Spring\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Seed Moon<\/p>\n
“This is what I believe: That I am I. That my soul is a dark forest. That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest. That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self, and then go back. That I must have the courage to let them come and go. That I will never let mankind put anything over me, but that I will try always to recognize and submit to the gods in me and the gods in other men and women. There is my creed.”\u00a0\u00a0 D.H. Lawrence<\/p>\n
And a damn fine creed at that.\u00a0 I might just worship at this church.<\/p>\n
I’ve noodled over a criteria for reading that Stefan put forward last Monday.\u00a0 Something along the lines of If I don’t come away changed or with an altered perspective, then it’s not worthwhile. \u00a0 He made this comment in relation to the Bill Holms’ essay, Blind is the Bookless Man.\u00a0 Stefan found the essay too quotidian, too reportorial and, perhaps most important, too small.\u00a0 The content of the essay concerned Bill Holms’ youth in Mineota, Minnesota and a couple of solitary Icelanders, friends of his family, who shaped his education, especially through books.<\/p>\n
Holms’ follows a strategy I would call thick description, an almost ethnological narrative in which details pile upon details, in this case details about the homes and the reading habits of Stena and Einar.<\/p>\n
I did not come away from the essay much changed, nor did I have my perspective altered.\u00a0 Instead, I had my world expanded to include the early days of a young Icelandic boy growing up in unusual circumstances.\u00a0 I now have Holm’s memories to include with my own.<\/p>\n
Stefan’s criteria is a valid criteria for good literature, but not the only criteria.\u00a0 Another criteria, also valid, gives us empathy, expands our sense of what it means to be human.\u00a0\u00a0 We may admit to our small clearing in the forest a god we had ignored.\u00a0 We may see, for the first time, the god in another’s small clearing, clasp our hands together and say, “Namaste.”\u00a0 Or, we may simply sigh, settle in to ourselves or to the quirks of another and say, “Well, interesting.”<\/p>\n
I have a different reason altogether for liking the Holm’s piece.\u00a0 That lies in the peculiar journey I have followed since college, that of a regionalist.\u00a0 I did not set out to walk this ancient trail, that of one who loves the place of his days and dedicates himself to its expression in diverse ways.\u00a0 But I ended up there anyhow.<\/p>\n
The regionalist finds the universal in the particularities, the idiosyncrasies of their homeland.\u00a0 Willa Cather.\u00a0 Sherwood Anderson.\u00a0 Henry David Thoreau.\u00a0 Annie Dillard.\u00a0 Wendell Berry.\u00a0 Zane Gray.\u00a0 Faulkner.\u00a0 James Joyce.\u00a0 Mark Twain.\u00a0 Robert Frost.\u00a0 All of these are either wholly or in good part regionalists.\u00a0 Bill Holms.\u00a0 Garrison Keillor.\u00a0 James Whitcomb Riley.\u00a0 Marquez.\u00a0 Octavio Paz. Isaac Bashevis Singer.<\/p>\n
This crowd often receives a gentle wink and a nod from the high literary crowd, but so what?\u00a0 In the galactic context the whole of our planet is but a region.\u00a0 All literature, all art must spring from some person, a person formed in some environment.\u00a0 That some choose to focus their art on the way of the Mississippi River or the plains of Nebraska,\u00a0 the ghettos of the Hasidim or uplands of Colombia is a matter for their heart.\u00a0 Whether it speaks to you is a matter for yours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Spring\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Seed Moon “This is what I believe: That I am I. That my soul is a dark forest. That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest. That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self, and then go back. … Continue reading A Bit of Literary Criticism<\/span>