MuseLetter \’myüz-‘le-tər noun
1: a personal message, inspired by a muse of one's own creation, addressed to a person or organization, in the course of which, the sender becomes absorbed in thought; especially turning something over in the mind meditatively and often inconclusively.
2: a letter from a poet, or one who envisions oneself as such, in which he or she “muses” on that which is perceived to be news, or newsworthy, usually in some ironic or absurd way.
“Heavy” Thoughts in the Lightness of Being Spring
Spring came in on Sandburg's "little cat feet" while we were sleeping. March 20th at 5:01a.m. EDT, to be exact. Called the vernal equinox, this transition occurs in the Northern hemisphere when the sun crosses the celestial equator, resulting in roughly equal day and night hours worldwide. With it comes the anticipation of pleasant weather. Though your moisture may vary.
Despite its reputation, April is only the third to fifth wettest month of the year, depending on the source reporting such information. With wet spring weather in mind, I once wrote a four-word haiku that implied the balance needed for nature to thrive. And by extension, us.
Greener grass...
more rain.
Spring is associated with rebirth and rejuvenation. We see it in nature; we sense it in ourselves. There’s a feeling of optimism that comes along with better weather. Especially in contrast to January and February. And I am not alone in bouts with winter doldrums. According to the American Psychiatric Association, 41% of Americans say their mood declines in the winters; 61% report feeling better when spring comes around.
Ah, Spring. Walking around on one of its classic balmy days, invariably makes me feel how great it is to be alive. And how very lucky, given the odds against being born in the first place. Which has gotten me to wonder at times, just what are those odds?
In looking for some semblance of an answer to that question—which borders on how many angels can dance on the head of a pin—the most frequent estimate I came across was 1 in 400 trillion. Which takes into account the probability of two specific people meeting and having a relationship long enough to have children...one sperm meeting one egg...the sheer number of possible combinations of genetic material. The takeaway being, that we are walking miracles.
Looking at it that way, can get one to thinking about the whole of creation itself. A binary proposition, so it seems. Natural Selection or Intelligent Design?
I once came across a quote regarding randomness in creation, that struck me with its unique perspective. It was written by William J. O’Malley, a Jesuit priest who passed away two years ago. Unsurprisingly, given my being a Catholic, I found it especially compelling.
"I have no trouble with a big bang, but I do have difficulties with the unvarying predictability of its results. How do you get predictability from an accident? The effect eludes a mindless cause.
To accept that life (much less intelligent life) came about by sheer chance, would be equal to accepting that a hurricane could pass through an airplane junkyard and leave behind a working 747."
In case one doesn’t get the picture, a Boeing 747 consists of over six million parts, half of which are fasteners like rivets and bolts.
Whether scientists subscribe to the big bang theory or not, the consensus among them is that the universe did have a beginning. What caused it? And from whence cometh we? Aye, there’s the rub. “Natural Selection!” the atheists emphatically aver. “Intelligent Design,” the theists more calmly counter.
Stephen Meyer, with a Ph.D. in the philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge, a former geophysicist and college professor, in his 2021 book, Return of the God Hypothesis offers his perspective. In making his case for intelligent design, he has been careful not to claim more than scientific and biological evidence alone, to justify it. In other words, not bringing religious beliefs, or moral codes to his assessment as the late scientist Francis Collins did. He speaks of three scientific discoveries which support, in his view, a theistic belief. In essence:
(1) Evidence from cosmology suggesting that the material universe had a beginning
(2) Evidence from physics showing that from the beginning the universe has been “finely tuned” to allow for the possibility of life
(3) Evidence from biology, establishing that since the beginning, large amounts of new functional genetic information have risen in our biosphere to make new forms of life possible
This last point in particular, what with the intricate coding inherent in DNA, has caused many to marvel regardless of where they stand in their creation beliefs. Even Bill Gates has been impressed by it. Saying that DNA is like a software program, but much more complex.
OK. So if there is a God, and one of such unfathomable intelligence and therefore a master in intricate and unerring design, one might ask, what to make of the dinosaur? Gotta’ be the worst thing ever designed. The T-Rex is God’s Edsel!
And He knew it. (Let's allow the “pronoun license” being taken here. Lest we call God, a genderless “it”?) So, He deleted. And when God deletes, it’s not like you and I do. His delete button reads AST. For asteroid.
Interestingly, both the T-Rex and the Edsel were around for about the same amount of time percentage-wise. Rex for about 3.5% of the time of the 4.5 billion years the earth has been in existence; the Edsel for about 2.5% of the time since 1903 that its maker, the Ford Motor Company, has been in existence.
Perhaps to offset that lapse, God gave us that cute Easter Bunny? With properly proportioned and functioning limbs.
AI (a current god in waiting), quashes that notion. It was the Germans.
"The Easter Bunny's origins are rooted in ancient pagan traditions, specifically the Germanic goddess Eostre, associated with spring and fertility, and her sacred animal, the hare. The tradition arrived in America with German immigrants in the 1700s, who brought with them the "Osterhase" or "Oschter Haws" (egg-laying hare)."
So we’re back to rebirth and generation of life. Which more or less is where I came in. With a sort of giddiness and silliness, what with the arrival of another spring and the good fortune of being alive. Especially in reflecting on how many family members, friends and associates were not so lucky to be around for as many springs (with a spring in my step still), as I have been. With that…Happy Osterhase!
A Cento of Spring
Joanna C. Migdal is a published poet who specializes in a poetry genre called cento (from the Latin meaning literally “patchwork”).
Its creation comes about by taking lines from existing poems, and arranging them to construct a new poem, usually in free verse with an underlying theme. At its conclusion, it is customary to provide a footnote on the sources that went into its making.
She last appeared here in the December 2022 MuseLetter, when the theme of that issue was the color white. This time around, she offers one in a color associated with spring. Taken from her current project of creating centos in a palette of colors.
Green Spirit Seeking Life
I don’t know what the ravens are saying this morning of green tenderness
as a scant green emerges after a scant rain.
The morning, green and laundry-sweet, opens itself.
Sunshine and shadow play amid the trees.
Each year it’s a surprise that the world can turn green again.
I know my grief will not stop the green.
I look at the vines and see the leaf buds inching towards life…
Green vines angering for life.
I will lie inert, unseen, my hair same-colored with grass and leaves
and see the sun smiling between the leaves
and the leaping greenly spirits of trees which is infinite …which is yes.
Sources: Title: Eugenio Montale; Lines: Mary Oliver, Virginia Hamilton Adair, Lucille Clifton,
Henrietta Cordelia Ray, Wislawa Szymborska, Jim Harrison, Adrienne Rich, Wallace Stevens
May Swenson, Amy Lowell, EE Cummings
Word of the Month
deus ex machina de·us ex ma·chi·na dā-əs-ˌeks-ˈmä-ki-nə
noun
1: a god introduced by means of a crane in ancient Greek and Roman drama to decide the final outcome
2: a person or thing (as in fiction or drama) that appears or is introduced suddenly and unexpectedly and provides a contrived solution to an apparently insoluble difficulty
Etymology
New Latin, a god from a machine, translation of Greek theos ek mēchanēs
First known use
1697, in the meaning defined at sense 2:
Source: Merriam-Webster dictionary
Used in a sentence (as in sense 2)
But the deus ex machina of an overwhelming public health crisis has changed things.
The Great Gatsby: Still Great after 100 Years
While the reviews were generally favorable when it was first published on April 10, 1925, the consensus among critics was that The Great Gatsby was not all that great. Not equal to F. Scott Fitzgerald's previous works, notably, This Side of Paradise (1920) and The Beautiful and the Damned (1922).
The New York Herald Tribune called it a "literary lemon meringue." Kind of ironic coming out of newspaper born around the same time as the novel, that stopped being around, after only 42 years. (1924-1966). But the prevailing criticism was best encapsulated by H.L. Mencken, the highly esteemed journalist/critic of the day who scoffed: "... it is in form, no more than a glorified anecdote....What ails it, fundamentally, is the plain fact that it is simply a story... Fitzgerald seems far more interested in maintaining its suspense than getting under the skins of its people."
Precisely. Which is just one of the many things I love about the book. That it tells a simple story. Yet one with implications that go far beyond the characters playing it out. Fitzgerald leaves it to the reader to decide who are the good and bad guys in this tale, judging by what they do or say. Not by digging into their psyches. Starting with Gatsby of course. Especially, what are we to make of him given the intriguing tidbits we learn about his past? And how much of it might or might not be true?
The book was a commercial disappointment following those mixed reviews, leaving Fitzgerald disappointed and defensive. Particularly resenting the criticism that the novel's plot was implausible. He had never intended the story to be realistic, but rather one of symbolism. Within which lies its main theme: a critique of the romanticized American Dream. And that despite the lengths we go, or how much we achieve along the way, the dream is out of reach. Which is inherent in the bittersweet concluding line, which would come to be one of the most famous in literature.
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
By the time he died in 1940 at age 44, the novel had been largely forgotten. But a funny thing happened on its way to oblivion.
During World War II, when something called the Council on Books in Wartime distributed free copies of it to American servicemen overseas, the book had a surge in popularity. Which then led to a critical and scholarly re-examination of it. And it soon became a core part of the high school curriculum and a part of the American culture. To this day. Although when you consider it, you need to be beyond high school age and have had some life experience to really appreciate the grand scale of this thin book of under 200 pages. Which accounts I suppose for why I've read it four times throughout the course of my life.
Over the course of its life, the book has been adapted to various art forms. I've seen five productions of it, including two movies, the current Broadway musical and two dramatic readings.
1974 2012 2013 2024 2024
While I've enjoyed them all, the most fascinating experiences were those staged readings of the book at the Public Theater in 2013 and then again last year. In its entirety. All 47,094 words. Without so much as an "if," "and" or "but" added. An 8-hour time commitment (with an hour and a half diner break thrown in).
Books are usually adapted to the stage. This was a case of the stage being adapted to the book. As the director explained, "the richness of the writing—a prose so poetic and a story told mainly through the insightful narration of a key character Nick Carraway—is such that it cannot be cut without losing the power of this masterpiece."
Take this passage of a billboard advertisement in the "valley of ashes" which is a powerful symbol of moral decay, the loss of faith, and the illusion of the American Dream. Shown here as the 1974 movie depicted it.
One would assume that the eyes looking out above the non-existent nose, must have been the inspiration for the original book cover, which has become iconic in its own right. Actually, it was the other way around. Which has to be the first and only time, that a literary work drew some inspiration from its cover. Which was created by an artist who had never designed one before or after. So enamored was Fitzgerald with it, that he that he went back to his manuscript and created that billboard piece so hauntingly described in the novel.
But what the artist might have had in mind, was Fitzgerald's poetic description of Daisy Buchanan as the "girl whose disembodied face floated along the dark cornices and blinding signs." It works from both perspectives. Each inspiring the other.
Finally, what makes the book so captivating beyond its themes, is the setting in which the story takes place. They say write about what you know, and Fitzgerald knew well the Roaring Twenties, the Jazz Age, that he experienced in the prime of his life. And with a minimum of words, he veritably paints a picture of that era. A period in America of great economic and social change, and arguably one of the most transformative decades in the country's history. And while Fitgerald was aware and critical of its great social divides—the Wilsons living in that "valley of ashes" and the Buchanans in "East Egg," an old money area on Long Island—he personally indulged in the opulent end of the lifestyle spectrum. Satirized so well in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris.
There are many celebrations of the book that will be going on in this centennial year. Fittingly so. Fitzgerald would have partaken of them. Gatsby would have kept his distance. Somewhat bemused by all the fanfare.
"When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness."
Quote of the Month
Happiness isn't something you experience;
it's something you remember.
— Oscar Levant
Staging The New Normal: A Play with Words
Need we go that far back to make the point?
Especially when it is firmly affixed
At the end of a lance a lot
Of the time. Yet we throw our hat—
Made of the finest cliché—
Into the Ring ling
Circus that once housed the elephants in the room;
An amalgam of anger under the big top—
Something is rotten in the state of Dentures.
We no longer can chew on food for thought
Yet doubtful that frequent flaunting
Could have saved the decay.
Do not go gentile into that good night, Irene.
Turning the other cheek is for the meek
Who inherited the lower birth (with an eye) on this gravy train.
“Innocent as doves; wily as serpents,”
Those lessons parablized in scriptures
When a timely flood could work wonders.
And as for being swallowed whole by a whale?
It taught Jonah and Pinocchio life lessons, albeit
Blacked out in time on whiteboard by a Sharpie.
Ahab, Ahab, I say to you
Obsession is the better part of valor.
If you can’t beat them, anoint them.
For what once passed for the past
Alas, has passed us by
And never Mark Twain shall we meet.
