Thoughts, Time

The thoughts are fast and furious, the time also.  Blogging, as usual, takes the hit.  There are many anecdotes that fall by the wayside, such as my weekend which featured back to back oyster days (sometimes you just can’t stop and must get more) courtesy the Dapper Floridian and the fishmarket.   Season One of Battlestar Galactica is in there as well, as is an essay re: Robert Fanning which has rather predictably spun out of control into a poetics.  Also Eastern Market, good coffee, pesto, bike riding, and musings on the parallels between the poetry culture and the criminal legal culture.  And that leads me to what we do, what sort of behaviors, (in both worlds) that should be considered “desirable-to-master” as opposed to “aspirational.”  When does a difficult skill (or persona) incorrectly become an end in and of itself - being "like a lawyer" or being "like a poet" as opposed to "being able to do as a lawyer or poet does."

As to the parallels between poetry and criminal law - each culture has its conception of the laity and the initiate.   Oh, they don’t call it such, but they certainly embrace the concept.  Stick a practitioner of any experience in with a rank novice and a certain dynamic develops (not always unhealthy, mind you) which often is inquisitorial.  Stick either of those in with someone who has no exposure to the subject/practice/profession/craft and another dynamic develops which is often more educational.  There’s yet another between the practitioner and the laity which have strong-yet-uninformed opinions of the subject: corrective. 

Given the cultural interest in poetry, the wretched state of its teaching via primary education, and popular clichés of both poets and poetry, I think poets, with notable exceptions, often fall into the third category when dealing with the general public. 

I don’t think “lawyers” are that easily boxed, however, there’s still the hurdle of basic cultural mis-apprehension of what the law is and how it works.  My initial thought is still that the average guy/gal on the street expects *criminal* law to be just.  That expectation translates into a conception of the law as a code mitigated by equitable principals.  The law says X, which is modified by both sides “telling their story.”  It’s a vision of a  paternalistic world where you should/should not do Y (which is always pretty clear), but the law allows you to explain why you did something.  Obviously, this is not the case. 

I’m thinking about this general issue of “basic expectations” as I consider the “rules” of cross-examination.  They make sense from the practitioner’s point of view.  The dangers of deviating from them are clear and unambiguous.  But the question I’m interested in is: what does the jury think when they hear a cross?  Do they think “as” lawyers do, picking up on nuances within the form, realizing the significance that certain exchanges signal?  Or do they ask questions (internally) which ignore the form of the cross itself?  Do they wonder why there are no “lock it down” questions asked at the end of one particular chain?  Do they wonder why?  Should then we want to master this perfectly, to trot it out safely, to, in essence, become enamored of form over function?  (Or is it just that, given the rest of the trial structure, this *is* simply the best way to go about representing our clients?)

So too with poets and poetry – do popular/false expectations as to what the whole enterprise of poetry *is* push readers off lines, off images, off poems.  Why do we then write *as though* readers will react as educated poets, instead of lay readers/listeners?

Do I blame mass media yet again?  Sure, why not.  Mass media can take care of itself this morning.   

**

As a complete aside, time is hard to come by, but I take a certain satisfaction in yoking activities together, so those bikerides are often to the quasi-distant markets to replace empty larders run down by working instead of doing weekday errands.  If I lived in suburbia life would be less happy.