The Redwood Coast

Volume 14, Number 3 Review Summer 2012 A Publication of Friends of Coast Community Library in Cooperation with the Independent Coast Observer arts & sciences a town on the other side of Worcester. For members of Mom’s big family, that hour commute from Boston, which meant crossing west over Route 495, was tantamount to crossing the Rockies in the At Home 1880s. According to the manifest of the SS Cretic, my grandfather Eugenio stood 5 in Exile feet 3 and weighed 110 pounds. Copies of that manifest that I’d seen proved there were hundreds listed at the same weight Zara Raab and height. Illiterate, Eugenio had been told to sign his name X. Page after page dward Frenkel, mathematician and showed that many others had also chosen filmmaker, grew up in a town near that name. It’s an old story now, a display EMoscow and came to the United in the museum at Ellis Island, closed for States as a young man right out of college, so long after 9/11. just as the Berlin Wall was coming down. I recalled strident voices debating that Life in the Soviet Union had not been easy the current Latin tide would bring the US for a young mathematical genius, a stu- to ruin. Reminded of Sacco and Vanzetti dent who showed great promise at a very and the red scare of the 1920s, I recalled young age. Now a professor of mathemat- that mass deportations and public denun- ics at University of California, Berkeley, ciations of immigrants had occurred more and the author of over eighty scientific than once in this country, usually as part articles and books, Frenkel has recently of a power grab playing on fears. Italians turned to writing and filmmaking. His is had been lynched in New Orleans. Afri- the biography of a gifted man, a story of tesy of John Flynn cans had been lynched everywhere. Jews

our had been ghettoized and restricted. Native success against the odds. c Indians had been betrayed, extinguished. The mathematical side of Edward The author’s mother, Grace Marie Cerullo, around 1958 Frenkel’s life focuses on the central sci- Even the Irish had come over on slave entific concept of symmetry, and involves ships, and were stomped on—why else go him in the Langlands Program’s advanced into ward politics? system for tying together different areas Were these lessons of history still of mathematics and quantum physics. My Without Papers being taught in public schools? I wanted own intuitive understanding of symmetry something pure. I had it. My own family often comes from tenth-grade geometry, Family, immigration and identity history. but according to Frenkel, symmetry can Mom’s generation hadn’t dreamed of mean different things in different fields. cultivating a bilingual, bicultural identity Most simply put, as one of the charac- John Flynn in the New World. They’d given it all ters explains in The Two-Body Problem, up, abandoning the lovely Italian mother tongue, insisting on English, and identify- his screenplay with Thomas Farber, “an ybrid cars, mixed messages object is symmetrical if it can be trans- legal aliens. It puzzled and angered me. ing the family as American, without hy- from a mixed-race Presi- This country I was born in—was it mine? phens. Mom married a Roxbury boy—not formed in non-trivial ways without chang- dent, and a mongrel subway ing its shape and position.” The examples It never quite stacked up against agenda- West Roxbury, not lace-curtain Irish, but rider asking himself if any- driven interpretations. the working-class son of vaudeville en- Frenkel likes to give are snowflakes, thing was pure any longer. butterflies and diamonds, but mathemati- San Francisco and New Orleans came tertainers. Though Dad seldom discussed HThat rider would be me—tri-hyphenated to mind, and the environs of New Jersey it, I knew from Mom that his father was cal equations can also be symmetrical, and romantic in the land of T-ball, think-tanks in quantum physics, elementary particles and Manhattan, where Italian ghet- against their marriage. I knew even less and triglycerides. I was Irish, Italian and tos thrived: Neapolitans and Sicilians, about my fractious Irish heritage than my have the symmetries of the particle’s inner American—yet if I was all three, how world. Understanding these symmetries those from the Piedmont and the Abruzzi Italian one. could I be one of them? regions, most of them uneducated, dirt What Mom and Dad had in common leads us to a much better understanding of These were my thoughts as I gripped their behavior. Working at the interface of poor and fleeing tyranny, had brought with was Catholicism. The Flynns were Irish, the handrail of the redline train into Cam- them provincial resentments. Yet they indeed, on Saint Patrick’s Day. One of my math and quantum physics, Frenkel looks bridge. I was back in Boston, city of my for the common trends and patterns, using had lived together, crammed into cobbled mother’s quirkier proud moments was her birth, a copy of Paul Virilio’s Open Sky streets lined with brick tenements. acceptance, through a thirty-year mar- symmetry. in my coat pocket. It was a proudly retro By all rights, Frenkel should have at- Growing up, I seldom heard about my riage, into the Ancient Order of Hiber- moment, standing there in public with a mother’s parents. Only one photo existed nians. I snicker to myself as I remember tended the prestigious Moscow University book. when he turned sixteen, but was denied of my grandfather, Eugenio. Only a hand- Mom in her apron cooking lasagna each I’d been invited from LA to read my ful of my Nona, who died when I was Thanksgiving, the most unlikely of fair a place there because his father was Jew- poems. Squeezed between nine-to-fivers, ish. As Frenkel explains, “In Moscow, in thirteen; I knew her as a long-suffering colleens. She’d felt shame and dissatisfac- I fought off jet lag and indulged in the widow shuffled from one tiny apartment tion with identifying herself as Italian, those days, there was special treatment at breezy sport of finding commuters who the entrance exams for students targeted to the next. She was the mother of twelve, and had come late to sharing her Neapoli- looked as weary as I felt. This sport had or was it thirteen children? I never got a tan heritage. For Christmas the year she as Jewish. The exams were designed become habit on the buses and trains of specifically to keep the Jewish students clear answer. turned sixty, she compiled an album for Los Angeles. Neither tragic nor unusual, Mom often complained that only her each of her children. In it were all extant away.” Frenkel had to endure a four-hour I assumed my unhappiness made me one oral exam during which he was asked brother Richie bothered to visit her. She’d photocopied pictures and documents that with the herd. moved out of Boston and the projects related to her family. questions significantly more difficult than A sullen young brunette sat near me, those asked of other applicants, ques- where I’d spent my first five years, to There are two photos of her mother her head against the window as if prevent- when younger, and only a half-dozen tions that ordinary high school students ing her from toppling over. Full-boned, could not have been expected to know. of herself before her marriage—she so her shoulders mannish, she kept her eyes comely with a lightning-flash smile. When At the same time, none of his answers closed. Her high flat cheekbones, glossy Mom’s generation were accepted as correct. The examiner, I asked why so few, she muttered, “We raven hair and cocoa-butter complexion hadn’t dreamed of couldn’t afford a camera.” for example, asked him to define a circle. suggested an indigenous ancestry from Frenkel replied by saying that a circle was It bothered me to think that for most of South of the Border. In her features, I saw cultivating a bi- her life she felt ashamed of her roots, and the set of points in a plane, equidistant my own mother at the same age, riding the from a fixed point. But this answer was lingual, bicultural had buried them. Now, with health issues same red line home after working in the and fears of death looming, she was pur- judged wrong, because, as the examiner meat department of a Cambridge super- explained, “It is the set of all points in identity in the New suing genealogy as if seeking to cauter- market. ize that shame. Come hell or high water, a plane, equidistant from a fixed point.” Perhaps in the twenty-first century I World. They’d given The examiner, who failed Frenkel on the she’d show her history to her children. In could find purity, after all. Such a Latina some ways, given memories of abuse from exam, later, perhaps out of a vague sense was the face of the latest wave of new ar- it all up, abandon- of guilt, told Frenkel that he showed an her father, I think it brought her as much rivals, many of them subjected to ridicule, ing the lovely Italian pain as comfort. extraordinary grasp of mathematics. As no matter how hard they tried to belong. Frenkel exclaims when relating this story, In my mother’s era, Italians headed a mother tongue, insist- “It was ludicrous! Can you believe this?” ow could I forget the look on her similar wave. Labeled Guineas, Dagos Hface after a recent Christmas dinner A lot of doors were closed to Frenkel and greasers, their numbers peaked in ing on English, and in Russia. He studied mathematics in when she’d tried to explain Italy and im- the postwar decades when DiMaggio and identifying the family migration while showing her notebook to Moscow at the Institute of Oil & Gas, Sinatra flavored popular culture. Many which had a small applied math program, my youngest brother’s daughters? Both —including my mother’s parents—had as American, without of these nieces had offered solicitous at- where a lot of bright Jewish students come illegally. How else explain the label ended up. While he was an undergradu- hyphens. tention without genuine interest. Later, in Wop (without papers)? their defense, I explained to Mom that the ate there, some mathematicians took him I thought with unease of the squawking on TV and radio I’d been trying to avoid, See FRENKEL page 4 much of it politicized rhetoric about il- See PAPERS page 10 Page  The Redwood Coast Review Summer 2012 editor’s note Stars, Art and Tar: Notes on a return to my native land

Stephen Kessler

n a recent visit to Los Angeles Boulevard’s Miracle Mile where I marveled I rolled into town around 9pm Its soft desert air is that the ancient dinosaur graveyard, now and thought I might catch a surrounded by a safety fence and a grassy movie before checking in at part of my pores; its park next door to the LA County Museum my Westside hotel. The Nuart vast grid of streets a of Art, was more or less the same black OTheater, conveniently located just off the swamp it was in the fifties. The anagram- 405, was showing the new Juliette Binoche map of my formative matic rhyme of art and tar suggested to film, Elles, an unrated contemporary me the curious coincidence that both have Franco-Polish drama whose explicit sexual years; its culture of ac- a way of preserving evidence of ancient content guarantees limited circulation in the existences: the mammoth fossils long since United States. The movie’s brief run was celerated striving em- recovered from the gooey ooze by industri- ending in the next couple of days, Binoche bedded in my heart; its ous paleontologists, and now represented is my favorite actress—for her subtle by lifelike scale models rising out of the intelligence as well as her beauty, which ring of beaches spread pits to catch the attention of passersby, are only deepens with age—and I had noth- oddly analogous to the artifacts displayed in ing else to do, so I pulled off the freeway thickly with sand the adjacent museum complex, the artists’ at Santa Monica Boulevard, parked around poured through the creations outlasting their buried bones. the corner from the theater and prepared to During these leisurely afternoons I gave voyeurize some Parisian eroticism for the waist of some mythic myself permission to do nothing, and that next couple of hours. sense of aimlessness moved me somehow to The movie didn’t start for another 45 hourglass of time for- follow my random instincts and revisit parts minutes, so I took the time to browse in a ever running out. of a city utterly changed since I was grow- secondhand bookstore on Sawtelle, a shop ing up there more than half a century ago. I hadn’t visited for fifteen or twenty years. Favorite old drive-ins and hot-dog stands, In the 1970s I found there a copy of a rare book I had never seen before, and in light drugstores and bookstores and moviehouses, collection of Henry Miller watercolors and of Justin O’Brien’s earlier version of the landmarks of my childhood redolent of pop- I recalled many interesting hours spent in Notebooks 1942-1951 (originally published corn and French fries (again the French), are its narrow aisles over my years as a native by Knopf in 1965 and reissued in paper- gone or transformed, replaced by highrise and recurrent visitor to the city. As soon as back thirty years later by another obscure office towers or turned into luxury shopping I entered the old building I noticed some- American publisher, Marlowe & Company), malls, the landscape of the past inexorably thing different: instead of the cluttered, I was happy to get my hands on this one. erased by time too relentless and totally lost abundantly overstocked and dusty bookshop Camus is, for my money, one of the deepest for even Proust to recapture. of memory, the collection was pared down, and wisest thinkers of the twentieth century, Sipping a margarita in a Mexican res- with shelf space to spare, and as I scanned and in his notebooks he reveals himself (at taurant over a meal with my nephew Mike the titles it struck me that each book seemed the time to himself alone) to be a touchingly (a freelance journalist who has eclipsed my to have been selected by a highly literate vulnerable human work-in-progress, dealing Juliette Binoche and Albert Camus dubious example by becoming a first-rate and discerning sensibility. For me it was with his own growing fame as a writer as investigative reporter) or having a King- an extraordinary and encouraging rediscov- well as with big ideas, cultural insights—es- romantic nor exploitive in its exploration fisher beer with my old friend Bart (whom ery, and I was heartened to be told by the pecially about the French—and private of female sexuality and male sexual need. I first met when we were students at UCLA fellow at the desk (there was no counter or doubts. The notebooks of such a mind at In American hands such themes would in 1965 and who is now a talmudic scholar cash register and the owner wasn’t present) work, jotting down thoughts for essays surely have been sensationalized, but the and lawyer specializing in mediation) at his that the store, now called Alias Books, was or novels, tossing off incidental epigrams female Polish director of Elles, 39-year-old favorite Indian eatery, I can almost remem- doing very well and had been in business in (“Naturalness is not a virtue that one has: Malgorzata Szumowska, manages to create ber everything I left when I fled this city so this new incarnation for more than a decade. it is acquired.” “The opposite of reaction a broodingly intelligent investigation of the long ago, everything that’s too late to recol- I found, among other unexpected things, is not revolution, but creation.”), observing crosscurrents between desperation, desire, lect now yet paradoxically lingers in the a copy of Camus’s Notebooks 1951-1959, the behavior of contemporaries, remarking economic necessity and familial obligation. mind, the psyche, the soul somehow shaped the third and final volume of the author’s on their character, acknowledging rivalries, You could watch it, if you were so inclined, for better or worse by this often exasperat- private musings, translated by Ryan Bloom reflecting on politics, sorting out for himself just for the sexy parts but you would be ing environment. The LA climate, its soft and issued in a handsome trade paperback how best to live, make for provocative and missing the deeper and more interesting desert air, is part of my pores; its vast grid by Ivan R. Dee, an independent publisher thrilling reading. existential questions it raises—about love, of streets an infinitely associative map of in Chicago, as recently as 2010. It was a And how synchronistic to find this book about work, about marriage—so beautifully my formative years; its culture of acceler- by this great French-language writer during enacted by the great Binoche. ated striving and glittery glamour something a brief interlude before watching a seriously I hope to have escaped and yet remains em- sexy French-language film. Binoche plays olored by the company of these artists, bedded in my tarry heart like the fang of a The Redwood Coast a middle-aged bourgeois journalist with a CCamus and Binoche, Los Angeles saber-tooth tiger; its ring of beaches spread businessman husband and two school-age came intimately alive for me as a landscape thickly with sand poured through the waist sons who is finishing an article for Elle brimming with not just the usual urban ag- of some mythic hourglass of time forever magazine based on interviews with a couple gravations but with vivid dramatic reality. running out. Review of young women who are paying for their The meals and conversations I enjoyed And yet one thing has remained the Stephen Kessler college education by freelancing as prosti- while there with family and select friends same: The Apple Pan, that charming little Editor tutes. As Binoche’s character, Anne, taps were complemented by time I had alone to diner on Pico near Westwood, just around away at her laptop under a looming dead- explore the city and county, from the wilds the corner from my hotel; a greasy spoon Daniel Barth line, she visualizes scenes her subjects have of Malibu’s Decker Canyon and the nature with a U-shaped counter and two or three Daniela Hurezanu described to her of encounters with their preserve on Point Dume at the northwest dozen stools and a minimal menu of burgers Jonah Raskin clients—dramatized onscreen in unusu- tip of Santa Monica Bay to a charmingly and fries, coffee and apple pie still served Rebecca Taksel ally graphic yet not gratuitous terms—and civilized French bistro a few doors down by the same old guys in their little white Contributing Editors she becomes increasingly unsettled by the from Skylight Books on Vermont and across hats and soiled aprons and perfunctory contrast between these girls’ assertion of from the post office in the Los Feliz district manners—a time warp like some Hopper Linda Bennett their sexual power and independence and where I had lunch one afternoon and, just painting where night owls gather to be alone Production Director the constraints and frustrations of her own like an old-school tourist in some exotic together in the darkness of some existential respectable family life. locale, took time while sipping a leisurely eternity. And who is that cool, vaguely The Redwood Coast Review is published It is a very good film, and Binoche as espresso to pen a letter to a far-off friend French-looking couple on the far side of the quarterly (January, April, July and October) grill smoking and speaking low over their by Friends of Coast Community Library in usual is excellent in her embodiment of the and then slip it into the slot across the street. cooperation with the Independent Coast complex inner conflicts of her character. It Another significant touristic stop was coffee cups? Observer. The opinions expressed in these is also a strikingly erotic film, yet neither a visit to the La Brea Tar Pits on Wilshire pages are those of the individual writers and do not necessarily reflect the views ofF oCCL, the ICO or the advertisers. Contents copyright © 2012 The Redwood Coast Review. All rights Readers’ Letters revert to authors and artists on publication. We welcome your submissions. Please send essays, reviews, fiction, poetry and letters Art is a gift that needs to be given to others to the Editor, The Redwood Coast Review, c/o ICO, PO Box 1200, Gualala, CA 95445. Manuscripts should be typed, double-spaced, with the At the end of your fine survey of Vivian In that case, the artist’s efforts can suc- without mercantile success; in most cultures author’s name, address, phone, email and Maier’s photos (“An Unknown Artist, Even ceed or fail on either count. One may fail at most times it has probably found a way of word count at the top of the first page. Postal to Herself,” Spring 2012), you make some to make art of high quality, of course. But doing so, and if it hadn’t, our cultural heri- mail only. A self-addressed, stamped envelope comments that I must half-disagree with. if one makes gems and fails to give them tage would be much thinner. The question is required for our reply. Yes, the making of art is its own reward. away, the giving part of the intrinsic reward now is whether good art can even survive On the Web: stephenkessler.com/rcr.html And yes, the loss is the world’s if fine is missing. So here there is a loss not just to in the gift economy, or put a little more Subscription information: See page 9. work vanishes. But I feel that the second the potential recipients, but to the hopeful broadly, whether the gift economy itself can Friends of Coast Community Library is a statement doesn’t quite line up with the giver as well. survive. If it can’t, then the culture we pass nonprofit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization. Tax-deductible donations may be sent to first. Because to make art is to try both to There is no reason to equate the giving down will be seriously impoverished. Coast Community Library, PO Box 808, Point create and to give a gift. Czeslaw Milosz: part of the process with popularity, commer- “[U]nderneath the ambition to perfect one’s cial success, or other goals of material am- Arena, CA 95468. The library is located at Roger Greenwald 225 Main Street in Point Arena. Telephone art without hope of being rewarded by bition. There is a gift economy alongside the Toronto 707.882.3114. contemporaries lurks a magnanimity of gift- fiscal/economic one. (Lewis Hyde explores Thank you for your support! offering to posterity” (A Book of Luminous the relation between the two in his seminal Things). 1981 book, The Gift.) Good art can survive Summer 201 The Redwood Coast Review Page  life stories Believe You Me Encounter in a Palo Alto Bookstore

Walter Martin

have been listening for an hour to the most abject yours”—because he needed man on earth. urgently to read De Monarchia. He walked in singing, loudly and well, from the They sent him their Italian finale of Don Giovanni—“Ferma un po’ . . . Non si catalogue and he stayed up all pasce di cibo mortale . . . Che si pasce di cibo celeste night going over it and marking I. . .” things. One edition was in Latin and Italian, another in Latin and “A white man, sir!” he said. “A man of stone!” A ferocious face, the veins in his forehead seemed ready English. Unable to decide, not to burst. Tufts bristling at nostrils and ears, a terrifying having eaten that day, having not scowl, and eyebrows worthy of a wild boar. a penny to his name, he ordered Now that he had our attention, he continued: “Altre cure both, at sixty dollars apiece. He più gravi di queste, Altra brama quaggiù mi guido!” recommends Alighieri to all those Many of his sentences seemed to end in exclamation who want to understand what is marks, and very few were completed without interjec- wrong with America today. tion—“O Heaven forbid . . . Pardon me, sir . . . I hope I’m I nod, which throws him off not wasting your valuable time . . . I’m nothing but a stupid balance. old man . . . God forgive me . . .” and so on. “I’m wasting your time, sir! He had recently called Schoenhof’s in Cambridge—“an Tell me to leave immediately!” excellent shop, sir, but believe me, not as excellent as He makes a move for the door, and when I protest, cries out, “Hialo didoskole! God bless you, sir,” and bangs his fist on the counter. “Give me your hand in pledge.” Then asks—“Are you familiar In a Time of . . . I’m sure you must be, you’re obviously a cultured man . . . Wild Mustard with these lines from Death on WES the Installment Plan?” In French tE Segregated by family he recites the passage about TA

renouncing medicine once and OBER

in botany books, they crowd r together in the borders for all as so much “merde . . . between highway and fences Pardon my French!” —mustard wild radish “What a man! . . . Louis-Ferdinand Céline, God bless He seemed to have an endless supply of verse for every cow parsnips—blooming fiercely his soul . . . Forgive me, sir… I spent some years in medical occasion, in at least five languages, at his command. I asked and late this year school, so I know what he meant!” if he wrote poetry himself. like spring, drenched Out of the blue he cried: “Maledizione! . . . I hate to “Certainly not! . . . oh, no . . . no . . . (then, shaken) . . . I nearly into summer. mention this . . . God forgive me . . . but I held it against you showed a sonnet to a professor of mine at Yale, who praised for years that you were playing some piece of popular music it to the skies . . . I knew perfectly well it was rubbish . . . In the parking lot the first time I came in . . . I can’t help . . . I can’t . . . I have Why didn’t he say so? . . . I never made that mistake again.” at the wharf surfers climb a grudge against the modern world . . . (shifting into decla- A physician, and simultaneously, since the late fifties, from cars and pickups mation) . . . but a tawdry cheapness shall outlast our days . . . a toiler in the stacks at Hoover Tower, where no one ever and off motorcycles so I fear . . . (the tragic mask whisked off and replaced by its bothers him—“I had so few patients—why not do something to suit up and carrying counterpart) . . . Remember ‘Young Man with a Horn’? Bix I enjoyed every day? something to improve my mind?”—but their boards go single file Beiderbecke? Wonderful stuff . . . He who on honeydew hath one day he walked into the lobby and what do you think they down the narrow path between fed / hath no need of mortal food—don’t you agree?” had on display? the boathouse and seawall, Remembering Céline, he said, “And would you believe Grossly offended even now, he jumps on the punchline: huge granite boulders it? . . . Some imbecile in the Yale Review called him . . . “The letters of Chou-en-lai, sir! The letters of CHOU- trucked from the mountains (looking both ways to see if the coast was clear, and frown- EN-LAI!” after the ocean’s last great ing deeply, pinching his nose) . . . an anti-Semite!” But not all men are bad, he assured me. There are giants lunge to retake the land I take off Sonny Rollins and put on a Haydn Mass. This who walk the earth even today, in particular His Grace Arch- took out the pier. has a calming effect. He closes his eyes and, grinning as bishop Marcel Lefebvre, Superior General of the Congrega- furiously as he had frowned before, breaks into Italian again, tion of the Holy Ghost, “a tremendous figure, rock-solid, Abreast by threes reciting a long speech in a loud voice as if into a micro- strictly traditional. I would urge you to read his Open Letter they paddle out to form phone. to Confused Catholics . . . I recommend him to you unre- a mammoth circle in the waves “And do you know who that was? . . . (drawing himself servedly.” The antithesis, apparently, of Ernesto Cardenal, enclosing a brother and sister up from his stoop at the mention of the name) . . . Benito whose book he had just found in the Stanford Bookstore . . . like an embrace. Mussolini!” Lowering his voice to a whisper, he repeats (retching and rolling his eyes) . . . “I love Spanish poetry, Above them on the pier with awe: “Benito Mussolini . . . Il Commendatore! . . . Oh, sir, but Cardenal was mixed up with the bunch of thugs who a voice lifts and is joined sir, forgive me . . . I should know better by now . . . I only drove out that decent man, Somoza . . . I won’t set foot in as the words . . . how sweet pray that I will not get you arrested, get both of us arrested, there again.” the sound . . . drift out over sir . . . though it would be an honor to share a cell with you, He jabs a finger in my chest. the bobbing heads and certainly . . . They can torture me there as long as they want “Forgive me, sir . . . I’m not jabbing, I’m jabbering, eh? black-clad bodies, sprays . . . I will never, never, never, never recant!” . . . ha, ha! . . . and I’m certainly not jabbing a finger at you, of wild rhododendron He claps both hands over his mouth hard enough to snap sir. Never!” falling to the sea. his head back. He placed, last night at one a.m., a person-to-person call A long desperate sigh, and slowly—“It’s a dangerous to Père Fallé, in Switzerland, a call that lasted a long while, Outside the windows world . . . you must be very, very careful with whom you let begging His Worship to accept, on behalf of the Holy Ghost of the old Odd Fellows Hall yourself get involved, believe you me.” Fathers, as a token of his deepest respect, the gift of two on Main Street, the day volumes of Dante, for the benefit of its members . . . “if they darkens as kin and comrades e asks if I have any missals, and I do. “God be praised! would read them, which I doubt.” gather, an evening fog wet H. . . Of course you do! . . . He told me to come in here After which he called Dr. X, a neurosurgeon at the Veter- and blowing spreads in over today . . . Bless you, sir, you’re a saint! . . . Oh, I shall have ans Hospital, who had once, years before, ordered—“with- the town, and the last of the a mass said for you, sir . . . not a funeral mass, eh? . . . ha, out my consent”—a ‘lamposcopy’, totally unnecessary and a wild forest flowers wash ha . . . certainly not.” He goes off to look for his missal and I waste of taxpayers’ money. back to shore. grab these pages and scribble what little I am able to remem- “And do you know what he called me?” he asked, ber. He returns soon with a postcard of George Eliot. crushed by the weight of the unforgivable. “He said, ‘You’re One by one in the big “Do you know what that filthy-minded Time magazine nothing but a damned fool!’ and slammed down the tele- room upstairs we are called this noble woman? . . . (mimes the act of spitting on phone . . . like this! talking talking talking the floor, convincingly) . . . ‘Mrs. Immanuel Chinwhisker, a “And I said to myself, now Bill, you are certainly a fool the things he did, the fag in drag!’ . . . forgive me for using that kind of language . . . he was right about that . . . but you are not damned, no, things he said, telling in here.” Bill, I said, you are . . . NOT . . . damned!” memories, reading his poems, He had himself been married once—prior to the odious Closing his eyes for a long time, the better to inhale the all to keep him here alive Council (pretending to spit again)—to the daughter of Pope Benedictus: “No, sir, I may be stupid . . . I may be a hopeless this much longer, knowing John XXIII, and he wrote to his Holiness, saying: I prostrate and pathetic worm . . . but the Lord is wise . . . (eyes twin- he left last week, the myself in the dust every day before your image, begging kling now) . . . the Lord is wise! . . . I don’t move an inch righteous waterman, your forgiveness, Holy Father. until He tells me to.” on the one wave “Do I strike you as somewhat . . . chimærical, sir?” he did not ride home He leaves again and returns with a long stanza by Waldo or after so many eons away Emerson for me to read. “When I tried to recite those lines he was home. to a certain colleague of mine, he said . . . Can you imagine such a thing? . . . He said, ‘Well, Bill, everybody knows that Walter Martin is a poet, a bookseller and the translator of Henry Thoreau was sleeping with Emerson’s wife.” This The Complete Poems of Charles Baudelaire (Carcanet). He lives in Fredericksburg, Texas. —Fionna Perkins revelation was followed by a terrible gnashing of teeth, paw- ing of carpet, and long-drawn-out sigh. Page  The Redwood Coast Review Summer 2012 frenkel from page 1

sometimes frustrating personal life. Frenkel back. Such documents could be available at wants to emphasize that there is no contra- a much lower price, accessible to students, diction between the two. who often don’t have much money. Both characters in The Two Body Prob- This is just what Frenkel created with his lem are looking for a deep relationship. own mathematical text. He negotiated with Richard, the writer, says he is waiting for Cambridge University Press to keep the a princess who will come and kiss him and rights to the electronic version of his book. wake him up. And for Phillip, the math- Then he went to Mathematical Sciences ematician, likewise, something is drawing Publishers, a small company in Berkeley, to him to his past lover, so he is drawn to that produce a state-of-the-art, fully hyper-linked deep relationship with someone. This is electronic version of his book. “This,” says the ideal that he wants to pursue. But at the Frenkel, “is the future of publishing in same time he has no trouble meeting other mathematics. This is how scientific texts women. The Two-Body Problem explores will be produced in the future. Mine is one these contradictions. of the first.“ Frenkel and Farber are in talks with a Frenkel put the electronic version of his well-known French producer about a film book on his homepage so anyone can down- based on their screenplay. Frenkel, who load it, free. Here is the link: http://math. wants to play Phillip in the film, attended berkeley.edu/~frenkel/loop.pdf the Cannes Film Festival to mingle with His book is an example of how scientific producers and filmmakers. But the world of publishing should be done––especially in filmmaking, even independent filmmaking, math, where scholars depend so much on is different from Frenkel’s native world of the work of others. Edward Frenkel mathematics, where you work by yourself Frenkel is at Columbia University at the or you work with one or two others, even moment, as the recipient of their prestigious though you depend on what other people visiting position the Eilenberg Chair. He under their wings and mentored him. He art and music; it’s a creative process of have done. When you actually make an is finishing a book about mathematics as a did some cutting-edge research and was going against the unknown. I wanted to effort, and write up your results and your parallel universe, hidden from most people, invited to Harvard University. Suddenly he convey that in a more emotional way as op- ideas, it’s a solitary effort. Filmmaking in- which he wants to make accessible to a wide found himself a visiting professor at one of posed to cerebral way.” volves many people working collaboratively audience. “There is a magic world out there, the most prestigious institutions in the free Frenkel’s next film project was co-writ- throughout the whole process. which most people don’t know exists,” he world. Frenkel was just twenty-one years ing, with the novelist Tomas Farber, a says. The book uses a non-standard ap- old. screenplay called The Two-Body Problem proach mixing presentation of mathematical He remembers the journey to the United [http://thetwobodyproblem.com/] using the In mathematics, “the ideas with a narrative of his own journey, States vividly. “My plane touches down mathematical “two-body problem”–– find- two-body problem” his struggle with adversity, mathematical at Logan Airport in Boston. But I felt at ing the trajectories of two objects, which in- research and artistic pursuit. home. I immediately felt it was my place.” teract only with each other––as a metaphor has a unique solu- The story of Frenkel’s education in Mos- Five years later, his family immigrated to for the problem of love between two human cow is a story that he thinks more people the Boston area. Meanwhile, he earned his beings. The Two-Body Problem started as tion. But in the real should know about. “A lot of lives were bro- PhD in one year at Harvard, and after that a screenplay that was later adapted for the world, the relation- ken at that time by the system in the Soviet became a Junior Fellow and then an Associ- stage and directed by Barbara Oliver at the Union.” He was only sixteen years old, but ate Professor at Harvard. Aurora Theater in Berkeley. It has also been ship of two people is strong enough to survive. In some ways, he Then, as Frenkel explains with a smile, published as a book by Andrea Young Arts. says, his struggles there as a student made “the University of California at Berkeley The Two-Body Problem is partly about complicated, espe- him stronger: “I had a lot of support from made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.” the connection and collision between the cially if others are my family, and I benefited from the generos- real world and the abstract world with the ity of some wonderful mathematicians. But ot only is Frenkel a mathemati- “two-body problem” serving as metaphor introduced; it doesn’t a lot of young people suffered from this, and Ncian, he’s also a filmmaker. In recent for male-female bonding. One of the charac- their careers were broken, their lives were years, he has made the extraordinary leap ters, Phillip, is a mathematician. He explains always have a solu- broken. For what? Just because of anti- into filmmaking as a way of expressing in the screenplay that mathematics is the Semitism. There’s simply no justification his feelings for the beauty of mathemat- world of infinite possibilities. Nothing ever tion. Phillip tries for this. We need to talk more about it, to ics. Frenkel’s first film, Rites of Love and dies. You never have to sacrifice anything. to come to terms prevent this from happening in the future.” Math [http://ritesofloveandmath.com/], was Phillip wants to hold onto his former love Frenkel’s coming of age was a time of co-directed with the French experimental and not sacrifice the world of possibilities of with this dichotomy economic crisis in the Soviet Union. He filmmaker Reine Graves. He was living in other romantic relationships. In mathemat- was torn, because his family was still in Paris at the time, doing research under the ics, “the two-body problem” has a unique between the math- Russia. In the early years, when he was at auspices of a French mathematical founda- solution. But in the real world, that’s not ematical truths of his Harvard before his family, too, immigrated, tion, when a mutual friend introduced him the case. The relationship of two people is he missed them. He wondered if he should to Graves. Frenkel wanted to make a film complicated, especially if other relation- profession and hu- go back to Russia. His parents were clear: about math. Graves immediately saw the ships are introduced; it doesn’t always have “Don’t come back. This is your opportunity. potential of the project. The result is a short a solution. In the play, Phillip tries to come man truth. You should stay.” He decided to stay at Har- film, 26 minutes long, in which a mathema- to terms with this dichotomy between the vard. And then he arranged for his family tician, played by Frenkel himself, creates a mathematical truths of his profession and renkel continues his mathematical to immigrate. They came about five years formula of love that he tattoos on the body human truth. He is so used to being able to Fresearch, and in the field of mathemati- later and are still living in the Boston area. of his beloved. It ends in tragedy, as a kind solve all problems, he’s a bit flummoxed at cal publishing, too, he turns out to be an Frenkel visited his family in Boston in Janu- of homage to a film by the great Japanese first by real-life problems. innovator. For high-end mathematics, the ary 2012, when the American Mathematical writer Yukio Mishima. It is part fantasy, Films and books tend to portray mathe- three or four most prestigious publishers Society invited him to give the Colloquium part allegory, part meditation on what most maticians as people enclosed in themselves, will typically publish a print version, put- Lectures.His family came to see him give people consider to be incompatible notions: sometimes on the verge of mental illness, ting the PDF File online and selling it for this address in front of an audience of thou- mathematics, beauty and love. The contro- like the mathematician in A Beautiful Mind. close to the full price. But with a very small sands. So it was a homecoming for Frenkel. versial film evoked strong reactions—some Phillip, the mathematician in the screenplay effort you can create a much better product, Russia remains important in Edward positive and some negative. Frenkel admits The Two-Body Problem, is not like this. He one with links to all references in the text, Frenkel’s life. He was twenty-one when he that his childhood reading of Russian is an intellectual driven by his intellectual so the reader can jump easily within the came to the United States––still growing up. authors like Dostoyevsky and Bulgakov pursuit, but he also has a fulfilling, albeit text or from the text to the references and But he felt at home here. In fact, he says he contributed to the writing of both his screen- felt more at home here than in his country of plays, The darker undertones of Frenkel’s birth. He says, “I haven’t been back to Rus- writing, reflected especially in Rites of Love sia in twenty years. I would like to go back and Math with its tragic ending, come, he one day, I have friends there, I feel very says, from his Russian heritage. connected to the culture there, and I care For Frenkel, the film was a natural In My Father’s Garden deeply about what’s happening in Russia. continuation of his work in mathematics. He But it was a good thing, my coming to this wanted to dispel popular myths about math- country.” Unwatch’d, the garden bough shall sway... ematics, as well as build bridges between —Tennyson different fields. According to Frenkel, “Most people just shut down when you try to broach the subject of math. They might Zara Raab’s recent book of poems is Swim- pretend they are listening, but they aren’t, The unusual blue hyacinth came into bloom ming the Eel (David Robert Books). She really. One reason people don’t want to hear unnoticed, and now the apple tree surprises me: lives in Berkeley and is a regular contribu- you is bad math education. The subject is already in full flower. tor to the RCR. abstract, so if your teacher does not find a The daffodils he planted here last fall way to explain it clearly, then this leaves have all come up, bright gold in the March dusk. you with a bad taste, and this taste stays He has had to leave his home, go with you. And there’s fear, too. People think elsewhere to be cared for, and I’ve they will not be able to understand. But in come back here to look in on his garden. fact I believe that everyone is capable of Does the camellia care there’s no face at the window? understanding math, if it is explained in the Do the birds in the branches miss the one who watched them? WRITE TO US right way.” Does it matter to the tulips that they opened up, then The idea of Rites of Love and Math is not faded, unappreciated and unseen? The RCR welcomes your letters. to talk about the subject directly, but to let For fifty years, his eyes admired this garden, every flower; Write to the Editor, RCR c/o people see and feel it through the powerful I might expect to find their imprint on these petals. images of cinema. “To most people this ICO, P.O. Box 1200, Gualala, sounds very surprising,” Frenkel says, “but —Carolyn Tipton CA 95445 or by email to I actually believe that love and math are not [email protected]. that far away from each other. Math requires the same kind of love and passion as poetry, Summer 201 The Redwood Coast Review Page  travels poets & poetry

forget it. Each man makes his own costume from scratch; he wears it only once. The Artistry The creation of a costume for an event that involves Short Cuts movement, procession, dancing, ritual—think about this, about moving in such a precious and beautiful shell, one you have created yourself, for one purpose, with great labor and Daniel Barth & the Ecstasy expense, and which you will discard, also like a shell, after the celebration. When the moment comes for the vela, for the Carnival Taking Tanka Home procession, for the Mardi Gras parade, when you leave your by Jane Reichhold house in Tehuantepec or Rio or New Orleans—in any of AHA Books (2011), 100 pages these it will be a humble house—you will merge into the crowd and you will see yourself in the others who emerge Books and Habits From the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn from houses around you. You will be reflected back to your- edited by John Erskine self dozens of times, hundreds of times—flowers, feathers, Heinemann (1922) beads—explosions of color. Even if you are Orpheus him- self, or the Indian Chief, you will exist only in the pageant. You will be reflected in the people of your court, as your t was Jane Reichhold’s book Taking Tanka Home that power and rank are reflected in their movements around you. got me started thinking about short poems and short Now, you move down the street and you merge with the Iforms. Tanka, like haiku, is a Japanese form which has others: You dance, you swirl your skirts, you preen your been transplanted to English-speaking countries, has adapted feathers. The membrane of your own skin becomes semi- well and taken hold. permeable. Divisions between yourself and others dissolve The Reichhold book is an excellent introduction to the in the stamp and swirl of movement. The Indian feathers form. To start with, it is very pleasing visually. Each page shake, threatening the oncoming tribe. You feel the air contains one tanka, first in one line of Japanese characters, currents shaking around them. Your heartbeat is audible in then the five-line Japanese phonetic translation, followed by the music. One Mardi Gras Indian chief describes it as an the original five-line tanka in English. I found it easy to take out-of-body experience. a meditative approach to the book, taking time to consider on and appreciate each poem. Here are the first two:

Despite the gorgeousness of the embroidery

t n Hi w of the huipiles, of the gold and blue of the samba costumes a round trip ticket

the shape of a navel

he at M of Orpheus and Eurydice, of the pink and yellow feathers of the Indians, these are not performances. The spectator who promises us remains outside the dance, outside the thousand reflections at the end of this life Rebecca Taksel of self in others created by the dance, has only a very incom- we come back home plete idea of what he is actually seeing. This is all about rida Kahlo wears the blouse, the huipil, of the losing oneself, but in the most benign possible way. There women of Tehuantepec in her self-portraits. We is no demagoguery about it, no subjection of one’s will to small pools all know the heavily embroidered floral blouse, another. There is only shared joy. high in the mountains probably because of Frida. She has appropri- Ask anyone who has learned to dance with a partner or a above the tree-line ated the look; it is a look, and we look at it. The group, whether it’s square dancing or line dancing or couples the only birdsongs Fself-portraits are beautiful and static, her eyes are fixed and dancing. They will tell you that there is an absolutely unique come from frogs hypnotic. But the colors are riotous and wild, the flowers exhilaration that unites dancer to dancer and dancers to mu- enormous, exuberant. sic; the dancers are moved by the dance rather than by their These give a pretty fair idea of the possibilities and uses In the documentary Blossoms of Fire we see the huipiles conscious will. I think that’s a mild version of what must go of the form. In her Introduction to this volume, translator worn by the women who make them, the Tehuanas them- on in Tehuantepec or Rio or New Orleans. Aya Yuhki speaks of “concentrated words similar to the selves, proud Zapotec women of the town of Juchitán on Still, we go and we watch, those of us who cannot dance poems of Emily Dickinson.” That seems an apt compari- the isthmus of Tehuantepec in southern Mexico. Tradition- and have no costume and don’t belong; we go to street son. Tanka are a lot like haiku, but it’s amazing how much ally—and the tradition has not yet died out—women make festivals, parades, religious processions, occult ceremonies. poetry can be packed into those two extra lines. They leave their own huipiles entirely by hand. Every neighborhood We want to go, we want to step out of our everyday lives room for devices like personification that are all but taboo has a church, every church has its vela, or fiesta in honor and into the magic raiment of celebration. And it happens, in haiku. The poet can also of a saint, and every vela requires a beautiful huipil and sometimes, up to a point. All the great writers on travel tell enter in personally, comment lace trimmings and skirts. Making their procession through us that when we travel our minds and our bodies are free to and offer opinion. In this the streets, dancing, gathering to eat and drink, the women make new connections and associations, to reorder reality way tanka are comparable to look like a flock of butterflies, in their costumes that are itself. From strangeness into ecstasy, we stand, as the Greek Dickinson’s short poems and each a little different within the discipline of the tradition. word ekstasis says, as the New Orleans Indian says, outside to others written in English. The vela has Christian associations, but we are told that the ourselves. I enjoyed Reichhold’s celebrations predate the Conquista; it is Nature that is being This sort of ecstatic tourism is often left largely to book from start to finish. honored at least as much as the saint. chance. Some travelers believe that to prepare for such an When I compare these tanka In Rio de Janeiro, in the hills surrounding the city, in the experience runs counter to the spirit of the thing. Others, and to many of the precious ego- favelas where the impoverished cariocas live, the samba I think that this second group numbers among its members based poems being offered many of the great traveling adventurers, prepare themselves by contemporary poets, well, by study. They know which saint is being honored, they I’ll take tanka. They are a The creation of a costume for know the words being sung in Spanish or Portuguese or Cre- good influence on my work. Jane Reichhold an event that involves move- ole-tinged English. They don’t embroider or sew but they Like other good poetry, they array themselves in history and music. They are amateurs, don’t always make logical sense, but they make poetic sense. ment, procession, dancing, those whose love translates not into a bid for belonging but They help to give form and shape to the natural world, evok- only into a modest gesture of appreciation. Sometimes, for ing circles within circles, the connectedness of all things, ritual—think about this, about a moment that has been prepared by weeks, months, years of long stretches of geologic time. Almost every tanka in the moving in such a precious appreciation, the love and the knowledge, the spectacle and book uses concrete nature images, nothing fancy, but often, the music, fill up the entire being of the amateur and it all with a skillful twist, the energy of an image is used to flip it and beautiful shell, one you brims over: ecstasy. on its side. And the images play off of one another, blossom- ing like flowers, billowing like clouds. Here’s another: have created yourself, for one Not participant, not amateur, without costume purpose, with great labor and or preparation, the rest of us still go and we still watch. We unreal again are a larger group, the tourists, and though we may disparage the road I walked today expense, and which you will the title, we spend our money and put up with considerable thick fog discomfort and we go, and we watch. We reflect the glory of whispers in the grass discard, also like a shell, after what we see in our cameras, hold our cell phones up in front for the moon to appear of us like tiny shields, filtering and miniaturizing the image the celebration. of the larger splendor that we won’t, or can’t face directly. As in haiku, the ephemeral moment is painted. Another We go, we take pictures. We want to capture images. We person’s “damned fog” becomes the poet’s welcome vehicle, don’t capture them, of course: The trap snaps shut on a flee- and she gives us a free ride away from the annoying every- schools work all year on their costumes for Carnival. Each ing ghost. What we create when we get home, the trophies day. The poem provides a window onto a moment, but the school chooses a theme for that year’s parade and competi- we mount, are prints, the footprints of escaped beings. We window can become a mirror, or it can look out and reflect tion. The 1959 film Orfeu Negro by Marcel Camus shows know it. We try to recreate the being, the magnificent crea- back at the same time. us a samba school costumed on the theme of Orpheus and ture that we glimpsed and heard, the composite of human Tanka was new to me, a different kind of poetry, yet I Eurydice. The samba dancers sew their glorious costumes beings and diaphanous clouds of fabric or brilliant feathers found the ones in this book to be rich in associations. Reich- themselves. They are worn only for that year’s Carnival. or flowers blooming above lace skirts, and music, of singing hold’s tanka made me think of poems by Gary Snyder, Jane and brass and intricate percussion. We lay the prints out on Hirshfield, Jim Harrison, and Ikkyu, Basho, Cold Mountain, In New Orleans, since the nineteenth century, a table, or pass them around in order, or create presentations Homer even; also R. H. Blyth’s Zen in English Literature some African-American men have formed themselves into on a screen, offering scraps of commentary. The momentary and Oriental Classics. So, a rich book, well worth reading. tribes and dressed as Indians for Mardi Gras. When blacks expressions of wonder and interest shift down to the usual weren’t permitted to join the Mardi Gras parades, dressing travel talk, of someone else’s trip, of missed connections, ith all that said, my urge after reading Taking Tanka as Native Americans was a way to get around the prohibition stomach upsets. We gather up the prints, now printed over WHome was not to write tanka, but rather to keep writ- and also a way to honor the Indians, who supported their with the fingers of our restless audience. But some rebel ing poems of all kinds, especially shorter ones. As I said, it right to freedom. The idea of the costuming for Mardi Gras voice within us speaks in the shadowy room after the guests really got me thinking about short forms in English language came from France and the Caribbean, but the New Orleans have left and we’re clearing away the prints and the traces. poetry. Why do we need to import haiku and tanka? Isn’t tribes brought an attitude of fierceness to the practice. The “I saw something. And I will never forget it. And I think it there a tradition of short forms in English that is worth tap- tribes used to meet in the streets and fight; later, the fights changed me in some way I don’t yet know.” ping into? took the form of ritual dances. The costumes are elaborate I began exploring this idea, and came across a worthwhile almost beyond belief, made of thousands of beads and feath- piece by Lafcadio Hearn, “Note Upon the Shortest Forms ers, with enormous headdresses. Run into a tribe, or a clash of English Poetry.” It’s part of his Books and Habits, a col- of tribes, at the carnival celebration, and you will not soon RCR contributing editor Rebecca Taksel lives in Pittsburgh. See SHORT page 6 Page 6 The Redwood Coast Review Summer 2012

SHORT from page 5 It’s instructive to look through antholo- as an integral part of the story. Many poets gies or books by individual poets and see are represented, both famous and obscure. lection based on lectures he delivered to how many short poems are included. It’s Here are a couple of examples from The students in Japan between 1896 and 1902. surprising, for instance, how many of Walt Man in the Blizzard: Hearn starts out, “Perhaps there is an idea Whitman’s poems are quite short. Sand- among Japanese students that one general burg’s books also include a mix of short Exercise difference between Japanese and Western poems interspersed with longer ones. They poetry is that the former cultivates short provide variety and counterpoint, a different Just as I stood up forms and the latter longer ones, but this is kind of beauty. Here’s one of his: I sat back down only in part true.” He goes on to point es- again forgetting pecially to the Greeks, who “carried poetry Splinter what I stood for. to the highest perfection that it has ever attained” and “delighted in short forms.” The voice of the last cricket —Pat Nolan Hearn’s opinion is that writers of short across the first frost poems in English and other European is one kind of good-by. Learning languages lost the way by basing it on Ro- It is so thin a splinter of singing. man satirical epigrams rather than the more To believe you are magnificent. purely esthetic Greek model. He does, how- It’s hard to say anything definitive about And gradually to discover that ever, reference some very nice short poems, Lafcadio Hearn the modern scene, because there are so you are not magnificent. Enough by Ben Johnson, Robert Herrick and Walter many regions and niches. Some years back labor for one human life. imitated—Ginsberg confession, Bukowski Savage Landor, among others, even while I contributed to a little magazine called Ant complaint, Billy Collins cuteness. dismissing much of their work as “worthless Farm, which was made up of very short —Czeslaw Milosz The fact that no other short poems leap satires or worthless jest.” poems. It eventually folded, and I don’t readily to mind might serve as my answer Well, I don’t know. I like a good laugh, know of another that has taken its place. Something Schneider’s novels bring out, to the questions posed. Short poems don’t and don’t see anything wrong with using On the World Wide Web, Wisconsin poet with which I wholeheartedly agree, is that get much respect. I can understand that poetry for humorous as well as esthetic pur- Norbert Blei has a site called Basho’s Road, the world of poetry has room for almost to a certain extent. If a poet writes only poses. Hearn goes on to make his case: “It which displays and celebrates short poems unlimited variety of form and content. As epigrams, we might say he hasn’t achieved was not until comparatively modern times in various forms. Jane Reichhold maintains poets, we shouldn’t limit or pigeonhole much, though no one seems to accuse Basho that our Western world fully recognized the a site called AHA Poetry and publishes ourselves, but rather revel in the variety of of being “just a haiku poet.” So some of it value of the distich, triplet or quatrain for a Web zine, Lynx, which includes haiku, poetic possibilities and write what is ours to is culturally determined. Just as the respect the expression of beautiful thoughts, rather tanka, renga, and articles about short forms. write, call it what you will. As Jack Kerouac accorded poets varies from country to then for the expression of ill-natured ones. No doubt there are other Web sites and zines said, “Something that you feel will find its country, the respect given to shorter forms But now that the recognition has come, it of which I am not aware. own form.” may also vary. Here in the States, publishers has been discovered that nothing is harder “Tanka came through the door that haiku are always looking for “the next big book,” than to write a beautiful poem of two or four n interesting recent trend is the use of had opened,” says Reichhold. I would like usually meaning a novel. But even in poetry, lines. . . . I should like to suggest, however, short poems in works of fiction. Almost to see that door stay open, not just to Ori- small is often equated with slight. A that it is very probable many attempts at by necessity, poems used in a novel will be ental forms, but to short poems and forms Short forms suffered something of a these difficult forms of poetry will be at- short, in order not to get in the way of the in the Western tradition. I love the short setback in the 1970s after Aram Saroyan’s tempted by English poets within the next story. Sharon Creech, a Newberry medal- Japanese forms, and I’m all for cultural minimalist poem, “lighght,” received a $500 few years. There is now a tendency in that ist for her novel Walk Two Moons, has exchange and cross-fertilization, but let’s National Endowment for the Arts award. direction.” published two other novels, Love That Dog not forget the beauty of couplets and qua- Absurdly, Republicans in Congress made an Which brings us up to the present, more and Hate That Cat, which use short poems trains—poets should be able to use them at ongoing issue of this in seeking to cut NEA or less. Has there really been a tendency in by Williams, Frost, Tennyson, Walter Dean least as well as hip-hop artists and country funding. Did that celebrated incident create that direction, and has it produced much po- Myers and others as part of the plot line. music songwriters. a backlash against short poems? Possibly. etry of note? William Carlos Williams’s “red Bart Schneider has published two novels, And possibly there was a certain amount of wheel barrow” comes to mind, and Carl The Man in the Blizzard and Nameless throwing the baby out with the bath—deni- Sandburg’s “fog,” and various couplets and Dame, featuring a police detective who grating all short poems to justify denigrating quatrains by Robert Frost, but longer poems is hooked on poetry and tries to convince Daniel Barth, an RCR contributing editor, one. certainly continue to be more admired and everyone he knows to memorize a poem or is poet laureate of Ukiah (which, spelled two. These novels use poems very creatively backward, is haiku). Summer 2012 The Redwood Coast Review Page 7 B i b l i o t e c a News, Views, Notes, Reviews, Reports and Exhortations from Friends of Coast Community Library

President’s Desk metaphor into the world until it takes on a library lines life of its own and speaks to the parts of us that suffer, love and worship. The poets Leo admired were ones for whom images were paramount. Few of these were Americans. Friends Most wrote in Latin America, Eastern and Democratic Southern Europe, the Far East. Neruda, Vallejo, Darío, Lorca, Machado, Jiménez, Indeed Ritsos, Montale, Bonnefoy, Mistral, Guil- Vistas levic, Pasternak, Pessoa, Du Fu, Li Po, Su Alix Levine Tung-po, Han Shan—Leo saw in these a vi- Julia Larke sion of poetry that emphasized vivid seeing, riends of the Library groups exist all touching, hearing, smelling. To walk out endocino County Library is cur- over the country, formed to support into an orchard at night and smell the scent rently participating in California local libraries. of the peaches while gazing at the moon: Reads, a new program of Cal F such was the sort of experience that most M Until I became involved with the Friends Humanities developed in partnership with of Coast Community Library (FoCCL), appealed to his imagination. the California Center for the Book and the I was only marginally aware of Friends Or his beloved Labrador, Bessie, who California State Library. Cal Humanities’ groups and what they do, in spite of a life- died a few months before he did: the way mission is to promote humanities by helping time of constant library use. The activities Leonard Cirino, 1943-2012 she swayed when she walked. Leo’s poetry to create “a state of open mind” and to “in- and concerns of Friends groups vary accord- is imagistic; he frequently takes it near the spire Californians to learn more, dig deeper, ing to the branch or community served, but breaking point where images dominate and start conversations that matter.” This raising funds to assist libraries is generally sense. The more you read his poetry, the year’s California Reads program is part of a the common thread that runs through all. more you see that he uses the same im- statewide initiative, Searching for Democ- So Long, ages over and over until they take on the In the last decade, major efforts have racy, which is designed to lead into the 2012 been engaged in raising building funds by character of universals, myths. His was a elections and invites people to think about Friends of Fort Bragg Library, Friends of sensibility deeply steeped in the physical and talk about democracy and civic values. Round Valley Public Library, and Friends of Leonard world and, to the extent it was spiritual, ex- Libraries and other institutions partici- Coast Community Library. pressed spirituality by means of an extreme pating in California Reads chose from five But aside from building fundraising, corporeality. books selected from a pool of over 300 Friends of the Library aid the libraries in Marc Hofstadter Leo was also a marvelous love poet, titles. Mendocino County Public Library many ways. Prior to the passage of Mea- producing a raft of love poems to his is reading A Paradise Built in Hell: The sure A to provide much-needed financial longtime companion Ava Lynn Hayes. Extraordinary Communities That Arise in n March 9 America and I lost a support to Mendocino County libraries, for In these he sees himself as a man who is Disaster by Rebecca Solnit. Other titles passionate poet and friend: Leon- several years the Friends at all the branches blessed and lucky to have so warm-hearted are The Penguin Guide to the United States ard J. Cirino. Leonard, sixty-eight took on paying for supplies, such as book- O a partner. But perhaps the most moving of Constitution, Farewell to Manzanar, It years old, a resident of Springfield, Oregon covering materials, paper, pens, etc., which all his verse are his poems to his daughter Can’t Happen Here, and Lost City Radio. (following many years on the Mendocino the county could no longer afford. Friends Calandra, whom he killed when she was Discussion guides for all of the titles are Coast), was the author of fourteen volumes have purchased books, DVDs and other ma- an infant. Yes, killed. A fact that can’t be available at www.calhum.org. of poetry as well as twenty chapbooks. terials to enhance their libraries’ collections. divorced from Leo’s attachment to life and Rebecca Solnit is a California writer, He was prolific because he breathed, ate And Friends of the Library volunteers help love or from the spiritual release of his historian, and activist whose works include and slept poetry. And what poetry it was! out at their local branches in performing a poetry, was the fact that, in a drugged state Wanderlust: A History of Walking and A For Leo, contemporary American verse variety of hands-on services. during the 1960s, Leo murdered his little Field Guide to Getting Lost. A Paradise was largely a wasteland of academicism, At Coast Community Library volunteers girl. He didn’t know what he was doing: he Built in Hell is a thought-provoking account hypocrisy and self-absorption. There were a have taken on shelving, book covering, disc was found not guilty by reason of insanity of disasters (earthquakes, a bombing, 9/11, few recent American poets who drew his ap- cleaning, working at the circulation desk, and had to live for seven years in an asylum a major storm) viewed with the premise probation: Wallace Stevens, Weldon Kees, sorting donations of books and AV materials for the criminally insane. This was not that positive, socially beneficial emotions Richard Wilbur, James Wright, John Haines, for sale or to add to our collection, running something he hid. Indeed, it was one of the surface among citizens in response to a Gertrude Schnackenberg. What Leo looked book sales, putting on programs for children first things he told me about himself. I admit disaster. She speaks of purposefulness and for in poetry was an intense involvement and adults, writing grant applications to to being a little scared at first, but Leo’s connectedness that bring joy even amidst with things that really count: loved ones and fund improvements, maintaining our build- warmth and generosity soon converted me. the chaos and fear of extreme crisis. To friends, Nature, animals, death, life, poetry. ing (owned by FoCCL) and improving our He was a great and caring friend from the quote from the California Reads Web Site, He hated bullshit and wasn’t shy about facilities. time we met about fifteen years ago to the Solnit “reaches some surprising conclusions naming it that, confronting and exposing In the past year FoCCL has added new date of his death. about our need for community and common it. Politicians, corporate figures, poets for bookshelves in both the children’s room and However, Leo himself was haunted by purpose, which she argues are fundamental whom writing was just a means of garnering the main room, signed up for a subscription what he had done. No one could ever con- to democratic forms of social and political fame or getting laid: he despised these. service to get the latest new books as soon demn him more than he did himself, unfair life.” [www.calhum.org/programs/califor- I’ve had numerous arguments with Leo as published (with help from a donation to himself though that was. I think in a sense nia-reads] about particular poets I admired but for from Good Buy Clothes), purchased and his poetry—he began to write while in asy- Melanie Lightbody, Mendocino County whom he had only X-rated epithets. But our installed a new children’s computer with lum—was a gift to Calandra, with the hope Librarian, who was instrumental in the friendship easily survived such contretemps 50 entertaining educational programs for that somehow, somehow, she would hear it. county’s participation in California Reads, because we both loved the image. The im- children in English and Spanish ( thanks to The remorse he felt was terrible, and poetry encourages people to attend “art exhibits, age: for Leo that was the crux. Poetry that a grant from the Community Foundation was the only way to repent. I often sensed a poetry readings, and book discussions expressed opinions, embraced philosophies, of Mendocino County) and is in the midst death wish in Leo, a desire to finally give up throughout the county to be hosted by was “talky,” was not poetry for him. Verse of acquiring new juvenile audiobooks and a life of guilt and shame and rejoin the little libraries in collaboration with arts and is an intense, visionary, transformative foray DVDs from the same Community Founda- girl he had so painfully lost. Paradoxically, cultural organizations.” At each branch, a into concrete manifestations of beauty, tion grant. Leo learned to love as a result of having local coordinator is leading discussions of love, spirituality. A good poem extends a We have also retooled our monthly book taken life. The stars, elder trees, peaches, the book and organizing other Searching for sales with the purchase of rolling book- the soil took on spiritual qualities because Democracy events. At Coast Branch, Pearl deep inside them lay Calandra. shelves to display our wares and make shop- What Leo looked Watts, a longtime community supporter and ping more pleasant and convenient for folks. library volunteer, is the person to contact. Our book sales serve double duty both as a for in poetry was an eo’s experience “in asylum” was hor- Eliza Wingate, Ukiah Branch Librarian, source of income for FoCCL to support the Lrific. He wrote a great deal about the who has developed various discourses and library and to put books into the hands of intense involvement suffering he saw there: the cruelty of the events on democracy for the Ukiah Branch, our community at rock-bottom prices ($5 a guards, the poor living conditions, the has added a Searching for Democracy tab to shopping bag full on the Sundays of the sale with things that re- psyches of men full of pain and madness. the County Library’s webpage with postings weekend). ally count: loved ones It inculcated in him a hatred of established from the five branches: www.co.mendocino. Anyone can become a member of FoCCL institutions: the government, the prison sys- ca.us/library/democracy.htm.As part of Cali- with a $10 donation to our nonprofit, or by and friends, Nature, tem, the profession of psychiatry. But, when fornia Reads, Rebecca Solnit will discuss A becoming a volunteer, receive member- he got out, instead of leaving it behind he Paradise Built in Hell on Saturday, October ship at no cost. Members get to vote on the animals, death, life, began to work for inmates’ rights. Indeed, 21, at 1pm in Ukiah at the Saturday After- annual board of directors election in June. poetry. He hated although from that day on he lived on Social noon Club House. I am stepping down as president of the Security disability—not a lot of money—he Here on the coast, our library has a beau- board to become a general director. A new bullshit and wasn’t gave a significant percentage of it each tiful new sign on the front of the building. president will have been elected by the time month to prisoners he knew who were It is an image of the international symbol you read this. shy about naming having a hard time. (He also made a point for library that is sure to attract the atten- I urge all who love and use our library it that. He despised of subscribing to many small-press poetry tion of travelers who might have missed an to become a member of Friends of Coast magazines and publishers in order to help opportunity to visit a lovely local library Community Library. More volunteers are politicians, corpo- them survive.) I’ve never known anyone as and to use free wifi! Jeff Watts, a library always needed to help in a variety of ways. generous. volunteer, initially proposed the idea for You will be working with a congenial rate figures, poets for The Instrument of Others was Leo’s last the sign and it was fabricated and installed group of people and gain the satisfaction of whom writing was just book and he got to see a copy of it just days by Point Arena’s metalworker Kentucky benefiting a great community resource. Get before he died. It is a masterpiece. In it, he John with help from library volunteers involved with the library. You will be glad a means of garnering came to a kind of simplicity that allowed Roger Jones, Virgil Knoche, John Bastian you did. him to see things limpidly and gently. Some and Charles Stanifer. A community support- fame or getting laid. of the short poems are incandescent: ing its library, once again.

Coast Community Library can be reached at 707.882.3114. See page 8 for library hours. See cirino page 8 Page  The Redwood Coast Review Summer 2012 cirino from page 7 books History, a Theory, a Flood, which hints at the scope, but falls short of the delightfully Bio I see in his titles the broad sweep of subjects: talking drums, al- phabets, dictionaries, the three great waves Born a small stream, bare trickle, moon, persimmons, of communication (telegraphy, telephony I grew into a storming river autumn, a vineyard, and radio), cryptography, symbolic logic, but learned my place algorithms, computers, information theory, when I entered the great sea. his dog, October’s the nature of life and entropy, memes, data light, bread, stars, storage, and the current glut of information, to name a few. Less is More—Two Geese maple leaves, rain. Gleick’s historical context touches base For Ava with the renowned, among them Aristotle, Newton, Leibniz, Morse, Russell, McLuhan, Not much nestmaking left, we’ve had our correspondent—he and I exchanged e-mails Einstein and Dawkins; but most interesting, share. at least once every day, frequently more at least to non-cognoscenti like me, are the Now we’re like homing geese, tipped than that—and, as I said, he sent money to less familiar: Babbage, Murray, Nyquist, wing to wing. people he felt needed it. That is why the title Boole, von Neumann, Wiener, Lovelace, he chose for his last book is interesting, for Shannon and Turing. no poem called “The Instrument of Others” Many topics are well known, such as Clear Moon appears in the volume. The title reflects, I early telephone switchboards, Germany’s think, Leo’s belief that the self exists not Enigma code machine, and Wikipedia, but Moon to light my mind, spring water to glorify itself but to serve others—other Gleick’s stories are fresh and pithy. The for coffee, it’s autumn and I refresh people, poems, gods. His gift to us lives on James Gleick history of dictionaries includes an account myself. in his poems. of the first (1604 by Robert Cawdrey, 2500 My bad dreams fall from the jade cup I’d like to close with an amazing prose words, “conteyning and teaching the true and I am cleansed. Clear head, poem he wrote many years ago in which he writing, and understanding of hard usual without the crepe of curled thoughts, seems to answer the dilemma with which Infomania English wordes”), the last printed edition it’s October again, and my poems return. we, his friends and readers, are confronted of the Oxford English Dictionary (1989; by his death: Stephen Bakalyar 22,000 pages; 138 pounds), and the current Leo didn’t feel exactly as though he edition, beginning in 2000, of quarterly wrote his poems; he felt they “came” The Autopsy online installments including thousands (“returned”) to him. I never knew him to The Information: of revised entries and new words. Today’s speak of God, but it’s clear that spirituality Walking down the ridge, over this A History, a Theory, a Flood OED has forsaken the original guidelines played a great role in his life and writing, next hill, and around the curve, there by James Gleick for a neologism to enter the canon—that it a spirituality that’s embodied in the world are cherry trees in full bloom. One can Pantheon (2011), 544 pages must be in use five years. Hence cyberpunk, of Nature. Looking at just the titles of the barely think how beautiful the ocean is tighty-whities, bada-bing. Remember The poems in The Instrument of Others, I see until crossing the last rise. Then, looking he most complex and vital informa- Godfather? “You’ve gotta get up close like the moon, persimmons, autumn, a vineyard, over the western horizon, realize that tion system is our cells’ genetic code this and bada-bing! you blow their brains all his dog, October’s light, bread, stars, maple none of us will die in a subtle way. Let Tand translating machinery: DNA and over your nice Ivy League suit.” leaves, rain. He gives the impression of liv- me rise higher and spy the beginning the protein-manufacturing ribosome par- The historical reports are rich in detail. ing a very solitary life, walking with Bessie dawn so I can say, “I’ve struggled with ticles. James Gleick’s book The Information For example, a ten-page narrative describes in a garden or an orchard, listening to music what is and the nonexistent.” Then be describes this genome-proteome system, the the conferences Warren McCulloch, “a dy- late at night, hearing birds sing, watching content with sounds of wind-shaken blos- result of evolution. But it has much more to namo of eclecticism and cross-fertilization,” snow fall. Yet Leo, who often spent nights soms, the smell of the ocean, small seeds say about the creations of humankind—the organized after World War II in New York writing, was a man who loved people. When in fruit. communication technologies developed over City. Gleick writes: “A host of fields were he became ill and let people know about the last few thousand years and the new coming of age . . . anthropology, psychol- his diagnosis, he was deluged with letters, ways of thinking about communication and ogy, neurophysiology . . . the not-quite-sci- phone calls and e-mails from some of the Marc Hofstader lives in Walnut Creek. His the very concept of information. The book’s ences like psychoanalysis . . . McCulloch people he had inspired. He was a devoted recent book of essays is Healing the Split. enigmatic title is clarified by the subtitle: A invited experts in all these fields, as well

Some Recent Arrivals @ Coast Community Library

FICTION NONFICTION Schulz, Kathryn. Being wrong: adventures Green, John. The fault in our stars Alcott, Kate. The dressmaker Alexie, Sherman. First Indian on the moon in the margin of error Handler, Daniel. Why we broke up Babbs, Ken. Who shot the water buffalo? Anderson, Kat. Tending the wild: Native Snyder, Gary. Riprap; and, Cold mountain Riggs, Ransom. Miss Peregrine’s Home Barbery, Muriel. The elegance of the American knowledge and the manage- poems for Peculiar Children hedgehog ment of California’s natural resources Solnit, Rebecca. A paradise built in hell: Stiefvater, Maggie. Forever Byatt, A. S. Ragnarok: the end of the Battles, Matthew. Library: an unquiet his- the extraordinary communities that arise Young, Moira. Blood red road gods tory in disasters Coover, Robert. Noir Bausell, R. Barker. Snake oil science: the Steingraber, Sandra. Living downstream: JUVENILE ITEMS Edwardson, Åke. The shadow woman: truth about complementary and alterna- an ecologist looks at cancer and the • EASY BOOKS an Inspector Erik Winter novel tive medicine environment Dale, Penny. Dinosaur dig Hope, Christopher. Darkest England Cardenal, Ernesto. Cosmic canticle Stephens, Autumn. Wild women: crusaders, Gibbs, Edward. I spy with my little eye Hornby, Nick. High fidelity Daulter, Anni. Organically raised: con- curmudgeons, and completely corsetless Reichert, Amy. Take your mama to work Houston, James D. A queen’s journey: scious cooking for babies and toddlers ladies in the otherwise virtuous Victorian today an unfinished novel Felch, Jason. Chasing Aphrodite: the hunt era Sayres, Brianna Caplan. Where do dig- Martin, George R. R. Fevre dream for looted antiquities at the world’s rich- Syman, Stefanie. The subtle body: the story gers sleep at night? McCarthy, Tom. C est museum of yoga in America Sierra, Judy. ZooZical Mo, Yan. Red sorghum: a family saga Flint, Anthony. Wrestling with Moses: how Thorndike, Joseph Jacobs. The very rich: a Tafuri, Nancy. Spots, feathers, and curly Morrison, Toni. Home Jane Jacobs took on New York’s master history of wealth tails Parkin, Gaile. Baking cakes in Kigali builder and transformed the American city Vann, Lizzie. Organic baby and toddler Willems, Mo. The duckling gets a Pears, Iain. Stone’s fall Foster, Lee. Northern California history cookbook cookie!? Pilgrim, Kitty. The explorer’s code weekends: fifty-two adventures in history Vegas, Jill. Speed decorating: a pro stag- Wing, Natasha. How to raise a dinosaur Roberts, Nora. The witness Frost, Randy O. Stuff: compulsive hoarding er’s tips and trade secrets for a fabulous • JUVENILE FICTION Rosnay, Tatiana de. Sarah’s key and the meaning of things home in a week or less DiCamillo, Kate. Mercy Watson: some- Singer, Isaac Bashevis. Yentl the Yeshiva Kaku, Michio. Physics of the future: how Yoshii, Ryuichi. Sushi thing wonky this way comes boy science will shape human destiny and Haas, Jessie. Bramble and Maggie Yorke, Christy. Song of the seals our daily lives by the year 2100 BIOGRAPHY Howe, Deborah. Bunnicula: a rabbit tale Yoshimura, Akira. Storm rider Kristof, Nicholas D. Half the sky: turning Carter, Jimmy. An hour before daylight: of mystery oppression into opportunity for women memories of a rural boyhood Kinney, Jeff. Cabin fever worldwide Duras, Marguerite. The war: a memoir Lowry, Lois. Number the stars Lazarus, Edward. Black Hills/white justice: Foster, Barbara M. Forbidden Journey: the O’Connor, Jane. Nancy Clancy, super the Sioux nation versus the United life of Alexandra David-Neel sleuth. Book 1 Library Hours States: 1775 to the present MacNeil, Robert. Wordstruck: a memoir Sage, Angie. Darke Lomborg, Bjørn. The skeptical environmen- Morgan, Bill. I celebrate myself: the some- • JUVENILE NONFICTION talist: measuring the real state of the world what private life of Allen Ginsberg McGowan, Christopher. Dinosaur Monday 12 noon - 6 pm McMillan, Tracie. The American way of Twain, Mark. Autobiography of Mark discovery: everything you need to be a Tuesday 10am - 6 pm eating: undercover at Walmart, Apple- Twain paleontologist Wednesday 10am - 8 pm bee’s, farm fields and the dinner table Morrison, Toni. Remember: the journey Thursday 12 noon - 8 pm Murray, Stuart A. P. The library: an illus- DVDs to school integration Friday 12 noon - 6 pm trated history Exploring our roots with Henry Louis Wood, John Norris. Nature hide & seek: Saturday 12 noon - 3 pm Nabhan, Gary Paul. Enduring seeds: Native Gates, Jr. Jungles American agriculture and wild plant Guns, germs, and steel based on the book by • JDVD Coast Community Library conservation Jared Diamond Happy feet is located at Orlean, Susan. Rin Tin Tin: the life and the North Country The land before time, X: The great long- 225 Main Street legend The singing detective neck migration Point Arena Raskin, Jonah. Marijuanaland: dispatches My side of the mountain (707) 882-3114 from an American war YOUNG ADULT FICTION Three bears and a new baby Clare, Cassandra. City of lost souls Summer 201 The Redwood Coast Review Page  as mathematics and electrical engineering. Gleick’s stories is that of Ada Loveless—a Throughout the conferences, it became ha- brilliant, imaginative, remarkable woman— Borges by Arbus, 1969 bitual to use the new, awkward, and slightly who at age twenty-seven began a collabo- suspect term information theory.” We ration with Charles Babbage, twenty-four follow the arguments among participants as years her senior. Often considered the father they wrestle with the new concepts of com- of the computer, he originated the concept munication and control: is the brain analog of a programmable computer, constructing or digital; how far can speech be reduced a mechanical “analytical engine,” a device and remain intelligible; what does it meant with memory and through which numbers to say something is random; can machines and processes would pass to make calcula- think; is entropy a measure of disorder or tions. As revealed in her letters to Babbage, uncertainty, or are these the same thing? Loveless often had a vision that exceeded One participant concluded, “Information his. can be considered as order wrenched from Gleick’s discussion of a flood of infor- disorder.” mation starts with the 1941 story by Jorge Gleick’s style is lively, as in the dis- Luis Borges, The Library of Babel, “about cussion of electricity’s early days: “But the mythical library that contains all books lightning did not say anything—it dazzled, . . . the gospel and the commentary of cracked, and burned, but to convey a that gospel and the commentary upon the message would require some ingenuity. commentary and . . . this library enshrines In human hands, electricity could hardly all the information. Yet no knowledge can accomplish anything, at first . . . but it be discovered there, precisely because all could be sent along wires to great distances knowledge is there, shelved side by side . . . It took no time at all to see what this with all falsehood . . . There can be no more meant for the ancient dream of long-dis- perfect case of information glut.” There is tance communication.” much about storage: the Library of Alex- andria, encyclopedias, bits-bytes-and-yot- wo profound ideas of Richard tabytes (1024 bytes), Google, and the history TDawkins—memes and selfish genes— of Wikipedia, in which “There are pages for are woven into Gleick’s cogent commen- every known enzyme and human gene. The us tary on the transmission of information. Encyclopedia Britannica never aspired to In the chapter “Into the Meme Pool” there such breadth. How could it, being made of is wit— “For most human history memes paper?” Gleick ends with comments on the D ia ne Ar b and language have gone hand in glove. cloud. “All that information . . . looms over (Clichés are memes.)”—and there are many us, not quite tangible, but awfully real . . . The Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges is standing tall anecdotes: “Memes were seen through car All traditional ideas of privacy, based on and erect, more so than in other photographs I’ve seen of him. His suit is dark, windows when yellow diamond-shaped doors and locks, physical remoteness and his formal bearing almost artificial, separated from the natural environment of the Baby on Board signs appeared as if in an invisibility, are upended in the cloud.” woods serving as his backdrop. The light falling from above, grazing the top of his instant of mass panic in 1984 . . . followed head and shoulders, functions as a spotlight but it is only bits of sunshine through an instant later by a spawn of ironic muta- We follow the argu- the trees. He is strong yet leaning on his cane, and the light brings your eye back tions (Baby I’m Bored, Ex in Trunk).” up to the few fragile strands of gray hair flying to your left, parallel to one of the You may not be interested in learning ments among partici- branches, while his tie twists in an off-kilter dance to the right. The authority of his about quantum computing. However, if stance, the verticality of his figure paralleling a symmetrical frame of trees, is inter- you’re unfamiliar with the weird stuff that pants as they wrestle rupted by the bottom frame that cuts off half of his legs. His gaze seems directed quantum physics describes (“spooky” as with the new concepts and, at first glance, he doesn’t seem blind—and yet I know he is already blind. Einstein said; he didn’t like it!), Gleick’s Borges seems to outwit Arbus, to stare her down. “This differs from other photos discussion will give you a glimpse of what of communication and of Borges I’ve seen,” poet Robyn Bell concurs, in that he is not the shy sort of smil- the rational mind is up against in dealing ing guy: he’s formal and strong. It also differs from her most characteristic photos in with quantum physics. For a fascinating control: is the brain which Arbus fashions those now famous “freaks.” He is a force of nature here, un- read on the same topic I recommend the analog or digital; how like her usual bizarre subjects, and yet the photographer has manipulated the image recently published book How the Hippies with her compositional skills to produce a series of uncanny and even weirdly comic Saved Physics. far can speech be effects. The symmetrical tree branches appear to enter or exit either side of Borges’s A wide cross section of readers will find head, perhaps to suggest a visualization of the fantastic, or even an abrupt fusing of The Information enjoyable and accessible. reduced and remain mind and nature. There are a few pages with mathematical intelligible; what does Arbus’s hyper focus imposes the human figure here as something that wasn’t expressions: rocky for those lacking a strong there before but now stands suddenly in the forest, original and enigmatic. Her interest in science or mathematical literacy. it meant to say some- camera’s intelligence captures Borges as paradox, powerful in his vulnerability. This Here is an example: photo also differs from most of her images, filmmaker Cooper SY notes, because thing is random; can Arbus chose a long lens which knocks the background out of focus, in this case the H = n log s machines think? forest, making it dreamlike as it must be for the blind poet, existing now only in his memory. He looks thinner than he often appears, yet defiant, and stands out in his Where H is the amount of information, unreality just as one notes on the ground the shadows of the trees perhaps more than n is the number of symbols transmitted, I would like Gleick to have extended his the trees themselves: fragments of the labyrinths, of the mental symmetries in the and s is the size of the alphabet. I show this discussion of problems in communication mirror of Borges’s fictions. equation as a kind of truth-in-advertising; to issues in education. For example, why is —Suzanne Jill Levine I am enthusiastic about this book, but do it that so many Evangelicals are refractory not wish to oversell it. However, readers to the facts of evolution? (No, prehistoric can glide over this chapter without concern children did not play while dinosaurs ca- about comprehension, since the math is not vorted nearby.) A 2011 book edited by Peter needed for understanding the other chapters. Howlett and Mary S. Morgan titled How For those attempting to grapple with the Well Do Facts Travel? The Dissemination of tough stuff, Gleick reviews the basics, such Reliable Knowledge touches on such issues. S U B S C R I B E as a discussion of logarithms, a workhorse tool predating the pocket calculator. (When leick’s first book—Chaos, Making a If you live beyond the Redwood Coast and don’t get the Independent Coast I attended Iowa State University in the late GNew Science (1987)—displayed his Observer, now you can subscribe to The Redwood Coast Review and not miss 1950s the engineering students all were gun- outstanding ability to tell engaging tales slingers—a logarithm-based slide rule hung about science, technology and culture. He an issue of our award-winning mix of essays, reviews, poetry, fiction and from their belt in a holster.) So, reading The continued to hone this talent in subsequent graphic art. For $24 a year you will be guaranteed quarterly first-class de- Information doesn’t require mathematical books. In my opinion The Information is his livery of the RCR and at the same time support Coast Community Library acumen. apotheosis. It is a comprehensive, scholarly What it does require is the reader’s curi- work; there are 426 notes. He treks from the in its ongoing operating expenses. Please use this coupon to subscribe osity, rewarded by fascinating stories of the long gestation of the distant past through or renew now. You won’t be disappointed. insights, conflicts, and victories by those of the exploding communication developments genus Homo who can justly lay claim to our of recent centuries and brings us to today’s species epithet sapiens, beings of intelli- information technology. Well, not quite. The Yes, I want to subscribe to The Redwood Coast Review. I am gence. One polymath was Claude Shannon, Information went to press before announce- enclosing a check for $24 to Coast Community Library. a key progenitor of the Information Age. He ment of a powerful new tool for the study coined the word “bit.” His monograph “A of cultural trends, termed “Culturomics.” It Mathematical Theory of Communication” was described in the January 14, 2011, is- I am making an additional donation to the library in the was in Gleick’s view “the fulcrum around sue of Science. Here is how it works: Enter amount of $______. which the world began to turn.” Gleick several words (or phrases) into a special skillfully describes the essence of develop- Google database of books. This yields a ments, such as Shannon’s insight that what graph of those words’ frequency of appear- Total enclosed $______a relay (on-off switch) “passes onward from ance over time—you select the interval; the one circuit to the next is not really electric- maximum is 1800 to 2000. Want to know ity but rather a fact: the fact of whether the the relative popularity of your favorite po- Name ______circuit is open or closed.” Another giant was ets, what words for sexual intercourse were Alan Turing. Science magazine’s April 13, used throughout the 1800s, or when your Address ______2012, issue contained two laudatory articles name appeared in print? Try it: marking his 100th birthday. He designed the http://culturomics.org/. first digital computer in 1945. His “univer- City, State, ZiP ______sal machine” used logic, not arithmetic, as the paramount feature. His 1950 paper was one of the most frequently cited of all time: Can the computer fool a blind interrogator Stephen Bakalyar is a writer and chemist Copy or clip this coupon and send, with check or money order, to Coast into believing it is human?—the famous living in Sonoma. This is his first appear- Community Library, PO Box 808, Point Arena, CA 95468. Thank You! “Turing Test.” One of the most appealing of ance in the RCR. Page 10 The Redwood Coast Review Summer 2012 papers from page 1 girls were too young to appreciate such concerns, especially bought her a Westinghouse radio and she improved her since they’d never met their great-grandparents. I didn’t say English by listening to Roosevelt’s fireside chats while she they were too American. Nor did I criticize Mom. Regard- ive e sewed lace doilies, and knitted wool throw rugs. For extra less of the sincerity of her intentions, she had been too eager G M money on days off, she rode the train alone to Manhattan to to foist her journey on them. sell those wares from a pushcart on Madison Avenue. As her oldest son, I was the one who thirsted to know Give me your tired, your hungry, your poor. more about the arranged marriage between Eugenio Cerullo I will hoe them in the cotton fields, as it because of shyness, fear or pride that I couldn’t and Rosa Maria Prisco. Eugenio hailed from Avellino, near Spin away their lives in mills, Wopen up and talk to the Latina? No, it was because I Naples. Peasant stock. Rosa, on the other hand, raised by a Reduce them to patterns in sweatshops. believed it wasn’t done. In Boston, I’d always been quick guardian, was educated in a convent in the village of Castel to shut myself down for the sake of propriety. This was not Baronia. She loved to read and listen to opera. At the age of Give me your brawny brave men, a cultural question, or one of class. This was pure—an idio- sixteen, she’d been given a choice. Either become a nun, or I will smelt them in steel mills, syncrasy; I told myself the young woman needed her stolen be sent to L’America, where per written contract she would Lay them out alongside rails, moments of rest on the train. I felt comfortable assuming marry her waiting husband. She presented herself to Eugenio Machine them into automatons. she was thinking about her children and solutions to new in Boston’s Scollay Square. They signed a few documents problems. and proceeded to have scads of bambini. Give me your farmers eager for soil. In the Latina’s neighborhood, did boys shriek out open The family started on Prince Street in Boston’s North On lands fertile with Indian graves windows and run wild in the streets in packs, the way my End, where my mother shared a bed with three of her sisters. I will plow their hearts into uncles did? They certainly didn’t play stickball or kick Her brothers did the same. Those were tense, noisy, fly- Amber waves of grain. the can. Nor did they stack fruit for vendors at Haymarket swatting years in tiny sweltering rooms. Eugenio swore and Square. No doubt, they lacked air conditioning, and to es- drank, usually wine, couldn’t find work and didn’t speak I will grind them in the flour mills, cape the heat they waited until twilight to swarm sidewalks. English. Neither did Rosa, who gave up reading Dante and Cut them up in the meatpacking plants, They survived through the help of their church, the kindness slaved for her husband, birthing one child after another. Flatten them in tin mills, of strangers and family, not out of any overblown code, or Each day, Rosa encountered new cultural obstacles. For Bury them in mines. dream of la dolce vita. To get ahead, it wasn’t enough to be example, she didn’t know how to explain to her daughters good. This Latina would have to be exceptional. Even then, how to deal with menstruation. My mother had looked em- I will batten on them in company stores, there were no guarantees. barrassed when she shared this detail of her girlhood. Pave them into roads for my commerce, I assumed she was Catholic, and it pained me to consider “My sister Louisa. Poor thing. She was crying. You can’t Make them the bricks and mortar of my banks, the sex scandals, and a particular Boston diocese. Perhaps imagine her confusion. And the smell,” she said. “My sisters Rivet their attention into skyscrapers and bridges. she attended one of the evangelical storefront churches and me, so close in ages, in that same bed. This was after popping up all over. I remembered my mother decrying the we moved out of the North End into a bigger place. When Tell them, across the oceans, growth of these pod mall churches, and the shutting down I think back, all I can say is that we just didn’t know. Ma, They will be fortunate; over the last centuries my of Catholic cathedrals in American cities. I hadn’t told Mom God love her, did her best. She was always working. But my kindness has grown. the Catholic bureaucracy had only themselves to blame. I father, he was no help at all.” For they will not arrive in chains from Africa, hadn’t needed to. She never skipped a Mass, but her once They learned. They moved from one rental unit to an- Or indentured from England, Scotland, Wales, exuberant piety had faded. other in Jamaica Plain’s Italian neighborhood. One by one, Ireland, Mom’s message to me hadn’t changed. Education the brothers grew up and joined the military. None of them To be worked to death before our contract requires remained the ticket. Read. Write. Think. Save enough, live finished high school. By age thirteen, the sisters went to My granting them freedom and a suit of clothes. modestly. Be patient. Work hard. Love God and your fellow work in shoe factories. Goals were never discussed. Lucky man. girls married an American GI who could buy a house. —William P. Meyers There existed differences between all ethnic groups and That was Dad: a 6-foot-6 red-haired Irish-American who their various histories in this tossed salad called the USA, had travelled the world in the Air Force. Nona Rosa adored but as I watched the Latina riding the T, rubbing her eyes, him. William P. Meyers lives near Point Arena; his essays gazing at the choppy slate of the Charles, I felt confident Today, in those same neighborhoods, the majority of can be found at iiipublishing.com. This poem took first believing that she was on her way, and that she’d get there. newcomers hail from Spanish-speaking lands. Some would place in the adult division of the 2012 Gualala Arts Once home, she’d prepare dinner for her family. Her fatigue say progress has been made. There are Asians, Africans and Creative Writing Contest. and self-doubt were my own. We had that in common as Middle-Easterners, as well. Languages have changed, but something pure, and we shared a craving for a sense that we the struggle for gold in L’America continues. belonged and could contribute to our country, adopted or otherwise. ike any immigrant couple of my grandparents’ era, Rosa knowing that for decades private shame kept my mother The adversities of economic hardship don’t make people Land Eugenio did not benefit from political correctness from celebrating her Mediterranean ethnicity, but as she or enforcement of legal rights. Nor had they expected them. often said, “They were different times.” Unlike those shipped here as There weren’t notions of entitlement that some form of help I assumed the Latina on the train worked in a low-paid from the government would keep them solvent. menial job. Mom cut and hauled beef. I wanted to ask the slaves, immigrants had come It made me chuckle to think of Rosa and Eugenio in Latina, strike up a conversation. I remembered the Irish of their own volition. They a waiting room demanding legal or medical services, as greeting, céad míle fáilte romhat: a thousand welcomes to if it were their right. I couldn’t imagine them attending you. It seemed perfect for Boston, but the girl looked tired. worked because they could. ESL classes, free of charge, at a community center in their I felt an awkward voyeurism, as if I was an outsider in my neighborhood. Like others thrown out of Italy, they’d been own land. It wasn’t really my land. It was hers, too. Good work didn’t exist in the grateful to start anew across the ocean. They’d never looked She wore a wedding band. Probably had children and back. Some Italians returned. Not them. Italy was the past; maybe used food stamps. There was no way she was on dirt they left behind. Italians they brooked no divided loyalties, and never talked about welfare. This Latina worked hard for a living. landed jobs with other Italians cultural identity. You got a job, kept it, and saved each Unlike those shipped here as slaves, immigrants had penny. You went to Mass, prayed your rosary, and donated come of their own volition. They worked because they in construction, commercial food to help neighborhood families that had fallen on hard could. Good work didn’t exist in the dirt they left behind. times. Men came around at night and picked up that food The Italians landed jobs with other Italians: in construction, fishing, and in factories that from front steps. Shrewd Boston politicians like Mayor commercial fishing, and the many factories that have since have since moved to China. Michael Curley, also known as The Rascal King, courted moved to China. The military was a ticket out of their ghet- their vote by going door to door and empathizing with their tos. Like the Irish, they resented the arrival of blacks in huge Catholicism. migrations from the South. Like Mexicans, they influenced kinder. On the contrary, they can embitter the soul and It was shameful to need help, or to expect government to the American diet and language. implant a meanness of spirit that becomes too useful as a solve your problems. Public shame today seems a medieval Ironically, the North End ghetto with its brick walls and defense mechanism. Misery loves company; it’s easy to concept. Yet private shame is a different matter. I disliked views of the harbor had become vaunted yuppie real estate. complain among peers in your native tongue, convinced the Once-cramped rooms were sold as condos, each a durable attitudes of one speak for the whole when market jungle-law throwback to an allegedly simpler time. Boston’s mayor prevails, choices aren’t seen as luxuries, and it’s considered wasn’t Irish but Italian. The state’s governor was African- arrogant not to indulge in self-promotion. books American. Awake, the Latina stared out her window. Like my Mom, How was it different for Latin Americans? They had, I she would never read in English at the same speed as her supposed, more services available to them. License exams, children. I hoped that she read to them at night, purchased Hidden Treasure food labels, street signs and phone messages were in Span- what they needed at school, dreamed they’d become doctors. I hoped those dreams would be realized, that her husband Sandra Waller’s privately printed memoir, Cherry ish. Perhaps, too, they had more civil rights and easier ways was a fair man who didn’t drink to excess. and Pine, is much too subtle and inward, too deeply to connect to their homeland through inexpensive airfares, Did she see her children’s eyes, bright with dreams that perceived and delicately written to have found a satellite TV and the Internet. They also had more legal hoops licked the heavens, just as Mom saw such dreams in me? home among presses large or small that might have to jump through and dodge. I remember Mom explaining I had an Irish name, but I was swarthy and stocky. During launched it further into the world. It barely whispers that Nona Rosa never needed government documents. She adolescence, I took my share of cruelty because of it. Still, its stream of recovered consciousness, its song of was a Wop, but she’d arrived whole, and that meant citizen- I’d made my way. exquisite memory that rescues images of her growing ship, eventually. Our train reached the Davis Square station. My stop. A up where her parents ran a corner store in an East How furtively things change. Tampons weren’t mass-pro- mob of commuters exited. I filed with them into an ungainly Coast urban neighborhood long since demolished to duced until the late 1940s. Pampers were invented in 1961. flow. Reaching the platform, I sneaked a last glance. make way for the Expressway. The child’s senses “We used cotton cloth for everything,” Mom explained. Buongiorno, Latina, may you prosper in our shared vividly register every remarkable sensation and revive “Washed diapers by hand, wrung ’em out and hung them on experiment. a lost time with a mythic feeling that is both intimate the line. I figured out the bleeding on my own. Just like my Diffused behind window glass, her face held warm and archetypal, thanks to the cool precision of the sisters. But we were family. We helped each other.” calming tones. An old perceptive soul in a young body, author’s language. The book is also handsomely Everybody worked at home, cooked there, washed laun- she watched commuters jostle like electrified ants in the produced, the modesty of its clean design reflecting dry over a galvanized bucket. Nona worked at factories well deranged swarm between train stops. that of the writer. into each of her pregnancies. A month after a baby was born, Like me, did she wonder where they were all going in The RCR does not ordinarily review self-published she went back to work, and all sisters took turns caring for such a hurry? books, but this one stands out as an exceptional the new infant. Was it flawed, emotional, sometimes violent? example of the quality of what is being overlooked by You bet. My grandfather Eugenio kept drinking, seldom held the publishing industry. Cherry and Pine is available down a job, and beat his wife and children without reason directly from the author, Sandra Waller, who can be or mercy. I always remember this during the fallout after a contacted at [email protected]. quarrel with my mother. John Flynn is the author of a novel, Heaven Is a City Where —Stephen Kessler Nona Rosa stitching soles on to shoes until another baby Your Language Isn’t Spoken, due this year from Cervena came along. Never owned a television or talked about the Barva Press. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. future, life fulfillment or college. In the 40s, one of her sons