Happy New Year!Joyce NowerHappy New Year! Three little words that convey faith, hope, and charity! In spite of war, pestilence, famine, belligerent postures, the inevitable rise in gas prices, governmental lies and misdemeanors, environmental plunder, and your neighbor's rainbird rotting the wood in your fence, you'll wish everyone you meet around the New Year a "Happy New Year!" and you'll mean it! Because no matter how bad things get, we manage to throw the cape of comradeship around our shoulders and with a few friends trudge through the slush caroling to Grandma's house, even if we have to walk part of the way with The Big Bad Wolf . And there are some ground rules for a good party once you get to Grandma's. Not one to let things get out of hand, early Seventeenth Century dramatist and poet Ben Jonson (1572-1637) was a convivial fellow who left us with a Guide to a Good Party called "Ben Jonson's Sociable Rules for the Apollo." It was that same Ben Jonson who insisted on using everyday speech in his writing and who expanded English literature almost single-handedly by adapting forms from Classical and Medieval literature, such as the epigram, the satire, the masque, the medieval lyric, the ode, the drama, and more. A less appreciated pioneering effort in our current age of rampant free verse was the "reining in", or Jonson might prefer that I say "refining," of English versification by delineating metrical rules and advocating rhyme. But most of all, he was a humanist, who optimistically believed in behavior and imagination guided by reason and ideals. We shall come to his rules presently. But, we pointedly ask, couldn't Jonson afford to be optimistic - since his times were by far less complex and heinous than ours? Hands down, yes; our era has indeed been by far more complex and heinous! For us to be optimistic and believe in the efficacy of reason and reasonableness requires an effort of will. And to have a really cheerful New Year's Eve often seems to be not quite possible! We've got too much on our historic minds: mass murder in Europe, mass murder in Russia, mass murder in Africa, mass murder in Armenia, mass murder in Cambodia, mass population displacements, A-bombs, H-bombs, apartheids, authoritarian and often stupid leaders, incredibly right wars and some wretchedly wrong ones, a burgeoning global system we don't quite believe in, a growing materialism with outposts of grossness that have all but engulfed us, and all of this framed in a world consciousness grounded in Eighteenth Century secular ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We can't rest ethically for one second! History has indeed given our times the proverbial finger. And our poets confirm our anxiety. Twentieth century violence is the heart of W.H. Auden's "The Shield of Achilles," easily one of the Top Ten Poems of the Twentieth Century. Thetis, the mother of Achilles, looks over the shoulder of the god Hephaestos as he forges the shield which Achilles will use in battle. The mother expected to see peace and plenty, "vines and olive trees,/well-governed cities,/And ships upon untamed seas,/White flower-garlanded heifers,/Libation and sacrifice/", and athletes and dancers. Instead she sees the horrors of real life: an "unintelligible multitude," a voice spouting statistics as to why some cause is just, soldiers in battle formation, barbed wire, torture and executions, and an orphaned child committing random acts of violence. The power of this graceful poem resides in its perfect union of content, and rhyme and meter. But violence is , as we know, not the only evil that stains our times; so are power and corruption. America is at the center of Robinson Jeffers' "Shine, Republic" as well as "Shine, Perishing Republic." In "Shine, Perishing Republic," the famous opening lines sum up the still very current debate over our country's direction: "While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire,/And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the mass hardens" Taking both poems together Jeffers points out that the stages of a nation's rise and fall comprise a natural cycle similar to that of a tree : flower, fruit, rotten fruit. A parallel national cycle, caused by the incompatibility of freedom and wealth, devolves from freedom to wealth, to the desire for power over others, to the consequent loss of freedom, and, ultimately, to decline. Hopefully, Jeffers isn't our national oracle; being an optimist, I prefer viewing him as a warning voice rather than as a voice of doom. Alas, Jeffers did not live to hear the new voices reinvigorating our national dialogue. And we cannot escape being chilled by the long shadows of slavery and lynchings, and the fact that Jim Crow is still with us. Jean Toomer (1894-1967), in "Portrait in Georgia" (contained in his beautiful book Cane, a mix of poetry, prose poems, and short stories) describes the lynching of a black woman: Hair - braided chestnut,
Seventy-five years later, Lucille Clifton in Blessing the Boats writes about the 1998 incident in Jasper, Texas, where a black man was dragged to death roped to a car bumper. The poem "jasper Texas 1998" is spoken by the head of the corpse "chosen to speak by the members" of the body, and the question it asks is "why and why and why/ should i call a white man brother?" Even though the townspeople will walk together singing "we shall overcome/... hope bleeds slowly from my mouth/ into the dirt that covers us all./i am done with this dust. i am done." Hope, in the face of yet another black man's torture and death, often seems frivolous. The sad consciousness of genocide visited upon Native Americans hovers in our air as we read Linda Hogan's poem "Tear". Hogan's poem (in The Book of Medicines, Coffee House Press, 1993), tells of a time when the Chickasaw were driven out of their homeland and started on the "trail of tears." At first women's dresses were called "tear" dresses (pronounced "tare") because the women had to tear the settler cloth: knives and scissors were not allowed. Then, because of the sorrow of leaving their homeland, the dresses were called "tear" dresses, in honor of the weeping. Hogan identifies with that horrific forced march and plays on the ambivalence of the word "tear." She, as does her (our) entire generation, has to find an appropriate way to live with that tear. "I am the tear between them/ and both sides live." The final "tear" can be pronounced both ways, and has both meanings. Labor's history and the dis-ease its struggles produced is memorialized in Kenneth Patchen's (1911-1960's) "Orange Bears." It is a boyhood memory of a famous factory strike in Pennsylvania where the National Guard from Wheeling was called out and with drawn bayonets kept the striking workers "in line". The orange bears, the symbols of childhood innocence and trust, are destroyed by factory life: "Christ, before I left home they'd had/Their paws smashed in the rolls, their backs/Seared by hot slag, their soft trusting/ Bellies kicked in." Stupid and unjust wars also scar whatever innocence we have left, filling us with a hopeless feeling in the face of official lies. One of Robert Bly's best poems is "Counting Small-Boned Bodies" (1967), an anti-Vietnam War poem. Anger and disgust against those conducting the war characterize this poem. Let's count the bodies over
again.
Questions about God, too, add to our anxiety. He seems to have become as diverse as the people who believe in the viability of that concept: we have, besides God, Allah, Primary Cause, god, gods, goddesses, Goddess, Inner Voice, Void, and so on. "The End of the World," by Archibald MacLeish (1917-1952) succinctly describes this anxiety: "And there, there overhead, there, hung over/Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes/ There in the sudden blackness the black pall/Of nothing, nothing, nothing - nothing at all." Anxiety is certainly one of the by-products of this variety. So how do we manage to say Happy New Year! with the weight of History bearing down on our souls? How do we manage to believe in progress through reason in light of current events? It seems to me that continuing to say Happy New Year! is the only way of dealing with our lot. And, of course, organizing around important issues. And this, as they say in the martial arts, takes awareness, will power, and focus. So are we ready to lighten up? Are we ready to switch gears? Are we ready to get to "Ben Jonson's Sociable Rules for the Apollo"? To make sure you're prepared for New Year's Eve, let me encourage you to take a copy of Ben's poem with you. I did a few New Year Eve's ago - I have forgiving friends with whom I like to celebrate - and the result was better than they or I expected. Ben, writing for friends referred to as the Tribe of Ben, who met periodically at a local pub, the Apollo, laid down in one stanza of rhymed couplets in Latin - later translated by a friend - some of the following enduring rules of sociability. I comment on them (in parentheses) in the light of my own New Year's Eve celebration. Rule 1. Invite only "learned, civil, merry men" and "choise Ladies." (We did! Ourselves!) Rule 2. Spare no cost: "... more for delight then cost prepare the feast... ." (We spared no cost: aged cheese, home-baked French bread sandwiches with roast turkey, eggplant, mushrooms; good champagne, hot chocolate for the kids, etc.) Rule 3. Use a democratic seating plan: "And none contend who shall sit high or low." (Random seating in the limo, after the kids were plopped in front of the TV.) Rule 4. "Our waiters must quick-sighted be and dumb...."(Well, this is perhaps where we didn't quite measure up: though each empty plate was quickly filled with food, and the wine glasses were always full, those who served, being part of the company, a group that talks and laughs a lot, were not silent. In fact, they were the loudest.) Rule 5. Don't dilute the wine: "Let not our wine be mixt, but brisk and neat, /or else the drinkers may the Vintners beat." (We drank "brisk and neat" bubbly as well as Merlot & Chardonnay!) Rule 6. Focus on witty conversation, not on drinking. (Okay! But I prefer the next two lines: "Let it be voted lawful to stir up/Each other with a moderate chirping cup." Chirping, yep!) Rule 7. Stay away from serious or sacred topics: "On serious things or sacred let's not touch/With sated heads and bellies." (Duly noted!) Rule 8. Don't let the musicians intrude unasked. (We asked for and danced to Gloria Estefan - on tape, on the beach, under the stars, before the rain came. "With laughing, leaping, dancing, jests and songs,/and what ere else to grateful mirth belongs,/Let's celebrate our feasts..." Yes!) Rule 9. Don't recite or write bad poetry: "Insipid poems let no man rehearse/Nor any be compell'd to write a verse." (Not in our wildest dreams!) Rule 10. Don't argue, fight, brawl, break windows or glasses, or tear the curtains. (We were definitely orderly revelers.) Rule 11. Don't report to others what's said and done: "Who ere shall publish what's here done or said,/From our society must be banished." (Am I failing this test at this moment?) Rule 12. Drink moderately and stay warm! : "Let none by drinking do or suffer harme,/And while we stay, let us be always warm." (We drank moderately, dressed in layers of clothing and built a roaring bonfire, but a wind from the bay sprang up around 9:30 P.M., just as we were packing up to leave, bringing with it rain, the first New Year's Eve rain in San Diego in twenty years!) Alas, Ben forgot to caution us to "Stay dry!" We had the limo take us to Seaport Village, the next pre-planned site of festivities, just in time to get totally soaked, while the kids were enjoying the promised rides. Well, the rain proved to be too much even for us, so, wet and weary, we limoed to one of our homes and saw the New Year arrive while drying up in front of a large and cheery fireplace. This New Year's Eve, the above poems as well as Ben's Rules will be in our minds, and we'll also be wearing the well-worn garments of our old humanism. Can joy and happiness, and sadness and anger, coexist? They'd better, if we are to survive to celebrate a few more Happy New Year's! Happy New Year!
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Joyce Nower