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Michael Sedano

Review: Raul Ramos y Sanchez. America Libre. NY: Grand Central. 2009.

I was happy to read Daniel Olivas’ review of Hit List Monday because it opens the week with a taste of the sublime, unlike the novel I started reading last week, instead of Hit List. The dog ate it, what can I say?

Fortunately, the edition I read of Raul Ramos Y Sanchez’ America Libre, is an advance copy anticipating its July 2009 paperback publication. So there’s time to fix a lot of stuff. Geography. Idiom. The “H” word. Most of all, Ethos.

America Libre takes place mostly in a dystopic present-day Los Angeles, but the trouble is nationwide. A Latina takes an errant bullet from drug-raiding San Anto cops. Barrios across the Southwest explode in violence. A National Guard platoon draws down on a mob and when the smoke clears twenty-three people lie dead. Across the nation, the barrios explode. Bloodthirsty television news channels provide only slanted, anti-raza coverage. Soon, lawlessness, or police indifference, bring vigilantes into the barrio. Bloody drive-by slaughters not only go unsolved, they grow in audacity. Increasingly, across the nation, xenophobia divides the country into brown v. white.

Conservative assholes, but I repeat myself, nativist assholes, ditto, hold sway in Congress. In a short period the United States of America begins rounding up all “Class ‘H’” people—“Hispanic” or Spanish-last name residents. Relocation camps in places like North Dakota will house the, first quarantined, then ultimately, concentration camped, population.

In Los Angeles, a group of, at first dissidents, then armed defenders, take on the violence. They ambush a three-car vigilante caravan. Using AK-47 and Rocket Propelled Grenades, led by an ex-Army Ranger, Afghanistan veteran and third-generation Hispanic, Manolo “Mano” Suarez, the barrio defender tortures the leader’s identity out of a vigilante. Joined by the incredibly rich and sexily blonde Hispanic Uruguayan Tupamaro Jo, and fiery orator Ramon Garcia, Mano helps the pretend poverty pimps craft a bloody liberation movement. Hispanics will take back their land from the …

Exciting material, could be a lot of fun to read, but for some serious obstacles.

The timeline gets mucked up. Each chapter tracks events by month and day, e.g. Month 2, Day 10. Someone--an editor, an assistant, a careless author—loses track of time. Month 11, Day 8 sees Mano quit his job with Jo and Ramon. Next chapter, listed as Month 21, Day 17, has Mano back on the street jobless and cheated out of twenty bucks, regretting quitting his job three weeks ago. Nine months of four weeks transpire in titles, but only 21 days in novel time. There are similar lapses in the sequencing gimmick.

Throughout the novel I had to keep asking myself who Grand Central thinks is its audience. Chicana Chicano readers, especially Angelinas Angelinos will have a lot of trouble enjoying the action owing to troublesome location errors, or, perhaps, ambiguities. And that's a small problem.

“East LA” is a place, not a stereotype, nor a metaphor. America Latina’s core action takes place in “Easlo,” an expression I hear for the first time in the novel. In El Lay, locals refer to “East Los” or “East L.A.”, and just as often respect specific communities like Boyle Heights, East Los’ neighbor to the West. Ramos y Sanchez writes as if “East Los Angeles” is a stereotype. In fact, Mano lives on Fourth Street, which is in Boyle Heights, not East LA. In another glaring locational error, after Mano and his crew of bombers blow holes across downtown L.A., the CIA moves its headquarters from its overlook of the Veterans Cemetery to some nondescript landscape. The Federal Building Ramos y Sanchez describes is on the tony L.A. Westside, miles from the downtown and not visible from East LA.

That type of blunder is easily fixed with a map or an informed editor. Less tolerable is the language people, supposedly raza, use. “Hispanic” is the major culprit. It’s clear Ramos y Sanchez and his editor struggled with the term. A limited Spanish-speaking Mexican-American like Mano and his guisa might indeed call each other and their gente “Hispanic” but dang, lots of characters buy into the term without any editorializing from the author about one of the most sensitive idiomatic expressions among Chicanas Chicanos Latinas Latinos, raza. I recommend the author and editor explore this terminological perplex with an ear for authenticity. Manitos and a chingón of Tejanos say “Hispanic” but in El Lay, Boyle Heights or greater East Los, hasta la westside, the “H” word might get your ass kicked. Among Mexicanos, Los Tigres Del Norte put the issue to song: En Estados Unidos te dicen que soy latino / Pero no te quieren decir que soy un Americano.

Politicized characters lack the ideological vocabulary one expects of Tupamaro or 60s veteranos. Instead of “amigo” the expression would, in the appropriate context, be “compañero” or “carnal” or “brother” or a host of other phrases that define relationship among speakers. For Ramos y Sanchez, “amigo” is the singlular expression of solidarity or palhood. Like “Hispanic”, the novel’s use of “amigo” contributes it a stunning lack of authenticity. I frequently have to read the author’s name again to make sure it’s not Amado Muro.

Everything that stuns my sensibilities is fixable in this action novel. Grand Central Publishing is home of Robert Ludlum’s library of high action thrillers. With that heritage in mind, Ramos y Sanchez has an obligation to give the reader more and better action. Things happen off stage or in exposition that deserve eye witness details and loud noises. The action develops much too slowwwwwly, and challenges even the most charitable reader’s willingness to suspend bullshit filters. Dozens of ammonium nitrate bombs detonate across Los Angeles downtown and not a drop of blood shed!?!

I suspect the most unfixable element is the horrid stereotyping of raza. In this world, as noted, dystopic, but other than gangbangers, junkies, whores, and looters, the barrios of this Los Angeles got themselves populated by gente with no backbone. All the crap that goes down and the people do not rise as one to do as they actually engage today: use political muscle and union power to organize the community. In this Los Angeles, outsiders sweep into town and lead us into temptation. The homegrown hero, torn by his loyaty to law and ordure and his Hispanic community, resolves the dilemma only after a National Guard tank levels the building where Mano’s son stood. In other words, out of selfishness rather than selflessness.

This puppet-like ethos of Los Angeles’ Chicano community makes America Libre one of the more subversive works of stories about chicanos by non chicanos. The cover blurb and author’s website describe the author as a Midwestern Cubano. If true, the author could possible fix the whole shebang by relocating the revolución to Pilsen or, major, Miami. That’s the ticket. One-way.

This morning, I had to drive S to school because she opted to stay home and finish a bit of homework she'd forgotten rather than take the bus that comes an hour before school opens. (I don't quarrel with her decision, which was sound, or with her priorities, which were to spend all last night studying for a major unit test in Spanish, and I enjoy time alone in a car with my girlies.)

On the way, I was still pondering what poem to use today for Poetry Friday. And S and I began to talk about the changing leaves on the trees. S's favorites are the "leaves that look like peaches — gold, with a hint of pink". (I like the dark eggplant-purple of the occasional ornamental tree, but only when it's contrasted with greens; they lose their magic for me when everything goes to rust.) And it hit me that the poem I most wanted to share today was Robert Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay."

"That's a sad poem," said S. "It was used in The Outsiders. Have you ever read that book?"

The answer is that I haven't. In the time and town where I grew up, once you were done with children's books, you moved on to grown-up titles. S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders, first published in 1967 (when I was three), was clearly around when I was a teen, but I never heard of it until S read it in middle school. But the poem plays a key role in the book in the relationship between the characters Ponyboy and Johnny. And because S so strongly associates the poem with the characters in the book, she finds it sad.

And really, it is sad, or at least fatalistic. But first the poem, then the discussion:

Nothing Gold Can Stay
by Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

On the surface, this is not truly a poem about autumn. The first four lines are about spring, and early growth of plants and leaves, when the first yellow greens appear on the trees. In the fifth line, the leaves are just leaves, but use of the word "subsides" shows a settling or falling sort of motion. And then the sixth line is the "turn," where Frost gets to his real topic. The subsidance of leaves reminds him of the fall of man in the Garden of Eden. Dawn is lost, but day remains. And then that last, killer line with a fatalistic ring to it, decrees that "Nothing gold can stay." It can be taken to mean that nothing can stay gold, and S.E. Hinton's character, Johnny, says that it's about the importance of appreciating the things you loved in youth, and about staying "golden", or young. But I think it means that nothing can stay young.

For me, the poem is about the transient nature of youth, with a hint of loss. And in my mind today, remembering this poem (I don't yet have it committed to memory, but I sure remembered the leaf references), I thought that "Nothing gold can stay" suited the brilliant-gold of the autumn leaves quite well. And so, evidently, did Robert Frost. Here are the last three lines of this poem from an earlier draft, at a time when the poem was called "Nothing Golden Stays":

In autumn she achieves
A still more golden blaze
But nothing golden stays.


Today's poem, "Nothing Gold Can Stay," was first published in 1923, in The Yale Review. But Frost played around with it for several years, and several earlier versions of it exist. The earliest of these other versions was sent to a friend in 1920, and ended as you see above. Frost's initial focus was on the evanescent quality of new growth. Buds are golden before green. Leaves appear to be flowers before they unfold and "subside" to be leaves. Trees burst forth in color again in the fall, then the leaves subside once and for all to earth. In later revisions, he decided to universalize the poem more. By introducing the idea of Eden, Frost injects a human element into the poem without spelling it out. The sinking of Eden is a reference to the "fall of man," but it echoes the idea of transience: Eden was short-lived, but the rest of man's time on earth has been much longer. Dawn, usually the time when the sun rises, is describes in falling terms as well, but dawn "goes down" to the bright light of day. Is that really a decline, or an improvement? Again, dawn is transient and over quickly, but day lasts far longer. Perhaps, then, Eden was transient, and the longer time spent after the fall is to be preferred? Is our preference for "gold" really such a good thing? Is not the long day better than the short dawn? Is not the summer longer and more durable than the budding spring? Is it not worth our while to recognize that youth's a stuff will not endure* and to appreciate our adulthood?

The poem concludes strongly, for a number of reasons:

"Nothing gold can stay."

Why does that line pack such a wallop?

Well, first, looking at metre, it is different than all the rest. The first seven lines are essentially iambic (a two-syllable poetic foot in which an unstressed syllable is followed by a stressed syllable, ta-TUM), although the first line has an oddball because "nature" is usually read NAture, not naTURE. The first seven lines each have six syllables to them. That last line has only five. And it's trochaic, with a truncated ending. (Don't panic - it means that it has two-syllable feet that are trochees, in which a stressed syllable is followed by an unstressed syllable, TUM-ta, but that the last foot only has one syllable, which is accented, so the line reads TUM-ta TUM ta TUM.)

It's written in rhymed couplets. Not just any rhymed couplets, either: but end-stopped rhymed couplets (which is to say that each line logically pauses at the end, where the commas and periods and semicolon can be found). This could easily become sing-songy in the wrong hands, yet Frost manages his images well enough that I find myself not truly noticing the rhyminess of it on a conscious level. Particularly if I read it aloud (as one should), where the pause after a comma is not as long as that created by a semicolon or a period. Especially since the lines "So Eden sank to grief,/So dawn goes down to day" form a single sentence, and don't rhyme with one another. Instead, they create a break before that last line, which stands alone.

Second, looking at word choice, the line begins with a negative: "Nothing." While there have been hints at loss and falling and evanescence throughout the poem, creating a vaguely melancholy tone, this word is aggressively negative. Also, as written that last line can be read as a command, rather than as a commentary on loss. It is a far broader statement than any that comes before it, generalized as it is to all things (in the negative). Gold cannot stay.

A possible stretch: While folks don't usually interpret the poem this way, one could stretch so far as to say that gold in that last line might not refer to the "just-Spring" qualities in the poem (with a nod to e.e. cummings), but could refer as well to money, which one cannot, after all, take with them.

For some other commentaries on the poem, check out these essays over at Modern American Poetry. The second one, analyzing it from a linguistic point of view, is fascinating to me, although I'm sure most people don't have the patience for it.


What think you?



* The quote "Youth's a stuff will not endure" is the closing line of "O Mistress Mine" by William Shakespeare. It was a song sung by the character Feste in Twelfth Night.

Poetry first, discussion after.



My Last Duchess
by Robert Browning

Ferrara

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
"Frà Pandolf" by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
Frà Pandolf chanced to say 'Her mantle laps
Over my lady's wrist too much,' or 'Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat': such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace—all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men,—good! but thanked
Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech—(which I have not)—to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, 'Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark'—and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
—E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

Thoughts

This poem is set up as a dramatic monologue, spoken by Duke Ferrara. It starts out sounding like a guy bragging about a piece of artwork — here, a fresco — but quickly skews toward the dark side, as he moves on to describe his wife, and thence to discussing his suspicions (reasonable or not) that she was indiscriminate with her attentions. He "gave commands;/Then all smiles stopped together." And now, he's talking to the envoy of the Count, whose young daughter he hopes to marry.

So, your thoughts on the story here? I ask because although this poem was written in 1842, it is quite psychological. And although Browning conceived it as a dramatic monologue, which he intended to be "objective," it remains a lyrical, subjective piece, with a sort of Gothic (and therefore "Romantic") sensibility about it. As the reader/listener, you must piece together more of the story than you are actually given. I don't know about you, but I find this poem to contain elements of both mystery and horror writing, and it certainly succeeds in engaging me on a psychological level. Am I correct in suspecting the Duke caused his wife's death? If so, how can he seem somewhat rational, and how can he so easily contemplate the business arrangements in taking a second wife, or discuss a sculpture of Neptune? If I'm mistaken, what does it say about my mind that I would suspect him of such a heinous act? And yet, I can't be mistaken — his jealousy and rage are clearly expressed through his words; he also describes his pride in his social position, and even in his actions, which he considers proper.

"My Last Duchess" was written early in the Victorian era. English Society had become fairly repressive, particularly where issues of female sexuality were concerned. A question one might ask is where Browning's thoughts lay on the matter of sexual repression in general, and fear of feminine sexuality in particular. I don't know the answer, but it's pretty clear that this intensely psychological poem depicts the Duke's efforts to control and his wife and what can be viewed as her sexual conduct (or, if the Duke is to be believed — and it seems as if he is not — her sexual misconduct), even if only smiles and blushes are mentioned.

Indeed, to me the poem suggests that the Duke despised his wife and considered her a lesser being, as when he says that to school her on the many ways in which her behaviour fell short would have required him to stoop to (her?) lower level: "'Just this/Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,/Or there exceed the mark' . . . I choose/Never to stoop." Did Browning intend to delve into the politics of marriage? If so, what did he want the take-home message to be?

He is obviously pleased with his current control over his Last Duchess. He has had her life-like image affixed to the wall, where she may never misbehave. He can keep her behind the curtain, and see her smile only for him. As an object of art, he can own and control her in a way that he could not do with the living person. The reference to the sculpture being one of Neptune using a trident to tame a sea horse is there to fill the dual purpose of showing the Duke's return to less weighty matters, while again emphasizing the need for dominance and control.

I find this poem endlessly fascinating to contemplate, but will stop positing now. There are, however, a few more things to consider.

First, does it change your reading if you learn that "My Last Duchess" is based on the true story of Alfonso II d'Este, fifth Duke of Ferrara, who lived in Italy in the 16th century? He married a very young De Medici girl(for 14 is very young, no?), who lived only three years, and died under suspicious circumstances — poison was suspected. That's her portrait at the top of the post. And while the De Medici family is now considered an old and venerable Italian family, Alfonso II was from an older and more highly ranked lineage. Alfonso was descended from royalty, as was his second wife.

Second. About the form of the poem. You may not have noticed, but it is written entirely in rhymed couplets, using iambic pentameter. If you didn't notice, or at least not immediately, it's because Browning didn't write using end-stopped couplets (where the natural break falls at the end of every line). Rather, he used enjambment, a word taken from the French (meaning "stepping over"). It is the opposite of an end-stop, and is sometimes called a "run on" line, because to get the sense or meaning of the particular line, you must move on to the next bit of punctuation.

Finally, if you want to see an even more twisted dramatic monologue by Browning, do check out "Porphyria's Lover", in which the speaker ultimately proves to be insane. "Porphyria's Lover" is dated six years earlier than "My Last Duchess," and is therefore just before the start of Queen Victoria's reign, at a time when societal standards were shifting towards repressiveness, but not in the heydey of Victorian principles, which didn't occur until much later in the century. Porphyria is the disease which is believed to have caused the madness of King George III and of Vincent Van Gogh — symptoms include hallucination, paranoia, depression and more — and yet, Browning would have known none of that when he crafted his poem about a man in love with with a woman named Porphyria, which manages to equate love and madness.