The Best American Poetry

Christmas Song

Christmas is over,

the goose has got the gout!

Please put the billing

address facing out.

Happy New Year, all!

What Instruments We Have Agree

 News of the talented and much-loved poet Rachel Wetzsteon's death circulated yesterday and this morning an e-mail from her friend Rachel Hadas confirmed the sad news.  We're still trying to make sense of it.  She apparently took her life, at 42.  Too young to die. 

As we close out this year, I want to plead with everyone out there who is in despair and feels hopeless: wait. Please please get help.  Here's a place to start. 

-- sdh

The Trouble Clef - Hans Christian Andersen and His Alter Ego [by Lera Auerbach]

Five years ago, I received a commission from the Royal Danish Ballet to write a full-length ballet with the legendary choreographer John Neumeier, based on Andersen’s The Little Mermaid for the opening of the new opera theater in Copenhagen during the 200th anniversary of the birth of Hans Christian Andersen. While working on this score I read almost all of Andersen’s creative output as well as numerous works about him. What is the secret behind Andersen’s fairy tales, so complex, with multi-levels of possible interpretations, with ambiguity under the mask of simplicity, designed for adults although internationally labeled as literature for children?   

Andersen understood human nature. In his simple, poetic and metaphorical way, he could speak about the most complex, often tragic elements that are universal. We all have hopes and dreams, some realized, some broken; we all have childhood memories that are precious. We seek beauty in whichever form it may take, we all die. We dream at night and do not know where the dreams come from or if there is a message in them or even what makes us dream. We fall in love, yet we struggle to discover what love is; we may even lose our sense of identity as being in love means to rediscover and redefine ourselves. We are afraid of death as it is unknown, and of darkness as we lose certainty, and of loneliness as we search for understanding. All of this is in Andersen's tales, which remind me of  Robert Schumann's piano pieces Kinderszenen – they can be appreciated by children but are intended for adults.

The Little Mermaid's story touches upon many more subjects than just unrealized love. The story of the Little Mermaid is about a being who doesn't belong. She doesn't belong to the Ocean nor to the Earth. She doesn't belong to the world of her Prince (although she may think she does), nor to the world of her father and sisters. She doesn't even belong to the humanly conceived after-death places such as heaven or hell since she doesn't have an immortal soul. Since she is no longer a regular mermaid she can't even turn into the sea-foam as do other dying mermaids, but becomes a creature of the air instead. She is constantly searching and questioning her identity. Her love is her strength as it allows her to transform. 

The Mermaid’s transformation at the end of Andersen’s tale is most striking. Neither human nor mermaid, she becomes a sister of the air at last. She is like a Phoenix – dying and burning her past yet is capable through the extraordinary strength of her essence to be born anew. Her last state is neither a reward for courage nor a punishment (although she is assigned a task of purification), yet there is a sense that she may finally find peace as she is the air and she is everywhere. Only perhaps in this purifying nonexistence can she be content. Maybe this is the answer to the ambiguity that Andersen poses with his ending of the story (which is almost always changed in the later adaptations) – it is not a conclusion, but another form of time, where time becomes timeless, space – spaceless. She is nowhere yet everywhere, and her presence is a blessing of pure breath. She loses her desires, but with the loss of desire one loses identity. Thus, she dies (neither as human nor mermaid, but as herself) and transforms into another realm where she is ABOVE her love for the prince. She no longer wants him for herself, she just is, but by simply being in this state she brings goodness and light. In a way it becomes a journey from the darkness of the ocean’s depth – to the light of the air. Yet it is not a happy ending, because the Little Mermaid that we know and love is gone forever.

Almost all of Andersen’s short stories would make perfect theater productions: ballets or operas. I especially love his Snow Queen with its strikingly beautiful images, deep wisdom and complex games with time. Andersen suggests that the human inability to grasp the concept of eternity is man's blessing. In this story a little boy, kidnapped by the snow queen, slowly loses his humanity. Yet he can't solve a riddle with the answer of "eternity" and that is what saves him, as it allows time for the little girl, who is traveling the world in search of him, to stop his heart from becoming ice-cold by melting the ice with her tears. There is a striking, almost painful purity in Andersen's writings. The boy and the girl in this story at one moment realize that they are not little children any longer, that they are grown-ups, yet they remain children in their hearts. There is a certain vulnerable fragility in his writing as if his soul is bared, and one wants to put one’s arms around him to protect this pure sensitivity. And yet his characters are incredibly courageous and strong. Courage and loyalty are important features in most of his stories.

What identifies a nation is its poets. Yet, as with any great poet, Andersen became an international figure. I have read several biographies of his life and times, including his own novel "The Fairy Tale of My Life". What is curious is that throughout his life, Andersen was composing his own biography, creating a perfect fairy-tale of his life, often rather different from its tragic and, at times, cruel reality. His real self can be glimpsed through his tales: he IS the Little Mermaid who outgrows her surroundings and is misunderstood by those around, he IS a steadfast soldier who keeps his courage and doesn't give up, he IS a poor, dreaming girl with a box of matches, capable of a wondrous imagination that lulls her into the forever blissful sleep of death, away from cold and hunger.

One of the peculiar qualities of writing theater music is that you need to find a balance between achieving what you intend to create artistically and make it work organically together with the dramatic requirements of the theater. If music becomes a servant of the dance as has happened with many 19th century ballets then there is a big problem. The other difficulty is the length. With The Little Mermaid we have three full acts, and  to sustain the best quality within the span of an almost three-hour-long production, where the overall architecture needs to hold the structure together, was my highest priority and a challenge.

Neither the music nor the choreography of the ballet suggests the Danish culture of Andersen's time as this would not only be false but it would artificially cage him into a time which he has outgrown. At the same time, it was very important for me, in order to understand Andersen, to gather as much information about Danish culture and his life as I could. John Neumeier and I even studied the score written for one of the Andersen plays called "Agnete og Havmanden" (Agnete und der Meermann) with the music of Neils Gade, which was staged (to complete fiasco) shortly before Andersen wrote The Little Mermaid.

In Andersen’s tale, Little Mermaid has a most beautiful voice. Of course in the ballet, I could not use a real singer. In the orchestration, I was searching for an instrument that could represent the voice of the Mermaid and would be close to a human voice, yet also have an other-worldliness, a transcendental haunting quality. I found the timbre I was searching for in the sound of the theremin, the very first electronic instrument, created in the 1920’s by Leo Theremin. The instrument is incredibly expressive - think of a mixture between cello and flute to have an idea of its sound. Also, there is something very mysterious in this instrument, as it is played by moving hands in the air, no strings attached, no keyboards. The instrument itself is an electromagnetic field, created by its antenna. There is something magical about creating the sounds from emptiness. The instrument also is an outsider of the standard orchestra just like Little Mermaid is an outsider of her surroundings, and to represent a creature who becomes a spirit of air the theremin seemed most appropriate. For Mermaid’s human nature I have chosen a solo violin. Thus, there is a duality between violin and theremin, representing the dual nature of this chimera. The ballet’s orchestration is for the full symphony orchestra and is highly multilayered, presenting different levels, similar to the ocean’s complex co-existence of different worlds.

The ballet “Little Mermaid’ will receive its American premiere by the San Francisco Ballet on March 20th, 2010. The last performance of the San Francisco Ballet on March 28th will mark the 70th performance of this ballet world-wide since its premiere at the Royal Danish Ballet in Copenhagen in 2005.

Happy New Year [by Jennifer Michael Hecht]

 Dear Bleaders, It’s the end of a tricky frikkin’ year, my friends, and a heck of a decade. If I were in charge I’d make an annual Cower in the Corner Day, where everyone just brings a blanky to the corner of a room and hunkers down for a nice twitch. How did Schopenhauer put it? "Many millions, united into nations strive for the common good, each individual for his own sake; but many thousands fall sacrifice to it. Now senseless delusion, now intriguing politics, incite them to wars with one another; then the sweat and blood of the great multitudes must flow[...]. In peace industry and trade are active, inventions work miracles, seas are navigated, delicacies are collected from all the ends of the earth, the waves engulf thousands. All push and drive, some plotting and planning, others acting; the tumult is indescribable. But what is the ultimate aim of it all? To sustain ephemeral and harassed individuals through a short span of time, in the most fortunate case with endurable want and comparative painlessness (though boredom is on the lookout for this), and then the propagation of this race and of its activities. With this evident want of proportion between the effort and the reward, the will-to-live, taken objectively, appears to us from this point of view as a folly, or taken subjectively, as a delusion. Seized by this, every living thing works with the utmost exertion of its strength for something that has no value." (WWR II, 357) Oh and: "The futility and fruitlessness of the struggle of the whole phenomenon are more readily grasped in the…life of animals. The variety and multiplicity of their structural organization, the ingenuity of the means by which each is adapted to its element and to its prey, here contrasts clearly with the absence of any lasting final aim. Instead of this we see only momentary gratification, fleeting pleasure conditioned by wants, much and long suffering, constant struggle, bellum omnium, everything a hunter and everything hunted, pressure, want, need and anxiety, shrieking and howling; and this goes on in saecula saeculorum, or until once again the crust of the planet breaks." (WWR II, 354) Why do I love these so much? Well, I love the rhythem, how excited they get about the staggering pointless misery of it all. Where German often hacks out sentences in sheetrock, the Schope is skipping stones. Love this: “delicacies are collected from all the ends of the earth, the waves engulf thousands.” A hundred years ago ships still went down regularly and you would read long lists of names lost in the evening papers; surely it is to this that the Schope refers, but we who watched a real freaking Tsunami on television several late-Decembers ago have our own reasons to shudder at the phrase. Could I love the parenthetical remark on boredom any more than I do? No, I could not. And then after all those galloping horse feet the delightfully airy words float in for the finish: folly, delusion, no value. The answer to these delicious, noisy attacks is to follow them scrupulously in a similar list of what I call in my book Doubt: A History, “the equal cacophony of birth, joy, and satisfaction.” A translation to optimism. Though it only now occurs to me to fashion a version: So let's see, he’s saying that you’d think such a complicated fancy thing like human and animal life would have some meaning, and then breaks it to us (I hear requote the above): 

“Instead of [meaning] we see only momentary gratification, fleeting pleasure conditioned by wants, much and long suffering, constant struggle, bellum omnium, everything a hunter and everything hunted, pressure, want, need and anxiety, shrieking and howling; and this goes on in saecula saeculorum, or until once again the crust of the planet breaks.” Now, translated to reasonable joy:

Instead of [meaning] we see at least momentary gratification, and thanks to our almost constant needs we are graced with moments of pleasure and satisfaction, we live and continue onward through much and long suffering, which we all suffer together, though separately, and the cold usually find a warm place to go inside; the lonely sometimes notice that they are not lonely; fueled by anxiety we have flashes of the bliss of creating; also, we hold each other. Sometimes we join in the shrieking and howling, sometimes we wait it out; it goes on and on and on and on though someday it will stop, and it is ours right now and everyone’s always, always, always. Alright my doves, you know I loves you. Last night I heard my three year old singing in the bathtub, “All the single ladies, all the single ladies.” Be safe on New Years and I’ll see you on the other side of 2010. Here goes the twenty-teens. Love, Jennifer

PS Above picture is from an exhibit at the Jewish Museum -- they've asked some writers, including me and to name one other Francine Prose, to comment on some art all of which inspired by Genesis, you know, In the beginning. Kind of a tough assignment. xoxo

 

Go Stand in That Patch of Light.

Bob Dylan's Voice (by Lawrence J. Epstein)

Mark Twain, in a characteristically wry observation, once noted that "Wagner's music is better than it sounds." A comparable comment can be made about Bob Dylan's voice, or, more accurately, his voices. Anyone who, without warning, first listened to Nashville Skyline and thought the vocals were the result of studio engineering knows that like the man himself Dylan's voice shifts identity. Dylan's nasal Midwestern twang lately sounds like a weathered voice that has spoken and sung and battled its way down many miles of sorrow and found, from time to time, some refuges of hope along the way.

I'm writing about Dylan's classic voice, the voice on Freewheelin' through Blonde on Blonde, the voice that made Hibbing famous. It's fair to note that it was Dylan's lyrics that captured the age. But those arresting words would not have had same impact they had if Dylan had not sung them the way he did. I always thought he sang his songs better than all the covers.

Dylan's voice had many elements. The vocal qualities that so shocked Mitch Miller and almost everyone else at CBS Records were Dylan's successful effort to inhabit Woody Guthrie's voice box. The very untutored rawness of the voice with its inherent affront to the sweet, packaged conformity of the 1950s made it the right voice to attack those who made profits from war or wanted to block the way of a new generation.

The vocal elements, though, were only part of the overall voice. The reason so many Dylan covers fail is that the singers mouth the words but lack the ability to transmit their emotional power. George Burns once noted that, "Sincerity is everything. If you can fake that, you've got it made." I want to believe Dylan was sincere as he sang his songs. I believe he was, despite the fact that he sometimes dismissed this idea. But sincere or not he acted as though he was sincere. He was a great actor, that is, either because he believed in the line and could control his voice to make listeners believe he believed, or he could simply mimic and fake passion perfectly.

Beyond the vocal elements and the emotions, Dylan's voice was helped by his phrasing. Particular syllables were emphasized and forced the listener to focus on them. Sometimes the phrases were virtually spoken in a rhythm, like beat poetry or talking blues. Talking blues was developed by Chris Bouchillon who recorded "Talking Blues" in April 1926. The recording director noted that Bouchillon's pleasant voice sounded better when he talked than when he sang, and so the director suggested that Bouchillon talk while he played the guitar. Woody Guthrie made the style popular. In Woody's case, he used talking blues to de-emphasize any beauty in the songs so that listeners could focus on the social and political importance of the words.

Dylan sometimes altered normal word accents. In poetry, such an alteration of the normal word accent is called a wrenched accent. It was common in the folk ballads that made up Dylan's informal education.

Putting vocals, emotion, and phrasing together with incomparable lyrics made Bob Dylan's voice unique in musical history.

NOTE TO READERS:  My book Political Folk Music in America From Its Origins to Bob Dylan will be published on March 16th. For further information see: http://lawrencejepstein.com/folk

Blurb of the Week - Used Bookstore, December 29, 2009

Teeth by Hugh Gallagher (Pocket Books, 1998) 

"Finally, the dental masterpiece we've all been waiting for."
    -- Gore Vidal

-- sdh

"The Rules of Chess" [by Lindsay Daigle]

There are eight pawns, like a city. They are babies cast down the river. The knights disappear into an L-shaped darkness, two fiery preachers. Each bishop drives drunk in sideways rain. Rooks turn their collars up, muffle doubtful sighs. The one king resurrects slowly. The queen plays dead, is a stubborn ghost.

-- Lindsay Daigle

Congratulations, Grandpa Paul

Paul Violi and newcomer

Beware of "An Education"

Last evening Stacey and I went to see the highly touted movie "An Education." It is a well-acted British film set in London and Oxford in 1961; the young (24) actress Carey Mulligan won rave notices for her portrayal of the under-age heroine, Jenny. The plot line is familiar: the movie is a busted fairy tale, in which the ordinary girl becomes a princess until the moment when her savior turns out to be a frog.

Nothing prepared us for the anti-Semitic line running through the movie. The charming cad -- who turns out to be a con man, a parasite, a philanderer, a thief, and a pervert -- is repeatedly identified as Jewish, gratuitously, for religion plays no part in the seduction narrative. Nothing requires that he be Jewish -- except the perpetuation of a stereotype, the demonizing of "the other," for allegorical purposes. The characters who reflexively voice their anti-Semitic prejudices -- the headmistress of Jenny's school, played by the redoubtable Emma Thompson, reminds the headstrong student that "the Jews killed our Lord" -- are not repudiated but vindicated by the turn of events in the movie. I found this element of the film most chilling, a disturbing reminder of the "genteel" anti-Semitism that I remember from my own time in Britain, and I scratch my head wondering why the vast majority of the critics overlooked this point. David Edelstein, in New York magazine, was an exception: "The story's most obvious lesson is 'beware of Jews bearing flowers.'"

Here is an excerpt from Irina Bragin's excellent piece, "The Wandering Jew in An Education: the Anatomy of an Anti-Semitic Film." -- DL

<<<
Jenny: “Oh, and by the way ... David’s a Jew, a wandering Jew. So watch yourself.”

We were only 15 minutes into the film and this was the second reference to the “Wandering Jew,” an age-old, European anti-Semitic stereotype. The British coming-of-age film, “An Education,” had gotten rave reviews, yet the more I watched, the more the character of David Goldman resembled the parasitical Jew of “Der Ewige Juden” (“The Eternal Jew”) — one of the infamous 1930s Nazi propaganda films I had studied in Peter Loewenberg’s class at UCLA.

From the moment David starts following the teenage Jenny in his fancy car, the pudgy, effete David Goldman (played by Peter Sarsgaard) proclaims his ethnicity. (Jenny: “I’m not a Jew.” David: “No, I am. I wasn’t ... accusing you.”) Like the predatory creature characterized in “Der Ewige Juden,” Goldman pretends to adopt the values of his host culture in order to turn its treasures into his profit. He offers Jenny “three five-pound notes” to drive her cello home safely out of the rain; “I’m a music lover,” he tells her. Then he proceeds to corrupt the innocent gentile girl (played by Carey Mulligan) with expensive flowers, gifts, concerts, art auctions and trips to Oxford and Paris.

David enriches himself by ruining good English neighborhoods, deflating property values and looting cultural treasures from displaced widows. He moves blacks into white neighborhoods: “Shvartzes,” he tells Jenny, “have to live somewhere; it’s not as if they can rent from their own kind.” The only identifiable Jew in the film, he constantly uses the collective “we” to justify his wickedness: “This is how we are, Jenny,” Goldman editorializes. “We’re not clever like you, so we have to be clever in other ways, because if we weren’t, there would be no fun.” He uses the word “stats” for old ladies he victimizes. They “are scared of colored people; so we move the coloreds in and the old ladies out and I buy their flats cheap.” Along with his partner, Danny, David barges into a house, military style, and speeds away with precious relics. “We have to be clever with maps,” he tells Jenny. An ancient map, he rationalizes, “shouldn’t spend its life on a wall…. We know how to look after it…. We liberated it.”

 

Is it possible that the film attempts to link the predatory Jew with his purloined Jewish homeland?
>>>

Read the rest of Irina Bragin's piece here.

End of the Year Bits 'n Bobs

This week, we're going to use this space to post items that came to us during the year but that somehow got lost in the deluge. 

First up:

We recently learned about the Ella Fitzgerald Foundation, an organization that works tirelessly to perpetuate Ella's music and educate the young and foster the love of music.  We *heart* Ella Fitzgerald and we're especially proud that the foundation gives a shout-out to A Fine Romance.  

Watch this space for updates during the week. 

-- sdh

"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.

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 went 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 major Hollywood star when she was nineteen and breaking in, and clarinetist and bandleader 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's "Origin of the Species"  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. (Artie married a lot, divorced a lot, and was famous for his chutzpah.) Mickey Rooney remembered that sex with her had been great. She demurred: "Not for me," she said. Of her third husband, Frank Sinatra, Ava once said. "Frank weighs 120 pounds but 110 of them are pure cock." But she made him sweat, being an inconstant as he was. She carried on with a famous Spanish matador and made the crooner fanatically jealous.

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

The unicorn made of stitches by hands by the thousands
of hours in Ghent or Bruges or possibly years.
The unicorn held in a ring of pickets
his beard and buckled collar and blood where they caught him.
All around the flowers with the names of Venetian glass
the hellebore and unbidden berries. All around a place
they went to day and night the candles straining the eyes.
Skin softened by wool the sheep in the field the wolf.
At this great distance the horn is the pinnacle
as tall as the beast is rampant its tip a single thread
squinted over an instant still flinching.

Poem of the Week, Canada’s poet laureate’s website (http://www.parl.gc.ca/poet) on 28 May 2007 (Ottawa, Ontario).

Stephanie Bolster edited the 2008 edition of The Best Canadian Poetry in English. Her new book, A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth, is due out from Brick Books in 2011.

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" [by David Lehman]

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 went 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 major Hollywood star when she was nineteen and breaking in, and clarinetist and bandleader 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's "Origin of the Species"  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. (Artie married a lot, divorced a lot, and was famous for his chutzpah.) Mickey Rooney remembered that sex with her had been great. She demurred: "Not for me," she said. Of her third husband, Frank Sinatra, Ava once said. "Frank weighs 120 pounds but 110 of them are pure cock." But she made him sweat, being an inconstant as he was. She carried on with a famous Spanish matador and made the crooner fanatically jealous.

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

"Tapestry, The Cloisters" [by Stephanie Bolster]

The unicorn made of stitches by hands by the thousands
of hours in Ghent or Bruges or possibly years.
The unicorn held in a ring of pickets
his beard and buckled collar and blood where they caught him.
All around the flowers with the names of Venetian glass
the hellebore and unbidden berries. All around a place
they went to day and night the candles straining the eyes.
Skin softened by wool the sheep in the field the wolf.
At this great distance the horn is the pinnacle
as tall as the beast is rampant its tip a single thread
squinted over an instant still flinching.

Poem of the Week, Canada’s poet laureate’s website (http://www.parl.gc.ca/poet) on 28 May 2007 (Ottawa, Ontario).

Stephanie Bolster edited the 2008 edition of The Best Canadian Poetry in English. Her new book, A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth, is due out from Brick Books in 2011.