The Merit of following our own compulsions

The measure of artistic merit is the length to which a writer is willing to go in following his own compulsions. - John Updike

Your Privacy For Sale

Small wonder the Bush administration has insisted on immunity from prosecution for AT&T and other telecommunications that granted government access to private phone conversations and e-mails without due process or order from any court. The political action committee at AT&T contributed the maximum amount allowable by law to the Bush/Cheney campaign — twice.

CIA in the news....

• CIA rejects secret jails report
• CIA jails in Europe 'confirmed'
• UK apology over rendition flights
• US judge blocks CIA flight case - "The very subject matter of this case is a state secret," Judge James Ware wrote in a ruling.
• Inquiry into destroyed CIA tapes
• US 'may' use waterboarding again
• Doctors' Group Says It Has Evidence US Military Tortured Detainees

Sad but largely true...

What most persons consider as virtue,

after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy. ~Voltaire

Thoughts on the Making of a Poem

Nick Laird is a young novelist and poet born in Northern Ireland who this past weekend had a piece in the Guardian about the physicality of language. He starts out:

"You should put that in a poem. A thing to say to the people who write
poems; the offering of some strange coincidence or anecdote. Poets if they are
like me, sip their drink and agree, privately certain it won't give rise to
anything at all."

Laird goes on... "You can make fiction and drama from reported stories, from hearsay and incident, but not poetry."

It is my own experience that words rather than a particular story do indeed tend to go much further towards the success of a poem. It's not that I have not tried the other approach, and likely will again (I tend to be stubborn like that), but it is the cohesive junction of a word and an image, or a word and a smell or some other word and sense linkage that is more likely to drive a poem forward than anything else I've found.

Lair also quotes Edward Thomas , the early 20th century English poet on the subject of what poetry is made of, "Anything, however small, may make a poem; nothing however great is certain to." The times I have sit down with pen and paper to specifically forge a poem on some grand storyline have almost always met with failure or disappointment on my own part.

Sometimes, I have found it helpful to lift a very short line from another poem or sentence of some other type of work and use it to start a new poem. I try to let those few words allow some image to direct me forward with what I am putting on the page. Later, the opening line can be dropped, just as any of the the rest of the work can be modified and rewritten any number of times. I find it's just a really good way to jump start a poem into being.

So I tell myself here that I need to resolve that I am going to stop trying to force something into being. I must periodically remind myself of this. I do it here, once again. Sigh.

Tim Russart

Tim Russert came on the scene as a television journalist back when I was still very involved in Democratic Party politics on a daily basis. Russert became a Sunday staple that I turned to for insightful coverage of the political landscape and governmental issues as well. For those entrenched in politics, he was an essential. Indeed it can be said that he grew in such prominence that one could argue that to get to the White House, you have to go through Russert. You had to be baptized into the litany of Meet The Press guests that Russert grilled. When my wife called me at the office yesterday and told me of Russert's death I could hardly believe it. Both my wife and I each morning tune into Morning Joe on MSNBC as we are getting ready for work each morning. One of the highlights is always the visit by Russert and his most recent take on the presidential campaign. I said to Cathy upon hearing the news, "Oh my God, he won't be here for the election." Indeed, it already feel like election night will be hollow.

I realized as I have thought about his sudden departure that there are aspects of Tim Russert that I will miss that transend his political analysis. For one thing, no matter how serious Russert was on the air, their was a genuine upbeat and personable quality about him that you so seldom see. His smile and laughter were almost trademarks of every apperance he made.

For many who are perhaps not as old as I am, the image today of TV journalism is so very different from what Russert served up on Meet The Press. It was not about glitter, it was not for show. It was not entertainment news in the context that so much of Cable News has become. There was an integrity that he maintained throughout his career that you don't generally associate with TV journalism elsewere.

Russert was a tough interviewer, but he was always fair and always dignified in his interaction with guests. There were certainly times when an interviewer would hang himself, but Tim Russert never kicked the chair out from under him. He always was in search of truth wherever it might lead and he was always willing to give his guests the benefit of the doubt and allow them to explain anything they felt was necessary.

This Presidential election campaign has already been a historic one. It's an election unlike any we've had before and it just doesn't seem right that Tim Russert will not be calling the states on election night.

Habeas Corpus Lives!

For yet a third time, the U.S. Supreme Court has rebuked the Bush Administration on it's handling of the detainees at Guantanamo. It struck down a 2006 law the Republican-controlled Congress passed at the request of the President, called the Military Commissions Act. The act suspended habeas corpus - a prisoner's right to challenge his or her detention. In the court's decision, Justice Anthony Kennedy, said, "The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times." I've found it very difficult to understand how it can be viewed otherwise. It is such a fundamental part of our justice system. I will be anxious to hear what the President has to say about this decision.