I’m practicing my redactive poetry:

Friday Welcome Melange

My talented coworkers have offered their own examples of redactive poetry today. The first comes from my nemesis and City Editor John Bertosa who used the Gettysburg Address to create a gothic riff on Jonathan Swift.

A new proposal –
We ground our poor
To add here for the living so nobly

It is the great task we take
That cause full of devotion, highly.
These shall not have died in vain.

Keeping with the theme of Illinois politicians, education reporter Sandra Klepach used Barack Obama’s victory speech. I like how she maintains the tone and adds a subtle twist.

Who doubts that America is the dream
Of our founders?
Answer this, nation. Thank the women
Young and old, rich and poor
We led cynical and fearful and doubtful
Hands of history
Working women, tonight we rode home
We will get there
This can change more

Copy editor Cheryl Sadler went the extra mile and turned my previous blog post into a haiku.

The whipping, I loved.
Dinosaur. Sculpting. Chisel.
Glenn Beck adventure.

Editorial Page Editor Michael C. Butz reworked Wilco’s “I Am Trying to Break your Heart.”

An American assassin
hiding out in the big city
Let’s forget about the cross-eyed strangers
Stop smiling

I want to glide, dreaming
Baby, hold on tight
I’ve been drinking

I don’t believe I said hello
I’d always thought you’d love me
What was I thinking

I am trying to break your heart
Drinking down the avenue
I let go of
the man who loves you

Meanwhile, I tried to turn Finnegan’s Wake into a carefree sex romp:

Eve brings us by a short sea on this side the scraggy isthmus
all the time, bland old isaac had to be seen
What clashes here of wills
What chance, What true feeling
(O my shining stars and body!)
you will rise, you must
none so soon, toofar
he swiftly stook it out again
that ought to show you what a chap he was
Annie with goodly grasp and overalls
to rise in undress – eyeful, with a burning bush
the first was he to bare arms and His crest of huroldry, horrid, horned.
His archers strung, handling his hoe.
you’re going to be fined again!
this municipal sin business

Brandon Baker reworked The Roots' “The Good, the Bad and the Desolate” from the High School High Soundtrack. (I now have just cause to add an Okayplayer tag to the blog.)

Dedicated to the cats that vocalize
Try to rise
Speaking through the mic, wise, realize
Respond when I make use with Hip-Hop that’s authentic
I represent revolutionary masters of ceremonies
Enslaved by the soundwaves, skills amaze
Insight, analytic, ‘cause I live it: Lyricism
Keep your styles, dissect ‘em
Class is in session, I’ll have all you guessin
Begin with the pen, rhyme radioactive waves on Fridays
Your style’s older, you ain’t makin’ a quota
A rap you might not see again

Cassandra Shofar has repurposed a Thomas Merton quote about the cosmic dance.

When we alone, chance
We see migrating birds
Autumn descending
A grove of junipers
Rest

When we see, a moment
Children
We know love
Our own hearts
The poet

When we hear, old land
A quiet pond
A solitary splash
Such times
Awakening

The turning, inside
Values the newness
The emptiness
The purity
Vision

Themselves, evident
All these
A glimpse
The cosmic
Dance

Finally, Tricia Ambrose turned to her favorite children’s book, Love You Forever by Robert Munsch, for inspiration.

Mother,

back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

Baby,
quiet, crawled, sang

Boy,
strange friends, strange clothes, strange music.

Mother,
back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

Son, mother, song

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

P.S. Please forgive the overwhelming use of italics in this post. I wanted to differentiate between poems and my interruptions.

8:51 p.m. “Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness against the whale, all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness he at last came to identify with him, not only all his bodily woes, but all his intellectual and spiritual exasperations.”

Oh, I get it. Moby Dick is like his city editor.

9:20 p.m. Ahab hates Moby Dick because he chewed off his leg. Ishmael hates him because he’s white. And we call Ahab crazy?

9:31 p.m. “What trances of torments does that man endure who is consumed with one unachieved revengeful desire. He sleeps with clenched hands; and wakes with his own bloody nails in his palms.”

No commentary. Just like the quote.

9:39 p.m. An important shift occurred about 60 pages ago, and I didn’t notice. Melville focused on themes of faith and prejudice for the first quarter of Moby Dick; and the story featured the odd couple of Ishmael and Quee.

Now, Quee has almost disappeared from the plot. Ishmael only appeared to explain why he dislikes the color white. The focal character is Captain Ahab and the primary theme is obsession.

Honestly, I preferred the story when it focused on Ishmael and Quee. Ahab’s story isn’t worse than Ishmael’s. Melville saves his best writing for Ahab’s tirades; but the concepts of faith and friendship interest me more than obsession.

Once again, I’m not implying that Melville should have written the Ishmael and Queequeg Show. It’s just a matter of preference.

I need sleep. I’ll see you in the morning. Thank you for reading.

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

I thought it would be cute to write something about Dracula for Halloween. Y’know, vampires and terror and stuff like that. Unfortunately, it took me about two weeks longer to read the book than I expected.

Consequently, I present to you—just in time for Veterans Day: Four thoughts I had while reading Dracula.

1. Bram Stoker has some issues with women. He seems to characterize them as only angelic victims or voluptuous succubae. Lucy and Mina are both placed on pedestals until they are transformed into something unholy. The only other female characters that appear in more than one scene are a trio of lascivious vampires who threaten to seduce and suck male victims dry.

While Count Dracula is portrayed as unattractive, the female vampires are described as beautiful but vulgar. They use their looks to beguile victims. (Men, I should say. They never attempt to prey on another woman.) Simply put, they’re diseased whores. They use their bodies to seduce and infect men.

But what about Mina and Lucy? Stoker is effusive in his praise of them. He even credits Mina with having a “man brain.” (His words, not mine.) This is a different type of sexism, but sexism none the less. If you call someone an angel, you may mean it as a compliment, but you’re still dehumanizing them. A person can’t be both divine and human. (Except in Greek and Roman myth, and those gods weren’t very angelic anyhow.)

Stoker creates an angel/demon dichotomy for his women. They can be one or the other, but not human.

2. Stoker uses several characters’ journals to tell the story of Dracula. It’s a cool idea to switch viewpoints between chapters.

The only problem is Stoker doesn’t shift voice, even when he shifts narrators. Almost all of the six or so characters who share narration duties write in the exact same style—Stoker’s. (The one exception is when Stoker adopts the style of a late 1800s newspaper writer.)

My city editor John Bertosa—you may remember him as the bane of my existence—can’t do imitations to save his life. All of them sound like a high-pitched John Wayne. Stoker has the same problem. No matter who he’s trying to write as, it always sounds like Stoker.

3. Dracula must have been terrifying when it was first written; but now that all of its ideas have been re-used a million times, a reader can see all of the surprises coming about 50 pages in advance.

For example, when Van Helsing reveals that Lucy’s been bitten by a vampire, all the characters are shocked. Meanwhile, the reader will think, “Well, of course! Why do you think she had two holes in her freakin’ neck?”

I can’t blame Stoker or Dracula for that. It’s not his fault that his story was so popular that everybody decided to co-opt his ideas. I have no reason to believe that Stoker’s tactics were horror clichés when he wrote Dracula. Rather, they became clichés because of it.

However, there is one genuine surprise in Dracula. It involves a communion wafer and Mina. It’s the one scare that Stoker doesn’t oversell with 30 pages of foreshadowing.

4. Finally, most anticlimactic ending ever.

I can’t call Dracula a bad story or even a bad novel. It just hasn’t aged well. People borrowed its ideas so heavily that even the source material seems derivative now.

That’s all I got for now. I might have more vampire-related stuff for you soon.

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

On Fridays, the blog
submits to the randomness —
Call it “the melange”

My coworkers have graciously submitted haiku for the blog. Fortunately, for both my readers, they are better writers than I.

Sandra Klepach
Wild cherry blossoms
Pastures, China, D.C., Suave
Rub them in my hair

John Bertosa (who you may recall as my nemesis)
Pennant race is on,
ball lands deep into the night --
There’s always next year

Michael Butz
I’m riding alone
On a bicycle for two
Hands off handlebars

Brandon Baker
MCing and DJing
Form the tenets of Hip-Hop
Beats, art, “Future Shock”

Tricia Ambrose
Economic mess
Houses, autos, banks, oh my
Will it ever end?

Jamie Ward (who has clearly been reading Nietzsche)
Man’s will to power
stolen by the lamb, self-worth
is gone, suffer more

One last awful haiku from Jason Lea
Rain drizzles on roof —
I want to splash in puddles
but I have to work

Two last links, then I release you to the weekend. First, the judge has temporarily barred the publication of “Coming Through the Rye” in the U.S.

Second, J.K. Rowling is being accused of plagiarism. This isn’t surprising. A person can only make so much money before someone sues.

—Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

P.S. Willy the Wizard? Really?

We postpone Poetry Thursday for a deserving cause… ZOMBIES!

I hate to give my city editor, John Bertosa, credit for anything. As my boss, he is my natural enemy. He once let me borrow his car and I thanked him by denting one of his rims. I’ve shaken him down for lunch money like the third-grade dork I suspect he once was.

Not only would I kick him when he is down, but I’d change into steel-toed boots first.

The reason I can write this here without fear of consequence? Because I’m certain he would never read a literature blog.

But even I have to admit when Bertosa does something awesome, as he did this Wednesday.

I was busy working on something — honestly, I can’t remember what. It must have been important — when he dropped a book on my desk.

Not a book. The book.

That’s right. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

It’s exactly as I would have hoped: a straightforward retelling of Pride and Prejudice with a shoehorned zombie subplot.

I’ve only read the first 60 pages, so expect a more complete review in a few days. For now, I’ll say this:

When it works, it works brilliantly. Take, for instance, the first chapter. It describes the machinations of Mrs. Bennet, trying to find suitors for her five daughters, while her husband cleans his musket and complains about the zombie epidemic. It ends with this chestnut.

“The business of Mr. Bennet’s life was to keep his daughters alive. The business of Mrs. Bennet’s was to get them married.”

Seth Grahame-Smith deserves kudos for maintaining Jane Austen’s tone, even as the Bennet sisters fight a horde of undead that interrupted their formal ball.

Unfortunately, the joke has already started to wear thin by page 60, so will see if Grahame-Smith has any other tricks up his sleeve besides the bizarre juxtaposition.

I figure this is going to be fabulously good or fabulously awful. Either way, it’s bound to be fabulous.

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

P.S. “Zombies” is the perfect third noun to follow “Pride” and “Prejudice.”

Try other substitutions. Pride and Prejudice and Pirates; Pride and Prejudice and Mallrats; Pride and Prejudice and Delonte West… Nothing can top “Zombies.”