The Best American Poetry

Available Surfaces I: Uncle Ernest’s Tattoos [by T. R. Hummer]

My thanks to David Lehman and Best American Poetry for the opportunity to be guest blogger for this week. The invitation is timely, because, as it happens, I have a theme I want to explore, and writing for this blog will provide me the opportunity and the much-needed impetus to get it done. Here, then, begins a series of entries that will progress under the overall title “Available Surfaces."

*

character c.1315, from O.Fr. caractere, from L. character, from Gk. kharakter "engraved mark," from kharassein "to engrave," from kharax "pointed stake." Meaning extended by metaphor to "a defining quality."    

I grew up in a place and time wherein the art of tattooing was virtually unknown—or, to be more accurate, was beyond the pale. A map of local businesses would not have included a tattoo parlor, any more than a list of the local houses of worship (and that would have been a lengthy list) would have included a Church of Elvis, however many Elvis worshipers might actually have lurked among us.  

The only member of my family who had tattoos was my Uncle Ernest, who we rarely saw, because he lived Elsewhere. Furthermore, he came from Elsewhere, as he was “only” an uncle by marriage anyway, having courted and won Aunt Eunice after the Great War; and Aunt Eunice was not “really” an aunt in any case, as she was adopted (though she was in fact Family, being the daughter of another aunt and uncle, both of whom perished in the Great Train Wreck, but that, children, is another story).

As if that weren’t enough, Uncle Ernest obtained his tattoos in an even more distant Elsewhere. During the Great War he had been a marine, serving in the Pacific Theater, where, I gather, he saw a good deal of combat on islands whose names, when I was a child, were utterly strange to me. I remember hearing him tell a story about lying on his belly firing his rifle (from under a jeep? Or have I imagined that detail?) while the bullets of an unseen enemy inscribed furrows in the sand to the left and right of him.  From there, I understood, it was somehow a natural step to the tattoo parlor.

Uncle Ernest had an anchor on his shoulder and a naked woman on his forearm. Both were tattoos of the crudest kind available from a professional--utterly stereotypical hack work executed in one color: mimeograph blue. Uncle Ernest was deeply ashamed of them, and always wore long-sleeved shirts. He would display them only rarely, under a combination of duress and the influence of a drink or three.   My connection to my Uncle (actually Cousin-By-Marriage) Ernest, therefore, was both complicated and distant.

And Another Thing... [by Jim Stubenrauch]

Greetings from hot, muggy, overcast Brooklyn... please pardon your guest blogger’s blog outage of the past two days. Service resumes just in time to wrap up the week with a couple of items…

 When Stacey shared with me a few guidelines for posting on this site, she mentioned that BAP bloggers generally avoid overtly political commentary, but she also said—I’m paraphrasing here—that readers might find it interesting to hear a bit about how AJN covers health care topics that have become politicized.

As anyone who wasn’t already in a coma this summer knows about our most recent coma-inducing national conversation, the timing couldn’t be better for discussing the discussion. I wrote about it, here, last week, where I noted:

At AJN we usually avoid taking sides in partisan political fights. We focus on issues that are important to nurses and their patients, and when we publish articles that concern health care policymaking, we try to present the facts as objectively as possible. When there’s a legitimate debate about the best approach to achieving a particular goal, we try to present all sides with equal objectivity, in the belief that readers can make up their own minds when presented with unbiased information.

 Unfortunately, people who should and probably do know better are not upholding similar standards of objectivity and reason in the current debate. National political and media figures are willfully undermining sensible discussion of desperately needed reform efforts, misinforming the public and stirring up baseless fears for their own political advantage and financial gain. It therefore becomes increasingly difficult to cover health care policymaking without taking some note of the political forces that are distorting the very terms of the debate.

 (Well, I suppose that’s all very sound; much more fun, of course, would be to have Jon Stewart’s job, and do this, not to mention this.)

 Those who are sick of hearing about health care reform may benefit most from reading these posts by AJN senior editor Jacob Molyneux at AJNoffthecharts.

 In any case, I hope you’ll read my post, and the Times article that traces the origins of the heinous phrase “death panel,” and names those responsible for inserting it into the debate.

 Credit where credit is due: let it be noted that on “Cease to Thrill,” the Vdisc song I posted on Wednesday, the music was written by Lin Esser, Ted Mockrish, Stephanie St. John, and Vdisc; the lyrics were written by Ted Mockrish. The track was produced by Lin Esser. The musicians were Paul Bennett, bass; Lin Esser, guitars, guitar synth, violin; Ted Mockrish, drums; Stephanie St. John, voice; and your guest blogger, keyboards.

 That’s all for now. It’s been a real pleasure to be here this past week. Thanks, again, for reading and listening.

The Second Handsomest Man

OK, I'll grant that Cary Grant (ne Archibald Leach) was Hollywood's handsomest leading man -- and for the long span between the early screwball comedies (playing opposite Katharine Hepburn, Irene Dunne, and Rosalind Russell) and the later thrillers (with leading ladies Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly, Eva Marie Saint, and Audrey Hepburn).

But who is number two? I would nominate the Clark Gable of "It Happened One Night," "GWTW," and "The Hucksters." How about you? Would you choose the young Gregory Peck of "Ten O'Clock High," or maybe Robert Mitchum in "Out of the Past," or William Holden in "The Bridge On the River Kwai"? Or Paul Newman, Warren Beatty, Burt Lancaster, Steve McQueen, Dana Andrews in "Laura," and I'm sure I've overlooked an obvious contender on the order of Clint Eastwood, Marlon Brando, Robert Redford, Woody Allen, George Clooney, and a whole raft of British actors from Laurence Olivier to Errol Flynn.

Let us know what you think.

Happy Birthday, Dorothy Parker & Your "quondam dreams"

Symptom Recital

I do not like my state of mind;
I'm bitter, querulous, unkind.
I hate my legs, I hate my hands,
I do not yearn for lovelier lands.
I dread the dawn's recurrent light;
I hate to go to bed at night.
I snoot at simple, earnest folk.
I cannot take the gentlest joke.
I find no peace in paint or type.
My world is but a lot of tripe.
I'm disillusioned, empty-breasted.
For what I think, I'd be arrested.
I am not sick, I am not well.
My quondam dreams are shot to hell.
My soul is crushed, my spirit sore;
I do not like me any more.
I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse.
I pond on the narrow house.
I shudder at the thought of men . . .
I'm due to fall in love again.

--Dorothy Parker

"The Hucksters"

As part of its all-Deborah Kerr day, TCM showed "The Hucksters" at midnight last Sunday, the day of the ballyhooed opening of the new (third) season of "Mad Men."  About the Madison Avenue geniuses of soap jingles, the 1947 movie is underrated on its own terms and contrasts usefully with "Mad Men." 

Like Don Draper in "Mad Men," but even more so, army veteran Vic Norman is the movie's informing personality and Gable is great in the role. Maybe that's because he is playing a version of himself. With his dashing looks and charm, and his ultra-male confidence, Vic can talk his way from being, say, a nobody who can drive a truck to being Hollywood's acknowledged "king," the very embodiment of Rhett Butler. The script does nice things with the notion that sincerity is something you can imitate or simulate. Looking for work as the movie begins, Gable buys a new necktie, because it makes him look sincere. I wondered whether Lionel Trilling saw the movie, which anticipates an argument he makes in "Sincerity and Authenticity."

Gable can sell nearly anything to almost anyone. and when he walks into an ad agency and demands to see the top man, he naturally walks out with the firm's biggest account. Don Draper has epiphanies that guide him unerringly; Gable has his swagger and charm and uses shrewd psychological ploys to get people to do his bidding. He can make a veiled threat sound like a pep talk to get a guy to do the right thing, can bet a nothing hand as if he were holding a straight flush, can con an agent into a rock-bottom contract for the agent's client -- in this case a second-rate comedian named Buddy Hare (played by Keenan Wynn). The stand-up comic in "Mad Men" is nasty. Buddy Hare is just juvenile.

The movie has Sydney Greenstreet, always fun to watch, as an entertainingly boorish villain, on whose oversized white hat Gable pours a pitcher of water. The hero as a good guy with a conscience who turns his back on Mad Ave: Gable makes impressive speeches ("your foreman is fear") after deciding that he'd rather have a defeated opponent's "forgiveness" than his "respect" and be sincere instead of playing at it. The movie -- which exists on the edge between comedy and drama -- was adapted from a novel that was undoubtedly angrier and more biting.

As befits Hollywood's "king," Gable is regaled with a double dose of frabjous femininity. He has Deborah Kerr, a general's widow, on one arm, and Ava Gardner as night club singer Jean Ogilvie on the other. In the terms proposed by "Mad Men," he gets to woo the high-slung proper Jackie ("I like being on a pedestal, but don't overdo it") and to revisit a romance with soulful, low-slung, big breasted Marilyn ("the cocktails are in the icebox"). The plot obliges Gable to be honorable, Gardner to be understanding, a model drinking buddy, and demure Kerr in her stud earrings and short hair to win the man. Kerr is a wonderful actress, easy to embrace in her convertible under the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. Her best moment: "Stop being a breadwinner and kiss me." But Ava is a rare enchantress. She is 24 and this is her breakout film. Her best moment: when she-- the former Mrs. Artie Shaw and the future Mrs. Frank Sinatra -- explains that singing on the beat (as in George M. Cohan's "Over There") is square. "Modern singing is soft and off the beat," she says. But of course Gable, hep from the start, knew that all along.

-- DL

A Marriage of Love and Independence [by Jennifer Michael Hecht]

ws tj, jmh conducting

A Marriage of Love and Independence

 

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes

When in the course of human events it becomes

I alone beweep my outcast state

necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands

and trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries

which have connected them with another and to assume

and look upon myself and curse my fate

among the powers of the earth,

wishing me like to one more rich in hope

the separate and equal station to which the Laws

featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them,

 

with what I most enjoy contented least

We, therefore, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, 
   

for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name,

Haply I think on thee,--and then my state 


and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies,

(Like to the lark at break of day arising 
   

solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies

from sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate; 


are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings 
   

That then I scorn to change my state with kings. 

It's Too Darn Hot!

What’s the Difference?—Blame It on the Weather [by Jim Stubenrauch]

 

Something a bit different tonight: I’d like to offer some music by Vdisc (not V-Disc), an obscure band that released one record, entitled Vee Khan Nez Pha, in the late 90s. Little is known about them—the liner notes are cryptic, even failing to list the names of the musicians—but a recent audit of our archives unearthed several previously unreleased tracks by the mystery collective. Here’s one, called “Cease to Thrill.”

Download Vdisc - Cease to Thrill

Thanks to all who commented on my posts of the past few days. I hope to respond in detail in the next day or two.

Perils of the Poetry Reading [by Katha Pollitt]

    Am I the only person who finds it hard to follow an unfamiliar poem when I hear it read out loud and don’t have the text in front of me? Even when reading to myself at my own pace, I might have to go over a poem several times to really get it,  but  at a reading,  the poems whizz by  unstoppably-- no chance of a second hearing, and all the helpful visual cues of print , like punctuation, italics, quotation marks, and even line breaks,  are absent.  A stray thought enters my head --  I wonder why they painted this room turquoise? -- and in seconds I’ve lost the thread.  (I’m speaking of what you might call “literary poetry” here,  poetry written primarily to be read silently, not spoken word, which is intended for the ear from the outset.)

   I often find that the poems I’ve enjoyed most at a reading  seem oddly flat on the page when I hunt them down in a book.   What made the poem seem striking and fresh was  the poet’s performance: the energy and especially the humor was in the voice and manner and gestures, not the words themselves.  Or it was the story the poem told: the poetry reading as a series of anecdotes, with the poet placing and embellishing each one in his introductions: My uncle ran a chicken farm in Iowa,  and when he ran off with the Methodist minister’s wife my aunt killed all the chickens and  gave them to the nuns, and out of that comes this next poem, “Saint Rooster and the Holy Choir of Hens.”  it’s been suggested, in fact, that the proliferation of poetry readings, and their importance to a poet’s career, has actually changed the way poets --  “literary poets” -- write, encouraging verbal simplicity, talkiness, easy emotions, simple narratives, and punchlines. It’s  the poet as stand-up comedian/tragedian. 

    Still, you can see why poets would try to shape their art to please their audience -- and notice how we now commonly speak of  poetry’s audience rather than poetry’s readers, which tells you something right there.   It can be painful and embarrassing to stand up before a small group of  miscellaneous strangers who expect you to entertain them and instead offer poems they might find bewildering, or remote.  I've given readings  at which I just want to say, oh well, never mind, let’s just go have a beer and talk about health care reform. 

      Wislawa Szymborska’s “Poetry Reading” (translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh)   may be the definitive account of a reading at its awful,  humiliating worst.  To paraphrase the old Jewish joke about the Catskills hotel (“The food is terrible!” “Yes, and the portions are so small!”), the audience is not only tiny, it’s not even listening.  And yet, Symborska disperses her pity, her warmth and her satirical humor so evenly among poets and audience members and even the muse, poor thing,  that what in lesser hands would be just another complaint about the world’s indifference to art becomes a gesture of understanding, forgiveness, love.

POETRY READING

To be a boxer, or not to be there
at all. O Muse, where are our teeming crowds? 

Twelve people in the room, eight seats to spare --

it's time to start this cultural affair.

Half came inside because it started raining, 

the rest are relatives. O Muse.

The women here would love to rant and rave, 

but that's for boxing. Here they must behave. 

Dante's Infemo is ringside nowadays.

Likewise his Paradise. O Muse.

Oh, not to be a boxer but a poet, 

one sentenced to hard shelleying for life, 

for lack of muscles forced to show the world 

the sonnet that may make the high-school reading lists 

with luck. O Muse,

O bobtailed angel, Pegasus.

In the first row, a sweet old man's soft snore: 

he dreams his wife's alive again. What's more, 

she's making him that tart she used to bake. 

Aflame, but carefully--don't burn his cake!

we start to read. O Muse.

 

        -- by Wislawa Szymborska 
                (from View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems Harvest Books, 1996)

Vallejo's Vedic Fiber (as rendered by Tom Clark)

Cesar Vallejo

The conclusion of a Vallejo poem (click here for the rest) makes fortunetelling look easy in the sense that a good center fielder, Carlos Beltran when healthy, say, or the athletic Matt Kemp, makes a difficult catch seem almost but not quite routine:

<<
What hasn't yet come along won't, but
what's already come and gone,
but what's already come and gone.
>>

Cesar Vallejo, translated by Tom Clark, on his blog today