Worthy Words, Part 10: Carlos Fuentes

The great Mexican writer, diplomat, and professor Carlos Fuentes (1928 - 2012) had a lot to say about a broad range of topics, ranging from literary legends to politics, business to social class, national identity to cultural myths. Fuentes's  soul-searching, humorous, and compelling memoir, "How I Started to Write," appears in his 1990 essay collection Myself and Others: Selected Essays, in part a remembrance of his initial experiences in the United States as the child of a Mexican diplomat stationed in Washington, DC. 

The North American world blinds us with its energy; we cannot see ourselves, we must see you. The United States is a world full of cheerleaders, prize-giving, singin' in the rain: the baton twirler, the Oscar awards, the musical comedies cannot be repeated elsewhere; in Mexico, the Hollywood statuette would come dipped in poisoned paint; in France, Gene Kelly would constantly stop in his steps to reflect: Je danse, donc je suis. [I  dance, therefore I am.] (page 5)

Americans can argue all they want about whether that national energy still exists, but it surely does to people outside of the USA. As the son of Maltese immigrants and with close familial ties in three continents, I have often tried to see the country I was born, raised, and reside in, the United States, from the eyes of outsiders. Fuentes's words remind me that Americans love a parade, exude creativity, and focus more on doing that leads to results than on reflecting purposelessly for its own sake.

Three paragraphs later, Fuentes doubles down on his view of the USA:

As a young Mexican growing up in the U.S., I had a primary impression of a nation of boundless energy, imagination, and the will to confront and solve the great social issues of the times without blinking or looking for scapegoats. It was the impression of a country identified with its own highest principles: political democracy, economic well-being, and faith in its human resources, especially in that most precious of all capital, the renewable wealth of education and research. (page 6)  

I refuse to get jingoistic or nostalgic, so I'll conclude with these words: If only we Americans could live up to that praise ...  

Worthy Words, Part 9: Theodore Roethke

These are the first 4 lines of Theodore Roethke's 24-line sestet "In a Dark Time": 

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,

I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;

I hear my echo in the echoing wood—

A lord of nature weeping to a tree. 

Writers have described this poem as Roethke's exploration into psychological suffering or mental disturbance. Roethke did, in fact, contend with manic depression. And lines such as "What's madness but nobility of soul" and "My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly, / Keeps buzzing at the sill" can incline readers toward interpreting the poem as the poet's plunge into despair.

After reading "In a Dark Time" more than a dozen times over the past 40 years, I see the poem from an entirely different perspective. For sure, its beginning movement is one of descent, into the mind, an attempt to resolve mystery, into the soul, a quest for harmony with one's existence and the natural world. But its ascendancy staggers the imagination. How else could I see a poem that concludes with these lines:

A fallen man, I climb out of fear.

The mind enters itself, and God the mind.

And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

The poem does more than take my breath away. It shakes my spirit to its core. I urge you to read and reread "In a Dark Time" at the Poetry Foundation.