Amsterdam in Photos

Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands, is one of the most unique places I've visited. It's an economic and artistic powerhouse, home to a long history and beautiful cityscapes; yet equally enticing to the countless tourists who roam the canals here is the storied spectacle of the Red Light District –– in Dutch, De Wallen –– as well as the country's (relatively) relaxed drug laws. I heard someone say that you "have to see Amsterdam to believe it." In that spirit, I thought I'd post a series of photos from my recent trip to the Netherlands, with small notes underneath. Here goes:

The National Monument, located in Dam Square. It was erected in honor of the casualties of WWII. The Netherlands were occupied in the war. Though the Dutch were seen by the Nazis as natural Aryan allies, the threats of pressing Dutch workers into forced labor in Germany, and the increasingly violent actions by German forces against the Jewish population, culminated in the February strike of 1941, the first large example of direct action against anti-Jewish measures in Nazi-occupied Europe. The Dutch resistance kicked off from there. Probably the most famous Jewish resident of Amsterdam during WWII is Anne Frank; more on that later.

Dam Square. One of the most important spots in Amsterdam. On the left is the Royal Palace, originally built in the 17th century, the Dutch Golden Age, as Amsterdam's town hall. To the right is the Nieuwe Kerk, or "New Church." The Dam is named as such for the dam over the Amstel river that was originally built there in the Middle Ages. The dam got filled in and expanded and soon became the center of the growing city. This is how Amsterdam, or "the dam on the river Amstel," got its name.

One of Amsterdam's many coffeeshops. In Amsterdam, "coffeeshop" is the term for an establishment in which customers may purchase cannabis, as well as refreshments like coffee and snacks. Gedoogbeleid is the Dutch term for the official "tolerance policy" toward "soft drugs," which are distinguished from "hard drugs." It's a bit complicated, but basically this means that while growing and dealing cannabis is technically illegal, the laws are not enforced against small scale use within designated spaces (the coffeeshops). The general idea seems to be to provide a controlled environment for soft drug users, as well as to prevent the kind of growth of organized crime that often occurs when hard-line prohibition is employed.

Though the easy access to cannabis is somewhat sensational for people outside the Netherlands, it conforms to the traditional "tolerance" that characterizes Dutch culture. One Dutchman told me the general attitude is that the coffeeshops' existence eliminates the allure-factor –– that is, if an activity is legal or at least tolerated, it soon loses its appeal. People who are openly spending all their time in coffeeshops, he said, are looked down upon, and that while the Netherlands are seen from the outside as a haven for libertines, it's mostly a veneer.

View along the Damrak. The street is a bustling commercial thoroughfare running from the Dam Square in the South to Amsterdam Centraal train station in the North.

The front of the Nieuwe Kerk in Dam Square. The banners are in celebration of the ascent of King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands to the throne, which happened in April. The government of the Netherlands is a constitutional monarchy.

Bust of Johnny Jordaan, a Dutch pop singer.

View along the Zeedijk ("sea dike"). The street is located in one of the oldest parts of Amsterdam, often called the Nautical Quarter because of its proximity to the docks and historical association with seamen. It runs between the Red Light District and Chinatown, terminating in the Nieuwmarkt, or "New market."

The coat of arms of Amsterdam. The popular explanation for the three vertical X's (not actually the letter X, but the Cross of St. Andrew) is that they stand for Amsterdam's three old enemies: fires, floods, and the plague.

View down Warmoesstraat. This is a typical daytime scene in the Red Light District. It's mostly tourist bars, fast food, and coffeeshops. There's a somewhat wilder atmosphere in De Wallen at night, though I didn't take any pictures of that –– for a few reasons, but especially because the prostitutes are known to leave their rooms to chase after, and smash the cameras of, people who take photos.

We took a boat tour around some of Amsterdam's canals and waterways. This is a view from the Damrak canal docks, with the grand Amsterdam Centraal looming in the distance.

The Westerkerk, or "West Church," in the Jordaan district (where Johnny Jordaan got his nickname), on the Prinsengracht, or "Prince's Canal," one of Amsterdam's many canals encircling the city center. It has the highest church tower in Amsterdam. Rembrandt is buried here, and the house where Anne Frank and her family hid from the Nazis is nearby. The chiming bells of the church are mentioned by Anne in her diary.

The entrance to the Anne Frank House. It's undoubtedly one of Amsterdam's top tourist attractions. Lines are known to get outrageously long, considering the relatively small size of the museum. However, it was fascinating to tour through the preserved house and get a glimpse of the confining interior rooms in which Anne and her family here hidden. It brought back memories of reading Anne Frank's Diary, which was compulsory reading for my fifth grade class, and many others all over the world.

The Begijnhof, an extremely old inner court. It contains the oldest wooden house in Amsterdam. It was originally founded in the Middle Ages as a center for the lay religious order of Beguines, so it's a bit like a convent, though the Beguines were not technically nuns. After the Reformation, the chapel was converted into a Protestant place of worship, though the court itself was allowed to remain a Catholic institution. Soon a schuilkerk, or clandestine church, popped up to serve the remaining Catholic community. A number of these "secret" places of worship (mostly Catholic, but could serve any religion that wasn't the official Dutch Reformed Church) were established in Amsterdam. The civil authorities knew about them, but tolerated them, provided their activities were discreet. That last part is important, because discretion is one of the three unofficial planks of the tolerant attitude popularly ascribed to the Dutch; it's often said that if an activity is not harmful to the general public, good for profits, and discreet, it's tolerated.

Het Lieverdje, or "The Little Darling." The small statue is supposed to symbolize the mischievous yet good-natured children of Amsterdam. In the 1960s it was a popular meeting point for members of Provo, a Dutch countercultural movement. They were a left-wing group that often used non-violent tactics to provoke responses from authorities, in order to promote their positions. One of their more famous activities was the development of a city-wide, free bike-sharing program.

The narrowest house in Amsterdam; it's only about one meter wide.

Houses along the Herengracht. The wide, grand houses along the canal are reminders of the great wealth accumulated by Dutch merchants in the Golden Age, when Amsterdam was the capital of a thriving trading empire.

Canal scene. On the right you can see a traditional-looking café, or bar. Dutch and Belgian beers are popular here. Old fashioned cafés in Amsterdam are called Bruine Kroeg, or "brown cafés" ("brown" because of the darkened, cozy atmosphere, as well as the years of cigarette smoke that stained the walls inside). If you look at the row houses lining the canal, you'll see hooks sticking out of the tops of their gables. These are a very common feature among houses in Amsterdam; because of their narrow size and steep staircases, moving in and out of traditional houses is easier when the furniture is lowered from the windows using ropes and pulleys attached to the hooks.

Book Report!

Recently I wrote a book review for my poetry workshop here at UCD, thought I'd share it here! The book is Songs and Sonnets by Paul Muldoon. He's one of the biggest contemporary Irish poets, and a big voice on both sides of the Atlantic. If you're looking for a recent book to sink your teeth into –– even if you're not a big reader of poetry, but you like pop music or boatloads of pop culture references –– I'd recommend this one. Though if you do run out and get it, come back here and leave a comment on this blog post. I'd like to hear what you think! Anyways, here goes. Oh, and spoilers may be approaching, if you believe in that sort of thing:

Songs and Sonnets by Paul Muldoon: Poet Plugs In

By Joe Boyle

The title of 2012's Songs and Sonnets imparts to its readers more than just a concise description of its contents. As a title it asks us to consider a disconnect, a divide between traditions, as well as ties that hold them together. Is all poetry song, all song poetry? The book is a representation of an Irish voice in America, or maybe an old voice in a new world.

In more than one way, Songs is a dialogue. Without even cracking the book open, it's unmistakably one part of a conversation. The other part is contained in the recordings and live performances of Muldoon and various musical acts, including Rackett and Wayside Shrines, both Princeton-based groups that feature the award-winning poet as a vocalist and guitarist. In this sense, Songs and Sonnets could be a sort of libretto. In any case the book contains mostly songs, lyrics in the typical pop format of verses, choruses and bridges; and a handful of sonnets in unusual forms: split up into stanzas, sometimes numbered, with varying rhyme schemes –– in every case they differ from the textbook Shakespearean or Petrarchan sonnets with which we were so well-acquainted in secondary school.


Across the board, in Song or Sonnet, Muldoon employs a dizzying array of quirky, undeniably smart allusions. He plunders high culture and pop culture; appropriates slang in idioms current and outdated; makes dirty jokes; and drops names, plucking characters from history, art, literature, and current events who make cameo appearances. This is the work itself, a conversation that straddles the North Atlantic on a swinging bridge, an intricate pastiche of Western culture.

These are poems that can be as easy or as challenging, as catchy or as cerebral, as their readers would like them to be. There is no doubt about Muldoon's accessibility here, especially because of the apparent emphasis on the Songs. But while the Songs' language is equally zany and imaginative as the Sonnets' they are fastened to an almost unchanging pop song form. One may expect that in the moments when the clever verges on camp, the Songs would be greatly aided by their respective vocal melodies or instrumentation. After all, any fan of pop music who reads the lyrics to their favorite hits may appreciate that the 'sense' made by songs is inextricably, and mysteriously, part of their musical performance, not solely in the lyrics.

The staying power of Muldoon's Sonnets, the ability to continually release both lyricism and challenging poetic sense –– especially in the prime examples of "Pip and Magwitch," "A Dent," and "Shoot 'Em Up" –– is due to the fact that while the poet starts with a dusty old form, he makes room to subvert it in structure as well as language. They draw back slightly from the full-frontal assault of the Songs, opening up worlds in which Muldoon's readers can exist alongside his characters. Because of this the Sonnets truly comprise the more innovative half of Songs and Sonnets. The Songs remain intelligent and captivating, though they start to appear formal and conservative, dressed up to look subversive. A Monica Lewinsky joke here, or a Jimi Hendrix-Giovanni Boccaccio comparison there.

Much of Songs and Sonnets appears occupied by Muldoon's personal interaction with his adopted American home. Nearly every poem contains some sort of American sensibility –– not least in the Buddy Holly tribute sonnet "Honey," which underscores the origins of the American pop song form present in Muldoon's own Songs. Other fine examples are the fading echoes of outlaw country in "The Last Great Country Song;" the lament for a disappeared, and possibly mythical, individualism in "It Won't Be Anytime Soon;" and "The Hillbilly Hilton," a send-up of American redneck stereotypes that's by turns hilarious and hideous. In "3-Car Garage" the aging members of the love generation are now driving Toyotas, downloading "Spirit in the Sky" onto their iPods, and have exchanged LSD for dropping "amino acid / Like ancient hippies do." It's funny and incisive but too sweet to be an indictment, and its upper middle class, upper middle age world certainly must not be foreign to Muldoon's own.

Considering its cultural antecedents it's no surprise that Muldoon's collages and bizzaro mixtures of high- and low-brow echo some of Bob Dylan's finest mid-'60s work. Dylan exhibited a unique ability to use disparate, unequal parts and form a whole out of them. In his rambling, carnivalesque pieces –– take "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" for example –– he could take a Capt. Ahab look-alike; set pieces like diners, phone booths, flags, bums; dazzling and nonsensical geography; and a hallucinatory, or hallucinogenic, sense of humor and make the listener feel as if they were witnessing the birth of America in the span of 6 or 7 minutes.

Considering many of Dylan's chosen ingredients, Songs and Sonnets would appear as an answer of sorts. But unlike Dylan's fabricated or adopted characters, who gain real permanence in his songs (Ma Rainey, Paul Revere, Mr. Jones, Queen Jane, etc.), most of Muldoon's characters pop up briefly: Bill Clinton, Holden Caulfield, Hieronymus Bosch, and King Lear all show up as if to a casting call, but only on occasion do they stay for a while and make themselves at home in a poem; such excellent occasions include Buddy Holly in "Honey," Rachel in "Hey Rachel," and the unlikely yet true-life pairing of terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki and Dickens' own brain-children in "Pip and Magwitch."

But Songs and Sonnets hardly falls short of some arbitrary mid-20th century pop-art watermark. Perhaps the entire collection is a statement on 21st century affairs and anxieties; an argument that it is impossible now, as it may have been in Dylan's '60s, to continue to construct a generative whole from fragmented pieces; that all we can do now is exist within the swirl of attention span-challenged post-modernity and take the grossness, the crudity and banality, and instead of fighting it, simply laugh it off and turn up the volume.

Holiday Updates

Hey blog-o-sphere, it's been a while! Lots to catch up on, so I'll try to be faithful, as well as brief. It's been a somewhat hectic last half of Fall semester at University College Dublin. In addition to schoolwork, I've written a few reviews for the newspaper, the University Observer. You can check out my review of the second season of HBO's Game of Thrones here: http://www.universityobserver.ie/2012/11/16/review-game-of-thrones-series-2/#more-27030; and my review of a new Charles Mingus live compilation here: http://www.universityobserver.ie/2012/12/07/review-the-jazz-workshop-concerts-1964-1965-charles-mingus/#more-28075.

Another thing I feel the need to plug is that I have recently been published on the brand-new arts website We Are The Catalyst. I'm proud of my inclusion. You can follow this link to the site (http://wearethecatalyst.com/). You can scroll down until you see a thumbnail of me, that will take you to my page; afterward, check out some of the many other pages of artists, musicians, and writers. There's some great work up on this site!

Now that I've finished my final projects –– mostly consisting of short stories and poem portfolios –– it's time to take a break and enjoy the holidays in Dublin!

I can't move forward without first mentioning my Thanksgiving holiday. It was my first one spent outside of the United States, and it was certainly an unusual one. I would have been alone had it not been for a few friends here in Dublin. I joined a group at The Woolshed for a Thanksgiving dinner. The Woolshed is a lot like BW3s in the States, a big sports bar and restaurant, except in its Australian/South African/New Zealand theme. It's the kind of place where Anglophones living abroad in Dublin get together to watch their favorite sports teams from back home. On Thanksgiving, we ate turkey and mashed potatoes while the Detroit Lions played the Houston Texans on the big screen. After that, homemade pumpkin pie and a drink at a small north side bar called the Hacienda, where the barman greeted us at the door wearing a 70s western-style leisure suit, the Eagles blasting in the dim lighting behind him. Yes, an unusual Thanksgiving.

Hot on the heels of Thanksgiving, I was able to snag a ticket to a pro rugby game. Leinster Rugby is Dublin's home team, and they enjoy considerable support among rugby fans here. This is no surprise: they're the reigning European rugby champs, having won their third Heineken Cup in four years in May. I had to do a little research before I went, so I'd know a ruck from a maul. The game on December pitted them against Italian team Zebre. Leinster wiped the pitch with them, 37-7. It was a beautiful, crisp evening at the RDS stadium. Cold, yes, but the Bushmills hot whiskies were selling like hot cakes.

This being Dublin, there are plenty of arts events to take in. Last week I had the pleasure of attending Kaleidoscope, an evening at the Odessa lounge. My MA poetry mentor Paul Perry was asked to accompany a group of Irish and international avant-garde musicians with some of his poems. The small lounge was packed to the brim. And to top it off, I finally got the chance to see a show at the famous Abbey Theatre. It's been the home of Ireland's premier theatrical and literary talent for over a century. I went to the Abbey with most of my MA class to take in Frank McGuinness' new adaptation of James Joyce's short story "The Dead," originally from the book Dubliners. It was an excellent adaptation for the stage, and I'm thinking of going again! The story really puts one in the Christmas spirit.

I think I've covered everything –– those were the highlights of the last several weeks. In the future, I'll try to make my blogging more immediate. Until then, happy holidays!

Galway

Now is as good a time as any to blog about my latest adventure; this time it's a trip to Galway. The city –– the third-largest in the Republic of Ireland –– is situated on the west coast of Ireland, directly opposite Dublin, and it took €10 and a 2.5 hour coach ride to get there. Essentially, Galway feels less like a city than a large town. I think this is really what Irish cities tend to feel like most of the time. The proportion of tourists must be just as large as in Dublin, but even so it's much more staunchly Irish, and not as cosmopolitan. I think this is what attracts so many people to Galway, an authenticity that refuses to dissolve under the relentless stream of foreign travelers. It's nearly impossible not to stumble upon a trad music session spilling out of a pub in the famous Latin Quarter. And the Irish Gaelic language commands a larger presence here than in Dublin. A typical tourist probably will not be able to pronounce the names of half of the pubs, neighborhoods or streets in which they find themselves.

It's also deeply entrenched in its own history, a history that's contributed so much to the wider world. The famous Claddagh Ring, worn by lovers and Irish-enthusiasts across the globe, was born here. One of the Medieval structures of the town, Lynch's Castle, takes its name from a town sheriff so committed to upholding the laws of the city that he was forced to hang his own son for murder, thus originating the English verb "to lynch."

In any typical midwestern American town you'd find avenues and front yards festooned with American flags, and occasionally a pennant from the state university football team. In the Galway I saw, pubs, houses, storefronts, and every other flat surface was plastered in the maroon and white checker pattern of the Galway hurling team, or colored with the blue and green of Connaught Rugby.

Checking in to our hostel on the first day, I was met by Declan, a short and friendly greying hostel-keeper originally from Achill Island. When he saw my Ohio driver's license, he asked immediately "Are ye from Cleveland?" When I answered "Yes," he went on to explain about the connections between the Cleveland-Irish and Achill Island, and that lots of his wife's family immigrated to Cleveland (or "Little Achill") and have been there for years. When I asked what gave me away as a Clevelander, he said "De curly hair."

The second day was our trip to the Burren and the Cliffs of Moher. We hopped on a day trip coach south out of Galway. The farther we went the wilder it got –– the more the crumbled stone fences were overgrown with weeds older than me, the more frequent the ruined farmhouses and abbeys, the smaller the towns got that punctuated the two-lane road. There are nearly always mountains in sight in this part of the country, partially obscured by cloud or mist, and you wonder what you'd find in the shadow of one if you got that close.

The sea views from the Cliffs of Moher were stunning, but it was the Burren that fascinated me most: a region of County Clare where naturally-occurring limestone slabs stretch as far as the eye can see, and arctic, alpine and Mediterranean flora coexist in the cracks over hills and plains. The landscape is completely unique. In some places it's almost lunar. It's a wasteland, but not forbidding; it just admits no human influence or intervention. But when you look up into some of the hills, it's hard not to imagine a million gravestones, rows of stone terraces, or seats in an enormous stadium. The Burren is untamed, yet visitors feel connected to it; it's inexplicably deliberate. When the coach stopped we skipped across a honeycomb of limestone rock to see the Poulnabrone dolmen, an 6000-year old Neolithic tomb. What was it that brought prehistoric cavemen out into this inhospitable and utterly wild landscape?

These are just a couple of highlights. Galway is a lively city surrounded by lovely countryside that demands a visit of anyone who finds themselves in Ireland.

Poems?

Talking to a former classmate brought up the subject of poem-writing. We agreed that (at least) 75% of what gets spilled out ends up being useless. Another 10% becomes poems straight away –– good poems, bad poems, just poems. The remaining 15% is made up of this conglomerate of weird phrases and mismatched lyrical scraps. That's the interesting part.

They just lay around.

So it seems, though really once they're written down, they gain a permanence that will easily outlast the writer's short-term memory.

In my experience, they kick around in there; squeal about and jostle for room and sometimes just play it cool. And then in a month, or in two months, or in six months, or in 2 years, or in 20 years (!) they must find poetical mates, become poems of themselves, or languish in the margins of a journal.

Of course, the best part is that all of this is based upon the assumption that poems even have endings. And they don't –– as long as there's anyone else to read them, as long as some reader may impart meaning, or sort of water the soil the seed was planted in –– they just grow. They live in a life running alongside ours; or if we're doing something right, running through ours. A life of their own. And God bless 'em.

Welcome Returns

It can be a challenge getting back in the groove. I've been in Ireland now for five days, and I am getting adjusted once again to life across the pond. Last time, I spent a semester at University of Ulster in Coleraine, Northern Ireland. During that semester I blogged occasionally (you can find it here: http://semesterinnorthernireland.blogspot.com), but this year I hope to be a slightly more faithful correspondent. This time around, I'm studying for my MA in Creative Writing from University College Dublin, and I should be here for about a full year.

I landed in Dublin on Sunday morning to find an array of American flags and red, white and blue balloons; despite the notoriously warm welcome of the Irish people, I quickly learned that the patriotic bunting was not for me, but in honor of the Notre Dame – Navy football game, held right here that very day. It's been sunny and warm here, though I've been warned not to get lured into depending on this idyllic Irish-style Indian Summer.

After a night's stay in a hotel on the south side of the city, I arrived at my university-owned accommodations in Blackrock, a charming town at the southern edge of Dublin. It instantly reminded me of Portrush, on the Causeway Coast of Northern Ireland. You can arrive in so many new places in Ireland and still feel as if you've only been away for a short time.

I'm in the middle of the necessary but sometimes grinding first week. It's a flurry of open suitcases, signatures, bus timetables, and € leaving your wallet. My classes don't begin until 17 September, so aside from a few orientation activities (graduate students' orientation itineraries are noticeably lighter than anyone else's) I am trying to occupy my time by getting out on foot to familiarize myself with my environs. 

And beautiful environs they are. From the promenade near the train station, one gets a panoramic view of the whole of Dublin Bay, with the harbor of Dún Laoghaire (pronounced "dun-leary") to the South and the peninsula of Howth to the North both stretching outward and around to embrace the Bay.

Despite the natural beauty surrounding you, it's easy to feel a bit lost or untethered at the beginning of an experience such as this. I've gone through it before, but it doesn't lessen it this time around. I've got more responsibility and independence this time around, and supposedly more maturity. "I'm a grad student;" I have to say, it rolls off the tongue easily. Finding out what that means will undoubtedly be a different story. For now, during the limbo of adjustment, I'll have to try not to worry too much in unoccupied moments ("Should I be doing something important right now?").  Okay, I'll admit it: I was feeling a bit lonely – until I walked five minutes up the avenue from my flat and passed by a large white house named Leoville; it's adorned with white stone lions and a plaque reading "IN THIS HOUSE LIVED JAMES JOYCE." I think I'll start feeling at home shortly.