DISCARDED DAYS

Time teaches a lighter tread: or/the body bound to gravity must shed/layer after layer. What progress is tracked, /comes only in the manner of what’s discarded: ---From “The Road of Imperfect Attentions” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa. 07-30-11 

DISCARDED DAYS

What have we discarded cutting through tunnels

we must have plodded to quarry from lives we

might have been accidentally given? What loves

have we found, what hearts have we lost? Layers

of clay, cracked stones, and silt could build us our

houses of hurts and ruptured dreams. Not a home. 

But we take care to wake up to days we can shape,

to moments we could mould like delicate bowls

whence we share victual and drink for our hungry

and thirsty souls. When travel becomes a burden

of faithlessness or pain, we call each other out:

Be brave, hold on, take on the world if we must! 

When these passageways fall dark, we walk on.

After all, our lives are not made of discarded days.

---Albert B. Casuga

07-31-11

LITERARY THEORY INFORMING MY WRITING (ARCHIVED POSTS JULY TO OCTOBER 2009)

As a writer, I subscribe to a theory of literature that informs my praxis. To accommodate requests for an accessible and relatively comprehensive view of these, I am posting the dates and titles of discussions posted in this literary blog which I have culled from a book I wrote earlier for my students of Literary  Theory, Literary Criticism, and Creative Writing.

Writing seminar directors are welcome to use these materials as they see fit. A number of seminars in the Philippines, Canada,  and the United States have been announced lately, and I hope these notes will be useful to participants. 

All I require is that their use be acknowledged as teaching materials derived from this literary blog. http://ambitsgambit.blogspot.com/ 

These posts (according to dates) may be accessed as stand-alone articles in the 2009 archives of my literary blog.  They may be used in seminars on a per-day/per-session basis.

July 1, 2009 LANGUAGE OF POETRY: IS POETRY FOR EVERYONE?

July 3, 2009 PART 1: A LITERARY THEORY FOR TEACHING LITERATURE AS A HUMANISTIC DISCIPLINE

July 5, 2009 PART 2: A LITERARY THEORY FOR TEACHING LITERATURE AS A HUMANISTIC DISCIPLINE. What is literary appreciation?

July 6, 2009 PART 3: A LITERARY THEORY FOR TEACHING LITERATURE AS A HUMANISTIC DISCIPLINE: APPROACHES TO LITERARY APPRECIATION  

July 7, 2009  PART 4: AN AESTHETIC THEORY FOR TEACHING LITERATURE AS A HUMANISTIC DISCIPLINE  

July 8, 2009 PART 5. LITERARY THEORY: GUIDE QUESTIONS IN THE APPRECIATION OF FICTION (SHORT STORY, NOVEL, DRAMA) 

July 9, 2009 PART 6: APPRECIATION OF POETRY – A SUMMARY **(See July 1 entry on Language of Poetry for details.) 

July 10, 2009 A THEORY OF ANALYSIS IN LITERARY APPRECIATION: PART 1

July 11, 2009 PART 2: LITERARY (POETRY) ANALYSIS; THE SENSORY-IMPRESSIONISTIC LEVEL (POETRY ANALYSIS: THE SENSORY-IMPRESSIONISTIC LEVEL) 

July 13, 2009 PART 3: LITERARY (POETRY) ANALYSIS: THE COGNITIVE LEVEL  

July 14, 2009 Part 4: LITERARY ANALYSIS (POETRY) THE COGNITIVE LEVEL --- Meaning in the Poem 

July 15, 2009 PART 5: ASSOCIATIVE LEVEL OF LITERARY (POETRY) ANALYSIS APPLIED --- Desert Places: Meaning Analyzed 

July 16, 2009 PART 6: HOW TO ANAYZE A DIFFICULT POEM --- Analyzing A Theory of Echoes: A Practicum 

September 10, 2009 A THEORY OF LITERARY CRITICISM IN AN EMPIRICALLY-BASED APPRECIATION OF LITERATURE: PART I, SECTION 1: CRITICIZING FICTION  

September 11, 2009 PART 2 LITERARY CRITICISM: DISCOVERING THE ARTISTIC PURPOSE AS A BASIS FOR CRITICISM 

September 13, 2009 PART 3 LITERARY CRITICISM: CRITICIZING STYLE IN FICTION  

September 14, 2009 PART 4 LITERARY CRITICISM: FOCUSING ON THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE  

September 15, 2009 PART 5 LITERARY CRITICISM: CRITICIZING TECHNIQUE IN FICTION (What is Technique? What are the Elements of Technique?) 

September 16, 2009 PART 6 LITERARY CRITICISM: CRITICIZING TECHNIQUE (FICTION) --- THE EFFECTIVE POINT OF VIEW  

September 17, 2009 PART 7 LITERARY CRITICISM: CRITICIZING TECHNIQUE (FICTION) --- WHAT IS AN EFFECTIVE PLOT?  

Friday, September 18, 2009 PART 8 LITERARY CRITICISM: CRITICIZING TECHNIQUE IN FICTION --- EFFECTIVE CHARACTERIZATION  

September 19, 2009 PART 9 LITERARY CRITICISM: CRITICIZING TECHNIQUE IN FICTION --- THE EFFECTIVE SCALE AND OTHER TECHNIQUES  

September 21, 2009 LITERARY CRITICISM: A PRACTICUM --- APPLYING THE NORMS --- LITERARY CRITICISM PRACTICUM: A CRITICISM OF E. A. POE'S

"THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO" (PART 1) 

September 22, 2009 PRACTICUM PART 2: CRITICIZING POE'S STYLE IN "AMONTILLADO" (The Plot, Characters, Setting, Language, Symbols) 

September 23, 2009 PRACTICUM 3: CRITICIZING POE'S TECHNIQUE IN "AMONTILLADO"  (Point of View, Order of Actions, Characterization, Scale) 

September 24, 2009 PART 1: CRITICIZING POETRY --- THE ARTISTIC PURPOSE AS A BASIS FOR LITERARY CRITICISM  

September 25, 2009 PART 2: CRITICIZING THE STYLE OF POETRY  

September 26, 2009 PART 3: CRITICIZING THE STYLE OF POETRY --- LINGUISTIC DEVICES (VERBAL ENERGIES)  

September 27, 2009 PART 4: CRITICIZING THE STYLE OF POETRY --- LINGUISTIC DEVICES: Part 4: Criticizing the Style of Poetry --- LITERARY DEVICES (Words Have It) 

September 29, 2009 PART 5: CRITICIZING THE TECHNIQUE OF POETRY  

September 29, 2009 PART 6: CRITICIZING THE TECHNIQUE OF POETRY -- THE ORDER OF STRUCTURAL PARTS  

September 30, 2009 PART 7: MAJOR ART MOVEMENTS THAT INFLUENCED LITERARY STYLE AND TECHNIQUE  (Major Art Movements Which Have Influenced Literary Style and Technique : Realism, Naturalism, Impressionism, Surrealism, and Stream-of-Consciousness) 

October 1, 2009 PART 1: A THEORY OF EVALUATION IN THE APPRECIATION OF LITERATURE.  HOW VALUABLE IS THE PIECE OF LITERATURE TO THE READER? 

October 2, 2009 PART 2: EVALUATION OF LITERATURE --- UNIVERSAL APPROACHES AND VALUES  

October 3, 2009 PART 3: EVALUATION OF LITERATURE --- FORMAL VALUES AND VALUES FROM THE PERSONAL APPROACH

(See 2009 Archives http://ambitsgambit.blogspot.com/)

It is expected that seminar participants involve themselves in subsequent creative writing to apply these theories. Writing, of course, is the most eloquent manifestation of informed literary appreciation.

SILENCE

SILENCE

This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper. ---From “The Hollow Men” by T.S. Eliot 

By sundown, they will be gone, like long shadows

on my porch walls. All the fierce singing done,

what remains is the quiet murmur of the bourn.

Its stream will not return, nor will the swallows. 

But while they flitted from tree tops to broken

perches, did they not cry out their bravest songs?

These are our elm trees, these are our willows,

we pieced our homes here together, we roosted. 

At the bluffs, we find the edge of the woods muted

now. Soon, even the cackling gulls will dive a final

swoon, catch the last crayfish lost on boulders left

bare by ebbing tide that must also leave its shore. 

It is troths like these that will not last, nothing

endures. The silence can only become a whimper.

---Albert B. Casuga

07-29-11 

Prompt: This morning it hits me: how silent the woods have become now with most of the migrants done singing their fierce but temporary attachments.---Dave Bonta, The Morning Porch, 07-29-11

Photo by Bobby Wong, Jr.

A DREAM

I am the dream that flickers beneath the eyelids/of the child who wakes then names the events/that unfold. ---From “What You Don’t Always See” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 07-27-11

A DREAM

We were running through rice fields, abuelo,

some of us flying our bamboo-ribbed kites: 

then a billowing red cloud burned my serpent

kite, its long tail falling by the river bank. Aiee! 

What wild wind would wander this way? Why?

It was like a huge face, a very angry face? Why? 

Its scowl and its roaring laughter made us all

scamper, hid under mango trees laden with fruit. 

They kept on hitting us, the falling fruit bombs,

and then there was this big blue bird cackling, 

its quivering beak raised to the darkened sky,

sounding like grandmother  yelling: Callate! 

We would pipe down and hear her protest:

Quiet, quiet! Your grandfather must sleep. 

Would I get my kite back again? I am afraid,

abuelo, but I want to go back to that dream, 

rebuild my broken kite, bathe in that river,

look for the blue bird that scolded the sky.

---Albert B. Casuga

07-28-11

Abuelo – grandfather; Callate!—Keep quiet!

DREAD

Shrugging off this cool morning’s dread
is as good as some calming camomile tea:
must be some fall breeze breaking through
the corridor of elms fencing the woods in. 

Will autumn repaint all this raw sienna
visited upon this valley by fierce sunshine?
How quickly will all this verdance go?
A tardy spring rushed a stampede of green. 

Quite like the unbridled sprint of a boy
whistling for wind to buoy his kite beyond
the bourn, this gallop toward dreaded days
of dying and death is a grown man’s dash 

through bivouacs of war. Nothing will last:
rainbow palettes on treetops turn grey
before the pall of winter inters carrion
of happy seasons. Or is it just crickets chirping? 

—Albert B. Casuga
07-27-11

Prompt: Another cool morning. Autumn’s in the air, I say to myself, but it’s really just a cricket chirping in the corner of the garden.---Dave Bonta, The Morning Porch, 07-27-11

UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY

UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY

 

Why do we return to/what we know? Do we uncover any anchors/or nets. Homeward bound, /the song goes, which means heading for home/or tied up in looking. ---From “Homeward Bound” by Hannah Stephenson, The Storialist, 07-27-11 

Cups, bric-a-brac, milestone pictures, pillows,

even rarely-washed security blankets spell it:

it is the smell of knowing that makes us run

to her stove  as soon as we drop our wee world

of toy trains, biscuit cans, disrobed barbies,

and ask if favourite cakes are cooking in the oven. 

It stays with us, this habit of pinning the tail

on memorial behinds. We know them well.

On the darkest nights, on most tempestuous times,

haven’t we gone back home quiet and blindfolded?

They know we would grow up and go away.

Folks enter into one-way contracts like these. 

Then home becomes hazy in uncharted distances.

Looking ties us down, we follow familiar scents

only to lose them along the way. Pavement arrows

do not point to where the heart lingers and stays.

Is there no clear map to this refuge? In the fog,

how can the faithless promise he is home at last? 

An undiscovered country before long, home

turns up around the bend, but we also find out

that it is the nook from which we cannot return.

---Albert B. Casuga

07-27-11

A DIALOGUE ON MIRACLES

A DIALOGUE ON MIRACLES

I saw your image stitched and stuffed as a well-/worn pincushion with the legend “There/is a place in my heart for you”. ---From “Milagrito: Eye of the Raven,” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 07-25-11

Was that a heart left askew at the wayside chapel

of the Albuquerque  abbey? Was it an offering

yanked out of a purloined body, a lover’s sacrifice?

Would you do that for me, amor mio, would you? 

What looked like a heart: yes, moulded in silver

melted from old pesetas and Yanqui moneda, an

unlikely blending of borders here where human

traffic routinely includes migrant decapitation. 

Mira, mira: los dedos de plata, los ojos de oro!*

But why is that other heart carved from wood?

And that shrunken head made of brittle wax?

The maze of lines on its forehead are angry cracks. 

Las hechuras de milagritos, these miracle forms,

they, too, have class distinctions: silver and gold

for the rich, wood and wax for the struggling.

Who and what would the gods hearken to? Sabes? 

Then pray, amor mio, that surprises met here

with largesse are not the same as those in heaven.                                                                            

---Albert B. Casuga

07-26-11

 ____

Amor mio – my love; pesetas, moneda – money; Sabes? – Do you know?

*Look, look: the fingers are made of silver, the eyes of gold.

ANGELUS

ANGELUS 

So long at work,/and teetering from one impossible/task to another. I count and recount/an abacus of spilled grain, water flowing/from a sieve: o gather me now in.---From “Orison” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 07-24-11

Sundown was always gleeful for us growing up

around abuela.  It was always time to gather

the clucking hens into bamboo nests tied

on low manzanita* trees, low enough for us

to scoop the scrambling little birds beelined

behind squawking mothers into their perch. 

The chore done, the handsome lady lilts

our boisterous squadron into a sudden

calm: Anyone for rice cakes after prayers?

The magical word was “cake,” not murmured

promises for a reign of peace as it is in heaven. 

On my hammock hour, I replay sundown

tableaus like these radiant remembrances,

(while recollections remain tranquil and clear),

and gather my own noisy bird scoopers, all,

all of them gone now into their own little worlds. 

“Anyone for real stories on when I was young?

Some songs sung as I scooped frantic chicken?

Anyone for tea biscuits after sundown prayers?”

O, for those shadowy things to jump up alive

again from these empty walls. O for those songs

to chime in again to lull me, and gather me in.

---Albert B. Casuga

07-25-11

*Bird berries that look like little red apples when they ripen.

WIPING HIM DRY

WIPING HIM DRY

(For Louis)

I run my hands over the rough, dry clay,/loving best those surfaces whose cracked /veins might lead divining rods to all/the parched suburbs of the heart.---From “Dowsing”  by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 07-21-11.  

Almost like a puppy, I muttered. Something

about his rushing to be wrapped with the flannel

in my hands, his quivering wag, and what looked

like a pirouette to catch his tail, invites me to rub

his narrow back: I feel cold, abuelo, he shivers.  

Would the man in Eden have protested coyly?

From the clay he was fashioned, I imagine

he would have undergone some gentle dousing

for the moulder to have pronounced: he is good.

From the rough, dry clay, he rose in splendour. 

As did this wisp of a boy rising from the water,

hallooing: Look, abuelo, I can dive, I can swim!

He wiggled his salva vida floating to the edge,

his face toward the bright blue sky: I am good!

As all grandfathers before or after,  I said: You are! 

Oh, you are, my boy. And while I wipe you dry

after this dousing frolic, I run my hands over

your body, cleaning it of any tinge of dry clay,

loathe to think that if I were shaping you

from the mud East of Eden, I’d want you pure. 

Unalloyed, a cherubic imp of a teaser, a laughter

tickled out of a dream, a pure delight,  and clean.

---Albert B. Casuga

07-23-11

SOMALIA ON MY MIND

SOMALIA ON MY MIND

Overcast at sunrise, with a cool breeze. A gray catbird in the middle of the gray driveway picks pebbles for the collection in its gizzard.---Dave Bonta, The Morning Porch, 07-23-11

At sunrise, they rouse their children,
if they have not yet mercifully died,
to trek through desert mirage searching
for oases, cacti, lizards, iguanas, worms,
anything. It’s a landscape of clean bones,
or carrion abandoned by even the crows
that fell prey to the ghastly death march. 

I take a guilty gulp at my now tepid tea
when I espy a catbird swallow pebbles
strewn on the sunbaked driveway.
I wonder: can a  starving  child’s  belly
hold as many rock chips to ease pangs
of hunger? Catbirds prefer these strewn
granules to desert sand, I reckon,
but promptly neglect a morning shrug.

—Albert B. Casuga
07-23-11

RANTING IN AMERICA

Meanwhile in America/the news anchors make a show/of indignation at the sun, righteous/& well-coiffed as fallen angels, &/never speculate why we might/really be so hot, never mention that we are blowing up mountains/& burning their black hearts to keep cool.---From “Heat Indices” by Dave Bonta, Via Negativa, 07-22-11

RANTING IN AMERICA

There’s fire in the hills that needs deep dowsing,

there’s fire in the hills that needs good licking! 

A cry for combat, if there was one:  All patriots,

stouthearted sons and lovers, all brave hearts, 

from sleepy hamlets to the hungry metropolis,

rally to these stars and stripes. Let’s finish this! 

Meanwhile, in America, its heralds blame the sun

for doing its job of fiercely shining--- not to burn 

the parched villages whence come the spunky lad

now coming home from wars in Iraq or Baghdad--- 

but to nourish those amber waves of grain,

and fill the granaries from California to Maine. 

No, no one blames the blowing up of quarries

in mountains to extract fossil fuel for lorries 

that lumber through the highways of America

bringing to every hearth and home in America 

that same camouflage of a bomb strapped

to every man, woman, or child and snapped 

ready to explode as it has now detonated lives

out of their homes in Arizona, market dives 

threatening bankruptcies that would not respect

Wall Street giants, Bronx tramps, and now expect 

even what used to be the strongest, richest country

on this wobbling planet, to fold up, quit as sentry 

to the peace and quiet of a still lovely blue planet

whose very people might have forced its sun to set 

in the deserts of starving Somalia, bleeding Sudan,

butchered Afghanistan, un-safehouses in Pakistan, 

even in every child’s crying corner labeled  American.

Ah, but the weary hand in the farm is still American: 

There’s fire in the hills, but I’ll lay down my hoe,

bear a bucket, lick that fire. God. See the job through.

---Albert  B. Casuga

07-22-11