So Sasha, what do you think the chances are…that we’ll be having the conversation again [ in ten years] that hip hop is in trouble…or will it be something else that’s in trouble?
I dont think it really matters. Look at the history of popular music. Something radical and fantastic always pops up. And somebody always wrastles through the boredom and knocks us on our heads. We’ve had so much great rap. I think it’s OK if we don’t have another “A Milli.” It could happen. I mean look at jazz. Let’s be real. When was there a recording that in a broad-based way really knocked out a huge chunk of the population. When did you have a consensus moment like that? A very long time. But that doesn’t mean you can’t go to a club and hear something fantastic. Maybe rap will go to a place like that– a different, vibrant but smaller, place. People, especially American youth, have a way of finding some way to piss people off and do something delightful at the same time. And if it’s not rap, it’ll be something fine.
-Sasha Frere-Jones, in conversation with Blake Eskin on The New Yorker Out Loud podcast.
*Frere-Jones takes up the question of hip hop’s fall from pop music prominence in the latest issue of The New Yorker.
“Besides the Frost that everybody knows, there is one whom no one even talks about. Everybody knows what the regular Frost is: the one living poet who has written good poems that ordinary readers like without any trouble and understand without any trouble; the conservative editorialist and self-made apothegm-joiner, full of dry wisdom and free, complacent Yankee enterprise; the Farmer-poet–this is an imposing private role perfected for public use, a sort of Olympian Will Rogers out of Tanglewood Tales; and, last or first of all, Frost is the standing, speaking reproach to any other good modern poet: ‘If Frost can write poetry that’s just as easy as Longfellow you can too–you do too.’ It is this ‘easy’ side of Frost that is most attractive to academic readers, who are eager to canonize any modern poet who condemns in example the modern poetry which they condemn in precept; and it is this side that has helped to get him neglected or depreciated by intellectuals–the reader of Eliot or Auden usually dismisses Frost as something inconsequentially good that he knew all about long ago. Ordinary readers think Frost the greatest poet alive, and love some of his best poems almost as much as they love some of his worst ones. He seems to them a sensible, tender, humorous poet who knows all about trees and farms and folks in New England, and still has managed to get an individualistic, fairly optimistic, thoroughly American philosophy out of what he knows; there’s something reassuring about his poetry, they feel–almost like prose. Certainly there’s nothing hard or odd or gloomy about it.
“These views of Frost, it seems to me, come either from not knowing his poems well enough or from knowing the wrong poems too well. Frost’s best-known poems, with a few exceptions, are not his best poems at all….It would be hard to make a novel list of Eliot’s best poems, but one can make a list of ten or twelve of Frost’s best poems that is likely to seem to anybody too new to be true….
“Nothing I say about these poems can make you see what they are like, or what the Frost that matters most is like; if you read them you will see. ‘The Witch of Coos’ is the best thing of its kind since Chaucer. ‘Home Burial’ and ‘A Servant to Servants’ are two of the most moving and appalling dramatic poems ever written; and how could lyrics be more ingeniously and conclusively merciless than ‘Neither Out Far Nor In Deep’ or ‘Design’? or more grotesquely and subtly and mercilessly disenchanting than the tender ‘An Old Man’s Winter Night’? or more unsparingly truthful than ‘Provide Provide’? And so far from being obvious, optimistic, orthodox, many of these poems are extraordinarily subtle and strange, poems which express an attitude that, at its most extreme, makes pessimism seem a hopeful evasion; they begin with a flat and terrible reproduction of the evil in the world and end by saying: It’s so; and there’s nothing you can do about it; and if there were, would you ever do it? The limits which existence approaches and falls back from have seldom been stated with such bare composure,”
Randall Jarrell,”The Other Frost,” 1953
In this short interview with Curtis Fox (courtesy of the Poetry Foundation), the poet Kay Ryan picks up Jarrell’s enthusiasm for Frost and carries it into a spirited discussion of Frost’s mastery of metaphor. Ryan also touches on why today’s fashion-conscious poetry readers are mistaken to overlook Frost. Ryan is, however, more forgiving than the harsh and exuberant Jarrell.
[Robert] Frost once said he wanted to be seen as “the exception I like to think I am in everything.” The problem with being an exception to every category is that after a while you begin to frustrate the categorizers. Consequently, Frost now occupies a position as unique as it is unstable. He’s a definitive Great American Poet, yet he’s never been embraced by the American academy as eagerly as, say, Ezra Pound. (In fact, Frost may be the only poet who is universally acknowledged to be a master but who nonetheless seems to require periodic reputation-buffing essays from the likes of Randall Jarrell and Seamus Heaney.) He’s a technician of prodigious agility, yet he generally limited himself to iambics, and favored rhymes like “reason” and “season” or “star” and “far.” And then there is the fraught matter of his popularity. Unlike almost every poet of comparable ability, Frost can claim a general reading audience, especially among readers who want poems that “make sense” — yet his aesthetic is evasive, arguably manipulative, and has at its core a freezing indifference that would make the neighborhood barbecue awfully uncomfortable. Still, as the critic Richard Poirier argues, “There is no point trying to explain the popularity away, as if it were a misconception prompted by a pose.” It’s easy to see how a poet this contradictory might suffer from the unsubtle ways in which we tend to talk about things like experimentalism and “the mainstream.” In such arguments, Frost will be simplified at best, ignored entirely at worst.
-David Orr, “Frost on the Edge,” NY Times, Feb. 4, 2007
“The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.”
-G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, Chapter II
“I do desire to help the reader to see Christendom from the outside in the sense of seeing it as a whole, against the background of other historic things; just as I desire him to see humanity as a whole against the background of natural things. And I say that in both cases, when seen thus, they stand out from their background like supernatural things.
Anyone who chooses to indulge in mere imagination can imagine that other things might have happened or other entities evolved. Anyone thinking of what might have happened may conceive a sort of evolutionary equality; but anyone facing what did happen must face an exception and a prodigy. If there was ever a moment when man was only an animal, we can if we choose make a fancy picture of his career transferred to some other animal. An entertaining fantasia might be made in which elephants built in elephantine architecture, with towers and turrets like tusks and trunks, cities beyond the scale of any colossus. A pleasant fable might be conceived in which a cow had developed a costume, and put on four boots and two pairs of trousers. We could imagine a Supermonkey more marvelous than any Superman, a quadrumanous creature carving and painting with his hands and cooking and carpentering with his feet. But if we are considering what did happen, we shall certainly decide that man has distanced everything else with a distance like that of the astronomical spaces and a speed like that of the still thunderbolt of the light. And in the same fashion, while we can if we choose see the Church amid a mob of Mithraic or Manichean superstitions squabbling and killing each other at the nd of the Empire, while we can if we choose imagine the Church killed in the struggle and some other chance cult taking its place, we shall be the more surprised (and possibly puzzled) if we meet it two thousand years afterwards rushing through the ages as the winged thunderbolt of thought and everlasting enthusiasm; a thing without rival or resemblance; and still as new as it is old.”
-G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man, Introduction
“You know, I think we’ve really gotten this wrong as conservatives. I think that we have been so engaged in politics, and putting all our hopes for cultural change in politics, that we’ve completely ignored the value of culture, and building up cultural institutions….If we on the right would be more engaged in culture, and think that culture is more than just [a] mock-up of whatever pop music the Evangelicals can come up with, and more than just saying no to whatever pop culture throws up there, if we can actually get engaged in more creative endeavors at a very deep level, and loving art for the sake of art, then maybe we might get somewhere in this culture. I can’t see that electing Republicans over and over again has managed to conserve anything.”
-Rod Dreher, a columnist for The Dallas Morning News, in conversation with Krista Tippett
“I never felt easy till the raft was two mile below there and out in the middle of the Mississippi. Then we hung up our signal lantern, and judged that we was free and safe once more. I hadn’t had a bite to eat since yesterday; so Jim he got out some cabbage, and greens– there ain’t nothing in the world so good, when it’s cooked right– and whilst I eat my supper we talked, and had a good time. I was powerful glad to get away from the feuds, and so was Jim to get away from the swamp. We said there warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.”
-Huck Finn
As to my intense wish never to come into contact with the eldila myself, I am not sure whether I can make you understand it. It was something more than a prudent desire to avoid creatures alien in kind, very powerful, and very intelligent. The truth was that all I heard about them served to connect two things which one’s mind tends to keep separate, and that connecting gave one a sort of shock. We tend to think about non-human intelligences in two distinct categories which we label “scientific” and “supernatural” respectively. We think, in one mood, of Mr. Wells’ Martians…or his Selenites. In quite a different mood we let our minds loose on the possibility of angels, ghosts, fairies, and the like. But the very moment we are compelled to recognise a creature in either class as real the distinction begins to get blurred: and when it is a creature like an eldil that distinction vanishes altogether. These things were not animals– to that extent one had to classify them with the second group; but they had some kind of material vehicle whose presence could (in principle) be scientifically verified. To that extent they belonged to the first group. The distinction between natural and supernatural, in fact, broke down; and when it had done so, one realised how great a comfort it had been– how it had eased the burden of intolerable strangeness which this universe imposes on us by dividing it into halves and encouraging the mind never to think of both in the same context. What price we may have paid for this comfort in the way of false security and accepted confusion of thought is another matter.
-C.S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter 2
“According to doctors, therapists, and his ex-wife, Landsman drinks to medicate himself, tuning the tubes and crystals of his moods with a crude hammer of hundred-proof plum brandy. But the truth is that Landsman has only two moods: working and dead. Meyer Landsman is the most dedicated shammes in the District of Sitka, the man who solved the murder of the beautiful Froma Lefkowitz by her furrier husband, and caught Podolsky the Hospital Killer. His testimony sent Hyman Tsharny to federal prison for life, the first and last time that criminal charges against a Verbover wiseguy have ever been made to stick. He has the memory of a convict, the balls of a fireman, and the eyesight of a housebreaker. When there is crime to fight, Landsman tears around Sitka like a man with his pant leg caught on a rocket. It’s like there’s a film score playing behind him, heavy on the castanets. The problem comes in the hours when he isn’t working, when his thoughts start blowing out the open window of his brain like pages from a blotter. Sometimes it takes a heavy paperweight to pin them down.”
-Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Chapter 1
The photographer Carrie Mae Weems uses clear, direct compositions to deal with subject matter that is difficult and often messy, such as the historical marginalization of African Americans. She sifts through the images and ideas of American culture with the fervor of a social anthropologist, unearthing depictions of racism in its many forms, whether outright violence or subtle prejudice. Perhaps sensing the tedium of academic dicussions, Weems seems to operate on the understanding that stark pictures can strike an audience with more immediacy than rhetorical discourse.
Her convictions find expression through a variety of photographic approaches that are bold and often confrontational. In the exhibit of her work I visited three years ago at Chattanooga’s Hunter Museum of American Art, I saw staged shots of characters in symbolic costumes, startling portraits of African slaves interposed with print, and photos of herself standing before various scenes in New Orleans, the location of one of her most recent projects.
In 2003, Tulane University’s Newcomb Art Gallery commissioned Weems to create an exhibit to commemorate the bicentennial of the Louisiana Purchase. She responded with “The Louisiana Project.” As Newcomb’s curators might have guessed, Weems’ show revisited the American hero of that historical moment. A photograph of Thomas Jefferson was one of the first pieces I saw when I entered the Hunter gallery room holding the exhibit.
Beside Jefferson, the purchase’s European counterpart hung in like form. The apparent sadness and worry in Napoleon’s eyes makes Jefferson’s gaze appear all the more confident and dignified. The obvious pride painted on the third president’s face is in keeping with the textbook opinion of Jefferson as our eloquent writer of political documents and exemplary venture capitalist. As I again passed this picture of Jefferson on my way out of the gallery, I think I understood why it was positioned to be the first image one sees when walking through the door.
“The Louisiana Project” is concerned with the story behind the common reference points that Jefferson’s and Napoleon’s faces represent. Weems is skeptical of the inherited notions of racial, political, and gender identity that have been shaped by the leaders of American society’s dominant power structures. In Weems’ inquiry, Jefferson is exhibit A. For “The Louisiana Project,” and its accompanying exhibit, “From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried,” Weems offers photographic presentations you might call “history from below,” to borrow a phrase from Stephen Greenblatt, a leading figure in the school of literary and cultural theory known as new historicism. In fact, Greenblatt might say Weem’s exhibits “counter the history of the victors with that of the vanquished.”
"Missing Link, Liberty," CM Weems
In “The Louisiana Project,” Weems acts as our own personal anthropologist and tour guide, placing herself within many of her photographs. In some, she holds a mirror before men and women of different races, prompting them to question their faces as racial and gender signifiers, forms loaded with social implications. Elsewhere, Weems, dressed in elegant black formal wear, dons animal masks that seem to symbolize opposing political positions or parties (a photo of her wearing a donkey mask is positioned beside another of her wearing an elephant mask). One might guess her intention is to call out party positions as a safe shield behind which to hide. Further on, a photo of Weems in a monkey mask is opposite another of her in a zebra mask, and we are again left to wonder at her intended meaning. The sardonic, knowing expressions worn by these masks might suggest she means to mock the crude and nauseating expressions of racial prejudice in America, but this is only a guess. The next pair of photos might be considered with a similar line of reasoning, this time applied to simplistic notions of gender. In one of these photos Weems wears a lamb mask, with an expression of helplessness on her face, and in the other she wears a rooster mask, whose face looks over-confident and confrontational.
"Here's to the Other 9-5" CM Weems
In another set of photos, Weems can be seen standing in various locations in and around New Orleans. Our viewpoint is from behind her, and we witness her studying certain buildings and signs. Her study of these scenes signals her implicit desire for us to follow her lead, and to ask what about the view might be of concern to the artist. In one photograph, she stands in an alley looking up at the side of a white building where a Coors Light beer sign is hung. The sign shows a group of young black men flashing gang signs beside a door that reads “Board of Directors.” A slogan beside the men sums up the ad, and the piece: “Here’s to the other 9-5.” And in this unexpected place, Weems finds an expression to convey her possible anger or sadness over the situation of overlooked peoples, common as that form may be.
Speaking on this piece, Weems has said, “I long to see images of black people that are more than simply prepackaged stereotypes. It was really rather shocking that in this town, which is fifty percent black, at least, that there are no images of black people anyplace, with the exception of this billboard that happened to be on the side of a liquor store. That is how much we have been reduced in this country.”
"You Became a Scientific Profile, A Negroid Type, An Anthropoligical Debate, & A Photographic Subject" CM Weems
The reduced place of the African American identity, in its many forms and manifestations, is one of the most prominent themes in “The Louisiana Project.” In “From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried,” created by Weems in 1995, this theme is put forth with an undeniable sense of ire and indignation. Through this exhibit, the artist presents a series of photos of African slaves, some of which date back to the 1840s. Shirtless and wearing only expressions of grief, they face the camera directly. The photos are cast with a deep red hue, and present themselves in the style of mug shots, as if their subjects were meant for scrutiny and strict sentencing. The visual effect Weems achieves resembles the look of a photo negative, a move that seems to suggest her positing of an alternate viewpoint– the one that has been tragically discarded or overlooked by the photo collections in traditional history texts, “the perspective of the vanquished.” Each figure is pictured underneath a line of text, which, in a terse and documentary tone, narrates another chapter in the collective historical identity of African Americans: “You became a Scientific Profile,” “A Negroid Type,” “An Anthropological Debate,” “& A Photographic Subject.”
When the sequence comes to its most disturbing image, a slave holding his wip-torn back towards the camera, the text breaks away from its documentary tone and takes on a lyrical voice. “Black and tanned/ Your whipped wind/ Of change howled low/ Blowing itself-ha-smack/ into the middle of/ Ellington’s orchestra/ Billie heard it too &/Cried strange fruit tears.” The last two lines of this poem reference the famous Billie Holiday song, which used the appealing image of fruit hanging from a branch to depict something grotesque and evil, the dead body of an African American man who’d been attacked by a mob and hung from a tree. Like Holiday, Weems has turned to art to express atrocities that seem to defy explanation. And she has created visual songs that counter alarming realities with surprising grace and beauty. Though they come to us in an era after the Civil Rights Movement, these are songs we still need to hear.
