What Good Is A Group Like This?

Maybe joining groups is natural for some people. It isn't for me. I'm not of a group-mind, and not a team player. What good can come of this, except some wasted time? What do some of you think? And what do you think about the poem at the end of this post?

I don't want to lead the discussion one way or another, but my thought is that people who love art sometimes exist in a wonderful world of the mind but sometimes don't have a chance to connect that much with others. There are conferences like AWP, but I dislike crowds and the expense of going. (I loved AWP Chicago, seeing Cisneros, especially, but I never entered into a deep conversation with anyone there.)

As usual, another writer has expressed my thoughts better. I was leafing through an old copy of SULPHUR RIVER LITERARY REVIEW (ed. James Michael Robbins, Austin, TX), which I have kept a subscription to ever since he published a couple of my pieces in 2000, and ran across this poem by John Humma. Here is an excerpt:

Like all the helpful voices over the years
on the other end of the line,
I ask, "How may I help you?"
I ask the supermarket checker, who looks
stumped and forgets to ring up my beer.
"How may I help you?" I ask the priest,
and he is mystified.
I ask my students, and not one of them knows.
I ask the janitor and he just smiles.
"Sure is a nice day," He says.
I make an appointment with the Dean.
"What is on your mind?" he asks,
without getting up. I say, "How may I help you?"
Excuse me? He asks how long I have been teaching here
then suddenly remembers a meeting he has to get to...
I ask my dog. He puts his head back to be scratched.


I like this poem a lot. We've been so conditioned by our service culture to shirk off any real kind of reaching out.

What is my point. It's in there somewhere.

MAYBE THE POINT IS THAT WE CAN MAKE THIS ANY KIND OF PLACE WE WANT IT TO BE. IMAGINE THE KIND OF PLACE YOU WOULD WANT OR NEED. IN YOUR WILDEST IMAGINATION, WHAT WOULD THAT PLACE BE LIKE? WE CAN MAKE IT.

For me, the good of this place is that I am able to interact with lovers of art and literature. I spent 27 years as an Air Force officer and had very few literary conversations with anyone, despite the fact that I was surrounded by college graduates. I never understood it. Sometimes a fellow officer would confide that he or she once wrote a poem, or once read some piece of classic literature, but the talks were always short-lived, and those I spoke with had a furtive air about them as if writing a poem was the equivalent of confessing to some kind of sexual aberation. In any event, I had no luck converting my associates from Tom Clancy to say, Melville, or Joyce.

Your story reminds me of something said of Wallace Stevens. He worked at an insurance company, and one day he called one of the workers in asked him what his beliefs were about the imagination. In an interview that took place after Stevens had died, the worker said he told Stevens that he really had no idea. Stevens said to think on it and they'd talk about it again. The worker said, "We never did talk about it, and I was relieved."

The great thing about this place is that with so many academics and writers involved, I am learning. That is my great desire, to learn.

The learning goes both ways, my friend.

i like well read broads.

Tim, have you been watching James Cagney and E. G. Robinson again?

another smile. Jimmy Cagney! and, since this is a book site, yeah, i can tell you I loved jimmy Cagney and especially loved his last movie, Ragtime. a great book and a great movie. E. L. Doctorow at his best, he'd hit his stride and put out several great books for a while there.

What i loved most about ragtime is how he worked each of it's stories around the theme of how chance plays such a great part in our lives, how a wagon takes the left turn as opposed to the right and so many lives change ...

but yeah, Jimmy Cagney. and that Robinson guy was pretty great too, although I can't put my finger on a book that became a movie he was in ... go figure.

Don't forget the original Sam Spade, Humphry Bogart. He was in many books turned movie. The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, To Have and Have Not, The Caine Mutiny (Wrong touchstone - S/B Herman Wouk). These come to mind rather quickly.

E. G. Robinson was in The Prize, The Devil and Daniel Webster, The Sea Wolf and others I'm sure.

What about Wallace Beery?

And, I nearly forgot: Jimmy Cagney was in one of my favorite weepers, Mister Roberts, originally a play rather than a book, but if you look I my library, it will attest the value of drama to literature.

When Nick Charles, uh. . .William Powell, The Thin Man reads the letter that announces the death of Mister Roberts in the war he so desperately wanted to get to, it just breaks my heart.

All I can say is, Thank God for Turner Classic Movies.