View from the terrace of the family's Brooklyn Heights apartment

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Ulmer Münster

Through the haze
sun-diffused
the spike stands skyward
much too tall
in the Lilliput landscape
how many kilometers
from the anxious autobahn
In a portico niche
stands the madonna
with her archaic smile
saying how pretty is my babe
though stony centuries
pile rock on rock
and shout hosanna
In the choir
wooden saints are segregated
according to sex
for even the blessed
cannot be trusted
in the sacred dark
They seem a gloomy lot
displeased with the arrangements
awaiting the millennium
or maybe a mug of beer
Above the gloom
the spire triumphs 
a Dantesque experience to climb
nine times nine
round the mounting spiral
to hang in the webbing
and feel the great bell
shake Ulmer Münster
to the bones of whatever worthies
lie grimly under foot.

Teach Creative Writing?


As an eager undergraduate turned on by Russian novels, by Joyce’s Portrait, by the poetry of Dylan Thomas, and what I imagined was the artist’s life in Paris, I visualized a take of myself sitting at a sidewalk café on the Boule Miche scribbling away at the Great American Novel on a blue-lined yellow legal pad while sipping cognac--or whatever it was that characters in Hemingway were always drinking.  

When I got around to learning something about the writers we kids were reading in the 1950s, I was appalled to discover what disorderly, miserable lives many of them had led. To get rip-roaring drunk on occasion was commendable, I thought, but to make a profession of it was something else again. Perhaps I should have realized that the great poet, despite his celebrity, was a very unhappy man. Far too many writers of that generation were hopeless alcoholics, unreliable lovers, lonely, envious, and self-destructive. Perhaps writing was an escape, I thought, demanding isolation buttressed by drugs or booze. 

Then, to my surprise, there suddenly appeared on campuses a new generation of writers, who had studied creative writing at a university, attended writing seminars, and published thin volumes of verse or short fiction. I couldn’t imagine any of the writers I talked about in my classes taking a course in writing poetry or fiction, but I gathered times had changed. Writers had begun to look and talk like casually-dressed, English department academics.

Although I doubted writing could be taught in a course, I recalled that my first academic job had been to “improve the writing skills” of hapless freshmen measured by a  guess-the-right-answer, machine-corrected test. When their scores  jumped dramatically, I knew that what actually had improved was not their writing, but their test-taking savvy. Freshman comp, the bread and butter of English departments, basically inculcates a preferred decorum; it is like teaching kids comfortable in T shirts to tie a Windsor knot. Creative writing is something else.

Before the establishment of a writing track in the English department at my university, manned (and womaned) by our new hires, I’d been prevailed upon to teach a course in writing short fiction, based probably on what I thought was a well-kept secret, that I’d managed--God know’s how--to have a novelette published in Galaxy, one of those garishly illustrated pulps that flourished in the heyday of hardcore science fiction. So I have some sympathy for those in the creative writing racket.

In my sole venture into this field, students were pleased when I told them the class would meet only twice a month and they would submit their manuscripts to me as to an editor through the campus mail. But they were not very happy to hear that they were to write a traditional story--with at least three characters in a contemporary, realistic setting, taking place in no more than a week, with effective dialogue and--above all--a plot. No monologues, stream-of-consciousness or otherwise, no life histories, no prose-poems, no intergalactic sagas. I said they could begin with just one or two visualized scenes and see what developed. I strongly advised against handsome, athletic young men and beautiful, desirable  young women as main characters.

Did the students learn anything about writing fiction in my course?

Possibly. The first thing might have been that writers write every day whether they’re in the mood or not. Next they learned that characters take on a life of their own and may do things that will surprise their author. They also learned that when they took the reader someplace, a park or a pub, for instance, something had to happen there. (One student objected that nothing at all interesting had happened in the park he had been following his characters to for three pages! I said that in reality nothing might have happened, but in fiction something damn well better happen!) Finally, if they followed my suggestions, they’d discover they probably had a chapter of a novel, since short stories are usually all worked out before the author begins to write! 

Years later, a student who took the course met me at Alumni Day and casually remarked, “I finally finished my novel, and it’s being rejected by first-rate publishers! I’d like to thank you for your encouragement!” When I asked her to remind me what I said, she replied, “You wrote in blue pencil, ‘Good job! You seem to know what you’re doing!’” And that was all the encouragement she needed.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Camel

The Camel has learned a hard truth
to survive
in the desert
one needs inner resources
and a strong stomach
the price of which
is a surly disposition
         an unlovely aspect
and the ridicule
of hawk and hound and hyena.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Regrets

Rattling to April’s winding horns
          Intense, moribund
there is no release
          no letting go
for these few brittle leaves 
no sudden tumble to oblivion
Grief and love have fallen
          petal by petal
while these grotesques hang shaken
          by another season’s turning
implausible among the small new greening
the groping tendril, the thickening vine.

Monday, April 11, 2011

The friendly villagers of Spakenburg

           Because I’m a sailboat enthusiast, on my way to an academic conference in Germany a few years back I decided to take a side trip for a day or so to Spakenburg, an out-of-the-way Dutch village that harbors the largest surviving fleet of botters--the sturdy, traditional fishing vessels that have survived as pleasure craft. I got off the bus there at about noon on a Wednesday right around the corner from the VVV, the national tourist agency, a block from where the main street divides to form a basin for “the brown fleet.” To my surprise, the woman in charge spoke neither English nor German, so my meager Dutch and sign language had to suffice. I agreed to stay at a pension two kilometers distant for $18.00 a day, breakfast included, about half of what I had been paying for a tiny five-floor walk-up overlooking a canal in Amsterdam. When much to her surprise the agent realized I didn’t have a car, she phoned the pension and the proprietor, an amiable and talkative fellow in his sixties, drove in to pick me up.
          On the way to the Pension De Poort in Bunschoten we worked out a system of communication involving a few words in Dutch and English, supplemented by gestures and facial expressions. My host’s amiability was a harbinger of the treatment I later received from the villagers. When I stowed my gear and indicated I was going to walk back to Sparkenburg, the innkeeper led me to an outbuilding and offered me the loan of a bicycle!
          Though it rained on and off for two days, I managed to check out the old boat basin and the modern marina on forays from the village tavern, my headquarters. The brown fleet is maintained by an organization of owners who cover their expenses by chartering the boats to groups. I spent some time aboard one of the botters whose cordial skipper was tidying up, but regrettably the weather argued against going for a sail. On my jaunts to and from the pension I visited the village’s mini-museums, which featured model boats, folk costumes. and exhibits illustrating village trades and crafts of yore.
          The second time I entered the village tavern, I was treated as if I’d been coming there for ten years. I was included in the rounds the regular customers were ordering, and I found myself talking with Dennis from Surinam, whose English was pretty good. When he learned I was headed for Münster, Dennis introduced me to Edwin, who would be traveling there by car with two friends, and I was invited to join them. I was also invited to--actually ordered not to miss--the party that night for Christine, the tall, blonde, convivial barmaid, who would turn eighteen at midnight. I had taken her for about twenty-five!
          When I bought some postcards before heading down to the Oude Schans to take photographs. it was clear the clerk knew who I was and where I was staying! Outside the shop I was surrounded by a dozen or more schoolchildren who were excited by my Red Sox baseball cap, which reminded them of a character on American TV. Later that evening, in the tavern, everyone--including me--had to offer a toast to Christine and dance with her. When I commented on how friendly the villagers were, Dennis said, “Everyone in this town knows everyone else.”
          “Everyone here seems to know me too,” I added.
          “Oh?”
         “I told the people at the pension I was leaving today, but I changed my mind when the sun came out. I had dinner tonight at the Petersheim, the restaurant you suggested, and I bet you can’t guess what the waitress said when I walked in. I’d never been there before.”
          “What did she say?”
          She said, “Oh, it’s you. We thought you left this afternoon.”
         
          The villagers of Spakenburg were indeed friendly--and inquisitive.


Monday, April 4, 2011

The Kiwago Indians

At the center of the council ring Donald Kauth 
     in the feathered bonnet
  and scant raiment of a Chief
          (over his bathing suit)
begins the solemn ceremony
     before the astonished eyes
of Harlem and Bensonhurst
As twilight deepens, Wakonda himself
the Great Spirit
  miraculously lights the central fire
which crackles and leaps house-high 
  (with some help from Gregory Corso
  who pulls the string)
The calumet is pointed to the four corners
  to the hot wind
  that he come not in his strength
  to the east, to the north, and to the west wind
  Eyune keyuniósneh nunweh!
After the Deer Dance 
  and four choruses of Shonni-Monni
  each kid is given a white wax candle
lit round the ring from the central fire

          Rise up old flame 
(they sing)
  by thy light glowing
          show to us beauty 
  vision and joy
We are the red men!
  feathers in our head men!
down among the dead men!  
  Pow wow!
A kerosine arrow arched to the lake below
signals the Chief’s departure
  (in an aluminum canoe)
and a straggling line of kids
  each guarding a candle 
  against the night
wend their way to the flagpole for taps

               Day is done
gone the sun
from the lake, from the hills, from the sky
all is well, safely rest
God is nigh
Nunweh!

New York Style Mexican Pizza

As ex-NewYorkers living in small-town Connecticut, my wife Barbara and I have spent considerable time trying to find a proper bagel, a genuine hot pastrami sandwich, cheese cake such as they serve at Junior’s on Fulton Street, and also a legitimate, thin-crust, NewYork style pizza. A few years back, at a deli-restaurant we happened upon  a real bagel, and when buying a dozen to take home, I learned they were shipped in daily from Brooklyn! When they went out of business, along with the other kosher deli in West Hartford, only one such establishment within reasonable distance survived, the New York style deli in Vernon, which is a bit of a drive for us and jam-packed seven days a week. Our solution was to buy the ingredients separately and concoct our own reasonable facsimiles of these tasties at home.
But pizza is a different matter. There are more than a dozen pizza parlors in our neighborhood--it’s a college town--and a couple of them are pretty good, though they don’t stand up to the perfection of our rosy recollections. And it would be difficult to replicate a real pizza in our kitchen, since the secret of the proper crust is a super-hot oven, brick or otherwise. A delivered pizza or even one you pick up yourself gets a bit soggy or limp, and late on a Friday night, when we often think pizza, we’re usually too lazy to drive to a restaurant. What to do?
On trips out west to visit our son’s family in California, I discovered Tex-Mex food, and to Barbara’s surprise, I was venturesome enough to give it a try it and become a fan. Though we occasionally go out to a Mexican restaurant, much more often, I concoct my own version of burritos with flour tortillas, mild cheese, salsa, and some form of beef or chicken, served with  scoops of sour cream and guacamole. But what about pizza?
Before folding a burrito I was working on I realized that laid flat it looked something like a small pizza, the sort they serve in Munich with a single anchovy in the center.  So I experimented and developed my own formula for Mexican pizza: a burrito-size flour tortilla, thin sliced or roughly grated mozzarella, red sauce, and sliced sweet Italian sausage. When this tasted too strong and was lacking something, I substituted thin slices of tomato for the sauce, and added oregano and a few drops of olive oil. This  ensemble I cook in a toaster oven without a pan until the cheese is melted and the edges of the tortilla are crisp and brown. Voila! Is the result a true New York style pizza? No, but it is close enough for Barbara and me. Incidentally, Mexican pizza is open to adaptations. Like something spicier? Use salsa instead of the tomatoes, or pepperoni instead of sweet sausage. Like something saltier? Add a few anchovies. Add or subtract whatever you fancy and enjoy!

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Gotham Farewell

When doomsday dawned
the anxious video
informed us somnolent coffeepots
of our imminent composure
       and alack
the gears, the wheels, the clocks
went to work as usual
ignoring the lampposts looting stores
       while, tra la
upon the esplanade
a few unemployed trashcans
argued which would bow first
the Bridge or the Green Lady.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

The Spider and the Fly

Patient indeed is the Spider
       and intransigent
biding her time,
knowing for certain
       her art more durable
       than mind-spun enterprise
Elemental realist
       the Spider will be there
       in a corner
dancing upon the taut architecture
       of her own dark heart
       when the West, like Babylon
              is fabulous
awaiting with delight 
a brazen ragged buzz.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Can you become a New Englander?

       In 1964 when I was living in Germany with my wife Bobbi and our two-year-old Chris, I was informed, after casually asking, that I could never become a German. I pointed out to our friends Rudi and Ingrid Meier, native Bavarians who lived across the street from us in a Munich suburb, that they could, if they chose, become Americans by a process called naturalization. “But I couldn’t become a German even if I speak the language like a native, know the history and culture thoroughly, and live here for twenty-five years?” I asked.  
Nothing personal was meant, but being German was a matter of “blood,” an inheritance from a German parent. Citizenship in Germany was a jus sanguinis (right of blood) and in the United States it is a jus solis (literally, right of the soil), which means anyone born in the country automatically becomes a citizen. And those born elsewhere can become “naturalized” citizens. 
       “You mean,” Ingrid said, “if we visited you in Brooklyn for a few days and I gave birth while there, the child would be an American citizen?”
       “Yes!” I said. She shook her head as if to say, “That’s weird!” 
       Even though the laws in Europe concerning citizenship have changed over the years, European countries in this age of massive immigration, especially from Muslim countries, are once again asking themselves how a person can really become French, or Dutch, or German. The question, of course, has more to do with cultural assimilation than with law, and it a question that also arises in our nation of immigrants as well. 
       Citizens of the United States are also by law citizens of the state in which they reside. Though born and brought up in New York City, Bobbi and I are citizens of the State of Connecticut, where we have lived for many years. But are we New Englanders? I’m afraid not. Though anyone can become a New Yorker, being a New Englander is akin to the jus sanguinis that was in place in Germany half a century ago. Traditionally, I have been told, it takes three generations to become a New Englander. I would guess it takes about three months living in the city to become a New Yorker and perhaps even less to become a Californian. Can you become a Texan, a Floridian, an Alaskan, and if so how long does it take? Can you become a Southerner? Probably not. Even if you live in, say, New York, are you still a New Englander or a Southerner if that’s where you grew up? Probably.

       There are also subjective and relative elements in geographic identity. When asked where I am from, in Connecticut I’ll answer I’m from New York, but at, say, a professional conference elsewhere in the U. S., I’ll say I’m from Connecticut. I think I stuck with my New York identity for about three years after relocating to the Land of Steady Habits, and when in Europe I still say I’m from New York because “Connecticut” is met with bewilderment by many Europeans. Pronouns can also reveal a relationship or lack of it with a place. My son Chris has lived in both New Hampshire and California. I recall him saying, “In New Hampshire they don’t pay state taxes,” and, more recently, “In California we don’t do suits!”
       Another aspect of language indicating regional identity is dialect. From Virginia to Georgia and west to Texas you will hear varieties of down-home southern speech, which I find pleasantly easy on the ear but some find comic. Even though the generation who spoke like Archie Bunker has largely passed from the scene, a pronounced New York City accent, often thought of as Brooklynese, sounds comic outside the metropolitan area, as does a pronounced Boston accent. There are distinctive midwestern  pronunciations, but American English apparently is becoming relatively homogenized, so that some dialects, such as the one you hear in Maine, for instance, are now turned on or exaggerated to humor tourists. 
        Most Americans clearly recognize the Boston a as in Haavid yaad and the Canadian variation in which about becomes aboot. But it takes someone with an interest in dialects to notice the difference between Flahrida (New York: my wife and I) and Floorida (New England and elsewhere: our children). I have tried, with limited success, to maintain my New York accent, but I find a number of my phonemes slipping. I’m just as likely to say lobstah as lobster. The result is that anyone with a good ear in Connecticut hears a trace of New York in my speech, while New Yorkers hear a trace of New England! 
Most New Yorkers are more talkative than the typically laconic New Englander. If you ask for directions to a restaurant in Hartford, you will be told in a sentence or two how to get there. In New York you are likely to get not only directions but a lecture on restaurants in the neighborhood and a number of recommendations. In this respect I am still a New Yorker, always inclined to chat volubly with people casually met. That’s another reason why I’ll never be a New Englander.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Coney Island

Through the arcades
past whistling peanuts
       cheering pinwheels
       slick poker parlors
the crowd rushes and reels
into the glare of Surf Avenue
Exuberant balloons take Julie and Jack
       to frozen custards and bumper cars
splendiferous spinnings above the maze
       through dizzy onion-smelling crowds
       spook-ride cackle, rootbeer roar
rings and balls and plastic stars
Mama remembers Steeplechase
caterpillar ride, whirring horse
       cotton candy in her face
       the tunes, the dance at Oceantide
and what Frankie finally had
with his sea girl in the shade
       Unlovely passage
child’s, man’s, mother’s 
harmless hot-dog dream
       miles of boardwalk and wide white beach
       popcorn clouds piled each on each
garlic humor, golden key
and the slightly polluted eternal sea.

Monday, February 28, 2011

It's not me--it's the language!

"Do you know, Jim, you have a different personality when speaking German?” my wife Bobbi asked with a smile. Two months before, we’d moved into a tiny house in Trüdering, a village just outside Munich, and she was struggling to learn enough of the language to buy groceries at the Lebensmittel across the street and to chat there with cheerfully plump Ingrid.
“A different personality? How so?”
“In German you’re more peremptory, more abrupt.” 
“Maybe that’s because with you I use simple sentences and speak precisely.” I made an effort to use cognate words and speak clearly with Bobbi while helping her learn the language. But Bobbi wasn’t buying that explanation.
“No,” she said, “It’s the same when you talk with Hermann or Rudi, or in the city--at a restaurant, for instance.” Herman was the college-age son of the imperious Frau Wendler, who rented us our one-room house, once a dentist’s office, and Rudi Maier was Ingrid’s husband. We got to know the Maiers since they had a little girl the same age as our two-year-old son Chris. Could I really have a different personality when speaking another language?
The first thing I considered was what Bobbi had said about my behavior in restaurants. I’d learned that slinking into one and sitting at the first available table didn’t work. You could sit at that table for fifteen minutes or more before a waiter came by to dispense menus and then disappear or become oblivious for another twenty minutes or so. Observing natives, I learned you had to walk in, nose in the air, parade about, and then sit at a serious table, as if you were an important personage, used to the best of everything. A sharp command--“Herr Ober!"--if pronounced with the authority of a colonel, would usually stop the waiter in his tracks. This maneuver violated my egalitarian sentiments, but it worked.
Bobbi once again said that my silly routine in restaurants wasn’t what she meant either. 
Could it be languages themselves, I wondered, or even dialects within a language that have personalities of their own? When a colleague of mine returned after a summer down home in Carolina, he seemed different. Was it the lingering pleasant drawl? My Yiddish-lilted New York pronunciation was schmoozier, I felt, than the plumy variety of an Oxford don. Even at the university, where I was (belatedly!) doing research for my Ph.D., there were differences. The precise, baroque Prussian contrasted with the rougher, more rustic Bavarian, so much so that it took our babysitter, a student from Hanover with a von before his surname, all of two elaborate sentences to intimidate the overly curious, formidable Frau Wendler! These, of course, were impressions. Was there any objective evidence that languages had personalities?
Yes, I realized. In multi-lingual directions for using gadgets, in announcements, and in   signs addressed to the public--on trains, for example. At the train station on the border between France and Germany a sign asked/ordered patrons not to cross the tracks: In French it said, Please do not cross the tracks; in German it said, Crossing the tracks is strictly forbidden, with an exclamation point! On Swiss trains, passengers are cautioned not to stick their heads out the window--in three language. In French it says, Please don’t; in German, once again, It’s strictly forbidden! But the Italian made me smile, as it said that it could be dangerous to stick your head out the window.
When it came time for us to return to New York, Bobbi and Ingrid said goodbye with a tearful hug, and we made our way to the M.S. Berlin at Bremerhaven the long way around, via Paris, where we stayed at the same inexpensive hotel and the very same room we’d had five years before on our belated honeymoon. The hotelier remembered us, patted Chris on the head, and engaged Bobbi in a lively conversation. “You know, Bobbi,” I said, “you have a different personality in French.”
“Oh?”
 “You’re much more animated--and convivial!”

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Garibaldi in the Park

Garibaldi despises pigeons
rats with wings he calls them
       and what would you think of pests
       who dawdle, primp and poop
on your signature poncho in bronze?
Garibaldi no longer minds the tired joke
now told by twelvish girls
       that he always draws his sword
       whenever a virgin passes by
cute, he finds them, and disarming
Garibaldi has heard rumors:
after banishing buskers, canines, and chess
       a new Moses will flatten the arch 
       and pave-over the fountain
to make way for a bus terminal and heliport
Garibaldi has enjoyed it all:
militia musters, urban troubadours, beats
       the old paisano plucking his quiet mandolin
       up-scale bohemians, joggers, jazz fests
sweet toddlers splashing in their underpants

Garibaldi has a plan:
when the bulldozers come for him
       he will at long last 
       draw his doughty sword
to deliver one final clanging stroke
for the lackluster denizens of his park.

Friday, February 25, 2011

How can I get to...?

People--in New York, where I grew up, and wherever I’ve traveled--are forever stopping me to ask how to get to the post office, a museum, the zoo, or wherever, and I’ve often wondered why. 
I first became conscious of this phenomenon riding the New York subways, when in addition to the usual inquires in English about whether the train stops at a particular station or where to change trains to get to, say, Astoria, I was asked for directions by a woman speaking Puerto Rican Spanish. As my Spanish is muy primitivo, an improvised linguistic hybrid did the trick. Why me, I wondered? I don’t look especially Hispanic.

When I was an exchange student in Bern, Switzerland, one chilly morning on my way to the university, I was accosted by a beaming middle-aged man in a tweed jacket and touring cap who asked, in weirdly pronounced German, how to get to Mövinpick, a popular café. Assuming he was a Scott, I answered in English. “Yer a Yahnk,” he concluded after thanking me for the directions. “Ay c’d tell bi yer aksent!” Did I just happen to be passing by when he realized he had no idea how to get to Mövinpick?

Once in Amsterdam a young couple stopped me to ask for directions to one of the canals that circle the inner city. I told them it was straight ahead--in Bavarian dialect, which worked. “Gerade oous,” I said, pointing. Because my German is functional, I could manage some Dutch, but I instinctively had replied in German. I’ve noticed that people when addressed in a language they don’t readily understand will respond in any foreign language they know. I recall an American in the Paris Metro who replied to an onslaught of French with a barrage of Mandarin Chinese.
As I was walking along a road heading for a park in Munster, Germany, a Mercedes pulled over, and the driver asked me for directions to the zoo, where I’d been the day before. Not only did I give him directions in the best Prussian I could muster but suggested they go for a boat ride as well. They had pulled over and parked the car just to ask me directions? It was as if I carried a sign that said Tourist Information.

The piece de resistance took place on a fashionable street in Rome. Hitchhiking during the semester break, I had just arrived in the Eternal City from France. With three-days growth of beard and wearing a ratty black raincoat with yesterday’s Le Monde sticking out of a side pocket, I looked as if I had slept under a bridge. An old man, dressed as raggedly as I, approached tentatively and asked for directions to the nearest post office. Though I didn’t know much more Italian than to count, order a beer, and find the WC, I understood his question, happened to know where a post office was, and somehow managed to give him directions in Italian. This time I understood why I had been selected: like him, I was a shabby sojourner among the elegant and nattily attired.
But why am I always being asked directions? After considerable thought I have concluded that I look exceptionally intelligent and well informed. Since my daughter also is always being asked how to get to this or that place, there may be a gene for being knowledgeable. My wife has an alternate explanation. She says I have a transparent Celtic countenance, an amiable expression, and a totally unthreatening demeanor. Though I prefer my explanation, she may have a point.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Bluejay

The jay has sacrificed everything
       for bright plumage 
       and a taunting squawk
Listen to him squabble and kvetch
       with a clutch of his mates
       to the derision of disapproving crows
See him flutter in a blur of blue
       to alight self-importantly
       on a prominent perch
Though he can cackle and curse
       or resemble a flower in flight
       no creature takes him seriously
except the winsome early worm.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

How to Play Golf Like a Pro

As anyone who has ventured onto a course is sure to know, golf can be--and on a busy weekend usually is--a humbling game. Unlike practitioners of other sports, the golfer has no one but himself to blame. The little white ball sits helplessly on a tee, and whatever happens or does not happen to it is completely the fault of whoever cranks the club. There are no spitballs, bad calls, or goof-ups by teammates to mitigate the humiliation. 

I picked up the game, which then seemed silly to me (Why chase a little white pill all over the landscape?) upwards of half a century ago to have something to do with my father-in-law besides talking baseball, which I’d lost interest in when the Dodgers abandoned Ebbets Field. Despite my miserable initial performance at the Dyker Beach course in Brooklyn,  a 14 on the first hole I ever played en route to a score of 147, not including mulligans and gimmes, I immediately got hooked--it only takes one or two good shots--and have been a happy if lackluster hacker ever since. So it was a  disappointment when, on the far side of 75, because of my back and other problems, I could no longer get out on the course.

What to do?
Last Christmas I watched my daughter’s kids, Ben, 10, and Kate, 7,  playing a brisk game of tennis using their television screen and the Wii game package Santa had brought. My experience with virtual games was limited to penny-arcade ventures when I myself was a kid, and I vividly remember a  marble-sized, metal ball being pitched and swinging a bat with the push of a button in an arcade on Surf Avenue in glorious Coney Island. But the Wii was even more intriguing. Perhaps I could play some sort of virtual golf on my Mac desktop at home? Google took me to several sites, one which gave direction in Japanese, but I quickly happened upon GL Golf, and downloaded a free demo and ultimately a package with thirty virtual courses, including the old course at St. Andrews,  Augusta National, and Torrey Pines South.
How does virtual golf compare with the real thing?
 
Instead of humbling me, online golf pumps up my ego. At my local course my best drive on a good day, downhill and with the wind behind me, might go all of 200 yards. Online I can easily drive the ball an additional hundred yards! And on screen the shot always goes precisely where I aim it, rather than into the woods or onto an adjacent fairway as so often happened at the club. At the push of a button I can draw or fade the shot, apply backspin or extra loft, feats that were dubious or impossible for me on the course. Instead of sinking two of ten eight-foot putts, I now sink almost all of them! Rather than scoring in the high nineties or worse, I finish with sub-par rounds like the pros on television. In fact, I recently humbled the famous old  course at St. Andrews in Scotland by finishing with a stunning 14 under par! It’s a different game when you can drive the ball 300 yards or more!
But is it anything like the challenge of real golf?
Of course it is! Just because Tiger Woods can drive the ball more than 300 yards doesn’t men the game no longer challenges him. Despite the added distance and the much more predictable flight of the ball, I find myself still watching anxiously while it descends gracefully, at times landing in the rough short of the green or in a bunker. Many of my online courses seem to have more water than grass on them, and I’ve gotten used to the splash and the plop of an errant shot; and if I cut the corner of a dogleg too close, I  get to hear the crack of the ball against a tree and wonder just how bad a lie I’ll have for my next shot. As in real golf, I have to read the greens, some of which are surprisingly tricky. Most interesting, I find, is the three-dimensional quality of the virtual landscape, especially on courses with cliffs,  deep troughs, and hills. I frequently find myself wondering, Can I hit over that clump of trees? Will the slant of the fairway throw the ball into the rough or the water? Should I play a longer club because of the wind or because the green is elevated? Should I go for the green or play it safe?
For anyone who can’t get out to a course, virtual golf provides many golf-specific pleasures. When I hit a five iron 200 yards straight at the flag, and the little white ball carries the bunker, lands nicely on the green, bounces, rolls to within a foot of the cup, and the virtual crowd goes Ooh, I feel like Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods at the Masters--almost.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

The Green Lady

used to hope I’d inspire a symphony
     or an epic 
but that damn Bridge gets all the accolades
     not that I take it personally
When your complexion’s gone
     and no one’s 
about to immortalize you
     it’s time for a girl to take stock
I’ve surely done my part
     lacking Aphrodite’s charm
     the Virgin’s innocence
I stand here in this outrageous garb
lifting a torch in the night
     mortal metal 
bearing wishful words, flickering light.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Better Late Than Never

When I retired from teaching, I felt I’d done just about everything I’d looked forward to as an eager undergraduate who’d been turned on by poetry, fiction, ideas, and the life of the mind--everything except write the Great American Novel.

I’d spent two semesters as an exchange student at a Swiss university studying Chaucer, German classics, and even the New Testament in Greek; I’d been the first teaching assistant in the English department at Boston College; after doing a stint in the artillery, I married the love of my life, taught literature at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, and took courses at night at NYU;  and with a year of research at the University of Munich, I (finally!) finished my Ph.D. and found a home at Eastern Connecticut State College, where I chaired the English department and directed the honors program

But what about writing?
There were of course book reviews, academic articles, a chapter in a book, papers read at American studies conferences here and in Germany, as well as articles on an avocation, sailing. But the Great American Novel, after a meager false start, was abandoned. In the 70s I did somehow manage to publish a novelette in Galaxy, one of those garish pulp magazines that flourished in the heyday of hardcore science fiction. But publishing fiction in an ever-dwindling market began to seem much like expecting to win a lottery.  

A lot changed when I retired. I found I was no longer interested in reading serious classics--lengthy accounts of a young man’s sentimental education, the plight of adulterous lovers, or the pathetic fate of the humble. What I now enjoyed, I discovered, was sprightly entertainment that kept me alert relishing characters I’d begun to root for and a story that moved forward with twists and surprises.  

Mysteries and novels of detection, which I’d thought trivial, now seemed just the thing for me. When I discovered a writer I enjoyed, I read everything by him, or more often her, available at my local library. My problem was that I could not help but notice opportunities the author had missed or neglected to develop, implausible episodes, and forced or unsatisfactory endings. Maybe I could do better myself?

So I gave it a try and learned in the process.    
 
I learned that characters in a novel take on a life of their own. I found myself writing to find out what my characters would do next. It is something like not knowing what’s going to happen in a dream. Whatever orchestrates dreams became the co-author of my book. The unconscious? Too tepid an expression. Das Unbewuste? Though that sounds a bit more mysterious, I prefer the Greek myth of a Muse or a Daemon. Mozart, after all, felt his melodies came from heaven.

What else did I learn? I learned why there’s usually more than one murder per book. Why? When your story threatens to bog down, there’s nothing like another corpse to stir things up and reduce or introduce   complications, and if the victim is the reader’s prime suspect, even better! I also learned why so many good reads have far-fetched, disappointing endings. Why? Because the author is trying all too hard for a thumping conclusion (Ha! You never thought she did it, did you?) or is having difficulties pulling all the strands together. I learned that the unraveling of the mystery ideally should take as much time as constructing the initial complications. I also decided that any reasonably alert reader should have a good idea of who-done-it before the sleuths do. And finally I realized that all the twists, surprises, and suspense--even the mystery itself--depend upon revolving point-of-view characters and manipulating time sequences. 

I began writing with two images in mind: a character knocked overboard when a sailboat is forced to jibe suddenly; another character thrown from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade into the traffic on the expressway below. I discovered my title, Double Trouble, and my plot only after writing about seventy pages. As it worked out, I used the image of the sailboat jibe, but in the book the plunge took place not from the Promenade but from the 18th-floor terrace of a hotel room in Washington, D.C. 

So, did I write the Great American Novel? Of course not. But I did write an entertaining page-turner that is cheerful, romantic at times, and full of surprises. And I learned, half way through Chapter 3 of a sequel, that writing mysteries is addictive!