columnist in one of our local papers here in Maine addressed the Weiner affair under the title “A Few Wieners short of a BBQ.” I thought that was pretty clever and worth a few chuckles. Probably the best to date, however, is Joel Stein’s “America’s Next Top Weiner,” his very humorous yet bawdy Time magazine exploration of the male’s apparent need to show his penis to everyone based on the results of Stein’s own attempt to follow in Mr. Weiner’s footsteps. He asks if we are “experiencing some kind of sexualized renaissance” or is this just another “pathetic manifestation of the male ego.” Perhaps it is a little of both? Is it the male who is really suffering from penis envy these days?

All in all, given the myriad problems we are facing, I just don’t get all the fuss and fury about a guy who is so cocksure the world would be a better place once it knew how endowed he is. Is this really news? Perhaps Mr. Weiner should have taken a lesson from Gustave Flaubert, the French writer who faced his own demons when it came to keeping it under wraps. In the autumn of 1850, while visiting Cairo, Jerusalem and Beirut, Flaubert availed himself of their many bordellos. Upon his eventual arrival in Istanbul he discovered he was suffering from a raging case of syphilis. He wrote of his “problème” in his journal, including meticulous descriptions of his penis as the disease advanced. When he arrived at a new (for him) brothel in Istanbul, a prostitute asked him to display his compromised phallus in order to prove he was not sick. Flaubert refused. “I acted the monsieur,” he wrote to a friend, “and jumped down from the bed, saying loudly that she was insulting me, that such behavior was revolting to a gentleman.” Now that is class, no? Mr. Weiner, while interested in the role his penis plays in current affairs, could have been just a little more circumspect. It just goes to show you that Mr. Weiner doesn’t know dick.

It's Googleable

This short essay was written for my other blogspot - Looking Toward Portugal - and was posted today. After doing so, I decided I would share it here, as well.
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What a wonderful new word . . . something capable of being found during a Google search, probably the most comprehensive and used Internet search engine. I can think of only very rare occurrences when I have typed in search terms and not come up with a “ghit,” or Google hit, on something even remotely connected to my intended search. The transitive verb “to google” has been used almost since the inception of this search engine and it has become a part of our everyday speech. The American Dialect Society, founded in 1889, called it the “most useful word” in North American English in 2002. In fact it has become synonymous with web searches regardless of which search engine is being used. “Google” has also been incorporated in other phrases having to do with the use of the search engine, such as the frequently used “Google Bomb,” “Googlewashing,” or “Google bowling,” all of which have to do with the intentional high ranking of websites turned up during a Google search. I find this all quite fascinating.

But I must confess that I have not heard the adjective “googleable” used before this weekend, although I guess it makes sense. If you can have a verb, why not an adjective? So I looked into it and sure enough there are folks out there that use this term regularly. There is also the derivative noun “googleability” which is the ease with which information about a person or thing can be found on an Internet search engine (not just through Google).

How did I find this information? By running a Google search of course. Doing so I found literally dozens of googleable words using “google” as a base. Here are a few of my favorites: “Googleheimer’s” - signing on to Google and then forgetting what you were going to google; “googlescrewed” - to look up directions on Google Maps and get lost when you follow them; “googlebator” - someone who googles their own name; and “googlechondria” - looking up your physical symptoms on Google. There are also some Google-based afflictions: “Googlerrhea” - looking up the definition of “Google,”and “Googler’s Remorse” - when you look up something and the search terms gives you results that you neither requested nor want. I will leave that one to your own imagination.

So I really opened up a Pandora’s box, and afraid of coming down with my own version of Googler’s Remorse, I decided to stop while I was ahead. I wonder what search terms folks will have to use for this blog posting to come up? What is its inherent googleability? Do I even want it to be googleable? It’s up to you. Whenever the “googletunity” strikes you.

A Tip of the Hat to Tomas Tranströmer

Earlier this month British bookmakers offered Tomas Tranströmer, perhaps Sweden’s most noted poet, as a 5/1 favorite to win this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature, placing him ahead of three other poets ranked at 8/1 - Adam Zagajewski of Poland, South Korea’s Ko Un and Syria’s Adonis - as well as the Paraguayan playwright Nestor Amarilla. Tranströmer, born in Stockholm in 1931 has, in addition to his career as a noted poet, critic and translator, worked as a psychologist providing vocational guidance to Sweden’s incarcerated juvenile offenders. This year is not the first time that he has been on the bookies’ shortlist for this prestigious honor. I welcomed this news but suspected that Tranströmer would not win since last year’s laureate was a European - the Romanian-born German novelist, poet and essayist, Herta Müller. One hopes that geopolitics would not influence the judges, but it does. A Hispanic writer had not won since 1998, when José Saramago, the Portuguese novelist and playwright who passed away in June, took home the Nobel laurels. But when you think about it, no Swede - no Scandinavian - has won the Nobel Prize in Literature since 1974 when Harry Martinson and Eyvind Johnson, both members of the Swedish Academy, shared the prize. So I was not surprised when the Academy anointed Peru’s Mario Vargas Llosa as this year’s winner. He was not the bookmakers choice - his chances were listed as 45/1 - but there can be little argument that Llosa is deserving of the honor.

I will admit that I was pulling for Tranströmer. I have been reading his poetry since I was first introduced to it in English translation almost 40 years ago. Robert Bly, his longtime friend and translator, writing in the introduction to his 1980 translation of Tranströmer’s Sanningsbarriären [Truth Barriers (1978)], has perhaps captured the essence of Tranströmer’s importance and appeal to readers. His “poems are a luminous example of the ability of poetry that inhabits one culture to travel to another culture and arrive.” I felt an immediate connection to his poems when I first heard him read in the spring of 1974 when I was attending graduate school at the University of Arizona, in Tucson.

I was working on a Master’s degree in German Literature at the time and had been involved with the University’s Ruth Stephan’s Poetry Center since my arrival in Tucson. I was especially drawn to its venerable reading series and the small poetry library located in a house donated by Ms. Stephan (a second donated residence, a small cottage, housed the noted poets visiting the Center). Tranströmer came to Tucson in late February 1974 to give a campus reading. He was also interviewed for the new student literary magazine, Window Rock, which also reprinted a couple of his more recent poems. I was there that evening sitting in the front row. Admittedly, I knew very little about the poet and his work when he took to the stage. He came before us as a relatively new presence and voice. Although he rose to prominence as a promising new voice in his native Sweden in 1954 with the publication of 17 dikter [17 Poems], at the age of 23, it was not until the early 1970s, with the publication of Robert Bly’s translation of 20 Poems (1970), and May Swenson’s translations in Windows and Stones: Selected Poems of Tomas Tranströmer (1972), that English-speaking readers were first introduced to the work of this fine Swedish poet. I read some of these translations prior to that evening, especially after hearing Swenson read in Tucson the previous month when she offered effusive praise for Tranströmer’s poetry. I cannot say that I fully understood them, but I was nevertheless intrigued as I felt he was a new and important poetic voice. There was an inborn authority underlying ever word, every phrase.

Now the evening star burns through cloud.
Trees, fences and houses grow, grow larger
with the dark’s soundless, steepening fall.
And under the star is outlined clear and clearer
the other, secret landscape that lives
the life of contour on night’s X-ray plate.
A shadow draws its sled between the houses,
They wait.
[“Epilogue,” from 17 dikter, translated by May Swenson]

What I recall from the poems read that evening, and what I have taken from all of his poetry I have read since, is Tranströmer’s very strong sense of place, even when it tends toward the surrealistic at times - Sweden, of course (he has continued to reside in Västerås near Stockholm), but more particularly the islands of Södermalm and Runmarö and the east-central coastal archipelago of his ancestors where Tranströmer spent the summers during his youth. The audience was enwrapped from start to finish and I left that evening a convert.

Tranströmer’s long poem Östersjöar was published in the autumn of 1974, and Samuel Charters acclaimed English translation Baltics was brought out by the Berkeley publisher Oyez in 1975. I read it as soon as I could lay my hands on a copy (which, I recall, was not very easy). It provided entree into an entirely new understanding of Tranströmer’s poetics and use of metaphor, and I agree with the poet Bill Coyle who later wrote that this collection “ is in some ways the best place for a new reader of Tranströmer to start; it develops more slowly than his shorter pieces, and his metaphors, though as striking here as elsewhere, reveal themselves more gradually.” Again, the strong sense of place - the Stockholm archipelago, and the Baltic Sea.

In the middle of the forest the Baltic also sighs, deep in the
forest you’re out on the open sea.
[Baltics, II]

“The Baltic is Tranströmer’s archetypal environment,” Coyle writes, “with its mixture of sea and islands, of sweet and salt water and, at least during the Cold War, of democracies and dictatorships.” The Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia had been under Soviet domination since the end of World War II, and this long poem reflects the geopolitical realities of the Baltic region and their impact on the poet and his work.

Now, a hundred years later. The waves come in from no man’s
water
and break against the stone.
[Baltics, III]

Transtömer returned to Tucson in November 1975 for a reading at which he presented Baltics in its entirety. I had an opportunity to speak with the poet at some length afterwards and he graciously inscribed my copy of the Charters translation of Baltics as well as my copy (one of 600) of the inaugural 1974 number of Window Rock with it’s interview of the poet and the reprints of two of his poems. I went home that evening with a deeper admiration for the poet and his work, but also a better understanding of the plight of these small nations so close to the poet’s native Baltic archipelago yet suffering under the oppressive Soviet thumb.

And now: the stretch of open water, without doors, the open
boundaries
that grow broader and broader
the farther you stretch out.
[. . . ]
But it’s a long way to Liepaja.
[Baltics, IV]

Baltics came up a few years later, in the autumn of 1979, when I had an opportunity to discuss Tranströmer’s poetry and the plight of the Baltic states with the noted Estonian poet Ivar Ivask (1927-1992) and the Lithuanian historian Vitas S. Vardys (1924-1993) . We shared dinner at the faculty club at the University of Oklahoma, in Norman, Oklahoma, and my long conversation with Ivask, who was then the editor-in-chief of World Literature Today and the founder of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature which Tranströmer would win in 1990, opened my eyes to other approaches to the poem, including those by Baltic writers in exile.

Tranströmer’s English speaking audience has continued to grow as has his influence on other poets. His work in translation appeared in Robert Bly’s Friends, You Drank Some Darkness: Three Swedish Poets: - Harry Martinson, Gunnar Ekelöf, Tomas Tranströmer (1975). Bly’s translation of Sanningsbarriären [Truth Barriers, 1978] appeared in 1980, and an entire issue of Michael Cuddihy’s fine journal, Ironwood 13, was devoted to Tranströmer in 1979 (published in Tucson, by the way). Tranströmer’s Selected Poems, containing the work of several of his noted translators and edited by Robert Haas, was published in 1987, and New Collected Poems, translated by Robert Fulton, appeared in 1997. This volume was greatly expanded in 2006 under the title The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems which represents the first time all of Tranströmer’s poems to date have been available in one volume in English.

I have been lucky to hear Tranströmer read two other times. First, at an evening reading in Stockholm, in the spring of 1985. I had a free evening in the city and it was a treat to hear selections of Östersjöar and other poems read in the original Swedish. Tranströmer was treated like a rock star yet he remained the same humble man I first encountered a decade earlier in Tucson. The last time was here in Washington, DC, when Tranströmer read at the Folger Library, in April 1986. The poet and his poetry had reached a new and recognizable maturity, yet his inner voice, and the voice by which he shared his poems in Stockholm and Washington, were still recognizable from that first time I heard him read in Tucson in 1974. Both, etched by new experiences, remained, spare, clear, and quiet - the benchmarks of his poetry through the years.

Thankfully, Tranströmer at age 79 remains a major poetic voice in the world. Sadly, however, his own voice has been largely silenced by a stroke he suffered in 1990, an event foretold years earlier toward the end of Baltics.

Something wants to be said, but the words don’t agree.
Something that can’t be said,
aphasia
there aren’t any words but maybe a style . . .
[. . .]
Then comes the stroke: right side paralysis and aphasia, can only
grasp short phrases, says wrong words
Can, as a result of this, not be touched by advancement or blame.
But the music’s still there, he still composes in his own style,
he becomes a medical sensation for the time he has left to live.
[Baltics, V]

Despite the cruel silence imposed upon him, Tomas Tranströmer continues to practice his craft and sharing it with the world. We are certainly thankful for his insights and his ability to help us recognize and transcend the boundaries that encompass us all.

Highway 61

Bruce Springsteen first heard Highway 61 Revisited, Bob Dylan’s seminal 1965 album, when he was a 16 year old kid growing up in Freehold, New Jersey and playing guitar with his first band, the Castiles. He recently told Ed Norton that this recording awakened something very basic in him. “I had the first indication of what my country felt like. It was exhilarating.” A folkie using little instrumentation in his first five albums, Dylan, who “went electric” in public at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, debuted a Rock and Roll sound on this new album. “Dylan had the courage,” Springsteen says, “to go places others didn’t.” And Springsteen has been doing this his entire career, from the time Mike Appel, his early manager, hyped Bruce as “the new Dylan” in the early 1970s, through his early groundbreaking albums, including his own seminal Darkness on the Edge of Town deeply reminiscent of Dylan, through his acoustic turn with Nebraska and his more recent tribute to Pete Seeger and American folk music. Springsteen has always done his music his way, and his true fans have been more than happy to follow his journey of self-discovery.

Bruce turns 61 today. He has come a long way from that skinny teenage kid playing guitar in a Jersey garage band . . . Heading down his own Highway 61 and looking back to that record that changed it all for him. I am reminded of a line from “No Surrender” - “We learned more from a three minute record, than we ever learned in school.” Perhaps this is true. Happy birthday Boss! “When they built you, brother, they broke the mold.”

A Stroll Down Memory Lane

It appears my hiatus lasted a little longer than expected. But I am back now.
__________

I have returned to the McKeldin Library, my old stomping grounds on the campus of the University of Maryland at College Park. I spent a lot of time there between 1976 and 1984 when I was enrolled as a graduate student and completing my doctorate in Germanic Studies. Since then I have had little opportunity or reason to return to the campus and I had forgotten how many strong and pleasant memories I have of this place where I spent so much time during my graduate studies.

Since my retirement a few months ago, I have renewed my membership in the alumni association which offers me inter alia borrowing privileges at all of the campus libraries (there are eight at last count). I am taking full advantage of this by re-familiarizing myself with the stacks and the layout of this old book barn and using the peace and quiet it affords to work on a number of new projects with all the materials I need close at hand. Most recently I was preparing a paper which I delivered over the summer at the biennial meeting of the Nathaniel Hawthorne Society, in Concord, Massachusetts. . So it was just me and Mr. Hawthorne in a quiet corner.

The place has changed quite a bit since I last worked there. Gone are the banks of wooden cabinets housing the thousands upon thousands of dog-eared bibliographic data cards needed to locate books and other publications in the stacks. They have been replaced with computers which allow for a different type of fingertip search.

As I searched for the library’s holdings on Hawthorne, I was overcome by curiosity (and not a small measure of hubris) as I typed my own name into the computer catalogue’s search box. And there it was - an entry for my doctoral dissertation completed back in November 1984. A few minutes later I made my way back into the stacks where I located that 344-page monstrosity, now hard bound in two volumes, one of the signed copies I had to submit to the Graduate School faculty as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Ph.D. degree. I could not help myself. I carried the volumes back to my work table in the reading room and spent the next hour or so perusing the product of long days and nights spent in this library those many, many years ago.

The title is not something that rolls right off the tongue, but typical for a dissertation, I guess - Spatial Behavioral Patterns in Selected Short Prose of the German Democratic Republic [East] and the Federal Republic of Germany [West] as Evidence of Developing Cultural Diversification. Despite its long-winded title, the study itself is a rather straight forward (remarkable for me) examination of fictional literature as a means of tracking and evaluating how Germans in the two postwar German states handled space differently and how these modalities served as benchmarks to measure the development of two distinct German cultures over the course of almost four decades. The conclusions drawn by my study demonstrated (at least my examination committee believed I was successful in my approach) how and why literary historians and critics must look at the sociological and anthropological sub-texts of literary works in order to properly understand their meaning and importance within the cultures that produced them. Pretty heady stuff, to be sure.

There are two (at least) recurring nightmares that every graduate student experiences - 1) that the only copy of a thesis or dissertation is lost or stolen and one must go back to the beginning and start over; or 2) one’s advisor dies or disappears under mysterious circumstances and one is left alone without any clear guidance as to how to carry on. I was lucky to avoid both of these as well as a third somewhat unique to my circumstances. Almost five years to the day after I successfully defended my dissertation the Berlin Wall, much to almost everyone’s surprise, fell and a year later the two German states reunified. I still shudder to think what would have happened had I been called to defend my conclusions - that the two postwar German states were gradually, but steadily, giving rise to two distinct German cultures - faced with the reality of one of the more momentous and unexpected events of the late 20th Century. I am still confident, as I was then, that my ultimate conclusions are sound, and despite the political and economic reunification of Germany, there are still two distinct “cultures,” in the sociological and anthropological meaning of that word, in evidence in the reunified Federal Republic of Germany. That said, I am glad I was not put to the unnecessary test of my wits and my wherewithal.

So it was a treat, to say the least, to discover these bound volumes of this hard fought study just a short distance from where many of the outlines and early drafts took shape. They awaken many fond, old memories. But past is past, and my visits to McKeldin are now focused on new projects.

I Am On Hiatus Until Mid-March

I have just retired after almost 32 years on the job and, frankly, my attention is focused elsewhere - on wrapping up a few remaining projects, packing up my office (no small task I am discovering much to my dismay), and preparing for the whatever is coming next. To say I am distracted is putting it mildly. I will be back very soon so please stay tuned!

Now There Are Fewer Books . . . .

Back on December 19, in an earlier posting entitled "Books, Books, Books," I referred to Paulo Coehlo’s essay "Dust in the Wind" in which he defends his decision to reduce his personal library to around 400 of his favorite and most useful books, giving the remainder to a public library where they might be enjoyed and used by others. I also shared my own compulsion to possess books which has led to crammed bookcases and shelves along with piles scattered here and there at home and in my office at work. My wife, confronting the latter, was increasingly chagrined - what would I do with all of these books once I decided to retire? Perhaps Coehlo had come up with a feasible solution when that time came.

Today the hens have come home to roost. Just over a week ago I announced my retirement after almost 32 years at the same job ( http://lookingtowardportugal.blogspot.com/2010/01/its-time-to-bone-duck.html). And today my wife and I braved a winter storm and drove into downtown DC to begin packing up my office, including three decades of accumulated books. There were books that had sentimental value, and others I knew I would need at some point in the future. Like Coehlo, I would want to keep these. We crated up almost two dozen boxes which we brought home. Several boxes of books moved from my office to the section’s library where my colleagues will continue to use them. Finally, we packed up more boxes which I loaded into our car and then navigated a snow-packed Pennsylvania Avenue to a small bookstore on Capitol Hill. While the owner unpacked each box for inspection, his wife invited me into an adjoining room where she offered me a piping hot cup of coffee and I told her how I had come to accumulate so many books. They both understood how difficult it was for me to part with them. They were generous and ended up buying about half of what I brought in. The rest I donated to the store for its "books cheap" program to benefit the local neighborhood association . . . the idea being to find them a good home. Sounded good to me; Coehlo would have been proud. I made my way back through the snow to my office with a few bucks in my pocket, enough to buy a nice dinner for us when we finished our packing at the end of the day.

We are home now. The floor to ceiling bookcases in my office are essentially empty now. The boxes of books we brought with us are squeezed into the basement wherever there was space. The office library is a little richer, and a small bookstore up on Capitol Hill has new volumes for perusal. I have fewer books to deal with, but all of the books still exist; they are just in different places than they were when the day began.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year !!!

Wishing everyone a festive holiday season and all the best in the coming new year. May 2010 be a good year for everyone.

Books, Books, Books

The December issue of Playboy includes "Dust in the Wind," an interesting essay by Brazilian author and journalist Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist, The Pilgrimage, The Winner Stands Alone). For many years Coelho has shown an intensive interest in the Internet and its ability to increase access to literature and other media. Back in August 2008 he wrote in his blog that " books are trendier than ever - people are reading again, and writing again and why? Internet." A couple months later he delivered a keynote address, "The Internet’s Impact on Culture," at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

The Playboy essay addresses the question why Coelho "is shelving his book collection and going viral." He freely admits that he no longer has many books; years ago he decided to keep only 400 books (give or take a few) in his personal library - books he found himself rereading along with a few that have sentimental value - while giving the rest of them to a public library where they might be enjoyed by others. "Why should I keep all these books at home? To show friends I am cultured? To decorate the walls?" When I look at my offices at home and at work, and the walls of our bedroom and den, I begin to think that Coelho has a good point. He originally kept all of his books, thinking that one day he would need to consult them. But considering that the Internet is one of the most comprehensive reference libraries in the world, he decided to share his books with others . . . "trying to obtain a maximum quality with a minimum amount of things." In this case, books. He still buys books, but once he finishes them, he allows them to travel "like the mind of the author traveled as he wrote it." It is his belief that "a book has a course of its own and should not be condemned to remain immobilized on a shelf." But don’t get him wrong. Coelho still believes in personal libraries - "The first contact children have with books is usually through curiosity about those bound volumes with figures and letters." What could be more important than that?

I must confess that I love books. I always have and I will until the day I shed these mortal shackles. It is difficult for me to imagine ever giving them up once I have read them and found them to be the sum of all that I hold dear to my heart. And Coelho is correct about the importance of making books available to children as early as possible. My son has been around books all of his life and to this day he goes nowhere without one stuck in his pocket or satchel. We taught him well! But now I am beginning to understand why Coelho has decided to simplify his life. There comes a time when one must come to terms with a lifetime of buying and saving books.

There are boxes of books packed up in our basement. Most of them date back to college and graduate school, and although I have no place to display them now, I have held fast to the dream that one day that space will materialize. Our den and bedroom have floor to ceiling book cases packed tight with our favorite books. Yet there is still an overflow of books stacked up next to each side of our bed and the couch in the den ("current reading"). And then there is my office at work where more floor to ceiling bookcases cover two entire walls. Every time my wife visits my office she looks at them and shakes her head and asks where I intend to put them when I retire. Good question! My response is quick and to the point. I haven’t got the faintest idea. On top of all this, new books appear almost daily as if out of thin air. Another one for this pile or that. I cannot see myself ever not buying a new book. But Coelho may have found an equitable solution to this dilemma. Perhaps it is time to let some of them travel and seek their own course.

I am not sure the Internet is what Kant referred to as the "Ding an sich;" I still prefer to pick up a book when I am doing research. But I definitely like the idea of sharing books with others. And, to be honest, I just don’t have anywhere else to put them. So I am going to have to start making some of the hard decisions I have been putting off until another time. That time has finally arrived. I will keep you posted on the success or failure of my efforts. Wish me luck!

Welcome to My New Blospot Series of Literary Commentary

Over the coming weeks and months I will be posting occasional literary commentary on a host of topics that strike my fancy. I hope you will share your thoughts and comments in what I am sure will become a fascinating running conversation. I hope you will also take an opportunity to check out my other blogspot series, Looking Toward Portugal: Steven B. Rogers' Random Thoughts From the Edge of America, at http://www.lookingtowardportugal.blogspot.com/.