Real Ringers Read

For many years I’ve known Jacquie Roland as artist, actress, federal government coworker, cartoonist, playwright, professional clown, writer, etc., etc. I now learn she’s also a “Ringer.” In a short essay below, the clever Ms. Roland explains.

By Jacquie Roland

I’m a “RINGER”. For those unfamiliar with the term, a RINGER is a (huge) fan of the J.R.R. Tolkien saga THE LORD OF THE RINGS. (LOTR). I’ve been reading, and re-reading the books since I was introduced to them in the 1960’s, by an office buddy in the federal government. I like to start each new year with a read, but this year, instead, I reached for my extended dvd’s of the marvelous epic directed by Peter Jackson.

I started 2009, (which due to the state of things promises to be a rather tough year all around) completely immersed in a world of Hobbits, Wizards, Elves and the men of Middle Earth. It was totally satisfying. My affection for, and involvement with, the characters imagined by Professor Tolkien has actually grown over the years, not lessened. Admittedly, this year I have had some help. In February of 2008, I joined a group of like-minded people on the internet, called THE FELLOWSHIP OF MIDDLE EARTH, The Unofficial Site of The LOTR Fan Club Community. This was/is my first foray into the vast resources of the Internet. I have been welcomed into the Fellowship, which is very family friendly, by an amazing group of people, most of whom I know only by their avatars. We share a real love for the books, and now the movies. My avatar is that of one of the Ring-wraiths, or fallen kings of men. Although the Ring-wraith character is male, by adding the “wife” I made it my own.

So the Ringwraith-Wife was born. RWW for short. The photo above is a self portrait I took of RWW in the backyard of ‘her’ new home. People who know me, and remember the Halloween parties that Bernie Wrightson gave in the seventies & eighties in upstate NY, will recognize RWW as an adaptation of another character I dressed as… The Vampire Bride. (Admittedly, I’m also a Halloween junkie, and costume freak.)

When I ‘became’ RWW, I started thinking about LOTR on a daily basis, rather than as my annual enjoyable pastime. Because of this, I’ve begun to integrate LOTR into my daily life… really. Almost to the point of WWGD. (What would Gandalf Do) Even to me, it’s a little spooky. But it sure is fun. In May, I felt confident enough to start an online comic, titled RINGER. Due to other real life considerations, I had stopped cartooning years ago, and I missed it. RINGER ‘publishes’ four cartoons a week, all a parody of LOTR and it’s characters. Because it’s on the Internet, I get instant feedback on the weekly gags… I found out quickly what works, and what doesn’t, and just as quickly I adjust. What started out as a small pleasantry, has now become quite a bit more. I fully intend to try for a book sometime this year. (My only cartoon book so far, I Drive People Crazy, Too, was about Pac-Man… I got the biggest kick when another author asked to include my book in her Pac-Man collectible tome… if for no other reason than instead of being thought of as an antique, I’m now officially a collectible.) As a Ringer, I still have friends who marvel at my fascination with LOTR, the books, the movies… and let’s not forget my semi-obsession with the movie’s stars!

My personal favorite, of the actors, from the beginning, has been Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn. -Sigh!- Other Ringer friends are quite enamored with Orlando Bloom, who played Legolas, Elijah Wood as Frodo, and Sean Bean as Boromir. Heroes, all. Nowadays, we need our heroes. (Can you say… OBAMA ? …I hope… I hope… I hope.)

Anyway, all I’m trying to point out here, if my little ramble has a point, is that nothing you do is wasted. It’s all grist for your mill. A book someone casually handed me 40 (!) years ago, has all but taken over my present life… and in such a good way. So if someone tells you that whatever you happen to be doing at the moment… reading a book, painting, writing a play, watching a movie, or simply daydreaming… is a waste of time… know in your heart that it isn’t… one of these days your ‘diversion’ could just end up being the next chapter in your own book.

As for the Ringwraith – Wife photo, my “hobby” used to be taking self portraits… always in costume, with interesting props. I put my camera on a tripod, hit the self timer, and run like the devil to get in place. I lost my favorite set of photos in a move… In them, I dressed as Esmeralda, had made a soft sculpture of Quasimodo, and positioned myself & “Quasi ” on the steps of a gorgeous downtown stone church. When I clicked the timer I ran and wrapped myself in this huge hawser, and laid on the stone steps at “Quasi’s” feet. I called the best photo from that set “She Gave Me Water.” One of these days I hope to redo the “Quasi” series. (Of course, if I don’t get a move on the new photos will be titled “He Gave Her Walker.”) I also have a few humorous LOTR characters, and setups, in mind as well. But as I’m sure you’ve noticed, there are only so many hours in a day.

For now, my character ‘RingWraith Wife’ will have to do… and my cartoons, of course. And the paintings, and plays… Ain’t life grand? But still, this year, already… something’s missing. Before too long I’m going to have to pull my crusty old LOTR volumes down from the shelves. Even with the movies… I miss the books… and you know what they say… “Real Ringers Read The Books.” (They do… they do… they do.) Damn you, J.R.R. Tolkien.

Copyright © 2009 Jacquie Roland.

Today’s Gag

Copyright © 2009 Jim Sizemore.

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What Is Haiku?

A comment I received in response to my post of 1/19/09 (to read it, scroll down a bit to “Today’s Haiku,” the one with the fly) essentially asks the question that I’ve used as the title of this post. Here’s the reader’s comment: “I thought a haiku was . . . a major form of Japanese verse, written in 17 syllables divided into 3 lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables, and employing highly evocative allusions and comparisons, often on the subject of nature or one of the seasons. I like the poem though.”

My reply was: “I think you’re right . . . the 5-7-5, 17 syllable style is classic Japanese haiku. But I also seem to remember that the American version(s) is (or can be) more lax when it comes to structure. (It took a lot of effort for me to just get the 17 syllable part.) I’d be interested to know what others have to say.”

I am interested in the thoughts of others about haiku form, Japanese or English, which is why I decided to cobble together an expanded version of my comment. My hope is that this post will provoke even more discussion of the ancient, profound—and often humorous—Japanese art form. My knowledge of haiku, such as it is, comes from these two books: “The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, & Issa,” Edited by Robert Hass; and “Haiku Moment: An Anthology of Contemporary North American Haiku,” Edited by Bruce Ross. I quote from both in this post. By reproducing some of my under-linings from the books, I attempt to share my understanding of what, in its various forms, haiku is. First up, from the introduction to “The Essential Haiku,” a book that has as its focus the classic Japanese haiku of three masters, Matsuo Basho, Yosa Buson, and Kobayashi Issa, which begins:

“It is a truism of Japanese literary criticism that the three men represent three types of the poet—Basho the ascetic and seeker, Buson the artist, Issa the humanist—and their differences are clear at a glance when you read them. “Here is a fall poem that has Basho’s poignant calm and spiritual restlessness:

Deep autumn—
my neighbor,
how does he live, I wonder?

“And this winter poem was Buson’s painterly mix of precision and strangeness:

Tethered horse;
snow
in both stirrups.

“And here is a summer poem of Issa’s, with its pathos and humor:

Don’t worry, spiders,
I keep house
Casually.”

Note that in translation not one of these poems retain the suggested five-seven-five, seventeen syllable form. Even so, all still manage to express their observations of life and nature beautifully. Also note the use of humor, as in the Issa haiku where he speaks to his resident house spiders. As a cartoonist, I find the use of humor especially appealing. I’m also impressed by the skillful economy of expression inherent in haiku generally. Here’s an edited quote from the book about haiku form:

“The hokku, as it was called in Basho’s time, emerged almost accidentally, from the practice of linked verse. It was, from the beginning, very attentive to time and place. It tended to begin with a theme from classical poetry . . . that was associated with a season of the year. It then added an image that seemed to penetrate to the essence of the classical theme. The spirit of haiku required that the language be kept plain. . . . It also demanded accurate and original images, drawn mostly from common life.”

Classic haiku also has as a crucial element the insistence of a specific time, place—and, especially—a season, without which a haiku was thought to be incomplete: “In Basho’s poem . . . the phrase . . . ‘deep autumn’ or ‘autumn deepens’ is traditional and had accumulated resonance’s and associations from earlier poetry as well as from the Japanese way of thinking about time and change. So does the reference to snow . . . which can also mean ‘snowfall’ in Buson’s poems . . . The practice was sufficiently codified and there was even a rule that the seasonal reference should always appear either in the first or third unit of the three phrase poem.”

The Robert Hass introduction also offers insight into the ways Japanese and English poetry spring from their respective cultures, especially from the very different religious points of view:

“If the first level of haiku is its location in nature, its second is almost always some implicit Buddhist reflection on nature. One of the striking differences between Christian and Buddhist thought is that in the Christian sense of things, nature is fallen, and in the Buddhist sense it isn’t. Another is that, because there is no creator-being in Buddhist cosmology, there is no higher plan of meaning to which nature refers. At the core of Buddhist metaphysics are three ideas about natural things: that they are transient; that they are contingent; and that they suffer. Though the melancholy of autumn is as traditional an experience in European poetry as it is Japanese, it is not fundamentally assimilated into the European system of thought. English poets had a word for these feelings, they called them ‘moods.’ When Wordsworth or Keats writes about being ‘in pensive or in wayward mood,’ you know that they’re doing one of the jobs of the artist, trying to assimilate psychological states for which the official culture didn’t have a language. Basho’s Japan did. The old Japanese phrase that sums up the transience of things, ‘swirling petals, falling leaves,’ was a religious thought . . . the silence of haiku, its wordlessness, also has its roots in Buddhist culture, especially in Zen. . . . Zen provided people training in how to stand aside and leave the meaning-making activity of the ego to its own devices.”

His purpose in editing the book, Robert Hass says, was to give a fuller sense of the haiku form to readers in English, as well as some sense of the variety and intensity of the experience this art can deliver. He ends his introduction with these words: “Perhaps the best way to get into (haiku), after one has familiarized oneself with the symbolism of the seasons and the Japanese habit of mind, is to read them as plainly and literally as possible.”

I’ve selected the following quotations from Bruce Ross’ introduction to “Haiku Moment” to contrast classic Japanese haiku and the adaptations of the form we English speakers have attempted. I’ll begin and end with structural differences:

“A haiku in Japanese is extremely short so that it is recited in one breath. Since an average syllable in English is much shorter . . . modern haiku in English generally range from twelve to fourteen syllables, although many haiku poets try to maintain a five-seven-five syllable count. Some Modern English haiku use the three-liner vertical column arrangement, but horizontal one-liners, two-liners, and four-liners occur, with the horizontal three-liner short-long-short construction the most common one. English haiku tends also to lack some of the sound color of their Japanese counterparts because the prevalence of vowels in Japanese words and the frequent use of assonance, alliteration, and other sound values in Japanese haiku have not been sufficiently recognized by the non-Japanese world as indigenous to the haiku form.

“Japanese haiku also uses kireji (‘cutting words’), particles of language that indicated a pause or a stop. Kireji usually separate discrete image clusters and often coincide with the short-long-short line breaks in haiku. English haiku normally uses punctuation marks in much the same way. Traditional Japanese haiku also includes either a kigo (‘season word’) or a kidai (‘seasonal topic’). These words as one, two, or even three images provide the emotional focus in a haiku . . . . Modern English haiku is . . . not formally dependent upon a standardized season word . . . . The Japanese nature image conveys real experience . . . The Japanese image also occurs in the present tense, highlighting haiku’s emphasis upon real lived experience.”

In my own attempts to write haiku I like to adhere, as much as possible, to the use of nature images and the structural devices of the Japanese tradition, but without being locked into them, or blocked by the formal rigidity. Based on the English haiku I’ve read, as well as many comments in “Haiku Moment,” it seems that when it comes to composing haiku, almost anything goes.

This essay has been a very limited examination of the haiku form. If you’d like a more detailed answer to the question “What Is Haiku?” please read the suggested books. In the meantime, you may also want to type “haiku” into the little search window at the top right of this page.

Copyright © 2009 Jim Sizemore.

Free Cartoon Money!

The annual Jay Kennedy Scholarship, in memory of the late King Features editor, was funded by an initial $100,000 grant from the Hearst
Foundation/King Features Syndicate and additional generous donations from Jerry Scott, Jim Borgman, Patrick McDonnell and many other prominent cartoonists. Submissions are adjudicated by a panel of top cartoonists and an award is given to the best college cartoonist. The recipient is feted at the annual NCS Reuben Awards Convention attended by many of the world’s leading cartoonists.

Applicants must be college students in the United States, Canada or Mexico
that will be in their Junior or Senior year of college during the 2009-2010
academic year. Applicants DO NOT have to be art majors to be eligible for
this scholarship.

Along with a completed entry form, applicants are required to send 5
samples of their own cartooning artwork; noting if and where the work has
been published (either print or web). Please send copies. DO NOT send
original artwork.

DEADLINE: FEBRUARY 6, 2009

The applications will be judged by the National Cartoonists Society
Foundation (NCSF) and the number of scholarships given out and their amounts will be at the discretion of the NCSF.

For more information and entry forms, click on the “NCS Foundation” link in the sidebar blogroll.

Today’s Haiku

A humid evening—
the housefly quits the wall
to make love to my nose.

Copyright © 2009 Jim Sizemore.

Today’s Gag

Copyright © 2009 Jim Sizemore.

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Not A Book Review

Slipping the Moorings, By Susan McCallum-Smith

Book reviews are not something I do, but I highly recommend this particular volume because the author is, I’m proud to say, a friend of mine.
Even so, I can also say that this personal plug is for a collection of accomplished and engrossing tales by a very talented young writer. Susan and I met in a Johns Hopkins University evening writing class some years’ back. When the class ended, several of us formed what we called “The Little Group of Serious Writers” and began to meet every couple of weeks to talk about writing and to critique each other’s work. For me, even when reading early drafts of Susan’s stories, I detected what I came to think of as “heft.” It’s a word I define, when applied to writing, as having depth and breath and clarity; also humor, insight, sensitivity and nuance. So, as I use it, that small word is actually very large (it contains multitudes), and applies to only the very best prose, the kind of writing that entertains even as it moves and informs the reader. Susan’s book gives us stories I believe my reading friends—and their friends, and their friends of friends—will find to be not just fun and beautifully written, but—dare I say it—even soul satisfying. Don’t just take my word for it; several of Susan’s professional peers also have great praise for her first collection of short fiction:

“No one could blame you for pausing with a slight air of forgetful uncertainty after devouring three or four stories in this fabulous collection, closing the book to glance again at the name of its author. Margot Livesey? Maeve Binchy? Sorry, no, but you’re in the right league, not by reputation but certainly by measure of aesthetic luminosity, narrative acumen, and dazzling descriptive powers unmatched except by the very best writers of this age or any other. Susan McCallum-Smith, a brilliant young writer making her debut, soars across the transatlantic pond of contemporary literature like a frigate bird, an old master with fresh wings, and Slipping The Moorings overwhelms with grace, elegance, gravity, humor, intelligence and dare I say perfection. Susan McCallum-Smith. Congratulations, dear reader–you just discovered a new and extraordinary talent.”
Bob Shacochis, National Book Award-winning author of
Easy In The Islands and The Next New World.

“Susan McCallum- Smith enters the minds and particularly the voices of her diverse characters with much understanding, humour, and sympathy. She renders moments of conflict and change with lively language, and illuminates these moments with an admirable attention to detail and imagery.”
Sheila Kohler, author of Cracks.

“Sean O’Faolain said the short story must supply both punch and poetry, and Susan McCallum-Smith’s debut story collection does that and much more. Ranging from the edgy to the elegiac, these stories feature characters living in contexts of emotional urgency within worlds richly, even munificently, observed.”
Margaret Meyers, author of Swimming in the Congo.

Susan’s publisher, Entsasis Press, describes her work this way: “McCallum-Smith creates vivid portraits of individuals who bear the scars of failed relationships, misunderstood intentions, sexual and physical abuse, and spiritual isolation. These nine stories, which move effortlessly from the 19th to the 21st centuries, take the reader to a Mexican colonial city for a Day of the Dead celebration, to visitors’ day at a Glasgow prison, to Belle Epoch New York, to the contemporary art scene of London, to villages of Scotland’s rugged coast, and to Montreal, where a hockey fan’s keen interest in the game leads to an unexpected dilemma. McCallum-Smith’s ability to give a comic and wry edge to a dark scene, to capture the patois of both high and low society, to navigate the turbulent waters of dysfunctional families, and to pull her readers through the emotional undertow of these stories attests to the power of her fictive voice. Much of the pleasure for readers lies in her masterful use of syntax and figurative language; her talent for finding exactly the right images to convey mood and setting gives her work its immediacy and its keen sense of place, creating elements of lasting beauty and transcendent insight.”

I couldn’t agree more. Finally, Susan, being the modest lass that she is, tells us just a wee bit about herself: “I grew up in a family and a city (Glasgow) of storytellers, and many of the stories were tall, and not all of them savory, and it instilled in me a passion for language and a fascination with the nuance and diversity of the human voice.”

Born and raised in Scotland, Susan McCallum-Smith currently lives in Baltimore, where she is a freelance editor and book reviewer. Her work has appeared in Urbanite, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Scottish Review of Books; her reviews are often heard on Maryland Public Radio. She received her MA from Johns Hopkins University and her MFA from Bennington College. Slipping the Moorings is her first book. Visit her literary blog by clicking the “Belles Lettres” link in the sidebar blogroll.

Author Photo by Jason Okutake.

Copyright © 2009 Jim Sizemore.

Domestic Conflict Doodle

Occasionally, when I find myself in a fraught situation, a humorous thought may occur. This rather morbid one came to me in our kitchen during one of many verbal battles I had with an “ex” of mine. She Who Shall Remain Nameless was, for the umpteenth time in our relationship, emotionally out of control, and I remember visually measuring her proximity to me (it was a tiny kitchen) and to the counter on which stood an impressive rack of butcher knives.

Copyright © 2009 Jim Sizemore.

Today’s Gag

Copyright © 2009 Jim Sizemore.

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The Trestle

When one of my blog posts inspires a friend, a relative—or even a stranger—to write a detailed comment about one of their experiences, it gives me great pleasure. Some I like to share. This most recent example came as a result of my “Trains” post of 12/10/08. The writer, a friend of more than 35 years, is a glamorous woman who, it turns out—and much to my surprise—was once a tomboy. It is always fascinating when someone you thought that you knew well reveals a new (to you) character layer, especially when she can express it so well in the prose voice of a small child.

By Alvera (McClain) Winkler

The sound of a train transports me back in time. It is 1943 and our tiny clapboard house is a coal lump toss from the railroad tracks. The locomotive lulls me to sleep like a mother’s lullaby. Shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh, the steam engine cajoles, as the whistle blows in sweet harmony. The train’s clackity clack rhythm as it makes its way down the tracks sooths me like a mother’s heartbeat. The trembling earth gently rocks my cradle as the mighty engine passes.

When my brother Robert is four and I am almost three, we play outside all day. Today, we are making mud pies with the black soot from the train. Robert is mixing worms in his. He likes to squish the worms up good with his hands first. We load the fresh mud pies in our red wooden wagon. The train whistle blows and we are so excited we forget about the mud pies and run as fast as we can to the end of the sidewalk, where a black and white striped gate comes down to block our path. Red lights flash. We wait. Sure enough, here comes the giant black engine, screeching and belching big puffs of steam and black smoke, its huge wheels going around as it does its job, pulling a string of freight cars and a red caboose. The engineer, wearing a blue and white striped cap and bandana, waves to us, as he always does. We rush to be the first to grab a lump of coal that bounces from the coal car. Robert got there first, as usual, but that’s all right because we’ll both play catch with it later. There must be a hundred freight cars, and bringing up the rear is the red wooden caboose. The conductor, watching from the window in a tiny room on top of the caboose, waves to us and we wave back. By the end of the day, we are covered with soot and must be a funny sight, because grownups, heading home from work, laugh at us. At bath time Mommy screams when she finds leftover squished worms in Robert’s pockets. Mommy has a surprise for us, too. She says we are moving to a new house, which at first makes Robert and me sad, because we will miss the trains. But when we arrive at our new house, we are happy to see it’s even closer to the tracks than the old house, and better yet, backs right up to them. And best of all, a river runs along the side of our house and the trains have to go over a trestle to cross the river.

In the five years since we moved into this neighborhood, Robert and me have had lots of fun playing on the train tracks. Mommy walks the tracks, too, but not for fun. She uses them and the trestle as a shortcut to get to the next town where she works at Jarrett’s Beauty Bazaar. At the trestle she always stops and listens for the train’s whistle. If it’s not blowing, she figures it’s safe to cross and she quickly walks on the railroad ties to the other side. She has to be fast because the only place to stand if a train comes is a small platform that hangs over the river halfway across the trestle. On this one day, Robert has an idea. He says it would be real fun to be on the platform while a train is going by, so that we can see it real close up. So we wait and listen, and when we hear the whistle blow far off in the distance, we run across the trestle as fast as we can, stepping on the ties. I can see the ripples of the river far below, between the ties. The tarry smell of the ties baking in the sun hits my nose. Then we hear the whistle again, louder this time. We jump onto the platform, and look back down the tracks just in time to see the train rounding the bend. The train is speeding straight for us, it seems. As it passes, the platform shakes so much I can feel my brains rattle. We cling to the platform railing for dear life. I grip the railing so tight my knuckles are white. I look down at the river below, so far away. The train’s giant wheels roar past us so fast, its whirlwind feels like a tornado. I’m afraid we are going to get sucked right under those wheels. This is the longest train I have ever seen. There must be a gazillion freight cars, but at last I am so happy to see the caboose. I hope Robert doesn’t have any other great ideas today.

Well, during our childhood Robert did have many more ideas, some great ones and some not so great. This was one of many adventures I experienced as I tagged behind him, exploring the tracks and the trestle. Those memories all return to me whenever I hear the sound of a train.

Copyright © 2009 Alvera (McClain) Winkler.