A Place in Space

In reading Gary Snyder's A Place in Space, I was really moved. So many quotes stood out to me and I scrambled to furiously highlight them. Let me bring some to your attention and share my thoughts.

"This emphasis often neglected the deeply dug-in and committed thinkers and artists of the era who never got or needed much media fame; who were the culture that nourished it so much." (5)

-Snyder's talking about in discussing movements and culture, we focus on certain individuals and events when so much more happened and so many more people were involved. I often think about this. We hear so much about Kerouac and Ginsberg, but they did not exist apart from others, there was so much nourishing them that we'll never know.

"The imagination has a free and spontaneous life of its own, that it can be trusted, that what flows from a spontaneous mind is poetry." (9)

-Our minds are so bogged down by outside influence, many times our own poetry cannot surface.

"One of the things that has been dragging the soul of the world down since the end of the Bronze Age is the family system and associated notions of sexual morality that go with patrilineal descent and the descent of property in the male line." (11)

-Yes! Possession, descent, property, capitalism, patriarchy...

"As the discriminating, self-centered awareness of civilized humans has increasingly improved their material survival potential, it has correspondingly moved them further and further from a spontaneous feeling of being part of the natural world." (47)

-this correlates to the "Smokey the Bear Sutra" in which humans have moved away from our natural state into a capitalistic society which isolates us and de-humanizes us

"The unequal distribution of wealth in the word causes endless social turmoil and intensifies the destruction of nature." (60)

-again, capitalism at its worst

"The whole planet groans under the massive disregard of the precept of ahimsa by the highly organized societies and corporate economies of the world." (73)

"Meditation is the problematic art of deliberately staying open as the myriad things experience themselves." (113)

"Spending quality time with your own mind is humbling and, like travel, broadening." (115)

-in one of my previous posts, I talked about how it's hard to regain some sort of simple existence. I like Snyder's thoughts on meditation.

"In Dr. Eugene Odum's terms, what we call civilization is an early succession phase: an immature, monoculture system. What we call the primitive is a mature system with deep capacities for stability and protection built into it." 138

-we think we're so advanced, but we're not. our advancements mean nothing.

"We are all indigenous to this planet." 250

-Those in power, determine who is "native," by assuming their technologies are superior to the "natives," when in fact they could not survive without them.

Snyder's A Place in Space resonated with me on his discussions of modern society, capitalism, and the need for a simpler existence. Read it. Love it.

Imperial San Francisco : Depressing

Reading Imperial San Francisco was depressing and enlightening. My viewpoint of California and San Francisco is kind of skewed since I'm not from here. I lived in Danville, in the East Bay, when I was younger and my father worked in the city, however I unfortunately moved to Houston after only a few years in California. I have so many happy memories of going into the city with my dad when I was little and thinking it was the best place in the world and I like to keep that glorified idea in my head. This book kind of ruined it for me. I'm familiar with the idea that the history I learn is the history of white men oppressing pretty much everyone else. However, for some reason, I like to think of California as beyond that, although quite clearly it is not. Will we ever get past the history of power hungry and dominant white men? I hope so. From what I learned of San Francisco history, since I never took a California history class obviously since I didn't grow up here, was mainly focused on the Gold Rush. History textbooks like to focus on the idea of pioneering young American men going out west to start from scratch and gain a fortune of wealth, however that's not how it was. Learning of all the corruption, real estate speculation by a few, and sublimation of nature kills that image of the enterprising every man and the whole American dream thing.

Many people say what separates humans from animals is that we have culture. However, I think more importantly we have the potential to be corrupt. In the animal world, there is power struggles and domination particularly among male animals, but it is more natural, in favor of procreation and survival, not money. They know when to stop, we don't. 

In the formation of San Francisco as a burgeoning metropolitan city, the founders had absolutely no concern for the environment. "The apostles of progress equated smoke with economic health and bought country estates to escape it" (27). As long as you can't see it and aren't directly impacted by it, it doesn't matter, right? NO! Humans treat the Earth so badly as if we have a right to destroy it. "The fountain of wealth, power, and glamour, that issues from the mine and the oil well has also decisively shaped the way humans perceive and treat their planet--not as a farm, let alone as a garden, but as a mine head and battlefield" (25). Throughout the history of city building, humans have constantly disrespected our planet. What do we think is going to happen? You don't shit where you sleep, but you can pollute and trash your environment. 

Having a better understanding of the history of San Francisco, makes me see it a little more clearly and less idealistically. So long wonderful San Francisco of my youth.

Monuments as Masks Image: Pioneer Monument (SF)

Brautigan: poet or just some crazy person who's lucky to get published?

Sometimes when I read poetry, I can't help but thinking its all bullshit. I mean, who decided Brautigan's work is worthy of being published? I think of all the unpublished poets out there and can't wrap my mind around why this guy got singled out to be published. Ya, I see how he depicts San Francisco and his generation poetically, but come on, some of his stuff is just weird and kind of stupid. I'll give Trout Fishing in America credit because it has recurring themes and is kind of interesting, but The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster blows my mind that this is art. But maybe thats precisely the point of it all, to show that art doesn't have to come in one fancy form inaccessible to many. Maybe Brautigan's trying to make his work accessible and inviting to the masses, or maybe he's just kind of crazy...

In reading the material for this class in particular, I keep wondering how much influence drugs have on the poems and such. I'm pretty sure this Brautigan guy was doing more than just experimenting with drugs. So how much of what he says is coherent? Does it matter if what he says is or isn't? Should art be made in the clearest, soberest mental state or do drugs help? All these questions flood through my mind, and I don't really have an answer. I definitely think drugs shape a lot of cultural movements and art. San Francisco especially has been shaped by drug culture. Also, think of all the songs by the Doors, the Beatles, Jefferson Airplane, etc. Definitely fueled by drugs and those songs are great! So should I devalue Brautigan's poetry in my head because it seems senseless?

While I actually liked some of Brautigan's poetry, I just feel like there's a lot more behind what poetry gets published and can't help but thinking of all the great stuff that doesn't for one reason or another. There's some level of corporate bureaucracy involved even in the publishing of poetry.

My most favorite aspect of Brautigan's poetry in The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster, is the natural way he speaks. Especially his poems about love and women seem very real to me. "The Beautiful Poem," while to some could seem vulgar, seems like a very real, raw emotion to me. "I go to bed in Los Angeles thinking about you./Pissing a few moments ago/I looked down at my penis affectionately./Knowing it has been inside you twice today makes me feel beautiful." That's more real to me than some overly romantic and figurative poem about the grandeur of love. Love can be expressed as simply as Brautigan does in "The Beautiful Poem."

Brautigan does get a little more metaphorical in his love poems such as "Discovery" when he writes "The petals of the vagina unfold like Christopher Columbus taking off his shoes./Is there anything more beautiful than the bow of a ship touching a new world?". Even this seems simple and pure to me. He seems to be rejoicing in the power of love and sex, yet I still get a free love/hippie feel from him as well. He keeps referring to his feelings of love and sex as "beautiful" embracing and revering these things in a way that I really like. He makes it real to me. Whoever Marcia was seems to really have made an impact on him and he expresses it nicely in his poetry.

Then Brautigan goes on to write something like "Xerox Candy Bar" (11) and I go back to thinking, "what the fuck?"

Commentary on "The Artist"

As someone who used to think I wanted to be an artist, the poem "The Artist" is particularly interesting to me. 

As short as the poem is, Ferlinghetti enables me to get a very distinct vision of this gallery opening. I've often thought about the charade of art and how subjective it all is. Sometimes I feel that it seems that to make a living off of art almost devalues the whole purpose of art as an expression of self. It almost seems like it denigrates the integrity of the artist as capitalism pervades into expression of the soul.

The alliteration of pairs of words such as "critics and crickets," "docents and donor classes," and "tide of tinkled voices" make this poem very appealing to me.

Ferlinghetti seems to be implying that the event of the gallery opening has overshadowed the value of the artist's work and simply provides for an opportunity for the upper class to have a party.

The ultimate phrase in the poem, when the artists asks "Is this what I am painting for?" evokes feelings of questioning, doubt, and regret. The artist at once looks at his surroundings and sees that his works are just one group in the series of gallery openings this gallery will hold. He's just one night's entertainment. After drinking all the wine and cheese, the people "sheathed in silk & Christian Dior" will just go on with their daily lives. He has not made a major impact and this forces him to question his life.

Ferlinghetti's ending lines to this poem are fatalistic in that he seems to be, if not sarcastically, insinuating or allowing for people to give up and give in to drinking the day away. I'm not sure exactly how I feel about this, but I can relate to this feeling of being unsure of if what I'm doing in my day to day life matters at all. Am I even doing anything productive? Will I look back on my life with pride?