New Books: Controversy in Poetry, Football, and a Historical City

Planisphere- New Poems by John Ashbery. (New York, 2009)

Ashbery is known as one of America’s leading post-modern poets. He has published over two dozen volumes of poetry and won nearly every major literary award. Simultaneously dense and funny.

The New York Times book review:

John Ashbery’s new collection, dedicated to his partner, David Kermani, draws its exotic title — “Planisphere” — from Andrew Marvell’s poem “The Definition of Love,” [...] Ashbery also juggles the infinite possibilities of genre, his mind running through many exhausted topics at once, trying for one that still has life in it[....] Some of the games “prove out” exhilaratingly for the reader, some are perhaps too private, some too abstruse, some too silly (there are a couple of Steinish collages that don’t earn their keep, one of them made from the titles of movies). But when the Ashberian associative complex works (as in the cases cited above) the mind is delighted by its unexpectedness. Conversation is nearly always the pretext, as in the poet’s shorthand summary of life in old age: “This is how my days, / my nights are spent, in a crowded vacuum / overlooking last year’s sinkhole.” Ashbery, the master of sinuous syntax (see his “Three Poems” or “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror”) has performed surgery on his poems here, often bringing them into the wry epigrammatic domain of Dickinson[....] But several poems, notably ­“Planisphere” and “Pernilla,” belong to Ashbery’s ambitious longer lyric mode. I quote, for readers longing for the lyric Ashbery, the conclusion of the love poem “Alcove,” which opens this volume with a wondering joy at the return of spring and ends with a vista of love, despite its inevitable separateness, surviving the worst days of old age:

We indeed

looked out for others as though they mattered, and they,
catching the spirit, came home with us, spent the night
in an alcove from which their breathing could be heard clearly.
But it’s not over yet. Terrible incidents happen
daily. That’s how we get around obstacles.

In his rendering of American speech, slang, cliché, Ashbery has surpassed most of his contemporaries. His “small museum / of tints” has provided ambiguous prophecies, curdled recollections, menacing prospects, emergencies, landscapes and puzzles; it has no less provided memories of youth, intimacies of love, the comedy of the ephemeral, the ­transhistorical speech of painting, and the ­literary in its quoted quintessence. The poet’s last look here is a “glimpse of / the books in the carrel, sweet in their stamped bindings”; one of these days, the carrel will hold his “Collected Poems.”

Bowled Over: Big-Time College Football from the Sixties to the BCS Era by Michael Oriard. (Chapel Hill, 2009)

Why does a college football coach make more money than a college president? Bowled Over attempts to answer this question and others like it by explaining the development of university football programs and the conflicts surrounding their growth into powerhouses that dominate academics.

The Oxford Journals book review:

I begin this review by misquoting Otto von Bismarck, “College football is like sausages; it is better not to see them being made.” The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) football (and basketball) is a mass of contradiction and hypocrisy. Only the most naïve would believe otherwise.

Author Michael Oriard offers a unique perspective on big-time college football: He played football for Notre Dame University and for the Kansas City Chiefs in the National Football League in the late sixties and early seventies before becoming a professor of English at Oregon State University.

He opens his book by recognizing college football's potentially contradictory pulls of marketing and educating, a contradiction recognized by observers almost at the inception of the college game. College presidents and coaches debated whether it was better for alumni to support individual athletes or for universities to provide scholarships.

While he does not state this quite as baldly, collegiate football, similar to the professional brand, depends upon older men (and, in a few cases, women) exploiting younger men. While collegiate football players pass through the system within four or five years, the older men—coaches, athletics directors, and college presidents—remain to dictate the rules.
[...] Oriard believes that such outrageous behavior as sporting sideburns (no one, apparently, was suspended for wearing bellbottom pants) led coaches to seek greater control over their players. He believes that the one-year scholarship rule passed in 1973, whereby scholarships were renewed at coaches’ discretion, was at least partly a response to the players’ rebellion. Indeed, his thesis is found on page 5: “that this mostly forgotten reinvention of the athletic scholarship marks a crucial turning point for big-time college football. … The one-year scholarship, backed by the mindset that it represents, exposed so-called student-athletes to the mounting pressures of an increasingly commercialized sports while denying them a share in its new bounty [of television money].”
[...] Oriard's discussion of the events that occurred during his playing career is another strength of his book. Indeed, had he focused even more on autobiographical detail and explored in greater detail the milieu in which he played rather than dwell on a lengthy discussion of reform, the book would have been shorter but more powerful.

[...] Many of the readers of this review are academics, whose schools are facing severe budget cutbacks. For academics working for schools in the Bowl Championship Series (the infamous BCS), the specter of ever-growing expenditures on football programs may well remind them of Groucho Marx's prescient comment in the movieHorsefeathers. When Groucho is told that Huxley has a college and a football team, he quips, “Well we can't afford both. Tomorrow we start tearing down the college.” [...] Oriard, too, is bemused by the “arms race” in building ridiculously lavish facilities for football teams.

[...] Oriard's book should appeal to the general reader. Those researchers who have already investigated the seamy world of collegiate athletics may not find much new information in this well-written book.

Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams by Charles King. (New York, 2011)

Odessa offers the compelling and fascinating history of a key Ukrainian city in such a way that it is appealing to any reader. King focuses on the controversies sparked in the city due to violent anti-Semitism and the radical movements that grew out of the city’s population of artists, authors, great thinkers.

The New Republic book review:

[...] Charles King has written a crisp, reliable account of the town culled from a wide range of sources, most impressively from archival material on Odessa’s wartime experiences under the Romanians. It is a history clearly intended for the general reader, but the book tells a complex story. King appreciates the poignancy of an urban tale of a visually attractive melting pot that was, and not infrequently, the site of fierce inter-ethnic brutality. More Jews were slaughtered in the Odessa pogrom of 1905 than were killed anywhere else in Russia at the time. And although Odessa’s most beloved post-war celebrities—the film star Mark Bernes, and Russia’s Sinatra, Leonid Utesov—were both Jews, its municipal authorities were known in the 1950s and ’60s as among the most overtly anti-Semitic in Russia.

[...] King tracks Odessa’s history with the use of biographical snippets and quick forays into the rich body of imaginative literature. The book is something of a blend between a general history and a guided tour with often quite splendid descriptions. Here King recreates the smells, the feel of the mid-nineteenth-century city, as many hundreds of wagons filled with wheat and pulled by animals bound for Odessa’s slaughterhouses packed the streets—the streets, constructed of highly porous limestone, that filled the lungs of Odessa’s populace especially on windy days.

[...] The story ends, as King tells it, not in Odessa itself but in Brighton Beach. (Packed already in the 1970s with Odessa Jews, some estimate that three-quarters of Brighton Beach's population come from Odessa and from Black Sea towns nearby.) King acknowledges that Odessa, still beautiful (if faded) in its center, has by now lost much of what it was that made it a source of nostalgia, of tender longing for quite nearly as long as it has existed. Still, its imprint remains palpable.

-Becky Heiser '11

¡Feliz Cumpleaños Frida Kahlo!

Frida Kahlo was born on July 6, 1907, to Guillermo Kahlo and Matilde Calderon. Guillermo was a well-known photographer, and the family was moderately wealthy; however, Frida would have a difficult and pain-filled life. She contracted polio at age eleven which crippled her right leg and left her with a life-long limp. At age eighteen, Kahlo was in a terrible crash between a local bus and a trolley. She broke her leg, spine, collarbone, and pelvis in the accident and was forced to spend months wrapped in casts and bedridden in hospitals and at her home. Before her accident Kahlo studied medicine at the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria (National Preparatory School) in Mexico City. While she was bedridden, Kahlo was able to devote large amounts of time to painting, and it was during this time that she painted several of her first self-portraits that she would later show to Diego Rivera. After asking Rivera to critique her work, the two fell in love and got married in 1929.¹

Diego Rivera was a huge man both in stature and in importance. He stood over six feet tall and never weighed less than 300 lbs in his entire adult life. He was charismatic, passionate, innovative, and determined. “He not only achieved his goal of bringing art to the people of Mexico, but also brought the art of Mexico to the world.”²His art represented Mexico’s contribution to modern art. Rivera’s style was grand in scale and ideology and his murals portrayed scenes designed to inspire nationalistic and socialistic sentiments in the viewer. The most common themes involve the roles of indigenous groups in the history of Mexico and those of the worker in the development of the nation.³

Malu Block, Frida Kahlo, and Diego Rivera.

The pair resided in the United States from 1930 through 1933 so that Rivera could work on the commissions he received from various American businessmen and politicians. During those three years Rivera worked on a number of projects including murals in San Francisco, Detroit, and Manhattan. He was eventually fired from working on a mural in the new Rockefeller Center because he painted a portrait of Vladimir Lenin in the middle of the mural - a less than desirable choice in Cold War America. Rivera and Kahlo returned to Mexico, and Rivera finished his murals in the Palacio Nacional (National Palace) in Mexico City and in the Hotel del Prado, the home of one of his best-known works: “Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park.”⁴

(For more Rivera paintings, click here.)

The Rivera-Kahlo marriage was a stormy one and was marked by infidelity on both sides. They divorced in 1939; however, by 1940, they remarried and remained married until Kahlo’s death in 1954. Kahlo was never able to have children, probably due to the accident during her teenage years, and she spent a lot of time in and out of hospitals, undergoing multiple surgeries for her chronic pain. Before she died, her right leg was amputated because of gangrene. Kahlo died on July 13, 1954, of either a blood clot or an intentional drug overdose.⁵

One of the houses where Rivera and Kahlo lived.

Throughout their lives Rivera and Kahlo were supporters and members of the Mexican Communist Party. They were vocal in their support, and both frequently used communist themes in their artwork. Their participation in the Communist Party created an opportunity for them to meet and house Leon Trotsky while he was in exile in Mexico City. When Joseph Stalin came to power in the Soviet Union, Trotsky fell quickly out of favor. He was exiled to Alma-Ata in Central Asia, but he escaped and fled to Turkey, then France, followed by Norway, and then eventually he found himself in Mexico in 1937. He had been invited to come to Mexico by the President Lazaro Cardenas and was welcomed by Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to Casa Azul, their home in Coyoacan, a province of Mexico City. Both Rivera and Kahlo were honored to have Trotsky stay with them, and they offered him and his family every protection they could provide. During his stay at the Kahlo home, Trotsky and Kahlo even had a love affair.⁶ His affair created tension within his own marriage, and he decided that he needed to get away from Kahlo and Rivera for a time. He went on a vacation to the countryside in July 1937. Frida made an unexpected trip to visit him; however, Trotsky refused to continue their affair. After this encounter he sent the following note addressed to Frida and Diego on July 13, 1937, which can be found in the Littlejohn Collection at Wofford College:

[translation and transcription]

I will arrive in Coyoacan Thursday or Friday for 24 hours; that is why I’m writing only a few lines. After Sunday’s unexpected visit - again solitude and fishing. My warm greetings.

Troksky lived in Mexico peacefully for some time. He had a fallout with Rivera in 1939 due to political differences, and he decided to move his family into a different house, although he remained in Coyoacan. Trotsky’s life was always in some danger, however, and there was an attempted assassination on May 24, 1940, when David Alfaro Siquieros fired over 200 shots into Trotsky’s home. The family escaped harm in that attack, but a second attempt proved successful. Ramon Mercader, a member of the Soviet secret police, broke into Trotsky’s home in Coyoacan and attacked him with an icepick on August 21, 1940.

“Mexican, shaped by disabilities, bisexual, inexhaustibly creative - all these ideas describe Frida Kahlo, but neither separately nor even together do they suffice to capture her spirit.”⁷ Frida’s personality is reflected in her artwork. Most of her paintings are autobiographical and followed the style called “mexicanidad.” This style rejected Western and aristocratic influences and instead focused on national folk culture. Accordingly she depicts herself in the traditional garb of the indigenous people of Tehuantepec using bright colors and a sense of fantasy. Kahlo described her work as “acid and tender, hard as steel, and delicate and fine as a butterfly’s wing, loveable as a beautiful smile, and profound and cruel as the bitterness of life.”⁸ Her artwork was popular around the world, and she had art shows in New York and in Paris. She only had one exhibition in Mexico shortly before she died. During her life, she was overshadowed by her husband, but her fame has only grown since her death, and now she is viewed by many as a feminist heroine.⁹

(For more Kahlo paintings, click here.)

Since the release of the 2002 film Frida, interest in Kahlo has revived. Her paintings have sold for millions of dollars. Madonna, the pop star, actually owns several originals. Some enthusiasts have begun to wonder if the image of Frida that is so appealing is in fact inaccurate, and the surge in interest and in biographies and other works has only served to further distort the image of the artist. Stephanie Mencimer, the editor of the Washington Monthly, argues that while most of Frida’s self-portraits portray her as a victim who could not have children and who was married to an unfaithful husband, the reality was that she never wanted children and she had her own extramarital affairs on a regular basis. Mencimer even goes so far as to say that many of Kahlo’s surgeries were unnecessary and were used to gain the attention of her husband and her acquaintances. Kahlo was not the Trotsky-supporter she seems to be in her biographies. In fact, Mencimer points out that after Trotsky’s assassination, Kahlo became a devout Stalinist.¹⁰ It is difficult to say whether Mencimer’s view of Kahlo or the artist-as-victim view is more accurate. Much of Kahlo’s life story has been constructed around her paintings, and Mencimer challenges the validity of this approach. Perhaps more evidence is needed to construct a well-rounded picture of Kahlo. Recently, Carlos and Leticia Noyola of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, announced in 2010 that they have a collection of Frida possessions: paintings, letters, diaries, clothing, and knick-knacks. The initial reaction of Kahlo experts was to declare the collection forgeries; however, a year later, the debate over the authentication of these items is still in full swing with little progress on either side.11 But perhaps the recently-discovered collection is exactly what is needed and can provide a new, more accurate glimpse into the life of Frida Kahlo.

- Becky Heiser ‘11

1 Tibol, Raquel. Frida Kahlo: An Open Life, trans. Elinor Randall. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993.

2 “Diego Rivera,” Contemporary Hispanic Biography, Vol. 2, Gale, 2002, Gale World History in Context, 23 June 2011.

3 "Rivera, Diego," The Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists. Ed Ian Chilvers. Oxford University Press 2009 Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. 27 June 2011 .

4 "Diego Rivera," Contemporary Hispanic Biography. As above.

5 "Frida Kahlo," Contemporary Hispanic Biography. Vol. 1. Gale, 2002. Gale World History In Context. 23 June 2011.

6 "Kahlo, Frida," The Oxford Dictionary of Art, Ed. Ian Chilvers, Oxford University Press, 2004, Oxford Reference Online, 23 June 2011, .

7 "Frida Kahlo," Contemporary Hispanic Biography. As above.

8 “Kahlo, Frida" A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art, Eds. Ian Chilvers and John Glaves-Smith. Oxford University Press, 2009, Oxford Reference Online, 5 July 2011.

9 Ibid.

10 Mencimer, Stephanie, “The Trouble with Frida Kahlo: Uncomfortable truths about this season’s hottest female artist,” The Washington Monthly, June 2002, http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0206.mencimer.html#byline, June 29, 2011.

11 Yabroff, Jennie, “The Frida Fighters,” Newsweek, August 26, 2010, http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/26/the-case-of-the-questionable-frida-kahlo-paintings.html, June 29, 2011.

Library Hours for the 4th of July 2011

Please note that the Sandor Teszler Library will be closed on Monday, July 4th, 2011.  Please enjoy your holiday and return to us on Tuesday ready for your summer school exams. 

New books: Victorian sexism, Iraq's politics, Karen Armstrong on God

We are always acquiring new resources for our collection. Some new books get displayed on the aptly-named "new books shelf" on the main floor. I just had a gander at the current crop and picked a few to highlight here.

Sexual science : the Victorian construction of womanhood by Cynthia Eagle Russett. (Harvard, 1989)

This one may be of interest to those involved in Wofford's 19th-Century Studies or Gender Studies programs.

The review from Choice:

A truly splendid book. Its subject matter--19th-century scientific views of male/female difference--has been treated elsewhere but nowhere in such complete detail. This bizarre story features a prominent cast of characters, including the likes of Darwin, Lombroso, and G. Stanley Hall, and a credulous public that accepted the untested assertions of authority, at least with regard to female capacity. Victorian scientists successfully argued that women were incompletely developed (resembling children and apes more than adult men), that women had lesser brains than men (lacking in size and complexity), and that intensive intellectual effort was incompatible with female reproductive functions (causing underdevelopment or withering of the uterus). Russett sets the tale within the context of modern science and a changing social order, showing the intellectual foundations for such assertions and for their general acceptance. Her description clarifies not only the bases of a strangely uniform misogyny within the scientific establishment, but also the division of labor within the academy in contributing to a "sexual science." Assiduously researched, artfully organized, and written with grace and wit, the book makes important contributions to several fields, including the history of science, sociology of knowledge, and women's studies. Every library ought to have a copy. -N. B. Rosenthal, SUNY College at Old Westbury
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.

Iraq from independence to occupation by Adeed Dawisha. (Princeton, 2009)

Topical. The author is a political scientist at Miami University and was born and raised in Iraq.

Choice's review:

Anyone who thinks that Iraq has no history of democratic government needs to read this book immediately. Dawisha (Miami Univ., OH) shows that Iraq experienced four decades of constitutional monarchy beginning in 1922. It featured many characteristics of liberal democracy, including electoral contests among political parties and a comparatively free press. That this era ended with the bloody 1958 revolution does not make the experiment moot. Dawisha's account is somewhat repetitious, but it is detailed and accessible. Why there are two separate chapters on political dynamics from 1936 to 1958 is a mystery. If the two chapters were merged, more attention could be devoted to the "ethnosectarian divide" that yawned during those years; it now gets only 11 pages. The crucial discussion of the factors that undermined the democratic regime lacks the kind of straightforward organization that might help undergraduates and general readers, and the survey of the Baath period pales in comparison to the nuanced analyses of earlier decades. But it is, after all, the ambiguous legacy of the constitutional era that has greatest significance for today's Iraq. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers, undergraduate students of all levels, and professionals. F. H. Lawson Mills College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.

The case for God by Karen Armstrong. (Knopf, 2009)

4 stars (over 500 ratings) on Library Thing. Armstrong is also the author of biographies of Muhammad and Buddha, "A History of God," and "The Battle for God," among others.

Choice:

This well-researched book argues the case for God (religion?) with insight into and understanding of what makes people religious--which the new atheists don't seem to understand. But Armstrong (independent scholar) also reminds religion's spokespeople that they should leave matters of the mind (e.g., explaining the world) to science, and concentrate on the experiential aspects of life where religions play an indispensable role. "The point of religion," Armstrong rightly observes, "(is) to live intensely and richly here and now." What makes this book particularly valuable is its survey of human attempts to grasp the transcendental from transcultural perspectives. Armstrong provides rich historical examples but also makes the case for a more enlightened approach to religion in the Christian framework. Whether there is a God or not is often determined in people's minds not by any proof or ontological validity, but by how persuasive the advocates and attackers of the God concept are for their respective stances. In this book Armstrong shows herself to be a good lawyer on God's behalf. Given the many anti-God books published in recent years by scientists and journalists, this book will be acclaimed by many religiously inclined people. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-level undergraduates and above; general readers. V. V. Raman emeritus, Rochester Institute of Technology
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.

Remembering Alan Turing on his 99th birthday | thinq_

Today marks the 99th anniversary of the birth of Alan Turing, a noted polymath and cryptanalyst who is regarded by many as being the grandfather of modern computing. We take a look at the life and times of one of the founding fathers of the modern information society.

Read more at thinq

Poet Alan Seeger writes from Paris, 1913

[Transcription:]

[recto]

Dear friend: Have you been entirely without news of me all these months, or have any feathers from the wings of Rumor reached you as to my present condition and whereabouts. Nothing seems more remote than my last evening with you and all the circumstances of our farewell, - the man from Pittsburg [sic] interested in heraldry, and the pretty boy, whose company over here would be most incriminating. Do not suppose that I do not think often of you, the charming room and the happiness it imposed upon all who frequented it. Who has succeeded to my chair?
Arrived over here in September I soon found a place that appealed to me, and there I have been ever since (lest I forget I will give you the address now 17 rue du Sommerard - near the Musee de Cluny, you know) Characteristically, I chose it for the view, not for the interior. And the outlook is indeed charming. Over picturesque roof-tops I see the wonderful, old towers

[verso]

of Notre Dame, and not only from my fifth-story window and balcony, but even from my pillow, gray and spectral against the lustre of the city lights as I go to bed at night, clear and sharply silhouetted against the cloudless dawns of these fair spring days as I wake in the morning. I am so attached to Notre Dame that I can never live willingly any place in Paris without seeing it from my windows. And it is not only the exterior that is familiar to me. The services there are wonderful, too especially on the feast-days when the cardinal archbishop officiates. Here is his picture. A few months ago I attended a splendid ceremony when Cardinal Vannutelli came from Rome to preside over the festival in commemoration of the centenary of Ozanam. There were three cardinals, many bishops, and the cathedral so full that one could hardly circulate in it. Vannutelli was splendid, big and dominating, and when the ceremony was over he crossed the square in front of Notre Dame on the way to his automobile, walking slowly in his red robes, amid the acclamation of the crowd.
You are happier in America, for everything here would discourage you over the decay of the old ideals that we love. They drove Christ out of France, but aveugles [Fr.: blind] they did not see what a double-edged sword they were wielding and how closely related were the love of church and of country. Now a tide of anti patriotism is sweeping over France, impelled by the socialists and the devotees of the new ideal, Humanity. The comble [Fr.: last straw] was last week when there were mutinous manifestations in garrisons in all parts of France against the reestablishment of the three years service, proposed in answer to Germany’s recent disproportional augmentation of her effects [?]. The government stands against, but the Catholics smile bitterly and say ‘I told you so’ and see in the spread of revolutionary and syndicalist sentiments the direct consequence of the separation of Church and State.The danger to France has ceased to be from beyond the Rhine; the menace seems to be from within.
I need not say that I am well and as you once put it, ‘reasonably happy.’I have been gather [sic] together my verse lately, and hope to bring out a volume soon, not with any expectation of having it read, but to circulate among friends like the ‘sugared sonnets.’I have been looking over your elegiaes [sic] today which made me think much of you - perhaps the motive of my writing.Write me soon in answer, and give my address to any who you think I would enjoy seeing- your emissaries as it were, since I have little hope of seeing you here yourself, and giving you the accolade of perpetual friendship.
As ever,
Alan Seeger
28.5.13

[Transcription by Becky Heiser ‘11]

Alan Seeger wrote this letter in 1913 while living in Paris, shortly before joining the war effort as a member of the French Foreign Legion.The letter is written to Guy Emerson, a classmate from Harvard, who wrote The New Frontier. The letter reveals Seeger’s opinions of pre-war France. He comments on the political and spiritual cultures of France, stating that “the danger to France has ceased to be from beyond the Rhine; the menace seems to be from within.” Despite his disillusionment with French ideals, his letter celebrates the beauty of the city itself. His love for Paris can also be seen in his poem “Paris.”

The political situation in France in the years leading up to World War I was characterized by constant conflict for power across the political spectrum. The Right had a small victory in 1913 when Raymond Poincare, a moderate, was elected president due to growing nationalist sentiment and a popular desire to prevent further threats from Germany. The largest point of contention between leftist factions and Poincare’s government was the three-year law, referenced in Seeger’s letter, which increased the required military service from two years to three. The purpose of the law was to compensate for France’s smaller population in the face of the Germany’s increased military strength. The law actually united the Socialists and the Radical left in opposition and their combined efforts resulted in a successful victory for the Leftist parties in the French Parliament in the election of 1914.1 In his letter here, Seeger views the sentiments of the French soldiers who were rioting against the law as being anti-patriotic and sympathetic toward the Socialists. His statements in his letter must have been indicative of the opinions of his friends and acquaintances because Seeger himself was never deeply interested in political matters.2

For a man with such an interesting - albeit short - life, it was surprising to find that the only biography written about Alan Seeger was published in 1967. Seeger was born on June 22, 1888, in New York City to Elsie and Charles Louis Seeger. He lived in New York until 1900 when the entire Seeger family moved to Mexico City after the family business failed. In 1902, Alan and his brother Charles returned to New York to attend Hackley School, a boarding school in Tarrytown, NY. He excelled in his English classes and entered Harvard in September 1906. There Seeger found himself involved with a rebellious group of long-haired, sloppily-dressed nonconformists. The group was made up of some of the best students at Harvard; yet, they were often disliked by faculty and peers because of their unorthodox opinions of life and politics. Seeger became friends with John Reed, the journalist, war correspondent, and author. Reed’s book, Ten Days that Shook the World, is an eyewitness account of the 1917 Russian Revolution.

After he graduated in 1910, Seeger moved to Greenwich Village where he lived the life of a “bohemian” - he never had a steady job, but he wrote poetry and articles and occasionally worked as a tutor. Seeger was unhappy for most of his time in New York. In search of an elusive truth, Seeger was a drifter who was often perceived as arrogant and too sensitive. He dreamed of moving to Paris, and in 1912, at age 26, he continued his bohemian lifestyle at 17 rue du Sommerard in the Latin Quarter of Paris.

In Paris, Seeger continued to view the world with intensity, but he was no longer scornful because he felt as if he had found the truth and beauty he’d been searching for his entire life. He walked the streets of Paris wearing a long black cape and a guitar over his shoulder, always going to a party or to meet a friend. His friends often described him as “lost” and “unreachable” because he did not participate in political debates. He did not want to waste his youth analyzing the city’s flaws because, to him, the city was splendid. He clashed with socialists and pacifists and other anti-war adherents; he thought they were dull and lacked elegance. To Seeger, war was a test of valor and an opportunity to shed blood for justice. By July 1914, he felt as though he had accumulated enough poetry to write a book which he entitled Juvenilia. Unfortunately, with the start of World War I, he was unable to find a publisher. Instead, Seeger joined the war effort.

After the assassination of Duke Ferdinand in June 1914, Seeger became convinced that the war was going to spread across Europe. He did not regard war as an abomination but instead seemed to have a romantic view of the adventure, honor, and glory war provided. Many of the Americans living in France at this time joined the French Foreign Legion, and Seeger was no exception and headed to training camp in Rouen on August 25, 1914. After the First Battle of the Marne, the War Ministry in France ordered any foreigners with previous military experience to front-line service. Seeger, along with many of his friends, said he had been an officer in the Mexican Army and was sent to the front lines. In a letter to his mother, Seeger wrote “I hope you see this thing as I do and think that I have done well...by my decision in taking upon my shoulders, too, the burden that so much of humanity is suffering under...rather than stand ingloriously aside.”3 Seeger and the rest of 1st Company Battalion C of the French Foreign Legion went to Camp de Mailly for advanced training on September 19, 1914. He promptly got lice and proceeded to infect everyone else in his unit. Seeger was passed up for a promotion and was sent to Verzenay (near Reims) along the Western Front. In 1915, his Legion was relieved and sent to a rest area where all Foreign regiments were combined into one unit and designated as shock troops for the Moroccan Division.

During his time on the Western Front, Seeger became a correspondent for the New York Sun and the New Republic. He also founded the “Foreign Legion Chapter of the Harvard Club” which was short-lived due to the death or transfer of the members. In January 1916, Seeger became sick with bronchitis and was moved to a military hospital where he wrote the poem “I Have a Rendezvous with Death” which was later published in the New Republic. Seeger’s war poetry can be compared to the poetry of Rupert Brooke, who wrote “The Soldier.” Their poetry is more idealistic and sentimental than other World War I poetry written by soldiers such as Wildfred Owen and Isaac Rosenberg. As the war went on, many soldiers lost their enthusiasm for the war and became pessimistic. Despite the romantic sentiments in his poetry, Seeger reveals a more pessimistic attitude in an article for the New Republic. He writes of the trenches: “we are not...leading the life of men at all, but that of animals, living in holes in the ground and only showing our heads outside to fight and to feed.”4

Seeger returned to his unit on May 1, 1916 and was then allowed a month’s furlough which he used to travel to Paris. His book Juvenilia had been published and was waiting for him at the US Embassy. Shortly after returning to the front lines, a burst of machine gun bullets killed Seeger at the Battle of the Somme. He died on July 4, 1916, during the attack on Belloy-en-Santerre, a battle where only five of the forty-five men in his unit survived. He was posthumously awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Medaille Militaire. His poetry was published after his death in 1917; however, Poems was never well-received owing to his high ideals and lofty language which were no longer popular in post-war Europe. T.S. Eliot, a former classmate of Seeger, critiqued Poems saying, “Seeger was serious about his work and spent pains over it. The work is well done, and so much out of date as to be almost a positive quality. It is high-flown, heavily decorated and solemn, but its solemnity is thorough going, not a mere literary formality. Alan Seeger, as one who knew him can attest, lived his whole life on this plane, with impeccable poetic dignity; everything about him was in keeping."5

- Hannah Jarrett ‘12 and Becky Heiser ‘11

1Anderson, R.D., France 1870-1914: Politics and Society (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1977), 28-29; Zeldin, Theodore, France 1848-1945, Vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 722-724.
2Werstein, Irving, Sound No Trumpet: The Life and Death of Alan Seeger (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1967), 44. Other biographical details in this essay were distilled from this source.
3 qtd. in Werstein, 78.
4qtd. in Werstein, 100.
5qtd. in “‘--the rest is silence’ Lost Poets of the Great War,” Harry Rusche, June 21, 2011, http://english.emory.edu/LostPoets/ThePoets.html.

Google to Make British Library Archive Available Online - Tech Europe - WSJ

The long tail gets longer:

The British Library today announced its first partnership with Google, under which Google will digitize 250,000 items from the library’s vast collection of work produced between 1700-1870.

Nevertheless, [a representative of the Library] expressed slight frustration that the project will not go beyond 1870: “What we really want is the 20th century, but we Europeans are often locked out of our own culture by copyright laws. So, for instance, the First World War poets, which are pre-1923 and therefore out of copyright in the USA, are still in copyright in Europe. There is an absurdity there.”

Nor, he noted, was the issue of copyright restricted to Europe: “Early adopters of digitization were American college libraries that got themselves in a bit of trouble with copyright. The 1870 date we’ve chosen is very conservative and none of the European libraries has released anything that is still in copyright. The idea of the British Library and things that are still in copyright is way too rich for our blood.” [Excerpted, emphasis added]

Read the full article @ Tech Europe - Wall Street Journal: Google to Make British Library Archive Available Online

Mind Control & the Internet by Sue Halpern | The New York Review of Books

I'm plodding my way through Lanier's "You Are Not A Gadget," so I really appreciate its contextualization in this review. A passage that struck me:

The [Google] search process, in other words, has become “personalized,” which is to say that instead of being universal, it is idiosyncratic and oddly peremptory. “Most of us assume that when we google a term, we all see the same results—the ones that the company’s famous Page Rank algorithm suggests are the most authoritative based on other page’s links,” [author] Pariser observes. With personalized search, “now you get the result that Google’s algorithm suggests is best for you in particular—and someone else may see something entirely different. In other words, there is no standard Google anymore.” It’s as if we looked up the same topic in an encyclopedia and each found different entries—but of course we would not assume they were different since we’d be consulting what we thought to be a standard reference.

Among the many insidious consequences of this individualization is that by tailoring the information you receive to the algorithm’s perception of who you are, a perception that it constructs out of fifty-seven variables, Google directs you to material that is most likely to reinforce your own worldview, ideology, and assumptions. Pariser suggests, for example, that a search for proof about climate change will turn up different results for an environmental activist than it would for an oil company executive and, one assumes, a different result for a person whom the algorithm understands to be a Democrat than for one it supposes to be a Republican. (One need not declare a party affiliation per se—the algorithm will prise this out.) In this way, the Internet, which isn’t the press, but often functions like the press by disseminating news and information, begins to cut us off from dissenting opinion and conflicting points of view, all the while seeming to be neutral and objective and unencumbered by the kind of bias inherent in, and embraced by, say, the The Weekly Standard or The Nation. [emphasis added]

Read the whole thing at The New York Review of Books:

Mind Control & the Internet by Sue Halpern