« January 27, 2008 - February 2, 2008 |
Main
| March 2, 2008 - March 8, 2008 »
February 26, 2008
Reviewed by Richard Marcus
Maybe it's because I write so much, but I've always been fascinated with words and languages. Where did they come from; how did different sounds come to represent words for different people, and why? I think it's amazing that so many people have come up with different ways of being able to communicate ideas, emotions, and abstract concepts.
There's so much you can learn about a culture from its language based on the ideas and concepts they are able to express and how they utilize the words at their disposal when doing so. In English we may be able to call an object a television and understand what that means, but another language may have to string a couple of words together that will describe the function in order to communicate the same meaning: the box which brings people to life.
English of course is itself a mongrel of a language, being made up of bits and pieces from all the peoples who ever invaded the British Isles dating back to the Romans and earlier. If you look at the earliest texts written down in the English language -- Beowulf, Sir Gawain And The Green Knight, or Chaucer's Canterbury Tales -- you wouldn't recognize it as being the same as what we speak today. Even today the English language continues to evolve depending on where its spoken and by whom. The English spoken in India differs from that spoken in Australia, which differs from what's spoken in Canada, and that in turn is different from the form it takes in the United States.
Yet, in spite of all that's different between us, and all the distinctive flavours that our languages have, there is one thing it seems they all have in common; the ability to rip the flesh off someone's bones with a few well chosen words or phrases. According to Curse + Berate In 69+ Languages published by Soft Skull Press every language from Afrikaans to Zulu contains the means to be rude, crude, lewd, and just downright insulting.
Assembled by the staff of the International Literary Review, the The Gobshite Quarterly and edited by R.V. Branham, editor of the same publication, Curse + Berate In 69+ Languages contains an A-Y listing of English profanity (abnormal-Yuppie/snob; apparently no curses found in the English language begin with Z) translated into as many languages as possible. A second section contains a selection of choice phrases for use in specific circumstances. "Corpus Politic Or What Would Caligula Say/Do & Variations" for instance contains a list of things that one culture might say to another in a moment of pique, or aspersions you might want to cast upon your political enemies in times of undue stress.
In his introduction to this compendium of invective, Mr. Branham makes no bones about his intent. He's appalled at what he considers our cavalier attitude towards swearing. We now toss off words -- ones that have lost their power to inflame or incite and that even a generation ago would have caused consternation among the masses -- without a second thought. By opening our eyes to some of the truly inventive means others have found for utilizing what we have managed to trivialize through overuse, he hopes to instill in us a new respect for the profane and encourage his readers to breathe new life into that which has been allowed to become moribund - swearing.
Now I won't say that I've read every listing, but even a sampling of the offerings under the various headings in this dictionary (the majority of which if published here would probably result in this site being blocked by parental locks on servers around the world) is enough to make a reader realize how much we have been limiting ourselves. The Spanish, for example, have a way with a descriptive phrase that makes the rest of the world seem like innocents, and I doubt that anybody can match certain Mid-Eastern languages for inventiveness when it comes to curses.
Curses are of course a different matter all together from cursing, and it's interesting to note how some cultures make use of one over the other when it comes to wishing a person ill. I have to admit that until now I hadn't given the matter much thought, but after what I've read here, I can see the attraction of a good hearty curse as compared to cursing. A curse has the power of momentum behind it, and as it builds up a head of steam to its denouement it gives you a wonderful opportunity to let someone know the depth of your feelings towards them. It's definitely an area where the English language has been lagging behind the rest of the world, and Curse + Berate offers up some wonderful choice examples that surely will provide fodder for the inventive mind.
The other thing that becomes abundantly clear from reading this book is how much we all have in common when it comes to our source material for swearing. Body parts, bodily functions, and religion are at the top of the charts for almost every single language on earth when it comes to cursing. Animals feature high on the list too of course, but usually only when combined with human activity - generally sexual for some reason.
Sex: there's no getting away from it when it comes to swearing it seems. Somehow being able to work the subject of sex or sexuality into your invective makes it all that more potent. What that says about most cultures' attitudes towards sex isn't very complimentary, as it means that the subject is still obviously taboo or considered somehow dirty, but next to references to God, I'd have to say that sexual activity and defecation are the most prominent features of cursing across the board. (Being able to combine the three into one curse is the sign of an extremely inventive mind and obviously an ideal to strive for in your own attempts.)
Aside from the obvious benefits of attempting to build bridges between cultures that a book like this strives for by showing the reader that no matter where we live we have so much linguistically in common, I'd be remiss in mentioning just how much fun this book is. If you don't have any hang-ups about swearing -- and if you did I doubt you'd even open the damned thing -- Curse + Berate In 69+ Languages will have you laughing so hard that it will hurt.
Some of the funniest parts of the book are the literal translations of other languages' expressions. While an idiom taken as a whole will have one meaning, and that can be funny enough - when translated word for word it becomes even more outlandish and hilarious. Some of the best examples for this are some of the Chinese dialects - check out the Mandarin slang for breasts and you'll see what I mean.
Curse + Berate In 69+ Languages is one of the funniest, most intelligent, and inventive books on language that you will ever come across. If this book doesn't give you a new respect for the wonder of words - nothing will.
Posted by nbennett at
06:32 PM
February 26, 2008
Reviewed by Jon Sobel
Over a long and fruitful career John Ashbery has proven what many wouldn't have dared suggest: it is possible for a poet to work in abstractions and also maintain a distinct and resonant voice. Just as an art aficionado knows a Pollock or a Rothko without being told, so does a reader of poetry know an Ashbery without needing to see the name on the cover - or, for that matter, understanding what the poem is about.
"About" is the wrong word anyway. This volume of selected poems (and prose poems) from the nine books Ashbery has published over the past two decades shows that age certainly hasn't slowed this octogenarian's pen; rather, time has broadened his palette, expanding the acreage of his peculiar subject matter. "Of" is a better word than "about" - "of" as in "made of."
What is a poem like "Finnish Rhapsody" made of? In this instance the answer is easy - it's made of two-phrased lines in which the second phrase restates the first.
Don't fix it if it works, tinker not with that which runs apace,
Otherwise the wind might get it, the breeze waft it away.
There is no time for anything like chance, no spare moment for the aleatory,
Because the closing of our day is business, the bottom line already here.
Another "easy" one is "Hotel Lautréamont," which is written in an obscure form called a pantoum, where lines repeat at specific intervals from stanza to stanza. These exceptions still go to prove the rule of Ashberian uniqueness. Their playful tricks suggest the fecund phraseology of ancient epic poetry without taking any specific epic form. We scent a dialogue with Shakespeare, a reflection of e.e. cummings, a Yeatsian echo, but each poem is never anything less than an Ashbery, though some may be said to be more distinguished than others.
"Offshore Breeze" demonstrates the poet's method succinctly. The first and second stanzas talk of an "I" and a "you" and some things, but no "he." Yet here is the third and final stanza:
What happens is you get the unreconstructed story,
An offshore breeze pushing one gently away,
Not far away. And the leggings of those meeting to
See about it are a sunset,
Brilliant and disordered, and sharp
As a word held in the mouth too long.
And he spat out the pit.
In that sharp last line, and not until then, perspective and metaphor are twisted into a completely new direction. It's startling and moving, without being "about." As Alan Brown put it in the Sunday Times, "Ashbery is still exuberantly dedicated to the truthful rendering of experience as a flow of sensations that defy interpretation."
"The Big Cloud," an exceptionally beautiful lyric that's also from 1987's April Galleons, seems at first to be "about" something. "For ages man has labored to put his dreams in order. Look at the result. / Once an idea like the correct time has been elucidated / It must fade or spread..." Yes, that feels true, philosophically at least. But as the poem delves deeper into the idea, abstractions pile up - "Last words are uttered, and first love / Ascends to its truly majestic position unimpaired." And then, in the final stanza, concrete images elucidate particular lives - "Letters were strewn across the floor, / Singing the joyful song of how no one was ever going to read them." As happens repeatedly in Ashbery's work, objects and ideas take on flesh and personality. The poem ends elegaically:
It was existence again in all its tautness,
Playing its adolescent joke, its pictures
Teasing our notion of fragility with their monumental permanence.
But life was never the same again. Something faltered,
Something went away.
That's about as sentimental as Ashbery gets. Contrast the above with the opening of the title poem, from 1992: "A yak is a prehistoric cabbage: of that, at least, we may be sure." This immediately undercuts any sense of groundedness we may have brought to our reading of the poem. "Still Life with Stranger," from the same volume, ends: "The whole cast of characters is imaginary / now, but up ahead, in shadow, the past waits." This boldly states what is usually unsaid: that these words are not meant as a direct reflection of any reality. A later poem, "The Green Mummies," begins with another perfect example: "Avuncular and teeming, the kind luggage / hosed down the original site."
Always playing, Ashbery writes inexplicable sentences in utterly graceful English. We extract meaning from them a little like we abstract it from music or sculpture. He presents facts and interpretations in tones of great seriousness, but with the subjects drained out. And somehow he makes this weird narrative flow work over the long haul, even through some very lengthy poems. The title poem of 1994's And the Stars Were Shining is like a short story or a movie set in an alien yet familiar universe. The narrator leaps through hoops of images, then pauses to reflect on the creative spirit:
...Some people have an idea a day,
others millions, still others are condemned
to spend their life inside an idea, like a
bubble chamber.
And in the final section comes close to stating a philosophy of art: "It's as though we've come refreshed / from another planet, and spied immediately what was lacking in this one: / an orange, fresh linens, ink, a pen." "The Problem of Anxiety," from 1995's Can You Hear, Bird, asks, "Suppose this poem were about you--would you / put in the things I've carefully left out: / descriptions of pain, and sex, and how shiftily / people behave toward each other?"
Sometimes when Ashbery starts to make too much sense, his poems lose force, as in some of the selections from Can You Hear, Bird. "...By an Earthquake" breaks out of this tendency with its playful form, a series of disconnected vignettes like these: "Albert has a dream, or an unusual experience, psychic or otherwise, which enables him to conquer a serious character weakness and become successful in his new narrative, 'Boris Karloff,'" and "Too many passengers have piled onto a cable car in San Francisco; the conductor is obliged to push some of them off." And the long poem "Tuesday Evening" is made of sometimes Shakespearean rhyming quatrains: "...It's getting late; the pageant / oozes forward, act four is yet to come, and so is dusk." The dada-esque prose poem "The Bobinski Brother," from Your Name Here (2000), could hardly be more different. "'Her name is Liz, and I need her in my biz,' I hummed wantonly. A band of clouds all slanted in the same direction drifted across the hairline horizon like a tribe of adults and children, all hastening toward some unknown destination." And so on.
The visual asserts its importance with the book-length poem "Girls on the Run," inscribed "after Henry Darger," the reclusive folk artist. "...The droplets made diagonal streaks in the air / where pterodactyls had been." But in the final volume represented here, 2005's Where Shall I Wander, Ashbery seems to be looking at politics and war, though, as always, in a skewed way. The prose poem "Heavy Home" closes: "For the time being the disputed enclave is yours. But its cadence is elsewhere." Finally, the short poem "Annuals and Perennials" begins with a discussion of "...this America, home of the free, / colored ashes smeared on the base / or pedestal that flourishes ways of doubting / to be graceful..." and ends with this devastating one-line stanza:
"We have shapes but no power."
By contrast, Ashbery's poems - certainly the best of them, as selected in this volume - come in many shapes, and bear masses of cutting, jostling power.
Posted by nbennett at
06:30 PM
