{ Friday, April 11, 2003 }
It was only last week I was spending all my time reading nothing but experimental poetry, and this week I suddenly find myself reading nothing but business advice books (and a biography of Warren Buffett, don't ask). I can't think of two subjects that are more perfect inversions of one another, the latter being the most exhortative, meaning-laden, accessible, capitalistic and production-oriented use of language possible, the former being the most meaning-subsuming, oblique, and counter-production-oriented text possible, that I often have to work very hard to understand.
A few nights ago when we were waiting (and waiting) at Kinko's, I asked Stewart, who was standing by the book rack, "What are the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People?", and he reached over to see, but the books were shrink-wrapped.
Then two nights ago I was looking for a lost Hofstadter book (Le ton beau de Marot), on a low and infrequently accessed shelf where I came across The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and opened it up and started reading.
This is not necessarily a business book, though its author worked as a management consultant, and it is filled with business anecdotes. So far it seems more personal growth and self-helpish, which is not to say that business people don't need more personal growth than the rest of us who don't consider ourselves business people (they probably do). But I have long held a bias against self-help books, though I don't have any logical explanation for this prejudice (except maybe resenting them for squeezing out the more respectable shrinks such as, say, Jung on the "psychology" bookshelves). I've found that many self-help books can be extraordinarily...helpful. My prejudice may have something to do with this story:
My friend (who I will call) Nancy told me that she once went home with a guy after a date for a nightcap, and while he was in the kitchen mixing drinks she strolled over to his shelves and noticed that every single book on his bookshelf was a self-help book. Shelf after shelf, they covered the walls, they were piled up by his reading chair, they were sitting on his coffee table. There were weight-loss and self-improvement and dress for success and how to win friends and influence people type books. There were how to make it big in the stock market, how to increase your sexual performance, 30 days to a richer vocabulary, attain peace and serenity type books. Mass-market buddhism. Insert Subject Here for Dummies. Golfworld's Putting Power! How to Get Girls. Intermediate-to-Advanced Australian Penis Acrobatics. And it occurred to Nancy that there must be something really wrong with this guy, seeing him through the 3-D glasses of this new information he seemed really really creepy creepy and she had no choice but to feign a sudden illness and flee the scene.
7 habits has sold over 10 million copies -- according to this edition, published in 1990. That's a hell of a lot of books. And they're still selling them at Kinko's. I laughed when I read, "The word "proactive" won't be found in many dictionaries..." I suspect that it was only after this book was released that "proactive" first found purchase on the tongues of bizfolk.
It's starting off with the common self-help concept of taking total responsibility for your life, with which it's hard to argue. And it's also germane to experimental poetry after all. When I interviewed Christian Bok, he asked why people didn't use the languages of science, or business, or medicine in their poetry. And why not indeed! There is a great Rae Armantrout poem using corporatespeak I'll have to find...
In any event, it's an interesting transition from last week's bookpile, and I'm lapping it up. Be on the lookout for a tenfold increase in effectiveness here on caterina.net as I habituate my 7 habits.
LINK | 8:24 PM | TB
1. Be Protean
2. Begin with the Mind and End
3. Put First not Ideas About the Thing but the Thing Itself
4. Think Whit-Whit
5. Seek First to be Oblique, then to be Published
6. Synecdochize
7. Sharpen the Old Saw
You've reminded me of an old parody I once wrote (perhaps submitted to the Harvard Lampoon where I was ultimately rejected for a staff position,) an instruction manual for writing a 216-page self-help book from nothing but an old chestnut. I can only recall bits of pieces but I do remember an (inverse) corollary - in order to retrieve the original chestnut, to summarize the simple idea from which the book is grown, simply read paragraph 2 of Chapter 3. Surprisingly, I think this actually works.
capodistria | April 12, 2003 1:04 AMLaurie Sheck: just read a fantastic bit on her in P&W a while back. She sounds like a lovely prof, but I wonder does ever having a 'teacher' in poetry ever really help?
As far as effective habits of poets go, so as I see it:
1. brokenheart.
2. drunk.
3. sense of the sublime.
skip 4-7
8. Invocations of god or ubermensch.
9. sex, the more kinky, the better.
10. lather, rinse, repeat.
If you do the above and watch 'last tango in paris' enough, i'm promise you, your poetry would be more effective. Do not try this for effective business.
lincoln | April 12, 2003 1:51 AMHe's not an experimental poet, exactly, but perhaps you should ask Dana Gioia about all this. I recently learned that Mr. Gioia, a Stanford MBA, was a General Foods exec for 15 years, serving before his departure as VP of Marketing! He looks back on this most unusual of double lives in "Being Outted" (http://www.danagioia.net/essays/eoutted.htm)
Carlos | April 12, 2003 8:27 AMMy favoutite self-help list is Frederick Barthelme's '39 Steps' to writing better fiction. A lot more than 7, to be sure, and not as funny as your lists, but useful nonetheless. I'm not sure they apply to poetry as well as to prose, but some poets might think they do. Here are 3 of the steps as teasers:
21) If you write a sentence that isn't poignant, touching, funny, intriguing, inviting, etc., take it out before you finish the work. Don't just leave it there. Don't let anyone see it.
22) To repeat, there is no place for rubbish & slop in the highly modern world of today's fiction. Every sentence must pay, must somehow thrill. Every one.
23) Also: Obscurity is not subtlety; intentional obscurity is pinheaded and unkind.
Dear Dave,
Thank you so so so much for #23. I've never heard it said better.
I read Drucker's Effective Executive a few years back. I can't remember how I found it, but I was doing a lot of paperwork for grants at the time, and felt like I was drowning. I got the grants, but forgot his thesis, if that's any kind of recommendation.
tim | April 13, 2003 1:21 PMDave, I think Barthelme's 23rd point would actually go far, if heeded, toward clearing up a lot of the self-indulgent obfuscation in many chapbooks these days. One should not require the resources of a scholar in order to enjoy a poem. Deliberate obscurity in poetry only alienates readers and perpetuates the sad myth that it's only for poets. Looking forward to reading the other 36.
Carlos | April 13, 2003 2:27 PMEliot was a banker and Stevens an insurance executive. Who says poetry cannot spring from the man in the grey flannel suit?
Bill | April 14, 2003 6:54 PM7 Habits is an evil book, evil I say.
PS | April 14, 2003 10:29 PMCaterina, I'd love it if you would have some fun with Armantrout poem. I am a poetry idiot, and love learning new ways to enjoy it.
SusanO | April 17, 2003 12:27 PMplease post summarize of 7 habits
wut | May 13, 2003 2:55 AMwhat do you get from this book 1-7 habits?
wut | May 13, 2003 2:56 AM{ Post a comment }
Well, my former teacher Laurie Sheck makes word lists from interesting language found in the Wall Street Journal and the business section of the New York Times.
And I'd just started my own foray into the intersection of the business and poetic spheres--creating Power Point Poems while I was supposed to be working--when I quit my job...
Shannon | April 11, 2003 11:25 PM