Acceptance in Monongahela Review

It’s been a fantastic month for me in terms of poetry acceptances. Monongahela Review just took two of my darker pieces, “Monster,” and “Don Giovanni In Hell."

I’ve spoken before about Monongahela, a cosmopolitan up-and-comer of a journal, which has some of the best prefaces I’ve ever read in the small press. They publish a wide range of moods and styles, honoring both new and established poets.

I’m glad they saw the power in my duet of eerie poems. The voice inside me that wrote them is grateful!

OWL

FX Channel Trashes Xmas

For some reason the FX Channel has decided to run and rerun, ad nauseum, one of the worst movies ever made: Deck The Halls, staring Mathew Broderick and Danny DeVito (2006).

I wouldn’t bother to comment, except that in addition to being awful, the ethical undertones of the movie are despicable. FX is shoveling out moral trash. No wonder our society stinks.

Maybe FX is intentionally trying to ruin the minds of TV viewers. The Wikipedia commentary brings more of a chuckle than the movie, supposedly a comedy. Here is the entire critique:

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“Critics across the board have widely panned the movie. It received a 6% rotten rating at Rotten Tomatoes. Roger Moore of the Orlando Sentinel named it "A leaden slice of fruitcake, with about as much nutritional value," and concluding that "it's not worth working up a good hate over". Stephen Hunter remarked "I literally didn't count a single laugh in the whole aimless schlep," and suggested that the movie should've been named Dreck the Halls instead. Michael Medved named it the "Worst Movie of 2006." Finally, Richard Roeper, co-host of the television show Ebert & Roeper, wrote:

"You cannot believe how excruciatingly awful this movie is. It is bad in a way that will cause unfortunate viewers to huddle in the lobby afterward, hugging in small groups, consoling one another with the knowledge that it's over, it's over -- thank God, it's over. [...] Compared to the honest hard labor performed by tens of millions of Americans every day, a film critic's job is like a winning lottery ticket. But there IS work involved, and it can be painful -- and the next time someone tells me I have the best job in the world, I'm going to grab them by the ear, fourth-grade-teacher-in-1966-style, and drag them to see Deck the Halls."

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What is wrong with FX, vomiting out this bile over and over? In addition, Wiki points out that the film has been nominated for three Golden Raspberry Awards:

(1) Worst Excuse For Family Entertainment

(2) Worse Supporting Actor (Danny DeVito)

(3) Worst Supporting Actress (Kristin Chenoweth)


So, again I ask, WHY is FX pouring this mess all over the airwaves like diarrhea? It’s either a conspiracy to dumb people down, or a way for the network to save money by purchasing the rights to the lowest grade of celluloid possible.

In either case, respect for the public is entirely lacking. Someone needs to send the Ghosts of Christmas to FX headquarters and scare some warmth into the Scrooges working there.


Ethical Commentary


The Wiki entry doesn't deal with the ethical idiocy of the film, so here I go.

The basic plot is that Buddy (DeVito) and his family move into a new neighborhood where Buddy gets upset because the house of his neighbor, Steve (Broderick) is bigger. That’s the catalyst for a neurotic feud that reduces everyone around the two men to pawns in their astoundingly immature game.

Never mind that both domiciles are big enough to comfortably house the starving population of a village in Africa. No. DeVito, exposing vast insecurity over his ‘little’ house, (and, it is insinuated, his little body) decides he will light up the sky with so many Xmas lights that his petite castle will intrude into outer space.

Yes, it's that stereotype of the fragile male ego: Buddy is pathetic enough to want to shine as brightly as god, because he sees himself as inferior.

Throughout the movie, you wait for some criticism of this ridiculous toddler show to appear in the script: Isn’t it a waste of energy to turn your house into a glowing poster child for global warming? Isn’t it wrong to seek approval by heaping on shallow mindless glitz?

The criticism never comes. About thirty minutes into this monster, you realize that Deck The Halls itself is trying to seek approval through shallow mindless glitz.

In terms of virtues like green living, empathy, modesty and moderation, the movie is educational poison. It promotes, in contrast, a rather devilish code: materialism, narcissism, and egomaniacal competition. You know, all those things that the major religions say are wrong.

If only that were the extent of the folly--but no. The producers have to make sure they insult women by making Steve and Buddy's wives some of the most docile and dull helpmeets ever to grace the screen.

Buddy’s better half is a blatant cliche of the clueless blonde. Steve’s brunette is supposedly smart but stays at home, tends to bland children, and pampers her ridiculously self-absorbed husband. She's fixated on her cookbook and gets nary an intelligent line.

In addition to the sexism, Deck the Halls wins a tarnished trophy for racism, never once permitting a peep at a non-white face. This despite the fact that sizeable crowds gather in front of Buddy’s house to ooh at his garish light displays like enthralled zombies.

Caveat: I may have missed the token exotic physiognomy in the crowds; but it sure looked like pure Wonder Bread to me.

Although both Steve and Buddy are as self-focused as Homer Simpson (though even less caring toward their families), Buddy descends to a nadir of conduct worthy of psychopathy. He commits several horrible crimes, including chopping down the town Christmas tree, and committing felony fraud by forging Steve’s signature to buy a new car. This criminally obtained vehicle is presented to Steve as a “gift.”

Unsurprisingly, the stolen good is a gas-guzzling mammoth of an SUV. Buddy explains with obvious relish that it has all the extras. Deck the Halls doubles as a commercial for eco-unfriendly vehicles of the most obese sort, the only worse guzzler being Buddy’s house, which swills enough wattage to light up Miami.

Of course, Buddy is secretly tapping into Steve's electricity to pay for the eye-searing show. There's a good moral lesson for ya!

Buddy doesn't show any remorse for stealing, lying, vandalizing and cheating until his wife gets huffy after he pawns her cherished family heirloom and confesses he lost his job. Once he returns the heirloom, his spouse reverts to gushing approval.

What a gimmick. Steal your wife’s heirloom, lie about it, then give it back and become her hero. Maybe the subtitle of this flick should be Codependency City.

At the end, the viewer is just dying for some kind of redeeming feature. Maybe Santa will show up and lambaste Buddy and Steve’s horrendous worldview of consume, bicker, and sabotage.

But no Deus ex Machina arrives to mitigate this nightmare.

Buddy’s house succeeds, at the finale, in being visible from outer space while hundreds of anglo zombies party in celebration. With emotional depth worthy of guppies, Steve and Buddy shake hands and start over, as if nothing they had done affected anyone else or made an impression in their own insensitive minds.

It’s poor entertainment, for sure. Much worse, FX knew. AND FX decided to air this crap-heap anyway.

What a major failure in media leadership. Does FX care about what they broadcast? Or is it simply about pinching pennies at the expense of decency?


OWL

Acceptance in The Medulla Review

My poems "Between" and "Death Vision" have been taken by a fairly new journal, The Medulla Review. Editor Jennifer Bowles has a good number of fine publications to her name, including work in the New York Quarterly. The site has a outlier feel of edgy excellence and a tinge of surreal mysterium. Good descriptive guidelines and info.

Bowles has also, in her first issue, published one of the finest young poets around, Susan Slaviero.

All this bodes very well for The Medulla Review. Make sure you send your very best work. You're dealing with a talented, well-published savvy editor.

OWL

Happy Birthday, Brave Soul

Happy Birthday to my brother Gudger. I miss you, sir. And I love you very much.

Christine Klocek-Lim Photographs The Heart

A wonderful poet and editor, Christine Klocek-Lim, has published her latest chapbook, How To Photograph the Heart. You can find out more here:

http://www.thelivesyoutouch.com/touchjournal/Publications/Klocek-Lim.html

Klocek-Lim is an award winning and well-published writer. From her bio at the above link, it is clear that she has been intrigued and involved with the sensuous crafting of language for much of her life. Although young, she is a sage.

Not only that, she has mastered the art of poetic-aesthetic ambience. To understand what I mean, simply go to her website. You’ll understand immediately, or after a few clicks of the mouse: www.novembersky.com

If that link doesn't work (site under construction), try:

http://www.novembersky.com/NovemberSky/NovemberSky.html

She’s very giving of her time and has run an excellent journal called Autumn Sky Poetry for years (accessible through her website). As this journal has evolved, it has become more and more a gift of wonders for the senses and soul, without in any way distracting from the power of the verse, both free and rhymed.

There’s a Zen-like touch to the beauty that manifests in Klocek-Lim’s multi-layered website. Photographic and color effects highlight everyday yet stunning aspects of nature. A mysterious doorway into a tranquil setting materializes--somehow. The reader sees that nature’s simplicity is actually exquisite and vast. Miracles are fresh.

By the time you reach the poems, you have passed many gateways, and are ready for the words, which were carefully chosen by passionate hearts to be ready for you.

Below is a poem of mine that Klocek-Lim generously allowed into Issue 9 of Autumn Sky. If you enjoy it at all, or even if you don’t, go to November Sky and you will see much greater and more absorbing works.

OWL

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Joan of Arc

like a stung monk,
nurtured by solitude not ears,
she rose up among wattle,

not daring to respect
the eyes foaming around her,
white as death cups.

"a prophet! a prophet!" they cried,
lips like shiny scales
on a hamlet-wide snake
that squeezed her in its midst—

pressured her to sing
like a doomed thrush,
until the beast writhed with divinity,

crushing Saxons, salting fields—

and she,
discarded in the spattered coils,
spread her half-real wings,
escaped.



(Published In Autumn Sky Poetry, Copyright of Owl Who Laughs)

Defending Abortion: Part III, Dealing With Potential

(See also Defending Abortion, Part IV in the March 2010 posts)

The argument from potential, I think, is the strongest card the anti-abortionists can play. Anyone considering an abortion should grapple with it both emotionally and rationally.

The basic idea is that by killing an embryo, or even conceptus, you are eliminating an entire potential lifetime of joys, feelings, thoughts and accomplishments. It is a common tactic of pro-lifers to present a woman, say Ms. Chavez, and her a grown child Marcos, and perhaps grandchildren, and have her give a heartfelt and deep testimony: if she had gone through with her plans for abortion, all these lovely people would never have come to pass.

You can take it a step further and point out that killing an embryo wipes out an entire genealogy of future people extending far into the future. In this way, the death of the preborn eliminates thousands of potential lives.

Anti-abortionists usually don’t take it this far. Placing so much weight on the inch-long back of an embryo shows the weakness of the argument. Potential is only reliable so far. After that, it becomes an unruly basis for behavior, even a ridiculous one.

Yes, the preborn might grow up to be a Beethoven; but that doesn’t mean we should treat it like Beethoven now. There’s also, of course, the possibility that the embryo will grow up to be a Nero, or just have a very tough life. Again, we don’t treat the preborn like a criminal just because someday the adult might go bad.

Potential can be used in all kinds of dubious ways. You might argue that children from women who wanted to abort them will grow up in difficult homes--either with the unhappy mother or foster parents. Such children are more likely to have tough lives and sow the seeds of even more misery, creating more unhappy mothers and children, and so on, forever.

Maybe. All this talk about future happiness or unhappiness gets very speculative, revealing flaws in the use of potential for an argument.

One thing, though, is certain: in most circumstances, the embryo will grow to become an infant. The potential to travel through developmental stages is high. Disease, faulty genetics, or accident could cut the young life short; but barring such calamity, embryos proceed toward fully complex brains and body states.

An abortion, then, has a high chance of preventing the existence of a sentient human sometime in the future.

This is the key case that pro-choicers must grapple with. And guess what? It is a tough decision. A choice to abort DOES eliminate a progressing human life. If you’re fully aware of what you’re doing, it should be emotionally painful to choose to terminate.

Just to emphasize: if you chose to abort, you are taking a human life, and you are annihilating that little being’s potential to develop and experience a full range of thoughts and sensations.

If you deny this, and claim you are dealing with a “lump of tissue” you might well regret it later. Furthermore, in a philosophical and political sense, you are playing right into the anti-abortionists’ hands. They want to make pro-choicers to look ignorant, callous and cruel.

That being said, abortion is still morally acceptable. A potential mature human is not a mature human. Pro-lifers know this and often use the potential argument only as a last resort. When you appeal to potential, you effectively admit that there is a relevant difference between the embryo and the developed child.

Pro-lifers want to say that the embryo has a soul, not that it has a potential soul. Potential to have a soul sounds fishy. It exposes a gap. It effectively puts the embryo on a lower level because it focuses on the embryo when it is no longer an embryo--but instead like us.

On the other hand, if you believe the embryo has a soul, there is no need to appeal to its potential to reach a later stage. It’s a no-win situation for the anti-abortionist.

The Supreme Court was well aware of the difference between embryos and later stages, and wisely recognized a legitimate gap. That is why the Court focused on the notion of a “person.” Persons get a right to life, but embryos, not yet elaborated into persons, do not.

A pro-lifer doesn't want to admit that the embryo is different than you or I--no way--but the appeal to potential forces it. They step on their own toes when they talk about future thoughts, future feelings, future loves. It highlights the embryo’s lack of thoughts and feelings, and its inability to love.

Next time a pro-lifer presents Ms. Chavez and her grown son, you can reply: Why do you need to show me matured humans to defend the rights of the embryo? Aren’t you implying that the embryo is lesser?

“But the potential is there,” a pro-lifer might insist, “and it is great.”

“Yes,” you could reply, “but the potential is not the actual. And the difference is great.”

Indeed, potentially having something and actually having something are VERY different.

A five-year-old will have a right to vote someday. That doesn’t mean the five-year-old gets a right to vote. The same goes with the right to own guns, drink, marry, receive welfare, or get a driver’s license.

In all these cases, potential to get a right someday does not mean you get it now. Complicating things further, we often, in ordinary everyday choices, deny human life.

You heard me right. Many potential humans--who might have been Beethovens or Solomons--are denied existence all the time, even by pro-lifers. For instance, if you have two children but choose not to have a third, you are denying a life.

If you use birth control, you are thwarting a potential being, denying it conception.

If you choose not to have wild inappropriate sex at a party, you might have avoided getting pregnant, which in turn means you may have denied life to a new preborn implanted in your womb.

Strange as it may seem, potentials for humans to live and thrive are being created and destroyed all the time. Usually we have no regrets over this, and don’t even think about it. It’s absurd to decide to have wild inappropriate sex at a party just because otherwise you might be preventing a life.

A practical truth, seldom mentioned in the abortion debate is this: deciding to have an unplanned unwanted child now, under pressure, might well lead to not having more children in the future, ones who could have been better cared for.

Ms. Chavez has her son Marcos, but because of the expense and bad timing, she decides not have any more children. These lost children, if they had been born, as originally planned, would have been called Xavier and Maria, and they would have had families of their own. But they will never get an opportunity.

Marcos suffers from behavior and physical problems due to bad timing and preparation, but of course Ms. Chavez loves him anyway. She would have loved Xavier and Maria too, and they would have had a better chance to be well and healthy.

The issues around potential are bewildering, even bizarre. Every time you have a child, it eliminates the possibility of other children coming into being. Countless Xaviers and Marias don’t make it.

When one sperm reaches an egg, millions of other sperm lose the race and the potential people they represent are denied.

You could say that entire worlds are denied every day, all the time, by ordinary decisions and just plain old happenstance.

Such is the astounding reality we live in. Miracles are everywhere, but they are necessarily destroyed as well as birthed as part of evolution and life. (See Defending Abortion: Part I).

When you’re deciding on abortion, you must grapple with a specific potential: you have a human life in the womb. The living embryo is farther ahead in its journey toward the third trimester (where partial rights take hold) than a human not yet conceived. The pregnant woman has a beautiful little being inside her.

But that is not enough to imbue the embryo with the rights we have. A potential person is not an actual person. This is a manifestation of common sense. We couldn’t function at all without the following general rule: potentials vary in strength and importance, they are often difficult to assess, and the potential state is very different from the actual state, once it is realized.

Disney Deals Drugs, Slays Miramax

A special HOOT Award ((Horrendous Outrageous O Terrible!) goes to Disney for its role in dumbing down American cinema. Miramax Films, with a decades-long legacy of intelligent drama from independent creative thinkers, has just released its very last movie ever, ironically titled “Everybody’s Fine.”

Why? Melena Ryzik, reporting on the story, doesn’t hold any punches:

“[Miramax], started by the Weinstein brothers and a key player in the history of independent film in this country, has been progressively disemboweled by its parent, the Walt Disney Company.”

(“A Bittersweet Night for a Not-So-Fine Miramax,” Dec 4, New York Times)


Finally some muckraking journalism that isn’t afraid to tell it like it is: “PROGRESSIVELY DISEMBOWELED.” Brava, Ryzik!

In the photograph accompanying the article, you can see the sorrow in Robert DeNiro’s face as he witnesses this gross tragedy.

Why has Disney done this? The same reason that other corporate overlords are killing off or strangling down their indie theater cells: profit. The flicks that make lurid amounts of money are not the ones that induce reflection on the nature of life.

Along with Disney, these IQ killing leviathans include Viacom, Time Warner and Paramount.

The Director of “Everybody’s Fine” comments:

“It seems to me that people at the top are saying we don’t want to do adult drama, there’s nobody that wants to be reminded of the real world, they want escapist cinema,” he said. “I love watching sci-fi movies and romantic comedies and teenage movies as much as anyone else, but I think it’s about balance, and you have to have adult drama because that’s often one of the few categories that makes people leave the cinema thinking about their own lives and reflecting on who they are and how they are in the world.”

(“A Bittersweet Night for a Not-So-Fine Miramax,” Dec 4, New York Times)


There you have it. People want “escapist cinema,” so Disney is willing to supply them with their mind-numbing drug: the movie equivalent of video games. Hey, why not. Let’s pander to a low urge to hide from reality. Let’s foster a nation of shallow thrill seekers, who goo-goo on the edge of their seats, waiting for the latest techno effect, and the largest flashiest amounts of catastrophe and blood.

The dumber people are, the easier to control. The more addicted. And the addicted can be financially pumped by the one who controls the desideratum.

What we witness, in the death of Miramax, is not just the end of a great production company, one that allowed us a window into our souls. We witness a critical and heartbreaking moment in the plummeting history of film.

The philosopher Socrates distilled his learning down to one all-important statement: Know Thyself. So vast in wisdom was this motto that it was inscribed on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi.

What Disney has done, in the name of Mammon and to the detriment of Miramax, is chisel away this phrase. It has ripped “Know Thyself” out of the very essence of movie-making. To the extent that cinema could have been a source of moral and psychological leadership, Disney has disemboweled not only Miramax but hope itself.

A grim truth rears: the quest for knowledge lies dead in the boardrooms of movie moguls, they who bow down before Transformers, pyrotechnics, and toons. They would have celluloid become the equivalent of Soma, that happy pill of the populace in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

Hold onto your seats, and clutch your popcorn tight. We are embarking on a horror-movie trip, into the bowels of cineplex hedonism.

Welcome to the Dark Age of Virtual Titillation.

Acceptance In Lucid Rhythms

http://www.lucidrhythms.com/

An honor it is to be included in this fine journal, which has a sense of dignity and classic beauty few venues ever attain. The cover art is aesthetic and sensuous. The poems read with the ease and harmony of a delicate rill. Editor David Landrum has given us all a magnificient gift of literary jewels, which are so much more valuable, in the end, than those made of stone.

Visit the haunting kingdom of Lucid Rhythms. You will be moved.

OWL

Acceptance In Offcourse

Two of my best poems, “Church Memory” and “Corroded Coin” were picked up by Offcourse, a journal run since 1998 by Ricardo Nirenberg, professor emeritus at SUNY Albany. The university has ties with Offcourse through Nirenberg, and also provides server support for the journal (http://www.albany.edu/offcourse/).

SUNY shows nobility and acumen in keeping an association with this journal, for Nirenberg is really really smart, a kind of renaissance genius. As a professor of mathematics, he taught a spectrum of courses, including advanced seminars at the graduate level, topics I can’t even begin to understand. For instance, the title of his thesis is: On Pseudo-Quasiconformality in Several Complex Variables.

He has published two literary novels (Cry Uncle and Wave Mechanics: A Love Story) and a raft of probingly brilliant essays. If you read his prose, you find that he has mastered concepts, theories, and worldviews in a broadly multidisciplinary way. He witnesses the universe through the apex lenses of both mathematics and literature, and it is quite evident in his writing.

It is also apparent in the devastating accuracy of his social critiques. Indeed, one of the truly great things about Nirenberg is his genuine appraisal of the world. The resolution of many beams of insight and knowledge into an ethos radiant with wisdom. Although I am not an aficionado of gurus, if you’re looking for highest learning of a philosophical and psychic nature, read the works of Nirenberg, and also take a look at Offcourse.

Finally, I want to give a special mention to Isabel Nirenberg, who does a good deal of work for the journal, serving as a diligent and patient manager. I have been accepted a few times now, and have not always been the most genteel contributor; but she has always shown consummate professionalism and courtesy. The editors Nirenberg make a great team.

It is a wonderful gift not only to the poetry community, but also the larger realm of learned thought and artistic passion, that they exist and strive.

OWL

Good Government Jobs! Except...

Paul Krugman is absolutely right in his latest Op-ed piece: Washington is exhibiting a “strange passivity” now that the recession, in a "technical sense," is over, one which favors wealthy elites--but not the common worker, who faces a grim unemployment rate, likely to go on for many years.

(“The Jobs Imperative,” New York Times, November 29)


The implication is as plain as a sneer: corporation captains are more important than you and me. We are grunts in the trenches of toil and travail. Economic canon fodder.

Maybe it’s impossible for the government to do anything else. Maybe our leaders have done their best?

No, says Krugman. In fact, he shouts it. Washington’s attitude is heinously wrong and earns serious moral condemnation:

“There’s a pervasive sense in Washington that nothing more can or should be done, that we should just wait for the economic recovery to trickle down to workers.

This is wrong and unacceptable.”


Notice how Krugman puts “This is wrong and unacceptable” in its own standout paragraph. Folks, this is the written equivalent of a scream.

It must be frustrating for Krugman, a genius professor of economics who won the Nobel Prize, to have his keen words fall upon wooden ears over and over. His intelligent thoughts share the stage with lame opinions by colleagues like David Brooks, aka Mr. Status Quo (see, for instance, my blog entry, “The Cruelty Question”).

Krugman lucidly lays out the financial logistics for a government-funded work program. It would create a million jobs, a la Roosevelt’s WPA.

Also, he asserts, more money should be given to the states, so that they can avoid an axe chop to their payrolls, especially the livelihoods of teachers.

And yet his advice will surely be ignored. The plutocrats pretend they obsess about the suffering of the many, honing their well-acted crocodile-tear speeches; but, in actual deed, they dote on their silk-tie masters.

I emphasize with all my literary lungs: our leaders COULD do something to help millions of people avoid years of lean misery--but they are not going to. Their actions express concern only for the wellbeing of the banking and corporate sector.

The tree is known by its fruit.