Thursday, December 13, 2018

Writers and Artists (Alfred Corn's Thread)


Another thoughtful discussion of MFA programs. 



There have been many discussions of Facebook about the inadequacy or misguidedness of MFA programs in writing. And recently a friend sent me a rather depressing article about MFA programs in visual art. Putting aside the question of whether MFA programs are good or bad, I'm wondering about the applicants themselves. Thousands upon thousands enroll in arts programs every year, at institutions where the tuition is often astronomical and for a degree that does not entitle you to anything unless accompanied by solid professional achievement elsewhere. Why, in the USA since, say,1980, has it become so common an ambition to be a practitioner of a fine art? At the professional level, I mean, since there have always been Sunday painters and amateur writers of greeting card verse. Very few artists or writers generate significant income from their work. The fame of an artist never comes close to the fame of a rock star or movie actor. So what is the lure? Why do so many people want to be an ARTIST? And go into serious debt to get an MFA? (I'm putting aside the question of the psychological harm some people suffer in classroom or studio experiences.)
  • Maryann Corbett Some theories:


    The longstanding, loud advice to "do what you love" and "follow your bliss," which reinforces the hope we all have of actually liking the work that supports us.

    The fact that we associate "artists" with prestige, while the same skills (say, metalworking or draftsmanship) applied to industry or commerce are not so associated.

    The fact that so many people feel less prepared to enter the world of work than to keep on going to school.

    As I say, these are theories.



  • Peter Daniels To me it's about mentoring and feedback, primarily, and unexpected steering into work you wouldn't have got into on your own. That may not be what most people do it for, and it's probably impossible to avoid the expectation that being mentored by someone more famous than you are is going to make you famous.
    2
  • Theresa Ann Aleshire Williams From talking to students, I’d say that many believe they will beat the odds. In the visual arts, many are gravitating to digital arts, with hopes of landing a job with Pixar, etc.
    2

    • Alfred Corn So it's more a question of applied art, which could generate income.
    • Theresa Ann Aleshire Williams Alfred Corn , yes, our Art Department sees fewer students wanting to be independent artists and more looking to industry jobs.
      1
    • Jack Miller Agree here. The two art colleges where I have taught, Atlanta College of Art and SCAD, represent the two polar opposites: the old-fashioned view of solitary or individual painters,etc. and the view of art as a cooperative, digital, state of the art (including advertising and commercial production) work for film, TV, and other mass art. Of course, I favor the former, with the visionary artists creating schools of art or art such as that of the Fauves, the Abstract Expressionists, etc. My former student, Kara E. Walker, represents the individual of insight and vision who changes the way we see and learn from art. I think many who seek an MFA or go to art colleges want an alternative to the materialistic, money-mad culture we live in.
      2

    • Jack Miller BTW, SCAD thrives. ACA disappeared after 100 years in Atlanta, to a great extent because of SCAD.
    • Theresa Ann Aleshire Williams Jack Miller one of my art profs went to ACA. The stories he told! Put me on fire for art!
      1
    • Jack Miller SCAD is a college that began in Savannah 40 years ago and it is full of stories and scandal. It has become international with branches in Atlanta, Hong Kong, and France. Oh the stories I'd love to share in private but dare not here! https://www.scad.edu/
      Home | SCAD.edu
      SCAD.EDU
      Home | SCAD.edu
      Home | SCAD.edu
      1
    • How SCAD sells a dream
      AJC.COM
      How SCAD sells a dream
      How SCAD sells a dream
    • Theresa Ann Aleshire Williams Jack Miller , oh that’s heartbreaking. Is ACA no longer running? It was such an awesome school.
      1

    • Jack Miller You read the AJC article?They are thriving as never before. I wish everyone would read the article and know what is going on there. I keep thinking it's a house of cards that will collapse; but the intermingling of a real estate boom and financial benefits for Savannah keep the school in power. There are some good teachers and courses there; but I don't think the ends justify the means.

    • Alfred Corn Jack Miller And scads of people have fallen for it.
      2
    • Theresa Ann Aleshire Williams Jack Miller, yes I read the article about SCAD. But what about Atlanta?
    • Jack Miller OH, ACA is gone. Yes, heart breaking. A story in itself about how SCAD convinced the Woodruff Art Center to close ACA and handover its wonderful library to SCAD. The story from a business point of view. It was a brutal "merger" and the President of ACA was fired with little warning as I recall. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_College_of_Art
      Atlanta College of Art - Wikipedia
      EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG
      Atlanta College of Art - Wikipedia
      Atlanta College of Art - Wikipedia
    • Theresa Ann Aleshire Williams Jack Miller , oh, horrible. I had no idea.
    • Atlanta College of Art Friends
      Atlanta College of Art Friends
      Atlanta College of Art Friends
      1




    • Theresa Ann Aleshire Williams Jack Miller , I still remember a story my teacher told me about his time at ACA. There was a contest for best Easter poster and everybody was doing all this pastel stuff, except one student picked up whole tubes of paint, garish colors, and squeeze them into the paper and created a masterpiece (he won). I remember that for the courage to break from tradition. I think about it a lot.






      Jack Miller I taught at ACA for 17 years and have many fond memories. I am still in touch with some of the graduates, a few of whom actually make a living through art. I taught aesthetics, ideas in film, ethics, existentialism, and 20th C. art history. I loved the creativity and non-conformist takes the students had on philosophical ideas and art.

  • Mare Heron Hake When I went for my MFA (in my early fifties) I knew from the first day the likelihood of making money from it was nearly nil. The best I could hope for was an added bump for teaching. That being said, I went for community, for people who understood what I loved and why I needed to be there. I was extremely lucky in that the program I attended was unique and supportive in every way--well-known (at least locally) for being so. But without that group of people who walked with me to be a writer and poet, to help me understand what those words even meant, to share their own significant stories, to see the best way to mentor and teach, I would be diminished, shriveled, chopped at the root. Debt? Yes. I have it. Lots. Regrets? Almost none. I would say without hesitation that the MFA debt bought the life I have now. That it doesn't buy groceries is another issue.
    5
    • Renée Roehl I went late, too, and had already been a poet for years. I have moved around a lot in my life, detoured my art life for a couple of reasons and I wanted to find my community/tribe of people. I got assistant-ships, some financial aid and grants to pay for it otherwise I couldn't have really done it as I had a 10 year old and a 19 year old. I enjoyed the dedicated time with my group of people and I did get what I wanted. That said, I didn't need the "artist label" that I saw some of my younger colleagues going for nor was I trying to find myself outside of this dysfunctional cog/wheel cultural work grind. And I got to teach creative writing which was something I wanted to do as well.
      1
  • Doug Anderson I read that article. The issues are different for visual artists. The article questions the influence of theory in those programs, e.g.; theory giving students permission to create bullshit, noting one instance of a student dumping jello down her panty hose. MFA programs in writing don't have a theory problem. They have other problems.
  • Don Lawson I didn't get an MFA (they weren't really fashionable back in my day and comparatively few institutions offered them). I did get an MA/PhD while being warned annually about what a small percentage of such folks got tenure-track jobs. I did end up getting tenured, etc., but at the time I was getting my degrees my thought process was more like "even if I don't end up in academia, for the years I do this, I'm getting to do what I want and few people ever get even a few years of that in their lives."
    2
  • Alfred Corn Again, my focus wasn't on the adequacy or inadequacy of the programs, but instead on the applicants. Why is it in this historical moment do so many desire to be professional artists?
    1
  • Peter Cherches When I started working on mine in 1978 it was already clear that most schools didn't consider it a "terminal degree" for teaching purposes unless backed up with a solid publication cv. But I don't think it's a matter of more people now wanting to be artists, I think it's a matter of a big pool among younger artists and the pool thins out after reality sets in, which has always been the case. When I started at Columbia Hope Plumley, who was the admin for the program, said to me that in 5 years more than half of my fellow students would no longer be writing. I think those who do it now, if they're at all realistic, do it for the focus, community, connections and time to devote to writing as a main occupation if you're in a full-time program. I hope most aren't silly enough to believe it will lead to a job.
    1
  • Doug Anderson That's a big problem. MFA programs need the money to stay afloat.
    2
  • George Szirtes Because education is not entirely about jobs and income?
    5
    • Theresa Ann Aleshire Williams University is seen more and more as job prep. I have watched it going that way for some time. 😟
      3
    • Alfred Corn That is, ideally, true, George. When I taught in MFA programs, I of course knew that very few would make a career in writing. (Though in fact many former students have published and two of them won Pulitzers; one is Poet Laureate; two have served as Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets; two work as editors; and many have tenured posts teaching writing.) No, I said that as a minimum, they would be better readers. To me, being a good reader is just as noble as being good writer.
      2
  • Aamer Hussein A lot of my students felt there was quick, and enormous sums of, money to be had from writing...young writers I meet today still do. And that one story will get them an agent and a ladder to the pinnacles of fame.
    2
  • Clifford Mynes The colleges will shovel as many students as they can into a program, and they recruit at various conferences.
    A college will only cut a program that isn’t cost effective. That said, recruitment promises must be considered, tho I am not privy to any po    pular phrases from that: be all you can be, be a painter? Dubious.
    MFAs are decent currency in public schools, as the usual new teacher is an education major 
    Why would someone go-/ cuz it’s fun, and because working in a bar hurts your knees after awhile.
    Do some students have illusions/delusions/ hopes of success— well don’t we all.
    1
  • Ed Adams Young people want to believe that what they feel and think and experience has meaning, and that they are special. Being an artist means you are a sensitive person, not just another brick in the wall. Also, perhaps they've already created something that had not only meaning for them but a magical component, that is, a feeling of connection to something real and enduring, and they feel a strong desire to keep feeling connected in a genuine way, of living a meaningful life, even if it's only meaningful to one's self.
    • Alfred Corn To me, being an excellent reader is as noble as being a writer.
      1
    • Ed Adams Yes, to me too. But if the desire or dream to write is expressed, pretty hard to discourage that in a young person.
    • Ed Adams I agree, the idea of the nobility of the reader should be out there. (and now it is!).
  • Bill Tremblay It's possible that an MFA is like what "the European tour" used to be.
    3
  • Paul A. White It saves my life to write.... no cliche here.... but MFA.... naw... that would burden me... writing was about unburdening me... but it would be nice to have something to show for it besides tubs and tubs of notebooks and papers. A life, thats it! And gratefulness...
    2
  • Brad Richard Having followed some of my former students (I teach high school), some pursue the MFA because they love the art form and they want to develop a community that will sustain their artistic careers for the long haul, whether whatever jobs they pursue for money take them into academia or other fields. Those are the ones who tend to continue writing and to be happy with wherever their artistic careers may take them. There are others who, I think, have been seduced by the creepy low stakes/high drama of academia, where the scarcer the resources and acclaim become, the more viciously everyone competes. That's bled over into the poetry world for a long time. Students who see those ethereal baubles as stuff worth fighting for are more likely to burn out and quit writing--or discover that they're not sure if they ever really cared about the art form in the first place. Or--they become the most terrifying colleague in your department.
    3
  • Bill Lantry Just read that article. Ouch! One of the main claims is that these degrees benefit the professors, not the candidates, who face a non-existent job market. Then we find out the article's author is getting a Ph.D. In English!

    Cold hard facts: at most Un    iversities, Undergraduate programs exist to support graduate programs. And Master's programs - of all types, but especially M.A.s and M.F.A.s - exist to support doctoral programs. M.F.A.s and M.A.s are cash cows, and the University uses the funds as freely disponible profits for other programs that are not economically viable. Yes, a few Ivies have an 'every tub on it's own bottom' rule, but most Universities have no such compunctions.
    4
  • Anthony Harrington I remember a comment once made by that great cynical poet Turner Cassity that the Creative Writing offerings by colleges and universities were a ploy to make up the deficit in tuition when enrollment in English Major programs. dipped way down.
    1
    • Alfred Corn See Bill Lantry's comment above. My sense has always been that English Departments didn't take Creative Writing very seriously, certainly not as seriously as regular courses and scholarship. They were much more rigorous with their standards when hiring faculty for the regular courses.
  • Amanda Fuller Richards I think for most it's about finding a community and a network.

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  • Moore Bowen I would make a distinction between BEING and artist and PRACTICING an art. To BE an artist is an ambition, and I don't know why anyone would want to BE one. In my experience, to PRACTICE an art is to be answering an irresistible call, or a compulsion, or a need for expressive therapy in this crazy world. The most prolific artist I know refused offers to show and said he was working out his theology.
    • Alfred Corn That's you. But I sense that the many want to be an ARTIST. It's a cool thing to be. Think of Dickinson, Van Gogh, Ginsberg, Sylvia and Ted. Artists get to lead non-suburban lives and be admired. Some get to kill themselves and become legends. Immortality.
      3
    • Ed Adams It's pretty silly alright :)
    • Alfred Corn Of course not. That's you and you being informed. But the beginner isn't likely to know much about those figures except how great they are.

    View 1 more reply
  • Christopher Hall My general comment on MFA Writing Programs is that they mostly only develop writers of literary fiction. That accounts for about 7 percent of the fiction sold today. The balance is for genre fiction which most MFA Programs don't even recognize.. I've steered students away from these programs as a waste of time and money..
  • Brigham Taylor Writing mfas count as a terminal degree, which makes you eligible for permanent hires in a college writing program. These jobs are still in demand, and it’s cheaper and faster than a PhD.
  • Christopher Hall I remember the late Robert Ferro telling me that it took him fifteen years to forget everything he learned at the Iowa Writers with Vonnegut as teacher.
  • Bryan D. Dietrich Personally, I needed mentors and a writing community. Plus it led to my professorship.
  • Surazeus Simon Seamount So many people are taking art because our cultural stories are full of fabulous legends of the Artists and Poets who achieve immortal fame through the apotheosis of critical analysis. Each individual wants to strive to achieve that same adoring fame of cultural worship, to become the Keats and the Dickinson and the Kahlo and the Van Gogh and the Lowell and the Plath of future mythology.
  • Mark Weiss Wanting to be an artist (poet, etc)--sure, but without the risks of doing it on one's own. The MFA as a requirement for guild membership. That a very few go on to do great work is a wonder, and they probably would have, anyway.
    1
  • Chard DeNiord To study with an accomplished person or persons in the field with the hope of developing one's skills and talent as a writer, painter, dancer, etc. It's an apprenticeship.
    2

    1 Reply
  • Valerie Lawson I was just accepted into the MFA in Writing & Publishing at VCFA after writing for many years. I feel like my writing plateaued in recent years. I'm going to push my work in poetry, and to explore other genres. This is an interesting program where you get to try out fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and play/screenwriting, besides the focus on your selected genre. I'm also a small press publisher, and there are opportunities to explore more in the publishing world. AND they have a solid interface with literary agents and publishers, so there is possible professional advancement. I'm not interested in a teaching gig. The work on my writing is most important. (FTR, I will only go if there is significant scholarship/fellowship/housing support. We're in discussion about that now.)
    1





    Doug Anderson I am of two minds about this. Since I presently teach in an MFA program, I'm not keen to see them invalidated. But I understand how the capitalist aspect of the programs look: a conveyer belt on the factory floor sending out poets and fiction writers. MFA programs offer writers an opportunity of two years enjoyable study, with good teachers, during which they will produce a body of work that is both creative and critical. The degree of talent (or market savvy) they have will determine what happens after. An MFA will no longer get people teaching jobs and neither will a PhD. If a student is talented and capable of publishing they will have acquired mentors who will become their recommenders, letter writers, etc. At the very least, students will have had their minds expanded. Some of them will go into advertising, arts management, etc. I'm speaking of creative writing programs and not art programs. But I imagine it's pretty much the same.
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Wednesday, November 28, 2018

San Francisco



Enjoyed my first visit with Julian in 1976. Spent time there every summer thereafter, culminating in three months living on Russian Hill in 1980. Visited the city, Big Sur, Russian River, Napa Valley, and more with Julian, Jake, Lynn, and repeatedly with Darryl. Love nearby Muir Woods and Sausalito, Favorite neighborhood is North Beach where City Lights Bookstore and Cafe Trieste are.


One of our favorite hangouts is Cafe Flore. 

Neighborhoods we like: North Beach

Nob Hill
Fillmore St (restaurants)

Golden Gate Park (Japanese garden and the museum)

Fisherman's Wharf

Castro Street

Land's End (and museum)

Lombard Street and Coit Tower





City Lights Bookstore
Lawrence Ferlinghetti 



Darryl In North Beach
My home on Russian Hill, 1980

View from our house.
Julian at work with our garden behind him. 











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Monday, November 26, 2018

Art of Film (updated and revisited)



The Art of Film -- Revisited



Who's your daddy? ... Chinatown

What makes a film a valuable work of art? The answer is complicated by the fact that there are many different ways for a film to make manifest what its subject or subjects are. For meChinatown is a great film because it 1) Tells an intriguing story on two levels, the story of the building of Los Angeles, and the corruption it entailed; the love story of two unlikely lovers caught up in the larger story. 2) It does this visually as well as through dialogue and narration. The images and scenes of the film are key to the unfolding of the story. Music and cinematography are essential exciting elements. 3) the film is coherent despite the intricacies and complexity of plot, unfolding of characters, and surprising revelations. The characters in the film change and grow more aware as the story unfolds. 4) The film is brilliant with profound insights into character, history, human nature, love, corruption, the power of evil, capitalism, naivete, and disillusionment, to name a few. It is a dark story, but whether a film is "uplifting," or depressing, or shocking, or whatever does not matter so long as it possesses such qualities as the above four. My one caveat is that I am bored with the contrived "Hollywood ending," resembling the unnecessary, but now too often performed, "happy ending" to a good massage.

Recent films I think excel, some of which I've posted commentary* :

 On The Road (review)

Weekend *
Melancholia by Lars Van Trier*
Take This Waltz by Sarah Polley  (review)
Perks of Being a Wallflower (review)
Dangerous Method (review)


Past Films that have shaped my life and my understanding of life include:



Rashomon
by Akira Kurosawa
 
(truth is subjective)

But this is just a sampling.
It is also essential to mention the great directors whose films have shaped my life:

Federico Fellini, Bernardo Bertolucci, Alfred Hitchcock, Roman Polanski, Werner Fassbinder, Ken Russell, Peter Greenaway, Lina Wertmüller, Derek Jarman, Pedro Almodovar, Ang Lee, John Waters, Ingmar Bergman, Louis Malle, Pier Paulo Pasolini, Kurosawa, Luis Bunuel, John Cameron Mitchell, Sarah Polley  and good old Woody Allen
(all are clickable)
The one
we sat down
and had a drink with:
John Waters--
Wikipedia

--Jameson 

Updated for 2012-2018:

Hedwig and the Angry Inch
There Will Be Blood
Paterson
God's Own Country
Get Out
The Before Sunrise trilogy of films
Moonlight
The Budapest Hotel
Call Me By Your Name
Mudbound








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Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Day of the Dead


Dia de los Muertos Revisited

Huichol Skull with Peyote 

"When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past..."

Now is a time, traditionally, to honor the dead, especially our family and those we have loved. Naturally, I think of my parents both of whom suffered long, dreadful ends to their lives. I think of my two grandmothers to whom I was so close, whose affection warmed my heart and both of whom helped create the values I've held since childhood. Fond memories arise of my husband Darryl's grandmother, Aunt Edna, and his mother. I think too of my friends' loved ones and parents, especially life-long friend Lee Killian's parents who were always sweet and kind to me, and of Lee's uncles. I think of Julian Baird of San Francisco, my first gay lover, who invited me to San Francisco many times, with whom I lived for several months on Russian Hill. There are many other cherished friends now hid in death's dateless night, in the words of WS.




As The Day of the Dead and All Saints' Day arrive, my thoughts and emotions go back exactly thirty years. My closest friend, my kindred spirit, from 1969 until 1986 was murdered that October. His mother and family had his body taken back to Tulsa to be buried there, and they flew his companion and myself in their private plane to Tulsa. I recall it all as if yesterday, the flight, seeing Jim's mother, my primal scream, and seeing people masked with images of death everywhere we went in Tulsa. It was surreal and I had no idea what to do. I just let others lead me around. I gave a ring I wore that I bought in Mexico with Jim to be placed in his casket. His mother introduced me to her friends at the funeral as "like a son to Jim." 

Jim was the first person with whom I visited Mexico in 1971. We returned two more times and we both kept journals of our rich and powerful experiences throughout the country. We both lived at Johnny Mercer's home on Moon River and Jim completed his book on Keats and Yeats there. By our last trip together to Mexico, when Jim spent a year teaching there, I was already studying D.H. Lawrence for my Master's thesis and degree at Tulane, the university where we both earned our doctorates. When I moved from New Orleans back to Savannah, we held readings aloud of Proust, with a few friends, in the garden courtyard of my apartment on Oglethorpe Ave. In the early 1980s we alternated teaching the same course in Philosophy at Armstrong-Atlantic University in Savannah.


It was through Jim that I met Jake. Jim wrote a series of poems to Jake. In 1976 Jake and I became fast friends as we traveled together to New Orleans and a year later in '77 to San Francisco and Big Sur. We drove cross country and had intimate experiences that Jake called "enterprises of great pith and moment" (WS again). Later we both studied law and moved to Atlanta to attend Law School and work together in the Law Library of Ga. State University.
On the day of Jim's funeral on November 1, 1986, after the service and a gathering of the family, I flew back to Atlanta to attend Jake's wedding. Thus the surreal play of Thanatos and Eros in my disoriented psyche that day. Festivities of the Day of the Dead, of Día de Muertos, always conjure that day for me. And on the day itself, and those leading up to it, I dance in memory with them both, Jim and Jake. I feel their spirits around me and praise those remarkable years we shared together. 







James Land Jones
Jake Waldrop

Jack 

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Tuesday, October 23, 2018

VOTE



Jack--
Early voting continues this week across Georgia for the upcoming November 6th election. Whether you’re LGBTQ or an ally, the stakes are too high to sit this election out!
Georgia Equality has endorsed the following candidates:
Governor: Stacey Abrams 
Lt. Governor: Sarah Riggs Amico 
Secretary of State: John Barrow 
Attorney General: Charlie Bailey 
Labor Commissioner: Richard Keatley 
Agriculture Commissioner: Fred Swann 
Public Service Commission (District 3):  Lindy Miller
Public Service Commission (District 5): Dawn Randolph

STATE SENATE:
SD 6: Jen Jordan (i)
SD 29: Valerie Haskins
SD 40: Sally Harrell
SD 41: Steve Henson (i)
SD 44: Gail Davenport (i)
SD 46: Marisue Hilliard
SD 48: Zahra Karinshak
SD 56: Ellyn Jeager


STATE HOUSE OF REPRESENATIVES:
HD 23: Adam Wynn*
HD 36: Jen Slipakoff
HD 37: Mary Frances Williams
HD 39: Erica Thomas (i)
HD 40: Erick Allen
HD 50: Angelika Kausche
HD 52: Shea Roberts
HD 56: Able Mable Thomas (i)
HD 57: Pat Gardner (i)
HD 58: Park Cannon (i)*
HD 60: Kim Schofield (i)
HD 79: Michael Wilensky
HD 80: Matthew Wilson*
HD 81: Scott Holcomb (i)

HD 84: Renitta Shannon (i)*
HD 85: Karla Drenner (i)*
HD 86: Michelle Henson (i)
HD 95: Beth Moore
HD 97: Aisha Yaqoob
HD 99: Brenda Lopez (i)
HD 101: Sam Park (i)*
HD 102: Gregg Kennard
HD 105: Donna McLeod
HD 107: Shelly Hutchinson
HD 108: Jasmine Clark
HD 109: Regina Lewis-Ward
HD 111: El-Mahdi Holly
HD 113: Pam Dickerson (i)
HD 117: Deborah Gonzalez (i)
HD 119: Jonathan Wallace (i)
HD 144: Jessica Walden
HD 153: Camia Hopson
HD 161: Adam Bridges*
HD 179: Julie Jordan*

Gwinnett County:
County Commission District 2: Ben Ku*
County Board of Education District 2:Wandy Taylor


* denotes an openly LGBTQ candidate or incumbent


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LGBTQ Films of Note



Here are the LGBTQ films I think are works of art, as well as profound portrayals of gay or bisexual characters.

Moonlight

God's Own Country

Beautiful Thing

Weekend

Carol

Blue is the Warmest Color

Cabaret

Milk

Brokeback Mountain

Maurice

My Beautiful Laundrette

Hedwig and the Angry Inch

A Single Man

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

Call Me By Your Name

Mulholland Drive

Law of Desire

Women in Love

Y Tu Mama Tambien

Bad Education

Shortbus

A Home at the End of the World

Esteros

Satyricon

Big Eden

History Boys


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James Land Jones



James Land Jones


1934-1986





Friend, Mentor, Kindred Spirit



Mom, Jim, and John in Atlanta
Jim at Moon River 

Jim in Savannah, 1970 


Moon River
.....The Johnny Mercer House at Moon River where Jack and Jim lived in the early 1970s


Author of Adam's Dream: Mythic Consciousness in Keats and Yeats, Jim was also President of the Savannah Chapter of the Georgia Poetry Society, founder of the Oklahoma journal Nimrod, and a prize- winning poet. One of his best poems is

Belle Isle


Late spring and night. Rain-scented air
Surrounds us like a presence. Ahead,
Past threaded rivers, Belle Isle waits.
Beyond, St. Catherine's Sound unreels, a bolt
Of crumpled purple-silver, into the far horizon.


For months we've said we'll boat out to Belle Isle.
Now lightning plays about us in the shuttered trees.
Transparent knives of moonlight sculpt your face
Between my hands. Your eyes, grown deeper blue,
Compel my lips as birds are drawn to air.


I wait, a silk banner to be filled by you.
Give body to my body through your body.
Turn my empty cloth into a sail.
So fitted, voyager, what is Belle Isle to me?
I would explore the rivers of you all my life. 



Written "For Jack--14 Sept 1984--with love."

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Saturday, August 04, 2018

Hope for the Future














When I first explored Hellas (Greece), I sent a postcard to my closest friend. I praised the beauty of the country, it's monuments of civilization and the natural beauty I saw everywhere. He replied that he too loved what is left of the world we are destroying. 
It was a year before his murder. 

As I continue in my 8th decade, the awareness grows that there will be no return to the world I inhabited in the 1980s. Many places I loved then are gone now. This is the way of history. Only now there is something not happening in the normal course of history. The devastation has grown exponentially. Why, just flying anywhere now reveals how much we have fouled the atmosphere. Few today have ever looked from an airplane window and seen a clear blue sky to the horizon as I once did. Now there is haze, often thick haze, below, reaching to a foggy horizon. Toxic smoke arises from global wildfires, dust storms, and countless smoke stacks. Even our rivers catch fire. The destruction from climate change we cause is no longer reversible. The will, itself, to reverse the pollution is insufficient.

In the film about Queen Victoria and her charming friend, Abdul, from India, there is a scene in which Victoria describes herself as a useless old woman. Abdul tells her to think not of herself or even her family, but of service. In service, he suggests, lies ones deeper purpose, whatever the service involves. 

There are few experiences more fulfilling than the sense of helping others, especially helping others learn. For that reason my continuing to work past 70 makes sense. I am blessed to be able to do that part-time.

Nonetheless, I harbor no hope of better times ahead. I may never see my beloved Kalani again because of the volcanic eruption and burning of so much of that part of the Big Island of Hawaii. The Earth is not going to recover the pristine beauty it once possessed. There are of course still beautiful places and wildlife to behold; but they are being destroyed by our own over-population, pollution, industrial development, exploitation, and the indifference of most people. I have no delusions that the destruction will stop or that technology will come to the rescue, or that people will all become enlightened. 

Buddhism, which loves life and has compassion for all, and pantheism which worships nature and the joys of living are the only two religions that offer hope for the world. All the others point to some ethereal, alternate realm, making little or nothing of the beauty of this world and the joys of our lives now, as opposed to some fantastical, other-worldly paradise not of this Earth. Corporations and greedy leaders out for power and their own gain, use religion to promote complacency, to con people into suffering and illness for a supposed after-life. One has only to think of the billions of people who would supposedly populate heaven and hell to grasp how absurd and self-destructive such an illusion is.

As I continue to witness the corruption, the racism, the greed, the cruelty, and the ruin of nature and wildlife, reason compels me to agree with Plato about democracy. In an indifferent, ignorant, and hateful populace arise such terror and ugliness. Is it too absurd to ask that our leaders be educated, experienced in governing, and demonstrating a love for diversity and all the people they lead?

If you trust corporations and those who represent and praise them, I suggest the enlightening episodes of the Untold Story:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Untold_History_of_the_United_States










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