Chaos Program

If there is meaning in life, then there must also be poetry. Whether you like it or not.

Some of us like it more than others. Many of us were brought up to think of poetry as an inaccessible creature, something belonging to smug self-involved intellectuals who dressed badly and had even poorer social skills than the average computer geek. (Completely unrelated question: Do computer security geeks – like me – count as being more or less geeky than regular computer geeks?)

High school has a way of making people think that way. It turns out that a large part of this may be the result of the way poetry is taught, rather than the poetry itself. It’s just a fact of life that many of us, particularly males (and, according to a survey I read once, political conservatives) are more likely to enjoy Rudyard Kipling than Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Yet English teachers are far more likely to use the second as examples of great poetry than the first. Such is life.

So we learn that poetry is for the elite. Those of us who don’t belong to the elite probably won’t understand the stuff anyway, so why bother?

That sort of disconnect from literary poetry was the subject of a terrific blog post I found the other day at the Poetry and Culture blog about Dashiell Hammett and poetry (here). Since I’m a poet (these days) and Hammett is one of my favorite authors, I had to read it. The post gave several examples of Hammett’s main character expressing less than positive feelings about not just written poetry but the entire idea that there is anything poetic in life.

Well, a hard boiled detective might find life’s poetry to be a bit rough around the edges, wouldn’t he?

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I read a few articles this week about the 60th anniversary of the George Orwell novel 1984 (including this interesting one at National Review Online) and one thing that struck me is that very few literary works get reviewed 60 years after their publication. Even fewer good ones get reviewed/taught/discussed 60 years later. Everybody knows at least a little about 1984, even those of us who have not yet read it (In school, I was in the class that was assigned Animal Farm instead. Interesting book. Hated the pigs).

But this is not a review of 1984. That would be silly since I just admitted I haven’t read it! But it seems I should. Traditionally, reading has been seen as a way of passing on culture – not the kind of culture that causes people to donate money to the opera or spend time at museums but the kind that shapes the way people think. That’s why an old fashioned Classical Education valued Socrates and Thomas Aquinas among others. Agree with them or not, these were smart people and excellent teachers.

Well, that’s the official story, anyway.
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I ran across an interesting internet hoax yesterday. Apparently, a number of people believed the announcement that Twitter was going to start offering special accounts – for a fee – that would allow both more than the usual 140 character limit on posts and would, apparently, randomly force people to follow these special pay accounts. (For the record, no, I’m not one of the people who fell for it. Really. You believe me don’t you?). See Twitterville Falls For Premium Accounts Hoax for more information.

Poor Twitter. People are making fun of their business model just because they don’t have one!

Let’s just take it as stipulated that Twitter is cool. That’s one of the reasons it gets targeted for silly jokes like that. If you don’t even know what Twitter is, you’re not cool. Sorry. That’s life. Look at The Infection Meme and Twitter to broaden your education. More importantly, it sometimes has value, though not always where you think. And I don’t just mean this: Ohio Cops Use Twitter to Talk to Residents.

One feature of Twitter (apparently not entirely planned by the creators) is the ability to tag posts for subject matter and search on those tags, so that you see what the whole world is saying about a subject, not just the people you personally follow. During the final episode of Battlestar Galactica I posted several items with the tag #BSG, to show that I was talking about BSG. See how it works?
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One of my short stories, a fantasy about a bard who gets in a lot of trouble, is now available for reading in the current issue of  Sorcerous Signals. The story itself is at http://www.sorceroussignals.com/LegendofBats.html and is also included in their first ever print anthology Mystic Signals . You can buy Mystic Signals at https://www.createspace.com/3370204 or from Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Mystic-Signals-1-Carol-Hightshoe/dp/1441453474/ref=sr_1_18?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1232557841&sr=8-18

I sell a lot more poetry than short stories, even though I’ve been writing stories a lot longer, so it’s a big kick for me to actually see a story make it to print. The stories pay a little better too, though I’m not exactly getting rich off of any of them. Incidentally, this story is one of a sort of loose series of them I’ve been writing (and failing to sell), all taking place at around the same time. For some reason, they are all written in the first person, too. Don’t ask me what order they go in. This is the first one to be published, so it must be first! Did I mention it was a loose series?

Anyway, I hope people will read the story, buy the anthology, and leave comments here telling me what they think.

What do you think?

A friend of mine and I have developed something of a tradition of drinking a shot in honor of famous people when they pass on. Not just any famous person will do. It has to be someone we, personally, consider interesting or significant. We did a shot for George Burns and one (or was it 2?) for Ronald Reagan.

On the other hand, we did not have a shot for Heath Ledger, despite his fantastic turn as the Joker because, a) We had not yet seen Dark Knight when he died and b) neither of us was very familiar with his previous work and so had no very strong reaction to his death. I’m not claiming it’s fair. There has to be some kind of system since the idea is just to show a token of esteem for someone, not to get massively drunk. If you want to get drunk, you can come up with much more frequent excuses to drink shots!

Anyway, after some consideration I think it’s unlikely we’ll do a shot for John Updike, despite his status as one of the most highly regarded American writers of all time. Or possibly, because of that status. read more »