The Many Faces of Poetry: Where Does Poetry Come From?

Posted: November 27, 2019 | Author: artrosch | Filed under: Literary, Mystery, Poetry, The Many Faces of Poetry, Writing, Writing Inspiration | Tags: Art Rosch, history of poetry, origins, Poetry, The Many Faces of Poetry, Writing to be Read | 1 Comment

The Many Faces of Poetry 2

Where Does Poetry Come From?

I keep inquiring into the nature of poetry: where does it come from? It’s a question that opens a lot of introspection into the nature of literature itself. Poetry is the ultimate ancestor of literature. There was the spoken word, the saga, told around fires surrounded by rapt listeners. Poetry came from the telling of heroic stories. Beowulf, the Eddas, the Greek epics, the Chaldean cycles. We’ve come a long way from the spoken word, the recitals that spawned the invention of text itself. People cared enough about the preservation of their cultural history that they made the effort to write it down. Ancient stories survived the eons, so that we still have them, we still can read The Odyssey or learn about the trials of Gilgamesh. In truth these long recitals are almost unbearable in the real world but they are like artifacts in museums. We have them. We can reach into their labyrinths and return with answers to questions that we must always ask. Why are we here? What are we doing?

Poetry is the literary equivalent of cave drawing. Mankind, many thousands of years ago, felt the impulse to make an artistic statement, whether it be for a ritual gathering of game animals or to praise the gods for their benevolence. We are still, when we write poetry, drawing on cave walls. We are traveling backward in time to re-enact the original creative impulse. What came first, I wonder? Did poetic recitation pre-date the drawing on cave walls. Or did they come at the same time? I wonder what anthropologist will research that question and tell us about the history of art. All of this speculation is to invoke the origin of Art itself. Poetry has changed with the human race. We are not the same people who told and re-told The Odyssey. We are modern people with a modern poetry, a poetry that has become more free as we re-invent the structures of literature.

We must ask another important question, one that I will address in a later essay. What does poetry do? We must break this down into two parts. What does it do for the poet? What does it do for its audience?

The poet writes to express his or her state of being. It may be emotional, intellectual or both. A poet, however, usually needs fire to lure an audience, so poetry begins in the emotions, where the fire lives. There are three things that literature needs to provide in order to attract an audience: information, inspiration, and entertainment. Who will listen to poetry if it’s not entertaining? Many are the yawns I’ve seen at poetry readings, glances at the wristwatch, restless fidgeting. Entertain us, poet! Or go home, get off the stage.

I’m rushed this month. We’re moving into a house, a beautiful house!

A Midwesterner by birth, Arthur Rosch migrated to the West Coast just in time to be a hippie but discovered that he was more connected to the Beatnik generation. He harkened back to an Old School world of jazz, poetry, painting and photography. In the Eighties he received Playboy Magazine’s Best Short Story Award for a comic view of a planet where there are six genders. The timing was not good. His life was falling apart as he struggled with addiction and depression. He experienced the reality of the streets for more than a decade. Putting himself back together was the defining experience of his life. It wasn’t easy. It did, however, nurture his literary soul. He has a passion for astronomy, photography, history, psychology and the weird puzzle of human experience. He is currently a certified Seniors Peer Counselor in Sonoma County, California. Come visit his blogs and photo sites. www.artrosch.com and http://bit.ly/2uyxZbv.

Want to be sure not to miss any of Art’s The Many Faces of Poetry segments? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress. If you find it interesting, please share.

Friday Funnies: Total Cell Phone Ban Coming Soon

Posted: September 27, 2019 | Author: artrosch | Filed under: Humor | Tags: Art Rosch, Arthur Rosch, Friday Funnies, Humor, Writing to be Read | Leave a comment

For the time being, the cell phone revolution is finished. In thirty days the phase-out begins. All cell phones will be handed over at specified collection points.

It has now been proved that these things cause serious brain damage. This recall is the largest disaster in the history of consumer electronics. Negotiations for refunds have been bitter, to say the least. Apple, Samsung, Motorola, etc have fielded an army of lawyers and finally hacked out the so-called “50/50 Bill”. A complex algorithm has been devised to assess the value of cell phones to arrive at a figure worth half the original value of the phone. The consumer who is returning a phone will fill out a form noting the age, condition, features, and dozens of other items of data regarding the device. It has already been demonstrated that at least fifty percent of phone owners won’t bother to get their money back. Word is out that this so-called REFUND was designed by the IRS and is just as difficult to obtain.

Media commercials for cell phones have completely ceased. The vast airwave dead time will be filled with inspirational music by Yanni and Clannad. Media conglomerates have taken a gigantic hit in advertising revenues. The world needs new products and it needs them fast. Writers, engineers and marketers are working at top speed to fill the void. The most promising ideas are coming from the automobile industry. Vietnamese conglomerate GWENJIAP is preparing a luxury sedan with a sixty two inch FlexVision LED. Features include online bill payment, 3200 channels of satellite-borne programming and an array of pay per view specials. The screen and speakers will be seamlessly integrated into the vehicle by replacing the front windshield with the television screen and using software and GPS systems to drive the cars without the input of a human being. Three’s also a twelve foot extending periscope giving the driver panoramic vision.

Some conventional window space will remain in order to prevent claustrophobia. A disconnected steering wheel is featured in order to convey that sense of control and driving pleasure. GWENJIAP’s design team has apparently pulled off a brilliant coup and has finally merged the auto and entertainment industries.

UPDATE: January 2021

The degree of emotional and somatic shock was not anticipated when consumers were separated from their cell phones. The most common symptoms are anxiety, rage and feelings of powerlessness. Therapists have mobilized their most advanced techniques but the response has been inadequate. Consumers have been going into fugue states. They look into empty space while their thumbs shake with greater and greater agitation. Measures are now being taken. Pfizer Pharmaceuticals are testing an anti-spasmodic/SSRI medication to control these symptoms. Consumers are also being provided with dummy cell phones to alleviate the effects of what is now called “Texter Reflex Muscle Memory Syndrome”, or TRIMMS

The dummy phones are programmed with several hundred generic messages, such as “See you at home,” “Tht ws wild lst nite”, “Is he/she cute?”, “Did U do it?”, “Gt any E?”, “My parents will be gone tnt”, “Did yr doc sign yr dope ticket?”, and so forth. These messages are randomly scrambled and appear on the dummy phone screens to provide the illusion that users are connected to their friends. The texting interface appears to work but of course it is not receiving or transmitting. The therapy has had mixed results, but since the killing of Yanni and the disappearance of Clannad, Pfizer has been given the green light by the FDA to widely distribute the new medication. It will be marketed under the name Gontwich CR.

The GIAP 300SLE hybrid vehicle has sold well. Unfortunately, the auto-sensors and self-guidance software have had glitches that have caused an undisclosed number of collisions. Firmware updates have eliminated 88 percent of minor collisions and 99 percent of fatal collisions. Rival designs from BMW and Mercedes are appearing on the market as of this writing. The Mercedes Double Decker Home Theater Hybrid boasts efficiency of a whopping 82 mpg and the Surround Sound 9.1 with broad band picture-in-picture-in picture has stimulated sales as fast as the vehicles are manufactured. BMW has matched this success with its clever Mirror 32ESL. The vehicles feature advanced autopilots and software. There is also a choice between full autopilot and manual driving. Many consumers enjoy the actual process of driving and guiding a vehicle. BMW has catered to this market and relegates the Big Screen TV to a cleverly designed rear compartment. There have been fewer fatal incidents among drivers of the 32ESL.

Email has not had the anticipated resurgence, but statistics indicate that consumers are reviving the archaic telephone. Therapists are working on issues that surround the stuttering epidemic. Efforts to immobilize the thumbs with modified cuffs has only intensified the issue. Parents of adolescents are still, as they say, “talking to empty space” but statistics indicate there has been an eight percent rise in direct eye contact among members of nuclear families.

Hope always burns high that there will be a return to ancient modes of person to person conversation. Cynical laughter from many millions of consumers has not deterred designers at GWENJIAP from using hi-res cameras to convert interior TV screens to real-time two way windows on their 300 SLE models. Rumors are floating about that Mercedes is bringing back a vehicle with transparent polymer windows that open and close, either at the touch of a switch or via speech recognition software. The stuttering epidemic, however, has persuaded Mercedes to give the manual switches a higher profile.

All of this turmoil may be history when Nokia introduces the Safe Mini-Phone that has been designed to operate without the use of the dangerous selenium diode and other circuits that ramped up microwave emissions to one thousand times the minimum safe level as indicated by the Consumer Safety Council. Work proceeds on the range and sensitivity of this innovative cell phone.

Nokia employee Jorma Kikkinen, the “whistle blower” who broke the radiation scandal is still being sought by authorities but is feared to have met with foul play.

Like this post? Let me know in the comments. You can be sure not to miss any of Writing to be Read’s great content by subscribe to e-mail or following on WordPress.

Lie To Me: TV For Shrinks

Posted: August 30, 2019 | Author: artrosch | Filed under: Art's Visual Media Reviews, Television review | Tags: Art Rosch, Art's Visual Media Reviews, Lie to Me, Lie To Me TV Show, Paul Ekman, psychiatrist, Television review, Tim Roth | Leave a comment

Art's Visual Media Review

Lie To Me

Actor Tim Roth is an odd creature. He can divide his face into zones and create two or three expressions simultaneously. He can be smiling and tender with his eyes while his lips and teeth express a feral snarl. It’s unsettling. In the TV series “Lie To Me” it’s supposed to be unsettling. Roth plays psychologist Cal Lightman. The character is a knock off of Dr. Paul Ekman, the innovative explorer of human body language. Dr. Ekman is the shrink who can read every tiny twitch of a person’s face. Termed Micro-Expressions, these muscle movements can be revealing of a subject’s inner state.

In Jungian psychology the mask that people wear for social interaction is called The Persona. It is just that, a mask. It’s essentially false, a place in which to hide our true anguish, guilt, depression and fear. It is a Lie, and we put it on our faces without knowing what we do.

In the series “Lie To Me” Dr. Cal Lightman is often dubbed “the human lie detector.” He sees through the Persona to the core emotions. This is a great device upon which to build a crime thriller series. It’s got enough of the cerebral to be interesting. It’s virtually shorn of physical violence. There are no car chases or fist fights, and guns are drawn only occasionally. It nearly makes me sigh with relief.

In short, there’s none of the usual crap.

Dr. Ekman was a consultant for the show. Nothing happened without his approval, including the casting of Tim Roth as his alter ego. Tim Roth bears no resemblance to Dr. Paul Ekman. Casting an Ekman lookalike would have been a dismal failure. Roth plays a feral, slouching, Cockney hoodlum with a lot of Phd’s behind his name. He works closely with the FBI and local police. He goes wherever he wants, barges through crime scene tapes, gets in people’s faces and stares into their eyes. Though Roth is guilty of many excesses (what actors call ‘carpet chewing’), these excesses work to keep the viewer fascinated. After a couple dozen episodes his mannerisms can get wearying. But Roth and the cast were having so much fun making the show that no director stepped in and said, “Tim, ease up on the ball scratching, eh? ‘Nuff sliding off couches in the conference rooms of posh developers eh?”

There’s method to Cal Lightman’s madness. He wants to push people out of their comfort zones. He wants them to get angry, to flip out and reveal the TRUTH, that they’re murderous scheming bastards. His mannerisms are a technique to break down the Persona.

Actress Kelli Williams (The Practice) plays Dr. Gillian Foster, Lightman’s business partner and possible love interest. Do they? Or don’t they? Will they or won’t they? Kelli Williams is a fine actress who looks like one of CNN’s high-end newscasters: model-perfect, every hair in place, always simmering with understated sexuality. She has a wonderfully kind face and is the perfect foil for Tim Roth. Chemistry makes for a good production and this is a cast that’s loaded with chemistry.

“Lie To Me” uses standard police procedural plots, but skews them just enough so that the detective (Dr. Lightman and his staff) work these cases using a different set of tools. Their skills may be exaggerated, but that’s TV, innit? Footnote: the “innit” I just used is an emulation of Roth’s cockney accent. That’s his back story. He is a one-time thug and petty criminal who lifted himself out of that scene to become the world’s foremost body-language theorist and human lie detector.

Dr. Lightman and his staff are called The Lightman Group. They catch serial murderers, thwart abusive psychiatrists, forestall assassinations, bombings and biological attacks. The stories are pretty good. The work of Brendan Hines as Eli Loker and Monica Raymund as Ria Torres keeps the ensemble small and tight. Cal Lightman has a teenaged daughter, Emily, played by Hayley McFarland. Emily’s presence helps to humanize the abrasive Dr. Lightman. Emily gives as good as she gets. To Emily the almighty Dr. Lightman is just her dad. She can mock him, annoy him and tease him. with hints at sexual liaisons. As the father of a teenaged daughter, Cal Lightman is hovering, hyper-protective and infuriatingly paranoid. Little Em knows how to drive her dad nuts.

The three seasons of “Lie To Me” satisfy like a good burger. They are sturdy and hold up well over time. Tim Roth shows that you don’t have to be good looking to be a leading man. You don’t have to be a Kung Fu master, you just need a healthy dose of confidence and aggression. You must be ready to wade into a brawl even if you’re really intending to sneak away from it at the first opportunity. When push comes to shove, Cal Lightman displays abundant courage. ‘E just ain’t stewpid, oi?

I enjoyed “Lie To Me”. I give it four and a half muskrats.

Want to be sure not to miss any of Art’s Visual Media Reviews? You can catch them the last Friday of every month or subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress.

Treme: David Simon’s Masterwork about New Orleans

Posted: July 28, 2019 | Author: artrosch | Filed under: Art's Visual Media Reviews, Opinion, Television review | Tags: Art's Visual Media Reviews, New Orleans, Post-Katrina, Television review, Treme, Writing to be Read | 5 Comments

Art's Visual Media Review

In early October, 2005 my partner and I were driving our new 38 foot motorhome from Ft. Lauderdale to Petaluma,CA. It was going to be a four thousand mile drive on I-10, the southernmost of our nation’s interstate highway system. As we drew into the outskirts of Pensacola we noted the ravaged condition of the trees, fences, billboard signs and the Interstate itself. The campgrounds were jam packed. We only found a site because someone had suffered a heart attack and was rushed to the hospital twenty minutes before we pulled into the Pensacola KOA.

We were in the zone of Hurricane Katrina’s wrath and the next four hundred miles would be like driving through a poorly kept secret. Along the highway were big plywood signs done in red magic marker: FEMA, they said, and sometimes an arrow pointed the way down a dirt road. These signs were emblematic of the slipshod management of a terrible disaster. Imagine, plywood planks with red magic marker: this way to the internment camp of white trailers.

Ahead of us lay New Orleans. We saw the city only a few weeks after it was submerged and torn all to hell. When we began watching the TV series Treme (trem-may), we had a visceral sense of connection to the experiences of the characters.

wendell

TREME is producer/director David Simon’s series about post-Katrina New Orleans. Simon is the creator of crime masterworks like HOMICIDE and THE WIRE. TREME is something different. It is a filmic mural that depicts conditions in a ravaged community. Suspense is not what draws the viewer into the show. It’s the characters that keep us watching.

One of the major characters of the series is New Orleans itself. There is a depth of culture in this city that is unmatched by any other American city. Treme is one of the neighborhoods in this town, an area where musicians live and form their community. They play at one another’s gigs. They do funerals, following wheeled black carriages in stately slow-march. They play at nightclubs where the patrons and musicians alike are having so much fun that it seems almost unreal, as if there can’t possibly be so much joy in this troubled world. But there it is: real music, dancing, carrying-on and everyone is having a freaking great time.

There’s nothing strident about Simon’s portrait of New Orleans. It’s a town trying to bounce back, but the bounce is a little flat. People want to rebuild their homes but the promised insurance checks and subsidies keep getting lost in bureaucracy. A man has spent three years rebuilding his home with his own money and his own skills. Suddenly a city inspector appears and cuts off his water and power. “The City” wants to see the original deed on the property. It’s a document whose origins go back two hundred years. It’s lost in history, lost in the flood. Can he PROVE that his family has occupied this parcel of land since 1824?

Photo by Art Rosch

He forgot a payoff to someone. He’s lost track of the fifties and hundreds he’s hemorrhaged to fees and penalties.

New Orleans has become a scene where politicians and developers gather like ghouls to create a theme park where there was once a city. If they have things their way, it will be resurrected as NewOrleansLand or Cajun-O-Rama. The citizens of New Orleans are fighting back. They know their city will never be the same. But the disaster has made them aware of themselves as an extended family. There is something special about being a New Orleans native. There’s a terminology, a language, a history and a lot of blood that goes into the making of a citizen of New Orleans.

TREME is strangely relaxing to watch. Real-life characters like musicians Carla Thomas, Kermit Ruffins and Allen Toussaint thread through the plot playing themselves, providing a sound track of amazing skill and vivacity. TREME is loaded with top of the line music.

“Let the good times roll”, or “Laissez le bon temps roulez” is the unofficial motto of Mardi Gras. The good times may roll but a new motto is emerging from the frustrated natives of New Orleans.

I will paraphrase the words of Sofia, the sixteen year old daughter of civil rights lawyer Toni Bernette, played by the fantastic Melissa Leo. Every day Sofia retreats to her bedroom, closes the door, aims the laptop camera at her face and uploads to YouTube a monologue of rage and bitterness.

“Fuck you, man, fuck you!” she says. “If you’re not going to help us, at least don’t hinder us. Just get the fuck out of our way!” THAT is the new motto of New Orleans.

Want to be sure not to miss any of Art’s Visual Media Reviews segments? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress.

So You Think You Can Dance: Breaking New Ground

Posted: June 29, 2019 | Author: artrosch | Filed under: Art's Visual Media Reviews, Opinion, Television review | Tags: Art's Visual Media Reviews, So You Think You Can Dance, Television review, TV, Writing to be Read | Leave a comment

Art's Visual Media Review

“What’s wrong with kids today?”

This lament has been uttered by every generation since Adam and Eve discovered they were pregnant a second time.

So….what IS wrong with kids these days?

They feel as if they have no future. The last few extant generations simply don’t. Futures come in handy when you feel as though the world will be unrecognizable before you’ve grown up. As a child of The Mushroom Cloud I know what that feels like, that amputation of the future. It made me really angry. My friends and I were more likely to commit petty crimes and indulge in drugs. Without a future, why bother? Why work hard in school? Why cultivate disciplines, interests, social connections? The oceans are rising and will drown your block or your whole neighborhood. The coolest animals will be extinct. No elephants, no polar bears. What kind of future is that?

Can't Dance

Then I discovered a TV show called “So You Think You Can Dance”. You can knock me over with what these kids are doing! Their bodies must be INCREDIBLY strong and flexible. These kids are doing the impossible! Has the human race mutated? Do we have extra joints, super-human muscle memory? Who ARE these people?

They’re just kids. Their secret is that they found a passion, something that interested them so much that they said “fuck it” to the absence of the future and decided to live for this thing called Dance. It was better than being a thug. Thugs are mean, WAY mean and being mean doesn’t feel very good. Not as good as practicing B-moves, Krumping, flapping, sapping, tapping, robot-twitching, water-waving, learning your body’s capabilities and stretching them further, further, further!

This is IT! Sometimes it’s called ART. Don’t be embarrassed by the word ART. It’s cool to do ART. It’s okay. Even if it’s gay it doesn’t matter. Nobody cares about gay any more. You can be gay, you can change from man to woman or woman to man, nobody cares! If you want to know where it is, where the cutting edge in creativity can be found these days you can see it on “So You Think You Can Dance”. The judges aren’t scary. They aren’t there to cut you down. They want to show you The Future. Word up, Bro. There IS a future. Nobody can stop it. It takes some work. Everything good takes work. Making a future is hard work. It’s not like it used to be, when the Future was going to happen no matter what. Now it takes a little faith and a lot of work, but it’s there: you… DO…Have…A…Future. Do you want it to kick you in the nuts or do you want to dance with it?

When has anyone given a shit about choreoraphy? Are you kidding? Corey-who? Shazam! Choreographers are the composers of Dance. They arrange the time-space-music continuum in which Dance exists. On the TV show they are not only given credit, they are like stars! Now I know the work of Tice Diorio, Mia Michaels, Sonya Tayeh, “Nappytab”, Stacey Tookey and Travis Wall. Choreographers come from the elder population of dancers. They still dance but they are the keepers of the flame, the mentors of the seventeen through twenty two year old dancers who are living the dreams.

I’m not sure there is any more difficult art form than what is now appearing as Dance. It’s not enough to specialize. You can’t be a ballroom dancer, a hip-hopper or a Broadway hoofer. One of the messages of So You Think You Can Dance is that you must be trained in ALL the dance styles. Choreographers wont’ hire you if you don’t know all the styles of dance. Choreographers are the Gate Keepers, the bosses, the ones who hire dancers. Get tight with the choreographers who work at SYTYCD and you will be employed for years to come. In time, you will become a choreographer.

The most amazing thing about the dance numbers on this show is their purity. We’re not seeing arrangements for pop superstars. We’re not seeing choreography for Taylor Swift or Michael Jackson (RIP). These dance routines are created for the television audience. For US! Sometimes magic happens on that stage. Those of you who watch the show know what I mean. In more than a decade this show has lifted the art of Dance so that each season is more amazing than the last. The mutations continue. Evolution is visible year to year. Dancers get more flexible, their muscle memories become more detailed, malleable, imprintable. This happens in front of our eyes. Sure, it’s a TV contest show aimed at a teenage demographic. That’s how things work. Consider the difference between the egregious karaoke of American Idol and the drama and high art of So You Think You Can Dance. Big difference, yeah?

Big big difference.

Want to be sure not to miss any of Art’s Visual Media Reviews? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress.

Modern Poetry: Confusion

Posted: June 26, 2019 | Author: artrosch | Filed under: Poetry, The Many Faces of Poetry | Tags: Art Rosch, modern poetry, Poetry, Slam Poetry, The Many Faces of Poetry, Writing to be Read | 3 Comments

The Many Faces of Poetry 2

Modern poetry presents us with many problems. Like: the problem of understanding it. There are no rules to poetry, not any more, not for a century at least. I subscribe to some literary magazines on the internet. I get most of my poetry from The Rumpus and Across The Margin. These literary mags function as curators and critics. Who is there to tell us when something is good in poetry? Are there reviews of poetry? Sure there are! Does anyone read them? I do, out of curiosity. Just as I read poetry that’s being reviewed, out of curiosity and because they are appearing in magazines that I trust. Their very appearance is a critical acclaim. It’s in Rumpus, so it must be good. Etc.

allen gberg

It really gets down to taste and patience. Poetry is “OUT” in pop culture. It takes too long, requires too much commitment. I haven’t encountered a contemporary poet who inspires me to be a fan, to glue myself to his or her output with enthusiasm.

Other than myself. I’m a big fan of myself. A BIG fan.

When we were in high school we had Poetry Gods. We had e.e.cummings, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, T.S. Eliot, okay, yes, Allen Ginsberg. We had a Movement, we had the Beats and then Hippies. Am I out of touch? Let me know, will you?

Still, poetry thrives. It’s a bigger world, with more people, more poets.

Then there’s SLAM POETRY! The high culture equivalent of hip hop. I don’t know anything about SLAM POETRY except that it’s great fun, the audience is fully involved, the passions are up front, IT’S ALIVE IT’S ALIVE! Go to Youtube and search out Slam poetry and there you have it. The world of performance speech, it has no rules but one: tell a story, suck in the audience. If you don’t you will experience a gloomy traumatic humiliation that you’ll never want to repeat unless you combine the attributes of martyr with poet (not a bad combo, really) and you’re in it for the long haul, you’re there to perfect your art no matter what the price.

Youtube threw up a slam poet named Jesse Parent. The poem he spoke was called “To The Boys Who Will One Day Date My Daughter”. Then, boom! I was off on a delightful two hour marathon of enjoying slam poetry and the only reason it resolved at two hours was because my butt hurt from sitting so long in my malignant chair.

Guess what? The world has changed. I’m old enough to enjoy the backward/shrinking/reverse view of looking through the wrong end of a telescope. e.e. cummings? Allen Ginsberg? Are they hip-hoppers? What do they do?

“You’ve never heard ‘Howl’?”

“Is that a song?”

“No. Probably the most famous poem of modern times.”

“What? Like ‘Niggas In Paris’?”

“Niggas in…uhhhh, I don’t….”

“Daddy! Kanye and Jay-Z.”

I’m already confused. This began as an essay about poetry. “Well, Kanye’s pretty much destroyed himself, and Jay-Z, okay, I can handle Jay-Z, gotta give him some respect.”

“Listen, I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll listen to ‘Howl’ if you’ll listen to ‘Niggas in Paris.”

“Deal. But…let me warn you. Ginsberg wasn’t much of an orator…”

(Ginsberg reads: I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness etc etc). He sounds as if he’s been drinking Robitussin for two weeks and just took a snort of cocaine to get through the reading. After listening to Jesse Parent for half an hour the desultory delivery of Ginsburg is pathetic. I listen to the words of the poem. I know it’s a classic. I like it. I’m ambivalent about it. It sounds old fashioned. But maybe that’s just poor Allen’s delivery.

Yes. The world has changed.

Want to be sure not to miss any of Art’s The Many Faces of Poetry segments? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress.

Friday Night Lights: Bingeworthy TV

Posted: May 31, 2019 | Author: artrosch | Filed under: Art's Visual Media Reviews, Commentary, Drama, Television review | Tags: Art's Visual Media Reviews, community, Connie Britton, Drama, Football in Texas, Friday Night Lights, Kyle Chandler, small towns, Taylor Kitsch, Television review, Texas Football, TV, TV drama, TV reviews | Leave a comment

By Arthur Rosch

FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS isn’t about Texas high school football.

It’s about Texas high school football.

I admit to writing this stupid/cutesy opening and I don’t even have a good reason for it. I suppose it expresses my surprise. I expected a sports drama. I anticipated a series about a scrappy low-ranked team overcoming its difficulties and moving on to the semi-finals and then the finals and then…..you know the story.It’s been done to death. Underdog Triumphs Despite Impossible Odds.

Peter Berg’s masterwork about Americans at their best and their worst is way beyond football scoreboards. The game dramas we’re given, the playoffs and championships, are almost footnotes. Do they win or lose the nationals? Yay! Boohoo! Oh well…the story moves on.

In case you haven’t heard, Texans have a local football culture like no other. Its passions fill in the great empty spaces of the land. It entertains, it distracts, it involves, it sucks people into its politics, it’s a tornado and it leaves nothing untouched.

It’s serious. The aristocracy of star players have perks beyond belief. They are scouted by major college teams and the NFL looms in the background for a few talented athletes. The perks have to be within the bounds, so to speak. There’s no buying and selling of games and players (or, at least, there’d better not be). This adherence to the strictures of amateurism doesn’t preclude assigning a virtual harem to the stars, the quarterback, the tight end, the wide receiver and so forth. These guys stride the halls of school like gods.

FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS isn’t about Texas high school football because it’s really about character, relationships and community.

The true star of this drama is a relationship. The marriage of Eric and Tami Taylor is the spine of this narrative’s skeleton. It’s the beating heart at the center of the town of Dillon, Texas. Without the marriage of Eric and Tami, there is no story. Actors Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton play their parts with such natural grace that their marriage should receive an Emmy. It is one of the great marriages in television history.

Eric is the new Head Coach of the Dillon Panthers. Tammy is the high school counselor. Their marriage is subject to pressures that would crush most commitments. If Eric and Tammy can survive this alchemist’s crucible, they will be peerless. They will be jewels.

If they can’t, they’ll be another sad divorce that leaves behind a shattered family. Their daughter Julie is at that age just before she starts to rebel and roll her eyes. We need to wait until Season Three for the foot-stomping, eye rolling and the whole alphabet of gestures of teenage contempt for adult restrictions. Meanwhile, she’s a nice cute kid with a training bra.

Eric and Tammy have tough jobs. If you think coaching high school football is small time stuff, think again. This is Texas. Eric needs all the qualities of a drill sergeant, a general, a shrink, a priest and a politician. He has to raise his voice and deliver a fifteen minute harangue to a team of wall-sized athletes until they are reduced to terrified little lumps of jelly, quivering on the locker room floor. Or he can put his arm around a confused, demoralized quarterback, pull the boy’s head onto his shoulder and choose the right words to unleash a deluge of tears. He must puncture the macho armor of these arrogant teen prima donnas and make them, FORCE them, to live in the real world where they are not God’s gift to women and football. Creating better athletes is secondary to creating better people.

All across the country, the name of Eric Taylor is being discussed. He’s a young, new coach, he’s just emerging and he’s the man to watch. He may be next year’s High School Coach Of The Year. He’s at the beginning of a career that may some day take him to the Super Bowl.

Eric is, by nature, a man of few words. At home, he’s a firm but gentle presence who doesn’t make a lot of noise. He’s busy. He’s working, watching playback of games, evaluating his own calls and his players’ moves. He works ALL the time. He lives football. His wife understands this, she has grasped it from the very beginning of their marriage and rather than pout and grow disillusioned, she creates her own life. She uses her own strengths and interests to engage the world. She’s a high school guidance counselor. This makes her the equivalent of a prison warden and The Great White Hunter on an African Safari. She is stimulated by challenge. She is one of those goddess mothers full of lush strength, red-maned, sexy and very tough.

What makes a marriage between two such powerful people function so well?

Honesty keeps the marriage strong. Tami and Eric are always honest with one another. Even when they lie, they’re honest about lying. Neither is afraid to admit being wrong about an issue. They support one another with unbreakable consistency. If they have a fight, they cut through the bullshit, find the central issue, and look for compromise. They don’t resort to yelling and name calling.

There are times when an irresistible opportunity appears before Eric or Tami. The problem is, accepting the opportunity would require changes in the marriage or the family lifestyle. One of them, Eric or Tami, is going to have to make a sacrifice. Who is willing to see a lifetime dream fade away? Who is wise enough to see that opportunity does NOT come only once in a lifetime?

The town of Dillon, Texas is neither large nor small. It’s like a town with a hundred thousand people that has been absorbed into the suburban sprawl of Houston or Dallas. It has an identity. Much of that identity is drawn from the supremacy of the Dillon Panthers.

The power brokers, the mayor, the oil moguls and the owner of the Cadillac dealership are Panther alumni and sit on the board of the Booster’s Association.They know which strings to pull, how to schedule games to the advantage of the team, how to acquire players from other teams who might be Panther-killers if they’re not brought into the fold. They’re the guys who play dirty, behind the curtain. A little pressure, maybe some mild blackmail; it gets the job done and the team is none the wiser.

It’s amazing how much of the human condition can be collected into a single file cabinet with the same labeled situations. There are aimless kids on drugs, there are abandoned old people, cheating husbands, bankrupt businessmen, pregnant cheerleaders, corrupt officials, natural disasters, infatuated teenagers going suicidal over a romantic setback….all these potholes in the road of life are much the same, no matter where you go.

The things that can’t be pigeonholed, that can’t be stuck in a file, are the lineaments of character. Which one of these people can overcome the temptation to shirk? Which one can step up and make an effort to change?

I ask, because I think Friday Night Lights is a narrative about that power in human beings, that ability to see their own trouble and solve the problem, and then move forward. There will be another problem, and another. No matter. By the time Season Three begins, even the people we learned to hate have become different, better. They are tougher, yet softer. They have something that we all wish we had: a supportive community.

I was amazed, over and over again, at the way the people of Dillon turn to one another. Coach Taylor’s door is always open. If the phone rings at three in the morning, he will answer it. “I’ll be right there,” he says, sliding out of bed and looking for his pants. If some sopping wet weeping teenager having a crisis knocks on someone’s door, there will be a soft place to fall. A motherly hand is extended: “Why come on in, sugar, you look awful, and you’re just SOPPING wet! What can I do for you?”

In my dreams I live in a place like that. Dillon is special because Southern Hospitality is not only real but it includes everyone and it understands that shame is the enemy of communication. As a community, Dillon expands its definition of humanity and grows like an amoeba to absorb shame so that being ashamed is not shameful. Lying about the cause of the shame, THAT’S shameful, so it’s better to unburden the heart, to come clean and let someone help you, someone with a wiser mind like Eric or Tami Taylor, or a hundred other people. What’s sad is that this town is a television fiction but it gives me hope. If someone can imagine such a place, someone can create it in the real world.

Want to be sure not to miss any of “Art’s Visual Media Reviews”? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress.

Game Of Thrones: IS It Toxic?

Posted: March 22, 2019 | Author: artrosch | Filed under: Art's Visual Media Reviews, Film Review, Television review | Tags: Art's Visual Media Reviews, Fantasy, Game of Thrones, Review, Writing to be Read | 6 Comments

Art's Visual Media Review

My wife and I watched this series, all five available seasons (at the time), in one big gory splurge. Maybe that was our mistake. It is addictive viewing, it has memorable characters and every episode ends with a cliff-hanger.

I’ll be candid and admit that we have been in an emotional slump. My wife and I have had a difficult year. That being said, perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to expose ourselves to such villainy and gore. I can imagine that viewing this series one episode at a time might be less harrowing. But who does that? Are you kidding? In this age of Streaming?

Nah! Binge viewing is the thing we do. Doesn’t everybody grab a series and watch every episode, one after another? Don’t deny it. TV isn’t a guilty pleasure any more. TV is survival, an alternate reality in which to hide from our terrifying world.

3aa0d-dinklage

Game of Thrones is High Fantasy. It has the medieval world-set, the armor, weapons, horses, castles, all that stuff that goes into High Fantasy. It has dragons, magical creatures and a looming menace that evokes our own present-day world with its apocalyptic terrors. As we watched we found that our depression began taking on a more vicious edge. Our dreams were disturbed. My wife muttered curses in the night and I went on a sleepwalking excursion, standing at the window completely unaware that my junk was exposed beneath the wrinkled edge of my t-shirt. I think I was waiting for some demon to creep into our home to steal our souls.

As a writer I must always ask a question of the story I’m writing: Is this story worth being told? If I apply that yardstick to Game of Thrones, I’m not sure it passes muster. Without the genius of Peter Dinklage playing “the imp” I wouldn’t have gotten sucked into the plot. Acting is an interesting process to watch. Great actors take good roles and define them for all history. Dinklage will hereafter always be known for his Tyrion Lannister role. Before Tyrion he was a famous dwarf and an actor. Now he is far more famous and completely identified with his character. No one cares that he has short legs. He has earned RESPECT. He carried Game of Thrones on his talent. The series is unimaginable without the work of Peter Dinklage.

There were so many beheadings, throat slittings, impalings, knives to the gut, arrows through the throat, squished eyeballs, spear thrusts through-and-through that it became like a creeping poison, leaking from the TV screen and crawling along the margins of the room, heading straight for our vulnerable psyches. We have no one to blame but ourselves. No one forced us to watch this wretched excess of medieval mayhem. We watched. We were sick with flu, flattened with fibro, fucked up with gastric distress, hamstrung with hernia….and we watched ten thousand extras get squashed by rocks and broiled with flaming oil. Oh, what a violent series! Add a healthy dollop of perfect naked titties and asses, muscular adolescent boys all frolicking with one another and whaddayaknow? It’s really all sex and violence, tits and ass. I can imagine the producer shouting on the set: “Did we book enough tits today?” He points to a Production Assistant. “We’re running out of tits! You, boy! Go find some tits, get out there on Sunset and round up a few dozen nice tits. Get some handsome boys while you’re at it. We need some asses, too….make sure they’re eighteen and have them sign their releases.”

Game Of Thrones. It was a relief when Season Five ended. We’d had enough. It was like eating a whole bag of miniature Reeses Pieces. It made us sick.

It was delicious when we started. Then it got a little cloying but we couldn’t stop. Then we wanted to puke and still we couldn’t stop. It was crazy! Get us to some Hallmark Entertainment, or….some Disney. No, wait. When you look deeply enough into Disney you find shit that’s even more creepy than Game Of Thrones.

Now, the temptation to watch Season Six looms ever more seductively.

Catch “Art’s Visual Media Reviews” the fourth Friday of every month. Better yet, sign up for email of follow on WordPress to catch all the great content on Writing to be Read.

Poetry And The Feminine Principle

Posted: February 27, 2019 | Author: artrosch | Filed under: Poetry, The Many Faces of Poetry, Women's Fiction and Poetry | Tags: Art Rosch, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Dickinson, Jane Hirschfield, Mary Oliver, Poetry, The Many Faces of Poetry, women in poetry | 3 Comments

The Many Faces of Poetry 2

There seem to be fewer female poets than male poets but that’s probably a sexist phenomenon. There are fewer PUBLISHED, FAMOUS lady poets, that’s all. Doing a search there are names that come to the top of the list: Mary Oliver, Jane Hirschfield, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I like to contrast the moderns with the Victorians because they make a little study in how much the world has changed. In 1850, assuming you had spectacular talent, “making it” as a poet was a matter of family connections, money and social place. The Victorians valued depth in education. Dickinson and Browning were well read in Greek Classics (in the original Greek), Milton, Shakespeare, et al. Today, attaining prominence as a poet is a matter of marketing and luck. Podcasts, platforms and persistence. Talent trails behind.

Mary Oliver And Friend

Mary Oliver is regarded as the English speaking world’s most beloved poet. I always think of flying geese when Oliver is mentioned. There’s a reason for that. This was the first poem I heard by Mary Oliver: Wild Geese. It’s a good example of her accessibility. Oliver celebrated nature, including human nature. She had a great eye/ear for the natural world’s subtle beauties.

Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

Emily Dickinson

Now let’s turn our attention to Emily Dickinson. She was such an interesting person that I feel saddened by the brevity with which I must treat her in this essay. She was the daughter of a prominent lawyer, politician and man of civic affairs. This was Edward Dickinson. He provided a liberal and wealthy environment in which Emily could do pretty much as she pleased. She obtained a first class education at Amherst Academy and Mt. Holyoke, and cultivated friendships with the likes of Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emily is famous for her reclusive ways. When she was finished with her education she retired into a world that consisted of her bedroom and the extensive family garden. She maintained vast correspondence with the best minds of the era. She also wrote nearly 1800 poems. A year after her death the first collection of her poems was published and became a huge hit. I find her poems cryptic and timeless. Many of them are just a few lines, and, to tell you the truth, I don’t really understand some of them. I plan to read them again, and perhaps yet again. It seems that she was writing for her own pleasure. There was no thought of an audience. In this way her poems attain a great purity.

I Like to see it lap the Miles, by Emily Dickenson

I like to see it lap the Miles,  
And lick the valleys up, 
And stop to feed itself at tanks;  
And then, prodigious, step  
Around a pile of mountains, 
And, supercilious, peer  
In shanties by the sides of roads;  
And then a quarry pare  
To fit its sides, and crawl between,  
Complaining all the while
In horrid, hooting stanza;  
Then chase itself down hill  
And neigh like Boanerges;  
Then, punctual as a star,  
Stop—docile and omnipotent—
At its own stable door.

Jane Hirschfield

.

It’s important to know that Jane Hirschfield is a student of Zen Buddhism. She was ordained in 2011 at The San Francisco Zen Center. Hirschfield gets irritated, however, when people try to identify her poetry as “Zen” or anything else. It’s just poetry. Winner of so many awards it gets ridiculous, Jane Hirschfield is a kind of poetry goddess of our times. She’s 65 as of today. She may be around for yet a while. Her poetry has a kind of practicality. It deals with familiar things in unfamiliar ways. Her poems are full of dogs and horses, images of man’s interaction with nature. There are musings on the dilemma of living within one’s own mind. I find such questions easy to understand. I, too, am some kind of Buddhist.

Rebus, by Jane Hirschfield

You work with what you are given,
the red clay of grief,
the black clay of stubbornness going on after.
Clay that tastes of care or carelessness,
clay that smells of the bottoms of rivers or dust.

Each thought is a life you have lived or failed to live,
each word is a dish you have eaten or left on the table.
There are honeys so bitter
no one would willingly choose to take them.
The clay takes them: honey of weariness, honey of vanity,
honey of cruelty, fear.
This rebus – slip and stubbornness,
bottom of river, my own consumed life –
when will I learn to read it
plainly, slowly, uncolored by hope or desire?
Not to understand it, only to see.

As water given sugar sweetens, given salt grows salty,
we become our choices.
Each yes, each no continues,
this one a ladder, that one an anvil or cup.

The ladder leans into its darkness.
The anvil leans into its silence.
The cup sits empty.

How can I enter this question the clay has asked?

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born into an aristocratic English family and received a classical education. Getting such schooling was not a given for women of that age. Usually it depended on the father’s disposition. In Elizabeth’s case, dad was a poet and the family luxuriated in artistic pursuits. Elizabeth was educated alongside her younger brother. No feminist outrages here. The Barretts were extremely wealthy and lived within the intellectual mainstream of the Victorian era.

It all seemed so wonderful until I came to the tragic stories of the Barrett family.

Elizabeth’s brother drowned. Elizabeth came down with tuberculosis and had an accident that permanently damaged her spine. In its way this is typical of upper class Victorian suffering. They suffered extravagantly: people died young, children were scythed down by fevers, chronic brain afflictions abounded. Elizabeth spent the rest of her life on morphine, opium and other such medications. Still, she had the stubborn persistence of all artists and produced a huge body of work. This first poem, below, “How Do I Love Thee” is one of the most famous poems in the world. It is also called “Sonnet 13”. I follow it with “Sonnet 14”.

How do I love thee? or Sonnet 13, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

I love with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, — I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Sonnet 14, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

If thou must love me, let it be for nought

Except for love’s sake only. Do not say
‘I love her for her smile—her look—her way
Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day’—
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee,—and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity’s wiping my cheeks dry,—
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love’s sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love’s eternity.

Thus we have a painfully brief glimpse into the worlds of some famous lady poets. It’s a rich universe and I feel ridiculous popping these classics out on the page so casually. These women were/are great poets! Profoundly human, they deal with universal themes, the glorious quiz of life on earth. Is there a difference between the male and female poets? Are men better than women? Hell no. Somewhere there’s a planet with six genders, each with distinctive characteristics and functions. They quarrel endlessly about whether a frem is superior to a bloot and why forgles make the best musicians. It’s always the same stuff. Art. That useless but essential stuff: Art. P.S. I think the it’s the werkish who make the best Jerk n’ Jell paddle players.

Want to be sure not to miss any of Art’s The Many Faces of Poetry segments? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress.

The Many Faces of Poetry: Two Important Poets

Posted: December 26, 2018 | Author: artrosch | Filed under: Poetry, The Many Faces of Poetry, Uncategorized, Writing | Tags: Art Rosch, Poetry, The Many Faces of Poetry, Writing to be Read | 1 Comment

The Many Faces of Poetry

I did most of my poetry reading between the ages of sixteen and twenty one. I was in love with a girl who loved poetry. Otherwise, for the next several decades I neglected poetry. It was an occasional pleasure. Lately, however, I have been rediscovering poetry. If you want to read today’s poets head for the online magazine “Across The Margin” (acrossthemargin.com). ATM publishes living poets and prose writers. I am, fortunately, online buds with the editors Michael Fisher and Chris Thompson. As curators of such a venue, they are brilliant. They bring together some of the best writers of our times. While I’m throwing out resources, I must also mention the uber-poetry web empire PoemHunters.com

As an adolescent I was drawn to the work of Federico Garcia Lorca and Rainer Maria Rilke. Their influence yet remains with me. They occupy special seats in the Poets’ Pantheon. Lorca, who was mired in the political confusion surrounding the Spanish Civil War, was assassinated in 1936. He is now a Spanish national treasure. Extensive searches for his grave have failed to find his remains. He was thirty eight when he drew his final breath. No one knows who murdered him. The Fascists blame the Communists and the communists blame the Fascists. Hey, it was Spain in the thirties.

Here is one of his poems. As a Spaniard and member of what was called “The Generation Of ’27”, he was inspired and surrounded by surrealists.

in the sky there is nobody asleep. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is asleep.
The creatures of the moon sniff and prowl about their cabins.
The living iguanas will come and bite the men who do not dream,
and the man who rushes out with his spirit broken will meet on the
street corner
the unbelievable alligator quiet beneath the tender protest of the
stars.

Nobody is asleep on earth. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is asleep.
In a graveyard far off there is a corpse
who has moaned for three years
because of a dry countryside on his knee;
and that boy they buried this morning cried so much
it was necessary to call out the dogs to keep him quiet.

Life is not a dream. Careful! Careful! Careful!
We fall down the stairs in order to eat the moist earth
or we climb to the knife edge of the snow with the voices of the dead
dahlias.
But forgetfulness does not exist, dreams do not exist;
flesh exists. Kisses tie our mouths
in a thicket of new veins,
and whoever his pain pains will feel that pain forever
and whoever is afraid of death will carry it on his shoulders.

One day
the horses will live in the saloons
and the enraged ants
will throw themselves on the yellow skies that take refuge in the
eyes of cows.

Another day
we will watch the preserved butterflies rise from the dead
and still walking through a country of gray sponges and silent boats
we will watch our ring flash and roses spring from our tongue.
Careful! Be careful! Be careful!
The men who still have marks of the claw and the thunderstorm,
and that boy who cries because he has never heard of the invention
of the bridge,
or that dead man who possesses now only his head and a shoe,
we must carry them to the wall where the iguanas and the snakes
are waiting,
where the bear’s teeth are waiting,
where the mummified hand of the boy is waiting,
and the hair of the camel stands on end with a violent blue shudder.

Nobody is sleeping in the sky. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is sleeping.
If someone does close his eyes,
a whip, boys, a whip!
Let there be a landscape of open eyes
and bitter wounds on fire.
No one is sleeping in this world. No one, no one.
I have said it before.

No one is sleeping.
But if someone grows too much moss on his temples during the
night,
open the stage trapdoors so he can see in the moonlight
the lying goblets, and the poison, and the skull of the theaters.

Rainer Maria Rilke was born into a middle class family in 1875. The family was highly dysfunctional, as are the families of 99 percent of every artist in Earth’s history. Rilke had the good sense to hang out with the most illustrious artists of any age. He was, for a while, Auguste Rodin’s secretary. He lived the life of a poet during the height of the Romantic era. His life was no piece of cake. He was drafted into the Austro/Hungarian Army at the outbreak of World War One. It took two years for his influential friends to free him from possible slaughter in the trenches. He did, however, have such friends. He wrote in a variety of media, including some four hundred poems.

This is Rilke.

At The Brink Of Night

My room and this distance,
awake upon the darkening land,
are one. I am a string
stretched across deep
surging resonance.

Things are violin bodies
full of murmuring darkness,
where women’s weeping dreams,
where the rancor of whole generations
stirs in its sleep . . .
I should release
my silver vibrations: then
everything below me will live,
and whatever strays into things
will seek the light
that falls without end from my dancing tone
into the old abysses
around which heaven swells
through narrow
imploring
rifts.

Want to be sure not to miss any of Art’s The Many Faces of Poetry segments? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress.