As we head into a presidential election year,  Dante Alighieri’s famous inscription on the Gate of Hell seems appropriate.   Once again, Frank Luntz –Republican pollster, strategist, consultant, and cunning linguist – is setting forth the rhetorical recommendations that will be used in shaping the talking points used by Republican candidates all across the nation, from those seeking the Presidency, to those seeking seats in the House or the Senate, to those seeking seats in state legislatures and even city councils.  Dante’s epic poem comes to mind because operators like Luntz have always been with us, even in the 14th century, where they were just as reviled as they are now.

It was Luntz who famously dubbed the inheritance tax the “Death Tax.” This phrase, which makes the government appear so petty that it would take the money of dead people was adopted by virtually all Republicans and used to secure the votes of millions of Americans who will never have to pay such a tax.  It did, however, make it more difficult for the government to provide services that benefit all of those very same Americans.

All of the current Republican presidential candidates are promising to repeal the Affordable Healthcare Act, aka “Obamacare.” It does not matter that Presidents, by themselves, have no authority to repeal anything, this idea is very popular among the Republican base because they have been taught to believe that the healthcare act was a “government takeover.”  It was nothing of the sort, but Luntz recommended that phrase to be used by Republican politicians, which they all dutifully did. 

In what has to be one of the most brazen assertions of rhetorical criticism, Luntz has even redefined the term “Orwellian“:

To be “Orwellian” is to speak with absolute clarity, to be succinct, to explain what the event is, to talk about what triggers something happening… and to do so without any pejorative whatsoever.

Luntz is at it again.  He is wisely advising Republican politicians not to criticize the Occupy Wall Street protesters but to simply appease them by saying “I get it, I understand your frustration.”  Entrepreneurs are now to be referred to as “Job Creators,” even though they’ve been uncreating jobs for the last ten years.  “Capitalism,” which is understandably being questioned, should now be called “economic freedom,” even though its current formulation for the 99 percent is “indentured servitude.”  According to Luntz, “Government Spending,” should now be referred to as “Government Waste,” paved roads, education for our children, safe neighborhoods, and healthcare for the poor and elderly be damned. 

Dante knew exactly where in Hell Luntz belongs.  Of his nine circles of ever-increasing depravity, Dante places those who knowingly commit fraud in the next to last circle.  Among them are corrupt politicians and those who advise them.  According to Dante, the only thing worse than fraud is treachery, which is assigned to the ninth circle.  Among the several characters in the ninth circle are Cain (not Herman Cain – he’s appears to be guilty of lust, which places him in the only slightly bad second circle) and Judas Iscariot. Cain, who is famous for killing his brother Abel, committing humanity’s first murder, and lying about it.

We all know what Judas did.

So, the best that can be said about Frank Luntz is that although he’s bad, he’s not quite as bad as Cain or Judas.  I wonder how he might spin that.

See larger image Dante's Inferno (The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell) (Paperback) By (author) Dante Alighieri List Price: $12.95 USD New From: $12.95 In Stock Used from: $7.79 In Stock

See larger image A Collection of Essays (Paperback) By (author) George Orwell List Price: $15.00 USD New From: $4.68 In Stock Used from: $3.00 In Stock

© 2011, Fred Bubbers. All rights reserved.

Fiction

• “A Couple” – Cantaraville Two (also available in the eBook Store)
• “Absolutely Fourth Street” – The Square Table
• “Bonnifer” – Lily (also available in the eBook Store)
• “Calvin’s Monster”- Word Riot
• “Indian Summer” -  Cantaraville Four
• “Natural Selection” – Cantaraville Eight (also available in the eBook Store)
• “Truths” – Loch Raven Review
• Short Story Cycle – in progress
  • “Brothers” – The Square Table (available in the eBook Store)
  • “Come Together” – Cantaraville Six (available in the eBook Store)
  • “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” – The Big Stupid Review (available in the eBook Store)
  • “Fortunate Son” – in progress
• Poetry in Summer – novella in progress
• Winslow: A Novel – in progress

Memoir

• “After the Fire” – Oregon Literary Review (also available in the eBook Store)
• “Gifts”- Seeker Magazine
• “The Persistence of Gravy” – Static Movement

Poetry

• “On The Beach”- The Green Silk Journal
• “Compartments” – Mississippi Crow, Issue 7, available in print and download here.
• “The Clouds, A Highway…and Joni” – The Shine Journal
• “A Victorian in 1990″ – Loch Raven Review. Also anthologized in the annual edition:
  

  See larger image Loch Raven Review - Four (Paperback) By (author) Jim Doss, Christopher T. George List Price: $14.95 USD New From: $14.95 In Stock

© 2011 – 2012, Fred Bubbers. All rights reserved.

Neda Agha Soltan

1982-2009

Neda Agha Soltan, an Iranian student, was attending a protest in Tehran today when she was shot in the chest by a Basij militiaman.  Her death was captured in a shocking video that has now been seen around the world.  She may not have desired it, but she has become a symbol.  Her name, Neda, means “The Voice.”

Her death may have been foretold by another Iranian woman, who anonymously wrote on the night before:

“I will participate in the demonstrations tomorrow. Maybe they will turn violent. Maybe I will be one of the people who is going to get killed. I’m listening to all my favorite music. I even want to dance to a few songs. I always wanted to have very narrow eyebrows. Yes, maybe I will go to the salon before I go tomorrow! There are a few great movie scenes that I also have to see. I should drop by the library, too. It’s worth to read the poems of Forough and Shamloo again. All family pictures have to be reviewed, too. I have to call my friends as well to say goodbye. All I have are two bookshelves which I told my family who should receive them. I’m two units away from getting my bachelors degree but who cares about that. My mind is very chaotic. I wrote these random sentences for the next generation so they know we were not just emotional and under peer pressure. So they know that we did everything we could to create a better future for them. So they know that our ancestors surrendered to Arabs and Mongols but did not surrender to despotism. This note is dedicated to tomorrow’s children…”

After Neda was murdered, she wrote again:

Yesterday I wrote a note, with the subject line “tomorrow is a great day perhaps tomorrow I’ll be killed.” I’m here to let you know I’m alive but my sister was killed…

I’m here to tell you my sister died while in her father’s hands
I’m here to tell you my sister had big dreams…
I’m here to tell you my sister who died was a decent person… and like me yearned for a day when her hair would be swept by the wind… and like me read “Forough”… and longed to live free and equal… and she longed to hold her head up and announce, “I’m Iranian”… and she longed to one day fall in love to a man with a shaggy hair… and she longed for a daughter to braid her hair and sing lullaby by her crib…

my sister died from not having life… my sister died as injustice has no end… my sister died since she loved life too much… and my sister died since she lovingly cared for people…

my loving sister, I wish you had closed your eyes when your time had come… the very end of your last glance burns my soul….

sister have a short sleep. your last dream be sweet.

These moving and powerful symbols are emerging from a culture that, to Western eyes, has historically been oppressive to women.  Nonetheless, they emerge as brave and fierce opponents of oppression.  Embedded in their cultural heritage is figure as meaningful to Iranian woman as any Judeo-Christian symbol is to us: Fatima, daughter of the Prophet, wife of Ali.  Through the centuries, just as our Christian symbols have been manipulated to suit the purposes of the powerful, so has Fatima. In spite of this, she has survived.

From Massoume Price’s Lecture “Distinguished Women, Past and Present: Fatima is Fatima” :

Yet at another level she is the fighter and the defender of the true faith and justice. After her fathers’ death the power struggle starts, her family representing the true faith, the pure and the holy blood is pushed aside. It is her speech that stirs, accuses and reveals all that is wrong and how deviations will happen with the greedy leaders who will change the course of Islam for ever and for worse. At the domestic level she is the loyal daughter, the devoted wife, the caring mother and a symbol of endurance. Such themes have been used for centuries to project her image as that of the ideal Muslim woman. The one who will not hesitate to sacrifice all including herself for the sake of her family and the true fate.

© 2009 – 2011, Fred Bubbers. All rights reserved.

Friday, the 19th of June 2009

Tomorrow, Saturday, is a day of destiny

Tonight, the cries of Allah-o Akbar are heard louder and louder than the nights before.

Where is this place?

Where is this place where every door is closed?

Where is this place where people are simply calling God?

Where is this place where the sound of Allah-o Akbar gets louder and louder?

I wait every night to see if the sounds will get louder and whether the number increases.

It shakes me.

I wonder if God is shaken.

Where is this place where so many innocent people are entrapped?

Where is this place where no one comes to our aid?

Where is this place where only with our silence we are sending our voices to the world?

Where is this place where the young shed blood and then people go and pray?

Standing on that same blood and pray…

Where is this place where the citizens are called vagrants?

Where is this place?   You want me to tell you?

This place is Iran.

The homeland of you and me.

This place is Iran.

© 2009, Fred Bubbers. All rights reserved.

These words reference and were inspired by I Corinthians 13.  I am by no means a bible scholar, but I happened to recognize these references to a particular passage that I am using as a theme for Winslow.  I’m also not particularly religious, and I firmly believe in secular government, but if you’re going to reference scripture, and use words that can touch believers of all faiths (and even non-believers whom Obama made a point of including) you can’t find a better passage to reference than this:

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face-to-face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

I think it’s entirely appropriate that a poet speak at a presidential inauguration.  I just saw filmmaker Ken Burns on television describing America as a country based on nothing more, nothing less, than ideas.  I believe that is true.  We are a nation of immigrants, all from different cultures and different religions.  The only thing that binds us together are the ideas first expressed by Thomas Jefferson what he wrote of “truths we hold self-evident.”  The power of these truths is that they have been in the past, and should be now and in the future, stronger than anything that divides us.

Words, that express ideas, that attempt to articulate truth, matter.  They matter deeply.

One can be skeptical about art that is produced to support a state event.  How can it be any good?  Isn’t it just fancy propaganda?  To ask that question ignores the difference between  art and politics.  Art seeks to express deep universal truths.  It may or may not align with a political agenda.  Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t.

I imagine that it’s very difficult to create a poem that both serves its inspirational purpose, but also reaches beyond political agendas to to touch some universal truth that resonates with us.  As much as I love it, Ginsberg’s “Howl” (“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness…”) isn’t going to cut it at an inauguration.  The poem must be patriotic, which doesn’t mean it has to be propagandistic.  The poem must be positive, but not falsely so.  It must be emotionally moving, but not sentimental.  But its most important purpose at such an occasion is to give voice to our common identity, those ideas that bind us together, and the journey that we have been on in perfecting how reality reflects those ideas.

As a writer, and especially as a poet of modest talent, I’m in awe of how well Elizabeth Alexander spoke for us.  Every word, every image, contains an epic story:

Praise song for the day.

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others’ eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, “Take out your pencils. Begin.”

We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, “I need to see what’s on the other side; I know there’s something better down the road.”

We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by “Love thy neighbor as thy self.”

Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp — praise song for walking forward in that light.

© 2009 – 2011, Fred Bubbers. All rights reserved.

As my interest awakened, I started feeling a need to be around other writers and artists. I fondly remembered my college days where my circle of friends included not only writers, but also poets, actors, painters, anarchists, Marxists, vegetarians, and various other misfits. I had spent my final two years in college with at least one writing workshop each semester. I wasn’t about to abandon a successful and fulfilling career to give in to a midlife crisis, much to the relief of my family, but I still needed to feel some connection to other people who view the world from an artistic (“odd”) point of view. I decided that a two week immersion at a writers conference would be enough to satisfy this need without causing too much disruption.

I decided on the New York State Writers Institute conference for several reasons. First, the conference was in Saratoga Springs, of which I had fond memories. I went to school at SUNY Albany and I had spent some time in Saratoga Springs. It’s a beautiful place, especially in summer. Second, I had a somewhat remote connection with the Writers Institute. The New York State Writers Institute was founded in 1984, two years after I graduated from college by William Kennedy, who had taught at SUNY Albany. Although I hadn’t studied with Kennedy, I had known him slightly from just hanging around the English Department. Finally, it was the writers who taught and read at the institute. Many years earlier, I had read Mary Gordon’s Final Payments and Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping. Having recently returned to reading literary fiction, I was now captivated by Robinson’s gorgeous prose in Gilead. Both were teaching at the institute that summer, as they have for many years. I sent in a writing sample, an early draft of a story called “A Couple,” and was utterly surprised when I was accepted into the intermediate writing workshop. I was far too intimidated to even apply for the master class taught by Gordon and Robinson.

And so, with the blessing of my wife and daughter, I packed up my car and drove up to Saratoga that first summer, with the first two chapters of my still unfinished novel, Winslow. Needless to say, since I returned for the next two summers, it was a wonderful experience. There were a few things that were a little unsettling at first. Age, for one. Although the students of all ages attend the conference, and while I was far from being the oldest one there, I certainly wasn’t the youngest one. Most of the students were undergraduates or graduate students. There were times that first summer where I felt a bit like Roy Hobbs from Bernard Malamud’s The Natural. Also, as an undergraduate, I’d always gotten a queasy feeling whenever my work was coming up for discussion in a workshop and that hadn’t changed, but the workshop and the entire environment was so supportive that I never felt like I didn’t belong there.

During the three years I have attended, I’ve had the privilege to participate in workshops conducted by some wonderful teachers: Elizabeth Benedict, Kathryn Harrison, and Gish Jen. The most enjoyable parts of going to these conferences, however, have been the evening readings (which are followed by equally enjoyable beer and wine receptions). I’ll never forget the inspiring creative buzz I felt on those leaving the lecture halls on those moonlight summer nights. Many of the writers who read at the conference read new work before it has been published. Some moments that stand out in my mind are Elizabeth Benedict reading a very moving personal essay called “Mad Dog Taborsky & Me,” one year and another year reading a hilarious and adult-rated essay on internet porn. Yes, she is indeed, “wickedly entertaining.” Another experience that I’ll never forget is Joyce Carol Oates reading from her novella, “Papa at Ketchum, 1961,” before it was published in her book Wild Nights. More than simply mimicking Papa’s writing style, she captured his desperation at the end of his life. Sentences rang out like gunshots and the only way I can describe the experience is shattering.

The most inspiring performances at the readings, however, were the poets. Invariably, they were the ones who sent me off in the night ready to try anything as a writer. The purity of their focus on language, words and words alone, helped to see all over again that every single word matters. I’m not really a poet myself, but the few poems I have written were written in the days and weeks that followed these readings. As poor as they are, my poems owe their existence to Carolyn Forche, Robert Pinsky, Charles Simic, and Campbell McGrath.

I’m hoping to begin a low-residency MFA program next year, so I won’t have enough vacation time to be able to attend both the conference and my on-campus residencies. so this year was probably my last trip to Saratoga. When I left Saratoga for the last time this past July, it was with a bittersweet feeling for many reasons, but it was also with a conference inspired poem called, “Compartments,” which has been published in Mississippi Crow.

Skidmore Gallery

Writers and poets mentioned:

See larger image Less Than Zero (Paperback) By (author) Bret Easton Ellis List Price: $14.00 USD New From: $6.69 In Stock Used from: $2.41 In Stock Release date June 30, 1998.

See larger image Almost (Paperback) By (author) Elizabeth Benedict List Price: $13.95 USD New From: $0.01 In Stock Used from: $0.01 In Stock

See larger image While They Slept: An Inquiry into the Murder of a Family (Mass Market Paperback) By (author) Kathryn Harrison List Price: $7.99 USD New From: $3.26 In Stock Used from: $0.01 In Stock Release date November 24, 2009.

See larger image Who's Irish?: Stories (Paperback) By (author) Gish Jen List Price: $14.00 USD New From: $0.01 In Stock Used from: $0.01 In Stock Release date June 13, 2000.

See larger image Gilead: A Novel (Paperback) By (author) Marilynne Robinson List Price: $14.00 USD New From: $3.50 In Stock Used from: $0.01 In Stock Release date January 10, 2006.

See larger image Final Payments (Paperback) By (author) Mary Gordon List Price: $16.95 USD New From: $6.92 In Stock Used from: $0.85 In Stock Release date June 6, 2006.

See larger image Blue Hour: Poems (Paperback) By (author) Carolyn Forche List Price: $13.99 USD New From: $7.93 In Stock Used from: $5.37 In Stock Release date March 30, 2004.

See larger image The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems, 1966-1996 (Paperback) By (author) Robert Pinsky List Price: $22.00 USD New From: $4.00 In Stock Used from: $0.01 In Stock

See larger image Sixty Poems (Paperback) By (author) Charles Simic List Price: $12.00 USD New From: $0.01 In Stock Used from: $0.12 In Stock

See larger image Seven Notebooks: Poems (Paperback) By (author) Campbell McGrath List Price: $13.99 USD New From: $3.02 In Stock Used from: $0.45 In Stock Release date February 3, 2009.

See larger image Wild Nights!: Stories About the Last Days of Poe, Dickinson, Twain, James, and Hemingway (P.S.) (Paperback) By (author) Joyce Carol Oates List Price: $13.99 USD New From: $3.00 In Stock Used from: $0.69 In Stock Release date March 31, 2009.

© 2008 – 2011, Fred Bubbers. All rights reserved.