Highly placed,
transfixed by the refinement of brick, wood.
Then, gliding between buildings,
the power of the draft,
the grandeur of building.
Our day ended atop a telephone pole,
seeing the bright orange and rosy pink fade away.

We don’t have a song.
All we have is a natural strength
from an unnatural happening.
You almost left your burden in tears
before you were on that skyscraper,
searching.

1. The core of Cost’s critique – republicanism is compromised when the electorate that matters is nothing but special interests. To wit:

And that is what “The Life of Julia” [Obama campaign advertising] is all about. It is liberalism, for sure, but it certainly is not a republican brand of it. It is almost a perfect articulation of antirepublican, client group liberalism, which unhappily has come to define the Democratic party under Obama. Put simply, the message of the ad is that this woman should vote for Obama because of all the great benefits he will offer her.

Michael Barone has often referred to Obama’s political approach as the “Chicago way,” and here we can see a version of that method at work. It was the urban political machines—like Chicago’s Daley operation and before it New York’s Tammany Hall—that mastered the decidedly antirepublican relationship of patron and client as well as any organization in world history.

I’ll agree that things can get very ugly for our country when local politics become national politics. I personally think the Founders bet on the “enlarged orbit,” the sheer size of the United States, so that way once in a while people like Dennis Kucinich could be mayor of Cleveland or Jan Brewer could become governor of Arizona and that local factionalism would not play out onto the national level.

Still, despite the strength of the primary contention, that interest groups receiving benefits can be detrimental to republicanism if they become primary focus, I think we can isolate several problems. Can we really distinguish what Cost calls “client group liberalism” from the practice of politics? If that proves problematic, what are compelling reasons for working with “client group liberalism?” Finally, what truly unites us as Americans, what makes our republicanism work? How abstract is the appeal to principle?

2. Cost is aware that it is tricky to distinguish giving stuff to your base and giving too much stuff to your base. Prior to saying that “The Life of Julia” represents a a major antirepublican trend in the Democratic agenda, he says:

Both liberals and conservatives believe they are republicans, that their policies will benefit all Americans, not just a privileged elite. Furthermore, both political parties pay lip service to this republican view of government, but in reality they are often ready, willing, and able to play favorites, doling out government benefits to their supporters (paid for, usually, by their political opponents).

One gets the impression that this paragraph exists to say that the problem with Obama’s advertising is that it is too direct. This isn’t necessarily a trivial complaint. How things are articulated by our leaders matters. Setting the right tone has huge implications for how we deal with each other, what we think is acceptable.

Then again: isn’t it the case we vote for people based on what they do for us? If you want to counter the “hey! free lunch!” promotion, you have to make a coherent case that an emphasis on limited government will help us at the moment. Cost mentions the “public good” as something Democrats are ignoring at the moment, and it is hard to argue with his indictment:

The stimulus, the health care bill, cap and trade, and the financial reform package were all designed with heavy input from the party’s clients, and ultimately each reflects their priorities, so much so that any kind of national purpose the legislation might have served was totally undermined. The stimulus catered far too much to Democratic clients, hence its measly effect on the economy; Obamacare was a veritable smorgasbord of goodies for Democratic backers, from feminists to unions to big business, while the average American will see no material improvement in the cost or security of his health insurance; and financial reform ultimately won the backing of the mega-banks on Wall Street, which not coincidentally had given overwhelmingly to Democrats in the 2008 cycle.

You’ll get no argument from me on that front. The only thing I’ll say is that since I don’t think the Obama administration terribly competent, I’m not sure how much this reflects a serious ideology as much as a gimmick. And it’s the ideological overtones that matter (“antirepublican”). I can conceive of a number of types of governments wanting to give benefits to various interest groups for reasons that matter. Heck, we need to do this. Last I checked, tax cuts don’t help people on reservations where there may be a 60% alcoholism rate and any sort of intervention in a place like Gary, Indiana is a good thing.

To be even blunter: you don’t get justice and equality through limited government necessarily. For that to happen, we all have to be the same, with the same income, the same priorities, the same circumstances. Then strict constitutionalism and fewer laws and less spending work like a charm.

3. One of the more compelling arguments for liberal prescriptions is economic collapse. It isn’t that one wants too much regulation or spending. But it’s also the case one shouldn’t want to cut services in a recession. It’s less a disincentive to work and more giving people one less thing to worry about while we recover.

Unfortunately, when one is arguing more or less based on ideology, FDR has to be seen as not someone dealing with a problem, but just as much a relentless partisan:

Ironically, it was Franklin Roosevelt—the very president who destroyed the Tammany operation—who adapted its clientelism to national government. This is how the antirepublican practices of urban politics found their way into the national Democratic party. FDR had two purposes in mind with his New Deal: to use the vast regulatory and redistributive potential of the federal government to fight off the Great Depression and to establish a permanent Democratic majority. Whereas Tammany had once been limited to ticky-tacky items like contracts and jobs, FDR could use sweeping legislation like the Agricultural Adjustment Act to buy off the entire Southern plantation gentry at a stroke of the presidential pen.

Cost rightly moves away from this narrative and starts seeing how many other factions the Democrats brought under their umbrella in the coming years. The trouble with the story as he presents it is a hundredfold. One reason why Republicans stayed in power for years after the Civil War was that they gave out exceedingly generous veterans’ benefits. You have to pretend that the time before FDR was this mythic time for republicanism in America, where debates were fought earnestly and with tremendous respect for the Constitution and the rights of others. And of course we didn’t have 10 year olds work in mines! Of course there was no economic instability and a ridiculous lack of oversight! We only had the Great Depression because of the Federal Reserve (I love when friends tell this story. The consensus among scholars, as far as I can tell, is that the Fed’s refusal to act was the catalyst for some of the worst damage)!

Can we get serious for a second? I think one can have some issues with FDR’s governance. But there’s no way to look at the “Great Depression” and say this is some insignificant problem that isn’t going to involve a drastic reordering of priorities. As ticked as I am that 50% of the federal budget goes to Social Security and Medicare, I’d be scared to death if I lived in a country where taking care of the old and sick wasn’t important.

Once we see that some “clientelism” isn’t the end of the world – it’s a way of tracking whether government is actually doing good for someone – we can start seeing what a healthy alternative to Obama style liberalism is.

4. The first thing we have to do is come clean and admit that conservatism is, for the most part nowadays, identity politics. There’s no other way to explain how people like this were allowed to thrive at National Review for as long as they did. I’m not saying all conservatism is identity politics that vicious; I’ve made the case above that I think some identity politics (obviously, not the one in the immediately prior link) is good.

But we have to understand that it isn’t clear that the modern Republican party, as constituted at this moment, can offer a “public good.”

The truth is that there is a public good to be had, but it doesn’t really lie in ideological economics. It has something to do with what Cost articulated above, which I’ll fashion into something stronger: you can’t use all of the national treasury to pay off your friends.

You can see that’s more basic than arguing ideological degeneration. It more or less contends that as political science has given us insight into winning elections, we’re using that insight a bit too much. The ability to offer voters a choice between competing but salutary and reasonable alternatives has been compromised by our factionalism and the strategies which engage and exacerbate that factionalism. I’m not placing blame here. To be a viable politician, you have to work with what you’ve got.

We need unity. I used to think bipartisanship was just a lame talking point. Now I think it’s one of the greatest blessings we had and we’re too blind to realize how much we need it. The President is very partisan and I know thoughtful liberals should ask whether the Congressional majorities were handled correctly. If you want this place to be more like Europe, you need to do a lot of convincing, not just win at the ballot box and pass some laws and make a few rounds at talk shows and town halls. And I don’t really want to say anything about the more disgraceful behavior of my party (re: that last link – that is, for all practical purposes, a violation of someone’s civil rights. Real Presidents stand by their staff on such things). The real ideological question is whether we can move beyond a politics of cynicism, apathy and outright hatred, instead articulating a coherent, optimistic vision for the future that’s practical. One that truly benefits all Americans and gets politicians talking to each other about what matters.

Don’t worry, spiders
Kobayashi Issa (tr. Robert Hass, from The Essential Haiku)

Don’t worry, spiders,
I keep house
casually.

Comment:

1. I spared many a spider growing up. Mom said spiders killed other pesky insects and shouldn’t be smashed promptly. They could be helpers for keeping the house clean, if it weren’t for those webs they tend to create.

I still spare spiders for the most part. (Admittedly, I don’t think I’ve ever lived anywhere spotless.)

2. Hass makes two points relevant to our consideration of the poem. First, there is probably a hidden seasonal reference. This is about summer, where housekeepers are a bit less diligent. Their “laziness” allows the spiders to be at work.

Second, Hass declares that Buddhist thought is at play in most haiku. “Three ideas about natural things” are typically seen. They are “transient,” “contingent,” and they do “suffer.” This poem can be seen as an exploration of the contingency of natural things. The spiders emerge in season, but they did not have to emerge in the house. The housekeeper’s whim in allowing the spiders to live is less free will or moral choice and instead more of a physiological reaction.

3. One can get a strong moral reading from the seasonality of the poem. If we let things live because we’re not really in the mood to kill them, why do we ever kill anything? Hass speaks of Issa’s humanism, and I won’t deny that’s important.

I’d rather focus for a minute on the decay spiders represent. Those webs aren’t just messy. They’re a potential takeover of human dwelling. The housekeeper speaks of keeping house casually. Don’t strict routines and laws enable us to preserve our dwelling? Shouldn’t spiders and other vermin always be cast aside?

That’s just it, though: if you want a house to be your house, to be kept, you have to be casual. Otherwise, the house is an object of its own apart from any human use. The whole point of having a house is being able to relax in it. Some decay results from such casual behavior. Again, the house is being used – by both its intended inhabitants and some guests.

References

The Essential Haiku. ed. Robert Hass. New York: HarperCollins, 1944.

2. As some of you know, I helped run a Short Poem Contest on deviantart. The challenge was to write a poem of 30 words or less on the theme of music.

I have to say “helped” because although I came up with the idea, announced it, promoted it, donated to my own prize pool and read and reread many of the entries, my efforts are a drop in the bucket when finally considered. C.J. Wilde read every single entry herself and gave all kinds of support to every contestant. She even helped judge. A few did as she did, albeit on a smaller scale. No amount of me promoting everyone would matter if people didn’t actually do anything with the announcement. A bunch of others wrote journal entries announcing the contest and directly recruited many to join. And, of course, there was the matter of actually participating – a help in itself, trust me – and contributing prizes. My donation is nowhere near the amount donated, in terms of deviantart points.

The end result was incredible. 58 entries. That’s ridiculous for a two week long contest. If I had gotten 20 I would have been happy. At one point I thought I might get 80-100: people were entering that quickly.

3. I’m not exactly bad at this criticism stuff, as you can see from this on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73 or Dickinson’s “There’s a certain Slant of light.” In fact, there’s a number of people who think I’m a lot better than “not exactly bad.” If there is a way to objectively analyze some parts of a literary work, can’t we say one work is definitively better than another? Doesn’t the concept of “great books” require this sort of logic?

The easy answer is that judging in a contest isn’t the same as analyzing literature. I spend weeks, sometimes even months, mulling over poems or texts before writing anything. That isn’t to say I’m giving no time to poems in a contest. It’s just that there literally isn’t time to offer on that scale. Besides, contestants should be able to impress to some degree. This is a practical logic, and it is true for the judgment presently rendered.

But the easy answer is ultimately too easy. It takes for granted a difference between “literature” and “what’s being created now,” a difference I myself don’t employ when choosing a work for serious critique. If it’s worth thinking about, it’s worth thinking about.

In the end, a critic needs to know his limits. There are lots of things I miss on a first read, lots of things I miss just generally. Consensus about what is good or great can blind as well as draw my attention to more appropriate objects. This isn’t the same sort of excuse I offered two paragraphs ago. What is really beautiful is known over time. Practical demands can fall out of a higher project.

The goals of the contest were to get people writing and helping each other out as artists. That’s been achieved.

4. Finally, the winners:

First place goes to BeyondJen’s “Muse” – there’s a double or triple collapse of activities into each other. Listening to music creates a room which might as well be the chambers of brain. Somehow this is parallel with or the direct cause of writing.

Second place to AlecBell’s “On the Podium” – I took it as a joke about the ego of some conductors. But there’s definitely something serious and powerful about it, and it is extremely quotable.

Third place – Packeranatic’s “Mouth to Music” – a very, very strong entry. It’s growing on me each time I reread. The question of what state of mind an “album on repeat” can be connected with is well-developed. “He’s deaf on arrival.”

Honorable mentions:

Kneeling Glory’s “Guitar Lessons” is earthy, quietly beautiful and tender.

dweckie’s “Reverie.” uses love to metaphorically describe music.

SilverInkblot’s “Inheritance” sets up a scene well, and good questions abound.

5. I offered a prize to the person who promoted this contest the most. I can’t say for sure who that was. So many of you did so much work. But letterjak definitely deserves some kind of prize for the sheer number that signed up because of him. A huge thanks to Love-the-peace and kymira12 for some exceptional effort in getting people to sign up and feel welcome.

The toughest part of this critic/judge role is showing gratefulness. Thanks to all those who participated and promoted and contributed to this. The collected poems are here; the prizes and those contributing are listed in the above “Meet the Contestant” entries. A huge thanks to pixiepot for offering something really unique.

Not the crystal with the bluish tint,
nor the dark wisps rising from cigars.
Another realm entirely. There,
day ends in royal purple, fiery orange.
Gray walls hold those colors for an instant.
Air places dew drops upon grass,
as if to say the world begins afresh.
Birds fly together, each supporting the other.

Now the sound of change striking the sidewalk,
the smell of dirty pigeons collected.
Noting the white of the closed blinds of hospital rooms.

A limb of steel and wire
fell and smashed the garage.
Salvaged my old journal,
plans for a new design.

Papers flying out of skyscrapers
reminded of drawings you sent.
I stopped by your house;
in your absence left a letter.

Finally, about to evacuate,
an eyelaser wrecked the highway.
Border of concrete and fire for miles.
Sorry, right now I’m trapped in my fears.

One day I’ll sneak into a robot,
give it better aiming software.
Will kill the other, stride over to you.
We’ll use the engine core to entertain guests,
but only I’m allowed in the control room.

Hat rack is one of Duchamp’s Ready-mades. The most famous of these I think is Fountain, which is a urinal ripped out of the wall. This is not the sort of “art” I typically appreciate. In fact, I’m pretty sure Duchamp was a master at getting museums and galleries to do anything because it was considered fashionable.

Still. You’ve got to admire consistency. And the second link above – the one that shows pictures of his studio and talks about his exhibitions – is really worth looking at. The Hat rack itself is suspended from the ceiling and casts a shadow not unlike a spider:

The small photographs reveal that the shiny porcelain urinal on view is not in the bathroom (although there might be another one there), or even tucked in a corner—it’s hung over a doorway. The disorder of the room might appear careless, except that a urinal simply doesn’t get up there by accident. Duchamp’s snow shovel is not casually leaning against a wall waiting for use—it is suspended from the ceiling. And his coatrack lies inconveniently and ridiculously in the middle of the room, nailed to the floor. Selected objects in chosen positions.

I’m guessing that there’s a mimicry of nature occurring in the studio. That snow shovel is more than likely going to reflect light; trees grow anywhere and don’t move easily; yeah, I don’t know what to do with a urinal over the doorway, either, although my car gets hit with an awful lot of bird poop.

The exhibitions emphasize interactivity and the tangible. As gimmicky as they are, there’s something to it. I often feel artists that don’t take full advantage of gallery space are wasting time. If you’ve got the space, going over the top or being pointedly understated is a good idea. Don’t get me wrong – I’d hate being coated with coal dust in some kind of reversal of earth and sky:

Duchamp’s interventions are quite simple, but radical. In his official capacity as “générateur-arbitre,” he turns the elegantly appointed eighteenth-century interior into a darkened “grotto,” covering the ornate moldings, ceiling, and bank of lights with what he announces as “1,200” suspended coal sacks. He installs an iron brazier in the center of the main hall and hangs artworks on uprooted department store revolving doors. The ceiling undulates, the walls are blackened, and coal dust invariably falls onto the finery of the exhibition’s guests.

Spare me. Then again, the care he puts into boxed facsimiles of his work is just incredible. It’s like he’s trying to outdesign the design crowd; you should really go to the “Exhibitions” link above and see how beautiful the miniature retrospectives are. One thing about being an artist in any age is you have to be productive. Keep producing and just see what works. One wonders how much more true that is for an age with an advanced industrial economy, one where museums think of their acquisitions in terms of visitors and dollars.

Marigolds tried to eat his leg,
lilies wrapped around his arm.
Gardening almost collapsed into chaos.
He stepped away from the marigolds,
watered the lilies.
Consoled the piranha plant
with the googly, tearful eyes.
Even got a wheelbarrow
to collect from the money tree.

In kindergarten they get bigger quickly -
toys still lie scattered.
Caretakers make us wonder
when they can be shown care.
A sun with a smiley face
always lets happy plants and resting gardeners
cast playful shadows.