Cooperation: A No-Brainer

ProetryPlace Blog 25 Cooperation: A No-Brainer

    You have probably used the term “Right Brain” to refer to someone who may be a little absent minded, loves reading poetry and drinking tea in her silk pajamas and might be an accomplished musician, or you may have used the term “Left Brain” when describing your lawyer or accountant.

    Greatly oversimplified, the scientific theories of lateralization of brain functions between the cerebral hemispheres have been popularized to categorize distinctive personality types. Left brainers are described as objective critical thinkers whose brains excel at mathematics and language regarding the use of words and syntax. Right brain thinkers conversely are described as subjective, visual and creative with language abilities more associated with emotion and meaning than with rules.

    As a writer and especially as a poet, I wonder how or if these alleged brain machinations affect my writing and my reading and in retrospect, how they may have affected other activities of life. So, I Googled the subject and took a couple of the several online tests supposed to reveal brainedness.

    In high school I majored in math, science and English. I liked English best—loved reading the stories of Hawthorne, Poe and Shirley Jackson. Poetry not so much. In college, once I got past the day-long, class-cutting card games in the student union, I majored again in math plus chemistry and physics which left little time for the language, performing or visual arts. Then followed graduate school supported by a research fellowship in physical chemistry. The Right Brain/Left Brain theories had not yet been proposed. They helped Roger Sperry win the Nobel Prize in 1981.

    During my working career in industrial R&D at one of those peer interaction and evaluation activities, I was unanimously judged to be “analytical.” The majority of my thought processes were actually directed at designing highly innovative and exploratory research and experimentation with the invention of new materials and methods for producing them as a goal, but I also enjoyed manipulating and analyzing the experimental data to squeeze meaning from them. Right brain, Left brain or both?

    Then, abruptly, in retirement my word processor quickly took precedence over spreadsheet programs. I wrote short stories, memoir and nonfiction and dabbled in poetry. I replaced technical and scientific reading with reading the same genres that I wrote and books about creating them.

    Did this confuse my brain? Did it call into play parts of my brain that had lain largely dormant for decades? Could the brainedness tests clearly define what kind of thinker I am?

    I scored exactly 50% Right and 50% Left on the first test, a result that seemed to indicate and explain either everything or nothing. I found another, more comprehensive, test that was designed to enable students to improve their study habits. My results were skewed slightly Left at 53% versus 47% Right.

    My sister is a talented and creative painter, poet and cook. She earned a living for several years by writing the script for a daily radio show. She scored 41% Left, 59% right, somewhat more indicative possibly than my middle of the road results.

    New research results published just a few months ago recognize that certain brain functions take place primarily in one hemisphere of the brain or the other and yet found no evidence for greater use of either side of the brain versus the other in over 1000 subjects studied using MRI scans. The study further suggests that the brain works best when both halves work together, i.e. for Co-brainers.

    Albert Einstein was possibly the most creative and visionary thinker in history; at the same time he expressed himself with advanced, abstract mathematical concepts. Was he Left-brain or Right-brain?

    When he died nearly 60 years ago his brain was removed, preserved and studied. The most distinguishing feature of his brain did not relate to either left or right hemisphere but rather to the corpus callosum; this information pathway that communicates between the two halves was highly enlarged in Einstein’s brain compared to normal, average brains.

    The benefits of a cooperative approach, making the most of the best that both Left and Right can offer is not only intuitively pleasing but now has roots in scientific reality.

    Now, if only our politicians could be made to understand this.

Richard Allen Anderson http://richardandersonblogs.blogspot.com 28 October 2013

CLUELESS in CARROLLTON

ProetryPlace Blog 24          CLUELESS IN    CARROLLTON

    For quite a few years during which I was fully occupied with earning a living, helping rear a family in support of my wife’s primary efforts and occasional community involvements including terms on the city council, the Red Cross board and other civic organizations, I had little time for or interest in games.

    Even after our nest was empty and retirement implied some free time, I kept fully occupied developing new interests and shedding some older ones. For a while I found Sudoku a challenging amusement involving critical placement of just nine numbers. I became somewhat proficient and started to lose interest. Numbers were not enough. I was writing more and I felt an itch for words.

    One day, I picked up my wife’s crossword puzzle book and started filling squares. That did it. I have continued lettering squares ever since, finding satisfaction in the completed matrix and much more.

    The small daily puzzles in our small daily newspaper are graded in difficulty, becoming more and more challenging as the week progresses. Today, being Saturday, the usual 10 to 30 minute task stretched to an hour as I struggled with clues that were unusually obscure, deceiving or ambiguous.

    I thought I had nailed “Native of Moscow” with “Russian,” only to find the word I needed was “Idahoan,”  also seven letters ending with “an.” Similarly, clue 24-down “Bouquet.” Required the answer “smell,” not “scent,” “Santa’s team member” was “Donner” not “Dasher” and “turn” not “spin” was the only fit for the clue, “rotate.”

    I have no clue at all about some clues. These get filled in by answering parallel and perpendicular neighbors, and often are still not recognizable to me even when the puzzle is complete. So, after I have finished the puzzle, I grab my iPad to seek enlightenment through Google, Wikipedia or Webster.

    Today, I discovered that Galahad’s mother was Elaine, all the puzzle required. But Wikipedia supplied the additional information that he was illegitimate and that Lancelot was his father. Hanky-panky in King Arthur’s court again! Leave it to the French. I also learned that the long white gowns that various clergy and altar attendants wear cinched at the waist are called albs—a funny little word, don’t you think?

    How many people do you know who know the capitol of Ghana? It is Accra (11 across).  Did you know that Accra is a port city located on the southern coast of that big land-lump of the African continent that bulges out into the Atlantic Ocean? And did you know that it was settled three centuries after Paris, France but now has nearly one million great population? Neither did I, and I doubt that the crossword author did either.

    Reading a good crossword puzzle has some things in common with reading a good novel, nonfiction or poetry. In these works (excepting perhaps haiku) the author does not present herself directly to the reader. Yet in the end, a connection, a bond exists between the author and the reader. Often, establishing this subliminal link facilitates the understanding of crossword clues and recognition of underlying themes, enabling one to say to the author, “Aha, I see where you are coming from (or leading to).”

    So, do not belittle the lowly crossword as a form of literature. It aint Beowulf, but it has much to offer and takes less time than reading the same—unless you choose to research some of the answers.

    BTW, the photo is an internet image from the fascinating Ghana collection.

Richard Allen Anderson http://richardandersonblogs.blogspot.com ProetryPlace

ProetryPlace Blog 23 Artists and Authors

    The Carrollton Cultural Arts Center occupies a few acres just off the downtown historic square. This past weekend it was host to local and visiting artists in great variety vending their wares, some 70, 80 or more in all, including potters and painters, carvers and ceramicists, singers, dancers, makers of fine jewelry and of musical instruments, purveyors of pulled pork and about a dozen writers  who are members of the Carrollton Creative Writers Club, including me.

    Books for sale included southern fiction, western fiction, sci-fi, young adult, children’s, fantasy, poetry, and whatever else I may have overlooked. Some of our authors sell their books as a livelihood, some as a hobby. For some it is an activity approached with trepidation and even loathing. For these, motivation is more in the form of desire to share their creative works than by expectations for profit.

    While we have, at this and similar events in the past, purchased many hand-crafted items to grace our home or serve as fine gifts, this was my first experience as a vendor with my book of poetry, Another Season Spent, up for sale in competition with all the other vendors for customer dollars.

    As it happens, I did sell enough to cover the vendor fees and other costs with some left over to take my wife to lunch at one of the quaint local beaneries or buy a couple of new books of my own. More rewarding was the experience itself. I found special satisfaction when total strangers stopped to hello, pick up my book, flip a few pages and declare, “Okay, I’ll take this one.”

    Adding to the enjoyment, both Saturday and Sunday were beautiful, bright autumn days by Georgia standards and would have passed for the finest of summer days in the North. I enjoyed the lull times that provided opportunity to chat with my fellow writers on matters of writing or trivia or personal import. I people-watched the art-loving public as they strolled by in greater variety than the art on display. I listened with amusement to my neighboring author, T. L. Gray, spiel her sales pitch with as much skill as she applies to her writing. I even found time to draft a few new poems.

    Several of our group of writers also took turns on the outdoors performing arts stage reading some of our lighter and shorter works and serving as emcees to introduce other performing groups.  I read:

Senior Center Moment

The sound of numbered marbles

Rattling in a wired cage

Stills the talk around the tables

Hushes voices hoarse with age.

We all hear the caller’s voice to say

O’er the dwindling murmur of the crowd

Are you ready? Are you here to play?

Yes! But, call ‘em slowly, call ‘em loud.

Then here we go, and your first number is

The little baby, little old B-one.

Can you hear me call the numbers,

And is everybody having fun?

The next number is the old gray man

O-seventy five, O-seven-five,

And we’ve covered the entire span

From babe in arms to glad to be alive.

My darling wife loves to play this game

Of chance, perhaps to win a prize.

Though she’s deaf she loves it all the same.

As each number’s picked, she strains her eyes

To read the caller’s moving lips:

It’s the little train, he says, I-twenty-two,

And all the players echo back the quip:

Two-two, too-too, toot toot.

My poor dear wife is not amused

By this ritual of fantasy.

Extraneous voices leave her confused

By humor she cannot hear nor see.

The next one flies like a silent bird

Past straining eyes and deafened ears

To stay unseen, to remain unheard

And I nudge and point to allay her fears.

N-forty-four, N four-four

She glances at me for confirmation

Then fills that space, needs just one more

And she’s wired with anticipation.

G-sixty- three. G-six-three.

She glances again, I shake my head;

She frowns and sighs dejectedly.

The caller selects a numbered bead

Turns the orb and brings it to his eye . . .

I-thirty, he calls, I-three-O!

Eyes on fire, her hand shoots high—

Bingo. . . Bingo. . . Bingo!

Richard Allen Anderson http://richardandersonblogs.blogspot.com

Tiny Poems with a Big Punch

ProetryPlace Blog 22: ‘ku bug

caught

the ‘ku bug again

hope it isn’t fatal

    Blame my sister for this latest bout of haiku fever, though in truth, it is a chronic ailment for me. Knowing my penchant for these weird little poems, she alerted me to “Haiku in English” published this year by W.W.  Norton & Company. This little volume compiles 800 of the tiny poems penned by 200 poets in English over the past 100 years and presented in somewhat chronological order.

    We gave the Japanese baseball, a capitalistic, democratic post-war society and an inordinate fear of radiation. 100 years ago or so, they gave us haiku, though they were writing it for centuries before. Poets of the “Imagist” group picked it up and played with it, attracted by its imagery and brevity of expression. The book allows us to watch the evolution of haiku in English since that time.

    The Japanese gave us a one-liner with 17 “on” (a sort of syllable) in a poem referencing nature in one vividly or artistically described moment.  For example, Basho wrote (the interpretation presented here in three lines):

all along this road

not a single soul–only

autumn evening comes

and

wrapping dumplings in

bamboo leaves, with one finger

she tidies her hair

and this one that breaks the rule to avoid metaphorical allusions, but strikes a chord with me:

this dark autumn

old age settles down on me

like heavy clouds or birds

    Haiku are meant to be read in one breath, though for me, with pausing at the kireji, it sometimes requires two. Still, you get the point—these are very short poems, often much shorter that the once sacred 17-syllable, three-line form. One, by the poet Cor Van Den Houvel, consists of the single word, Tundra, set in the middle of a blank white page.

    (The kireji, by the way, is a sort of mental change-up pitch that may catch the reader by surprise.}

    In view of this apparently simple and brief form, one might expect writing and understanding haiku to be equally simple. Aint so. Quite the opposite, and volumes have been written to explain and describe haiku. These explanations, while not essential, can enhance one’s appreciation of the poems and the poets’ intentions.

    I like what Billy Collins, one-time US poet laureate, says in his introduction to “Haiku in English.”

He first notes that “haiku is both easy and impossible to define,” but goes on to offer some useful concepts.

    “. . . haiku not only convey the beauty of individually experienced moments, they are powerful . . .  assertions of the poet’s very existence.

    “Every haiku makes a common claim: I was there!

    “The best haiku contain a moment in time caught in the amber of the poet’s attention and the poem’s words.”

    English-language haiku have undergone evolutionary change in content as well as form. The natural world is not necessarily referenced in many haiku, and human nature often is the poem’s focus. Some refer to such poems as senryu, a subset of or separate category from haiku. Whatever; there no longer seems to be limits or restrictions regarding the subject matter of these poems.

    Given this wide variance in form and content, how should we now attempt to define haiku—or should we even bother? This great freedom requires great responsibility. It is what makes writing good haiku so difficult and writing bad haiku so easy. For a taste of contemporary haiku, here are a few recent samples of my own works in progress (they seem subject to eternal revisions) that I consider at least legitimate and possibly good:

sweet summer breeze

rustles fragile curtains

you may kiss the bride

her hand shoots up

excited and triumphant

Bingo! Bingo!

beneath the rose buds

a black snake lifts its head

quiet as a mouse

we speak of

our mundane experience

until it grows late

savoring a slice of sausage from my youth

the pink knit jump suit

strains to contain its owner

waddling down the hall

on the shelf

the camera gathers dust

memories

    For me, the essential haiku presents an image of a significant observation or occurrence in the poet’s life or imagination, significant because it evokes emotion, epiphany or clarity to the poet that may or may not be apparent or transferred to the reader.

reading haiku

tiny moments

fill a lifetime

Richard Allen Anderson,  ProetryPlaceBlog:      http://richardandersonblogs.blogspot.com