The Best American Poetry

"It's December in NY" [by Florence Cassen Mayers]

It’s December in NY

and dogs wear coats.
Rich ladies air fur coats,
the homeless bundle worn coats.
Annual coat
drives distribute hats and coats.
Cold as the Norwegian coast,

cold as South Dakota.
Button up your overcoat.
Layer sweater, leggings, petticoat,
mittens, muffler, ascot.
Is that coat
warm enough? A new winter coat

need not cost a
fortune, coats
are on sale everywhere. 25% off on these coats
40% off on those coats.
Searle on Madison shows beautiful red alpaca coats.
Ducks float

on the reservoir in Central Park (there are no boats),
and boast
down layers under smooth green throats.
We’re not supposed to but we toss them oats,
dry toast,
sugar-coated groats.

Rim of reservoir: ice coated.
Policemen: blue coated.
Ice coats
puddles in crosswalks, sidewalks: coated
with salt, driveways: sand coated.
I coat

Fish fillets lightly with flour, recoat
in hazelnut coating,
a Tbs. olive oil will do to coat
romaine. Vanilla custard thickens, coats
my spoon. We drink a red, a Cote
de Rhone. Please bring home a bag of tacos.

I buy us a used coat rack: we’ve no room in the coat
closet for so many coats. It needs three coats
of paint: an undercoat, a primer, a top coat.

-- Florence Cassen Mayers

Edmund Wilson and His Wife, Elena, Have Dinner with Edna St. Vincent Millay and Her Husband, Eugen Boissevain, August 6, 1948. (by Jim Cummins)

Is it hot in here, or is it just me?
They both seem so much older now than I—
can this be so? Do women age like dogs,
or something out of Wilde? Seven years
for every one we live? He cuts her meat.

Good God, that inward stare! I loved her so.
The self-absorption’s thickened like her hide.
I knew all this before, of course. I knew.
And got out early like the pig I am.
She’s jowly, tense. Elderly. It’s nineteen years …

What was Elena saying as they left?
Arm in arm, as if I’d ceased to be?
They walked along the garden for an hour,
Elena kindly offering E. her laugh.
Two women, arm in arm, whose toes I’ve—

What? What’d I say? Blurted something out—
but what? It must have been unpleasant: clouds
are forming on the brow of Mt. Monadnock.
I’ve added to the burden of his days!
Good Christ, am I going through the change?

Why are they looking at me with such hate?
Why can’t I just remember what I said?
We’ve drunk too much; we always drink too much.
I hear Herself—she calls my name loudly,
a tone of bemusement hiding her rage:

“So are you going to pass him the gravy,
or must the three of us go over there,
and by God take the boat by force?” I see
Elena’s face, alarmed; I look at Gene,
his face savage, full of remorse; then down

at those gravy-less potatoes. I stare
again at E., at E.—are we all insane?
“Of course,” I mumble, “the gravy.” I look
about wildly—thank God, it’s near my plate!
Is there no window in this goddamn house?

-- by Jim Cummins
(Paris Review & Harpers)

Ed note: Read more about Millay in here.

Who Killed Tragedy?

 

I) According to Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy, who killed tragedy?

(1) Euripides, because The Bacchae lacks the Dionysiac element.
(2) Socrates, because reason is the enemy of tragedy.
(3) Jesus, because Christianity is the enemy of tragedy.
(4) Aristophanes, because comedy is the enemy of tragedy.
(5) #2 or #3, but not for the reason given.

II) Which of these two statements is correct?

a. "Nietzsche was like a man who throws himself from a tower in order to put an end to the unbearable sensation of vertigo."

b. Nietzsche threw himself
from a tower to end his
lifelong vertigo.

III) Which of these two statements comes closest to stating Freud's position?

a. "From the rationalist's point of view, which I feel confident that history will vindicate, Nietzsche backed the wrong side in civilization's death-struggle between the voice of reason, strong in its persistence though prosaic in its form, and the sopranos and tenors of Wagnerian passion that prepared the masses for the dictator's voice on the radio."

b. History will say
Nietzsche backed the wrong side but
History is wrong.

IV) "The Aryans assigned crime to the male sex, the Semites assigned sin to the female." This is a proposition advanced by whom for what purpose?

1) Nietzsche, in an effort to exalt the myth of Prometheus
2) Nietzsche or Freud, because he was a misogynist
3) Nietzsche, because he felt that hubris is a virtue
4) The chorus of wizards in Goethe's Faust, to demonstrate the fallacy of global dichotomies.
5) Aeschylus, in a spontaneous display of joy upon witnessing a luminous cloud on a lake of sorrow.

-- DL

Patricia Carlin Presents a Poem by Stephen Burt

For the last week of the old year, here is a kind of state-of-the-union message, as germane now as it was in Winter 2006 when this poem appeared in Barrow Street. The poem, “The Task,” is by Stephen Burt.

THE TASK

All children are changelings; that’s why skilled
Repairmen are always in demand.  But Rosie and her
Great ilk are moody these days,
Ready to head back into the past all
Grandparents share, when things
Seemed fairer and more solid, although
Poorer.  People ate
Indistinguishable taupe cubes;
For entertainment they watched flashing lights.

Yet these days every corridor is a flooded
Mangrove swamp, where ancient types despise
Our white-collar competition, our scandalous talk;
The person you expect to be next year
Is less heroic than you are, and more glum,
With fewer talismans.  He praises the day even so.
If this world has fallen together by chance
And evolution, she says, it is
A marvel, but if somebody
Designed it, yikes!
Dear shepherd: Do you have a staff?
Dear effortful ones: How far are you wandering home?
Do you prefer paper or plastic homes
For purchase?  Can you fit on the head of a match?

There’s a filter on our enjoyments: it kicks in
Between twilight and dearly
Beloved, but perhaps less respectable,
Dawn.  The sun shows that
We already owe too much.  And still hope prepares
Itself like a bread knife left in bread, like wooden
Models in the kitchen trap,
For the caustic gift of trying
To imagine how it would feel, or what you would
Do, if you were actually
In charge.  The enemies
Of the naiads remain on guard
Over 24 hours per day, archaic rules
And halberds at the ready:  You must
Listen to them.  You must not do as they say.

-- Stephen Burt

Between its authoritative opening and closing lines, “The Task” offers a witty, inventive description of how we live now, and also a prescription for dealing with it.  Not incidentally, it’s also a guide for a certain kind of poetics -- one which encapsulates our present psychic and social situation in the poetic means it uses to address that situation.

The situation may be a little grim – “The person you expect to be next year / Is less heroic than you are, and more glum.”  And yes, “There’s a filter on our enjoyments,” and “The sun shows that / We already owe too much”; but that doesn’t stop the poet and the reader from enjoying themselves as they skip along through the changes in this kinetic poem.

The succession of elements in the poem – jumps in thought, in language, in details, in who is speaking (“he,” “she,” “you,” “we,” “our”), in who is being spoken to (“Dear shepherd,” “Dear effortful ones”) -- continually surprise.  In part it’s because successive elements are original, in the sense that one element doesn’t originate from what precedes in any expected way.  To trace only the first part of the poem, children, changelings, repairmen, “ Rosie and her / Great ilk,” grandparents, taupe cubes, flashing lights, and a mangrove swamp pass in rapid succession.  The poem perpetually goes somewhere new.  On closer examination it can be seen that some phrases do proceed associatively – but they do so with a logic that can be understood only after the fact.

Has the world of the poem (and the world the poem reflects) “fallen together by chance / And evolution”?  If so, what  “A marvel.”  Or “has somebody / Designed it”?   If so, “Yikes!”  In either case, the poem offers much pleasure in the form of pervasive wit created through shifting, surprising jumps in language, imagery, tone.  But pleasure is not the poem’s only point.  There is “A Task” to be performed, and the final lines set it out.  “The enemies / Of the naiads remain on guard / Over 24 hours per day, archaic rules / And halberds at the ready.  You must / Listen to them.  You must not do as they say.”

“Archaic rules” and outdated weapons (the “halberds”) are poised at the ready, working overtime (“Over 24 hours per day”).  They are “on guard” against the naiads -- water spirits who suggest imagination and myth, flexible and shifting as the element they live in.

These lines are a prescription for how to live, and also, for how to write.  Readers and writers must “listen” to rigid outdated strategies (poetic as well as social and psychological), but not in order to obey them – instead, to oppose them.  “You must not do as they say.”

I particularly like the way the poem presumes to speak to and for a shared communal reality.  In this it hearkens back to the Augustan age, which assumed poetry spoke of and to a public world.  This stance reappeared in the twentieth century in, notably, Auden’s work, for one.  Here it reappears in a twenty-first-century version, where self and community are in a sense interchangeable, each being equally made up of multiple voices.

-- Pat Carlin

Regina Quondum, Regina Futurus (by Mitch Sisskind)

Almost a hundred years ago, Edna St. Vincent Millay was one of the best-known women in America and certainly the best known female poet. Though she's been unfashionable for many years, I predict a comeback -- for reasons explained below. Anyway, true talent is never a matter of fashion for those who strictly meditate the thankless muse. Certainly that included Papa Hemingway, who said of Vincent (as ESVM liked to be called), "She could hit them with the bases loaded":

Tenderly, in those times, as though she fed
An ailing child -- with sturdy propping up
Of its small, feverish body in the bed,
And steadying of its hands about the cup --
She gave her husband of her body's strength,
Thinking of men, what helpless things they were,
Until he turned and fell asleep at length,
And stealthily stirred the night and spoke to her.
Familiar, at such moments, like a friend,
Whistled far off the long, mysterious train,
And she could see in her mind's vision plain
The magic World, where cities stood on end...
Remote from where she lay -- and yet -- between,
Save for something asleep beside her, only the window screen.

In 1920 Vincent began her love affair with young Edmund Wilson, whose books Memoirs of Hecate County and To the Finland Station are sexual allegories of this torrid and inflaming time. "Bunny" and Vincent used to amuse themselves by shooting nude figure studies of the poet, of which some excellent prints still exist. The pictures are now in the possession of the Library of Congress, but are under an embargo...until 2010. Yes, that's why I predict the start of an ESVM revival beginning as soon as next week!

But as a reader of the Best American Poetry blog, you don't have to wait until next week. Through my contacts in the government, I've been able to obtain a few of "Bunny's" quite excellent photographs. I submit them here to your connoisseurship, including the brief notes that "Bunny" scribbled on the backs ---->>>>

"Holy smoke!"

"Shayna tuchus,
as the Jews say!"

"To the Finland Station!"

Here's a link to a good article about Vincent, including mention of the photographs and shared optimism for revival of interest: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200110/mallon

"Poet Eating Peanuts" by Mario de Andrade [trans. Ron Horning]

Poet Eating Peanuts
to Carlos Drummond de Andrade
(1924)

Nights heavy with suffocating smells, heat . . .
The Sun made its way across the enormous stretch of our country
And gave each Brazilian a dark complexion.

I’m thinking of times long before I was born . . .

At night you took it easy. White laughter of mulattos . . .
Shhh! The Emperor is composing a sonnet.
In the oval shadow of a mango tree, loyalists plot to restore his father to the throne.
The murmur of priests was the only thing Brazilians had in common . . .
When the runaways found out slavery had been abolished,
The number of Hail Marys dropped like a rock . . .

But the real disaster was pretending the Republic could last.
We didn’t know yet how to govern ourselves . . .
It was a step forward, but a tiny one,
Because progress is fateful, too . . .
Only God knows what the future will be! . . .

Me, I want more disasters . . .
I want to sail the Amazon and I want mosquito winds
Whining through the branches of plum trees shading front doors . . .
I want a bass viol and carefree days alone
I want to groan and die.

Brazil . . .
Tasted in the rich flavor of fresh hot peanuts . . .
Spoken in a mongrel slang from the street
Of hit and miss words honey smooth and bittersweet . . .
They come out slow fresh bitten off by my strong teeth . . .
They moisten my lips for even more kisses
And drain any meanness from the prayers I really mean . . .

Brazil loved not because I was born here,
I was born here by chance, like anyone anywhere . . .
But because it’s the rhythm of the hand at the end of my arm,
The pleasure of my days off,
The balancing act of my songs my loves my dances.
Brazil that I am because of the funny way I look,
Because I couldn’t care less, either,
Because of how I earn my living, what I eat for dinner, and when I go to sleep.

-- Mario de Andrade (from Clan do Jaboti, 1927)
translated from the Portuguese by Ron Horning
(in current issue of Vanitas ed. Vincent Katz)

Merry Merry

Thanks for the tree, Laura.

And Merry Christmas to all of our readers. 

-- sdh

In a narcissistic slight of hand actor Michael O’Keefe interviews himself about his poems, Christmas and other matters significant to him and him alone.

Q.: Michael, nice to have you here.

A.: Pleasure to be had and here.

Q.: You’ve published a book of poems recently.

A.: You’re quite right about that.

Q.: But enough about poetry tell me about the meaning of life.

 A.: Hey, let’s get back to poetry, Interlocutor.  Unemployed actors know very little about the meaning of life.  They can’t even hold a job in the real world.  That’s why they became actors in the first place.

 Q.: How did you become an actor?

 A.: I was dropped as a child.

 Q: And why publish a book of poems?

 A.: I thought you’d never ask.

 Q.: Oh, I wouldn’t leave you hanging.

 A.: No, but you sure can’t interrupt a guy who’s trying his best to say something about poetry.

 Q.: Sorry.  I’m all ears.  Tell us about your poems.

 A.: The book is called “Swimming From Under My Father,” and…           

 Q.: Why not just “Swimming Under,” or “Swimming From?”  Why “Swimming From Under…?”

 A.: Oh for Christ’s sake.  Can’t you keep quiet?

 Q.: I hardly think using Christ’s name in vain on Christmas Eve is an appropriate way to celebrate the holiday.

 A.: And I don’t badgering me with interruptions is the way to interview me about my writing.

 Q.: I’ll be the judge of that.  Your first blog for BAP was about Christmas and Barbara Stanwyck.  Do you think the reason you’re single at your advanced age has anything to do with an inability to connect with someone in the real world?  And isn’t that why you hold Ms. Stanwyck in such high esteem?  She is, after all, only an illusory presence for you.

 A.: Advanced age? Have you ever been knocked cold by an interviewee? Because, Brother, I am about to sock you in the jaw.

 Q.:  Whatsa matter?  Did that hit close to the bone?

 A significant pause ensues as Mr. O’Keefe waits for Mr. O’Keefe to collect his thoughts and regain his composure.

 A.:  William Carlos Williams once said that while it is difficult to get the news from poetry men die miserable deaths every day from lack of what is found in its pages.

 Q.: (In an Irish brogue) Did he now?

 A.: When you did become Irish?

 Q.: (Continuing the Irish brogue through out the rest) Ach, get away. Sure, I’ve been this way all along.

 A.: Look, I only have so much time.  Can we please just settle into a conversation about my poems?

 Q.: I’ll not be badgered by ye, ye unemployed actor with yer high falutin’ book a poems.  Poems is it?  What’s next?  Philosophy?  From an actor yet.  Bollocks!

 A.: God, you’re a nuisance.  What does “Bollocks” mean anyway?  I hear Irish and English people use it frequently but no one’s ever made clear what it means.

 Q.: It means, “testicles” ya ignorant git.

 A.: Gross.  How the hell did that ever make it into the lexicon of modern speech?

 Q.:  Oh no ya don’t.  I’ll be asking the questions around here, Mr. Fancypants.

 A.: These are jeans.

 Q.: And I’ll wager ya spent hundreds of dollars on them.

 A.: What if I did?

 Q.: Yer not a real poet.  Real poets suffer fer their art.  You wouldn’t find Jane Hirshfield or Henri Cole in a pair of jeans that cost hundreds of dollars.

 A.: Perhaps you’re right about that.

 Q.: A course I’m right.  And that’s all the time and space we have.

 A.: I thought space-time was unlimited.  Kind of like a fourth dimension.  I’ve heard string theorists go on about it.

 Q.: Brilliant!  Next time I’ll interview one a dem.  Tune in next time for, “String Theory.  Math or Religion?  You decide.”

 A.: Oh, bollocks.

Top Ten Christmas Songs Written by Jews. 

An Australian cameraman at whom she threw a glass of champagne marveled. "She was so bloody gorgeous." That is what he was thinking when the glass and its contents were flying at him. That was Ava Gardner. Like a hurricane but beautiful, glamorous yet down to earth -- she could swear like a sailor; had a terrible temper; gravitated naturally to macho men, matadors, crooners, big-band leaders, big-game hunting American writers on safari. She was 5'6, a brunette with killer looks and a nice voice. They dubbed her in the movie "Showboat" but it's her voice you hear on the soundtrack. They should not have dubbed her. It sounds phony.  Her voice full of tequila cocktails was just right for Julie's showstopper, "Bill." Her eyebrows and mouth rival Vivien Leigh's; her eyes give Liz Taylor's a run for the money. On the sexuality scale, she ranks right up there with Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth, and Kim Novak. She posed for Man Ray ("absolutely ravishing"). A sculptor got her to step out of her little two-piece, one piece at a time. He did inspired work. But they didn't use the statue. Damn it, it has tits, the executive roared.

Ava commanded an unusual loyalty. Among her ex-husbands, Frank Sinatra was really hooked. He had a statue of her in his backyard until his fourth wife (Barbara Marx) made him remove it. But was it the same one? When she fell ill in 1989, Frankie paid all the bills. He called her "Angel." But he didn't attend the funeral when she died in January 1990. Neither did the two other ex-husbands, Mickey Rooney (a mistake when she was nineteen and breaking in) and clarinetist heartthrob Artie Shaw (who ruined her self-esteem by reminding her how uneducated she was. Artie made her read Dostoyevski, Mann, and Flaubert. He even took Darwin along on their honeymoon. Darwin's great-grandson deemed her to be "the highest specimen of the human species." But Artie thought she was a dummy, and she was desperately in love with Artie. "I don't think he ever really understood the damage he did," Ava wrote about Artie Shaw. Mickey Rooney remembered that sex with her had been great. "Not for me," she said. Of her third husband, Frank Sinatra, Ava once said. "Frank weighs 120 pounds but ten of them are pure cock."

Surprisingly, there is more North than South in her natal chart -- 56.4% to 43.6% -- a proportion that beautifully mirrors the popular vote after certain landmark US elections. Her chart conjures a type of individual who externalizes her emotions rather than bottling them up. In a certain mood, she is more likely to fight, curse, slap, and shout than to act quietly bitchy. She is not introspective. As the actress herself once said, "deep down I'm pretty superficial." The predominance of water signs in her chart suggests a state of constant motion, change, and periodic upheaval. Can anyone be surprised that the proportion of yin to yang in Ms. Gardner's chart is more than three to one, 76.3% to 23.7%?

Planetary: The predominance of the moon, Mars, and Saturn in Ms. Gardner's chart indicate that she can be saturnine, martial, and lunar, though not all at the same time. The dominant signs in the chart are Capricorn (her birth sign, which also houses her Mercury), Cancer (her rising sign, and her Pluto), and Pisces (the moon, Mars, Uranus). Much depends on your interpretation of Ava's eighth house -- the house of transformation and the house of sex -- which in her case is particularly complex. The strong currents of the water signs in her chart suggest an unremitting flow of sexual energy. The fact that both her Venus and her Jupiter reside in Scorpio give you an idea of the unpredictable nature of her temper and moods. Such a woman. when endowed with a beautiful face and body, is guaranteed to have a bewitching hold on men -- whether the strong, silent, sincere type, the mercurial genius, or the vain prince.

Let me just put it this way: she shares a birthday with Elvis Presley. She is the same height as Catherine Deneuve (5'6).In Chinese astrology, she is a water dog. When Sinatra sings "I'm a Fool to Want You," he's thinking of Ava. She taught him heartbreak and the dark side of passion -- and that was just one of the gifts she bestowed on him during their tempestuous marriage. It is said that Sinatra got his career-reviving role in From Here to Eternity (1953) not from the machinations of a mafioso (as The Godfather would have it) but because Ava, then as big a box office star as there was,weighed in with Harry Cohen of Columbia Pictures.

-- DL

Michael O'Keefe interviews actor Michael O'Keefe.

In a narcissistic slight of hand actor Michael O’Keefe interviews himself about his poems, Christmas and other matters significant to him and him alone.

Q.: Michael, nice to have you here.

A.: Pleasure to be had and here.

Q.: You’ve published a book of poems recently.

A.: You’re quite right about that.

Q.: But enough about poetry tell me about the meaning of life.

 A.: Hey, let’s get back to poetry, Interlocutor.  Unemployed actors know very little about the meaning of life.  They can’t even hold a job in the real world.  That’s why they became actors in the first place.

 Q.: How did you become an actor?

 A.: I was dropped as a child.

 Q: And why publish a book of poems?

 A.: I thought you’d never ask.

 Q.: Oh, I wouldn’t leave you hanging.

 A.: No, but you sure can’t interrupt a guy who’s trying his best to say something about poetry.

 Q.: Sorry.  I’m all ears.  Tell us about your poems.

 A.: The book is called “Swimming From Under My Father,” and…           

 Q.: Why not just “Swimming Under,” or “Swimming From?”  Why “Swimming From Under…?”

 A.: Oh for Christ’s sake.  Can’t you keep quiet?

 Q.: I hardly think using Christ’s name in vain on Christmas Eve is an appropriate way to celebrate the holiday.

 A.: And I don’t badgering me with interruptions is the way to interview me about my writing.

 Q.: I’ll be the judge of that.  Your first blog for BAP was about Christmas and Barbara Stanwyck.  Do you think the reason you’re single at your advanced age has anything to do with an inability to connect with someone in the real world?  And isn’t that why you hold Ms. Stanwyck in such high esteem?  She is, after all, only an illusory presence for you.

 A.: Advanced age? Have you ever been knocked cold by an interviewee? Because, Brother, I am about to sock you in the jaw.

 Q.:  Whatsa matter?  Did that hit close to the bone?

 A significant pause ensues as Mr. O’Keefe waits for Mr. O’Keefe to collect his thoughts and regain his composure.

 A.:  William Carlos Williams once said that while it is difficult to get the news from poetry men die miserable deaths every day from lack of what is found in its pages.

 Q.: (In an Irish brogue) Did he now?

 A.: When you did become Irish?

 Q.: (Continuing the Irish brogue through out the rest) Ach, get away. Sure, I’ve been this way all along.

 A.: Look, I only have so much time.  Can we please just settle into a conversation about my poems?

 Q.: I’ll not be badgered by ye, ye unemployed actor with yer high falutin’ book a poems.  Poems is it?  What’s next?  Philosophy?  From an actor yet.  Bollocks!

 A.: God, you’re a nuisance.  What does “Bollocks” mean anyway?  I hear Irish and English people use it frequently but no one’s ever made clear what it means.

 Q.: It means, “testicles” ya ignorant git.

 A.: Gross.  How the hell did that ever make it into the lexicon of modern speech?

 Q.:  Oh no ya don’t.  I’ll be asking the questions around here, Mr. Fancypants.

 A.: These are jeans.

 Q.: And I’ll wager ya spent hundreds of dollars on them.

 A.: What if I did?

 Q.: Yer not a real poet.  Real poets suffer fer their art.  You wouldn’t find Jane Hirshfield or Henri Cole in a pair of jeans that cost hundreds of dollars.

 A.: Perhaps you’re right about that.

 Q.: A course I’m right.  And that’s all the time and space we have.

 A.: I thought space-time was unlimited.  Kind of like a fourth dimension.  I’ve heard string theorists go on about it.

 Q.: Brilliant!  Next time I’ll interview one a dem.  Tune in next time for, “String Theory.  Math or Religion?  You decide.”

 A.: Oh, bollocks.

Have Yourself a Jewish Little Christmas

Top Ten Christmas Songs Written by Jews. 

Ava Gardner: "She was so bloody gorgeous"

An Australian cameraman at whom she threw a glass of champagne marveled. "She was so bloody gorgeous." That is what he was thinking when the glass and its contents were flying at him. That was Ava Gardner. Like a hurricane but beautiful, glamorous yet down to earth -- she could swear like a sailor; had a terrible temper; gravitated naturally to macho men, matadors, crooners, big-band leaders, big-game hunting American writers on safari. She was 5'6, a brunette with killer looks and a nice voice. They dubbed her in the movie "Showboat" but it's her voice you hear on the soundtrack. They should not have dubbed her. It sounds phony.  Her voice full of tequila cocktails was just right for Julie's showstopper, "Bill." Her eyebrows and mouth rival Vivien Leigh's; her eyes give Liz Taylor's a run for the money. On the sexuality scale, she ranks right up there with Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth, and Kim Novak. She posed for Man Ray ("absolutely ravishing"). A sculptor got her to step out of her little two-piece, one piece at a time. He did inspired work. But they didn't use the statue. Damn it, it has tits, the executive roared.

Ava commanded an unusual loyalty. Among her ex-husbands, Frank Sinatra was really hooked. He had a statue of her in his backyard until his fourth wife (Barbara Marx) made him remove it. But was it the same one? When she fell ill in 1989, Frankie paid all the bills. He called her "Angel." But he didn't attend the funeral when she died in January 1990. Neither did the two other ex-husbands, Mickey Rooney (a mistake when she was nineteen and breaking in) and clarinetist heartthrob Artie Shaw (who ruined her self-esteem by reminding her how uneducated she was. Artie made her read Dostoyevski, Mann, and Flaubert. He even took Darwin along on their honeymoon. Darwin's great-grandson deemed her to be "the highest specimen of the human species." But Artie thought she was a dummy, and she was desperately in love with Artie. "I don't think he ever really understood the damage he did," Ava wrote about Artie Shaw. Mickey Rooney remembered that sex with her had been great. "Not for me," she said. Of her third husband, Frank Sinatra, Ava once said. "Frank weighs 120 pounds but ten of them are pure cock."

Surprisingly, there is more North than South in her natal chart -- 56.4% to 43.6% -- a proportion that beautifully mirrors the popular vote after certain landmark US elections. Her chart conjures a type of individual who externalizes her emotions rather than bottling them up. In a certain mood, she is more likely to fight, curse, slap, and shout than to act quietly bitchy. She is not introspective. As the actress herself once said, "deep down I'm pretty superficial." The predominance of water signs in her chart suggests a state of constant motion, change, and periodic upheaval. Can anyone be surprised that the proportion of yin to yang in Ms. Gardner's chart is more than three to one, 76.3% to 23.7%?

Planetary: The predominance of the moon, Mars, and Saturn in Ms. Gardner's chart indicate that she can be saturnine, martial, and lunar, though not all at the same time. The dominant signs in the chart are Capricorn (her birth sign, which also houses her Mercury), Cancer (her rising sign, and her Pluto), and Pisces (the moon, Mars, Uranus). Much depends on your interpretation of Ava's eighth house -- the house of transformation and the house of sex -- which in her case is particularly complex. The strong currents of the water signs in her chart suggest an unremitting flow of sexual energy. The fact that both her Venus and her Jupiter reside in Scorpio give you an idea of the unpredictable nature of her temper and moods. Such a woman. when endowed with a beautiful face and body, is guaranteed to have a bewitching hold on men -- whether the strong, silent, sincere type, the mercurial genius, or the vain prince.

Let me just put it this way: she shares a birthday with Elvis Presley. She is the same height as Catherine Deneuve (5'6).In Chinese astrology, she is a water dog. When Sinatra sings "I'm a Fool to Want You," he's thinking of Ava. She taught him heartbreak and the dark side of passion -- and that was just one of the gifts she bestowed on him during their tempestuous marriage. It is said that Sinatra got his career-reviving role in From Here to Eternity (1953) not from the machinations of a mafioso (as The Godfather would have it) but because Ava, then as big a box office star as there was,weighed in with Harry Cohen of Columbia Pictures.

-- DL