Mind you catch the turning of the tide

[sovay]

rushthatspeaks and I took Fox to the Museum of Science for the first time this afternoon. We had planned on Revere Beach, but the clear skies and sun of the last two days suddenly turned into bucketing rain, so we went for something indoors instead. Apparently what Fox at this age likes is Van der Graaff lightning, newly hatched chicks, and parabolic mirrors. These all seem like good things to me. They do not like being in the stroller, or at least they like it much less than being carried by their parent or me—facing forward, so that they can see everything I am looking at, which is absolutely not the way Autolycus wants to be held when he climbs into my arms and rests his chin on my shoulder and purrs with guilt-tripping soulfulness. I adapted.

The good thing about this week is that I spent large portions of it out of the house. The bad part is that I spent most of my time inside the house working, as opposed to writing any of the things in my head. These are links.

1. The latest issue of Poetry (now with revamped website!) is dedicated to the "individual 
and cumulative practice" of everything that can be defined as "Asian American poetry." The table of contents is huge and all worth reading, but at the moment I am most struck by Aimee Nezhukumatathil's "Sea Church," Hayan Charara's "The Prize," Larissa Lai's "SPLEEN 3: Supreme White," Bryan Thao Worra's "Ecce Monstro," Tishani Doshi's "Monsoon Poem," Craig Santos Perez's "A Whole Foods in Hawai‘i," Rajiv Mohabir's "Coolie," Brandon Som's "Chino," Joseph O. Legaspi's "Feasting," and Wang Ping's "Lao Jia 老家."

2. This is a very specific point to take away from an article about 45's pretty damn white nationalist speech in Poland, but I feel increasingly that the word "Judeo-Christian" should be retired from the language, full stop. Interfaith allyship is great; Evangelical supersessionism can eat a brick. Steve Bannon invoking some shared religious bulwark against Islam? A lot of bricks. I know the historical usefulness of the word: it was a means of defusing American anti-Semitism by incorporating Judaism into the Christian national ideal. But it's like the process of becoming treated as (contingently, not universally, always revocably) white: there are better ways to affirm that people have the right to be part of their nation's identity. Anyway, it makes me twitch.

3. I understand that this photo by Josee Houle is called "The Experiment," but it sure looks like some kind of Symbolist sphinx to me:



Give it up, Oedipus. You won't find the answer to the riddle that way.

Comments

[davidgillon]

Good point on uses of Judaeo-Christian. Maybe Abrahamic to make Bannon's head spin until it explodes?

[sovay]

Good point on uses of Judaeo-Christian.

Thank you. It's a usage that's felt weird to me for years, but it took until quite recently for me to be able to pinpoint why. Noticing that I don't really see it used by Jews, for one thing. (Saying that feels like I may have just summoned disagreement into my comments, on the one island/two Jews/three synagogues model.)

Maybe Abrahamic to make Bannon's head spin until it explodes?

How I wish!

(And, yes, discussing the Abrahamic religions does not make me twitch in the same way, especially since that means we can include groups like the Yazidis and the Bahá'í.)

[davidgillon]

Good point on the Yazidis and the Bahai, the more inclusivity the better! Of course 'people'* would probably be best of all.

* Just so long as we're not usng Bannon's definition.

[sovay]

Just so long as we're not usng Bannon's definition.

I think not using Bannon's definitions for anything is a good rule in life.

[jesse_the_k]

As a cultural Jew, I found the appropriation of that name by Christian cultural supremacists to be maximally annoying.

I can't count the number of times I was told that "Jews read the Old Testament."

Hmph.

[sovay]

As a cultural Jew, I found the appropriation of that name by Christian cultural supremacists to be maximally annoying.

Abraham, Judeo-Christian, or did I miss a step?

I can't count the number of times I was told that "Jews read the Old Testament."

I ran into the visual version of this a couple of years back with John Singer Sargent's The Triumph of Religion (1919), where for "religion" one should mostly read "Christianity," and that was interesting, where for "interesting" one should mostly read "I am unsurprised to hear that Boston Jews of the time yelled at him about it; I would have." "Old and busted . . . new hotness" is not a reasonable way to talk about a living religion.

[jesse_the_k]

Forgive my (sadly) typical incoherence.

Abrahamic has an OK ring; Judeo-Christian makes me cranky.

(And thanks for the link: it was like a vacation,)

[sovay]

Abrahamic has an OK ring; Judeo-Christian makes me cranky.

Okay! Thank you for disambiguating.

(And thanks for the link: it was like a vacation,)

You're very welcome.

[cmcmck]

I know what you mean about 'Judeo Christian' and it's made all the worse by being a Christian (Quaker) of Latvian Jewish ancestry!

[sovay]

I know what you mean about 'Judeo Christian' and it's made all the worse by being a Christian (Quaker) of Latvian Jewish ancestry!

I remember you mentioning your great-grandmother's family in Riga.

[gwynnega]

That new issue of Poetry looks amazing.

[sovay]

That new issue of Poetry looks amazing.

I highly recommend it! They've been on fire this whole summer.

[thawrecka]

Ooh, thanks for the links to the latest issue of Poetry. I don't tend to go looking for poetry on my own, as much as I like it, and this includes some lovely stuff.

[sovay]

I don't tend to go looking for poetry on my own, as much as I like it, and this includes some lovely stuff.

You're very welcome! I don't link as much poetry as I should.

[asakiyume]

In addition to adoring "Sea Church," I really liked "Monsoon":

We dream of wet, of course, of being submerged
in millet stalks, of webbed toes and stalled
clocks and eels in the mouth of a heron

[sovay]

In addition to adoring "Sea Church," I really liked "Monsoon"

I'm so glad. The lines you excerpt are, unsurprisingly, ones that stayed with me. Did you see (hear) that there's audio for that piece?

[asakiyume]

Did you see (hear) that there's audio for that piece?

I did not! Thank you!

[asakiyume]

Wow, this gets me to hear the rhymes, which I totally **didn't** perceive when I was reading it to myself.

[dhampyresa]

I know the historical usefulness of the word
I had no idea! I wonder if it has a similar origin in French?

That's a beautiful picture!

[sovay]

I wonder if it has a similar origin in French?

Is it used in the same kinds of contexts?

That's a beautiful picture!

I was really struck by it!

[dhampyresa]

Is it used in the same kinds of contexts?
I'm not sure. I'm not familiar enough with the contexts it's used in to say.

[starlady]

We threw "Judeo-Christian" around a lot in my "Great Conversation" classes at college, but over the past few years I've decided it's not good to use, for much the same reasons you mention. In my mind it applies a teleology that doesn't actually exist.

[sovay]

In my mind it applies a teleology that doesn't actually exist.

Yeah.

How was it used in your classes?

[kate_nepveu]

I recently came across this comic about a sphinx, which that image immediately brought to mind: http://jakewyattriot.tumblr.com/post/161558309113/heres-a-comic-i-made-for-todays-edition-of-le

[sovay]

I recently came across this comic about a sphinx, which that image immediately brought to mind

That's great.