On Charles North [by Michael Schiavo]

In the past year (at least) I've made several attempts to write a long piece about Charles North's excellent 2007 book Cadenza. Each time, I've faltered. I think my best course of action is to apply for a grant and, Gideons-like, use the money to place not just Cadenza but all his other books into hotel rooms across the country. The book would act both as reading material, the artwork that adorns the walls, and the rural radio station. I'd like to call his style something like "Transcendental Objectivist" but I don't want the responsibility.

The book's title poem is one of the great longer poems of the last decade. Akin to Ashbery's "The Skaters" in that it's a kind of entry into North's poetry. It's indeed a cadenza—"an elaborate flourish or showy solo passage, sometimes improvised, introduced near the end of an aria or a movement of a concerto." Except that it's the first poem in the book, so we already know we're in for something different. It's a discourse that opens up the fluid passage between the reader and the book, an argument for a certain approach to the creation and evaluation of art that still seems to be largely dismissed. Like Ashbery's poetry, it puts the classical and contemporary on the same plane. Medusa romps with Ted Williams, Athena and "How High the Moon" are not so dissimilar. I remember the exact passage where I began to feel the top of my head being taken off—and I mean this quite literally: I had a physical reaction to the revelation

Then I am at the bottom

of an extremely tall, vaguely cylindrical

(something about it reminds me of a free-form glass candy bowl)

swimming pool which has the water painted up the sides

and no clear point of exit or entry.

Far off, near what must be the top, is what looks like

a porthole where, if the pool were in fact filled,

a swimmer could theoretically exit—although

if this were as well the point at which

the water entered, exiting would be problematic to say the least.

The water is painted in a pleasing

—actually dry-looking—powder blue,

more the look and fell of sky than water,

neither realistic nor stylized (in the manner,

say, of a Hokusai) but somewhere between the two.

The English painter David Hockney, who has in fact

painted swimming pools, comes to mind.

I don't have enough space here to investigate all the nooks in "Cadenza" that I'd like to, but the ending must be mentioned, for it is also a key. The penultimate stanza takes the form of a memo/email to, we presume at first, one of North's graduating classes at Pace, then lists several lines of names. Whether these students are real real or invented, who knows, and that's North's point. Then, the last stanza goes

In a crowded off-Broadway theater,

a heckler refuses to sit down despite mounting threats

from the relatively large audience. Several of the costumed and in

    some cases masked actors

(they are doing Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream in

    traditional dress)

though visibly distracted, climb down from the stage

and form a protective ring around him. Bottom

appears to be the ringleader.

North and like-minded readers are the hecklers, the agitator-artists, that art comes to defend when the public, who paid good money and just want to see a show, doesn't get it. Shakespeare was/is as "meta-" and "post-" as anything in the 20th or 21st centuries. Naturally, Nick Bottom would come to the rescue.

Some of my favorite poems in the book are "Romantic Note," "Boul' Mich," "Au Printemps," "Clip From Francis Jammes," "October," "Holy Sonnet," and "My Ship Has Sails." "Study" is another great example of how North manages to be a poet, painter, musician, architect all in eight lines

It must be daylight

Your painting of chicory dividing a dark green field

Fills on all sides with light.

It must be daylight.

Some of the portions which are out of sight

Become what the painting yields.

It must be daylight:

Your painting of chicory dividing a dark green field.

North also includes three translations of his own poems (all called "Translation") to illustrate just how much art can and should be like nature. Here, the first stanza of the first "Translation"

I feel you very close to me

In the same way that sky and air seem not two things but one

Those termite-like pests are attacking the two-by-fours

O two-by-fours.

And the first stanza from the original poem, "Song":

I am pressed up against you

Like air pressed up against the sky

The carpenter ants are at work on the bearing beams

O bearing beams

Like Kenneth Koch's two poems, both called "The Circus," North asks us with these translations to investigate our stance on the chicken/egg argument, to ask ourselves if a piece of art is ever really finished or if, like nature, it can ever revise itself.

North is also the inventor of one the few truly original American forms of poetry: the lineup. Last year he released Complete Lineups, and while we can celebrate the fact that these excellent poems have been collected in one volume, the book's very title means that we are unlikely to see any more from their inventor. But rejoice! You're living in the Holy Roman Empire, Giacomo da Lentini just invented the sonnet, and you can buy his book.

Unlike other sports, the lineup is an integral part of the game of baseball. It's a tradition requiring managers to exchange lineups before the first batter steps to the plate, not simply sportscasters informing the listener/viewer who's playing where today. Its form resides in nature, or reality, is utilitarian, can't be unwoven from the actual game. In this sense it is very American because it's both philosophical and practical.

The lineup is also three-dimensional, for while the batting order is important, so are the field positions that each player is assigned. One of my favorites is a newer lineup, an epithalamium, that North wrote for his daughter Jill and her husband ("For Jill & Ted")

Elizabeth Bennett & Mr. Darcy  3b

Wallis Simpson & The Duke of Windsor  lf

Romeo & Juliet  ss

Jill North & Ted Sider  cf

Space & Time  rf

Hitler & Eva Braun  1b

Venice & The Sea  2b

My Big Fat Greek Wedding  c

Cinderella & Prince Charming  p

Socrates & Xanthippe  dh

PINCH HITTERS

Jason & Medea

Oedipus & Jocasta

Lorena & John Wayne Bobbitt

Henry VIII & Anne Boleyn, Kathryn Howard, etc.

The ultimate Romantic coupling in literature leads off, possibly stealing your heart, followed by a union that truly came out of left field. Romeo & Juliet did indeed stop their romance short, and North hopes that his daughter and her husband will clean up. Space & Time sit in right field, waiting. Hitler & his betrothed didn't get very far and were heavy hitters. A second baseman is pretty unique, much like Venice and its situation with The Sea. My Big Fat Greek Wedding, a 21st-century romance, takes the pitch from storybook characters. Designated hitters Socrates & Xanthippe are the archetypal put-upon husband and nagging wife, but Socrates, like Jill, is a philosopher, so is she husband or wife? And surely North hopes he doesn't  have to call in any of the pitch hitters, that his lineup will be able to take Jill and Ted all nine innings.

Is this exactly what North had in mind when he composed this lineup? That's not the point. These poems allow the reader to argue and debate with himself and others, just like fans in a fantasy league, why the goddamn manager made these decisions. There's a terrific piece on MLB.com about Complete Lineups (John Latta also wrote a great review) wherein North explains that it's synesthesia that leads him to his final order, though some, like "Pets" or "Spices" don't have a lot of wiggle room: "With the spices, vanilla batting eighth, with garlic a heavy hitter, and salt and pepper up there, those aren't my opinions. That's the way things are."

Maybe we shouldn't really rejoice if we're living in the new Holy Roman Empire, but at least we've got Charles North to help us arrange things.

Comments

[DL]

"With the spices, vanilla batting eighth, with garlic a heavy hitter, and salt and pepper up there, those aren't my opinions. That's the way things are." I love that. Way to go!