Poetry Resurrection

I miss poetry.

Last week, I stopped in the downtown Tattered Cover Bookstore to look at some poetry. Frank O’Hara’s Meditations in an Emergency

Destroy yourself, if you don’t know!

It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so. I admire you, beloved, for the trap you’ve set. It's like a final chapter no one reads because the plot is over.

Inspired by AMC’s Mad Men to take a closer look. But standing there, reading the words, the poems jagged edges pleasing to my eye, I realized how much I miss poetry.

For the last two years, there’s been no time for poetry. Barely any time for fiction. And even before that, I’d neglected it. There was a time when I read a lot of poetry, devoured it, wrote it, read it at poetry readings, published it. I turned them into songs. I even used to send out a poem each week to a long list of email contacts. I haven’t written a new poem in probably ten years. Even in the MFA program, I stuck with the fiction writers. You kinda got the feeling you’d better not go trying to play in the poets’ sandbox.

So now, writing again after two years off in the EMBA program, I feel it might be time to reconnect with poetry. I really want to shake up my use of language, to be inspired to take chances, to not go for the obvious word choice, to seek out unique metaphor, to see things again from a poets perspective. So I pulled down from my shelves Carolyn Forché

You recognize strangers,
think you lived through destruction.
You can’t explain this night, my face, your memory.

You want to know what I know?
Your own hands are lying.
“Taking Off My Clothes”

Sylvia Plath

I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars.
Inside the church, the saints will be all blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness—blackness and silence.
“The Moon and the Yew Tree”

Not the poets I know well. I went to the library, checked out Theodore Roethke

Is pain a promise? I was schooled in pain,
And found out all I could of all desire;
I weep for what I’m like when I’m alone
In the deep center of the voice and fire.

I know the motion of the deepest stone.
Each one’s himself, yet each one’s everyone.
“The Sententious Man”

Denise Levertov

From the tawny light
from the rainy nights
from the imagination finding
itself and more than itself
alone and more than alone
at the bottom
of the well where the moon lives
“Everything that Acts Is Actual”

Li-Young Lee

And one day, when I need
to tell myself something intelligent
about love,

I’ll close my eyes
and recall this room and everything in it:
My body is estrangement.
This desire, perfection.
Your closed eyes my extinction.
“This Room and Everything in It”

We all should more poetry in our lives. At least I know I should.

MBA Graduation Yesterday

Well, that's it. Finally and officially done with the Executive MBA. It was a bit of a proud moment, I have to say, thinking of all the work that went into it, all of the sacrifices. And of all that I learned and experienced. And there's the people. Sure, there were a handful I didn't care for. Funny, they're also the ones I feel don't really deserve the MBA since they didn't put in nearly the work the rest of us did. But that's a selfish thought. They're not my concern.

One question asked of me yesterday was whether the MBA has changed my outlook, how I view business, capitalism. In many ways the answer is 'no.' I think I had a pretty good sense of business before, and nothing I learned changed my view of the virtues and tragic flaws of capitalism. Where the program has changed my views is in the opportunities out there. The careers, the ways to do business, the opportunities for improvement. The program has also taught me of what I am capable. The intellectual challenges, the time and project management, the reserve of energy and motivation. There was always so much to do, and more that I wanted to get done. And somehow I got most of it done, I found the energy to do what was required. We also blazed through a lot of very valuable material, things that I would have loved to study more in depth. I emerge so much smarter about some things (macroeconomics) and with interest piqued about other things (strategy).

No one has dared to but should someone ask whether it was worth it, the answer is an obvious 'yes.' Though there is no immediate, obvious financial benefit, no dramatic career change or advancement that is imminent now that the degree is in my hand (I would hardly have done it solely for these reasons), I am a better person for having done it. I am a better manager, employee, intellectual, husband, father. And now that I am finished I will have more time and energy to devote to these things.

Dow and Euro-Dollar Forecasts

As an assignment for the first day of a class on Financial Strategy and Valuation, we were asked to forecast what the Dow and the Euro-Dollar exchange rate would be at the end of the year. I wrote my first forecast on Wednesday and, as you will see, subsequent events forced me to revise the forecast. Below is what I wrote:

Dow Jones Industrial Average at the close on March 19, 2010 = 10,560 10,120.08

Fourth quarter earnings and forecasts for 2010 earnings will continue to be optimistic through the rest of earnings season. Companies have managed to cut costs and grow profits despite decreases in revenue. Seeing an economic recovery beginning, companies believe that they can capitalize on new, revitalized cost structures and reap generous profits on the way up. Investors and analysts are likely to believe them.

In the near-term (late-January through early-February), the Dow should continue its climb. Economic reports in February should begin to bring investors back down to Earth. U.S. GDP figures will be revised down (as they were for the third-quarter) and consumer sentiment will continue to be weighed down by jobs numbers that don’t live up to expectations. Even as companies begin to rehire in light of increasing sales and maxed-out productivity, the unemployment rate will not show improvement as those who have dropped off the rolls and stopped looking for work will start again and will be included in the unemployment numbers.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, because of the industrial components, should see the results of the recovery first, while retail and other consumer-dependant sectors will lag. The Dow has increased 2.9% from 10,428.5 to 10,725.43 at the close on January 19, 2010. The index should continue to climb in the near term and we should see a close above 11,000. After an increase of over 2.5%, the Dow should see a decrease in the neighborhood of 4% from the peak. I am projecting the DJIA will close on March 19, 2010 at 10,560.

UPDATE: After writing the above paragraphs, the Dow lost 552.45 points in three days. The sell-off demonstrates the way that unknowns can influence the market in ways that forecasts cannot predict. The announcement from China that they would look to curb lending in attempt to reduce the impact of inflation, coupled with the announcement by the Obama Administration of proposed rules that would restrict risk taking by U.S. banks, put fear into investors about the limits of recovery—despite positive earnings statements by Dow components.

A loss of more than 5% points in just a few days was not factored into my previous forecast. I cannot see the market falling too much farther within the next several days, but the mood on Wall Street has been seriously dampened. Any boost we would see from positive earnings statements, like the one this morning from GE, will be muted. The fundamentals of what I stated above should still be in play. Good earnings may stabilize the market and provide some price improvement, but economic factors will pull the market back down by the 19th of March. My revised forecast is for the Dow to close on March 19, 2010 at 10,120.08.

Euro-Dollar Exchange Rate on March 19, 2010 = $1.4445

Many counter-acting forces are currently at play in the foreign exchange market. The U.S. recovery is beginning and may soon advance at a higher rate than Europe given the risks for further turmoil, especially in places like Spain. On the other hand, our domestic recovery will be slow, possibly slower than expected. Slow U.S. GDP growth will continue to weigh on the dollar.

From the beginning of the year through January 19, the Euro-Dollar exchange rate has declined only slightly, from $1.4326 to $1.4302. These gains should be wiped away with a weakening dollar as recovery lags expectations. I am projecting a decrease of 1% in the value of the dollar against the Euro between January 20 and March 19, 2010 to $1.4445 to the Euro.

UPDATE: The Dow’s slide since the above forecast was written is not likely to have a great affect on Euro-Dollar during the next quarter. The rate should remain range-bound, despite dipping to the low end of that range this week. The Dow is more volatile than the dollar, certainly against the European currency. I do not see a reason to adjust the above forecast at this time.

So It Starts: The first term of the second year of the EMBA program

Thursday I received my box of materials for the next term of the Executive MBA program. One of the luxuries of such a program is that they take care of the books. No waiting in lines. One day before the term starts, there's your books, a couple of binders full of syllabi, assignments, readings, Harvard cases. Of course now I know what's due for that first day of class, so I've got that hanging over me.

One of the peeves I have, after taking many, many classes, is how poorly put together the syllabi are for these classes. They need to teach these professors a class on how to prepare them, or at lease standardize them. Every term it's a big exercise to sort out what each professor means, how things are graded, what's due when, and the like. This is an executive program, full of overachievers, working full-time and trying to get the most out of this that they can. To not have the answer to every question laid out before them gets them (and me) a little anxious.

So, now it starts. The late nights, the heavy workload, the group work, the feeling that every minute should be spent doing something valuable and productive. This term it's "Interpreting the Economic Environment" which translates to Macroeconomics. I'm excited for this one, though I know it's not going to be that easy. I'm sure I'll like it more than others in my class. And the textbook is written by Paul Samuelson, so I'll have to give a lot of credit to what it says. And there's "Managing People in a Global Environment" which is really just human resources class. And the professor for the class also wrote the text for the class.

For now, grab every last second of summer, wrap up all those half-finished projects, clear the desk, and get ready to work

Going Public

I am not a good friend. I am not good at staying in touch. In some ways the people of my past stay fixed in that past. They exist for me as only memories of that era. I rarely bring those people forward with me. This is one of the reasons the whole idea of Facebook, of going public, makes me a little nervous.

In some ways I think I'm afraid of worlds colliding. The man I am today doesn't necessarily jive with who I have been in the past. Maybe I'm embarrassed now of who I once was, or maybe I'm embarrassed of who I am now from the perspective of who I once was.

I am 'the man' now. I work a 9-to-5, I'm married, and I have kids. Heck, I even live in the suburbs. I'm not the rebel I once was, sure, but I'm not nearly as miserable as I used to be. In fact, I am quite happy.

There are risks in reconnecting, but it is not like I've been in hiding. I've been writing a blog for something like four years. A Google search will find me pretty quickly. Actually reaching out to people, as Facebook creatively requires, risks bringing up all of those things from the past, all of those traumas and dramas. There is a lot in my past that I'd rather not revisit, no matter how I feel about the people involved.

Who I am today, though, is a result of all that happened before. I may now be an MBA candidate, but I also have an MFA in Creative Writing. I may have a good job in corporate finance, but I also finished writing a novel (still unpublished and not even yet submitted) last summer. I may spend what little free time I have playing with my children, but I also spent years drinking too much and playing in bands. I may be happily married now, but I spent years either pining or having my heart broken by women.

I am venturing forward into a strange virtual world of social networking and at the same time I am venturing into my own past, opening up boxes that had been closed and tucked away. Maybe now, today, I can be a good friend--at least, virtually.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Damon-Garr/1590769401

Schumpeter and reading fiction

I took time this weekend to actually read some fiction. Sure, I had other things I should have been doing. It’s just been itching in me. I see it in the way I think. I need to move beyond the tangible randomness of numbers, symbols, equations. School is taxing, zaps my mental energy, but it leaves full parts of my brain unexercised. The closest thing to what I was used to through the rest of my schooling was reading Schumpeter. When the professor passed around copied pages of an old text, I felt a warm familiarity. So many previous assignments came in this exact form. And even then the text called for re-reading, pondering, questioning. Things notable absent from my recent studies.

The question in Schumpeter is the notion of creative destruction, the idea that capitalism is a constantly changing form, ever evolving as even great companies need to be destroyed and rebuilt. He argues, like Marx, that capitalism has an inevitable end. He explained, in ways I had not yet seen, that socialism is seen as a replacement for capitalism, its natural successor. And while I see some parts of socialism as a natural evolution from strict capitalism, I now understand why capitalists fight so hard against socialism. It is the antithesis to the form they believe is best. Any move to socialism means a further erosion of capitalism and a step closer to its demise.

Schumpeter doesn’t see capitalism as inherently flawed in the same way as Marx. It just is not static. It changes, requiring the biggest and most formidable capitalist institutions to collapse in order to be rebuilt. Maybe that explains some of what is going on these days. At least reading this reminds me that I’m much more comfortable with theory than I am with calculating aggregate demand curves or with linear regression.

MFA-MBA: An Ethical Dilemma

When a literary-type enrolls in an executive MBA program, an evaluative eye naturally remains open. I may be doing my best to learn, but a part of my brain remains open, judging, assessing, characterizing what is happening around me. And though the seriousness of it, the workload and the nature of what we're doing, consumes my energy, I still want to write about it.

Here, I am faced with a dilemma that is at least ethical, but goes beyond that. Writing publicly about my experience in the EMBA program is tricky. I think the blog is the perfect forum because it allows me to debate things openly. Not only do I want to write about my experience, but I also want to get into what is being covered in the courses. As well as what is going on in the real world.

My instinct for self-preservation tells me this is risky. Writing critically about the program, the faculty, or other students might get in trouble. It's not as if my name isn't all over this blog. If I fail to mention the name of the college, or the name of any other student or professor that at least might help me avoid any pesky Google searches.

So, I'll tread lightly, I suppose.

A shift in objective

It is funny how sometimes I feel I have nothing to say and then other times I feel like I could sit down and bang out 5000-word essays non-stop. I've been coming up dry when it comes to blogging. I still like the idea, but there have been so many occasions when I don't feel like anything I say is worth putting out there into the ether to be read by my extremely limited internet audience. And the less I post, the more that audience shrinks.

Yet, I want to be writing. I am willing to take on the most uninteresting of journalistic assignments in order to be writing and to have my name out there in the world--and in print. The trouble is that I remain conscious of a future audience. I worry that the words I write will somehow negatively influence some one's decision about me. It could be a future or current employer. I'd love to write about the Russian-Georgian conflict of last week, but it is likely to be a sensitive issue for people in my organization and I'd be better served by staying silent on the issue. And there's always the idea that sometime in the future my children might get a hold of my writing. If course I'd really be in trouble if they ever began reading through my journals.

For some time I've had the notion of changing the purpose of the blog. There are plenty of people writing about books and writing, and while I'm not likely to stop doing that, there's no reason to compete with people who could do a better job. It is better to capitalize on my unique position, using my life, my personality and personal predicaments instead. And at the same time it would better show case my writing abilities, which really should be the purpose behind the blog.

The work-life-writing balance, an issue that has plagued me for some time, and inspired many too many journal entries, is about to get worse as it, again, becomes the work-life-writing-school balance. I imagine that there are few MFAs out there pursuing MBAs. By shifting the blog's objective somewhat I might actually end up writing more and writing better and more interesting posts.

From Anti-establishment to Executive MBA

About fourteen or fifteen years ago, I wrote a journal entry while sitting downtown at The Market on an early workday morning. I, of course, was not going to work. I had dropped off a lady-friend at work. I sat there, drinking my coffee, in the shadows of skyscrapers about the freshly washed sidewalks, watching the day start, watching the gears of commerce begin to turn. I'd been reading Celine and was feeling very anti-establishment. Watching people going to work, the buildings filling with workers, I wrote a journal entry railing against this world. It was all absurd and served no purpose, I wrote at the time. I had no idea then that many years later would find me at the same location in a very different frame of mind.

This Wednesday morning, I was back at The Market, having a coffee. Only this time, I was wearing a suit. I was wearing a suit and killing time waiting for an interview. An interview for admission to an Executive MBA program. So, however many years ago I had felt bad for those part of the large mechanism of capitalism, thinking about how the system had stolen their souls. And then there I was this week, eager to become further entrenched.

I'm not sure if it is simply ironic, if the system has stolen my soul, or if simply says something about evolution.