August 27 September 2, 2009

The Epoch Times

Arts & Culture 2

The AntidoteClassic Poetry for Modern Life

A Reading of The Voice of the Rain by Walt Whitman

By CHRISTOPHER NIELD The Voice of the Rain
And who art thou? said I to the soft-falling shower, Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here translated: I am the Poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain, Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea, Upward to heaven, whence, vaguely formed, altogether changed, and yet the same, I descend to lave the drouths, atomies, dust-layers of the globe, And all that in them without me were seeds only, latent, unborn; And forever, by day and night, I give back life to my own origin, and make pure and beautify it; (For song, issuing from its birth-place, after fullment, wandering, Recked or unrecked, duly with love returns.)

If the role of philosophers is to take away the mystery of the world around us, then the role of poets is to give the mystery back. The former bring clarity, the second wonderyet in wonder there is a form of understanding. In this poem, Whitman turns to one of most ordinary sights of all, a rain shower, and receives a vision of the cosmos. And who art thou? he begins, as if he has already asked the sun, the moon, the blades of grass interrogating every aspect of existence in wide-eyed astonishment, and discovering everything afresh. Strange to tell, as if in a fairy tale, the rain replies and Whitman translates. As paganprophet, he mediates between nature and liza voronin/the epoch times humanity. The voice of the rain is the voice of Earththe soil beneath our feet and the planet that is our home. And the voice tells the most banal and the most incredible of stories: the journey of a drop of moisture, from the land or sea, evaporating into the air, rising up into the sky, to condense into clouds and then to fall as a shower. And in an endless cycle, it will evaporate once more. Challenging our sense of logic, the rain is altogether changed and yet the same. This points to a deeper truth that science conrms: that energy is never destroyed, only transferred into another form. So in change, there is eternity.

Whitman emphasizes the strangeness of what we see. Words such as impalpable, bottomless and vaguely suggest that, while our eyes record each icker of reality, its true scope remains tantalizingly beyond our rational comprehension. When the rain returns to Earth from heaven, it returns to lave the dust. The word lave has a magisterial quality that grants the rain a gravitas, a dignied beauty. The rain nourishes the drouths (droughts) and the atomies, the tiniest particles, and releases life from every seed. Nothing escapes its patient, loving administrations. Making the world pure and beautifying it, the rain is like the Holy Spirit or a HIndu avatar, bringing enlightenment and salvation to a world dirtied by death and ignorance. Yet Whitman sees the world in an everlasting cyclical process of giving birth to itself. Giving back life to its own origin, it implicitly has no need for a creator-god. He anticipates the idea of Gaiathe Earth as a single organism. Stylistically, Whitman balances order and chaos: breaking with the conventions of meter and rhyme, yet arranging his words into a pattern as absolute as a leafs or a snowakes. Each phrase is the length of a breath; yet we become almost breathless as they build into one long owing sentence in which everything connects. In his nal image, the Poem of Earth becomes a song. This song is like a wandering child, issuing from its birthplace and exploring the world but always returning, bonded to its mother. The voice of the rain and the voice of the poet meet in the voice of love itself, perpetually creating, whether recked or unrecked (noticed or not), soaring to heaven yet never losing faith with the glory of the Earth below. Walt Whitman (18191892) was an American poet, essayist, journalist, and humanist. Christopher Nield is a poet living in London.

MOCKUMENTARY ROMANCE: Michael Cera and Charlyne Yi in Paper Heart. justina mintz/ overture films

A Quirky Mockumentary About Love

Movie Review: Paper Heart
By STUART KURTZ Ahh yes, lovethat euphoric, gravity-defying, heady king of emotions. When we nd it, we just know it for what it is. However, dening it is more dicult. Paper Heart seeks both to secure romantic love and to dene it, though it fails on both counts. While it presents some true throat-gulping interviews of couples truly in love, it breaks a cardinal rule of romanceyou have to be honest about love. The quirky Charlyne Yi, who has done comedy on lm and stage, has teamed up with director Nick Jasenovec and actor Jake Johnson (Curb Your Enthusiasm) to make a mockumentary on love. She sets o on a road trip with her crew from Albuquerque to Atlanta, crisscrossing the country to nd what love is. If it really exists, maybe it can exist for her. The ctional portion of the lm follows the budding romance between Charlyne and Michael Cera (Knocked Up), who plays himself. No movie comes without a complication. That is Charlynes skepticism on nding the answers to love on her journey and also her ambivalence toward Michael. The interview process reveals love in such variety that it redeems the choice to shoot a portion in the documentary style. From a scientist expounding the chemical reaction of love, children, and bikersit seems Charlyne struggles to dene what love is. And she gets some examples to reinforce her doubts, such as the guy at the Vegas wedding chapel who ipped a coin to see whether to get married or not. For those who might have swallowed Charlynes poison pill of negativism by now, dont get mired down. Some afrmations of romance will lift your boat. The use of puppets instead of dramatizations lends the most touching moments. The eect elevates the love stories into a magical place. Whats not magical is yet a magicians trick the lmmakers attempt to pull o. This is why the lm merits the distinction of mockumentary, a documentary with some ction. Charlynes courtship with Michael Cera is endearing. The one problem is its all sham. They are acting the pangs of love. The viewers would not know this from the movie, and many will leave the theaters thinking this relationship is as genuine as the interviewee who says love means making a sacrice. Jasenovec came up with the idea of a narrative side to get Charlyne over her camera shyness. She was condent when acting her emotions. They felt the audience too would have an easier time with it. Yi stated in the press notes that, People would think its more real, more something to believe in if people werent sure if this were a true documentary or not. Sasha Baron Cohen fools his interviewees and some of his audience in Borat and Bruno, but they deserved it. Cohen wants people to wake up to the satire of themselves so that they might change their behaviors. Paper Heart only deceives for the sake of style. It is forgivable that Nick is only Jake Johnson playing Nick and that the team left some of the sad interviews on the cutting room oor. As Charlyne says, Sometimes you can only feel something if you take a risk. Here the risk should have been providing a true romance or sticking to the documentary form. That would be an honest relationship with the audience. Stuart Kurtz is a freelance arts, travel, issues writer with a blog at http://www. stuartkurtz.blogspot.com and can be contacted at decophile@hotmail.com.

Stories from Ancient China: Beware of Those Who Flatter

According to Laut Shishuoxinyu, Emperor Tang Taizong of the Tang Dynasty, passed a tree following a court hearing one day. He enjoyed the trees leaves and branches. An underling, Yuwenshiji stood close by and attempted to atter the emperor by saying good things about the tree. Tang Taizong berated the atterer, Wei Zheng taught me to keep a distance from those of low character. Although I assumed you might be one of those people, I was not sure until now. Yuwenshiji was crushed and asked forgiveness. Confucius said, I consider those of low character whose sharp tongues do our nation harm, but we must also keep apart from those who try to atter; those who atter easily are crafty to discern what their superiors want and how to make them happy. To reach this end, these people can embellish things, twist the truth and do harm to those who are honest and upright. Therefore, beware of those who atter!

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The open rebuke Yuwneshiji received is a good example of that. It is not dicult to single out a person of low character from the rest. A person who speaks

the truth, daring to voice what is on his mind, is an upright person. Those who try to ingratiate themselves and atter are sly and conniving.

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