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Being Joseph Ceravolo: Thoughts about the Poem "Great Plains" (from Collected Poems)

The other morning my wife, the poet Elaine Equi, read me "Great Plains" from the newly published Collected Poems of Joseph Ceravolo:

Great Plains

What, no one here?  No one
around here?  No buffalo?
Like sleeping on the toilet bowl...
Drifting toward love...

The dogs are out this morning
jumping on top of each other
Is there a real release with them?

But, no one here.
There's no buffalo, only dogs,
this morning, where dawn
and a wild wild bird fly away.

She wanted to know my thoughts about this poem, and immediately I offered my surface impressions.

Recalling cold mornings in Chicago where I grew up -- and in fact remembering dogs, if not screwing, at least growling at each other in the icy street -- I placed the poem in winter (although there's nothing in it to indicate a season).  Perhaps the white of the toilet bowl made me think of snow (and the fact that it was cold outside).

I also knew that Ceravolo lived in New Jersey, but was part of the New York poetry scene from the 60s through the 80s.  So I sensed a touch of loneliness in it, as if Ceravolo, comparing NYC to Jersey, felt it to be rather desolate, with a touch a natural wildness to it.

I injected "wildness" into my reading because of the title and the mention of buffalo, but also because of something my Jersey friends have told me about the state: that just 100 miles outside NYC, you can still see bears and coyote (though they may have been pulling my Midwestern leg).

But what interests me, in retrospect, about this unremarkable 30 second interpretation was the paradoxical feeling state that came with it.  Even though my reading of the poem was really about me -- assembled more from my personal memories and associations than anything Ceravolo had in mind -- I identified with him. 

In fact, I felt I was actually inside his mind -- looking out through his eyes, seeing what he saw on that morning.  And therein laid the enjoyment I derived from this poem: the experience of seeing things from the perspective of a poet I admired.  (Perhaps a bit of his magic would rub off on me...)

And as I mentioned, all this happened in less than half a minute; my imagined projection into the poet's mind was automatic, instinctual -- I could not not do this.

This reaction brought to mind two books I've been reading that offer interpretations of literature informed by cognitive psychology.  The first (covered in a previous post) is by Lisa Zunshine, titled Getting Inside Your Head.  Zunshine argues that one of the pleasures literature offers is precisely this feeling that we're really seeing into the minds of others -- observing people's thoughts with a clarity we aren't granted in everyday life.

The second, a book about Shakespeare's Sonnets by Brian Boyd, connects this impulse to what he sees as the raison d'etre of the poetic lyric.  As a form, lyric poetry makes us feel not only that we're reading a mind, but doing so in a particularly intimate way.  It does this in part because, unlike other genres, it is not hampered by the necessity of telling a story.  Stripped of narrative conventions, lyric poems seem to reveal bare thought itself.

Both of these writers argue that our desire to read minds is an evolved trait.  As social and political animals, our survival depends upon accurately guessing the intentions of others.  So when we're offered an insider's view, it delights us.

Being John Malkovich

The drive to dissolve the barrier between our mind and another's can, of course, get rather obsessive, as the many parodies of fan culture suggest.

Coincidentally, as I was thinking about my experience of this poem, the now classic flick Being John Malkovich aired again on cable.

In it, you may recall, a character discovers a secret portal that allows him to get inside the mind of the actor and experience life as he does.  Soon, like a good entrepreneur, he merchandises the portal -- selling tickets to trips inside the Malkovich mindscape.

But even this invasion of privacy isn't enough.  Eventually, like a malevolent spirit, he takes over not only the mind, but the life of Malkovich, making him abandon his acting career and become a puppeteer.  All of which I take as an allegory of how in popular culture, keeping fans happy can pressure a celebrity to begin living out their projections.

Of course, poets today don't get famous enough to have to worry about such problems; we can fall into and out of identification with our favorite writers without harming anyone.

When it comes to mind reading, the contemporary lyric gives all parties a free ride.  No wonder, despite periodic claims of its obsolescence, it persists!  Thoughts?
 

Reading Joe Pesci's Mind: Thoughts About Lisa Zunshine's "Getting Inside Your Head"

I've just started reading Lisa Zunshine's Getting Inside Your Head: What Cognitive Science Can Tell Us About Popular Culture, and I'm already intrigued by its central idea.

Zunshine, a literary studies scholar, states early on that "we can predict...that no cultural form will endure unless it lets us attribute mental states to somebody or something."

She bases this bold statement on findings that arise from cognitive psychology and evolutionary theory.  According to cognitive psychologists, "...to make sense of any human action, we must see it in terms of a mental state that prompted it."  She adds "psychologists have a special term for [this] evolved cognitive adaptation...They call it theory of mind, also known as folk psychology and mind reading."

Zunshine goes on to explain that we've been "mind reading" for hundreds of thousands of years.  According to evolutionary psychologists, this trait helped our ancestors "make sense of the behavior of other people in their group, which could number up to two hundred individuals."  By now, this feature of our make-up is so habitual that much of our "mind reading" is an unconscious reflex.

But this ability stops far short of telepathy.  No matter how important it is to know the intentions of others, we can't be certain of what's actually in the mind we're reading.  As Zunshine puts it elsewhere, rather than "mind reading" we might call this habit "mind groping."  This is why, I take it, our culture is so obsessed with the inner thoughts and confessions of people.

As I haven't finished reading Getting Inside Your Head yet, I'm not yet convinced that what makes cultural productions last is their appeal to this trait.  This is a pretty big claim.

But as a metaphor, "mind reading" is certainly potent.  So much so that I find myself spontaneously thinking of examples that support the author's case.

Consider, for instance, this iconic scene from Goodfellas.  Its suspense and humor seem to arise from a little "mind reading" test that Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) gives Henry Hill (Ray Liotta).  The scene begins right after Tommy tells a hilarious story and Henry compliments him for being so "funny."

 

Henry makes an assumption  about Tommy's "mind state."  He thinks Tommy enjoys telling humorous stories and getting laughs.  He also assumes their relationship is one of easy familiarity.

Tommy then pulls the rug out from underneath Henry, making him question his interpretation.  This is why the seconds of silence in this scene are so gripping.  As I watch it, I'm drawn into Hill's mind; I identify with his uncertainty about really knowing what Tommy's thinking.

The laughs that erupt once the silence is broken and we find out that Henry really could see into Tommy's mind (judging finally that Tommy is putting him on) arise from the release from anxiety (for both the characters and viewers).  And after watching that scene, I found myself thinking of many social situations where such awkward silences occurred whenever I've said something in jest and was not quite sure how others took it.

Zunshine also argues that "mind reading" is so habitual that it's activated not just by people -- but their representations.  When we see a statue, we are compelled to interpret what this piece of stone is thinking.  Or, to return to my example, there's the scene from Goodfellas where Tommy plays art critic to his mother's painting:

 

Pesci's character is quite specific in deciphering this work.  He even tells us what the guy on the boat is thinking! (See the Art, Life, TV, Etc. blog for more on this scene.)

Another example that came to me of the expression of this trait is the psychological novel -- particularly the convention of "stream of consciousness" narration.  Here's a paragraph from Joyce's Ulysses that I found in an essay on "theory of mind" by Deirdre Wilson:

"What, reduced to their simplest reciprocal from, were Bloom's thoughts about Stephen's thoughts about Bloom and Bloom's thoughts about Stephen's thoughts about Bloom's thoughts about Stephen?  He thought that he thought that he was a jew whereas he knew that he knew that he knew that he was not."

And such mental gyrations are not, of course, confined to the novel.  Literary critic Brian Boyd, for example, argues that one of the reasons why lyric poetry persists -- despite the common criticism that it is no longer influential -- is that that it "allows us the illusion of access to another's thought" unconstrained by the conventions of story telling.

Somewhere in all of this I sense a fascinating new functional definition of the arts.  But that's a topic for other posts.  In the meantime, I'm wondering if anyone would like to share their thoughts about these thoughts about thoughts?

Slogans that Do Double-Duty: Obama's "Forward" and a Few Choice Words from Trojan

Of the many postmortems of the recent Presidential campaign, one of the most fascinating I've come across is by advertising guru, Al Reis.

Reis, who writes for Ad Age, is the co-author of one of the great books about the business, Positioning: the Battle for Your Mind.  His column analyzes why Obama's slogan "Forward" won that battle, hands-down, over Romney's "Believe in America."

Reis argues that a good slogan is "two-sided."  "It says something positive about your brand and something negative about the competition."

The Obama campaign's "Forward" did this masterfully.  On the positive side, it said that the country was going in the right direction, that if we stayed on the present course the arduous task of recovery would be completed.

But it also implied a powerful criticism of the opposition.  It said that Republicans wanted to go backwards, toward old policies and old-fashioned social beliefs.

Romney's "Believe in America" only stated something nice about his agenda.  According to Reis, it wasn't "two-sided" because suggesting Obama didn't "believe in America" just wasn't credible.  As Reis puts it:

"A country that educated him at Harvard.  A country that elected him to the Senate and the Presidency.  A country that made him wealthy and world famous.

"Barack Obama doesn't believe in America?  Highly unlikely."

Forward...March!

As I thought more about the Obama slogan, I saw another advantage to it, also having to do with the fact that "Forward" can be interpreted a number of ways.

This second advantage came to me by way of an odd association.  I remembered that the newspaper Benito Mussolini wrote for, before he became a Fascist, was an Italian socialist paper named Avanti! (Forward!)

I googled this fact and found that conservative publications like the Washington Times had made a big deal out of a similar coiincidence.  The Obama slogan had deep roots in the European Marxist past, one columnist argued, because "Forward", it turns out, was once the name of many socialist newspapers.

Right wingers were correct in sensing a connection here, but wrong in suggesting that this has anything to do with a "radical agenda."  Though the Democrats did (miraculously) get health reform passed, for the most part they haven't been able to push through even classic liberal policies (such as a truly Keynesian stimulus plan or a modicum of gun control).  Besides, a booming stock market seems to go more with capitalist, rather than socialist, policies, doesn't it?

So the connection I see is more semantic than political.  That is, "Forward" has a double-meaning in another sense.  It's not only a description that suggests things are going in the right direction, it's a command that says: "let's mobilize."

But where radical papers of the past were mobilizing for militant actions (strikes, protests, etc.), the Obama campaign uses the word to motivate an action that's positively all-American: voting.

To see what I mean, take a look at the "Forward" campaign video.  After the first half minute or so, people start taking to the streets -- waving "four" fingers to underscore how the slogan also refers to "four more years."  As the video goes on, it skillfully incorporates the whole Occupy Wall Street energy -- and offers images of each of the key demos the party needed to show up on election day:

 

Watching this made me think about another weakness of "Believe in America."  Belief is usually thought of  as something internal.  "Forward" is both an inner attitude and an outer action -- a way to move your feet.

You Can't Wait to Get it On

Of course, it takes a lot more than a good slogan to win an election; it's a necessary but not sufficient condition for victory.

Nevertheless, it's a mistake to underestimate a slogan's power.  In the ad world, the way a few choice words can position a product sometimes makes all the difference.  Ries tells us that Avis lost money 13 years in a row, until they (with the help of Doyle, Dane and Bernbach) launced the statement that turned the whole business around:

"Avis is only No. 2 in rent-a-cars, so why go with us?  We try harder."

In our own time, I can think of another line that helped transform the perception of a product: Trojan Condoms' award-winning "You can't wait to get it on."  And again, the slogan has a double-meaning: the literal act of wearing it and the slang expression for what you do once it's on.

With the addition of a few stimulating product features, this award-winning line changed something that  seemed an anti-pleasure necessity to an orgasmic treat -- for both partners.  I'll end this post with one of their recent spots:

  

 

 

Shadow Patrol: Thoughts on the NYC Sandy Blackout, Plus a Poem by Elaine Equi

Like millions of other people in the NYC area,  Elaine (my wife) and I spent most of last week in the cold dark, without light or heat.  We did have cold running water, and the toilets flushed, so we were luckier than many.

We live downtown, and by  Wednesday we learned that there were pockets of power up by 26th and 6th.  So to get out of the apartment, we'd trek up each evening about twenty blocks in the dark to find a restaurant.

The journey from our apartment to the land of light was other-worldly.  It brought to mind images I've encountered over the years about the afterlife.  You might think the pitch black streets would be empty, but they were loaded with other pilgrims scrounging around like us for food, warmth and whatever household supplies they were lucky enough to discover in the rare store that was open. 

Many of us carried flashlights in our hands to guide our way; some wore them on their foreheads like miners.  Others strolled without light at all, as if they had night vision.

Walking these streets made you feel like you were part of an army of shadows -- one of the shades of the classical underworld.  And the military reference is more than just an analogy.  As we strolled back and forth to our destination, we'd periodically notice the men and women of the National Guard walking along side us in camouflage attire, gently laughing and joking into the night.

But of all the shades we encountered, I found one group particularly striking.  At one corner I saw, moving through the small circumference of my flashlight, a family -- mother, father and two young children -- holding hands.  Briefly they appeared in my view and then the four of them dissolved back into the darkness together, like a string of cutout dolls that had momentarily come to life.

I'm not sure why I found this sight so touching.  All I know is that it brought to mind other images that have stayed with me over the years.  One is the last scene from Bergman's The Seventh Seal, where the Angel of Death leads his own "family" over the hill into the next world.

Another is found in Ray Bradbury's  "There Will Come Soft Rains."  Toward the end of this short story, after the bomb has annihilated its suburban landscape, all that's left of the middle-class family the tale is based around are their ashy shades on the sidewalk (while eerily, their robotic appliances go on performing their tasks, speaking to their nonexistent masters).

All of which is to say that I was able to appreciate the poetry of the blackout, which for me had something to do with the sublime, dark beauty of a brief trip through the underworld.

And I was able to look at our nightly stroll this way, of course, because, though the aftermath of the storm left us cold, uncomfortable and somewhat anxious, we didn't feel we were in immediate danger.  Others still enduring the effects of the hurricane are no doubt too threatened by its devastation to appreciate its aesthetics.

My wife, the poet Elaine Equi, also saw beauty in the darkness.  Her response was the following poem, in which she muses about how the blackout offered relief from the constant bombardment of sales messages:

Darkness Adds Beauty

To whatever
               face or object
                               comes forward.

The nineteenth century is full
                of haloed humble beings
                                 flashing the sign of their presence.

In the twentieth century, only mystics
                like Walter Benjamin would notice
                                and lament the loss of darkness

in a world overpopulated with things.
               I remember one winter long ago
                               I saw an entire nativity scene

on the roof of a department store:
                wise men, angels, sheep
                                lit up and peering down

into our small cold car,
                reminding us to rejoice, and to buy,
                                and to rejoice in our buying.

                                                                                  -- Elaine Equi

Anyone like to share their own thoughts on, or response to, Hurricane Sandy?

There's a new poem of mine in The Nation

A poem of mine, "In the Country of No Country," appears in the November 12th issue of The Nation.  Should be out this week.  If you're a subscriber, you can also read it online. Enjoy!