The Best American Poetry

The Greening of Bohemia [by David Yezzi]

I want to tell you about one of my favorite poems at the moment. It’s from Lord Byron’s Foot, by George Green, which was selected last year by David Mason for The New Criterion Poetry Prize and recently published by St. Augustine’s Press. As an editor at The New Criterion, I was thoroughly delighted by Mason’s choice, since I had championed George’s work on a number of occasions, both in the magazine and in The Swallow Anthology of New American Poets.

I remember showing up several years ago to a marathon reading organized by Roddy Lumsden at a bar up by Columbia University. We were asked to write a poem based, I think, on some theme—the theme, like the poem I produced, was eminently forgettable.

After a couple hours of poems sliding by like fried eggs off of memory's Teflon, George got up (he may have been the last reader, in fact) and read “Bangladesh.” So surprising and so weird was this poem, we were rapt. You could have heard the reshelving in Butler Library. And funny! So funny. The abrupt, associative segues and the logic-defying half-slapdash, haphazardness of the narrative resolves, quite mysteriously, into a unified, warmly satiric portrait of an age that we lived though in Downtown New York and loved for its Bohemian craziness and, and, now, in hindsight, for the wince-making tartness of its bittersweet excesses. He wrote the poem the night before, he told me, when I said how much I liked it.

Riotous and sweetly sad: such a killer combo. Bravo, George Green!

 

Bangladesh

 

We have to start in 1965,

when all the gay meth heads couldn’t decide

which one they most adored, Callas or Dylan,

both of them skinny as thermometers,

posing like sylphs in tight black turtlenecks.

Then, gradually, a multitude of Dylans

                                  

began to fill the park, croaking like frogs,

strumming guitars, blowing harmonicas,

hundreds and hundreds, several to a bench.

But there was only one Maria Callas,

sequestered in her gloomy Paris pad

and listening to Maria Callas records

 

(and nothing but), her bulky curtains closed,

which works for me because it worked for her.

What doesn’t work is three David Lee Roths,

one checking bags at Trash and Vaudeville, one

strutting with ratted hair up St. Mark’s Place,

and one zonked out in tights and on the nod,

 

surrounded by the Dylans in the park.

David Lee Roth times three would mean the times

would have to change, and so a roving band

of punk rockers began to beat the Dylans,

chasing them through the park and pounding them

senseless, then busting up their folk guitars

 

or stealing them. They even torture one

unlucky Dylan by the children’s pool,

holding him down to burn him with Bic lighters,

then cackling when he begs to keep his Martin.

Later on at the precinct, deeply troubled,

a sensitive policeman contemplates

 

the crimes. Why were marauding gangs of punks

beating the Dylans in the park? He asks

himself, repeatedly, not realizing

that they, the punks, were cultural police

determined to eradicate the Dylans

and purify the park of Dylanesque

 

pollutions and corruptions, rank and abject

folk rock recrudescences, and worse—

that odious and putrid piety,

the sanctimoniousness of all the Dylans,

the phony holiness that peaks for Bob

(his faddish Christianity aside)

 

during the benefit for Bangladesh,

where George insists that Yoko not perform

and John agrees ’till Yoko blows her stack,

and they start primal-screaming at each other,

John flying out of JFK and nodding,

and Eric flying into JFK

 

and nodding. Well, Ravi would go on first,

the one and only Ravi Shankar, folks.

I saw him five times, three times high on acid,

the first time straight with Richard and his mom,

Debbie, who drove us down from Podunk High

to see him at the Syria Mosque (long gone,

 

bulldozed in ’75). Debbie’s not well.

Last August she was totally Alzheimered

and, my sweet lord, she made a pass at me,

which was embarrassing. Rebuffed but proud

she sat down on the porch swing with a thump,

and, chirping like a parakeet, she swung.

 

(And in the Department of Self-Promotion Department: my book Birds of the Air is featured on Poetry Daily today! Thanks, PD!)

 

Tomorrow: I attend the dress rehearsal of my daughter’s grade-school production of Romeo & Juliet and come away impressed not only by the performances, which were super, but also by the playwright who clearly has what it takes!

"On the first of May, it is moving day" (Mountain Greenery by Rogers and Hart)

Try to beat these rhymes: -- sdh

George Jones, a fool no more

George Jones, who died this past Friday at age 81, had long been lauded as one of the greatest voices in country music history. He was also, along with Hank Williams, one of country music's most cautionary tales, with a history of alcoholism, substance abuse, marital woes, and career mismanagement that would have forced a lesser man into early retirement or (as in the case of Hank) an early death. Unlike Williams, Jones was never a great songwriter; he was a great interpreter of others' songs. He was very much a contradictory artist: A loner who did some of his best work in collaboration with another singer -- Tammy Wynette (his ex-wife) and Melba Montgomery most notably. And all of the problems that dogged him whenever he didn't appear onstage (which was frequent enough to earn him the nickname "No-Show Jones"), vanished when he was in thrall to his own gift, in performance, at one with the baleful sentiments he sang. He was hard on himself in every sense, and always carried with his toughness and stubbornness an air of hangdog shame, as though he felt destined to be the fool, not the master, of his life. 

 

Jones was one of the most self-conscious, for good and ill, of great American artists. He knew his gift, he knew it wasn't so much his voice as his phrasing that was the genius part ('s why he could redeem so many lesser lyrics). But the clenched-jaw delivery can also serve as synecdoche for a man frozen, trapped: trapped by his feelings of inferiority, the unwarranted shame he felt about his class, the paralyzing sting of those in mainstream music industry who never recognized him fully, for the cruelty of country radio for abandoning him when he still had something to give. People of privilege sometimes don't understand why an artist can start to self-destruct when he feels resentment, abandonment, false praise instead of the kind of praise and appreciation of his gifts he knew he was owed. (And I'm talking about the whole arc of his career, not just the final years.) "No-Show" was a fond joke barely concealing a different diagnosis: an addictive, isolating personality that could not achieve enough comfort in his own skin. All of which makes the best music that he leaves behind more precious.

--Ken Tucker

Thanks for the Memory (It's lyricist Leo Robin's birthday!)

 

Introducing the Orchestra and its Creatures [by Lera Auerbach]

Piccolo flute: ears’ toothpick.

Piccolo’s passages: scraping of the nervous system.

Flute: skeleton of an exotic bird.

Flute in the low register: unheard of.

Alto flute: melted flute.

Bass flute: imaginary friend that makes an occasional imaginary appearance.

Block flute: a child’s toy, requiring a highly specialized professional to perform.

Oboe: permanently out-of-tune instrument, so much so that the rest of the orchestra has to tune to it.

Oboe: harmonics’ condenser.

Oboist: a man who always tastes his instrument before playing it and smacks his lips in satisfaction.

English horn: is neither English nor a horn.

First clarinet: exhibitionist of circular breathing technique.

Clarinet (instrumentation advice): don't write p (piano, i.e., quietly) for clarinet or he will melt into his musicianship and vanish without a trace.

Bass clarinet: unfunny bassoon.

Bassoon: royal jester.

Contrabassoon: grandfather of the royal jester.

Contrabassoon’s staccato: old king's farts.

French horns: cellos of the brass section with violinists' ambitions. Please note: 1. Horns do not have horns, but curves. 2. French-horn players are, supposedly, good kissers, but not everything that has French in its name is either French or sexy (French fries, for example).

Piccolo trumpet: spilled silver.

Trombones: howling bones.

Trombones: throw a glissando at them and see what happens.

Bass trombone: Mr. Macho-Machissimo, married to Tuba.

Tuba: the golden halo of the orchestra.

Mute for the tuba: Wouldn't you wish to have one for your spouse?

 

Celesta: music box, always sounding ahead of the orchestra.

Orchestral pianist: percussionist who cannot count.

Percussion section: the brains of the orchestra.

Symbols crash: time to wake up!

Timpanist: arrogant percussionist.

Harp: amplifier of silence.

Harpist: a harpy in disguise.

Harp: skeleton of the piano.

Piano: a coffin for a harp.

Piano: 88 keys for the unlocked door.

Violin: prima donna of the orchestra.

Viola: Prince in exile.

Cello: soul of the orchestra.

Contrabass section: a mythological tortoise on which this world (i.e., orchestra) is built. Slow and clumsy, but it is the foundation and all depends on its solid dependability.

Contrabassist: a man who carries his coffin.

Musings [By Lera Auerbach]

I am in the middle of writing a book – collection of random thoughts, musings, daily fragments. Here are some of them:

On self:

Wondering wanderer in search of wonder, always lost, never found, profane and profound; round and round circling sounds in the maze of the page, musical sage, child of the times, enchanted by rhymes, seeking connection in all forms of art, forgetting her part in everyday matters (invoices, letters), not knowing left from right, hiding alone in a secluded hut, dying from a papercut.

. . . . . . . . 

On art:

If there is consensual love, there must be consensual art, but great art is never consensual – it rips you apart, uses you for its creation, and then leaves you like an empty useless shell. You may resent it, but you can't help loving it all the same. You may deny your lover, but you can't deny your calling.

. . . . . . . . 

On work:

I never know what to say when asked about my occupation. It's such a strange word! How can one occupy a profession? And does it imply that you are taking forcefully someone else's space to which you have no right? Suddenly, your job takes the form of a war zone and you stand alone and lost, staring at a hostile blank page.

. . . . . . . . 

On age:

Young people are unashamed of big words or concepts. Avoiding them is a sign of maturity; scorning them is a sign of an old age. You are as old as the skeptic within you.  

. . . . . . . . 

On books:

My grandfather always requested that I wash my hands before touching a book. He worshiped his library. To bend a page was a sacrilege worthy of spanking. “It’s only a book. It’s not going to break,” I would object. “Write your own books. Then see if they are breakable,” he would answer.

. . . . . . . . 

On progress:

There is no progress in art. Art denies Darwinism. Stravinsky is not better than Mozart and Mozart is not better than Bach. Picasso is not better than Rembrandt. There is no progress – only linguistic or stylistic changes reflecting the times.

Isle of the Dead [by Lera Auerbach]

If Venice is married to Death - the small island of San Michele is the offspring of this union. It takes an entire day to visit San Michele, the legendary Isle of the Dead. The entire island is a cemetery, which resembles a labyrinth consisting of many contrasting sections, almost like miniature islands within one larger island.  One of the most striking and memorable "rooms" of this labyrinth is the children’s section: children’s graves, most of them recent, with photographs, toys, flowers… On marble stones kids’ faces are so painfully alive, smiling, laughing, celebrating the joy of their too fleeting lives. The contrast of their youth and their surrounding is heart-wrenching. We do not associate death with youth, yet children are much closer to that vast non-existence from which we all come from and where we all end up, and the thread which binds them to that "forever beyond" is much shorter than with most adults.  

A turn in the labyrinth of San Michele – and a 19th century cemetery comes into view, with forgotten graves, some half-decayed, names no longer decipherable…   Another turn – and an island of gravestones for nuns appears all neatly organized in rows like brave little soldiers conquering the heavens.

A narrow path leads to an open sea of flowers of the most recent graves – after 12 years of temporary residence in San Michele, they will be transported elsewhere.  At San Michele, the post-mortem real estate seems to be just as coveted and unattainable as guaranteed indulgences. One more twist of the road - and the foreigners' section is found. The Isle of the Dead is home to many famous artists.

Visiting Isola di San Michele in Venice was a sort of pilgrimage for me. The impact of Sergei Diaghilev and Igor Stravinsky in music and  theater, specifically their collaborations in Le Noce, Le Sacre du Primtemps, Pulcinella and Petruchka, was the most influential in the 20th century. Their legacy is felt by every living composer, choreographer and producer today.  

In death, they stand as they stood in life: Diaghilev’s overpowering large gravestone and Stravinsky’s modest plate without any overstatement, but at the center of attention by visitors.

I am always interested in the offerings the living bring to the dead. Diaghilev's grave is covered with… ballet slippers. Real, worn ballet shoes which dancers bring as offerings of their gratitude to him. On Stravinsky's grave there are also several glued pieces of paper with handwritten music, offerings from composers, perhaps.

Next to Stravinsky is the gravestone of his wife, Vera. Her grave is the mirror image of his, yet her stone-plate is covered with leaves, and there are no "gifts" of burning candles, slippers or music pages. Even in afterlife, she is in his shadow.

 

View from Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev grave - still looking over his company

Here lies Igor Stravinsky

A musical offering...

Stravinsky speaks about the creation of The Rite of Spring 
and playing it for the first time for Diaghilev in Venice. 

Joseph Brodsky's work was introduced to me in Russia when I was thirteen. His name did not mean anything to me then. Simply someone once gave me a few typed pages with his poems. My teenage reaction was one of shock. His work was unlike anything I had read. His poetry was real, it spoke to me in a powerful way, it was a calling, a recognizable, irresistible voice addressing me directly. It was impossible to ignore. When I arrived to the United States in 1991, one of my wishes was to meet Brodsky. This meeting happened, and his support of my work meant the world to me during that crucial time of my life when everything I knew was left behind.

Brodsky's wish was to be buried at San Michele. He visited Venice often, always in the winter. This was the city of his love if one can be in love with a city. Yes, Venice, more than his native St. Petersburg, was the city of his dreams; Venice, with its glorious decay, its endless reflections, its past so vast that it already contains its future.

Brodsky's grave is simple yet beautiful, with overgrown flowers and many special offerings from visitors. There was a cigarette on his grave-stone (he was a heavy smoker), a Watermen fountain pen (his favorite brand); someone left a few old Soviet coins, which I personally thought would not be the most welcomed gift by this deceased. And, of course, candles and flowers.

Joseph Brodsky's grave

Poet's essentials

Brodsky, Venice and grapes

 

In a somewhat ironic twist of fate - not too far from Brodsky lies another famous poet, in many ways Brodsky's opposite – Ezra Pound. Pound's grave is large yet unkempt.

Ezra Pound's grave, San Michele

Canto CXX

 

Read lyrics...

I spent long hours wandering this cemetery, listening to the seagulls, deciphering the writings on the graves, and thinking of Time.  Time is always abundant in Venice. Venice is cradled in Time just as it is draped in death. This cradle song of death is comforting, quiet and peaceful. In a world where everything multiplies and doubles with reflections, San Michele provides perspective which widens the horizon and unearths the essence.

Sometimes, before falling asleep, I imagine what it would be like to spend a night at San Michele, listening to the moon-beams splashing the water and the occasional cries of birds. I imagine the ghostly concerts and poetry readings featuring that never finished symphony or a poem and wonder if the dead are just as curious about the living as we are about them.

 

Most Popular Funeral Songs [by DL]

In the age of sabermetrics, they ("they, they who are known as they," as Kenward Elmslie has it), have tallied up the songs (and versions of same) most popular to play in funerals. Click here for a full run-down or take away these teasers.

-- Sinatra leads the pack with "My Way."

-- Both Richard Rodgers and Harold Arlem are represented in the top ten, though the most popular version of "Over the Rainbow" is said to be by Eve Cassidy rather than the star of "The Wizard of Oz" -- and people would apparently rather hear Gerry and the Pacemakers sing "You'll Never Walk Alone" than, say, John Raitt.

-- Nat King Cole's "Unforgettable" comes in at number ten.

-- -- Vera Lynn's "We'll Say Gooodbye" makes the list, which reminds me that the song puts in an appearance at the end of "The Singing Detective" -- which makes exceedingly smart use of songs popular in the year of the action, 1945: "Peg o My Heart," "Accentuate the Positive," "I've Got You Under My Skin," "It Might As Well Be Spring," "Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall" . . .but I see I'm digressing into a different list. --

Meanwhile, I think of the wit of Larry Rivers, at whose funeral they played a recording of the painter singing "Everything Happens to Me." For Sinatra's funeral the choice was inevitable: his signature song onn radio and TV, "Put Your Dreams Away."   -- DL

Richard Hell's punk poetry memoir 'I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp': No void here [by Ken Tucker]

Richard Hell wrote one of the best songs built around one of the least useful, or at least most misunderstood, phrases of 1970s punk rock in “Blank Generation,” for his band the Voidoids. To his great credit, as his new memoir I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp: An Autobiography (Ecco Books) proves, he and a few of his cohorts were among the least blank, most thoughtful and informed young musician-writers working during that period, not nihilists but poets with the romanticism wrung out of them by some combination of natural asperity, experience with music-biz venality, and a genuine passion to make some kind of art.

         And so while I Dreamed is indeed the memoir of a man who spiked his hair, consumed a lot of different chemicals, and lived in the shadow of Patti Smith, Tom Verlaine, and Johnny Rotten, Richard Hell stakes out his status as an always-intelligent man whose musical value has been underrated and whose excellent taste extends to a casual yet more than knowledgeable reference to “my main man New York poet Ted Berrigan.”

         Indeed, the most interesting aspect of this swiftly paced tale of a Kentucky-born first-gen punk-rocker is that he was a poetry fan and a poet before he was a bass player, a lyricist of concise note, a by-his-account profligate yet caring ladies-man. Hell – born Richard Meyers in 1949 – writes with some of his greatest passion about the second generation of New York School poets including Berrigan, Ron Padgett, and Tom Veitch, as well as ornery outliers like Bill Knott, the latter for writing “fully thought-through funny word-packs of imagery and ideas of loneliness, desperate love, shock and fury.” He lavishes as much praise upon publications such as “C” magazine and “Ashbery’s and Koch’s and Schuyler’s and Mathews’ swoon of witty word-chess” Locus Solus as he does influential recordings by the Rolling Stones and the Kinks. If Patti Smith’s award-winning memoir Just Kids took a more literary shape than the straightforward prose and chronology Hell offers here, his is the book to read to get a less self-mythologizing view of what it was like to live in the blended musical-literary circles that overlapped and bedded down with each other in the late-70s/early-80s.

         It may be that, as someone who wedged into the vibrating narrow corridor of CBGB’s and sat at the same Gem Spa counter stools as Hell during this period, I am more susceptible than an average reader to his amiable rambles not just through CBGB lore but also his jobs at the Gotham Book Mart and the Strand Bookstore. But that also means I know his details are pretty much spot-on. Plus, I like the way Hell is not so highfalutin’ that he doesn’t enjoy sharing gossip about and quarrels with characters including his Television band-mate Tom Verlaine (boyhood buddies who became thoroughly sick of each other over the course of launching a career – that’ll happen when you’re a part-time drug-head and he’s a full-time control-freak); record-biz hustler-talents like Richard Gottehrer and Terry Ork; or Hell’s quick, vivid portrait of a pre-publishing-agent shark Andrew Wylie when he was still a punk-loving poetaster (a would-be Aram Saroyan, no less!); and the way Hell disliked Patti Smith’s guitarist Lenny Kaye because Kaye disliked Hell’s guitarist Robert Quine (I know Lenny; I like Lenny; but the late Quine was undeniably great).

         Even better, Hell writes vividly about “what it felt like to be creating electrically amplified songs,” the way “it was like making emotion and thought physical, to be undergone apart from oneself.” Hell halts his story at 1984, when he “stopped making music and stopped using drugs.” Yet I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp is not that dreadful thing – the “survivor’s memoir”; it’s a chronicle of an assiduously adventurous life lived with an acute awareness that the adventure is not something to be exaggerated or obliterated, but rather a blessing to be well-remembered.

--Ken Tucker 

"Sway Me Smooth, Sway Me Now" [Dino and Jerry cut up and dance on Jerry's birthday]

 

Happy birthday, Jerry Lewis (born on this day in 1926). The same song occurs in the 1999 French movie "Girl on the Bridge."