Endicott Redux

Guiding Lights: Lisel Mueller

    

I took part in a discussion recently about Guiding Lights -- the contemporary writers, artists, performers, and scholars who have particularly inspired us over the years. I have a long list of such people (Angela Carter, Jane Yolen, Alice Hoffman, Paula Rego, Lewis Hyde, Carolyn Heilbrun...), but close to the top of that list is the Pulitzer Prize winning poet Lisel Mueller.

I've been re-reading Mueller's collections recently, and realizing just how influential they were in forming my ideas about the power of folklore and mythic language, back when I was a younger editor and writer. I discovered Mueller's work thanks to Jane Yolen, who published "Why We Tell Stories" (still my favorite of Mueller's poems) in her Pantheon anthology Favorite Folktales From Around the World. I immediately sought out Mueller's own publications and was thrilled to discover a wealth of other poems with myth and folklore themes, such as her Sleeping Beauty poem "Immortality," and "Reading the Brothers Grimm to Jenny."

Mueller drew on the Brother and Sister fairy tale in another one of my favorite poems, "Animals Are Entering Our Lives," which begins:

Enchanted is what they were
in the old stories, or if not that,
they were guides and rescuers of the lost,
the lonely, needy young men and women
in the forest we call the world.
That was back in a time
when we all had a common language....

Her folkloric poem "Bread and Apples" begins:

In the tale
the apple tree rises before her,
not in an orchard,
but solitary and sudden
in a world she does not know
is supernatural. It asks
in an old woman's voice
to be relieved of its red-faced burden....

Her splendid long poem "Voices of the Forest" begins:

No matter how exhausted you are,
and though you think you will die of thirst,
do not enter the house in the forest.
Ignore the unlocked door
and the lamp in the window, lit for you.
Pass the house, which is real
and warm and apparently safe,
where the traveler is received
by someone, or at least
It is only when you finish eating
and, drowsy and grateful, pull of your shoes,
that the ax falls or the giant returns
or the monster springs or the witch
locks the door from the outside and throws away the key....

Her other poems are as powerful as her folkloric ones, working with themes of history and memory and exploring works of art ranging from the paintings of Edward Hopper and Paul Delvaux to the fiction of Mary Shelley, demonstrating how stories, both personal and cultural, can shape and re-shape our lives.

Mueller's own life story (chronicled in her poem "Curriculum Vitae") is both tragic and triumphant. She was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1924, and raised there until the age of 15, when her parents fled to America to escape the Nazis' persecution of her father, a Hamburg intellectual. (Mueller's beloved grandparents stayed behind in Germany and perished in the war.) She learned the language of her new country, eventually attending the University of Evansville, where she earned a B.A. in sociology, followed by graduate work in comparative literature, with an emphasis on folklore and mythology, at Indiana University.

Mueller did not begin to write poetry seriously until the age of 29, when the death of her mother "placed my grief/ in the mouth of language, /the only thing that would grieve with me," as she explains in her poem "When I Am Asked." Her first collection, Dependencies, was published at the age of 41 (so take heart, all you late-bloomers out there). Since then, Mueller has published six more collections (The Private Life, Voices from the Forest, The Need to Hold Still, Second Language, Waving from Shore, Learning to Play by Ear, and Alive Together), winning the Lamont Poetry Prize, the Carl Sandburg Award, the National Book Award for Poetry, and the Pulitzer Prize. 

You can read a selection of her poems here, here, and here. (You'll also find her fascinating essay "Two Strains: Some Thoughts About English Words" on the Ploughshares website.) Then I highly recommend picking up Alive Together: New and Selected Poems, which provides a splendid introduction to the poet's work.

Back in 1995, Mueller generously allowed me to include her wrenching poem "Bedtime Stories" in The Armless Maiden, an anthology that drew upon folklore and fantasy to address the subject of child abuse, and which raised money for a children's shelter in Arizona. Read the poem online here, and you will see why this extraordinary writer is one of my Guiding Lights.

[Posted with thanks to Jessica Wick & Amal El-Mohtar, the editors of Goblin Fruit, whose own love of Mueller's poetry prompted me to dig out her collections again.]

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Approximately 600 years ago, a poet whose name has been lost to history wrote Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. One of the eeriest stories in the Arthurian canon, the poem tells the story of a Christmas bargain struck between Sir Gawain and "a knight of such a kind -/ entirely emerald green."

The poem has been translated before, notably by J.R.R. Tolkien and W.S. Merwin. Simon Armitage's new translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight from the Middle English is a masterpiece. Armitage maintains the driving pulse of the poem's alliterative and bob and wheel structure, while infusing it with the brightness of his own voice. His joy in the language of the poem is evident, and no other translation I've read has so closely captured the feeling of being told a story. Yet even with that joy and brightness, Armitage never allows the reader to forget the impending doom that hangs over the poem, like the long-anticipated blow from the Green Knight's axe.

His Sir Gawain belongs in the same company as Seamus Heaney's Beowulf or Sweeney Astray. And it is a poem that I will be pleased to offer, like Heaney's work, or the Avary-Gaiman Beowulf, as a response to "why read medieval literature?" The answer is because these are works that are not hundreds of years dead, but hundreds of years living. Because here there be dragons. And Grendels and Green Knights. And Stories.

The picture at the top of this post is one of the free poetry e-postcards you can send from this site. The art is by Brian Froud, and the poetry is "Green Men" by Bill Lewis. If you are interested in other versions of the Green Man, I highly recommend one of my favorite collections, The Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, and illustrated by Charles Vess. Terri gives a terrific introduction to the Green Man as a mythic figure, and while I particularly love the stories and poem by Midori, Charles de Lint, and Neil Gaiman, every contribution is excellent.

So he winds through the wilds of the world once more,
Gawain on Gringolet, by the grace of God,
under a roof sometimes and sometimes roughing it,
and in valleys and vales had adventures and victories
but time is too tight to tell how they went.

The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World by Lewis Hyde

This year is the 25th anniversary of Lewis Hyde's inspiring book The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property and Viking has reissued the classic under a new title: The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World. I loved this book when I first read it years ago and think it still holds up very well. The production of art creates a unique set of relationships between the creator and the audience it's intended for -- a gift which must in some way be shared. Hyde looks at the concept of the gift in traditional societies, folk tales, myths, and modern market relationships between artist and audience. It's fascinating and thought provoking.

And to those who have worked (struggled financially) in the arts and felt like they were somehow "losers" because they hadn't acquired that elusive financial security, Hyde's work is really reassuring. It is the production of the work (a compulsion from the heart almost) -- the creation of the gift more than the promise of reward that matters. We do it, because we must. He has a wonderful quote from Sartre: "Nature had made me a man; Fate had made me a book."

With the reissue of this anniversary edition have come a new round of interviews and responses on the internet. Have a look at Scott Timberg's interview with Hyde in the Los Angeles Times, where Hyde explains the economics of the creative marketplace and the reasons he chose an analysis of traditional myths and folk tales as part of his methodology. James Hynes also reflects on The Gift here, and Jeffery MacIntyre offers an interesting review here.

One For Sorrow Wins Crawford Award

Just found out that Christopher Barzak has won this year's William L. Crawford Award for his terrific novel One For Sorrow. Yay, Chris!!  Stop by Christopher's blog to read more about the award itself and to congratulate him on this well-deserved honor. You can read my review along with many others of the novel here. And if you haven't read it yet, put it on your list of things to read in 2008.

Here's a bit from the cover copy:

"Part thriller, part ghost tale, part love story, One for Sorrow is a novel as timeless as Catcher in the Rye and as hauntingly lyrical as The Lovely Bones. Christopher Barzak’s stunning debut tells of a teenaged boy’s coming-of-age that begins with a shocking murder and ends with a reason to hope." 

Rousalka: Slavic Folktales

It' s sort of a Rusalki morning for me, for in addition to mentioning Kitka's performance of The Rusalka Cycle (below), I also want to alert our readers to a gorgeous new book of Slavic folktales, Rousalka, Et Autre Fées du Mille et Unième Lac (Rousalka and the Fairies of 1001 Lakes), due out in France sometime soon. (Sorry, no publication date available yet.) The collection is a joint project between author Damien Vaillant and illustrator Agata Kawa, whose work is just absolutely wonderful -- a mixture of 19th century craft-style illustrations with a dash of Kay Nielsen, Rackham, and William Morris. Do have a look at her beautiful MySpace page, Portfolio, and website to see more of her art.

Wild Child

   

The "wild child" of the forest has long been a staple of myth and folklore, and thus also of magical fiction ranging from Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book to Wild Boy by Jill Dawson (for young adult readers) and Alice Hoffman's Second Nature (for adults). Though some historical tales of actual wild children have turned out to be hoaxes, others have been well documented and the occasional case, surprisingly, still arises today, such as this recent account of a boy living with wolves in central Russia.

Perhaps the most famous historical feral child was Victor, the Wild Boy of Avignon, discovered on a mountainside in France in the early 19th century. His teacher, Jean–Marc–Gaspard Itard, wrote an extraordinary account of his six years with the boy — a document which inspired Francoise Truffaut's film The Wild Child and Mordicai Gerstein's wonderful novel The Wild Boy. In an essay for The Horn Book magazine, Gerstein wrote: "Itard's reports not only provide the best documentation we have of a feral child, but also one of the most thoughtful, beautifully written, and moving accounts of a teacher pupil relationship, which has as its object nothing less than learning to be a human being (or at least what Itard, as a man of his time, thought a human being to be). . .. Itard's ambition to have Victor speak ultimately failed, but even if he had succeeded, he could never know Victor better or be more truly, deeply engaged with him than those evenings, early on, when they sat together as Victor loved to, with the boy's face buried in the man's hands. But the more Itard taught Victor, the more civilized he became, the more the distance between them grew." (You'll find Gerstein's full essay here; scroll to the bottom of the page.)

In India in the 1920s two small girls were discovered living in the wild among a pack of wolves. They were captured (their "wolf mother" shot) and taken into an orphanage run by a missionary, Reverend Joseph Singh. Singh attempted to teach the girls to speak, walk upright, and behave like humans, not as wolves — with limited success. His diaries can be read online here, and are fascinating if occasionally horrifying. Several works of fiction were inspired by this story, but the ones I particularly recommend are Jane Yolen's novel Children of the Wolf and Karen Russell's story "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves" (in her collection of the same title).

For more about wild children I recommend Savage Girls and Wild Boys: A History of Feral Children by Michael Newton. You also might be interested in my article in the JoMA archives: Lost and Found: The Orphaned Hero in Myth, Folklore, and Fantasy. There's a reading list of recommended fiction on page 3 of the article.

Art credits: The drawing at the top of this post is by Tang Sin Yun; you can see more of the artist's work here. The second drawing is by Rudyard Kipling's father, John Lockwood Kipling.

"We Who Live Below and Between"

There is an entire city underneath Seattle. When I was growing up, this was one of my favorite places to visit. I would walk through the shadowy tunnels, look up through the cracked glass the sun had turned violet, and wonder what it would be like to live down there, in that alternate Seattle.   

I recently read Ekaterina Sedia's lovely book The Secret History of Moscow (for the review, please click here). Moscow, it seems, also has a city beneath the city -- an old city, layered with fractured histories and half-forgotten gods. Strange and dark, this Moscow beneath was more real, more alive than the Moscow of the real world.

Sedia is not the only author to write about a city beneath a city. China Miéville's Un Lun Dun (reviewed here) takes place in an alternate London; Tappan King's Down Town takes place underneath the city of New York; Lisa Goldstein creates an underworld connected by the subway systems of cities around the world in Dark Cities Underground; and there is, of course, the book from which I borrowed the title of this post, Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, which takes place in London Below.

These stories are not the first to take place in fantastic worlds that touch the real world so closely that one could get to them by falling through a puddle or opening a door. Alice, after all, fell down a rabbit hole. And I am certain I am not the only one who carefully explored the back of closets, hoping to step into a snowy wood and meet a faun. But the difference between Wonderland and Narnia and Sedia's Moscow or London Below is that while Narnia and Wonderland bordered the real world close enough to touch, they were decidedly different places. More than that, as marvelous as they were, they were just settings. The cities in Sedia's, Miéville's, and Gaiman's books are beyond place, very nearly character. It is as if Neverwhere has begun a genre of the fantasy of place, where real cities are set on a slant in order to let the magic in.

Perhaps under the city is replacing the archetypal into the woods in an increasingly urban world. Or perhaps cities have lives, too. In the shadows. Under the violet lights. Below.

*The image above is from artist Peter Milton's "Hidden Cities Series." Stop by and visit Miltn's website to see more of his incredible imaginary worlds.

New Diana Wynne Jones

Here's a bit of exciting news for Wynne Jones fans:

"HarperCollins Children’s Books has acquired a new novel from Diana Wynne Jones. House of Many Ways, a sequel to Howl’s Moving Castle (1986), and Castle in the Air (1990), will be published in June 2008. It is set a few years on in the neighbouring mountainous kingdom of High Norland.

"The deal was concluded by fiction editorial director Stella Paskins and literary agent Laura Cecil for UK and Commonwealth rights (including Canada). The novel will be published simultaneously by Greenwillow in the US." (via Bookseller.com)

Of Beowulf and Grendel

As Beowulf's name has entered popular culture again -- this time the result of a CGI intensive animated movie that has taken some serious (and to this purist, questionable) liberties with the ancient tale -- I thought it a good time to offer encouragement to read or even re-read this classic epic. I promise you that the translations available are excellent, and the whole narrative only takes about two hours to read -- every minute of which will be well spent.

Let's start at the top with the brilliant verse translation by Irish poet Seamus Heaney. There are currently several versions available, depending on your particular passion: Beowulf: The Bilingual Edition offers the original Old English text on one side and Heaney's translation on the other side, which is especially nice if you actually know Old English -- as one of my former students did, regaling me one afternoon with the finer points of the language and its translation.

For those who love annotated versions and pictures, try the brand new Beowulf: An Illustrated Edition (edited by John D. Niles), which features not only Heaney's superb translation, but also a large collection of photographs of artifacts, art, and ships, along with details of the historical context of Beowulf's world.

A third Heaney translation, Beowulf: A Verse Translation (edited by Daniel Donoghue), was published by Norton Critical Libraries. I love this edition too, because in addition to the text it includes excellent critical essays on Beowulf, most notably Tolkien's brilliant "Beowulf: The Monsters and The Critics," which today (some fifty years after it was written) still remains a lively and influential examination of the text. Also offered are additional source materials transcribed about the same time as Beowulf, including a wickedly good story, "Grettir the Strong and The Trollwoman," where one can hear the echoes of Beowulf's battles with Grendel and his Mother.

I would also like to add that Beowulf remains a very accessible story for younger readers as well. I received my first copy of Beowulf with spectacular pen and ink illustrations when I was nine years old and to this day I attribute much of my love for fantasy and epic myths from that first thrilling read of this heroic tale. Happily there are several terrific offerings out there:

In the picture book category, I recommend the new illustrated version by James Rumford. The art is wonderful -- conveying all the intensity of the drama and certain to capture the imagination of younger readers. Michael Morpurgo and Michael Furman have also produced a sumptuously illustrated version -- this time with rich color and celtic border designs. Gareth Hinds has produced an interesting graphic novel styled version. (The image at the top of the post is one of Hind's illustrations.) Check here to see a NYT review of all three of these titles.

And let's not forget John Gardner's Grendel, where the monster for once speaks the tale. It's a terrific first person novel from Grendel's point of view, especially when familiar with the original epic. The turn in point of view makes for a compelling read. This novel is equally appropriate for a young adult or adult reader.

And here's a cool place to stop and visit to listen to Beowulf scholar Ben Slade read of Beowulf's arrival in Denmark in the original. Actually, I highly recommend an internet visit to Slade's own website, where you will find all things Beowulf.

Congratulations!

Earlier this year, author Catherynne Valente held a cover art contest for her new book,  A Guide to Folktales in Fragile Dialects -- a collection of poetry and poetic prose on mythological and folkloric themes, due out April, 2008 from Norilana Books Curiosities Imprint. The winner, just announced, is Connie Toebe, with the beautiful kitsune image pictured above. I am more than a little pleased by this, not only because I think Connie is a terrific artist, but because the little dress that appears on the cover was made from vintage fabric and lace from my great grandmother.