The Best American Poetry

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

When Ed Koch met Kenneth Koch [by David Lehman]

Shortly after taking office as Mayor of New York in 1978, Ed Koch met the poet Kenneth Koch. By this time everyone had learned how to pronounce Hizzoner's name: Koch, like "catch" but with an o sound instead of the a. Kenneth pronounced his last name like the soft drink (so that, years later, I could title a Newsweek piece about Kenneth's poetry "Back to Classic Koch). When the two tall gentlemen met, Kenneth said, "Because of you, everyone is calling me Kotch," to which the mayor, wiothout losing a beat, replied, "And because of you, everyone has been calling me Coke." -- DL

R.I.P Ed Koch 1924-2013

Married to a Sculptor [by Grace Cavalieri]

(Ed note:  We are sad to learn that Grace Cavalieri's husband Ken Flynn has died. Grace is an award winning poet, a playwright, and an energetic champion of poetry.  Here is an essay she wrote about Ken, which first appeared here in 2009. Grace you are in our thoughts and prayers. -- sdh) 

My husband Ken Flynn is a metal sculptor and he’s taught me a lot about writing. He always loved metal, and playing with it, working with it. Heavy metal: Racing sports cars, working assembly lines, making his own airplane, flying very big ones as a Naval Aviator. And he was at the same time always a visual artist. When he came home from the unfathomable experience of Viet Nam – he promised himself (that if he ever came home) he’d never put off his love of welding; and the first thing he’d do is buy leathers, torch, and all the fixings. This was 1964. He had this howl in the belly and wanted to turn that over to the powers of invention. Ken had watched his friend, Chuck Klusman, get shot down and captured as the first Naval Aviator POW in Laos. He tried to rescue him (that’s a whole other essay) and was nearly lost in trying. This memory resulted in a (not naturalistic) rendition of Chuck that was juried into an all California art exhibit. Ken was too reticent to submit his first work, so a neighbor artist did this without his knowing. Ken’s works are beautiful organic shapes, smooth to the touch of bronze on steel but pierced with sharp and dangerous piercings within. This we could call memory. His process is now patented and is from carving wood shapes, covering them with molten metal, and burning the original form so nothing is left but metal laced with light and space. Here is where I learned my lessons in discard. Writers would be so much better off they believed the waste basket was not sacrosanct. Ken may spend 9 months on a wood carving and, after the dripping and the welding, he will purposely destroy the wood. I can honestly say I’ve worked 9 months on something no one wanted, but that’s different from starting with the intention of destroying it. Even revision, even plundering our own work is not quite the same. This is because Ken’s wood carving is in itself a work of art. I learn something every day about our arts. I’m lucky because I can carry a pen or laptop wherever we go, anytime, anywhere. His procedure is so complicated, the equipment so heavy, materials so expensive, the convenience is not at all. Also writers can stuff their work into drawers and discs. Ken’s is always visible, once on 5 acres in West Virginia, now crowding a smaller place in Maryland. I know 3 things about sculptors: They like solitude, they hate marketing, and they will do anything to make what they want.

Here is a photograph of Ken, me and beautiful bronze Mary Corita. Photo by Dan Murano.

       

Here is Ken’s online gallery, courtesy DiDi Mendendez and MiPOesias Magazine.

Dangerous in the Right Way: Remembering Charles Durning (1923-2012) by Michael O'Keefe

I saw Charlie Durning for the first time onstage in the Broadway production of That Championship Season at the Booth Theater on West 45^th St.   At the age of sixteen I was already certain I wanted to be an actor and that play, and all the performances, made a very strong impression on me.  So much so that I stole the poster from the local train station in Larchmont, NY and kept it in my bedroom through the remainder of my high school years.  Years later I did the first revival of That Championship Season in New York in the role of ‘Tom’ and kept a replica of the original poster in my dressing room.

       
  In 1988 I had the pleasure of doing a TV film entitled Unholy Matrimony, in which Charlie and I played con men busted by Patrick Duffy after murdering a young woman.  Beside the need to pay my mortgage I took the part because Charlie had already been cast and I jumped at the chance to work with him.  One look at his work onstage or in films like The Sting or Dog Day Afternoon and you got the immediate sense that he had great instincts, a pugnacious demeanor, and would be a blast to work with, which he was.

         The film we did wasn’t so great but one story comes to mind about Charlie that I don’t think he’d mind me telling.  We were in San Antonio, TX, staying at a posh hotel.  The next day we were flying to Phoenix, AZ to change locations.  That evening a young man who was in town for a Herbalife convention approached me in the lobby. 

         “Mr. O’Keefe,” he said earnestly, “I see you’re here with Mr. Durning and I just want to say I can’t let this opportunity pass by.”

         “Really?” I replied.  “How so?”

         “Well, the man is obese and I think I can help him.  I’m here with Herbalife and if I could just get a chance to speak with him I believe I could be of service.”

         “I’m sure you could,” I said, concocting a bit of a plan on the spot.  “Here’s the thing, Charlie, um, Mr. Durning is a very early riser.  Your best bet is to call him around 4:30 or 5 AM and make your pitch.”

         “You all are staying here in the hotel, aren’t you?”  the young man asked.

         “Oh yeah,” I said.  “We’re here.  You ring Charlie up.  Early.  Real early.  It’s going to go over like a song.”

         The next morning the entire cast was outside the hotel at 9 AM to catch a van to the airport.  I came outside to a sunny morning with a bright-eyed feeling, spied Charlie, and said, “Hiya Charlie, how’s it going?”

         “Fuck you,” Charlie replied.  And I burst out laughing, as did the other actors after both Charlie and I explained what had gone down.  I thought that was the end of it and we were none the worse for the wear.

         At the airport all of us checked in together and I took all of the claim checks for the luggage and put them on my ticket, which I carefully placed in the inner pocket of my sport coat.  We’d need those in Phoenix. 

         Upon arriving and walking as a group to baggage claim I was dismayed to find I didn’t have my ticket or the baggage claim stubs so I ran double time back through the airport to the plane, which was still at the gate.  I went over the plane a number of times and still couldn’t find them. 

         Back at the baggage claim, prepared to grovel for all the luggage belonging to our cast, I was greeted by the sight of the entire cast in a van, with all the luggage, including mine, waiting for me.  Charlie had lifted my ticket with all the stubs from my jacket without me noticing.  He had the last laugh and it was a well-deserved one.

         In the movie business chances are you will make more clunkers than memorable films and what you have when you’re done is not necessarily what you meant to do but what you did.   After learning that lesson I learned that the relationships you have with your co-workers are imperative, not just because we all depend on each other to get the work done, but because when it’s done all you do have is the memory of having done it. 

         My memories of Charles Durning are vivid and enduring.  He was funny, dangerous in the right way, and knew how to hit his marks and speak the truth.  I’ll miss him but, thankfully, I’ll have his many amazing performances to remind me of how talented he was and how lucky I was to get to know him.

- - -

Michael O'Keefe is the author of Swimming From Under My Father (Noble Swine Press 2009).  He has many film, television, and theater credits.  His new pilot King and Maxwell will premiere on TNT in early 2013. His films, Neighbors, Junction, and A Thousand Cuts will be released in 2013.  Apt. 143 (Emergo) is available on demand on most cable networks.  Bonnie Raitt recorded Marriage Made in Hollywood, which O'Keefe co-wrote with Paul Brady.  It is on Raitt's new record Sliptream, which was just nominated for a Grammy in the Americana category.

Jake Adam York (1972 - 2012)

We mourn the loss of Jake Adam York, who died suddenly today.  Jake was 40.  Too too young. He was a kind generous talented poet and a good man.  His death comes as a great shock.

Jake was a guest blogger here in July, 2011.  We will repost his writing in the days to come.

Rest in peace, Jake.

-- sdh

Extreme Elegies [by Michael Schiavo]

 

Michael Gizzi (1949-2010)

Morgan Lucas Schuldt passed away on January 30 due to complications from cystic fibrosis. I wanted to sketch a portrait of Morgan for this blog, wanted to write about not only his extraordinary life, but the love supreme that his poetry embodied. His death, though, is still too close, and it will take me just a little more time.

I attended his memorial services in Tucson, where he lived for much of the last decade of his life. Like William Carlos Williams and Allen Ginsberg before him, Morgan was a thoroughly Jersey boy, but he found a home in Tucson. He found Mark Horosky and Adam Chiles. He found Stephanie Balzer and Barbara Cully. He found Boyer Rickel.

The climate change from Vermont to Arizona—I mean going from unseasonable April warmth in New England to anomalous frosty weather in the Southwest—the mourning at various memorials those few days—as well as the bourbon that occasionally accompanies said grief—fused with passing a year earlier of Paul Violi—another friend and mentor—all this left me tattered. I returned to work at The Bookstore physically twitchy, emotionally worse.

After catching up with Matt on what I’d missed—including a poetry reading by Clampitt House fellow Bruce Snider—I was presented with a stiff manila envelope. Scrawled on the front was a signed note from the poet Barry Sternlieb: “For / Michael Schiavo / a few from the zen master. / (one just a proof, / the other a signed + / numbered edition— / primitive, but still / packing a punch!)”

I slowly unsealed the envelope. After removing one of the cardboard flats, I gently untaped the fine paper therein to reveal broadsides of Michael Gizzi’s “Extreme Elegy” and “Second Extreme Elegy” that Barry had printed in the mid-’80s. At one point, after a few months of employment at The Bookstore, Matt had informed me that I was only the second poet he’s ever hired. The first was Michael Gizzi.

A Tonic, A Ton

 

Barry is a wonderful guy. We would talk whenever he’d stop by the store, and I know we talked about Michael Gizzi, but I can’t remember as I ever told him just how much I loved his work, how much it had, at one point, intimidated me, and then later enthused me with its familiarity. I’m sure I never told him that one of my favorite Gizzi books is Continental Harmony. And I’m positive I never told him that “Extreme Elegy” is one of my favorite poems not just in that book, not just of Gizzi’s, but of all time.

What I wonder is if Barry will ever fully understand what he did for me this past spring, even when he reads this. In that one moment, through that unassuming act, those poetic powers that I felt closest to, that I felt were forsaking me through the deaths of those whom I most loved and respected (M. Gizzi himself passed away in 2010), all at once, those powers announced their presence.

I wept.

Not out of grief, no, but filled—and not of a sudden—with the consolation of the universe.

—

EXTREME ELEGY

Michael Gizzi

 

                                   after Ives

 

The Last Rites, man

3 helpings! Extreme

Triadic Unction a -bury

a -port a -ton, troughwater

with shadowbarn

                                   like mausoleum

deathward we glide, our viscera

slung The pitch

of New England the mind of an ear

shockt into blooming a -shire

a -vale a –wick     oaken

lid going to sleep

near still-

ness of my life—America,

un

writable love

of foliage in voice

          beside an axe

                    ’til evening

Canvas in moonlight an oversight

comin’ up backstream But only

          a rheumy cache

                                        of russet spittle

like oaken funk, New England, a tonic

 

                    a ton

 

Jack Gilbert, 1925-2012

Failing and Flying

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was 
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars 
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say 
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

-- Jack Gilbert

More on Jacques Barzun by Jamie Katz

We've received a few comments in response to David's post about Jacques Barzun, who died on October 25th at the age of 104.  Here's an excerpt from a piece by our friend Jamie Katz, who had the honor of toasting Barzun on the occasion of his 100th birthday.  Follow the link to read more about this extraordinary scholar.

In his work I am struck, not just by his erudition and elegant prose, but by his acknowledgement of fluidity, chance and human agency in culture and history. It is a liberating conception, giving weight to both daring leaps of individual genius and the smaller gestures and habits that form the tissue of society. He gives respect to our innermost selves, too. Speaking of Descartes and the split between rationalism on one side and impulse and intuition on the other, Barzun refuses to take sides: “The more science proves its worth, the harder it is for ‘nature’ or ‘the heart’ to feel free. Reason should guide — all moralists agree — but, as others point out, mind is not separate from heart. The astute Chinese have a character for heart-and-mind. They perceived that the urge to reason is itself a drive from the heart, which explains why rationalists are often fanatics.”

Continue reading here.

--sdh

Good-bye, Celeste Holm, 1917-2012 (by Laura Orem)

The great character actress, Celeste Holm, died this past weekend at age 95. Miss Holm was a fixture in the acting world for more than six decades. The first Ado Annie in Oklahoma, she famously won the part when she demonstrated for Rodgers and Hammerstein her ability at hog-calling. In 1948, she received an Oscar for her performance as Anne Dettrey in the social drama about anti-Semitism, Gentleman's Agreement, and was nominated twice more, for Come to the Stable (1949) and All About Eve (1950). She more than held her own against Frank Sinatra in 1956's High Society. She performed extensively on Broadway and later, on television, including a recurring role in the 1980s nighttime melodrama, Falcon Crest. She was one of those wonderful actresses who can do almost anything.

But I remember her chiefly and most fondly for her role as the Fairy Godmother in the 1965 television production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella. It was a yearly event awaited with great anticipation at my house, and even now, I can sing most of the score at the drop of the hat. Here's "Impossible," with Lesley Anne Warren as Cinderella. Good-bye, Miss Holm, and thanks for making this little girl happy.

 

Take a Load Off, Levon, and Rest in Peace

Levon Helm, 1940-2012

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