The Best American Poetry

Learning how to be dead [from "Mr. Palomar" by Italo Calvino]

<<< A person's life consists of a collection of events, the last of which could also change the meaning of the whole, not because it counts more than the previous ones but because once they are included in a life, events are arranged in an order that is not chronological but, rather, corresponds to an inner architecture. A person, for example, reads in adulthood a book that is important to him, and makes him say, 'How could I have lived without having read it!' and also, 'What a pity I did not read it in my youth!" Well, these statements to not have much meaning, especially the second, because after he has read that book, his whole life becomes the life of a person who has read that book, and it is of little importance whether he read it early or late, because now his life before that reading also assumes a form shaped by that reading. 

This is the most difficult step in learning how to be dead: to become convinced that your own life is a closed whole, all in the past, to which you can add nothing and can alter none of the relationships among the various elements. Of course, those who go on living can, according to their shifting experience, introduce changes in the lives of the dead, too, giving form to what had none or what seemed to have a different form: recognizing, for example, a just rebel in someone who had felt doomed to neurosis or delirium. But these are changes that matter mostly to the living. It is unlikely that they, the dead, will profit by them. Each individual is made up of what he has lived and the way he has lived it, and non can take this away from him. Anyone who has lived in suffering is always made of that suffering; if they try to take it away from him, he is no longer himself. >>>

-- sdl

Happy birthday, Mozart -- and Jerry Kern [by DL]

Spring 68 at Columbia was the season of the strike,
the occupation of the buildings (Low, Hamilton, Avery
Mathematics, and Fayerwether where a righteous
mininster married a young couple), and Mitch and I
went to the West End Bar to talk tactics because
we knew the "tactical patrol force" (TPF) was
going to come and hit hard. The days went by
and the arm bands worn by angry students
went from green (amnesty for protesters)
to black (mourning for Alma Mater). But I still
had my Music Humanities final to face and I
was so ignorant I did the only thing I could do:
bought Bach's "Ein Feste Burg Ist Under Gott,"
Mozart's Jupiter, Beethoven's 3rd, 5th, and 7th,
and Brahms's 4th. On the final the professor
played something we had not heard in class.
It was the slow movement of the 7th.
And that summer in Oxford
I heard the opening of the last movement
of the Jupiter every hour
on the hour. Years later I learned
Mozart's birthday, the 26th of January,
was also that of Kern, Jerry Kern
of Show Boat and Swing Time,
"The Way You Look Tonight"
and "Long Ago And Far Away." So I will just say
to both of these great composers: happy birthday!

Spring 68 at Columbia was the season of the strike,
the occupation of the buildings (Low, Hamilton, Avery
Mathematics, and Fayerwether where a righteous
mininster married a young couple), and Mitch and I
went to the West End Bar to talk tactics because
we knew the "tactical patrol force" (TPF) was
going to come and hit hard. The days went by
and the arm bands worn by angry students
went from green (amnesty for protesters)
to black (mourning for Alma Mater). But I still
had my Music Humanities final to face and I
was so ignorant I did the only thing I could do:
bought Bach's "Ein Feste Burg Ist Under Gott,"
Mozart's Jupiter, Beethoven's 3rd, 5th, and 7th,
and Brahms's 4th. On the final the professor
played something we had not heard in class.
It was the slow movement of the 7th.
And that summer in Oxford
I heard the opening of the last movement
of the Jupiter every hour
on the hour. Years later I learned
Mozart's birthday, the 26th of January,
was also that of Kern, Jerry Kern
of Show Boat and Swing Time,
"The Way You Look Tonight"
and "Long Ago And Far Away." So I will just say
to both of these great composers: happy birthday!

They Didn't Believe Me (Jerome Kern's breakout song: 1917 )

And when I told them

How beautiful you are

They didn't believe me

They didn't believe me

Your lips, your eyes

Your curly hair

Are in a class beyond compare

You're the loveliest girl that one could ever see

And when I tell them

And I certainly am going to tell them

That I'm the man whose wife someday you'll be

They'll never believe me

They'll never believe me

That from this great big world you've chosen me!

 

"Yonder, a Rental" [by Anna Maria Hong}

Time to howl at the celestial sphere,
that full frontal silver dollar, the very
paintball of pallor and elemental other.
It’s all or nada as noonnight’s empanada

discloses her pretty quarter, the priest’s collar
hung high on the hook of evening’s fluent
wall. Hung like a juror bent on acquittal
who can’t stall any longer, you’re a cobbler

hawking copper coins in an Oriental
bazaar. The Sultan’s power went horizontal
long, long ago. It’s fine to be sentimental,

though there’s no need to bother. Grab a handful
of shine like a disc of doll hair, a dollop of Neufchâtel,
                                                           valor and force, vital—

from Ecotone

Two Songs, Different Eras: Discuss. [by Stacey Harwood-Lehman]

WEDNESDAYS WITH DENISE: JANUARY 25, 2023

Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology was released January 19^th (on Dolly’s birthday) by Madville Publishing. Editors Dustin Brookshire and Julie E. Bloemeke are donating their annual royalties to Dolly Parton's Imagination Library in honor of the Book Lady. The anthology is already making a rainbow splash and was recently spotlighted by Richard Blanco on WGBH Boston Public Radio. (https://richard-blanco.com/poet-richard-blanco-spotlights-a-dolly-parton-anthology/) You can stay current with Let Me Say This events, news, and more by using this link: https://linktr.ee/letmesaythisanthology where you’ll even find a Spotify playlist called "Let Me Play This" in honor of the book.

Congratulations, Dustin and Julie!

Here are the Let Me Say This contributors:

Kelli Russell Agodon – Nin Andrews – Lana K. W. Austin – David-Matthew Barnes – Nicky Beer – Julie E. Bloemeke – Emma Bolden – Dustin Brookshire – Phillip Watts Brown – Marina Carreira – Denise Duhamel – teri elam – Rupert Fike – Diamond Forde – Chad Frame – Makayla Gay – Tyler Gillespie – Kari Gunter-Seymour – Robert Gwaltney – Beth Gylys – Karen Head – Raye Hendrix – Collin Kelley – Dorianne Laux – Chin-Sun Lee – Arden Levine – Katie Manning – Kelly McQuain – Lynn Melnick – Jenny Molberg – Rachel Morgan – Caridad Moro-Gronlier – Carolyn Oliver – Dion O’Reilly – Jeffrey Perkins – Stephen Roger Powers – Steven Reigns – Linda Neal Reising – Benjamin Anthony Rhodes – Micah Ruelle – Anna Sandy-Elrod – Roberta Schultz – Maureen Seaton – Gregg Shapiro – L.J. Sysko – Nicole Tallman – Kerry Trautman – Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer – Dan Vera – Isaiah Vianese – Donna Vorreyer – Julie Marie Wade – Jennifer Wheelock – Yvonne Zipter

Thomas Hauert’s “Efeu”: Where do we end? [by Tracy Danison]

"Efeu" (Ivy) Thomas Hauert and cie ZOO. Photo © Bart Grietens

Choreographer and performer Thomas Hauert says one of his concerns over the years has been how people are in their world. Through a celebration of 20 years of working with the eight players of his cie ZOO, his dance performance How to proceed ((2018), focuses on interpersonal emotions and relationships. Hauert considers the performance  If only (2020), as an expression of a dark shadow lurking behind human relationships, crisis, chaos. Hauert says that the dance performance  Efeu (German for “ivy”), is, tentatively, the third piece in this ad hoc series on people in their world. I saw it at the Atelier de Paris 12 January 2023.

Efeu, Hauert says, opens on the creaturely situation of humans in the material world. He writes,

The movement of the human body as raw material contains in its essence the resistance to the most destructive and implacable forces of the universe. Life needs very specific and improbable conditions in order to be born and to survive. [Efeu is a] kind of ode to life, to the earth and its fragile atmosphere.

Efeu works. It happens. It belongs to its spectators.

The performance gets its form and, to big extent, its substance from the two very distinctive dances that open and close it.

As a couple, Hauert, who is also a performer, and Federica Porello open by turning and soaring  to Gino Paoli’s and Ornella Vanoni’s 1961 Italian hit Senza fine (Endless): You push our life along/Without a break/To dream/To be able to remember/What we have already experienced/Endless/You are an endless moment. God is me. And you too. We’re time and the rest. It’s us as does it.

Also as a couple, Sarah Ludi and Fabian Barba close the piece by dancing with Marvin Gaye’s jarringly sensual 1971 consciousness-raising hit Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology): Ah, things ain't what they used to be/Where did all the blue skies go?/ Poison is the wind that blows/ From the north and south and east.

The dances gain a single identity in the contrast between them. This is especially visible in what seems to be each woman’s particular talent. Porello’s ultra-polished turns are Ludi’s emotion as skin. Porello’s expressive movement makes you breathless, agape. Ludi’s perceptive or interpretative movement tears at your heart.

With its shared 60s Heaven and Earth or mind and body themes, the two (classic) hits complement into a single evocation of the concerns of the so-called Age of Aquarius (1967), which we have entered, by the way.

As a spectator, Efeu is a retrospective experience – you must look backward to understand your present emotion.

“Concert in the egg”, school of Hieronymus Bosch. Photo Wikipedia

When I remember Hauert’s and Porello’s dance and Paoli’s and Vanoni’s music, I remember that I’m with you, the Others, in the driver’s seat. We’re unstuck in time.

The emotion of Ludi with her partner and Gaye’s hit together send me tumbling through time: the first Earth Day in April 1970 – bowled over by  the sense in “ecology”- Doesn’t that mean the flower and the bee are one thing? And in 2023, many pretend that though the bees are dying off, the flowers will continue. As if we live in a Dollar Store.

In October, 1971 The Staple Singers released Respect yourself – and the kind of gentleman who want everything their way are in Congress, in Teheran, their missiles across the strait of Taiwan, their tanks snorting at the gate of Europe.

The image Efeu produces in my inner eye is Hieronymus Bosch’s “Concert in the egg”.

The opening and closing dances mean that Hauert’s piece, like an egg, has two distinct ends that invent it as an identity: give it an up, down, sides, a middle.

I’m not the first to point out that the spectator or holder of an egg chooses its place in the world. Also, while an egg is very tough, it’s very fragile: a chance blow and it may be a goner.

While the opening and closing of Efeu invented the concert of movement against and with “the improbable conditions” in which we “are born and survive on earth in its fragile atmosphere”, the containing space of that egg got me wondering.

If I am in the driver’s seat, unstuck in time with you, the Others, where, in the material world, do “I” and “we” physically end or begin?

Where is our body in respect to each other, to the fragile shell underfoot, to the fragile shell over our heads, to the air around us? Life is not just endless moments where we are not able to remember what we have already experienced, it is also a co-evolutive living experience – an ecology. If the wind is poison, it delivers poison and we react to that.

But Efeu has made me think: what if our breath is not just a delivery system or a symbol in some narrative of ourselves but, in a way that we haven’t yet understood, an inseparable part of us?

Our gut bacteria are not exclusive to our gut; they part of other ecologies, further off. And if the wetness on my skin is not just on my skin but my wet skin, like bacteria, is part of wetness everywhere?

And if this evolution we are forcing on the world we make is not just evolving that world but evolving us who make the world?

And in ways so subtle that we will never become aware?  …

from "Julius Jaffe: The Poems" (by Mitch Sisskind)

The Shlump
Jess Rabin and Julius Jaffe were walking with a shlump.
Jess Rabin said to Julius Jaffe, "Open your mouth and
"Deliver words of Torah." Julius Jaffe replied, "'Her ways
""Are ways of delight.'" (Proverbs 3:17) The shlump said,
"A coin in a flask is found in this verse. Wherever in Torah
"One reads 'ways,' the ways were opened by our sages
"Who went to the bottom of the sea. Now the ways are
"Open on every side and in every direction in the world."
They said, "How do you know?" The shlump said, "I heard
"It from my father." Julius Jaffe asked, "Who was your father?"
The shlump said, "a great fish" and the shlump disappeared.

Shinderman

Shinderman approached Julius Jaffe.

He said, "I have a chance to make a

"Lot of money on a risky investment.

"What should I do?" Julius Jaffe said,

"Make the investment. You can make

"A lot of money."

Shinderman returned and said, "I lost

"My money but I still have some money

"For another risky investment. I can make

"A lot of money. So what should I do?"

Julius Jaffe said, "Make the investment.

"You can make a lot of money."

Shinderman reappeared and said,

"I lost my money again. I now have

"Only two dollars left to my name.

"Should I bet my two dollars on a

"Longshot at the horse races?"

Julius Jaffe said, "Yes."

That same night Shinderman said,

"I lost my two dollars! I have no money!"

Julius Jaffe said, "No money? Not even

"A dime?" Shinderman said, "Not a penny!"

Julius Jaffe said, "Mazel tov! Because now

"You can really pray."

Shtunk & Shlump

To embarrass the shlump, the shtunk

Asked how many women the shlump

Had shtupped. "Just one woman,"

The shlump replied and the shtunk

Laughed at him. "I have shtupped

"A hundred of them!" said the shtunk,

Whereupon Julius Jaffe interceded,

"If a man has shtupped one woman

"And really loved her, that man is

"A greater lover than if he shtupped

"A thousand of them." But the shtunk

Laughed again. "Only a thousand?"

"Ten thousand! A hundred thousand!"

Julius Jaffe excitedly exclaimed.

The Hollow Crown: From Shakepeare's "Richard II"

From Richard II

No matter where; of comfort no man speak:
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth,
Let's choose executors and talk of wills:
And yet not so, for what can we bequeath
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
Our lands, our lives and all are Bolingbroke's,
And nothing can we call our own but death
And that small model of the barren earth
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!
Cover your heads and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn reverence: throw away respect,
Tradition, form and ceremonious duty,
For you have but mistook me all this while:
I live with bread like you, feel want,
Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus,
How can you say to me, I am a king?

All The Things You Are [by Lewis Saul]

VARIOUS ARTISTS

All the Things You Are

Ten versions

Oh, I coulda picked 20 or 30, there are so many great recordings of this oft-played standard by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, which is from the 1939 musical Very Warm for May.

The intro appears in #3, 4, 9 and 10. Probably written by Bird or Diz, so as to have something prior to diving into the tune.

This ingenious composition relies on a constant shuffle of secondary dominants. Right after the first tonic, Kern spins a vi/ii/V/I to D-Flat Major, then again vi/ii/v/I to E-Flat Major. Then G Major, E Major, and finally A-Flat Major, the parallel tonic, before dropping a semitone to introduce ii/V back to the original tonic, F Minor..

1. Tommy Dorsey (1939)
Jack Leonard, vocal
(3:19)

Dorsey's warm tone and a beautifully filled-in arrangement sets up Leonard's vocal, with Dorsey playing behind him with a mute.

2. Frank Sinatra (1945)
Ken Lane Singers
(3:03)

Towards the end, he takes it up a half-step and finishes on a high G-Flat!

3. Charlie Parker (1947)
CP, alto saxophone
Miles Davis, trumpet
Duke Jordan, piano
Tommy Potter, bass
Max Roach, drums
(3:08)

A nice intro, which both Bird and Dizzy use, as well as Scofield and Mehldau (below). Bird plays the head with lots of little flourishes, but never loses the melodic line. Miles solos first, muted. Jordan goes next, back to Miles and Bird together; they finish with the intro music ...

4. Dizzy Gillespie (1955)
DG, trumpet
Charlie Parker, alto saxophone
Clyde Hart, piano
Frank Paparelli, guitar
Slam Stewart, bass
Cozy Cole, drums
(2:52)

Gillespie plays the head with a mute. Bird takes the B section. Stewart takes over, bowed, followed by Hart, Paparelli (B section); then Dizzy returns, followed by the intro as ending.

5. Art Tatum & Ben Webster (1956)
AT, piano
BW, tenor saxophone
Red Callender, bass
Bill Douglas, drums
(7:22)

At a very relaxed tempo, Tatum begins alone for two choruses, then the breathy Webster blows through the wind (what a sound!) ... Tatum returns with some soulful improvisation -- when Webster pops back in, Tatum is in full 88-key accompaniment!

6. Ella Fitzgerald (1963)
(3:19)

Nelson Riddle arrangement. Ella sings it pretty straight, but what pure vocal tone! Riddle writes out a softly fading finish.

7. Oscar Peterson (1970)
OP, piano
George Mraz, bass
Ray Price, drums
(6:10)

A little Latin tinge. Peterson plays bunch of cool substitutions in the head, and the he's off and running, bopping around the changes, but without ever covering up the harmonies. He also runs the gamut with dynamics -- smashing octaves melting into superb quiet coolness.

He finishes the tune playing over a two-bar riff (Fm7/Bbm7) ...

8. Tommy Flanagan (1978)
TF, piano
Keeter Betts, bass
Jimmy Smith, drums
(5:57)

Live at Carnegie Hall. Flanagan's solo alternates between strong block chords and high-wire ripplings. An amazing pianist.

9. John Scofield (1988)
JS, guitar
Anthony Cox, bass
Terry Lynne Carrington, drums
(7:40)

Scofield (electric guitar) runs through the head by himself, barely touching the  melody until the turnaround. He plucks out notes from the chord structure like he's catching raindrops.

Carrington is one my favorite drummers. She's like Elvin or Tony Williams -- keeping time while punching all kinds of offbeats and cymbals crashing -- without ever getting in Scofield's way.

Cox takes a beautiful solo, Carrington's brush work keeping things crisp, while Scofield comps, then gradually returns, again just touching the melodic outline. He then switches things up and finishes the tune with the Phrygian Parker intro.

10. Brad Mehldau (1999)
BM, piano
Larry Grenadier, bass
Jorge Rossy, drums
(13:44)

Live at the Village Vanguard.

Mehldau plays by himself, jerkily circling around the melody/harmony, with both hands syncopating -- resulting in a cloud of rhythmic uncertainty. It's captivating.

The bass and drums join in around the two-minute mark. Grenadier's solo is also heavily syncopated -- but this band always knows where one is!

Mehldau also introduces the Parker intro, over which Rossy solos.

One of the truly great talents of our day.

Love / Hate [by Terence Winch]

Ed. note: I had just about exhausted every crime series available on Netflix when Terence Winch [pictured here with a friend at La Maison blanche] wrote to suggest that I check out Love/Hate, an Irish crime drama series broadcast on RTÉ Television. The show is irresistible, and I was especially drawn to Darren, a central character played by the compelling young actor Robert Sheehan. Just the other day, this poem appeared in my in-box. I love it! Thank you T.P. Winch for letting me share it here. He is pictured on the left talking to a friend at the Maison Blanche. -- sdh

Love/Hate

                        for stacey harwood

I will be upstairs in just a minute,

I promise you. But first I must

compose a long, complex symphony

dedicated to Duke Ellington, which

I have pieced together from riffs

and bits off old tinny 78s, scratched

with skips but full of musical

notes, like A, G, and E.

If I could get out of this chair,

I would. And I would ascend

then to the Throne of the

Angelic Mobsters of RTE

who are right this very moment

murdering each other on those

dark Dublin streets. It would be

a laugh and a half times two.

But I can’t get up. I am not

able to keep my promises.

The serenity prayer is a cruel

joke. Baudelaire was an alcoholic

and so’s your mother, and

that's a fact, revealed in the third

act, which I can’t stay around for.

Sorry, sorry. My bad. I’m sorry.

from the archive; first posted January 13, 2014

Renia White: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

__________________________________________________

sometimes I flash forward and cry

 

I am afraid to have this thought.

a 1.5 bedroom apartment in a city I can bear,

metallic hangers and art featuring dark girls,
their faces obscured by large flowers
and overgrown fruit

a bed so heavy it startles the sinking hips

a man with my feet in his hands
who half-coos, “I bet you were hard
to find before I found you”

all the things glimmering,

the man’s eyes growling,

each fruit unripe

everything wishing
to be unfound

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Renia White is a poet and instructor originally from Maryland. Her first book, Casual Conversation, was named a BOA Editions, Ltd. Blessing the Boats Selection. She earned her BA from Howard University and her MFA from Cornell. She teaches writing in NYC, where she lives. Her work has appeared in publications such as The Recluse, Southern Indiana Review, Slice, and elsewhere. 

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

                                              Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Drown, 2012, acrylic, colored pencil, and solvent transfer on paper. 

"Scarface Nation" [by Ken Tucker]

Highly recommended.

Scarface Nation: The Ultimate Gangster Movie by Ken Tucker (St. Martin’s Press)
Not merely the behind-the-scenes making of the 1983 De Palma/Pacino film (and the 1932 Howard Hawks/Paul Muni version), but also a critical analysis of how Scarface has influenced pop music, TV shows, YouTube videos, and political culture (see the chapter “President Scarface,” starring Bill Clinton and Dick Cheney, among others). "Insightul, intelligent, memorable, true." -- Lawrence Starling

"The Big Heat" [by John Harbourne]

The most dramatic moment in The Big Heat, a memorable Fritz Lang noir for the early 1950s, is when Gloria Grahame turns the tables on her tormentor, Lee Marvin, by emptying a pot of boiling coffee on his face. 

"Last Words" [by Mary Jo Salter]

LAST WORDS

by Mary Jo Salter

Forgive me for not writing sober,
I mean sooner, but I almost don’t
dare see what I write, I keep mating mistakes,
I mean making, and I’m wandering
if I’ve inherited what
my father’s got.

I first understood it when he tried
to introduce me to somebunny:
“This is my doctor,” he said,
then didn’t say more, “my daughter.”
The man kindly nodded
out the door.
I thought: is this dimension
what I’m headed for?

I mean dementia.|
Not Autheimer’s, but that kind he has,
possessive aphasia: oh that’s good,
I meant to say progressive.
Talk about euthanasia!
I mean euphemasia,
nice words inside your head not there,
and it’s not progress at all.

No, he’s up against the boil
after years now of a sad, slow wall
and he’s so hungry,
I mean angry.

Me too. I need to get my rhymes in
while I still mean.  I mean can.

from Zoom Rooms by Mary Jo Salter ( Knopf, 2022).

Poetry & jazz: Dana Gioia reads "Meet Me at the Lighthouse"

 

from "Julius Jaffe: The Poems" [by Mitch Sisskind]

Julius Jaffe and the Angel of Death

 

Julius Jaffe was carrying a large box of bricks.

The day was hot. Too exhausted to go on,

Julius Jaffe dropped the box and called on

The Angel of Death to rescue him from

This life. Instantly the Angel appeared

And said, "Can I be of service to you, sir?"

Now trembling in fear, Julius Jaffe said,

"No, but how do you like them Cubbies?"

This shows the foolishness of Julius Jaffe!

Parable & Paradox

When Mort Plotkin died Julius Jaffe said,

"Mort Plotkin was a great businessman

"Except he never made any money."

Julius Jaffe added, "He was in the

"Schmateh business except he was

"Never in the schmateh business."

Herman Fishman asked, "Can this be?"

Julius Jaffe answered, "Yes and no."

He added, "Maybe and maybe not."

Feh!

Julius Jaffe said, "I will marry Esther Tabachnik."

He went on, in the name of Rabbi Rabinowitz,

"A man alone in a room -- feh, feh, feh! --

"Lilith will tempt him in the midnight hour,

"But Esther Tabachnik's price is above rubies,

"Her husband's heart safely resides with her,

"Nor doth she tempt him in all her days."

Jess Rabin said, "Feh! I mean, congratulations."

My Goal is to go to Mongolia [by David Lehman]

All day yesterday I tried to write a song in the Cole Porter manner beginning "My goal is to go to Mongolia," but the melody of "Columbia, the gem of the ocean" kept getting in the way. Well, I'll see what I can come up with when I'm over there. It's flattering to know they're prepping for my visit, though the cyclones and quakes do seem somewhat excesssive.

Tomorrow Stacey and I fly to Beijing; we will visit that city and two others in China, giving readings and lectures, in the next week. Then comes a week in Mongolia, where I'm hoping to ride a camel and hang out with Mongolia's poet laureate, who has promised to teach me a Mongolian verse form. If I can manage to post from those outposts I will do so, and if not I'm sure we'll have lots to tell when we get back in early June.

My Goal Is to Go to Mongolia.

My goal
Is to go
To Mongolia.

In Mongolia
I shall know
The whole of ya.

“Let me seduce thee,”
Said he.
“Only if I be
The wlling accomplice
Of a kiss,”
Said she.

O let me kiss
Her and win her back,
And ride the back
Of a camel,
An ornery animal
With the smell
Of magnolia, 
In the desert
In Mongolia.

-- DL   from the archive; first posted May 15, 2008

François Gremaud & Samantha van Wissen’s “Giselle…”: A model classic [by Tracy Danison]

Samantha van Wissen. “Giselle… Comédie Ballet” by François Gremaud. Photo © Dorothée Thébert Filliger

Theater pieces always manage a “…triumph…” or a “… wonderful...” printed on the program. Could mean anything – “With thousands of slaves in tow, Julius Caesar brought his triumph to Rome…”; “It is wonderful, the persistence of the Ancien Régime …”

But quote me whole when I say of François Gremaud's and Samantha van Wissen’s Giselle… Comédie-Ballet that it gets inside the heads of today's and yesterday’s creators and spectators. Doing that, it touches at the heart of the famous classic Giselle, ou les Wilis: I listened with real interest and laughed at, too, what was effectively serious textual analysis and I gasped in spontaneous dismay when van Wissen-Giselle dropped dead. And that is certainly proof of wonderful performing inside a triumph of theatrical writing.

Giselle… Comédie-Ballet has the same plot as all the Giselles I’ve ever heard of – Act 1: disguised noble falls for peasant girl who dies tragically after learning truth; Act 2: dead peasant girl thwarts her own damnation and the vengeance of supernatural females called Wilis. Also, Gremaud  bases his Giselle…Comédie-Ballet on the script used for the Giselle, ou les Wilis première oof  28 June 1841 at the Paris Opéra by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges and Théophile Gautier.

Photo © Dorothée Thébert Filliger

Gremaud has modeled his Giselle… script as a palimpsest: you have to pay attention to warp, weft and splotches of the paper, not just the most recent print on it. At reading, the script shapes an indivisible, if pretty giddy, whole of parts.

Choreographer-performer Samantha van Wissen’s execution of Giselle… Comédie-Ballet is more than equal to the task of holding together the whole of Gremaud’s palimpsest, which includes bits of general history, social context, authorial intentions, writing, choreography, stagecraft, along with the points of view of historic observers and actors. into  Giselle… Comédie-Ballet.

Van Wissen uses a classic one-woman show format to turn the script into an amusing and instructive, even innovative, dance piece. 

Moving with that subtle, distinctly personal, body confidence of an accomplished dancer, van Wissen begins Giselle… by owning Giselle, ou les Wilis, the classic format, and Giselle, a character.  “Van Wissen”, she says, means “from Effacement” in Dutch, her native language. “Her” effacement alludes, she says, to one of the central issues raised by Giselle, ou les Wilis – which, one presumes, would include whether or not the effacement of Giselle is imposed or desired or self-imposed... Or just a literary intellectual’s will o’ the wisp.

Van Wissen goes on to demonstrate her ownership of the potential possible Giselles-Giselles through the piece, a significant pause here, a rising but always dulcet voice there for focus, but mainly letting spectators wander through, feeling they've decided questions and answers for themselves. 

Van Wissen dances: moves as she talks, talks as she moves.

Sometimes arch, sometimes not, she comments on topics as diverse as the historic association of pantomime and ballet, on librettist Théophile Gautier’s belief in the centrality of love, on the role of Bathilde, Giselle’s mom, or on the previous wild and European success of Italian Filippo Taglioni’s La Sylphide at the Paris Opéra, which, coincidentally, wink, wink, is chock full of hot but tragic and invisible gals, desirable, morally weak yet sentimental and well-set-up guys, betrayal, witchcraft, vengeance. The whole shtick of course flies about the woods in twilight.

Photo © Dorothée Thébert Filliger

Van Wissen demonstrates more than she says with hands and feet, pantomimes, mimes, dances, postures, figures, phrases…  Baulked lover, what a disguised noble as 19^th century ballet character looks like. Plays the leaping and twirling 15-year old Giselle, a dancing fool –  do you know, she has a weak heart? It’s a big worry for Bathilde.

For the spectator, Van Wissen’s dancer art brings all the comment and movement to a boil: showing Giselle, ou les Wilis creates Giselle… Comédie-Ballet. That’s that’s why I gasped at the mime of Giselle’s death. That’s why I and my partner walked out thinking of Giselle… Comédie-Ballet – as dance more than performance.

So, Gremaud's and van Wissen’s Giselle… is dance triumphant as well as well as literary or narrative art.

But I also think Giselle… Comédie-Ballet is pertinent to our times – by the thoroughness of its literary anatomy and in view of the needs of today’s spectators.

Remember van Wissen’s initial show-owning “effacement”? 

When all is said and danced, does the ultimate esthetic success of scripted Giselle, ou les Wilis turn on rubbing out the girl and/or the thrill of femmes fatales, or, like contemporary entertainment, are the words and clichés just a pandering mishmash of what some producers and mountebanks think attracts eyeballs?  Or is it a mix of its culture, commercial calculation and a desperate effort to talk about something universal and vitally important for human beings?

I come away from Gremaud and van Wissen’s Comédie-Ballet with the option of thinking it's the mix. At its heart, I'm with them, because it's clear that's what they think, too, "Giselle", as a concept, comes down to putting love, Love, capital L, on stage. In the end, it takes very little actual tweaking of Giselle, ou les Wilis to make that clear, too.

If the developer behind the Madame Butterfly I saw the other day had taken the care François Gremaud has taken with Giselle (…), I wouldn’t still be regretting the wasted 100 euros.  I wouldn’t be wondering about the state of mind of the opera’s creative developer, either.

Photo © Dorothée Thébert Filliger

Holy Cow! This Butterfly I saw was like stumbling into a screening of an irony-less Springtime for Hitler! Talk about bearing up under the White Man’s Burden. I can enjoy the pre-war works of novelist Louis Ferdinand Céline, a notorious racist and active anti-Semite. I can cite certain esthetic ideas of the social-climbing weasel Martin Heidegger, even knowing he was making love to Hannah Arendt even as he prepared to throw her, as well as his Jewish colleagues, under the Nazi bus. Still, there’s no way I can explain away that Madame Butterfly I saw that evening, in Germany, of all places.There’s just no rationalizing possible.

In the same vein, building on somebody’s graduate thesis about effaced “romantic heroines” and the long history of bootstrap-moralizing by rich American patrons and in the name of cleaning up historic misogyny, Akram Khan has recently managed to conjure Giselle, ou les Wilis as The Little Girl Who Could, switching the focus of the play from the sweet nebbish character of Giselle to the bracing message telling us that all a sillikins girl needs to do to undo eight thousand years of patriarchal oppression is show some dam' gumption.

I know the proverb about beggars, wishes and horses, but all the same, I am thinking now that if Khan had seen Gremaud’s Giselle… Comédie-Ballet, he might have considered using Gremaud's approach to controversial classics to do Madame Butterfly instead. Butterfly fits Khan’s esthetic mood better. More important, if Giselle, ou les Wilis turns around Love, capital L, Butterfly surely turns around Power, capital P. Imperial and patriarchal Power, to boot. There’s certainly room for a little female pushback in the opéra's narrative dynamics. Even a little American-style girl-gumption might actually do the trick! 

Let’s hope somebody produces Gremaud’s Giselle… Comédie-Ballet for international audiences – in English.

Beggars, mount up! Let’s especially hope that other aspiring classic controversy re-creators have a look at what Gremaud has achieved with his Giselle… Comédie-Ballet. 

“Giselle… Comédie Ballet” by François Gremaud was produced at the Théâtre de la Bastille with solo dance and performance by Samantha van Wissen with musical accompaniment by  Léa Al-Saghir or Anastasiia Lindeberg (violin), Tjasha Gafner or Antonella de Franco (harp), Héléna Macherel or Irène Poma (flute) and Sara Zazo Romero (saxophone). A printed libretto is available. I saw it on 6 January 2023. 

More Clerihews [with thanks to Rick Winston]

In 1995, Henry Rathvon and Emily Cox ran a clerihew challenge, and Rick Winston made a copy of the results:

<<<  ***Results of Clerihews in the News***

Mr. Rathvon and Ms. Cox
Don't fit any convenient box.
They push one to wax Ogden Nashish
For contests more addictive than hashish.

   Such is the opinion of contestant RPhill5136, whose views are expressed above in Clerihew style. The Clerihew, that odd little verse form invented 100 years ago by Edmund Clerihew Bentley, proved wonderfully fertile in a 1990s context. But it also proved quite challenging, as its staggered rhythms required an artful touch in order to elicit the proper funny-bone twang. Contestant Glemward mused:

Why choose
Clerihews?
How much sweeter
Are things that rhyme with the usual sort of meter!

   And VCRogers, reflecting on the havoc we word-gamers were wreaking, concluded:

E.C. Bentley
Did not go gently
Into that good night--
But after this, he might!

   Suffice it to say that your Clerihumor--from the subtle to the sledgehammer--gave us a lot of laughs. We'll conduct another of these Clerihew festivals in a future contest. Meanwhile our  favorite verses are listed below, topped by three jauntily witty winners. (Contestant Sean Med quipped, "Could the prize for this contest be considered a 'hew grant?") Each of our winners will receive 5 free AOL hours plus a book of his or her choice from the Atlantic's online bookstore. Congratulations Ravensegg, Cruciver, and JebMar!

***The Clerihew Winners***

General Shalikashvili--
Now, I ask you, really.
With a name like that
Shouldn't he wear a much bigger hat? (Ravensegg)

The Kennedys
Are used to having all of the amenities.
Their wealth's so great it even beggars
Schwarzenegger's. (Cruciver)

Peter McNeeley
Had a great deal. He
Fought Tyson from the deck and
Made thousands per second. (JebMar)

Five of the runners-up:

Dorothy Gish
Choked on a fish
At the cotillion
Embarrassing Lillian. (G8ly)

Henry Kissinger
Covets Kim Basinger.
If she were his frau
He'd be Kissinger now.  (G8ly)

Jean-Paul Sartre
Despised Descartes
Because of his insistence
On meaningful existence. (G8ly)

Warren Beatty
Loved to date, he
Fooled around with every girl he
Met except of course for Shirley. (StefSpad)

Elizabeth Taylor
Diets constantly so as to look frailer.
"Though I may at times be chubby,"
She says, "I'm never without a new hubby."  (Epithenas)