Language to Live In

By R. Allen Shoaf

Language to Live In offers readers an opportunity to reflect on the current crisis of the relationship between the humanities and the sciences. Drawing from work in quantum physics, biochemistry, psychoanalysis, eroticism (ancient and modern), neuroscience, environmental studies, and the traditions of European and American poetry, the book engages questions of evolution, sexuality, and technology as it considers the consequences of the 20th-century's breathtaking achievements and unparalleled disasters. It, thus, aspires to speak to those seeking self-understanding in an increasingly polarized world, where political tribalism repeatedly angles to dictate the meaning of 'self' to people on vast scales, amounting in many cases to open propaganda and indoctrination. The book espouses a conviction that thoughtful and considerate men and women long for and seek a language or languages to live in, empowering, educating, and liberating them to share the meaning of their lives with their fellow human beings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: May 31, 2019
• ISBN: 9781645367314

R. Allen Shoaf

R. Allen Shoaf, Alumni Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Florida, is the author of more than a dozen books and nearly 100 papers and reviews in literary studies, twice a holder of Fellowships of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Founding Editor of the prize-winning journal Exemplaria: A Journal of Theory in Medieval and Renaissance Studies--which he edited from 1987 until 2008--and the winner of six teaching awards during his career at UF, including 'University-Wide Teacher of the Year' in 1992. He is also the author of several books of poetry, most recently Pied-Piper Philology: Love Words, and a contributor to poetry magazines. Graduating from Wake Forest University in 1970, later that year, he took up a Marshall Scholarship to study in the United Kingdom (BA Hon., 1972). He has dedicated his career to Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton, authoring books and numerous articles on all three poets, and he has also published regularly over the past 40 years in Dante scholarship, especially regarding the relationship between late medieval sign theory and the Commedia. Language to Live In is his fourth book of poems and brings together his recent writings in eroticism, quantum physics, biology, neuroscience, and politics.

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About the Author

R. Allen Shoaf, Alumni Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Florida, is the author of more than a dozen books and nearly 100 papers and reviews in literary studies, twice a holder of Fellowships of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Founding Editor of the prize-winning journal Exemplaria: A Journal of Theory in Medieval and Renaissance Studies—which he edited from 1987 until 2008—and the winner of six teaching awards during his career at UF, including ‘University-Wide Teacher of the Year’ in 1992. He is also the author of several books of poetry, most recently Pied-Piper Philology: Love Words, and a contributor to poetry magazines. Graduating from Wake Forest University in 1970, later that year, he took up a Marshall Scholarship to study in the United Kingdom (BA Hon., 1972). He has dedicated his career to Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton, authoring books and numerous articles on all three poets, and he has also published regularly over the past 40 years in Dante scholarship, especially regarding the relationship between late medieval sign theory and the Commedia. Language to Live In is his fourth book of poems and brings together his recent writings in eroticism, quantum physics, biology, neuroscience, and politics.

Dedication

Dedicated to

Edwin Graves Wilson

R. Allen Shoaf

Language to Live In

Copyright Information

Copyright © R. Allen Shoaf (2019)

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Ordering Information:

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Cover art: Aeneas and the Cumaean Sibyl by François Perrie

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

Shoaf, R. Allen

Language to Live In

ISBN 9781643782638 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781643782645 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781645367314 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019935773

The main category of the book — Poetry / General

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published (2019)

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

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New York, NY 10005

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Acknowledgments

So many ought to be thanked, I should have to write another book, nearly the length of this one.

Some, however, must be thanked.

I am the beneficiary of instruction and criticism from four writers, whom I can never repay except by writing better the next time. William Logan, Robert R. Morgan, Padgett Powell, and Robert B. Shaw have chastened and improved my skills and my strivings with wisdom and good cheer in equal measure. My own cantankerousness alone is responsible for the many failings that remain.

Then there are those who have cared in spite of everything. I will always remember Jacqueline and Judson Allen, Jay Arns, Amy Atkinson, Tony Borden, Peter and Janet Brav, Margaret Bridges, Claire Brown, Ron Burrichter, Bob Butler, Beckett Cantley, Rebecca Davis, Kay Dunlap, Helen Egger, Dylan Fay, Justin Forti, Lee Foster, Will Goodman, Karen Greenberg, Michael Harrawood, Steve Kent, Lindsay and Travis LaJoie, Mark Lane, Brett C. Millier, Jimmy Newlin, Jonathan Newman, G. Michael Palmer, Ralph S. Smith, John Summerfield, Sandra Weems.

My family are the light in my eyes—Brian, Elaine, Judy, Michelle, and Oliver.

The man to whom I dedicate this book was my teacher and my model for teaching during my 43 years in the classroom. I only wish I had lived up to his example.

Epigraph

… foliis tantum ne carmina manda,

ne turbata volent rapidis ludibria ventis;

ipsa canas oro.

‘… do not set your songs down on the leaves,

For they will fly away on the rushing winds,

Which will scatter them like toys abandoned;

Sing yourself, I pray.’

Aeneid 6.74–6

Preface

Language To Live In is my fourth book of poems (preceded by Simple Rules 1991, 2007; Erotic Reckonings 2012; and Pied-Piper Philology: Love Words 2013). Of the many poems I have written, as well as published, the constant theme is the power—and its obverse, powerlessness—of language. Like any writer born in, and emerging from, the 20th century, I am constantly reminded of the powerlessness of language, a practically obsessional theme of poets in the European and American traditions during that century of holocausts. But, I also feel and celebrate in my poems the power of language, and I give equal emphasis to both, or at least I try to do so. My one aspiration in all my poems is to use adequate language adequately: language adequate to the imperatives of imagination, used with skill adequate to the demands of form. If readers should feel that I have succeeded even once or twice in fulfilling this aspiration, then the lifetime of writing I have lived will have been worth the effort—‘To Him of adequate desire / No further ’tis, than here’ (Emily Dickinson 370 ).

Language to Live In

For Janet and Peter Brav

Codes everywhere clamoring to be cracked.

Crack ’em and you get oozes of –isms,

Lubricated by lies bought and paid for.

Men live in armories they call their homes

As likely to kill their wives and children

As the men they believe would do it first,

Hate cancered in so far pain’s a habit

No drug can soothe withdrawal from—

Murder makes sense (no language to live in).

Those who buy their way out of suffering

Never go as far as they think they will.

The distance trivializes light-years.

The unbearable truth: the only way out

Is within—there’s no place