The Best American Poetry

"Lunching with Elaine Equi" [by David Lehman]

Sometimes, when lunching alone, I bring Elaine Equi along for company,
rereading Ripple Effect sipping a cup of strong black coffee and slipping
into the room where Fairfield Porter paints the light, and solitude
rhymes with altitude, attitude, multitude, lassitude, and beatitude.
That’s how I see and hear things, too. And the music is “John Coltrane’s
Central Park West,” where Elaine names the tenor saxophonist playing
“if [she] were having an affair / with myself as a married man.” Now if
we’re talking shop I’d have to pause here to talk about the line-breaks
because her rhythms her timing depend on them and the rhythm
and wit of her poems is their greatness, often achieved in short lines,
bite-size bits, though her prose poems are pretty amazing, too, such as
“Ultra Confessional” (the shoplifting stage follows the age of living in
“Victorian  novels on the verge of swooning”) and “Found in Translation,”
which praises not only “whatever cannot be killed by the translator”
but all translations, even bad ones, because reading itself
is a version of translation, a chain of logic leading to the epiphany
that “it would be great to learn French in order to read
William Carlos Williams.” The “perversely patriotic” narrator
of one of Elaine’s poems liked S & M before terrorism killed it
on the evening news. I know what she means but share her confidence
that new sources of inspiration will continue to show up
as two beautiful hookers helping her decide what to wear.

On the Erotic in Poetry and Literature (part I) [by David Lehman]

         In My Secret Life (c. 1890), that classic work of late Victorian pornography, the author, an anonymous gentleman with a raging libido and the compulsion to repeat and record his amatory adventures, writes, “Providence has made the continuation of the species depend on a process of coupling the sexes, called fucking. . . . It is not a graceful operation – in fact it is not more elegant than pissing, or shitting, and is more ridiculous; but it is one giving the intensest pleasure to the parties operating together, and most people try to do as much of it as they can.” The artless simplicity of these sentences is their charm, though they are more complicated than meets the eye. Notice the relation of “coupling” to the perpetuation of the species on the one hand and to superlative pleasure on the other. The conjugation of the bodies is the observance of a sacrament, a religious imperative, but it also involves the unrelentingly gross human body in an “operation” no finer than urination or defecation, and “more ridiculous.”

      Call it “fucking” or call it “making love”: the “process of coupling” is the fact at the center of all erotic speculation. “Fucking” remains the ultimate profanity. The word’s effect is like that of the Tarot card of the Lovers dealt upside down: the same meaning in the form of its negative inversion. But any word or phrase for sexual intercourse, euphemistic and genteel, or clinical and precise, or lewd and graphic, will prove inadequate to the ramifications of the act. The many possible ways of talking about it, that great pronoun -- or, as Freud would have it, Id -- suggests that contradictory impulses are at work, or contradictory ways of presenting the same impulse. An instance of heterosexual love, for example, can be depicted as the union of yin and yang, husband and wife engaged in the blessed task of procreation, or contrarily as an anomalous episode during a temporary truce in the battle between the sexes. In any case, we know that sexual desire is a drive that seems to trump all others and dictate human behavior, sometimes against all reason or beyond any rational explanation. We know that it is the most intense and irresistible of bawdy pleasures, that it makes fools and rascals and buffoons of us and often lowers the attitudinal level from tragic postures and epic vistas to bedroom farces and comedies of Eros. Yet as Anonymous noted in 1890, “most people try to do as much of it as they can,” and everyone thinks about it more than anyone will admit.

      Classical images of Eros, or Cupid as the Romans renamed him, show an infant archer or, in Jacques-Louis David’s famous painting, an impishly grinning young man with angel’s wings beside his sleeping beauty, Psyche, embodiment of the eternal feminine. It is not difficult to decode the symbolism in all of this. That Cupid is depicted as a baby points to the inevitable consequences of sex, and you are left to wonder whether the child to come is a penalty for a guilty pleasure, an extra mouth to feed, or a reward. According to Apuleius in The Golden Ass, Psyche can link with her lover Cupid only at night, and on condition that she not see his face. Given that Psyche means “mind” or “soul” in Greek, can the myth be a parable in disguise? Not that use of a blindfold may produce excellent results, but that the soul’s yearning for erotic fulfillment can and does happen, albeit with strings attached that are easy to break, as Psyche learns to her consternation in Apuleius.

[from The Best American Erotic Poems ed. David Lehman (Scribner, 2008), which contains much wonderful writing, including what one creepy critic called "the worst poem ever written on any subject," illuminating Wittgenstein's concept of nonsense]

Next Line, Please: Homage to Anna Kamienska [by Virginia Valenzuela]

Last week on Next Line, Please the notoriously clever David Lehman proposed two of Anna Kamienska’s aphorisms—“Sleep is what I’ll miss most when I die,” and “I walk around disguised as an overweight old lady”—as possible springboards for poems, and the contributors of Next Line, Please did wonders with this tasty piece of bait.

“What I’ll miss most when I die” inspired Patricia Wallace’s “Homage to Kamienska,” which won plaudits and praise from some of our most discerning readers:

When I am dead I’ll miss the fox
who took up residence in my skull and listened
for the scurry of mouse feet under the many
layers of snow on my heart, and the owl asking “who,”
perched on the stones of my spine. I’ll miss
the hummingbirds migrating between my ribs,
their small hearts beating so fast I thought that mine
had stopped. I’ll miss the fish swimming my body’s waters
searching a way to the sea, the hare unrepentently
nibbling my pelvic meadows, the fireflies lighting
candles in the chambers of my ears, the chameleon lizards
lazily sunning themselves on the stations of my shoulder
blades. How surprised they will be, these small creatures,
for whom time moves more slowly, to find the doors
closing and all trace of inhabitants gone.

“Tourist Trap” by Ed Keller responds to the second side of the prompt—“I walk around disguised as an overweight old lady.”

I walk around disguised as a tourist
even though I’m from here
Wardrobe pieced together
from airport to downtown souvenir shop
I carry a bag from one of these places
as though I just came from there
I suppose it increases
my chances of being
targeted by people who look
for someone to take advantage of
In fact I know it does
Little do they know,
until the bag is opened,
that this is not simply a fashion statement
or an unconscious reflection
of my own mediocrity
This is the look of a villain killer
For I am living bait.

And next, a personal favorite, a poem offered by a poet who goes by Byron:

I walk around disguised as a fat man
with a club foot, or a bag lady in
the lift going down, or a bag man
delivering hundred dollar bills in
an old-fashioned medical bag to
the future mayor of Los Angeles.
Only in my sleep do I walk around
undisguised, naked, twenty years old.

And last but not least, springing from Kamienska “sleep” epigraph, David Lehman’s poem “The Dark Horse” which was made better by the poetic think tank that is NLP:

Chances are, I will miss nothing.

Death like good fortune comes
when you’re least ready or you’ve given up on it.

My definition of Zen is
you get what you want when you no longer want it.

Death comes as an even greater surprise than
risking fifty thousand bucks on the dark horse
in the Belmont and winning.

And if the long shot comes through
and there’s an afterlife, I would like to hear
“But Not For Me” with Vic Damone’s voice.

Visit the American Scholar's page to read the full post! And look out for a new prompt coming soon.

 

A Peck of Pickles and Poetry [review of "The Pickling Poet"] by Jennifer L. Knox

As a poet and cook, the pickle/poetry connection is obvious to me. A poem preserves a moment. No matter what emotion of that moment (wonder, surprise, grief, love, etc.), in its preserved poem form, we can turn it over in our hands and watch the light pass through it. We place the book on a shelf, return to it years later, and the poem comes alive again. A pickle freeze-frames one spectacular (hopefully—why would you pickle anything mediocre?) moment in the life of a cucumber, or a carrot, or an okra pod, as well as the spices symphonically swirling like stars in its brine. Unsinkable pink, white and brown peppercorns, greenish-gray bay leaves crisp as clarinet reeds, star anise like tiny rusty tractor parts. We place the jar on the shelf, unscrew the lid later, and that bright moment recommences.

The connection’s also obvious to proprietors of The Pickling Poet, Alex and Tanya Radison of Queens, New York. “We love pickles, and we love poetry, so why not join the two in a way that's never been done before, and elevate them both in the process?” Alex explains on The Picking Poet’s website, featuring inspired homemade pickles and jams made from fresh, locally sourced ingredients. The name was born in one of those moments that arises when one listens intently, as poets do habitually. “Tanya saw me cooking up one of my first batches of pickles and joked: ‘I could have married a doctor or lawyer. Instead, I married a pickling poet.’”

Their passion for combining the two is especially evident in the product names, which are inspired by some of the Radison’s favorite poets.

The Shakespeare: “Dill and garlic is our original blend, and he's the OG bard.” 
The Emily: A bread and butter blend that’s “a darkly sweet and a little melancholic.”
The Walt: A tri-color mustard blend “bursting with flavor, just like his personality which refused to be contained.”
The Bashó: Pickled edamame surprises in blend, brined with sesame, ginger, and rice vinegar.
The Maya: After Maya Angelou, hot pickled okra with a complex, strong cayenne kick. This was my fave of the flavors I tasted.
The Soronji: A curry-inspired recipe with cumin, cardamom and cinnamon. “I wanted to create something that celebrated her homeland, so I went for it. Interestingly, although Sarojini worked to unite people, this blend tends to divide them: people either absolutely love it or hate it.”
The Carmen: The only flavor named for a living poet, Carmen Gimenez Smith, is an ode to Latin American cuisine with sweet peppers and a bright orange habanero pepper brined in jalapeños, black peppercorns, cilantro and lime.
The Poe: Coming soon, this flavor will feature pickled strawberries, shaped like Tell-tale Hearts.

Along with pickles, they also create fabulous jams (the color of the blood orange strawberry surpasses the sunsets in all the Mad Max movies combined) and offer vegan honey, which is exemplary.

Every order includes a poem from Brine, The Pickling Poet’s own poetry magazine. You can download the complete journal from their website or purchase it from them at any of their market appearances. I was delighted to discover Sarah Etlinger’s poem, “Crossroads of America,” in my home delivery. 

Teenage girls, hair pulled back or cropped hugging necks, in cutoff shorts,
prop naked feet against the porch.
I see them all, stuck in a sort of trapped dream,
where tomorrow is more plowing more eating more fireflies
more picking more more more.

The effect was equal parts poem and pickle. I could’ve never imagined how wonderful that poem would make me feel—riding along as it had, all the way from Queens, with a menagerie of singular pickles and jams. As the Dude says in The Big Lebowski, “It really tied the room together, man.”

Submissions for volume 2 of Brine open on June 1. They’re also seeking an image for the cover. The selected artist will receive $50 and a free contributor copy of the journal. The Pickling Poet also has a Poet of the Month, whose work you can peruse on their website.

Jennifer L. Knox is the author of several celebrated volumes of poetry, most recently Days of Shame and Failure (Bloof Books, 2015). She is  is the proprietor of Saltlickers, a small-batch artisanal spice company. You can find Saltlickers ' herb and spice infused salts and finishing sugars online, at central Iowa farmer's markets, at the Ames CSA, Farm to Folk, and in a few very cool speciality stores. 

Born today, Benny Goodman plays "Sing, Sing, Sing" and Fred and Ginger dance

 

 

Ready, Set, Summer: "Celebrating 100 Years Of Leonard Bernstein, Boston Pops Showcase 'On The Town'" [by Lloyd Schwartz]

(Ed note: Lloyd Schwartz is the classical music critic for NPR’s Fresh Air and senior editor of Classical Music for New York Arts. His latest book of poems, "Little Kisses," was published by the University of Chicago Press.This preview of upcoming performances to celebrate Leonard Bernstein's centenary has us making our summer plans to visit Tanglewood. You can read Lloyd's complete preview here. sdl) 

Matthew DiBattista, Andrew Tighe, Aimee Doherty and David McFerrin perform music from Leonard Bernstine's "Candide" with the Boston Pops on May 5, 2018. (Courtesy Hilary Scott)

April 1944, a year before the end of the Second World War, marked the premiere of an extremely contemporary ballet called “Fancy Free,” about three sailors on a one-day leave in New York. Leonard Bernstein wrote the score, with choreography by Jerome Robbins. It was a landmark for both of them and is still in the repertory of countless dance companies around the world.

It was so successful that before the year was over, it had been turned into a full-length Broadway musical comedy titled “On the Town,” with additional music by Bernstein and book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green (who also performed in the original cast). Bernstein himself wrote the double-entendre lyrics to the comic number “I Can Cook Too” (“I can bake, too, on top of the lot,/ My oven's the hottest you'll find./ Yes, I can roast too,/ My chickens just ooze,/ My gravy will lose you your mind”).

As they begin their leave, the sailors sing “New York, New York, a helluva town,/The Bronx is up but the Battery’s down,/And people ride in a hole in the ground./New York, New York, it’s a helluva town!” And that anthem has remained a popular tribute to our most populous city.

In the 1949 MGM film version, shot on location, Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Jules Munshin are the sailors. The shocking “helluva” had to be changed to the less offensive “wonderful” to suit the production code.

The show is mainly comic, but as one of the sailors sings, “A town’s a lonely town.” And the show also captures the poignance of the war years, with all its separations and partings. If I had to choose a favorite song, it would probably be “Some Other Time,” a song of wistful regret and not entirely convincing optimism, giving the underlying possibility that these sailors might not return.

Just when the fun's beginning
Comes the final inning
But let's be glad for what we had and what's to come

Can't satisfy my craving
Never have watched you while you're shaving
Oh, well, we'll catch up some other time

There's so much more embracing
Still to be had, but time is racing
Oh, well, we'll catch up some other time

Continue reading here . . . 

World War II [poem by Edward Field]

During a recent dinner with David Alexander and Richard Howard, David told us the story of 19 year old Sgt. Jack Coleman Cook, who gave poet Edward Field his place in the life raft after the ditching of their B-17 The Challenger in the North Sea on February 3, 1945. Here's Edward Field reading "World War II" his poem about the rescue: 

-- sdl

Next Line, Please: What You Will Miss the Most [by Virginia Valenzuela]

Last week on Next Line, Please, contributors were tasked with a formidable concept: the creation of a new hero.

Lord Byron begins Don Juan, his comic masterpiece, with the lines “I want a hero, an uncommon want, / When every year and month sends forth a new one.” These are the heroes the writers of Next Line, Please came up with.

Donald LaBranche wants a hero that can do algebra and write poetry, the head and the heart all in one!

A hero from the border lands between poetry and algebra:
some stone-hearted, scat singing daughter of a catbird
from a long-suffering, secretive brood of Quebecois
should be just the ticket. And she’s on the way, so I’ve heard.
Third row back from the front of the train, bringing a coup d’état
to restore what passes for order out of this crazy. And afterward
will surely come hearings on her provenance, talk radio doubt
about a hero in the first place. Then, time for the mob to run her out.

Ravindra Rao’s “Study of Lines” brings us back to reality to remind us that our heroes are not always what they seem.

I made a hero out of heartbreak
like a painter fixated on the eye
of a storm that passed years ago. Ache
is the language of my spine,
hunched over your scant, naked
poetry, in which every line
presages the current snow.
How could I not know?

And finally Eric Fretz who champions (and here I agree) vulnerability over brute strength:

I want a hero who doesn’t catch cold
And die of pneumonia in Greece. Who’ll grow
Old, yet in verse and politics be bold
And still “mad, bad, and dangerous to know.”
So as we’ve many times now all been told
Poetry changes nothing, yes, it’s so,
But neither does joining the armed struggle;
I want my hero here to lie and snuggle.

As for next week, David Lehman turns our attention to the poet Anna Kamienska, who offers us two great first lines:

“Sleep is what I’ll miss most when I die.”

and

“I walk around disguised as an overweight old lady.”

For next week, use one of these lines as a springboard, an epigram, or first line. Visit the American Scholar's page to read the full post with even more heroes and more details on the new prompt. And don't forget to tune in every Tuesday for more of Next Line, Please!

 

Squibs 245, 246 [by Alan Ziegler]

245. While in college, my songwriting partner and I bus to Manhattan from Schenectady to audition for Vanguard records. We don’t get a contract and my guitar is stolen from the waiting room. Back in Schenectady, I call the A&R guy we auditioned for (“not ready”) to see if the guitar turned up. “No, but, hey we have insurance. Just come back down and file a police report.” “Not worth the trip down, it was a cheap guitar, a Guava written in the same script as Goya.” “I distinctly remember you had a pre-war Martin D-18.” “Not me…” “All right, if you insist…” Years later I hear the subtext and picture Mr. A&R hanging up the phone and just shaking his head.

246 (The Dr. Facci Fellowship). In 1971 I am rear-ended at a red light, hurt but not injured. The other driver assures me he has good insurance. An actor friend refers me to his “lawyer acquaintance” who got him a quick settlement. “Think of it as the way big companies support the arts.” The lawyer acquaintance hands me a card for Dr. Facci, with a Mott Street address. “Mafia country. The safest neighborhood in the city.”
    The dusty waiting room is filled with elderly women, but Dr. Facci waves me right  in. He looks like the Orson Welles’s character in Touch of Evil ten years later on a really bad day. Ancient medical journals are strewn across his desk with several unmarked bottles of pills. “So, you have a case of whiplash?”
    “Yes, it hurts when I think.”
    Dr. Facci looks at me with a weary sadness, then seems to smile a bit, and growls, “Hippie and a smartass. But I’ll take care of you.” He lumbers around the desk, palpates my neck, and tells me to come in every week for six weeks. He jots down a note, hands me some pills, and says, “Here, for when you think too hard,” adding, “Don’t get excited, it’s sugar.”
    I like Dr. Facci.
    I enjoy roaming Little Italy each week, lunching on pasta, trying to spot Mafiosi. The waiting room is always full, and Dr. Facci takes me right away, palpates my neck, jots a note, and sends me on my way with a few sugar pills. At first I wonder how his career sunk so low but I come to realize he must provide an essential service to the neighborhood. Perhaps my scam is subsidizing medical care for the elderly.
   After six visits to Little Italy, I am awarded a $750 Dr. Facci Fellowship.

Peggy Lee (born today) sings, Benny Goodman plays (1943)

 

 

Forty Swimsuits [by Molly Arden]

Tonight’s entry begins in the small closet in the upstairs hall.  There, a bag of shameful confirmation is knotted evidence of a ritual I’ve practiced since my teens.  It’s difficult to discuss without the risk of sounding horribly shallow, it might be only a poet who would recognize the significance of the ceremony involved in selecting an annual summer wrapper.  This ritualized spring rebirth of the self is made by way of spandex, nude lining, underwire, a few pieces of hardware.

     Usually it’s one suit a year, on an indecisive year, maybe two.  Always a careful combination of separates crafted into one complete experience.  Fold over boy short bottom snug on the hips and a twist front scoop bikini top calls I’m ready for the waves, ride me.   The low rider bikini bottom with a swing top tankini suggests golden toes this summer.   Glamour ruched bottom and with string bikini top together say I’m open to starting that new manuscript and stopping the nonsense with the panties.  The combining is as critical as the pairing of two shoes.  Who would step out of the house in a mismatched pair of Dana Buchman flats?  Coordinate a Courrèges mini with a 49ers jersey?  It’s unrepentant.
        The next consideration is a careful selection of color – chosen, I imagine, as a parent might choose their child’s name. One year a tonal “Slate”, suggests sophistication; I am above the garish clatter of the beach.  The next, an “English Rose” portends a straw bag bearing a mid-century Romance novel, a hank of bread, slices of cucumber, then “Brackish Swale”,” Yearling Gold”, and last year’s miserable “Pale Milk”.   I thought men would find me lap-able, woman: creamy.  It was a sheer disaster.  Color is the first definition of the season.
          Although each winter it seems like the days will never get warmer or longer, they do and the JCrew swim catalogue always arrives with its pages stiff as crocus stems.   This year, Easter evening was lingering and warm and hovered on the edge of daylight for a long time.  Smoke from the neighbor’s lamb cookout came through the screen; people laughed on a lawn far down the busy street.  I lounged on the sofa, the catalogue splayed on my lap.  It was time to commit to the seasonal suit.  I drew myself as a circle on the edge of catalogue’s slick page.  From my circular self I drew radial arms:  a wind-swept explorer who vacationed in cotton at the Ocean, a black sheep, tipsy daughter/sister combo at the family reunion, a bronzed sizzle-girl dripping in champagne and oil, in love with my skin, half-drunk with sun, a dull guest lecturer at the obscure Polish undergraduate writing program, fighting freckles and essays.  
          I longed to touch upon the body’s assets, as well.  It had been a good year in the gym.  Could I brave a two-piece?  Was I a two-piece woman?  One had to consider age.  I drew another line to the circle, connecting me to my age.  When I was done, in addition to the miffed muff of the model sporting a modal one piece, the page was surrounded by hundreds of words modifying myself.  To be completely honest, this bathing suit might never even touch water but it was fingering my Volkswagen, my good sheets, my Italian sandals, my hungry belly and two oeuvres breasts that the suit’s soft shell cups would carry, the Mead notebooks I write in, the thick wood cutting board over the sink in the kitchen, the sink itself (aproned, enamel, slippery), my tangerine leather appointment book, my brother the lawyer, my first published poem.
      So many notions.  Were there this many last year?  Would I add even more next year?  Approaching it as a poet, it seemed like I might be better served by a suit that was sold in pieces of pieces; a top that was tendered by cup, strap, and stitch – not just top alone.    It is an intimate encounter, this bathing suit shopping.  It expresses ideas that I have about myself.   It’s how I’ve always done it, though; be it a pound of strawberries, a bathing suit, red wine.  With this narrative version of myself in mind I draw these items into my life.  No detail, seam, nuance of color or fragrance is left unnoticed.  The same is true in my writing.  I wouldn’t overlook a comma.
    My hall closet will always harbor these suits.  I delight in piecing meaning out of things, tasks, so mundane or created that others shrivel.  For those differently abled folks, finding a swimsuit is no harder than slogging to the store, grabbing a blue one in their size and heading home satisfied.  But I fall for the small elements; straps, darts, drape, fabric. This poet was born for separates.  Let all the others buy off the rack. 

Philip Roth says the Bull Still Has Room to Run [by David Lehman]

In honor of the late Philip Roth we bring you this feature that we ran back in March 2014.

<<<

If the market seemed overvalued last year, wary analysts are eyeing the exit signs now that the individual investor is back into equities. Have we reached a market top? Philip Roth, who accurately predicted the end of the last bull market in 2007, is still long on stocks, according to today's Wall Street Journal. (See page C4, "Bull Market is Weary, but Few Signs Point to Exhaustion" by E. S. Browning).

Roth, now eighty and retired from novel writing, has pursued an alternative career in stockpicking, hints of which surface in the Zuckerman novels and in "American Pastoral." Interviewed about current market conditions he sounded cautious. "There's nothing that I see now that says imminent demise," he says, acknowledging the danger signals: new market highs, overpriced stocks, and a tremendous amount of headline risk. "The Ukraine, Syria, Egypt, Venezuela, Boko Haram (Nigeria) -- and you can't blame it on Israel and the US."

Except for these trouble spots, and the vengeance of nature whose most potent weapon is the weather, Phil sees smooth sailing ahead for the bull. "Most tops are made with high interest rates, rising inflation, and rising stock prices," Roth says. "Two out of three are missing right now, and two out of three ain't bad."

So how much room does have the bull have left to run? "It depends on how you define bull," Roth says. "Not only the metric you use but the ontological status of bull. Let us not overlook the fact that bull is short for bullshit, and if you served in World War II and weren't singing 'Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree (with anyone else but me),' you know that everything is bullshit.

"Hell, some writers made a career of it," the retired novelist added. "But let's not go there." Roth refused to comment on the following other subjects I brought up in our conversation: Woody Allen, the Oscars, the new biography of Philip Roth by someone with Roth in her name who is no relation, the Olympics, Bob Dyland, and the disrespect shown him by envious writers and irate feminists.

Roth grew animated when the subject turned to "Investors Intelligence," a widely followed survey of newsletter writers, which indicates that 60% of market newsletters were bullish in January. This unusually high figure sent a bearish signal, and January saw a sell-off. "But people were buying on the dip in February," Roth said. "And the cycle continues. Now comes March like a hungry lion, proud if alone. The ides are not a soothsayer's fantasy for nothing. Then April, and the poets with the hats walk under the trees on college campuses. The old mantra is 'sell in May and go away,' but June is "busting out all over.'  July, August, Summertime, and the slow slog of the marshes. And then, like the unfurling of a matador's cape, September. Oy. September. November. And these few precious days I'll give to you."

-- David Lehman
>>>

Originally posted March 3, 2014

When Philip Roth Retired: "I read Dostoevsky, I read Conrad. . ."

Back in November 2012, we ran this column  about Philip Roth's decision to cease his writing career:

Our greatest living novelist is hanging up his spikes. He has been mulling it over for two years, he told Charles McGrath of the New York Times. “I didn’t say anything about it because I wanted to be sure it was true,” he said. “I thought, ‘Wait a minute, don’t announce your retirement and then come out of it.’ I’m not Frank Sinatra. So I didn’t say anything to anyone, just to see if it was so.” Here's a link to what Roth calls his last interview, and here's a little more about how he came to his decision.

<<<<
“I sat around for a month or two trying to think of something else and I thought, ‘Maybe it’s over, maybe it’s over,’ ” he said. “I gave myself a dose of fictional juice by rereading writers I hadn’t read in 50 years and who had meant quite a lot when I read them. I read Dostoevsky, I read Conrad — two or three books by each. I read Turgenev, two of the greatest short stories ever written, ‘First Love’ and ‘The Torrents of Spring.’ ” He also reread Faulkner and Hemingway.

“And then I decided to reread my own books,” Mr. Roth went on, “and I began from the last book forward, casting a cold eye. And I thought, ‘You did all right.’ But when I got to ‘Portnoy’ ” — “Portnoy’s Complaint,” published in 1969 — “I had lost interest, and I didn’t read the first four books.”

“So I read all that great stuff,” he added, “and then I read my own and I knew I wasn’t going to get another good idea, or if I did, I’d have to slave over it.”
>>>

"The Sea Within": riding a fine choreographic wavefront – with Sound, too [by Tracy Danison]

The wave is the primary choreographic trope of Lisbeth Gruwez’s exciting new dance piece. Photo©dannywillems18

THE SEA WITHIN • Lisbeth Gruwez, choreographer •  Maarten Van Cauwenberghe, sound creation, with Elko Blijweert & Bjorn Eriksson •  company Voetvolk vzw • Belgium Ω  Performers, New Théâtre de Montreuil, May 2018: Ariadna Gironès Mata, Charlotte Petersen, Cherish Menzo, Dani Escarleth Pozo, Francesca Chiodi Latini, Jennifer Dubreuil, Liadain Herriott, Natalia Pieczuro, Sarah Klenes, Sophia Mage, Wei-Wei Lee / Lighting: Harry Cole / Scenography: Marie Szersnovicz / Costumes: Alexandra Sebbag Artist performance calendar

From the sustained applause and the large number of folk lingering in the foyer to get a look at the Voetvolk troupe, it’s safe to say Lisbeth Gruwez’s The Sea Within is a public success. Sea, which premiered at the Nouveau théâtre de Montreuil as part of the Rencontres choréographiques internationales festival, is the Belgian choreographer’s first piece in which she doesn’t herself figure as performer, and remarkable for an especially intimate, sustained interplay of sound and choreography – an interplay for which her pieces are always notable.

For Sea, Gruwez challenges herself to transmit through, essentially, words and looks, a very personal – very corporal – sense-vision without benefit of body. For me, thinking here in particular of It’s going to get worse and worse my friends, Gruwez is always reaching to use dance to transmit sense, a seamless mix of mind and body. So as Sea challenges Gruwez to get her sense-vision across by, as it were, talking and flailing her arms a lot, the 11 performers (10 women and Maarten Van Cauwenberghe’s Sound) are challenged to dance sense: force and passion enough, but also moral conviction enough, to deny the mind-body split.

This is only a slight exaggeration. Gruwez is systematic as well as abstract in her thinking. In her note on The Sea Within, for instance, she writes that she is expressing the “tribal individual” – a concept borne out of her experience of zooming in on the pure individual in her recent Penelope piece (which she says has her turning round and round for 20 minutes), which then determined her to work on “human-scapes” rather than individuals. As I understand it, the “tribal individual” is a sort of e-pluribus unum psychic structure within each person and within which each person lives with others, a “tribality of being”, if you will.

To put her sense-vision in motion, Gruwez’s choreography launches a pulse… something like a Fibonacci series which shapes as it swells along the course of the performance. The 10 performers in casual, individualizing postures and spread in the shadows around the three sides of the stage mat represent the condition in which a “prime mover” “just moves”. This “just movement” is visually tagged by the performer being the only person in a cast of strongly-built, expressive women to enjoy a milk-chocolate skin, a striking contrast that also suggests a distinctive warmth and sensuality; black is the color of the unknown unexplorable. Her movement – at first tentative, without reference – is the precursor (not “leader”) at the origin of the wave of becoming that is the primary choreographic trope of The Sea Within. The movement is accompanied by an equally non-referencing sound that focuses attention on what’s happening on stage.

Since the generative quality of a wave dynamic excludes crystallizing hierarchies, in The Sea Within, “prime mover” cannot not mean “principal dancer”: a duo or any grouping must be understood as momentary transiting of flow; shapes and forms must appear just long enough to make it clear that pairings and groupings are no such thing. Within Gruwez’s choreography, as I read it, the interactions of the “tribal individual” are expressed as “cross-over of flows” rather than as “links between” as the performers dance the rhythmic breath of living, the troubling whisper of self-consciousness or the pugnacity of self-awareness as it moves forward towards what she calls a “festive parade”. So also, evoking “a tribal individual” as a wave means that the dance/ers, whatever the trope – and there are maenads and romantic heroines, there is folkloric high-step and urban break, there are group-gropes and a geometrical diagonal line-up of arm-and-leg triangles that files in my mind in the narrow specimen drawer labeled “crystal” – draws attention to the complementarity of a/their movement to the whole, rather than to the individual dance/er.

Gruwez says that women have the “power of liaison” between the physical and symbolic worlds, that they are, in effect, natural interpreters between mind and body/body and mind. Their femininity also makes the choreographic wave personal and organic: liquid, “blood”: the different themes are played out in forms of dance that develop in a wave:  the women swirl, lap and mix, gather and swell, slip off, eddy... and are joined by an 11^th performer:  Maarten Van Cauwenberghe’s Sound.

Van Cauwenberghe’s Sound at first might be heard as “sound”, birdsong, clicking switches or “music”, purling waters of crazy wisdom, referencing echoes of Charles Ives or John Cage: the necessary sound-off of dance, a vague roar or an absence that pretends stillness, a vibration that is there, not far, that points and prods the movement, helps the spectator see the “dance” in it.

But something exceptional happens in The Sea Within: an alchemical transmutation of pulse, blood, mind, performance experience and personal intimacy makes Sound herself a performer. I mean this literally: my mind’s eye saw Sound as it saw the other performers. As Papuan English would rightly speak it, Sound byemby braid as the others braid her, she is byemby undone as the others are undone, byemby caresses, is caressed, byemby pursuing, byemby pursued and byemby becomes flesh like their flesh.

This transmutation to Sound was amazing to me, the realization of the hope I always have in watching live performance, for me, the reason live performance persists and will persist.  

Rest in peace Philip Roth (1933-2018)

The great Philip Roth has passed away at age 85. 

from Tablet (2013) in honor of fake news:

<<
Philip Roth didn't win the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday.

Announcing the award in Stockholm, the Swedish Academy said that Mr. Roth, 80, the author of 29 novels and the only living American author to have his works anthologized by the Library of America, is “an epicist who examines contemporary American life with incorruptible scrutiny.” He is the 14th American and the 14th Jew to be anointed with the honor.

The Newark-bred author will add the Nobel Prize to an unparalleled array of accolades, including two National Book Awards, two National Book Critics Circle Awards, three PEN/Faulkner Awards, the Pulitzer Prize, the inaugural Franz Kafka Prize, the Man Booker Prize, the French Legion of Honor, and the National Humanities Medal. Often short-listed by the betting site Ladbrokes, in recent years, Mr. Roth’s name had dropped to 50/1 odds, making him a perennial long shot.

When reached by phone at his apartment in Manhattan, Mr. Roth seemed nonchalant about his new laurels. “I wasn’t in a hurry,” he said.
>>>

A Philip Roth Moment (Squib 244) [by Alan Ziegler]

Philip Roth made several (unpaid) visits to Columbia MFA classes (through his friendships with David Plante and Benjamin Taylor). He asked if he could have access to the library, so we applied to designate him as a Visiting Scholar. When the request was approved, I gave him directions to where he could pick up his card, and said, "Remember, you can take books home. Then you won't have to come down here every day." Philip looked at me quizzically, and for a few seconds I thought he might not have recognized the quote from Goodbye Columbus. Then he said, with that sliver of a grin I'd seen several times: "Are you referencing a mid-20th Century novelist?" And he went off to get his library card.

Take a bow on your birthday, Artie Shaw [by David Lehman]

Happy birthday, Artie Shaw, and let us not forget
when GIs learned street French, they pronounced
the French word for artichoke "Artie Shaw."
Married to beautiful women, an ornery cuss,
excellent marksman, innovative bandleader
Artie was a major Gemini. like Marilyn Monroe,
John F. Kennedy, Henry Kissinger, Dean Martin,
and Judy Garland. In Tarot Artie is represented
by the king of hearts. The two and three of hearts.
appear in his chart. He lived a long time.
His clarinet will live for all time.-- DL. 

 

Application File (Conclusion; continued from yesterday) [by Alan Ziegler]

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

December 19
    It is to our great chagrin that we will not be able to offer you a position, as our operations will be shut down immediately following completion of our open correspondence. There is widespread disagreement as to whether this cessation was precipitated by an inadequacy in our business plan or poor execution thereof. Suffice it to say, we all agree that had you begun this process sooner, the outcome would have been more felicitous.

January 2
    It was kind of you to surprise us at Chez Avec Amis (you remembered!), and to pick up the check. Bringing the glove was a lovely touch. We are intrigued by your offer, and we feel we have much to contribute. The requisite paperwork is enclosed. We look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.

THE END

Application File (Part Four; continued from yesterday) [by Alan Ziegler]

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

October 26
    We have finally received completed reports from all those who attended your interview. (It is a good sign that we could barely pry people away from their computers.) We will now disperse into the field.

November 9
    We have completed a series of meetings with your references. Not unexpectedly in matters of this kind, several issues have arisen. Kindly respond to the enclosed questions. Please understand – as we do – that the quoted material is no more – or less – than one version of the truth. (Two questions were inserted by one of us over the strenuous objections of many.)

November 15
    We are pleased to tell you that we found your responses quite satisfactory; any new questions raised by your answers, we all agree, are better left untethered. And we are delighted to report that a suitable position has just opened up (please refer to parentheses in previous letter). As you can imagine, there is much paperwork to be done. You shall hear from us before the end of the year.

CONCLUSION TOMORROW

Application File (Part Three; continued from yesterday) [by Alan Ziegler]

Part One

Part Two

September 17
    Thank you for your interest in our company. Unfortunately, we do not have any appropriate openings at the present time. We shall endeavor to contact you should that situation change.

September 23
    Please disregard the previous letter, which was the result of a clerical error. We regret any inconvenience. We might add that we found your response quite understandable.

October 9
    We are pleased to offer you a personal interview. Due to renovations underway in our offices, we invite you to meet us at Chez Avec Amis, a cozy bistro in a quiet corner of town tomorrow at 6 p.m. We have reserved the back room. Directions enclosed. Kindly bring any available photographs from the attached list. We apologize for the short notice, and assure you it is not the result of a last-minute cancellation.

October 11
    Did you inadvertently happen to wind up with an extra left glove (the designer tag is: Vera Pelle)?

CONTINUED TOMORROW