Doubt

As Jon Stewart said, why couldn't they have called this something more positive, like Certainty? Well there is a reason.
I'm here to recommend all Catholics and former Catholics see this movie, which bludgeoned open up a large memory bank for me. I attended a parish school very similar to St. Nicholas, late 50's to early 60's (the movie is set in 1964), except mine was in Chicago, not Brooklyn. St. Catherine of Sienna. Mostly Irish and Italians. I was an altar boy through at least the seventh grade. Then off to an all-boys Catholic high school.
The plot of the movie involves a possible molestation of a young altar boy by a new priest Father Flynn (played to perfection by Phillip Seymour Hoffman who I've admired ever since Magnolia). Meryl Streep, the closest iconic star we have to Katherine Hepburn plays the accusing principal of St. Nicholas, Sister Aloysius Beauvier. Just to see actors of this caliber face off is worth the price of admission, but conflicts and lines of tension abound, as do the uncertainties: Gender - Nuns, the teachers are hierarchically inferior to the priests, monsignors, and bishops. Progress - Flynn is a "new" affable, open and welcoming priest who is trying to make St. Nicholas more, pardon the insidious phrase, user-friendly; Sister Beauvier is strictly old school, and believes in a strict discipline, pencils over pens, and absolute decorum. Racial, class, theological and philosophical divisions also rear their heads, or rather their banners, since the movie is too short to explore any of these in detail.
There are two weaknesses to my mind: the issue of child abuse by priests seemed to be informed by contemporary knowledge and beliefs rather than the morays of the late 50's, early 60's. Abusing priests had not yet been "outed" and they were either ignored or not recognized. Secondly, in thypical Hollywood overkill, the kid (Donald Miller) that Flynn was suspected of abusing was the first black student in the school, and I'm sorry but that's just too damned convenient.
The film is best at its grittiest. Go see it with friends and plan to have a drink afterwards. Lots to discuss here.

Quick Reviews

Blogging is like life, like love...it does take attention, and I confess the ambition, insistence, habit, energy, attention does ebb and flow, but before the old year pours artificially into the new, here are a few very quick, crude and hopelessly superficial reviews of recent books read.

Dying to Fly Fish - David Leitz: Now that we are actively collecting every fly fishing mystery ever written here at Western's Library, I feel it my humble duty to read them all. This is one of the Max Addams/Whitefork Lodge mysteries, and a fun read. Leitz is a decent writer and knows the art of fishing with flies. Plenty of local color, situations and suspense (set in Vermont). Recommended.

Firehole River Murder - Raymond Kieft: Another recent FF mystery acquisition. Worst book I've read in decades.

The Quiet Girl - Peter Hoeg: Hoeg is an often unnerving and brilliant writer, but this newest attempt (the protagonist a clown/violinist/detective) seemed overly pretentious. At stake were children who could detect earthquakes, and real estate speculation in Denmark. I finished it however because it had moments.

The Right Mistake - Walter Mosley: I was pretty blown away by the first two Socco novels, but this one, an attempt on the part of Fortlow to build a center for discussion modeled loosely after the ancient Greek universities in a house he came to inhabit, fell a bit short. It lacked some of the earlier dramatic tension, was a bit over-insistent on Socco's bad-boy status (Mosley does not have to tell us he's a murderer and rapist every other time he mentions his name), and it seemed to come to a rather hasty resolution. However, Socrates Fortlow is one of the most interesting characters I've witnessed in contemporary fiction, and any text where he appears is worth reading.

The Maytrees - Annie Dillard: I love Annie Dillard. No, literally. I would marry her in a heartbeat, given many life changes. She is, as anyone who's read her knows, a stunning writer whose attention to detail is nearly unparalleled. This novel, her second, is a love story, a triangle actually, that wrestles with all the great themes. Set in Provincetown and Maine. Highly recommended.

Rock Crystal - Adalbert Stifter: A lovely little gem of a book, written in spare, under-stated style, about two towns, two children, and mountains. Subtle and almost fugal by design, the novel explores by penetration the forces of nature and community. Highly recommended.

Ulysses - Joyce: The beast that will not break me. Only 70 pages left. What a tome. It stands like Denali towering above anything around it.

Have a great New Years.

Frank O'Hara

I don't buy books much anymore (I work in a library, duh) but I am going to buy the new Frank O'Hara Selected Poems edited by Mark Ford. There should be a law that forbids people to read Ted Berrigan, or God forbid, Billy Collins, without having first read Frank O'Hara. In fact I will buy thousands of copies, placing one in every window of our little town, candles of life, affirmation & love.

Dog Poem

I'm working on a series of Dog Poems. Here's one of about 10 I've done so far.

Dog Reads Issa

Dog has been reading Issa, The Year

of My Life. Soft tears clot the corners

of Dog’s eyes. Dog wants to lick Issa across

the years of his hand, his gentle eyebrows, chew

his sandals, sniff the warm salt of his crotch. Instead

he chews the book, wanders into the moon-flooded

yard and lifts his head, howls, and listens

to the echoes die away. Perhaps someone

in another time and place will hear him howl, and

wish to gently lick his eyebrows.

Odetta, in memorium

The first and only time I saw Odetta in concert was at a New Year's Eve party at the Earl of Old Town on Chicago's near-north side many years ago. It was a memorable occasion for two reasons: I had never heard a voice with that degree of power, majesty and control before. It was also my first call and response session. The crowd was the usual assortment of Chicago folkies (I went with my father who introduced me to folk music early in life) and it was a mixed crowd both in age and ethnicity. But we were unified by this amazing woman's presence. I have, over the years, purchased and listened to her music, but never without returning to that seminal experience. And I have never doubted the power of one person and a guitar. She will be missed, but she will live on, and perhaps in greater scale and fame as death often achieves for artists.

Poems

New Poems at Drumlummon

& here (equal, but different - to quote Martha & the Muffins)

For Issa Series #1

Yellow Big-Leaf Maple
leaves, flat hands
wave neither Hello or
Goodbye as I pass


For Issa Series, #2

The lake quicksilver
black in the shadow of mountains
The surface trembles
as if some great creature will explode
from the depths
but clouds drift like silver fish
too high above us to care

for those interested in learning more about Kobayahi Issa check out the amazingly courageous book The Year of My Life.

Sky the Hue of Robin's Eggs

Well it's been awhile, but that's bloggin.
I've taken on a daunting but rather thrilling reading project lately, namely to read all the books in Modern Library's 100 best novels, the board's list, not the reader's list, which has apparently been infiltrated by thousands of Scientology quacks. So, I'm of course starting off with a novel I've moved around the globe with for the last 30 years and never read, Ulysses by James Joyce. Actually Joyce has two of the top three, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man reigning third. I'm only a scat of the way into Ulysses but finding it brilliant uphill trudging, Mr Bloom wandering the streets of Dublin, his mind buzzing about with three word sentences. And of course I'll have to detour and re-read The Odyssey. More anon.

Have also recently read two superb books: But Beautiful by Geoff Dyer and The Moon and Sixpence by Somerset Maugham. But Beautiful is simply the finest book on jazz I've ever read. This collection of non-static portraits: Lester Young, Bud Powell, Mingus, Monk, Ben Webster, Art Pepper, and Chet Baker, with Duke and his driver Harry Carney weaving their way through these mean and crazy night-stroked streets: takes off with a quote from Adorno about the often momentous flaws of artists (don't have the book with me so I'm paraphrasing). Dyer writes out of love, deep empathy and passion with his saxophone of words changing keys and phrasing to jam with his subjects. Brutal, haunting; presence/absence.

The Moon and Sixpence is a fictionalized account of the life of Paul Gauguin, certainly an artist who had little regard for the commodities of modern life. This is a great novel -- witty, observant and very tough. it is also an interesting form, a novel fictionalizing itself as a biography, complete with faux footnotes. Maugham, toward the end, even rues that this were a novel, and discusses changes he would adapt to structure and character to make the book more appealing. Genius takes no prisoners and makes no compromises.