Henry & June & Anais

Henry & June [Universal Pictures, 1990, color] is one of American cinema's most improbable productions. Philip Kaufman both wrote and directed the movie. Kaufman's credits are a little scattered--he's not a major Hollywood figure, and that perhaps accounts for the off-beat approach that characterizes this film, his most notable effort. 

 

Clearly, Kaufman had to believe in the possibility of an unusual and challenging production, in bringing the story of Henry Miller and Anais Nin to the screen, since Miller's reputation in American culture was, and continues to be, among the most problematic of any major literary figure in our history.  

 

 

Among the obstacles which would confront Kaufman was how far he would be allowed to go with the verisimilitude of the plot, which involves a number of frank love-making (and partial nude) scenes: Censorship would become as crucial an issue with this film, as it had been to Miller's career as a novelist and memoirist (it was the first film to be released to the general movie audience in the United States with an NC-17 rating). 

 

It was clear that Kaufman wouldn't be able to tap any major stars for the movie, because of its subject-matter, and because it would be an obscure production without much publicity or propulsion. Which explains why the cast was composed mostly of what was then a collection of mostly unheard-of or obscure acting talent. For Anais Nin, the central figure in the story, he chose a Portuguese actress, Maria de Medeiros, whose genuine unfamiliar looks and smooth style seemed the perfect choice to play the self-styled European femme fatale Nin. Except for a plum cameo in Pulp Fiction, Medeiros's parts have been largely confined to European cinema. For Miller, Kaufman chose Fred Ward, commonly referred to as a "character actor"--only because, as is often the case, he's never been considered for the usual heavy parts which makes stars out of ordinary mortals. Because of Ward's subtle abilities, a strong male presence, as well as his own interesting, peripatetic history as a struggling wannabe actor--he turned out to be a brilliant choice to play the redoubtable Miller. 

 

The other two major parts--Uma Thurman as June (Miller's wayward wife) and Anais's banker-husband Hugo (Richard Grant)--were also miraculously prescient, as they both have gone on to major careers, especially Thurman. And finally, Kevin Spacey turns up as Miller's room-mate Osborn, in another brilliant minor turn, well before his star had risen.

 

It's a conundrum: Do great movies turn ordinary mortals into acting greats, or do casting directors, acting on tips and hunches, pick just the right people to play parts that seem tailored uniquely for them? Either way, it's a tribute to Kaufman's skill as a director that each of these major roles was played by someone who seemed literally to melt seamlessly into the identity of his/her character. 

 

Despite the film's title, the story really centers around Nin's adulterous relationship with Miller. The film seems to presume a certain knowledge of the participants' reputations by the viewers, since very little background or biographical filler is provided. About all we know at the beginning of the film is that Anais is a sexually frustrated bourgeois wife, and Miller is a struggling writer, footloose in Paris, separated from his wife in Brooklyn. As the movie unfolds, we see a natural rivalry and affection develop between Miller and Nin, which both feeds their separate aesthetic needs, and chips away at their respective relationships with their spouses. Both Hugo (Nin's husband), and June, it turns out, are much more uninhibited and daring than we would have suspected. June, particularly, who has a strong bi-sexual streak, seduces Nin while driving Henry wild with jealousy.  This unconventionality is presented as would be expected, as creative-destructive irrationality within a Freudian context of suppressed sexual experimentation and risk.       

Kaufman's version of Miller, as the earthy beast of Rabelaisian pretensions, intent on exploiting his sexual nature and uninhibited lust, but with a lively and basically innocent, impulsive and spontaneous nature, is contrasted to the scheming, unpredictable and mystical natures of the two women. Kaufman's framing of these audaciously "liberated" feminine prototypes--Nin's calculating predation, and June's sunken, self-pitying, coquettish vamping--against the "straight" Miller is a fresh commentary on the old-fashioned notion of the red devil exploiting women for artistic purposes, or simple selfish pleasure.      

  

Both Medeiros and Thurman, in their very prime of beauty, bring real depth to the story. Medeiros/Nin presents the case of the "modern woman artist"--hungry for experience, insatiable for material, willing to use anyone, or anything, to achieve a transcendence over the given, contrasted against June--the emotionally complex, hypnotic, hormonally driven "deadly" witch who, if she cannot, as Henry's muse, inspire him to greatness, will castrate him with devastating critiques.

 

The spirit of the film--despite all this emotional sturm und drang between the main characters, is surprisingly light and casual. Paris is portrayed as a kind of peasant playground, with a host of odd-balls, including a quaint caricature of Brassai (the great French photographer), a couple of deft magicians, the art students' street gala, a saucy whorehouse madam, a prurient psychiatrist, and sundry colorful freaks--which is reminiscent, for me, of Fellini's clowns or the troop of circus performers in Antonioni's Blow-Up. Underlying this picturesque bohemian tapestry is a score arranged by none other than Anais Nin's real-life half-brother and classical composer-professor of music Joaquin Nin-Culmell, a figure mentioned before on this blog. Nin-Culmell's collection of war-horses d'amour, and touching impressionistic fragments of classical chamber pieces perfectly fits the mood of the movie. Special favorites include the captioned clip from his Tonadas for the foggy Paris street night scene; the spirited piano romp accompanying the bycicyle ride in the forested suburbs; and Henry's dancing rendition of "Barnacle Bill, the Sayyyyyy-lor!"

 

While Henry & June is in many respects a fictional evocation of a time and place which is storied, the emphasis here seems to be on dramatic elements seen apart from their literary associations. Henry may be working on a book titled Tropic of Cancer, but there's nothing else about this fact in the movie, nothing to suggest the implication of what Miller's or Nin's work might signify beyond their specific interactions as characters. Their assignations are treated half as humorous close-escapes, half as pathetic passion. 

 

The ending is delightfully inconclusive and free-spirited. Henry & Anais will remain friends for the rest of their lives, though their paths will diverge. This series of episodes in their artistic quest for realization and self-possession can only be important for them. For those who know only the work of these figures, this half-fictionalized dramatization of the actual (seen through the glass of Nin's admittedly favorable distortions) neither adds to, nor subtracts from, our sense of the meaning of their works. As celebrity bio, it's simply a kind of shadow-play on a curtain. But as cinematic entertainment, it's great stuff. We can enjoy superimposing the notorious real models against their fictional counterparts, while remaining free to follow the story autonomously, as pure drama.          

Downhill Racer - Cool Clean & Bracing

Green cocktails may suggest cooler climes, or tropical ones. Maybe green is an indeterminate color? 

 

One of my favorite writers--though he long ago got out of the screen writing business, for reasons of, as he has often put it, self-preservation--is James Salter. Better known now as a stylish short story writer and novelist, his most notable effort as a screen writer was Downhill Racer [1969], a Robert Redford vehicle, adapted from the novel by Oakley Hall. It also starred Gene Hackman, as his coach (a familiar type of role for Hackman), and the coolly seductive Camilla Sparv as the love interest. Redford played the typical American skier, talented but beset with temptations and distractions which threatened his performance.

 

In any case, here's a drink inspired by the snowy slopes and alpine air, a drink to summon the freshness of a cold morning of skiing.

 

 

Ingredients - by proportion:

 

4 Parts Gin

2 Parts Midori 

1 Part Anisette

1 Part fresh lime juice

 

Garnish: Option lime slice

 

Shaken hard and served up in a frosty cocktail glass.      

METRO - A Day in the Life

In 2005, after almost a 30 years hiatus, during which time I was largely preoccupied with pursuing a career as a bureaucrat with the U.S. government in San Francisco, I published a collection of short poems which I had written during the preceding several weeks. I had discovered there was a printer working in Marin County who possessed a Heidelberg Cylinder Press, one of the few still in working order in the world. He used an automated technology for the preparation of polymer plates (instead of metal moveable type in a bed) made directly from computer file font programs, which enabled the efficient production of traditional mechanical impressions. I had wanted to do some letterpress publications for a long while, and I was also curious to see how this new technology performed.  

     

Self-publication has traditionally been a suspect activity, regarded as an indulgence, since there is no "jury" of taste which oversees the suitability of publication, which "warrants" the right to enter the marketplace of literary commodities, which "authenticates" the value and privilege of formal approval. 

 

Certainly, the act of (the humility of) petitioning another entity--a publisher, a printer, an editor--to publish one's work, is a justifiable relationship: After all, "publication" involves a number of complex steps, none of them "free" for the having. A publisher--whether commercial, academic, non-profit or official--takes a financial risk, or makes a "gift" of the costs associated with a contract or agreement for publication. That bargain involves the acknowledgment of a long tradition of print media in which any printed matter is assigned a certain quality. 

 

Departures from this historical relationship between writer/artist, and material text have been relatively obscure, and infrequent. The idea of an engagement of the writer/artist with the material production of a work--either as original artifact, or as a direct application to publish a work independently of any third party (i.e., "publisher")--strikes most people as an unjustified vanity, hence the term "vanity press."     

         

Inevitably, in the course of cultural development, canons of taste and judgment arise to fill the space between the writer/artist, and the possible public or audience for a work. "Taste-makers" may include editors, critics, teachers, printers, grants & contest judges, etc. All these mediate between private production, and consumers of material texts. 

 

With the arrival of electronic media--particularly cathode ray tube projection screens (computers)--the concept of "material text" has become ambiguated. Is an online "magazine" a material text? Yes and no. Does an online journal, or newspaper, a "publication" or just a projection on a screen, have with more in common with a slideshow, or a movie, than with a book?

 

Putting aside such considerations, I should mention that I was always interested in "books" as such, before the idea of writing anything for publication ever entered my head. I began to buy books as a teenager, at about age 13, and frequently exhausted my skimpy allowance on hardcover first editions, bought at the tiny local retail bookstore in the town where I grew up.

 

I loved books, I loved reading them, and I loved the idea of a personal library. There was no one in those days, whom I knew, who shared such preoccupations. My stepfather thought I was nuts. When he read a book, he tended to degrade it deliberately, stretching and twisting and soiling it, spilling cigarette ash and coffee on the pages, and generally using it up in the process. 

 

The idea of a book as a useful object took precedence over its possible value as a work of art, or its literal value ($$), for instance, as a first edition on the antique-collectible market. 

 

I became a collector of rare books in the 1980's, and in due course, a dealer in collectible first editions in the mid-1990's. In addition, in the 1970's, I set up as a literary small press, publishing issues of a poetry magazine, as well as several full-length collections of verse. The design and production of books is a diverting affair, and I would rather have been doing something like this, than processing dry paperwork all those years, but we can't always choose what manner of support we get stuck with.

 

In the end, I'd much rather publish my own book, than have someone else do it. I like presenting my work--making it--in exactly the way it occurs to me it should be appreciated. This process brings me closer--not further--from an ideal relationship between author and text. What others might describe as vanity, to me is a more direct expression of my involvement with the actual work itself. To me, a book is something I make, not something which I bequeath to strangers to interpret and revision in their terms. The time may soon be coming when writers will, of necessity, become much more involved with the actual production of their own texts for consumption. As traditional publication--and the processes and procedures which once were expressed through it--decays, the writer's (and artist's) dependence upon these traditions will gradually fade away. Self-publication may be an harbinger of the future.     

 

 

Metro was intended to be an expression of, or experiment in, the use of a square format to present very short poems. The danger of short poems is that they may descend to the level of jokes or anagrams, tricks and toys. Any short poem which doesn't make its point immediately risks being thought of as a failure of invention, or simply a waste of time, though a short poem which is too apprehensible, risks being thought trivial or naive. Mysterious fragments or unlikely combinations like haiku, or shards from ancient papyri, often move me to meditate, or deconstruct the thought or linguistic rubric underlying their properties. 

 

Metro was intended to be a collection of short poems or fragments all imagined or coined in a single day, from a morning sipping espresso over a game of chess, to nightfall under a wintry moon. The idea of metro was as a transit between states of mind, as between destinations along a rail line, points along the route of existence. There have been long novels written about the events occurring in a single day's span, vast masses of ratiocination and psychological speculation heaped up against the complexity of the mind's intricate circuitry, its limitless accruals.        

The relation between the mind's apprehension of visual, aural, and tactile impressions influenced by the effect--for instance, by the effect of a gin cocktail on the consciousness of the writer--water and gin mixed, invisibly, together. 

 

    

I thought, here, of writing "Fuji" instead of "Fiji" since Fuji color film has been familiar to camera users the world over for decades--their familiar dark green boxes of 35 millimeter format film--but decided against it. The word "liner" suggests an ocean liner on the horizon ("on the sunset"), where sunset, in the South Pacific--for anyone who's been there--can be, and frequently is, a diffusion of red, orange, purple, blue and yellow hues "outlined" by the tropical orientation of the climate. 

 

   

When I showed this poem to my friend Robert Grenier, he asked "have you ever fucked a witch?" "I'm not sure," I replied, "and I'm not sure that I could ever be sure that I actually had." The "Woooo..." has two meanings for me: The Hallow'e'en cry, and an ironic bay of exasperation. 

 

  

One temptation of working with very short form, is in setting up dichotomies or balances. Two phrases which both do and do not "fit" together is a most common effect. Linguistic occasions which are unlikely partners, or unlikely bedfellows, intrigue the ear, and surprise the mind--the contrast here between an injunction to "be shown" something, and the pretense of "wanting to" appear to have a certain attitude--I find an attractive set of alternative possible meanings.   

 

  

This is a joke about Duchamp. 

   

The tension between words (or letters) as signs, or engravings on a surface (such as rock, or a billboard) and one's reactive commentary upon it, is one example of the tension between contexts which I mentioned above. When we're no longer here can happen in an imagined past, when, in the future, the poem is read after the poem's original occurrence, so that "I wrote that down" before I died, but we read it after I died. It's a weird notion.

 

    

The transitory or evanescent quality of waves or disturbances on the surface of water suggests the subtlety of thought, silently, ineluctably erased by change. One of my thoughts is mankind's failure to create enduring evidences of his presence. It all becomes dust, or, as in this instance, a fleeting wrinkle on the surface of clear liquid.

 

   

I spent endless hours playing "sand-lot" baseball, basketball and touch football as a kid. Sometimes one of us would bring a lively pet dog, who would think the baseball was "his" toy, and he would run after the grounders, grab them in his mouth and run around, or away from us, in the middle of the game.  

One thing I'm certain of: No one--no publisher--could or would have been willing to publish this odd collection of poems in the way that I imagined it. Is this an argument against--or in favor of--such a process? I let you be the judge.

_____________

These images were taken with a digital camera directly from the book. It's available, a limited edition of 300 copies, for $50 apiece, directly from me. Unpaginated. 87 poems.     

The Living Daylights

                                                                  A man is laughing

With his jaw

But the jaw

Is cracking

Along the fissures

He is laughing

But the laughter is decaying

His teeth are grinning

But the laugh is dying

The jaw is creaking

On its hinges

It's true

On the gallows

No joke is wasted

The Sting - 3 Layers of Nostalgia

 

 

It's not difficult to account for the easy success of George Roy Hill's The Sting [1973]. A brilliantly designed production, which starred the duo of Paul Newman and Robert Redford (they had previously done Butch Cassidy in 1969, establishing a natural working relationship), it forged a vision of Depression Era America which is part noir cliche, part comic satire, and part straight drama. 

 

The film was a runaway success at the Oscars, walking away with Best Picture, Best Director, Best Music Score, Best Costume Design (Edith Head), Best Film Editing, Best Art-Set Decoration, and Best Screenplay. Plus Golden Globe Best Picture. They must have been doing something right!

   

 

The film will forever be remembered for its sound-track, adapted by Marvin Hamlisch from the piano rags of Scott Joplin. Combining straight piano settings, with 'Twenties rag band adaptations, the richly evocative score almost turned the story into a musical, as the period settings and costumes and clever old-fashioned scene-cuts all were coordinated to create a seamlessly smooth narrative cartoon. Joplin's ragtime masterpieces received a much-deserved shot in the arm as a result of the success of this movie, and today, almost forty years later, it shows little evidence of abating. The long slow rendition of Solace, A Mexican Serenade, which accompanies the sadly unfortuitous assignation between Hooker and the female assassin sent to kill him, is one of cinema's most affecting sequences, capturing the melancholy loneliness of an emptied out big city diner, and later the cheap boardinghouse.     

 

Conceived as a spoof on the 'Thirties gangster-gambler genre, the dramatic tension set up between Newman (Gondorf) and Redford (Hooker), is a master-apprentice relationship based on "grifting" as a soft criminal persona. A cynical take on hard times, the plot follows small-time con-man Johnny Hooker to Chicago, where he convinces Gondorf (the old pro) to teach him how to engineer "the big con"--against big racketeer Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw)--as revenge for Lonnegan's killing Hooker's partner Luther Coleman. The delicate arrangements required to set up the very elaborate trap (sting) for the aggressively pernicious Lonnegan involve the participation of a host of colorful underground figures, including Ray Walston, Harold Gould, Eileen Brennan, Jack Kehoe and Charles Dierkop, among others. Meticulously detailed with period costumes and automobiles, elevated train tracks and gritty urban back streets, it's like an amalgam of all the high and low elements of Thirties' cinematic tropes: the whorehouse disguised as a fun-house merry-go-round, the corrupt gravel-voiced beat detective (Charles Durning), the Vaudeville stage scene, the mob hit-man, the basement betting-parlor, and so on.              

 

 

The film's social subtext of economic desperation flattens out the moral dimension, so we're allowed to root for the good crooks against the bad ones, without feeling as if we'd betrayed our values. The Seventies' anti-social theme of a survival team of swashbuckling soldiers-of-fortune--which Newman and Redford had initiated in Butch Cassidy--finds its clearest expression here, and the love interest, however subtle or under-played, is really between these two heavies, Newman the washed-out heister, Redford the bushy-tailed side-kick. 

 

   
  

The aura of nostalgic swagger in which the film is enveloped, encourages the audience to see it in the context of the stereotypical situations and stock characters from film history, but the hard luck reality of economic depression provides a contrasting undertone: The story is all in good fun, but crime is also one plausible alternative to desperation, or righting the wrongs of a society that is corrupt from top to bottom. Doyle Lonnegan is like a banker, doing business on a grand scale, exploiting and punishing people on the edge. Gondorf and Hooker are like anti-Robin Hoods, exacting revenge on a "captain" of crime. We enjoy their risky escapades, their hair-raising schemes, and admire their moxie. In the end, we're perfectly delighted to see Lonnegan outsmarted and whisked off by the dumb cop "to avoid being seen in a place like this." Lonnegan, after all, has an image to protect! He's an upstanding citizen.   

       

 
 

The Sting has inspired a number of attempts at Gangster Era recreations. There's The Untouchables [1987], a Kevin Kostner vehicle, and a good one. Both films use the little fillip of an ironic ending. 

 

At the conclusion of The Sting, Gondorf asks Hooker, if bringing it off--the sting--feels good enough to assuage his grief/revenge and grifter's compulsion; Hooker thinks a moment, then shakes his head. "But it's close!" and then they both have a good laugh as the credits begin to roll. It was a great romp.

 

At the end of The Untouchables, Kostner (Elliott Ness) is leaving the Chicago police building when he's approached by the anxious young crime reporter. "What'll you do now that Prohibition has ended," he asks. "I'll go have a drink!" he replies. After the violence and fuss of his war against bootlegging and organized crime, the pretext is suddenly swept aside, made irrelevant. The music rises, and the camera moves up and back to reveal the dramatic perspective of the big city canyon.       

 

Nostalgia for a past that didn't exist--except in the movies--is colored by our realization that America's history was anything but inspiring, especially for its armies of neglected and defeated. Having created our own myths of tortured violence and fluffy indulgence, we can now look back with fake pride at these competing fables, one of a fake prosperity, the other of a fake "poetic" hardship ennobled by homely virtues and ordinary decency. It's like Dead End [1937] crossed with It's A Wonderful Life [1946]. The Sting is perfectly balanced between our sense of fun and our foreboding about economic insecurity, which is what capitalism produces. The "outlaw" in each of us fantasizes about the big score, of being rewarded for being smart enough to beat the system (whatever its rules, whatever the consequences of failure), or being given the consolation of knowing we played by the rules, even as we were being tossed aside in the process.  

 

What we know in our bones is that quasi-historical pulp fiction like this isn't the real story of America. The real story is the exploitation of the workers by the robber-barons, the bankers, the railroad companies, the factory titans, the great capitalists of the Gilded Age, and the early modern Industrial Era. The wave of social legislation that began in the 1930's, and continued after the War, lasted until the 1970's, when capital set about turning the tables once again, beginning with the "Reagan Revolution" and continuing with Bush I & II. "There was a class war," someone recently quipped, "and we lost." 

It's just entertainment, after all. Does the dialectic that The Sting sets up, between the good bad guys, and the bad bad guys, tell us anything important about its subject-matter, or about our sense of national identity? What we admire in our fellow-citizens is durability, charm, grace under pressure, and guile. These are the gifts that will carry us through. These are the attributes of the underdog. The qualities we need when times get tough. 

 

Editing Eigner's Collected Poems - Considerations [Part II]

As I explained in part in my appended essay "The Text as an Image of Itself" published in Volume IV of The Collected Poems of Larry Eigner [Stanford University Press, 2010], the primary principle in editing Eigner's individual poems, was in reproducing the exact relationships between individual words, lines and stanzas in each separate poem. Eigner thought of his poems as visual designs in space--a poem could shift, or "drift," or zig-zag, or fall, across the "space" of the page. 

 

I think it might be helpful to imagine this concept in terms of a spacial outline, or envelope, or window, within which the shape of each poem is contained. Larry's poems define their own outlines, or envelopes, in space. They push out, and arrange themselves, according to the manner in which they unfold: This involves both visual and aural qualities, timing and orientation. A whole Eigner poem exists within the final form of its setting. The shape of this envelope might be considered as a rectangular box (as I've drawn it below)--     

 

     

 

--or as a kind of oblique shape (more like the one below), following the line lengths and groupings of its respective stanzas, words and spacings. It would seem clear enough that the ultimate "size" of the page would relate to the scale of the typeface (in Larry's case, a mechanical given following the traditional construction templates of the manual typewriter). An individual poem's final position within the rectangular dimensions of the typewriter letter sheet, would be dependent upon the conveniences of individual habit. Unless one wished to make a "painting" or a unique holographic document, as such, the process of the setting of an individual poem would not involve a commitment to the typewriter page as having a direct relationship to the final position of the text on the page, or the scale at which it could be replicated, in reproduction. In other words, unless Eigner's original typescripts are regarded purely as ends in themselves, incorporating all their flaws, corrections, errors etc., as implied intentions, then the typescripts must be treated as blueprints, or rough versions, intended--of necessity--to show how the poem exists within its own parameters and internal proportions. This was how Eigner wrote his poems, as free-form compositions, whose ordinations were limited only by the mechanism he employed.                  

 

In determining how Eigner's poems might be set, we understood that our first priority was in duplicating the internal relationships--the equivalent spacing of the manual typewriter--as Larry had insisted on every one of his holographic pages. These pages were not intended as guidelines on how the poems should look on a page when finally printed--he never thought of them as finished works in themselves. The amount of space in the two dimensions surrounding each poem varied considerably among the countless expressions of Eigner's work over the five decades of his career. The relationship between the text and its margins may be proportional to a set of given dimensions--books by Larry varied in size, from as small as 2x3 inches, to as large as 15x30 inches. In addition, separate poems were frequently split in half, or multiple poems were often lumped together, several to a page. 

 

There is no evidence to suggest, finally, that Eigner wished that the overall shapes--the envelope or spacial outline of his set poems--were to be positioned precisely as they appear on his original holographs. Neither the corrective annotations and adjustments, nor the organic waywardness of his "journey" across the page, were intended to be slavishly replicated; nor could they be. A poem, for instance, which began at a certain point on the typewriter page, might continue, by accident or simple process of expansion, beyond its given parameters. This does not suggest that Eigner wanted his poems to wander off into empty space (off the page), or that every poem should be centered, or surrounded by a given proportion of blank space, or reproduced on sheets proportional to the given envelope of a single poem.

 

Larry's primary consideration, when mediating its transition to finished form, was to see, insofar as possible, that it be "fitted" onto a single page; or, failing that, that its internal inter-relationships be preserved across the splice of the page-break. The "whole page" therefore, took on a special meaning for Larry, as a method of preserving the whole spacial intricacy of each single, configured poem, which could best be achieved without interruption. 

  

Realizing the above priorities, our task as editors was:

 

To preserve the internal relationships of his poems; 

 

To accommodate all the poems in such a way as to allow as many of them as possible to be seen whole, unbroken, on a single page.

 

In addition, we wanted to establish a template of the dimensions of the page which would make clear where the left margin was, without resorting to a variable, expedient one. There is a natural tension between Larry's formally organic, almost mathematically precise internal adjustments within individual poems, and the exigencies of traditional typographical practice. Any individual Eigner poem might be expressed typographically in any one of a number of possible ways. Establishing a fixed left-hand margin was a way of delineating clearly what the frame of visual reference was; preserving the equivalently set arrangements of the poem, within its overall shape, was the other half of that formula. What this means in practical terms is that nearly all of the poems begin "left" and go some way, in their typical "drift" rightwards, and some of them go all the way to the right margin. Would narrower poems "demand" more space around them, isolated, in the center of the page, than if set to a harder left rule?      

There is thus a sequential relationship among the whole series of poems, which over-rides the possible visual expressions of each separate poem. Eigner's work does not suggest a chronological series of formats, tied to the occasions and taste of different typographical or book-making adaptations, but to a single, linear theme. That theme was remarkably consistent, possibly even oppressive in its implications. Like Whitman, Larry increasingly thought of his work, as he aged, as constituting a single arc, all of a piece, unified by approach and method. As he rounded the corner into old age, he could look back with confidence to a consistency of method that never deviated. The poems--in style and approach--look remarkably like each other, separated by decades. Poems written in the early 1950's seem very like those written 40 years later.                  

My Views on Elective Abortion

Below is a world map denoting the national policies regarding elective abortion. As can be seen from the map, abortion on demand is mostly a condition predominant in Western, "first world" countries. From this perspective, restriction on abortion is seen to be weighted primarily toward Third World nations, in which religious or cultural traditions are rooted in pre-scientific or pre-modern viewpoints regarding the inviolability ("sacredness") of life, or in which women (as members of a class) have traditionally been relegated to an inferior position of authority or power.  

 

   

Legend transcription     Legal on request     Legal for maternal life, health, mental health, rape, fetal defects, and/or socioeconomic factors     Legal for or illegal with exception for maternal life, health, mental health, rape, and/or fetal defects     Illegal with exception for maternal life, health, mental health and/or rape     Illegal with exception for maternal life, health, and/or mental health     Illegal with no exceptions 

 

Abortion is not a new procedure, though its means and effectiveness remained primitive and dangerous right up until the 20th Century, when more scientific means of application were developed. Abortions, of a kind, were known to have been practiced since ancient times. With the arrival of safe and efficient abortion procedures, it has become more widespread, and has increasingly come under scrutiny.  The public acknowledgment of the desirability of legal abortion has been gradually increasing over the last century. Attempts around the world to legalize the availability of abortion have come up against various religious and ethical barriers, based on concepts of the sacredness of life at conception--regarded as holy--or on suppression of a women's right to determine the outcomes of her own pregnancies. 

 

The Catholic Church has traditionally lobbied against the practice of abortion, regarding conception as a holy event, not to be traduced by human intervention. If conception is a moment of divine grace, it's argued, then anyone who subscribes to this doctrine must accept that all abortions constitute an act of murder, and a sin against god. 

 

Never having been much of a religious person myself--my parents forced me to attend the Presbyterian Church for four years, though they never attended any church, to my knowledge--the idea of all life being sacred and inviolable was never a concept I thought of except in purely profane, philosophical/ethical terms. I grew up during a period in which violent conflict, and the prosecution of "necessary wars" resulting in mass death(s), was regarded as a social and political good. Killing bad people, or people who fought for evil reasons, was a good thing. Evil was a real force in the world, and in order to defeat it, violence was occasionally the last resort in the eternal struggle between virtuous, and non-virtuous individuals or groups. There were those who might attempt to attach religious significance or meanings to such conflict, but these kinds of meanings were outmoded in the modern world. Death was a necessary consequence of the prosecution of moral righteousness, and could be shown to be a healthy process, on a case by case basis. Otherwise, terrible consequences would occur.

 

Despite attempts by religious zealots, or right-wing extremists, to convince me otherwise, I continue, in late middle-age, to regard the so-called "preciousness" of, or right to life as a morally indefensible absolute. 

 

Much of the suffering in the world is a consequence not only of over-crowding and mindless increase, but of the conflicts which develop over the scarcity of resource or land. In the 19th Century, it was still possible to regard the earth almost as an infinite resource, in which mankind, no matter how fast it increased and spread, would never challenge natural limits. We now know, to our despair, how false that assumption was. 

 

The raw value of life is roughly proportional to the likelihood of its prevalence. We think nothing of killing hundreds, thousands, even millions of animals at a time, our only probable remorse being that this may, precipitously or over time, end up driving a species into total extinction, its existence only a memory. Each year, millions of humankind worldwide die from hunger, disease, violent conflict. We think nothing of hearing, for instance, that a thousand people died miserably last week in Eastern Africa. Que sera, tough luck, we think to ourselves. 

 

Yet we argue endlessly over the sacredness of fetuses. Fetuses, after all, are "innocent" and "helpless" victims. The propagation of life is indeed a miraculous process, designed by nature to perpetuate the descent of species over time. Like all animals, however, reproduction is designed to overcome the inherent moderation of numbers which limit all living things. If a species is to survive, its method of replication must be many times more efficient than mere maintenance, since the balance of available sustenance is never unlimited. The reason that all the living things now on the earth exist, is that their reproductive success overcame the challenges set before them. And that prevalence was also facilitated by adaptation, both genetic and circumstantial. In other words, our ability to reproduce, and to reproduce with alternative models, are what enabled us to survive.  

 

But what happens when you begin to overcome natural limits through the artificial elimination of enemies--such as predators, disease--or by obtaining easy availability of food and materiel? You change the ground-rules of descent. Man's manipulation of the environment has meant that we've created an artificial condition in which the natural limits to our increase have been moderated. This has led to our current "population explosion." And this in turn has led to a whole host of new problems, few of which seem immediately soluble. Our science and technology has facilitated a rapid expansion, but has provided us with precious few ultimate answers about how we might prevent even these impressive parameters from curtailing our continued profligacy. We've postponed armageddon, but we can't delay it forever.

 

Unlike the rest of the natural kingdom, humans have large, complex brains. We can see and understand the consequences of our acts, and have some control over our destinies. We know from nature that life is only as precious as its possessors can make it. The substance and value of the individual may be paramount in ethical or political terms, but in the grand scheme of life on this planet, individuals are relatively trivial. Henry David Thoreau is often quoted as saying that he wished "to live deliberately"--that is, to live with purpose and direction, to a given end. Clearly, as members of a successful species, we no longer need to pretend that the mindless increase of our numbers, promoted through our sexual drives and moral concepts of our own sacred value, are sufficient as a guide to conduct. Man doesn't need to preserve the notion of sexual union as a sacred event leading to a holy, inviolable conception. That idea may have seemed viable once, when humankind was of manageable extent, and growth seemed like a natural good. But people are not ants.   

 

First trimester abortions should remain an option available to all women. Men and women aren't just dumb animals. We can prevent conception, or we can terminate it, with equal rationality. It is not a devaluation of life to want to manage our numbers, either on the grand scale, or on the individual level. If we can, with good conscience, punish and kill each other as adults, then we have the moral authority to determine whether we shall, or shall not, add to our numbers. 

  

I regard ethical arguments based on the presumed value of the immature fetus to be nonsensical. A "human" the size of a pea, or smaller, does not weigh on my conscience. In a theoretical sense, life begins at inception. But nature isn't interested in theories. It only demands, that as a species, we prevail. There really isn't much question about that, anymore. We need to "want" to bring life into being, into the fullness of potential and affection. Accidents and rapes and unwanted babies are not "acts of god." We have brains, if only we will use them.