[Jeffrey]

the verge

I imagine fumbling for my keys
on a doorstep I know is not my own.
I have become the salt-stench summer breeze
that strikes on the rocks of Kingsport Landing,
this wet & ageless cycle demanding
room for its roar in the whisper of stone.
Walls are raised to encase a family,
bidding them dwell in the space in between.
I wonder how they would react toward me
begging a minute of their company,
tossed on their threshold as cold debris
cast out from a stark Coleridgean scene.
The Almighty crafted both stones and waves,
leaving the Devil to send poets down
to accuse the world of lacking beauty,
an endless parade of verse digging graves
as if Death was in need of more renown.
Crossing this threshold is more than duty.

[Nate]

Autobiographical?

This is pretty much perfect.

I find it odd that almost every city in the country has some of the same streets / subdivisions / neighborhoods / names for locations.

And not just "Main Street".

"Kingsport" [or "Kingspoint"] would be one. Lakewood. Elmwood. Oaklawn. Martin Luther King Jr Blvd. At least, they're all over down here.

Topological archetypes?

[Jeffrey]

It's part of the homogenization o' America, I think. Not necessarily a bad thing. But increasingly developers and city planners transplant cultural milieus from one part of America into new developments in the suburbs.

"Kingsport" is the site of several Lovecraft stories, and with that is supposed to recall both the story "The Strange High House in the Mist" and with the reference to "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" may make a Lovecraft devotee also think of "The White Ship," which partially inspired a hymn I wrote (that Aaron recorded) and also was the inspiration for one of the first stories I sold.

But even without the Lovecraft references, I think this one makes sense.

There's also some Homer and Lao Tzu in there, natch.

[Nate]

Originally Posted by Jeffrey

It's part of the homogenization o' America, I think. Not necessarily a bad thing. But increasingly developers and city planners transplant cultural milieus from one part of America into new developments in the suburbs.

It even happens on a smaller level.

When we moved from the southshore suburbs of New Orleans to the Northshore [not really suburbs any more, but still part of the extended "Greater New Orleans Metropolitan Area", technically], I was surprised to find [after going a few weekends to garage sales] that there are many of the most famous / recognizable New Orleans street names in subdivisions in Slidell:

Rue Royal
Rue Esplanade
Almonaster
Washington
Louisiana
Rue Chartres
Rue de Burgundy
Even "Rue de Bourbon"

Are the suburbs just our attempt to fool ourselves?

[Jeffrey]

Originally Posted by Nate

Are the suburbs just our attempt to fool ourselves?

Yes; it goes back to the Roman suburbs, perhaps even further. There is a feeling that cities are inauthentic, but as suburbanites try to split the difference, they try to create a culture that feels both familiar and safe. Cities and ruralities are organic. Suburbs are havens for the middle and upper class that attempt to create a non-sustainable approximation of culture. I know that sounds like jargon, but when society crumbles (for instance: 1200 BCE in the Near East; eastern Rome circa the time of St. Augustine) people retreat behind the walls of the nearest city or return to nomadic or subsistence living. The seaside Phoenician villages are abandoned; the Roman villas are empty; the Egyptian palaces outside of the cityscapes become the haunts of jackals.

Is modern American literature the attempt to fool ourselves into thinking we have a cohesive culture? That an American identity exists in literature? Is this why poets are encouraged to dumb down their poems, to write only on the familiar or pedestrian (thank the Lord no one suggested this to Dante or Miltion!), to simplify structure, to cut allusions? Is this why American pop culture overturns every five years? Why our political parties lose their identities every twenty years?

Is this why American literature becomes either faddish, content-less novel series or overly-complex Joycean dreamscapes that have only a veneer of beauty?

[Role Modlin]

Originally Posted by Nate

It even happens on a smaller level.

When we moved from the southshore suburbs of New Orleans to the Northshore [not really suburbs any more, but still part of the extended "Greater New Orleans Metropolitan Area", technically], I was surprised to find [after going a few weekends to garage sales] that there are many of the most famous / recognizable New Orleans street names in subdivisions in Slidell:

Rue Royal
Rue Esplanade
Almonaster
Washington
Louisiana
Rue Chartres
Rue de Burgundy
Even "Rue de Bourbon"

Are the suburbs just our attempt to fool ourselves?

I have driven down most of those streets in Slidell.

[Nate]

Originally Posted by Leboman

I have driven down most of those streets in Slidell.

Why does this seem surreal to me?

[Role Modlin]

Originally Posted by Nate

Why does this seem surreal to me?

When we first moved down there I got lost one night and ended up in a neighborhood where it seemed like every single street was Rue de Something. All I was trying to do was get to the Wal-Mart.

[Nate]

Originally Posted by Leboman

When we first moved down there I got lost one night and ended up in a neighborhood where it seemed like every single street was Rue de Something. All I was trying to do was get to the Wal-Mart.

They need a "Rue de Wal-Mart".

Now that would truly be surreal.

[Nate]

Originally Posted by Jeffrey

The Almighty crafted both stones and waves,
leaving the Devil to send poets down
to accuse the world of lacking beauty,
an endless parade of verse digging graves
as if Death was in need of more renown.

These [especially the middle one] were my favorite lines of this, Jeffrey.

I think postmodernism often deconstructively exalts ugliness far too much.

There's something to be said for a legitimate, common-sense kind of beauty.

[Jeffrey]

Originally Posted by Nate

These [especially the middle one] were my favorite lines of this, Jeffrey.

I think postmodernism often deconstructively exalts ugliness far too much.

There's something to be said for a legitimate, common-sense kind of beauty.

I believe in objective truth and goodness, but haven't come around to beauty yet (as in artistic terms). However, I'm with Aristotle on eudaimonia and agree with Rand that there's something to be said for chiseled marble over Jackson Pollack.

Those lines were a sort of rebuke to myself, however.

[Nate]

Originally Posted by Jeffrey

I believe in objective truth and goodness, but haven't come around to beauty yet (as in artistic terms). However, I'm with Aristotle on eudaimonia and agree with Rand that there's something to be said for chiseled marble over Jackson Pollack.

Perhaps you never will, and that certainly would not be a fault.

I even see postmodernism as denying subjective beauty at times.

Why did it take us so long to get away from realism in our art?

Why do we interpret ancient art as "what the culture valued"?

If art can be ugly [or ugly, art], why not "what they despised"?

Why is there a moral sense connected to almost all art critique?

"It shouldn't look like that" is the intuitive response to bad art.

Why is there even "bad art" if beauty is subjective, or fake?

Those lines were a sort of rebuke to myself, however.

I half thought as much. They're even better, on that account.

[Jo Mo]

All too interesting to note for me. Kingsport is the name of my Hometown. So called because the famous Holston River as depicted in the movie The River with Mel Gibson and Sissy Spacek runs through the Kingsport area. Its not a port anymore since the river is tamed by Dams. It is shallow in most places although boaters still go through it, amazingly without wrecking their vehicles. Anyway, The towns name originally was Kings Port. Just as the years went by people started running the words together and so now it is spelled that way.

[Jeffrey]

I love stuff like that: "Kingsport" was literally "Kings Port."