Not Blockbusters all the Way
The film we watched about William Stafford was pretty interesting (though I admit to not having slept well the night before and so not following it as well as I could have). I appreciate it, and it's really coincidental that just recently Sara Jameson mentioned his book You Must Revise Your Life on her blog (when discussing the need for the constant revision of one's writing and one's life). This coincidence probably wouldn't mean anything to me, except that I don't think I had heard of Stafford before Thursday.
Stafford said a few things in the video that really struck me, and one of those was that his poems weren't (and couldn't be) "Blockbusters all the way," but were rather made up of modulations. This reminds me of the Bible because it seems like our culture focuses on the Blockbusters (Adam and Eve, the Fall, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, the Sacrifice of Isaac, and the Selling of Joseph into Slavery), but there are "valleys" in between the "peaks" that often go unnoticed and that I find really interesting. I know I'm reading ahead here, but the story of Judah's children by Tamar is fascinating (chapter 38), and how it echoes the story of Jacob and Esau's birth, yet I don't think it's ever mentioned. These smaller parts that echo "larger parts" make the Bible cohere, instead of a series of "MAJOR STORIES."
I also likened Stafford's desire to keep things simple to the Bible's simplicity. He mentioned that he took "Elie Wiesel" out of the poem that read something like "someone talks about social justice and he gets paid $3000 for it." By making the story more general, Stafford can get at the truth of the situation, rather than having his reader's react to an attack on a revered writer (Wiesel). When I think about how I would read that poem, I know that if it read "Elie Wiesel talks about social justice and he gets paid $3000 for it," I would be angry that he was criticizing someone I think has suffered and should be talking about it. But when he makes it more general, I see his point a bit more clearly. And perhaps that is part of why the Bible is so powerful: it's language is sparce. We don't need many details. In fact, the more details, the less likely that this book will be as universal as it is.
Stafford said a few things in the video that really struck me, and one of those was that his poems weren't (and couldn't be) "Blockbusters all the way," but were rather made up of modulations. This reminds me of the Bible because it seems like our culture focuses on the Blockbusters (Adam and Eve, the Fall, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, the Sacrifice of Isaac, and the Selling of Joseph into Slavery), but there are "valleys" in between the "peaks" that often go unnoticed and that I find really interesting. I know I'm reading ahead here, but the story of Judah's children by Tamar is fascinating (chapter 38), and how it echoes the story of Jacob and Esau's birth, yet I don't think it's ever mentioned. These smaller parts that echo "larger parts" make the Bible cohere, instead of a series of "MAJOR STORIES."
I also likened Stafford's desire to keep things simple to the Bible's simplicity. He mentioned that he took "Elie Wiesel" out of the poem that read something like "someone talks about social justice and he gets paid $3000 for it." By making the story more general, Stafford can get at the truth of the situation, rather than having his reader's react to an attack on a revered writer (Wiesel). When I think about how I would read that poem, I know that if it read "Elie Wiesel talks about social justice and he gets paid $3000 for it," I would be angry that he was criticizing someone I think has suffered and should be talking about it. But when he makes it more general, I see his point a bit more clearly. And perhaps that is part of why the Bible is so powerful: it's language is sparce. We don't need many details. In fact, the more details, the less likely that this book will be as universal as it is.
posted by Michael Faris @ 2:37 PM
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