Im 78. If spend the rest of my life reading the comedians,I will be very happy. This include all the hilarious ive only read once or twice- about half of your books, Ive read Lone Ranger and Tonto t hree times, Business of Fancy Dancing and First Indian On the Moon Three times, The Toughest Indian Aliive two, and all the others once. But you get the drift. Ive read most of Amos Tutuola only once, Grace paleys short stories always twice, Dead Souls only twice, Rabelais and Pantagruel and TheGoldn Ass of Apelius only once, the novels of the brilliant Jorge Amado only once, Confessions ofl Felix Krull by Thomas Mann only most,same with Cynthia Ozick, and a number of writers ffrom India and Eastern Asia, Richard Brautigan believe it or not. some o Ernest Hebert, beliievetor not and thegreat Chilean Nicanor Parras Antiin Poems and Emergency poems, and doh yea, reread all of Ismahel Reed's sstuff ( or most it ) and thegreat class srltruggle disgusied as mystery novels of Chester Himes who also has a pretty funny bunch of short stories. More later.
I just get very tired of sitting mud puddles with Samuel Beckett. Trying to outlast last calls with Sanuel Beckett, Faaulkner all tlhel bottled up Amrican men with a few "ladis" thrown in all wanting praise becauseosay, they have heartstring yanked whenevrer Holden Caulfield wants to feed the duck at the pond or what is essentiallly MFA writing about dorm angst in bejeweled hacks like Godlffinc, Krassner and all the bullshitbig chill post sixties ingenues but inside I smelll stained pants cuffs and whateverthe goddam gender or "hybrid genre) I hear this weird murmur " we are the hollowmen, we are the stuffed men" and, as my mother used to quip, "Yes,s you aaretheholloe men in the toomuchlight letsget thell. out of here. more later. also am ignoring world literature or am i ignoring what the power that be, perhaps even internationaly, allow to be published and marketed as "international literature". How do you know that herehavenot been scores of lpoets and novelists whose never "ccame to light" because their country's rc and their henchman had their hands on the light switches, the stages, theprinters ink kekktc???????
Think of all the wrters all over the world wh o have already paid high prices. And lists keep getting thrown out, bu what is being',H
Ill have more to say about this tomorrow. about the history of radical writers all over the world killed and or savagely stifled. way way back to Cervantes, Dante, To Fu Hi bothkmet in Turkey, Lorca in Spain his friend Marcos Ana, Otto REne Castillo of Guatamala burned at the staake by eitherttfascistss, USA agents or BOTH.dd,the horrendous treatment of two of the greatest poets of the twentiethcentury= Pablo Nruda. Be well.
The two opposites when it comes to Holocaust survivors: Frankl, who believed that one had to find a meaning in life in order to survive the camps and Primo Levi who wrote: LThe worst survived, the selfish, the violent, the insensitive, the collaborators of the ‘grey zone’, the spies. It was not a certain rule… but it was, nevertheless, a rule… The best all died.”
Im with a James Scarlett Lyon on this one. Call lme a Polyanna optimist but Ive seen too many incidents of human love and solidarity to say otherwise. I leave the lugubrious to the English profesors and the seamyologists
I have spent a lot of time over the course of my life in very wild backcountry and have had a number of harrowing experiences. I have been regularly impressed with how friends and strangers have come together to help someone get to safety. People are capable of impressive self sacrifice if the circumstances require it. It gives me hope.
I need to write about the responses to this poem. I find it fascinating that some folks mightily resist the fact that some people, many people, just surrender in the face of extreme circumstances. And that none of us really know how we'd react in such a situation.
My poem is, of course, about a larger sense of survival but it's in particular a poem about surviving extreme physical hardship. I've had a bad back since my late 20s. I could never carry somebody that many miles.
That doesn't mean you don't do that or more intense in an emotional way, or on an energetic level. There are different kinds of courage. Different kinds of commitment. I was told by an intuitive at a particularly impossible seeming time in my life, where I sincerely asked, "Should I just go?" that I could go if I wanted to...in a way, that freedom allowed me to really reflect. And choose life. The things I have been through, like so many things so many others have been through, do not show physical scars. I believe many more of us are heroes in one way or another than we are led to believe. It's in embracing that that we can celebrate one another, not as badge of victimhood or even survival but a celebration of our soul sovereignty and YES to life.
I think maybe you're opposed to the poem's thesis. We're not required to agree with any poem. And we're not required to think of a poem as having lesser value because we disagree with its worldview. Or a greater value because we agree with it. I think it's cool that we're exchanging responses in this way. My poem is asserting the difficult idea that some people just surrender in difficult circumstances. It's a primitive idea in the sense that all animals, including humans, will fight, take flight, or freeze when faced with immediate mortal danger. And the poem does indeed focus on an immedate danger, an immediate choice. I don't know anything about the lives of those guys in the Utah desert. I only know how they survived. And I don't think any of us know what we'd do if we ever have to make that kind of choice. And here's the funny part: After a six-hour drive today with two stops to rest, my lower back is wrecked!
As an aside, I was told I would never have children and that I wouldn't be able to walk by forty as a result of scolioses. (This by the way is not at all the suffering to which I am referred in my earlier comment.) I have three kids, two VBACS. I am over 40. I walk now more than I used to! And I walk with more peace. So just as you never know how you may react in a life or death situation (I keep remembering the woman who drowned herself to save her baby in the floods in Texas years ago,) we also may not in the future have the limitations we currently have. I was set to climb Huayna Picchu in 2019 and threw my back out the day before. I was there because I had been told by my mentor that I had spiritual work to do there. I went with my son and with all the suitcases and trains and plains...well, it's not a huge surprise. I told God, "Look, I'm here. I came. But I can't do what you've asked me to do, unless you heal me and empower me to get up there. I went to bed, knowing there wasn't anything to do other than sleep. I was also out of shape having dealt with chronic illness that flared up for many months before the trip. Yet I climbed Huayna Picchu without pain and without exhaustion. I danced at the top.
Your poem puzzles me, Sherman, because you are a survivor. I think the missing ingredient in the study you reference is love - ineffable and unmeasurable but a baby is born, I suspect, knowing whether or not he or she was brought into this world because of love.
we don't know what we're capable of until we're faced with a thing... I have failed miserably on some counts... that's how I know when I see something askew elsewhere... >heavy sigh<
Made me think of those Competition marathon runners who stop to help a fallen fellow runner, thus sacrificing their placement position. The moral imperative - to help or not see the possibility to help.
It's likely the man who carried the other survived because he carried the other. Saving another life gave him motivation he would've been unlikely to achieve alone.
Im 78. If spend the rest of my life reading the comedians,I will be very happy. This include all the hilarious ive only read once or twice- about half of your books, Ive read Lone Ranger and Tonto t hree times, Business of Fancy Dancing and First Indian On the Moon Three times, The Toughest Indian Aliive two, and all the others once. But you get the drift. Ive read most of Amos Tutuola only once, Grace paleys short stories always twice, Dead Souls only twice, Rabelais and Pantagruel and TheGoldn Ass of Apelius only once, the novels of the brilliant Jorge Amado only once, Confessions ofl Felix Krull by Thomas Mann only most,same with Cynthia Ozick, and a number of writers ffrom India and Eastern Asia, Richard Brautigan believe it or not. some o Ernest Hebert, beliievetor not and thegreat Chilean Nicanor Parras Antiin Poems and Emergency poems, and doh yea, reread all of Ismahel Reed's sstuff ( or most it ) and thegreat class srltruggle disgusied as mystery novels of Chester Himes who also has a pretty funny bunch of short stories. More later.
I just get very tired of sitting mud puddles with Samuel Beckett. Trying to outlast last calls with Sanuel Beckett, Faaulkner all tlhel bottled up Amrican men with a few "ladis" thrown in all wanting praise becauseosay, they have heartstring yanked whenevrer Holden Caulfield wants to feed the duck at the pond or what is essentiallly MFA writing about dorm angst in bejeweled hacks like Godlffinc, Krassner and all the bullshitbig chill post sixties ingenues but inside I smelll stained pants cuffs and whateverthe goddam gender or "hybrid genre) I hear this weird murmur " we are the hollowmen, we are the stuffed men" and, as my mother used to quip, "Yes,s you aaretheholloe men in the toomuchlight letsget thell. out of here. more later. also am ignoring world literature or am i ignoring what the power that be, perhaps even internationaly, allow to be published and marketed as "international literature". How do you know that herehavenot been scores of lpoets and novelists whose never "ccame to light" because their country's rc and their henchman had their hands on the light switches, the stages, theprinters ink kekktc???????
Think of all the wrters all over the world wh o have already paid high prices. And lists keep getting thrown out, bu what is being',H
Ill have more to say about this tomorrow. about the history of radical writers all over the world killed and or savagely stifled. way way back to Cervantes, Dante, To Fu Hi bothkmet in Turkey, Lorca in Spain his friend Marcos Ana, Otto REne Castillo of Guatamala burned at the staake by eitherttfascistss, USA agents or BOTH.dd,the horrendous treatment of two of the greatest poets of the twentiethcentury= Pablo Nruda. Be well.
The two opposites when it comes to Holocaust survivors: Frankl, who believed that one had to find a meaning in life in order to survive the camps and Primo Levi who wrote: LThe worst survived, the selfish, the violent, the insensitive, the collaborators of the ‘grey zone’, the spies. It was not a certain rule… but it was, nevertheless, a rule… The best all died.”
I just reread Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. This hits that same nerve.
Ice cold showers baby. Makes me feel MANLY
Im with a James Scarlett Lyon on this one. Call lme a Polyanna optimist but Ive seen too many incidents of human love and solidarity to say otherwise. I leave the lugubrious to the English profesors and the seamyologists
You'd be ignoring at least 90% of world literature if you ignored the dismal!
I have spent a lot of time over the course of my life in very wild backcountry and have had a number of harrowing experiences. I have been regularly impressed with how friends and strangers have come together to help someone get to safety. People are capable of impressive self sacrifice if the circumstances require it. It gives me hope.
I need to write about the responses to this poem. I find it fascinating that some folks mightily resist the fact that some people, many people, just surrender in the face of extreme circumstances. And that none of us really know how we'd react in such a situation.
Thank you, Matthew.
This is awesome. Good meaning in a short form!
the two of us alone
no prospect for assistance
miles to go...
I would try
we would probably die together
My poem is, of course, about a larger sense of survival but it's in particular a poem about surviving extreme physical hardship. I've had a bad back since my late 20s. I could never carry somebody that many miles.
That doesn't mean you don't do that or more intense in an emotional way, or on an energetic level. There are different kinds of courage. Different kinds of commitment. I was told by an intuitive at a particularly impossible seeming time in my life, where I sincerely asked, "Should I just go?" that I could go if I wanted to...in a way, that freedom allowed me to really reflect. And choose life. The things I have been through, like so many things so many others have been through, do not show physical scars. I believe many more of us are heroes in one way or another than we are led to believe. It's in embracing that that we can celebrate one another, not as badge of victimhood or even survival but a celebration of our soul sovereignty and YES to life.
I think maybe you're opposed to the poem's thesis. We're not required to agree with any poem. And we're not required to think of a poem as having lesser value because we disagree with its worldview. Or a greater value because we agree with it. I think it's cool that we're exchanging responses in this way. My poem is asserting the difficult idea that some people just surrender in difficult circumstances. It's a primitive idea in the sense that all animals, including humans, will fight, take flight, or freeze when faced with immediate mortal danger. And the poem does indeed focus on an immedate danger, an immediate choice. I don't know anything about the lives of those guys in the Utah desert. I only know how they survived. And I don't think any of us know what we'd do if we ever have to make that kind of choice. And here's the funny part: After a six-hour drive today with two stops to rest, my lower back is wrecked!
What a triumph you had! Basketball is where I can most ignore pain. I once played 3/4 of a game with a broken jaw. That's how much I wanted to win.
As an aside, I was told I would never have children and that I wouldn't be able to walk by forty as a result of scolioses. (This by the way is not at all the suffering to which I am referred in my earlier comment.) I have three kids, two VBACS. I am over 40. I walk now more than I used to! And I walk with more peace. So just as you never know how you may react in a life or death situation (I keep remembering the woman who drowned herself to save her baby in the floods in Texas years ago,) we also may not in the future have the limitations we currently have. I was set to climb Huayna Picchu in 2019 and threw my back out the day before. I was there because I had been told by my mentor that I had spiritual work to do there. I went with my son and with all the suitcases and trains and plains...well, it's not a huge surprise. I told God, "Look, I'm here. I came. But I can't do what you've asked me to do, unless you heal me and empower me to get up there. I went to bed, knowing there wasn't anything to do other than sleep. I was also out of shape having dealt with chronic illness that flared up for many months before the trip. Yet I climbed Huayna Picchu without pain and without exhaustion. I danced at the top.
<3 I love the exchange too, and I agree that poems value is not based on whether we agree or disagree. In this case, I don't disagree. I broaden.
Really good
Your poem puzzles me, Sherman, because you are a survivor. I think the missing ingredient in the study you reference is love - ineffable and unmeasurable but a baby is born, I suspect, knowing whether or not he or she was brought into this world because of love.
we don't know what we're capable of until we're faced with a thing... I have failed miserably on some counts... that's how I know when I see something askew elsewhere... >heavy sigh<
Yup
Made me think of those Competition marathon runners who stop to help a fallen fellow runner, thus sacrificing their placement position. The moral imperative - to help or not see the possibility to help.
I enjoy seeing those moments, as well.
It's likely the man who carried the other survived because he carried the other. Saving another life gave him motivation he would've been unlikely to achieve alone.
That is an excellent point. Yes, yes.
Yes, the ending but also the beginning:
“Some people want to live more than others do.”
Perhaps that’s true of all mammals. I think of Tokitae (Lolita)the Southern Resident orca...53 years in captivity.
Another beautiful poem, Sherman Alexie - thank you.
Thank you, Angela.
I am not sure if the desire to live is a mere happenstance of individuality.
There are many studies of why some people survive disasters and others don’t. Here’s one:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4488507/
I am looking forward to your future book of poetry (please!)
Working on it!