The Best American Poetry

Thank You, Whale [by Michael Schiavo]

I was born in Concord, Massachusetts. Raised in Connecticut. Brookfield  for the first eight years, four years in Marietta, Georgia (home of the Big Chicken and the Georgia Satellites), then back to Southbury, my hometown if I have one. The state's branded no country for young men, a place you go when you have a family and want to keep them safe. Surely that was my father's logic. I understand. He's from Brooklyn.

But Connecticut is a supremely weird place.

Brothers Dave and Jake Longstreth are from Connecticut. I went to high school with Jake, a talented artist who reminds me of Fairfield Porter. His paintings of suburban landscapes—parking lots, strip malls, tennis courts, treelines—mostly devoid of human movement (though not the human stamp), hold such a vivid familiarity that they work less like windows and more like mirrors. I would love to be able to hang , in my non-existent home, a painting like "Whales?"

or "Sonoma"

or "Karate."

"I'm Not a Doctor But" [by Robert Hershon]

Robert Hershon, co-editor of Hanging Loose magazine and Hanging Loose Press, will be editing our Sunday poetry pages for the next several months. Hanging Loose magazine was begun in 1966, the name deriving from the original money-saving format of loose pages in an envelope; ninety-five issues have been published to date. Hanging Loose Press has published 175 titles including the first poetry books by Sherman Alexie, Kimiko Hahn, Dennis Nurkse, Hettie Jones, Joanna Fuhrman, and Elizabeth Swados. The press also publishes  Ha Jin, Joan Larkin, Jayne Cortez, Paul Violi, Charles North, and Tony Towle  while continuing to present the work of new writers. Robert Hershon’s co-editors are Dick Lourie and Mark Pawlak, with Donna Brook and Marie Carter as associate editors.

Hershon's own most recent book, his twelfth, is Calls from the Outside World. Here's a poem of his -- from Hanging Loose #94 -- that will introduce you to Robert Hershon's distinctive voice and brand of ironic good humor. Welcome, Bob! -- DL

I’m Not a Doctor But
                for Larry Fagin

I’m not a doctor but
I play one on
the 79th Street crosstown bus
and I’m very busy
I’ve covered all the little girls
in their school uniforms
with band-aids on their elbows
knees and noses
and I performed an appendectomy
on some old guy while
we went through the park
(no anesthesia but lots
of birdsong)
I had to amputate the driver’s ears
but he’s learned to love the quiet
My practice has doubled
between Madison and Columbus
I’m just very, very busy

-- Robert Hershon

Thank You, Whale [by Michael Schiavo]

I was born in Concord, Massachusetts. Raised in Connecticut. Brookfield  for the first eight years, four years in Marietta, Georgia (home of the Big Chicken and the Georgia Satellites), then back to Southbury, my hometown if I have one. The state's branded no country for young men, a place you go when you have a family and want to keep them safe. Surely that was my father's logic. I understand. He's from Brooklyn.

But Connecticut is a supremely weird place.

Brothers Dave and Jake Longstreth are from Connecticut. I went to high school with Jake, a talented artist who reminds me of Fairfield Porter. His paintings of suburban landscapes—parking lots, strip malls, tennis courts, treelines—mostly devoid of human movement (though not the human stamp), hold such a vivid familiarity that they work less like windows and more like mirrors. I would love to be able to hang , in my non-existent home, a painting like "Whales?"

Michael Schiavo, Guest Blogger January 31-February 6

This week we welcome Michael Schiavo as our guest blogger.  Michael is the author of The Mad Song and editor of The Equalizer (launching 2010). His work has appeared in Forklift, Ohio, The Yale Review, No Tell Motel, The Believer, Seneca Review, LIT, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Sixth Finch, Tin House, Raleigh Quarterly, The Normal School, and The Awl. Poems are forthcoming from The Paris Review and jubilat. He edited Tight with Whit Griffin and Andrew Hughes and is a contributing editor to CUE. He blogs occasionally at The Unruly Servant.

Welcome, Michael.

In other news . . .
The New Yorker weighs in on A Fine Romance.

Enter the Kurosawa contest here.  Read the new double-wide Sports Desk here.  Oy, and Oy Vey.  Remembering David Franks.

-- sdh

Patricia Carlin presents a poem by Sarah Paley

This week I’ve chosen to post “Spring, Central Park Zoo” by Sarah Paley (Barrow Street, Tenth Anniversary Issue, Winter 2008). Selecting a poem for this final post is a little sad, because there are so many poems we’ve published that I’d like to single out.

In my first post (on November 11, 2009), I said that I didn’t want to generalize about Barrow Street.  Instead, the poems I’d post would give readers a sense of what we’re looking for in poems. From the work I’ve posted over the last twelve weeks, I hope it’s evident that our only criteria are the strength of a poem; the pleasure it gives; and our sense that regardless of where we’d place it on the current aesthetic spectrum, it has a highly distinctive stamp.  I also hope it’s clear that poets who have published little or nothing are as welcome in our pages as are authors of many books.

SPRING, CENTRAL PARK ZOO

“I love my Love, and my Love loves me!”
A bird, a Lark, sings this.

Blissful tears are shed
By a Gentoo Penguin mid-plunge.

The fullness of his heart causes
A Suriname Toad to ascend to a higher plane.

Mary, Mother of God, appears
relieving a Red Panda of all anxiety and self-loathing.

“Rejoice!  Rejoice!  Rejoice!  All Men, Rejoice!”
barks a Harbor Seal as high as a kite.

and
The bats are just going crazy crazy
with happy happy happiness.

-- Sarah Paley

Every strong poet is a school of one.  Every strong poem is one of a kind, which is just as true whether a poem appears to embrace some form of tradition or allies itself instead  with specifically contemporary gestures. “Spring, Central  Park Zoo,” does both.  It begins with a line from a Coleridge poem (“Answer to a Child’s Question”): “I love my Love, and my Love loves me!” The line will sound familiar even to readers who’ve never read the Coleridge poem, partly because it’s often quoted, but also because the line looks back to centuries of poems in praise of spring. Yet this playfully over-the-top poem is completely contemporary and distinctively individual. It doesn’t sound like anything I’ve heard before. Through its wild exaggeration, it manages to parody its literary forebears, but also to enroll itself in their number.

The poem’s opening line is sung by “a Lark,” a poetically generic bird, warbling its way through the Coleridge poem and through seven centuries of poetry in English.  In the Paley poem, however, the generic lark gives way to very specific and (in spring poems) very unexpected creatures:  A Gentoo Penguin, a Suriname Toad, a Red Panda, a Harbor Seal, and bats. They do unexpected things, too. They’re no longer simply warbling.  “Blissful tears are shed / by a Gentoo Penguin mid-plunge.” The Suriname Toad “ascend[s] to a higher plane.” “Mary, Mother of God,” pops into the poem from nowhere, to relieve “a Red Panda of all anxiety and self-loathing.” The poem resembles nothing so much as the loopy, animated (in both senses) world of early Disney films, where animals, birds, humans, even flowers and trees, fired by spring, dance and sing with loony abandon. The creatures in this poem, and apparently the poet persona too, are all beside themselves with joy; and by the end the reader is too. I’ve read this poem a number of times. Each time I read it the final lines, rising to their peak of excess, made me laugh and – yes – made me happy, even if not quite as happy as the delirious bats.

-- Patricia Carlin

On Young Actors, The Collector and How We Treat Ourselves by Michael O’Keefe

Last night I was fortunate enough to see a production of an adaptation of John Fowles’ novel, The Collector at the Ruskin Theater Group in Santa Monica, CA.  (In the interest of full disclosure I should note that the director, Edward Edwards and I have been friends for over thirty-five years.)

            The two young actors in the show, Jaimi Page and Dane Zinter do wonderful things conveying the horrifying experience a beautiful young woman endures after being kidnapped by a deranged lottery winner who is obsessed with her.

            As I said to Eddie afterwards, “Even though I’ve been acting for forty years I have to ask myself how those two did what they did.  It was amazing.”

            Ms. Paige conveys all the terror and desperation of her ordeal while maintaining her dignity and deploying intellectual superiority over her captor for minimal gains in her basement prison.

            Mr. Zinter’s deluded butterfly collector is both disturbing and oddly endearing.  While abhorring his actions one feels a kind of pity for him not unlike that of his victim, who professes a desire to defend him should she escape and he stand trial. 

            At a small reception afterward I did my best to convey to each of them how impressed I was by their work and how I hoped they both found success in “the business,” as we call it.

            Upon deeper reflection this morning over coffee I wondered whether I should have also told them that even breaking into show business and garnering roles worthy of their talent might still leave them in need of a day job to make ends meet.

            The unfortunate truth for young actors is that they are entering a world where fees are diminishing as the marketplace offers fewer venues for fiction on film.  The break down of what we called, “the quote system” in show business, a dollar amount an actor could reasonably demand for his time, the reduction of “top of show” fees for a guest actor on a series by over fifty percent in most cases, and the amount of competition they will face are daunting elements for aspiring actors.  Fees for actors in independent film are always quite low and Internet shows are rarely  providing that much, if anything at all.

            On a personal note let me put it to you this way.  I landed a role opposite George Clooney in Tony Gilroy’s Michael Clayton.  It was the fifth largest role in the film.  Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Tom Wilkinson and Sydney Pollack had the leading roles.  I was paid scale and hired as a local actor, which meant that even though I was living in Los Angeles at the time I would have to find my own bed and board while in NY.  In another era, one in the not so distant past, I would have been paid a high five-figure perhaps even six-figure salary, given a hotel room, and a per diem.  Those days are gone.

            Unless young actors break in as stars, or land series regular roles on the dwindling TV series market, they will have to make serious choices about lifestyle, family and planning for retirement.  My fear is that the smart ones, like Ms. Paige and Mr. Zinter, will take a look around and wonder why they should bother at all.  And I couldn’t blame them.  It’s easy enough to blame producers, studios and networks for this.  But in fairness to them they are catering to the tastes of the market place and keeping an eye on the bottom line.  So, who’s to blame?  No easy answer there.  This is just who we are and how we treat ourselves in show business.

            Ms. Paige and Mr. Zinter will have to find that out for themselves.  With a bit of luck they may rise above the fray.  I certainly hope they do.

            Despite the blistering frustration I sometimes feel after forty years as an actor I still believe in the power of theater, film and TV to convey the poetry and elegance of artistic realization to a large audience.  If only those of us who could would spread the wealth around just a bit more artists might sustain themselves and realize their potential. 

"Oy" (by Mitch Sisskind) --->>

"Oy" is one of the greatest words in any language and I've noticed that
people of all backgrounds quickly pick it up and start using it. During the
coming week, let's take a look at some situations in which saying "Oy"
is very appropriate.

"Evasion of Privacy" [by Jordan Davis]

When they ask me can they just be honest,
The sweetest place I can go is out to
The eight-track, line in, breathe out. Anyway
You go, always all-time, flash cards
I watched come up over the hills
Then go behind a cloud until dusk,
A word that settles on marigolds
With intent to bioluminesce. I have that
Get up and be there feeling myself,
And as long as I can remember it's
Sent me out to the arcade, unmoored,
Maybe in a fedora, who knows. Just
Leave me alone means come home
And love me, I thought everyone knew.

-- Jordan Davis
from Copper Nickel

In Dreams by Michael O'Keefe

 I’m on a Pegasus descending from the heavens to earth where a friend is waiting by a fire.  He had advised me telepathically to land the horse.  As I do, it’s breathing words out its nose.  Pegasus and I descend rapidly but gracefully to earth at a steep angle towards my friend. We land and are now facing the opposite direction of our descent as Pegasus breathes more words out its nose.

I had the above dream about a month ago.  Upon relating it to my shrink, a Jungian, his eyes grew wide and he replied, “You were riding Pegasus.  Wow.”  He went on to explain how Pegasus was the mount of the muses in Greek Mythology. 

The story goes that Bellerophon was commanded by King Iobates to kill the Chimera, a hellish creature with a lion’s head, dragon’s tail, and goat’s body.   For inspiration Bellerophon sleeps in the temple of Athena and in his dream she gives him a golden bridle.  Upon awaking, the bridle from his dream by his side, Bellerophon finds Pegasus, who submits to his bridle and off they go to fight the Chimera.  The Chimera’s fire breathing initially proves too much for Bellerophon but after mounting a large block of lead on his spear he manages to lodge it in the Chimera’s throat, which melts, cutting of its air passage, and killing the beast.

Bellerophon had many more journeys with Pegasus but upon attempting to reach the gods was struck down by a gadfly under Zeus’s command who bites Pegasus thereupon shaking Bellerophon off the winged horse.  Pegasus was then stabled with Zeus’s other horses and in relation to that we have a constellation named Pegasus.

So, what, if anything can be made of all that?

To some dreams are not much more than the brain’s attempt to organize stimuli that occur while sleeping.  To others they are a key to individual and collective unconscious.  And to still others, they are no different from what we usually to refer to as ‘the real world.’  That is to say, reality is no more real than dreams therefore dreams are real. 

Here’s what I make of it:  I write.  And my writing has taken on a deeper meaning in my life.  With it I can aspire to great things, even accomplish some, like the elimination of hellish fantasies that plague me.  But reach too far, aim too high, and I’m sure to fall with dire consequences.

Humility is not my strong suit.  But I have been beaten into a state of surrender by circumstances, which is not a bad thing.

Funnily enough, I dreamed of a former love of mine last night.  We were desperate to escape a prison camp by a river.  At first searching the shore for a boat I finally stole a car and away we went. 

As I was writing this she called me and I related the dream to her.  She was happy we escaped by whatever means.  I told her I had to go because I was writing this blog about my dreams, which are no less real than reality.

XXI. The 30 Films of Akira Kurosawa: Shichinin no samurai (The Seven Samurai) [1954] (by Lewis Saul)] (Part 1)

Ed note:  For the next several weeks, composer and film aficionado Lewis Saul has agreed to supply us with in-depth commentary about the films of Akira Kurosawa, now showing in an extended festival at the Film Forum. Even if you're unable to stop by the Forum, we think Lew's insights will deepen your appreciation of these important movies.

Shichinin no samurai (The Seven Samurai) [1954]

PLAYING on January 29th and 30th at The Film Forum

This is Kurosawa's 14th film.

Two hundred and seven minutes is 3:27. If AK did his job, it will seem like a very short three-and-a-half hours!

Galbraith: "A 16th century rural farming village learns bandits plan to invade and steal their crop. They hire seven ronin to protect them: Kambei (Takashi Shimura), their leader; Kikuchiyo (Mifune), a wild but brave warrior; Heihachi (Minoru Chiaki), a samurai with limited ability but whose affability will boost morale; Kyuzo (Seiji Miyaguchi), an expert swordsman; Shichiroji (Daisuke Katô), who with Kambei survived many battles; Gorobei (Yoshio Inaba), a wise samurai; and Katsushiro (Isao Kimura), disciple to Kambei. The samurai teach the farmers how to protect themselves, and the bandits are vanquished. But the price of freedom is heavy. Homes are lost and several farmers die in the attacks, as do four of the samurai." [p. 173].

Shinobu Hashimoto (eight films with AK) and Hideo Oguni (12) were as usual excellent collaborators! "After Ikiru," says Hashimoto in Galbraith, "we wanted to write a screenplay about a single samurai. We decided to show one day of a samurai's life, from the time that he woke up, prayed with incense, spent time with his family, went to the castle, and so on. At one point during the day he would make some kind of mistake, and at the end of the story he would commit seppuku" [p. 170].

After working on this for some time (along with Producer Sôjirô Motoki, and Production Supervisor, Hiroshi Nezu), Hashimoto told Kurosawa that he didn't think the idea would work. Kurosawa was furious about the time lost, but thankfully Hashimoto's ideas went into his script for the incredible 1962 Kobayashi film Seppuku (Harakiri).

XXI. The 30 Films of Akira Kurosawa: Shichinin no samurai (The Seven Samurai) [1954] (by Lewis Saul)] (Part 2)

 

• 0:00:00 (Disc 2). These lovely Eisensteinian images are accompanied by a cute, pentatonic ditty by Hayasaka.
• 0:00:15. Very cool. After seven cuts in 14 seconds (average cut, two seconds), this one lasts ten seconds, uses fluid camera motion, and tells the viewer everything he needs to know about the upcoming scene: the camera tracks four young women -- all carrying straw -- along a path. At once, we see Kikuchiyo at the upper left of frame facing away from the camera. He turns and -- seeing the girls -- runs towards them (us). The camera holds on him, smiling, wondrous! (Mifune was never better.)
• 0:00:54. Nothing much to add, except to put a little punctuation mark on Kikuchiyo's growing fondness for Yohei. Here he runs up to him and speaks as if Yohei himself has hidden these gorgeous women away in his own secret harem or something! Bokuzen's face and laugh ... "oni," ("devil") Kikuchiyo says to him, giving his forehead a little push (I see this gesture a lot in Japanese cinema!)
• 0:01:11. Kikuchiyo's desire to help out the girl is perfectly natural for reasons other than his barely contained sexual passion -- he is naturally a farmer, and feels right at home using the scythe.
•  At around this point, the subplots of Manzo/Shino and Rikichi/? are coming into focus; although we're not sure about Rikichi. He has just turned a bamboo grove into a "bear's den."
• The Russian music again here. Ominous.
• 0:05:42. Waking up Kikuchiyo only proves that Kambei knows he is not really a samurai. This again shows Kambei's wisdom, because such a scary test would be sure to nudge Kikuchiyo into more responsible behavior (which it -- in fact -- seems to do, in the end!) ...

Kurosawa: SEVEN SAMURAI CONTEST! Win a Kurosawa DVD of your choice! Guess the number! (by Lewis Saul)

WIN A KUROSAWA DVD OF YOUR CHOICE!

I am elated to have had this opportunity to blog about Akira Kurosawa.

I like to count things, and I have counted every single cut in Shichinin no samurai (The Seven Samurai) [1954]. (Believe it or not, this information is actually useful to me in my studies of Kurosawa's filmmaking).

HERE'S THE CONTEST:

In honor of today's epic post on Seven Samurai, I am offering a free DVD to the person who can come closest to guessing my worked-so-hard-for tally of the actual total number of cuts (this includes straight cuts, wipes, dissolves and fades to black) in Seven Samurai. The person who guesses the number which is closest to my actual count (final and official) without going over wins a free Kurosawa DVD of your choice. I will ship it to you anywhere in the continental United States. If you want a DVD set of two or more discs, I will divide the Amazon purchase price by the amount of discs and will give you that in an Amazon gift certificate. (For instance, if you want the new AK 100 set [$289.99 today], then I would send you an Amazon GC for $11.60 [$289.99 div. by 25 discs = $11.60]).

Put your guesses in the comment box. One guess per person.

Contest ends at 12:01 AM Eastern Standard Time on Thursday, February 18, 2010. Not open to any recognized member of the Kurosawa-gumi, Donald Richie, Stephen Prince or the projectionist at The Film Forum. Winner will be announced in these pages on Friday, February 19, 2010, and need not be present to win the grand prize. Being past or future is fine, too.

In the event of a tie, I will break it at random.org with a timestamp.

I have checked the internet as best I could, and I don't believe that anyone has ever published this information before.

IF, HOWEVER, it becomes known that this information is published (either in a book or on the net) then THIS CONTEST IS NULL AND VOID. I am doing this because I don't think it's ever been done before.

Clear?

-- Lewis Saul

XX. The 30 Films of Akira Kurosawa: Yume (Akira Kurosawa's Dreams) [1990] (by Lewis Saul)]

Ed note:  For the next several weeks, composer and film aficionado Lewis Saul has agreed to supply us with in-depth commentary about the films of Akira Kurosawa, now showing in an extended festival at the Film Forum. Even if you're unable to stop by the Forum, we think Lew's insights will deepen your appreciation of these important movies.

Yume (Akira Kurosawa's Dreams) [1990]

PLAYING January 28th at The Film Forum

This is Kurosawa's 28th film.

I cannot think of another Kurosawa film which engenders such wildly divergent feelings as this one.

For example, personally speaking, of the eight dreams, I can watch four of them endlessly. I find them beautiful and like to linger in their colorful worlds over and over again. I never get tired of them!

That leaves four additional dreams. I cannot put it any other way -- I detest these four sections, and at times like these, when I feel I must watch them again in order to write something coherent -- I realize just why I dislike them so much. I notice myself squirming in my seat waiting for it to be over and for one of my "favorites" to come up!

I'll let you know which is which in a few more sentences -- my opinions are far from universal; many of my favorite critics love the episodes I hate and vice versa.

As usual, the story behind the making of the film is pretty fascinating, and again it involves Kurosawa's nephew, Mike Inoue: "One day I got a call from my uncle, who said, 'I need your help. Why don't you come over?' He said to me, 'I received a letter from Steven Spielberg which doesn't make any sense.' So I went over to his home and he said that he had written a script called 'Such Dreams I Have Dreamed' and that he had sent a translation of that script to Spielberg for possible financing. I read Spielberg's reply, which said, 'Thank you for sending the synopsis, and if you do a script, please send it to me.' I said, 'Uncle, what did you send to him?' And he said, '[I didn't send a synopsis.] I finished the whole script and sent it to a translation company, and they sent it on.' I read the translation he sent. It was terrible and missing many important nuances from Kurosawa's original Japanese script. I then volunteered to re-translate. It took me over a month to complete my translation as I had to commute to his home frequently to ask him about the nuances he intended to express between the lines. A few days after we sent my translation to Spielberg, we received a fax from him stating that he was highly impressed with this script and offering his help to find a financier. He brought in Warner Brothers who gave us a Negative-Pickup guarantee for the film to be directed by Kurosawa." (Negative pickup means that WB bought the finished film but did not finance it. Kurosawa did so with bank loans) [Galbraith, p. 603].

• "Inoue and Kurosawa decided to meet with Spielberg at Universal Studios. When they greeted each other, they kept bowing, and Spielberg refused to sit down before Kurosawa did" [p. 604].
• The film cost $12 million.

Poetic Tip of the Day --->>>

Up After Three Months in My Bed Last Night by Michael O'Keefe

Home After Three Months Away by Robert Lowell

Gone now the baby's nurse,
a lioness who ruled the roost
and made the Mother cry.
She used to tie
gobbets of porkrind in bowknots of gauze--
three months they hung like soggy toast
on our eight foot magnolia tree,
and helped the English sparrows
weather a Boston winter.

Three months, three months!
Is Richard now himself again?
Dimpled with exaltation,
my daughter holds her levee in the tub.
Our noses rub,
each of us pats a stringy lock of hair--
they tell me nothing's gone.
Though I am forty-one,
not forty now, the time I put away
was child's play. After thirteen weeks
my child still dabs her cheeks
to start me shaving. When
we dress her in her sky-blue corduroy,
she changes to a boy,
and floats my shaving brush
and washcloth in the flush. . . .
Dearest I cannot loiter here
in lather like a polar bear.

Recuperating, I neither spin nor toil.
Three stories down below,
a choreman tends our coffin's length of soil,
and seven horizontal tulips blow.
Just twelve months ago,
these flowers were pedigreed
imported Dutchmen; now no one need
distinguish them from weed.
Bushed by the late spring snow,
they cannot meet
another year's snowballing enervation.

I keep no rank nor station.
Cured, I am frizzled, stale and small.

        
     Robert Lowell was one of the great American poets of the Twentieth Century, or any century and any country for that matter.  “For the Union Dead” alone would suffice to get his name into the mix on that discussion.  But I want to draw your attention to, “Home After Three Months Away.” 

To really appreciate this poem you should hear Lowell reading it with his sonorous, depressed and oddly mixed New England accent with the Louisiana lilt that some say he acquired as a student at LSU.  It’s available in Sourcebooks, Poetry Speaks.  His mournful sound drones like the last bit of air being squeezed from a Celtic bagpipe, though his people descended from the Boston Brahman and Mayflower immigrants.

The opening image of his daughter’s nurse, “Gone now…” hanging, “gobbets of porkrind in bowknots of gauze” to help, “…the English sparrows weather a Boston winter,” is deployed to establish his upper class status (note his command of Middle English.)  It is juxtaposed against the nurse’s capacity to rule the roost and “make the Mother cry.”  How odd the use of the article “the” before “Mother.”  That one word possibly reveals the distance between Lowell and his wife, Elizabeth Hardwick, who he would leave eleven years after the writing of this poem.  (For a good heartbreak consider that he died in a cab on his way to reunite with Hardwick after seven years with English author Lady Caroline Blackwood.  Arriving at Hardwick’s Manhattan apartment building the cab driver turned around to find Lowell in the backseat dead from a heart attack).

After his lament, “Three months, three months! / Is Richard now himself again?” (Richard, really himself, Robert) There’s a brief respite with his daughter and he sharing a bath, a biblical reference to putting away childish things, “… they tell me nothing's gone. / Though I am forty-one, / not forty now, / the time I put away, / was child's play.”

And after his daughter momentarily appears as a son we get to the meat of the matter, not the gobbet hung in gauze.  The coffin-sized yard, the tulips now weeds, “Bushed by the late spring snow, / they cannot meet/ another year's snowballing enervation. // I keep no rank nor station. / Cured, I am frizzled, stale and small.”

In a letter to Peter Taylor, Lowell wrote, “In depression…I too go over my life trying to understand it ­­–– I think in a way, I never understood it, that it is addition not be understood just completed…Yet I can’t live that way, must live with a point to be reached.”

It’s a wonder Lowell never committed suicide.  (See David Markson’s Reader’s Block for a list of those who did.)

All of which is a circuitous way of saying I struggle with depression. And can appreciate feeling cured, frizzled and small.  At the age of fifty-four, one might think I would have found an efficacious way to address my mood swings.  I have not.  And after analysis, Zen practice and numerous self-help programs I go through long periods of time when nothing is so bleak as the prospect of getting up and getting into the day.

Thank God Lowell went through what he did and was able to articulate it with grace and elegance. It was enough to get me past the snowballing enervation of the blizzard in my bed to post this blog about one of our national treasures.

R.I.P., J.D. Salinger

"It's really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs."

"I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody."

"All morons hate it when you call them a moron."

"It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to."

"An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's."

“I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.”

"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."

 

J.D. Salinger, 1919-2010

On Jackson Pollock's Birthday

<<<
On this birthday of Jackson Pollock (born in Cody, Wyoming on January 28, 1912), I’m reminded of Frank O’Hara’s appreciation for Pollock’s paintings. From the beginning of Pollock’s experimentation in the late 1940s—dripping paint on an unstretched canvas positioned across his floor (perhaps inspired by Indian sandpainting) and scraping the covered surface with odd instruments, sticks, or knives—Frank O’Hara appeared fascinated by the technique, which both Pollock and O’Hara viewed as a process toward freedom from restraint or convention.

Pollock’s action painting, containing dark arcs of paint or lines of spattered drops lengthening like beaded chains, embraced spontaneity and imitated coincidence much the way many of O’Hara’s action composition poems narrating events as they may have happened attempted to speak to their readers with a seemingly natural, unfiltered voice relating personal observations or experiences.
>>>

-- Ed Byrne. Click here for the rest of Byrne's piece.

XIX. The 30 Films of Akira Kurosawa: Rashômon (In the Woods) [1950] (by Lewis Saul)

Ed note:  For the next several weeks, composer and film aficionado Lewis Saul has agreed to supply us with in-depth commentary about the films of Akira Kurosawa, now showing in an extended festival at the Film Forum. Even if you're unable to stop by the Forum, we think Lew's insights will deepen your appreciation of these important movies.

Rashômon (In the Woods) [1950]

PLAYING on January 28th at The Film Forum

This is Kurosawa's 11th film.

You lucky New Yorkers will see a brand new 35mm restored print! How I envy you! Go see this film today!

This précis is probably unnecessary, so universally known is this story -- but I include it here so as to make the actors who play these memorable characters more familiar to you:

In the 11th century, a woodcutter (Takashi Shimura -- 21 roles for Kurosawa in his 30 films!*) and a priest (Minoru Chiaki) wait out a heavy rainstorm under the collapsing Rashômon gate. A commoner (Kichijirô Ueda) joins them and the woodcutter tells his story about a samurai (Masayuki Mori), his wife (Machiko Kyô, her only AK role) and a bandit (Mifune). They all testified in court, and in addition, a medium (Noriko [Fumiko] Homma) testified on behalf of the dead samurai. Throw an abandoned newborn infant into the mix at the finish, as Kurosawa appends a sharp moral uplift.

The profound influence that this film had on future cinema is impossible to overstate. In 1950, no one had ever seen anything like it! Galbraith points out three films which later attempted to mimic the structure of Kurosawa's masterpiece: Kubrick's The Killing [1956]; Alain Resnais' L'année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year at Marienbad) [1961]; and Mario Bava's Quante volte ... quella notte (Four Times that Night) [1972] [p. 129].

Poetic Tip of the Day --->>>

Bullet Post [by Jennifer Michael Hecht]

 Dear Bleaders,

Sorry to be filing late.  When I sat down at my desk there was a blue sky with white puffy snowflakes that turned out to be insulation from the house they’re building two doors down.  Now it is almost pumpkin time for the little worker-bee I call me, which is six pm weeknights.  I have to limit my time trying to write because otherwise I’d stay screenward too long, but rules, bread, hearts, and records are made to be broken and I rilly feel like chatting with youse right now.  I liketa whisper in yer ear.   For the sake of efficiency, I’m thinking bullet points.  (For the rice wine of efficiency.  Can we start using “rice wine” wherever we’d once have used “sake.”  Oh for heaven’s rice wine.)

1) Are you familiar with the Significant Objects project?  I blogged about it here the week that my story and object were for sale.  Anyway the object story that is up now is by the magnificent Annie Nocenti. 

2) How great has this site been lately, right?  Was just quietly loving this Michael O’Keefe poet person, then realize it’s Danny Noonan.  OTG.  Welcome Michael! My husband saw you in Mass Appeal in 1981!

3) OTG means Oh Their God.  Along with being a poet I am a minor-famous atheist.

4) Love the post on Avraham Sutzkever.

5) Did you hear the sad news that the great Howard Zinn has died?  I learned via Marge Piercy on Facebook, it was a heart attack, this morning.  I’m saddened by this as many will be.  I never met him but of course read him, and when my book Doubt: A History was coming out the publisher sent galleys to HZ and he gave them a great blurb which now sits on the front cover in both in cloth and paper.  The quote got edited down to “Jennifer Hecht’s romp—light-hearted but serious—brings to life an awesome array of figures in philosophy, science, and literature, in a way that is wonderfully engaging.”  I just went into my archives and found the original and I’m proudly hanging it here today:

“I have enjoyed immensely Jennifer Hecht’s romp --light-hearted but serious -- though the history of one profoundly important idea -- doubt. She brings to life an awesome array of figures in philosophy, science, and literature, in a way that is wonderfully engaging.”

Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States

How could they have cut “enjoyed immensely”?   Anyway, people have picked up on his word “romp,” perhaps subconsciously – and attached it to Doubt: A History in a way that is sweet and odd.  Several people in reviews or whatever have actually argued with the categorization as if the book were titled “a romp through doubt.”  It's no romp they say.  It is, after all, a big ‘ol book on history and philosophy.  But I love that for Howard Zinn, Doubt: A History *was* a romp.  Come to think of it, saluting his memory, I am pleased as a Cheshire cat to have given "immense enjoyment" to a thinker of such courage, energy, brilliance, and grace.

6) I just went and bought Michael’s poetry book, Swimming from Under My Father.  I love his “On the Efficacy of Prayer” post, don’t you?  Smart, heart, walks the line.  (Of course, you know the reason I walk the line.  It’s because you’re mine.)

7)   Laura, love the Bix, big thanks for the clip, it’s been soundtracking the writing of this note.  Also the Jean Simmons vid, so sweet.  Also loving Saul’s Just a Dumb Musician’s Kurosawa commentaries.  Wish I could buy all Mitch Sisskind’s new posters that I see on this site.  I have seen the future and it is Mitch Sisskind’s new posters.

8) Just amazoned (new word for e-bought) a novel by Brad Leithauser having read him here and one click followed another.

9) No, I do not have enough money to buy books alla time like this, I’ve been good lately but think of the delicious packages arriving in their wee book boxes.

10) David your poem Ode to Buddhism (use the Look Inside to read online) still cracks me up

11) Emma Trelles, I like your Ezili Freda a lot.  Good going Katha, gotta love Mary J. 

12)Jeopardy!'s half over!  I gotta go.

Love,

Jennifer

ps I call the above pic Many Lights In the Night, which is also what I call all yall.  wink.  stay up late and read poetry! xox