The Best American Poetry

For Summer: Florida Poets: Adrian Castro [by Emma Trelles]

The Sound Of One Immigrant Clapping
after Czeslaw Milosz

by Adrian Castro

Let's say he actually

did not

arrive on a boat--

that the relentless colonel

never found his subtle throat hidden

under the trance of the clave

or thunder hands that spoke

repíques of those crimes

Let's say he went to Nueva York

on the assumption

Mario Bauzá

Machito or

Tito (Rodriguez or Puente)

could make his legs & hips move

in a constellation of joy

Let's say he merely

tried

to hear the echo of his arms

flapping through a factory

like a red rag fastened to that fan

Let's say the cold

often froze his vowels

tan Caribeña

tan resvalosa y mermelada--

Could the immigrant even

mute the melody of his tongue--

They say it is silence

that makes music

But this will be like

drumming

on a distant tuft of cloud like

the colonel cutting the sound he never found

But it takes years of forgetting

for a stranger

to breathe the salt water

or glance at a pile of stones

& say

I arrived through this portal

This is now my home...


Adrian Castro is a poet, performer, and interdisciplinary artist. He was born in Miami from Caribbean heritage, which has provided fertile ground for the rhythmic Afro-Caribbean style in which he writes and performs. He is the author of Cantos to Blood & Honey, Wise Fish, and Handling Destiny, all from Coffee House Press, and has been published in several literary anthologies including Conjunctions, Paper Dance: 55 Latino Poets; Little Havana Blues; A Century of Cuban Writers in Florida; Step Into A World: A Global Anthology of New Black Literature; and Renaming Ecstasy: Latino Writings on the Sacred. He is the recipient of a USA Knight Foundation Fellowship, a Cintas Fellowship, a State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship, the NALAC Fund for the Arts Individual Fellowship, and the Eric Mathieu King award from the Academy of American Poets. Adrian Castro is also a board certified Doctor of Acupuncture & Oriental Medicine and herbalist. "The Sound of One Immigrant Clapping" first appeared in his collection Wise Fish: Tales in 6/8 Time. 

Whom do you write your poems for? [by Katha Pollitt]

It’s easy to describe the readers I  have in mind when I write my column in The Nation:  the 185,000 Nation subscribers, who are mostly liberals, progressives and leftists  of various sorts,  college-educated, over thirty, up on the news.  I know quite a few of these readers, and hear from them all the time.  Beyond the magic subscription circle, there’s the larger community of feminists, other journalists, and writers I admire including a few dead ones in my head.

But whom do I write my poems for?  “Anyone who wants them” is one easy answer. “Myself” is another. Both are true in a way, but incomplete.  Who is that “anyone” who pockets the breadcrumbs I cast upon the water?  And if I write for myself, why do I  try to publish my poems and care what anyone thinks about them? At least for me, communication is intrinsic to writing, so I must have some blurry idea in mind about who I’m communicating with -- or, perhaps more accurately, given the state of poetry these days, wish I was communicating with.

There’s a sociological answer to the readership question. According to  The Poetry Foundation’s  survey, “Poetry in America,”  the most frequent readers of poetry (or, as the study oddly calls them, “users” of poetry)  are middle-aged women with post-secondary degrees, who began reading, or using, poetry when they were young.  That’s me all over!   Sociologically,  “I write for myself” and “I write for anyone who wants it” are not such different statements after all.

But what about the ideal reader?  The one who really sees what you are trying to do in a poem, and if you can please that demanding but simpatico person, you  feel you’ve gotten it right? If you’re lucky, you might have a teacher like that when you’re young, or a  friend, or a fellow poet or two.  Failing that, or in addition to that,  you might have to imagine your ideal reader, as Dante for all intents and purposes imagined Beatrice, whom he’d had such a crush on when they were kids.

   One popular type of imaginary ideal reader is, curiously, the non-reader.  In “In My Craft or Sullen Art,”  Dylan Thomas claimed he wrote not for literary people or for the ages but for “the lovers,/their arms round the griefs of the ages,/who pay no praise nor wages/nor heed my craft or art.”  And indeed, if  those lovers disentwined themselves long enough to read a poem, it was probably one by Thomas,  one of the last poet-celebrities of the English-speaking world. 

 Yeats [above] was another one who envisioned an ideal non-reader. In l914, fed up with  the  ideologically overheated  Dublin literary-political scene, he imagined his ideal reader as a Connemara fisherman,  a “wise and simple man”  whom Yeats believed belonged to an older, better, truer, more organic (in the old sense) Irish people.  What saves “The Fisherman”  from nationalistic  sentimentality is Yeats’ admission that this ideal  fisherman-reader does not  exist. He is  a necessary fiction, a dream:

Although I can see him still.
The freckled man who goes
To a grey place on a hill
In grey Connemara clothes
At dawn to cast his flies,
It's long since I began
To call up to the eyes
This wise and simple man.
All day I'd looked in the face
What I had hoped 'twould be
To write for my own race
And the reality;
The living men that I hate,
The dead man that I loved,
The craven man in his seat,
The insolent unreproved,
And no knave brought to book
Who has won a drunken cheer,
The witty man and his joke
Aimed at the commonest ear,
The clever man who cries
The catch-cries of the clown,
The beating down of the wise
And great Art beaten down.

Maybe a twelvemonth since
Suddenly I began,
In scorn of this audience,
Imagining a man,
And his sun-freckled face,
And grey Connemara cloth,
Climbing up to a place
Where stone is dark under froth,
And the down-turn of his wrist
When the flies drop in the stream;
A man who does not exist,
A man who is but a dream;
And cried, 'Before I am old
I shall have written him one
poem maybe as cold
And passionate as the dawn.'

"Coat of Arms" [by Joanne Dominique Dwyer]

I don’t believe desire is the root of all suffering,
though it’s better to pull up the roots
of the weeds you desire to be rid of,
rather than poison them. For nothing
will grow again in that dirt.
I never read philosophy. It hurts
the way a fall from the monkey bars does
or an argument with someone you desire
that goes round n’ round and ends in a knock-out
or an even less satisfying temporary truce.
Birds keep getting stuck in the body of my stove.
I open the soapstone door and they emerge
soot-covered, disoriented, batter
their tiny skulls against glass.
Eventually finding their way out
through one of the opened windows –
the way I want to find my way through to the real you
if there is such a thing - changing as we do
our passwords, our undergarments, the pets in our garages.
Desire cannot be the root of all suffering!
Hunger and loneliness, or ineradicable pain perhaps.
The boa is hard-wired to crush endoskeletons.
Every religion has their saints and their power mongers.
Some are allergic to strawberries.
To be human is to desire.
Eggs and garlic and the oil of the evening primrose.
The pollen hurting some, others unaffected.
The only agreed upon creed: Do no harm.
I like to be under the canopy of trees,
so you could say I desire shade.
The heads of tiny quail in puff pastry.
My children to outlive me,
that I may give them my land.
The dome of the cerebellum an umbrella –
white paint is falling from the eaves of my roof.
Today I loaded a stack of old coats
into black garbage bags and left them
on a loading dock behind the Salvation Army –
unsure that the portal into the sky
will fit us all.

first published in American Poetry Review

Squibs 322-326 [by Alan Ziegler]

322: Footnote to “A Note on Memory in ‘On the Road with Phil Freshman’

    When I visited the former boarding house known as Dixieland in Look Homeward Angel—now officially the Thomas Wolfe Memorial—I took pictures of various objects, including one of the beds. Rereading Angel years later, I came across a description of “the old cream-colored bed, painted gaily at head and foot with round medals of clustering fruit.” A few days ago, I excitedly wrote on this blog: “I saw that bed. Sure enough, ‘round medals of clustering fruit’ are painted gaily on it.'” I even included the photographic proof.  

    But this morning—to adapt Max Jacob—“Now, as I looked at the photograph, I saw that what I had taken for a cluster of fruits was a medal containing a few exquisite flowers.” 

     Did Thomas Wolfe remember fruit where there were actually flowers? Did he consciously change flowers to fruit. Were there medals of fruit and flowers?

    What is certain is that Thomas Wolfe's description altered the neurons and synapses in my cortex so that my memory of a photograph of flowers became a memory of a picture of fruits. This photoshopped memory would not be denied even as I stared at the picture with my lying eyes. Which was one of the points of the piece. 

323: Little Sun, meet Snaker and Spider.

324: Whether or not we lived on the wrong side of the tracks was a close call because I could see the train from my window.

325: I didn't like tomatoes when I was nine, but there was a whole pile of them on the table alongside bagels, lox, onions, pickled herring. My father’s wisecracking friend Joe was the guest. I liked him because he always gave me ballpoint pens with the names of companies on them. I thought he worked for a lot of companies but my father explained that Joe only worked for one—a pen company. The tomatoes were so red that I decided to give them another shot. Incredible, sweet like pizza. I took another and another. Finally, Joe said, “Hey, Alan, why don't you help yourself to a tomato.” That day I learned I love two things: great tomatoes and expertly delivered sarcasm.

326: Booby, meet Trap.

For Summer: Florida Poets: Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello [by Emma Trelles]

                                    in the shadow, federico carosio iii

Driving Down Old Cutler Road
              for Guillermo

by Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello

Banyans arch across the road,
all braided with orchids and light,
asphalt ragged with roots
so that we have to slow down and take
in more than we otherwise might.

This is your favorite road. You said this
once, stitching hours into the highways
between us, and I remember us drawn up
and down the eastern coast, each long-held
breath hemming in our frayed days.

Now, as I drive alone, these roots
seem to unspool into garlands of stars,
far-flung miles gathered back into the arms
of a man who, for all your driving, can have
a favorite road, and at the end of it, wait for me.


Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello is the author of the poetry collection Hour of the Ox (University of Pittsburgh, 2016), which won the 2015 AWP Donald Hall Prize and a 2016 Florida Book Award, and was a finalist for the 2017 Milt Kessler Award. She has received poetry fellowships from Kundiman, the Knight Foundation, and the American Literary Translators Association, among others. Her work has appeared in Best New Poets, Best Small Fictions, The New York Times, and more. She serves as the poetry editor for Hyphen Magazine and as a program coordinator for the Miami Book Fair. For more, visit www.marcicalabretta.com

Squib 321: A Note on Memory in “On the Road with Phil Freshman” [by Alan Ziegler]

          [click for On the Road with Phil Freshman]

            Lauren Gravitz writes that autobiographical memories “begin to take lasting form in a part of the brain called the hippocampus…Neurons communicate with each other through synapses — junctions between these cells that include a tiny gap across which chemical messengers can be sent…Through a process known as synaptic plasticity, neurons constantly produce new proteins to remodel parts of the synapse…This creates a network of cells that, together, encode a memory…Over time, and through consistent recall, the memory becomes encoded in both the hippocampus and the cortex. Eventually, it exists independently in the cortex, where it is put away for long-term storage.” [Nature]

            My brain can’t wrap itself around the miracles executed by the billions of entities in its tiny space any more than it can comprehend the enormity of the Milky Way—or the design and construction of equipment depicting the infinitesimal and the infinite.

            Fortunately my brain can immediately grasp “As he caught his footing, his head fell back, and the Milky Way flowed down inside him with a roar” (from Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata). I’d love to see how my synapses sparkled when I first read this.

            Some writers are blessed with great memories. Thomas Wolfe could remember watching his sister climb a hill on her way to school when he was 18 months old. He put that memory into Look Homeward, Angel. Also in Angel, he describes “the old cream-colored bed, painted gaily at head and foot with round medals of clustering fruit” in the boarding house based on the one his family ran in Asheville (where he hadn’t been in many years). I saw that bed. Sure enough, “round medals of clustering fruit” are painted gaily on it.

            A flawed memory is not a fatal flaw; sometimes it can be an advantage. Filling a memory gap with invented truth may produce something more interesting—and appropriate to the story—than the actual experience. Even when attempting a faithful rendering of the past, we fall prey to imprecision. You can tell the truth about all you remember, but all you remember may not be the truth. In his preface to Reveries Over Childhood and Youth, W.B. Yeats writes: “I have changed nothing to my knowledge, and yet it must be that I have changed many things without my knowledge.”

            My neurons and synapses were kept hopping in my medial prefrontal cortex (among other areas) while living through, remembering, writing about, re-remembering, and revising “On the Road with Phil Freshman.” The piece as a whole relies on good-faith fidelity to experience, but, as William Maxwell writes in his autobiographical short story “Billie Dyer”: “For things that are not known—at least not anymore—and that there is now no way of finding out about, one has to fall back on imagination. This is not the same thing as the truth, but neither is it necessarily a falsehood.”

            In the working manuscript for Based on a True Life (where this piece will reside), I have changed names to protect people from the flaws of my memory and the hops of my fancy. But I could not bear to change Phil Freshman, so I tracked him down (not difficult—he is a well-known editor; currently president of the Association of Art Editors).

            Phil took issue with both his entrance (“he replies with a wry smile that his most recent job was shoveling chickens for Colonel Sanders”) and exit: “I go everywhere, I do everything, and I never have any fun.”

            About Colonel Sanders, he wrote that he “never worked in one of those places. But again, this is memoir and not history.” I appreciated the allowance Phil made for memoir, but I was puzzled because by then “shoveling chickens” was firmly ensconced in my cortex. I responded, “Hmmmm—very interesting. Why would my memory make up the phrase ‘shoveling chickens’? Is it at all possible that it was something you might have said though not true?” Phil threw me a bone in his reply: “Yes, I suppose I could have said it, just to create an image. I've been known to do such things, and my wife rolls her eyes heavily whenever I do.”

            Phil checked in with my cousin, Ellen (real name), who confirmed the broad strokes: “He [Alan] definitely went to Oregon and I do remember getting off in some small town around Mendocino? but don't recall any of the other details. I have some impression that you [Phil] were there, but it's been a long time!!! He had enough specific memories that even if he didn't get some details right, I'm sure he had felt a real connection with you or you wouldn't have been immortalized in this way.”

            Phil responded by contributing to the memory quest. “I'm wondering if the town with the drug store was (is) Ferndale. Tiny town filled with gemlike Victorians. Houses, that is.”

            Ellen also contacted her long-ago boyfriend, whose cortex was bereft of the whole deal. “I don’t even remember a cousin of Ellen’s—let alone the trip to Oregon he narrates.” But he did confirm the one detail I would have removed without verification—his stepfather “did fight with the partisans in Northern Italy during WWII.”

            And what about Phil Freshman’s cherished farewell, “I go everywhere, I do everything, and I never have any fun”? Before I contacted Phil, I realized he might have been quoting someone, and I found a 1936 cartoon (The CooCoo Nut Grove) with the words coming from the animated mouth of an actor playing Ned Sparks, linked here: Ned Sparks caricature

     

(Ned Sparks in Magic Town)         

 But I was foiled again by Phil: “To my knowledge, I had never heard of Ned Sparks before reading your piece. This was mentally confirmed when I looked at the YouTube bit…and felt absolutely no memory tug.”

           The only memory tug that I feel is Phil Freshman on that August night in Berkeley a half century ago. The memory remains a mystery; the story will remain the same.

The Mets Weekend Wasted Away [by Greg Pattenaude]

After the Mets completed a three game sweep of the Indians, I was excited for a huge series against the National League East's leading team, the Atlanta Braves.  The Mets were nine games back of the Braves, only eight if you counted losses, and my blind optimism said that a weekend sweep would move them to six games out, five in the loss column. 

At about 7pm Friday night, I bid my better half farewell and headed to the basement TV for the opening pitch.  Major League Baseball had declared this "Player's Weekend", where players got to choose any name, preferably nicknames, for the back of their jerseys.  OK, this is not my cup of tea, but whatever.  I still picture "He Hate Me" on the back of a uniform from the failed summer XFL football league.  What I didn't expect was to so see my Mets, not in their familiar white jerseys with blue pinstripes and orange trim, but in an all white outfit, including white hats, and unreadable white numbers and names.  They looked like an American version of cricketers or a squad of Good Humor men.  When they came to the plate with brilliant white batting helmets (rather than blue), they looked like characters out of Woody Allen's Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex.  If you have seen the movie, you know the scene. Meanwhile, the Braves were dressed in total black.  The pants looked like dress pants and could have easily been paired with a roman collar.  It was that bad, and took me a good 5 innings to calm down in an attempt to enjoy baseball.  I should add that I did yell upstairs to Susan to check out the Mets game, prompting the same horrified reaction to a drum barrel of bleach gone mad.  If I had to put on these uniforms, my nickname would have been "Deez Unis Suk".

While Twitter was bashing the uniforms, Jacob deGrom was pitching a fantastic game, piling up strikeouts including his 200th of the season in the middle of striking out eight in a row, two short of Tom Seaver's record of ten.  Meanwhile, Braves starter Mike Foltynewicz also was cruising along, allowing a lone hit.  Then in the 6th inning, Mets' tormentor Freddie Freeman knocked a single into center scoring Ozzie Albies to give the Braves a 1-0 lead.  In the bottom of the 6th, deGrom took matters into his own hands with an opposite field home run to tie the game.  This is why I'm not a fan of the designated hitter; you don't get moments like this in the American League.  deGrom left after 7 innings, giving up only one run and striking out 13.  From there, it was a battle of the bullpens, and with neither team scoring in the 8th and 9th, it was on to extra innings. 

The Braves had a great scoring opportunity in the 10th, but struggling Mets reliever Edwin Diaz struck out Ronald Ocuna, Jr and Albies stranding a runner at 3rd base.  The Mets has their chance in the bottom of the 10th.  After loading the bases, Braves reliever (and former Met) Anthony Swarzak  struck out shortstop Amed Rosario leaving the bases loaded.  I should mention that Mets games that have been won in the 9th inning or later have included a new habit of ripping the shirt off the player who had the game-winning hit.  Tonight, I was hoping all of the white outfits would be stripped off and perhaps burned after the game.  Unfortunately, it didn't happen.

In the 14th inning, the Mets brought in another struggling reliever, Jeurys Familia.  He promptly allowed two baserunners. Then the Braves' Billy Hamilton poked the ball passed the drawn in infield to give them a 2-1 lead.  Ironically, Familia managed to record three strikeouts while also giving up the winning run.  The Mets did not score in the bottom of the 14th.

So the Braves prevailed, sending my slim hope of catching the Braves in the standings out the window. And from a Mets standpoint, it gets worse from here.  

I returned Saturday for another dose of punishment.  The White versus Black uniforms were back as Zack Wheeler took the mound for the Mets.  The Braves scored early, highlighted by solo homers by Josh Donaldson and Ozzie Albies and took a 4-0 lead in the 3rd.  The Mets got one back in the bottom frame which takes us to the 5th inning. After the Mets' Juan Lagares doubled, Amed Rosario drove him in to make it 4-2.  Joe Panik, the pride of John Jay High School in East Fishkill, NY, followed with a single and brought Pete Alonso to the plate.  Alonso, at age 24,  has been the Mets sensational rookie this season, hitting home runs at a pace no hitter in Mets history has.  On the first pitch, Pete deposited the ball far beyond the center field fence, driving in three, and the Mets took a 5-4 lead.  This homer tied the Mets single season record for homers with 41.  But it may have been the turning point of the game.

In his zeal, Pete slowly hopped out of the batter's box, gazing at the flight of the ball, bat still in hand, as if to will to go as far as possible.  (You don't get bonus runs for distance.)  Once it landed, Pete flipped his bat triumphantly in the air and cruised around the bases, pointing to the crowd as he crossed home plate then engaged in a series of arm bumps and exaggerated handshakes with his teammates, not in the dugout, but on the field.    A quick history lesson is
appropriate.  In the past, this sort of action would land you on rump next time at bat or soon thereafter, or perhaps a ball in your back.  No pitcher likes to be shown up by the other team.  But Major League Baseball, in an effort to attract the next generation of fans, has encouraged players to "show emotion" on the field, not that players did not show emotion, but I guess not enough emotion to connect with today's video game and social media generation.  At least in the minds of MLB, this translates to bat flips, slow walking around the bases, exaggerated arm motions like you've been cleared for takeoff, ripping uniforms, and other gyrations more akin to a professional wrestling match or, these days, just about after every play in the National Football League.  MLB calls this marketing ploy "Let the Kids Play", discounting the fact that most players are in their mid 20s to late 30s and are making, at minimum, half a million dollars and most are making a lot more than that.  It's not exactly kids delivering newspapers on a bike.  Now, whether Pete's actions crossed the line probably depends on how old you are and your desire to depart from time-honored norms.  But the Braves seemed to take notice.  Rather than seek their pound of flesh, they took charge of the game, and proceeded to school the cricketers.   

The Braves tied it quickly in the top of the 6th on an RBI single by Rafael Ortega. Then, the Mets seemed to forgot how to play the game.  Jeff McNeil, in his first appearance back after a hamstring injury, doubled to right center field, but, on the next play, was thrown out trying to get to 3rd base on Rosario's grounder to shortstop.  Players at all levels are taught never to try to advance in these situations, a play where he would have cost his little league team ice cream after the game. 

In the 7th, the Braves scored two more runs, the 2nd of these when the Mets left fielder JD Davis failed to throw the ball in from left field. This move would have cost his little league team ice cream for a month.  The Braves added two more in the 9th inning highlighted by a Freeman homer.  The final was 9-5.

On Sunday, I decided it was too nice a day to be glued to the TV inside and listened to much of game on the radio.  Josh Donaldson hit a wind-assisted homer off Mets starter Steven Matz to give the Braves a 1-0 lead in the 2nd.  Matz pitched pretty well, but was removed after 6 innings.  In the 7th, Donaldson didn't need any help from the wind on his 2nd homer of the game, this time off Mets reliever Paul Sewald.  Meanwhile, the Mets could do nothing against Braves starter Dallas Keuchel.

Against my better judgment, I came inside for the 9th inning.  In the bottom of ninth, the Mets came alive with a double by Alonso and a single by JD Davis.  With runners on 2nd and 3rd, Todd Frazier hit a weak grounder to short, allowing Alonso to score and forcing Davis at 2nd.  Wilson Ramos then singled, extending his hitting streak to 19 games and leaving the Mets with runners on 1st and 2nd. But Joe Panik grounded out and the game was over, the final 2-1.

The loss dropped the Mets to 12 games behind the Braves, clearly the better team in this series.  So are the Mets post season hopes dashed? Not quite yet.  They are still in the running, along with 6 other teams, for baseball's coveted Wild Card game, or in essence, an extra game to see who makes the post season.  I call it the Play In game. 

Can the Mets recover?  Will there be more suffering by Mets fans?  We'll find out soon as three teams in the Wild Card hunt -  the Cubs, Phillies, and Nationals -  are the next three opponents.

Hopefully, with those damn white uniforms a distant memory, sanity can return to the blue and orange.

Squib 320: On the Road with Phil Freshman [by Alan Ziegler]

            August 1969, after my stint at the Riverside Press-Enterprise, I hook up with my cousin Ellen and her boyfriend Greg in Berkeley. We will drive to Oregon and stay at Greg’s mother’s ranch. Ellen introduces me to Phil Freshman and tells me he is going with us. I barely know Ellen and have never met Greg, and I stiffen at the intrusion of yet another human being to deal with (though I love that his name is Phil Freshman). I tell him about my reporting job in Riverside and he replies with a wry smile that his most recent job was shoveling chickens for Colonel Sanders. By the time we climb into the car I feel comfortable with Phil Freshman and am glad we’re sharing the back seat.

            Past Mendocino, after Highway One merges with the 101, Phil Freshman notices a sign for Eureka and says we’ll have to get off the 101 because a few years ago he stumbled across a little town somewhere south of Eureka and always wanted to return. Phil tells how he befriended a couple of elderly women at an old-fashioned drug store/soda fountain. They bought him sodas and talked with him for hours. Phil promised them one day he would return and buy them sodas.

            Phil can’t remember the name of the town or where it is. He suggests that we drive around and see what happens. We have no schedule to keep and I am pleased when Greg says why not and turns off the highway. After taking random turns and going in and out of small towns (“Nope, this isn’t it”), Phil says, “This just could be the place.” Greg drives slowly up the main street.  I point out a drug store/soda fountain and Phil screams, “That’s it!”

            We go in and sure enough there are two elderly ladies at the counter. One of them turns around and exclaims, “Phil! Come sit down!” Phil and the ladies sip and talk for an hour while the rest of us have lunch at a table, with me marveling how no one seems to think anything unusual just happened.

            At the ranch in Oregon, Greg tells me that his stepfather was a resistance fighter in Italy during World War II and, among other things, set up booby traps for German soldiers on motorcycles: he would string a thin wire from tree to tree about neck-high, and then hide and watch a Nazi continue riding from the neck down, while the head bounced around the road. Greg’s stepfather is quiet and somber; I want to talk to him about killing Nazis, but can’t bring myself to ask. If I was still working on the newspaper it would be my job and I would have no problem.

            The house is plush with books of all kinds. Greg’s mother invites us to pick up anything of interest and feel free to write in the margins if so moved. “I feel insulted when someone borrows one of my books and doesn’t contribute to it.”

            After a family dinner heavy on the zucchini, I awake nauseous and barely make it out to the porch before losing the zucchini and everything else over the railing. I sneak back to bed, seemingly undetected, but the next morning at breakfast Greg announces—with a hint of admiration—“Alan was heaving away!” Everyone laughs, but rather than being mortified and retreating into myself, I find the laughter so much better than commiseration, and join in the celebration.

            When we get back to Berkeley, I have one night before my flight to New York, where I will reunite with Alicia. I want to go into San Francisco, but everybody is busy, including Phil Freshman. I go anyway, trying to think of myself as Leonard Cohen alone and brooding through a strange city until captured by a woman for a brief encounter to be immortalized in song.

            On the cable car heading up to Fisherman’s Wharf, three young women with English accents laugh and joke with the conductor. I am trying to figure how Leonard Cohen would play it when the prettiest one—with short, dark hair—tells me how romantic I look with my hair rustling in the wind. I slowly shake my head to give my hair more rustle, and she sits next to me.  “I’m Linda.”

            When we reach Fisherman’s Wharf, Linda invites me to join them. I ask her where in England they are from and they start giggling. Linda confesses that she is from Long Beach (a short ride from Lynbrook) and tells me they just graduated from Buffalo State University (a longer ride from Schenectady, where I’ve spent the last four years).

            I try my best at an English accent, and we hop on and off cable cars for the next couple of hours. Periodically, someone announces a new country—“Spain!”—and we start a new accent. Following their lead, I am able to talk to strangers without a press card—street singers, cable car conductors, bartenders.

            As midnight approaches, I start to think about what could happen between Linda and me. I have never been unfaithful to Alicia, but this is a version of me with a version of Linda. At 2 a.m. we wind up at their car and decide to drive across the Golden Gate Bridge. Linda and I sit in the back seat, the sides of our thighs against each other, her head nesting on my shoulder.

            Back in San Francisco, Linda lifts her head. Now, Linda is Linda and I am me; going any further would leave me with a secret to carry back to Alicia. I would be unhappy until I told her and even more unhappy after I did. I ask if they can take me back to Berkeley. Linda quietly says “Okay” and puts her head back on my shoulder. Linda and I hold hands, and when we get to my cousin’s house, she says, “Come find me in Santa Barbara.” I kiss her briefly on the lips, and then kiss the others on the cheeks. Everything has gone right tonight, and we called it quits before anything could go wrong.

            The house is dark. I feel exhilarated and want to tell someone all about my night. I am even tempted to call Alicia. I tiptoe through the living room, feeling for furniture.

            “I’m up.” It’s Phil’s voice. As my eyes adjust, I see him stirring in his sleeping bag, now sitting up. “I’ve been waiting for you. It got so late I knew you must have had an incredible night and I bet you want to tell someone all about it.” I tell him everything, embellishing here and there. After I am done, Phil says, “I’m so glad I was here to listen.” A sweet drowsiness ripples through my body and, as I fall asleep, I am quite pleased with life.

            Phil Freshman says goodbye the next morning. He is gone briefly then re-opens the door, cocks his head back in, and says, “I go everywhere, I do everything, and I never have any fun.” Later, as I fly over the Grand Canyon, I chuckle once again in admiration of Phil Freshman’s farewell.

To Be Continued, with a note on Memory (including comments by Phil Freshman)

The Images of Noir [by David Lehman and Suzanne Lummis]

What image or images from noir films come to mind as particularly striking and memorable? 

Suzanne Lummis:

For irony and paradox—and pathos— I guess not much tops the pietà that closes Double Indemnity, where instead of mother and crucified son it’s Boss kneeling by his fallen Star Employee, insurance salesman Walter Neff, blood seeping from his bullet wound.  Turns out it was a love story after all—the kind the Greeks called philia.

But also…

Another visual impression sticks with me, not the most striking in terms of lighting and composition but explosive in its day. Or, it would’ve been except for the sexual naivetë, of that era—after all, back then no explicit imagery in movies, advertising, early TV, and certain books had to be sold under the counter. A significant portion of the audience wouldn’t have fully grasped its implications.  And some people would have. It must’ve set their hair on fire. 

The image appears in The Big Combo, 1955, directed by Joseph Lewis and lit by master cinematographer John Alton.
Well-bred Susan Lowell (Jean Wallace) has fallen into the clutches of ruthless gangster and homme fatale manipulator of women, Mr. Brown (Richard Conte).  She tells him she’s leaving—she hates him.  All that changes, when after a fierce kiss he slides down and out of the frame of the camera. 
Jean Wallace was married to the star, Cornell Wilde. Lewis made sure the husband was nowhere near the set when he shot this scene. When Cornell did see the film, he was furious—never spoke to Lewis again.

The image I’m talking about involves a few seconds while Mr. Brown’s off camera—Jean Wallace’s face.   

Even though the Hays Production Code had begun to lose power in 1953, I wondered how Lewis got this past the censors in ’55. Well, it’s a great story, and proves that women weren’t the only ones who could be smart by playing dumb. The Production Code people were extremely displeased by what appeared to be a depiction of taboo erotica. Lewis pretended he didn’t know what they were talking about—‘Gee, she’s just thinking of the great kiss and, you’re right, I can’t see quite see Conte in the frame. I must’ve made a mistake…’  They believed him, and the several seconds of 35 mm film that has been called “arguably a cinematic first”—for Hollywood movies anyway—slipped through.       

David Lehman

The only way to do this without cheating is to rely on memory and association. Very well, then . . . The dollars flying out of the open valise that falls out of the cart at the airport as Sterling Hayden watches aghast at the end of The Killing. . . the same actor dying as he drives back to the farm of his youth in The Asphalt Jungle . . .in the same movie, the boy and girl dancing the lindy with nickels for the jukebox provided by Sam Jaffe. . .the beach café in Central or South America where Bogart waits for Bacall while Jo Stafford sings “Too Marvelous for Words” at the end of Dark Passage. . . the hall of mirrors in the fun house at the end of The Lady from Shanghai. . .the boiling hot coffee that Lee Marvin hurls in Gloria Grahame’s face, and disfigures it, in The Big Heat. . . Richard Widmark’s fingers in another man’s pocket on the subway in Pickup on South Street. . and Jimmy Cagney consulting with his dead mother in White Heat as well as his triumphant “Top of the World” as he stands atop the burning tower.  Hmm, I see that six of my choices are from the films’ final sequences.

And may I compliment you, Suzanne, on the “pietà” metaphor for the final tableau in Double Indemnity.

Gloria Graham is pictured bottom left; Jean Wallace, middle right. This is the eighth in a series of exchanges about noir. For previous posts, click here.

For Summer: Florida Poets: Erica Dawson [by Emma Trelles]

carla, 2014, mickalene thomas

from When Rap Spoke Straight to God
by Erica Dawson

I’m covering my head, like Kool
G. Rap said, in this red zone. Dead.

This ain’t no motherland, though fek-uhnd
as fuck.
              Florida’s the only time
and place I’ve said, It’s a black thing,
you wouldn’t understand,       like I
will never understand the love-
bugs fucking ass to ass,         or man
standing his ground, shotgun in hand,
shooting at cans like they’re an unkindness
of ravens.

                    Seven years I have
mothered this nature into a woman.

The moon, her crevices, a tree
the sharpness of her tough skin split.



Erica Dawson is the author of three books of poetry: When Rap Spoke Straight to God (Tin House, 2018), winner of the 2018 Florida Book Awards Gold Medal for Poetry; The Small Blades Hurt (Measure Press, 2014), winner of the 2016 Poets’ Prize; and Big-Eyed Afraid (Waywiser Press, 2007), winner of the 2006 Anthony Hecht Prize. Her poems have appeared in Blackbird, The Believer, Virginia Quarterly Review, and other journals. Her poems have appeared in several anthologies, including Best American Poetry 2008, 2012, and 2015; Resistance, Rebellion, Life: 50 Poets Now; and American Society: What Poets See. She is the director of University of Tampa’s Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing, and, at UT, an associate professor of English and Writing. 

 

On Jane Freilicher (1924-2014) [by John Ashbery]

Jane Freilicher and John Ashbery at Tibor de Nagy Gallery, 1952. Photo: Walter Silver.

I’M WRITING THIS in a room that contains a number of pictures, mostly by women, as it happens. One is by Jane Freilicher, a still life in pastel that brings together a half-dozen miscellaneous objects, including a few roses that are having the floral equivalent of a bad hair day, a reddish-brown pamphlet that was probably an address book sent to customers by the phone company (remember those?) and a copy of Art News, flopping over the edge of the table, confronting the viewer, in the time-honored tradition of trompe-l'oeil perspective, but also subtly spoofing it. Jane gave the pastel to me once, perhaps to commemorate my becoming an editor at Art News in 1965 and moving back to New York after ten years in France.

Jane was in fact the first person I met in New York. When I arrived in June, 1949, fresh out of Harvard, my friend Kenneth Koch had said I could stay at his apartment while he was away; I had only to pick up the keys from Jane, who lived above him in a small walk-up building overlooking the Third Avenue El at Sixteenth street (one of Kenneth's favorite diversions was to don a rubber ape mask and gaze out the window at trains as they passed by). I rang the bell and Jane came down and invited me up to her place for a coffee. I didn't know much about contemporary art at the time, and had never heard of the exciting teacher Hans Hofmann, whom Jane and other painters I would soon meet had studied with. It turned out that Hofmann, an abstract expressionist, didn't try to impose his own ideas about art on his students, but somehow encouraged them to be more like themselves. I did notice a few small paintings of Jane's in her living room. They seem, in retrospect, funny, discreet, comforting—all things I associate with her.

• 

  Jane Freilicher, Untitled (Still Life with Copy of ARTnews), c.1963, pastel on paper, 23 x 18”.

• 

  Jane Freilicher, Portrait of John Ashbery, c.1968, oil on canvas, 20 x 18”.

On my desk is the announcement of her last show in September, 2014, a color lithograph still life called Roses and Chrysanthemums, 2014. It is more straightforwardly realistic than the Art News pastel, yet there are “mysteries of construction,” in Marianne Moore's phrase. For instance, one rose is so meticulously, magic-realistically rendered that it seems to belong to another picture, indeed to another century. But its “lovely companions,” more summarily sketched in, don't seem to notice or mind particularly. Each has a different agenda. Democracy rules.

That's what I love about her work—the democratic vistas. Her pictures seem to have come into being all by themselves—almost. The painter sort of showed them how to do it and then returned to her other work—fixing lunch, maybe, opening the mail, and coming back to check on the picture and make sure it hasn't gone off the rails. The resulting creations look unfinished and incredibly strong. I made this, each of them seems to say. The artist? Yeah, she helped a little, maybe even a lot. Okay, so it was her idea all along.

John Ashbery is a poet based in New York.

Jane Freilicher, Roses and Chrysanthemums, 2014, color lithograph, 27 x 34”.

 

From Artforum International (January 19, 2015).

 

What's the Scariest Poem in the English Language? [by David Lehman]

             What is the scariest poem in the language? I wager that many would select Poe’s “The Raven,” and it is unquestionable that Poe has the ability, in his verse as in his stories, to scare the devil in or out of you. "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" will get votes, as it should. It is possible, however, that Robert Frost -- Frost, who was once habitually misread as a genial Yankee sage -- has written the darkest and most frightening poems in our literature. The French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal confessed himself terrified by the “eternal silence of those infinite spaces.” It is Frost who captures that silence.

            The brilliant sonnet “Design” – in which a spider makes a meal of a moth -- exemplifies the view of nature that informs Frost’s poetry. Nature at work is aesthetically satisfying; it has order, pattern, design; but there is nothing moral or ethical about it. Nature, as opposed to human nature, is indifferent to individual life. Put another way, nature feeds on itself, and life requires death, as the life of the spider requires the death of the moth.

            Humanity is stupid or destructive in Robinson Jeffers’s poems, which take the side of nature against human life. Frost doesn’t go that far, but in his poems the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Man is frail, and the loss of a man may be mourned, but the mourning lasts a mere moment. In Frost’s “Out, Out – “a boy working with a buzz saw loses his hand in an accident. The results are surprisingly fatal: “No one believed. They listened at his heart. / Little – less – nothing! – and that ended it.” But what truly shocks the reader is not the death but the moment when the boy, a “big boy / Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart,” pleads, ‘Don’t let him cut my hand off -- / The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!’” We infer that brother and big sister lack parents, and this knowledge deepens the pathos. 

The ending of “Out, Out –“ seems at first to indict humanity for its essential callousness. They – the same “they” that had listened at the boy’s heart – go right on living: “And they, since they / Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.” Callousness or realism? The ending is similar to the ending of Auden’s great “Musee des Beaux Arts,” in which Icarus, in Brueghel’s painting, falls from the sky to his death in the sea, “and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen / Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, / Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.” Both poems are superb, but Frost’s will give you the chills while Auden’s more analytical approach will make you ponder the thesis that humanity is necessarily indifferent to human suffering.

             Among the scariest of Frost’s poems is “Desert Places.” Compare it to Wallace Stevens’s “The Snow Man.” Both poems are about “nothing.” It may be that Stevens’s poem is the stronger of the two; it certainly requires enormous attention and rewards numerous re-readings. But “Desert Places” has something that “The Snow Man” with its “distant glitter of the January sun” lacks. “Desert Places” has terror. Here is the final stanza:

            They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
            Between stars – on stars where no human race is.
            I have it in me so much nearer home
            To scare myself with my own desert places.

 Take that, Pascal.-- DL

from the archives; originally published October 31, 2015

Paris performance rentrée: new creation, classic music and creative retrospectives [by Tracy Danison]

Jan Martens, Sweet Baby Sweet © Klaartje Lambechts

If you’re a trillionaire trying to reward my good looks with a hefty check, in September and October you’re likely to find me at one and the other of the dance and performance pieces in the Paris Performance Calendar, hands on knees, attentive to doings on the stage. The federative performance arts Festival d’Automne and big, or dance performance-dedicated, institutions such as the Théâtre National (Palais) de Chaillot or Micadanses always offer a good range of dance performance as a new season opens. Most, if not all of my September and October picks are taken from such 2019-2020 Season calendars. 

Through to December, there’s Festival d’Automne’s celebration of Merce Cunningham’s contribution to modern dance. This makes for a prime opportunity to see France’s excellent provincial ballets strut their excellent stuff. There is an instructive bent in the offer and with it an opportunity to brush up on the principles of modern and contemporary dance as you enjoy the dancing.

My head has highlighted intriguing retrospective work by the well-known choreographers Jérôme Bel and Philippe Decouflé. Without ignoring such emotion-masters as Saburo Teshigawara performing things like Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique (recommended by DanseAujourdhui’s Catherine Zavodska, at the Philharmonie de Paris) or the erotic tension of Jan Martens’ Sweat Baby Sweat, my heart has chosen creation by artists whose esthetic power I admire, including Yasmine Hugonnet, Myriam Gourfink and Latifa Laâbissi or such artists as Florence Casenave, Carole Quettier or Nina Vallon, whose work I have not yet seen but whose performance ideas tease my esthetics. Vallon, along with Aurelie Berland, among others, are movement artists whose work makes up a really intriguing offer of new creation riding classical music and choreographies for Micadanse’s Bien Fait! 2019 program.

Jan Martens’ Sweat Baby Sweat and the playful exploration of Yasmine Hugonnet’s Se Sentir Vivant both feature in Lafayette Anticipations’ Echelle Humaine 2019 program. This contrast of approach reminds me that Echelle Humaine is both quality live performance and a visual treatise on how movement creates or shapes physical space – and vice-versa.

Yasmine Hugonnet, Se sentir vivant, 2017© Anne-Laure Lechat

Again in the spatio-human vein, the very talented saxophone-clarinet-piano guy Antonin Tri Hoang and 12 musical companions will be turning the vast volumes of Saint Eustache’s Ship-to-Heaven architecture into a jazz soundbox. The performance will also provide a good moment to explore the old Halles parish church, far more of a conscious work of art than Notre Dame and which harbors Raymond Mason’s 1971 Le départ des fruits et légumes du coeur de Paris, le 28 février 1969 (“The Departure of Fruit and Vegetables from the Heart of Paris”) sculpture in a side chapel.

Looking past the September-October listing, Paris’ performance offer for November and December is easily as solid but also perhaps more esthetically intriguing than that of September-October. I’m thinking here not just of the ongoing Festival d’Automne program (lots of performance from La Ribot as well as dance from Merce Cunningham), but also Loïc Touzé, Liz Santoro and Daniel Linehan as dance performers at Théatre de la Bastille and new creations by Jann Gallois, Kader Attou and Système Castafiore at Palais de Chaillot. But really, especially I’m impatiently waiting on the program for the Kalypso hip-hop dance festival from 6 November to 17 December. In 2019, Kalypso, brainchild of performer, choreographer and tireless promoter of urban dance culture Mourad Merzouki, will feature work by 52 well-selected troupes in Paris and in cities throughout France. I’ll be paying particular attention to Kalypso and French hip hop/urban dance in 2019-2020.

Beyond hip hop and into Spring 2020, staying with just a few center city institutions, there’s reason to look forward to the contemporary dance performance offer, just for instance, at Théâtre de la Bastille or La Scala Paris or Atelier de Paris in Spring 2020. Bastille for example will be featuring such proven young talent as Sofia Dias, Vítor Roriz, Olivia Grandville or Madeleine Fournier, talen developed at the Atelier de Paris. La Scala will offer, notably, new circus performance with La Chute des anges (Raphaëlle Boitel, cie L'Oublié(e)) and Humans (Yaron Lifschitz, cie Circa) along with a reprise of the Michèle Anne de Mey & Jaco Van Dormael’s absolutely brilliant Cold Blood (Collectif Kiss & Cry).

Click here to access the September-October Performance Agenda.

PARIS DANCE PERFORMANCE AGENDA SEPTEMBER & OCTOBER 2019 [by Tracy Danison]

 

Paris Performance Calendar is a work-in-progress “dance syllabus”, a “to-see agenda” of dance performance complemented by essays and articles about esthetics, creation and creativity along with interviews of creators and performers in The Best American Poetry and other publications. 

For the beginning of the Season 2019-2020, my head has highlighted intriguing retrospective work by the well-known choreographers Jérôme Bel and Philippe Decouflé. Without ignoring such emotion-rallyers as Saburo Teshigawara performing things like Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique (recommended by DanseAujourdhui’s Catherine Zavodska, at the Philharmonie de Paris) or Jan Martens’ erotically tense Sweat Baby Sweat, my heart has chosen creation by artists whose esthetic power I admire, including Yasmine Hugonnet, Myriam Gourfink and Latifa Laâbissi or such artists as Florence Casenave, Aurélie Berland, Carole Quettier or Nina Vallon, whose performance ideas tease my esthetics. Work by Vallon, along with Aurelie Berland, among others, makes up the really intriguing offer of new creation riding classical music and choreographies for Micadanse’s Bien Fait! 2019 program. The tense emotion of Jan Martens’ Sweat Baby Sweat and the playful exploration of Yasmine Hugonnet’s Se Sentir Vivant both feature in Lafayette Anticipations’ Echelle Humaine 2019 program.

DANCE, PERFORMANCES & CREATORS TO LOOK FOR, PARIS RENTREE 2019  Les Traversées du Marais 2019: Voyages spatio-temporels  – Performance & Dance • 2019 • Les Castellers de Paris & Bruno Benne • Micadanses, 15, 16 & 20 rue Geoffroy l'Asnier 75004 Paris, 8 September 2019: three Voyages of between 20 - 40 minutes from 15h to 17h30 • Bien Fait! 2019 dance festival • Α Les Castellers de Paris are acrobats and dancers using traditional dance and performance in modern contexts. This Voyage in space and time includes a street-side acrobatic “castlebuilding” show based on a Catalonian tradition recognized as part of our universal cultural heritage by the UN, followed by Baroque-era dancing and music. infini – Dance performance • 2019 • Boris Charmatz • 60 minutes • Théâtre de la Ville - Espace Cardin, Paris, 10-14 September, 20.30h • Festival d’Automne 2019 • Α Premiered this past June at the Montepellier Dance Festival, the choreographer continues his always fascinating and generally successful modus operandi of using dance-movement to perform complex themes. Infini explores gesture and symbolic effect through dance, sound and numbers. In addition to hisperformance will be using young performers drawn from suburban dance conservatories where they have been working with Charmatz on a piece called Levée des conflits, an attempt create total (unbroken) movement. Ω Choreography: Boris Charmatz / Performers: Régis Badel, Boris Charmatz, Raphaëlle Delaunay, Maud Le Pladec, Tatiana Julien (alternately), Fabrice Mazliah, and Solène Wachter / Vocal work: Dalila Khatir / Sound: Olivier Renouf / Lighting: Yves Godin / Costumes: Jean-Paul Lespagnard / Produced: cie Terrain TRACES – Performance dance • Creation • 20 minutes • Eva Klimackova • Micadanses, 15, 16 & 20 rue Geoffroy l'Asnier 75004 Paris, 16 September 2019, 20h, along with Midi sans paupière by Carole Quettier • Bien Fait! 2019 dance festival • Α Traces uses dance movement to explore how performers use listening and the quality of the performance space to create each other. Eva Klimakova wants to work with the nude body as a distanced or “strange” presence, looking at the body as “a work of art, plastic, modulable, malleable … an opportunity to read the body as a language” ... Ω Choreography: Eva Klimackova / Performers: Céline Angibaud, Eva Klimackova, Fabien Almakiewicz/ Music: Vincent Epplay / Lighting: Yann Le Bras   Midi sans paupière – Dance performance • Creation • Carole Quettier • Micadanses, 15, 16 & 20 rue Geoffroy l'Asnier 75004 Paris, 16 September 2019, 20h, along with Traces by Eva Klimackova • Bien Fait! 2019 dance festival  • Α In this solo expressionist dance performance, Carole dances the sense between the lines of the Scarlet Letter’s Hester Prynne to music by Arnold Schoenberg, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert, Sergei Prokofiev. Midi is dedicated to Martine Clary, a classical dancer from the very traditionalist Opéra de Paris, who became a founding performer with the Théâtre de Silence (Jacques Garnier & Brigitte Lefèvre, 1972), one of the first exclusively modern dance troupes in France. In 1981, when Jacques Garnier was tapped to head up the Groupe de recherche chorégraphique de l’Opéra de Paris (GRCOP), which had a mission to raise public awareness of dance, Clary was again a founding performer. Her role in GRCOP’s Le Cordon infernal, a free public performance based on the now-celebrated cartoonist Claire Bretecher’s depiction of a family roped together and set in the vast space of the Opéra (Auber) metro-RER station, is legendary. After Garnier’s death in 1989, Clary took up teaching contemporary dance at the Conservatoire nationale de Musique et de Danse, where her teaching was much appreciated and her students legion. Martine Clary died in 2014 Ω Choregraphy and performance: Carole Quettier / Costumes: Catherine Garnier / Lighting: Manuella Rondeau O. K. – Dance performance • Creation 2019 • Florence Casanave, cie LOUMA • Micadanses, 15, 16 & 20 rue Geoffroy l'Asnier 75004 Paris, 16 September 2019, 20h, along with Maintenant, oui by Gaël Sesboué Recital • Bien Fait! 2019 dance festival • Α Dance improv sublimed or exalted by the vibrations of an inspired magic zither within the ethers of J.-S. Bach’s Well-tempered Clavichord, Book 1, Fugue N#4 et N#12. Ω Choreography and performance: Florence Casanave / Music and sound arrangement: Florent Colautti / Musical performance: Blandine Verlet, harpsichord / Set design: Florence Casanave & Florent Colautti / Lighting and technical assistance: Gweltaz Chauviré / Set: Yann Lemaitre / Costume: Mélanie Clénet Maintenant, oui – Dance performance • 2019 • Gaël Sesboué, cie Lola Gatt • Micadanses, 15, 16 & 20 rue Geoffroy l'Asnier 75004 Paris, 16 September 2019, 20h along with O.K. by Florence Casanave • Bien Fait! 2019 dance festival • Α Gaël Sesboué’s Maintenant, oui, a piece for four performers, organizes austere, clean-limbed dance performance around the model of the language logic punctuated with sense: Now (maintenant) is the present participle of keep up/hold on (maintenir)… Yes (oui). Keep up. The yes. Now. Present participle (participe). Participate in (participer à). Writing (l’écriture). The present (présent). Share in (participer de). Writing (l’écriture). Our present (de notre present). Through the Yes (Par le oui). By keeping it up (Par son maintien). Dans un mouvement qui tient. Jusqu’à maintenant. Par le oui. Par son action pour quatre interprètes, fonctionne comme une métaphore de notre quotidien, de nos actions et déplacements, amenés à se répéter chaque jour et pourtant, chaque jour différents. Par la reprise et la réinvention de la partition, le chorégraphe questionne les cadres qui balisent notre quotidien afin d’en faire jouer les limites pour permettre de nouveaux Ω Choreography and concept: Gaël Sesboüé / Director: Gaël Sesboüé / Performers: Carole Perdereau, Annabelle Pulcini, Jérôme Andrieu, Alexandre Thery / Music and sound: Vincent Raude / Lighting: Bénédicte Michaud / Costuming: Stefani Gicquiaud / Production assistant: Marion Cachan Sweat Baby Sweat  – Dance performance • 65 minutes • 2011 • Jan Martens • Lafayette Anticipations, 9, rue du Plâtre, 75004 Paris, 19 September 2019, 20.30h  • Echelle Humaine dance festival  • Festival d’Automne 2019 • Α Sweat Baby Sweat makes you really glad hip hop brought athleticism to the gestural elegance traditional to dance. Baby, take me: Jan Martens series of reflections on how to treat one’s life partner, the slow, continuous show of the limits of strength has made one of the most sensual pieces ever seen. Ω Choreography and performance: Jan Martens with Kimmy Ligtvoet and Steven Michel / Music arrangements: Jaap Van Keulen / Dramaturgy : Peter Seynaeve/ Production : Frascati Productions, ICKamsterdam, TAKT Dommelhof and JAN vzw SE Sentir vivant & We are still Watching – Performance • 2017 & 2012 • Yasmine Hugonnet, cie Arts Mouvementés & Ivana Müller • 40 minutes • Lafayette Anticipations 75004 Paris, 19 September 2019, 18.30h & 21h  • Echelle Humaine dance festival • Festival d’Automne 2019 • Α Science suggests that how we feel about our voice and what out voice says to others reveals how we feel about ourselves and shapes how others feels about us. Yasmine Hugonnet’s Se Sentir vivant gives voice to the parts of self; how do they feel about it all? Ω Concept, text, performance: Yasmine Hugonnet / Production: cie Arts Mouvementés / Coproduction: Arsenic-Centre d'art scénique contemporain. • Α Ivana Müller gives the audience the script, enabling an alternate view of live performance in the interactive We are Still Watching. Ω Concept, text: Ivana Müller with Andrea Bosic, David Weber-Krebs, Jonas Rutgeerts / Production: cie I’M Company Hors-Champ – Performance • 2018 • Ivana Müller • 45 minutes • Lafayette Anticipations 75004 Paris, 21 September 2019: 14h30 - 15h15; 15h15 - 16h; 16h -16h30; 17h15 - 18h; 18h - 18h45 / 22 September 2019: 14h30 -17h30; 15h45 - 16h30 • Echelle Humaine dance festival  • Festival d’Automne 2019 • Α Ivana Müller’s Hors-Champ is an installation and participative performance piece around one-on-one conversation. Participants read out scripts based on expressions derived from language around plants, cultivation and gardens to each other in private to enable a relationship both around the individuals involved and the content of the conversation. Hors-Champs exercise might require some French. On the other hand, a good dose of incomprehension might make for an even more interesting encounter and experience. Ω Concept: Ivana Müller / Text: Ivana Müller with Julien Lacroix and Anne Lenglet / Production: I'M COMPANY (Matthieu Bajolet, Gerco de Vroeg et Suzanne Veiga Gomes) Dancer of the Year – Performance • 2019 • Trajal Harrell • 40 minutes • Lafayette Anticipations 75004 Paris, 21 September 2019: 16h30 -19h55; 19h -19h40/ 22 September 2019: 15h - 15h40 ; 17h30 - 19h10 • Echelle Humaine dance festival  • Festival d’Automne 2019 • Α Acclaimed for his “what-if” vogueing piece Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church and since much interested in themes around identity, Trajal Harrell’s Dancer looks at how being named “Dancer of the Year 2018” by the German Tanz Magazine affects performance and self “representation”. Ω Choreography, performance, sound and costuming: Trajal Harrell / Dramaturgy: Sara Jansen / Production: Kunstenfestivaldesarts Score #1 Récital [Bach to Boulez] – Music with dance • 2019 • Nina Vallon • Micadanses, 15, 16 & 20 rue Geoffroy l'Asnier 75004 Paris - Studio May B, 23 September 2019, 20h, along with Offrande by Mié Coquempot • Bien Fait! 2019 dance festival • Α Nina Vallon writes that it is both “the pleasure to dance with or to music and the richness of musical creation” that have inspired her choreography and and performance. I might say that it may be the nicest thing about contemporary dance performance that music and dance can be so variously related: the pleasure of sight and sound varying together and on their own terms, the inspiration of both or each together. Nina Vallon brings together Pierre Boulez, Douze Notations pour piano and Ferruccio Busoni, Chaconne, transcription for piano in D-minor, J.- S. Bach to add music’s relation to itself to the possibilities of variation. Score#1 is a creation in avant première. Ω Choreography & dance performance: Nina Vallon / Musical performance: Aurélien Richard, piano Offrande – Dance • 2019 • Mié Coquempot - cie K622 • Micadanses, 15, 16 & 20 rue Geoffroy l'Asnier 75004 Paris, 23 September 2019, 20h, along with Score#1 Recital by Nina Vallon • Bien Fait! 2019 dance festival • Α Mié Coquempot is collaborating with dancer and choreographer Bruno Bouché, recently named director of CCN Ballet de l’Opera national du Rhin, and the master of Baroque Béatrice Massin of Fêtes Galantes to perform The Musical Offering (Das Musikalische Opfer), BWV 1079 (J.- S. Bach) : mixing classic, Baroque, modern and contemporary theories, as well as dance styles, to interpret or reinterpret the art of movement with and to Bach’s Ur-pieces. Ω Choreography: Mié Coquempot / Performers: Six from cie K622, Fêtes Galantes and CCN Ballet de l’Opera national du Rhin, TBA / Notatrice and assistant choreographer:  Maud Pizon / General manager: Christophe Poux / Production: Lucie Mollier Tout doit disparaître ! (everything must go!) – Dance, Performance, Music • 2019 • Philippe Decouflé, Cie DCA • Théâtre National de Chaillot, 27 September - 6 October 2019 • Season 2019-20 Théâtre National de la Danse • Α Philippe Decouflé takes audiences for a stroll through his evolution as choreographer and Cie DCA’s past and present work, literally, as this four-hour performance extravaganza occupies both auditoriums, its monumental foyers and other High Art Deco noks and crannies. The offerin includes work over 30 years, including Triton (1990); Tranche de cake (1994); Petites pieces montées (1993); Decodex (1995); Shazam (1998); Triton 2ter (1999); Sombrero (2006); Coeurs croisés (2008); Octopus (2010); Contact (2014) and Wiebo (2016). Ω Choreography: Philippe Decouflé / Director: Philippe Decouflé / Assistant choreographers: Daphné Waksmann-Mauger, Olivier Simola / Music: Hughes de Courson, Joseph Racaille, Nosfell, Pierre Le Bourgeois, Sébastien Libolt / Video: Olivier Simola / Costuming: Philippe Guillotel, Laurence Chalou / Assistants: Peggy Housset and Jean Malo / Set design: Aurélia Michelin, Martine Besombes / Performers: Manon Andersen, Didier André, Flavien Bernezet, Dominique Boivin, Christine Bombal, Meritxell Checa Esteban, Stéphane Chivot, Muriel Corbel, Sophie Cornille, Coralie Corredor, Philippe Decouflé, David Defever, Véronique Defranoux, Herman Diephuis, Julien Ferranti, Clémence Galliard, Ludovic Gauthier, Sylvie Giron, Nathalie Hauwelle, Pascale Henrot, Pascale Houbin, Eric Houzelot, Benjamin Lamarche, Eric Martin, Sean Patrick Mombruno, Alexandra Naudet, Aurélien Oudot, Matthieu Penchinat, Aurélia Petit, Stéphanie Petit, Michèle Prélonge, Maxime Rigobert, Lisa Robert, Alice Roland, Nancy Rusek, Olivier Simola, Suzanne Soler, Rosalba Torres, Christophe Waksmann, Daphné Waksmann-Mauger (DANCE), Peter Corser, Louise Decouflé, Morgane Houdemont, Yannick Jory, Paul Jothy, Pierre Le Bourgeois, Sébastien Libolt, Nosfell, Joseph Racaille, Christophe Rodomisto with participation from students from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris and ballet supervisors Silvia Bidegain and Céline Talon. Portrait de groupe avec femme(s), (Part 1 of 2) – Dance performance • 2018-2020 • Claire Durand Drouhin, cie Traction• Micadanses, 15, 16 & 20 rue Geoffroy l'Asnier 75004 Paris, 27 September 2019, 20h - studio May B • Bien Fait! 2019 dance festival  • Α The title of part 1 of Claire Durand-Drouhin’s Portrait de groupe avec femmes (Group portrait with women) calls to mind Heinrich Böll’s celebrated Gruppenbild mit Dame (Group portrait with lady), a story of an ordinary woman at grips with the intense tacit and explicit misogynies of Germany’s National Socialist period. In contrast, in what is meant to be a very physical invocation of the meaning of being woman. Durand Drouhin’s piece uses synchronization of movement and a classical Persian percussion music called Daf after the hand-drum used to produce it to create a sensibility among five performers “united by a single breath”. Ω Choreography: Claire Durand-Drouhin / Performers: Pauline Bigot, Claire Durand-Drouhin, Inés Hernandez, Haruka Miyamoto, Jyotsna Liyanaratne / Music: Angel dance by Mohsen Taherzadeh, Hossein Alizadeh, Leila Han, Cooperman hand drums Les statues meurent aussi – Dance performance • 2019 • Aurélie Berland, cie Gramma • Micadanses, 15, 16 & 20 rue Geoffroy l'Asnier 75004 Paris, 27 September 2019, 20h - Studio May B • Bien Fait! 2019 dance festival  • Α The filmmaker, photographer and essayist Chris Marker remarked à propos his film Les Statues meurent aussi (“Statues Also Die”) that “an object is dead when the face that looked at it has died”. Since first forming cie Gamma in 2014, performer Aurélie Berland has been looking at how an aesthetic is transmitted through time, how dance movement is transmitted into new contexts. Notably, she has reconstructed and renewed work by Doris Humphrey, Lucinda Childs and Martha Graham. In this series of performance around Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, she is taking up the rich aesthetic of modern dance in Germany with reconstruction of work by Rudolf Laban (1879-1958), Irmgard Bartenieff (1900-1981), Dorothee Günther (1896-1975) constructed by choreographer Gundel Eplinius (1920-2007), a student and disciple of Mary Wigman (1886-1973), the country’s pioneer of expressionist dance and dance therapy. Ω Choreography: Gundel Eplinius, reconstructed by Aurélie Berland / Performer: Anne-Sophie Lancelin / Music: Ludwig Van Beethoven, 7th Symphony in A major, Opus 92 (Wilhelm Furtwängler, 1943) and extracts from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana cantata (Eugen Jochum, 1968) Rétrospective – Video Dance Performance • 2019 • Jérôme Bel, cie R.B. Jérôme Bel • 80 minutes • Théâtre des Abbesses, Paris, 27 -29 September 2019 • Festival d’Automne 2019 performance arts festival  • Α For his 20th création Jérôme Bel has put together a rétrospective video of his work and themed it around the rôle of political consideration in dance creation; out of concern for the environment, Bel’s company no longer uses air travel and; he points out, making and distributing this latest work has required and will require no environment-unfriendly travel. Bel has stitched together extracts from 18 of what he considers his important pieces to visually explore his central concerns: the body, language, power and vulnerability. Ω Conception: Jérôme Bel / Image research: Céline Bozon, Pierre Dupouey, Aldo Lee, Olivier Lemaire, Marie-Hélène Rebois / Image Editors : Yaël Bitton and Oliver Vulliamy / Performers (in video) : Taous Abbas, Fanny Alton, Cédric Andrieux, Sheila Atala, Sonja Augart, Michèle Bargues, Jérôme Bel, Ryo Bel, Malik Benazzouz, Remo Beuggert, Nicole Beutler, Gianni Blumer, Céline Bozon, Damian Bright, Matthias Brücker, Carine Charaire, Vassia Chavaroche, Germana Civera, Houda Daoudi, Diola Djiba, Shadé Djiba, Olga De Soto, Véronique Doisneau, Juan Dominguez, Moussa Doukoure, Dina Ed Dik, Chiara Gallerani, Nicolas Garsault, Ito Glissant, Matthias Grandjean, Stéphanie Gomes, Claire Haenni, Julia Häusermann, Sara Hess, Olivier Horeau, Miranda Hossle, Benoît Izard, Cuqui Jerez, Marie-Yolette Jura, Peter Keller, Maxime Kurvers, La Bourette, Akira Lee, Aldo Lee, Françoise Legardinier, Lorraine Meier, Eva Meyer Keller, Ion Munduate, Henrique Neves, Tiziana Pagliaro, Gisèle Pelozuelo, Carlos Pez, Magali Saby, Oliviane Sarazin, Frédéric Seguette, Esther Snelder, Johannes Sundrup, Simone Truong, Pierre Tu, Amaia Urra, Peter Vandenbempt, Hester Van Hasselt, Simone Verde / Assistants : Chiara Gallerani, Maxime Kurvers / Artistic direction : R.B. Jérôme Bel, Rebecca Lasselin / Administration: Sandro Grando / Production: cie R.B. Jérôme Bel Glissement d’infini  – Performance dance • 2019 • Myriam Gourfink • 30 minutes • Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris, 30 September 2019, 19h • Festival d’Automne 2019 performance arts festival  • Α Myriam Gourfink has created an in situ performance for the Nymphéas rooms at the Musée de l’Orangerie, renewing the spaces and volumes of Monet’s famous painting. Ω Conception: Myriam Gourfink / Choreography: Myriam Gourfink / Performers: Carole Garriga, Deborah Lary, Azusa Takeuchi, Véronique Weil / Music: Kasper T. Toeplitz / Musical performance: Kasper T. Toeplitz and Elena Kakaliagou Production: Les Spectacles Vivants & Centre Pompidou (Paris) Isadora Duncan – Dance performance • 2019 • Jérôme Bel, cie R.B. Jérôme Bel • 60 minutes • Centre Pompidou, Paris, 3-5   October 2019 • Festival d’Automne 2019 performance arts festival  • Α Jérôme Bel’s Isadora Duncan, first produced at the Deutsches Theater, Berlin is a solo for Elisabeth Schwartz, who is also a dance historian specialized in Isadora Duncan’s repertory. Schwatrtz’s performance, which is part of Bel’s ongoing series of choreographic portraits begun in 2004 and the first portrait of a historic figure, is based on her reading of Duncan’s autobiography, Ma vie. As Bel no longer uses air travel out of concern for the environment, a Skyped version of Isadora Duncan by Catherine Gallant is being performed in New York. Ω Concept: Jérôme Bel / Chorégraphy, Isadora Duncan / Performers: Elisabeth Schwartz / Assistant, Chiara Gallerani / Artistic direction: R.B. Jérôme Bel, Rebecca Lasselin / Administration: Sandro Grando / Production: cie R.B. Jérôme Bel Symphonie Fantastique – Music, Dance • 20 • Saburo Teshigawara • 60 minutes • Philharmonie de Paris, Grande Salle Pierre Boulez, Paris, 4 October 2019 • Recommended by DanseAujourdhui • Α As his performance in Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot amply demonstrates, Saburo Teshigawara can project feeling like few other performers. Catherine Zavodska writes that Teshigawara’s interpretation of the celbrated symphony is “total art”, a visit to Berlioz’s musical universe that brings his magical and romatic vision to life as if it were a première. The multifaceted charm of Berlioz’s composition and its call on all an orchestra’s resources is perfectly matched by Teshigawara’s inventiveness as much in interpration as in lighting and and costumes. Ω Choreography: Saburo Teshigawara / Music: Orchestre National de Lyon / Production: Orchestre National de Lyon & Philharmonie de Paris White Dog – Performance dance • 2019 • Latifa Laâbissi, cie Figureproject • 60 minutes • Centre Pompidou,, Paris, 10-14 September • Festival d’Automne 2019 performance arts festival • Α Premiered at the Théâtre Joliette, Marseille, earlier this year, Latifa Laâbissi’s latest creation is, like Consul & Meshie, a look into the collective heart of human beings, how they define themselves, how they transform, done with a fine humor and a profound respect for and knowledge of the art of movement. Ω Conception: Latifa Laâbissi / Performers: Jessicat Batut, Volmir Cordeiro, Sophiatou Kossoko, Latifa Laâbissi / Artistic collaboration: Isabelle Launay / Set design and costuming: Nadia Lauro / Sound: Manuel Coursin / Lighting: Leticia Skrycky / Technical direction: Ludovic Rivière / Production: cie Figure Project Soundance, Fabrications & Four Walls - Merce Cunningham – Dance, Music • Soundance (1975, Detroit Music Hall) / Fabrications (1987, Cyrus Northrop Memorial Auditorium, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis) / Four Walls (1944, Perry-Mansfield Workshop, Steamboat Springs, Colorado) • CCN - Ballet de Lorraine • Season 2019-20 Théâtre National de la Danse, Paris, 12 - 16 October 2019 • Festival d’Automne 2019 performance arts festival  • Α Petter Jacobsson and Thomas Caley use free interpretation of “story dance” Four Walls – a first collaboration between Merce Cunnigham and John Cage – danced with the inimitably diverse talent by CCN – Ballet de Lorraine and interpreted live by pianist Vanessa Wagner, to close what they conceive as a homage to the great choreographer. The approach to Soundance and Fabrications focuses on bringing out what Jacobsson and Caley see as the fundamentals of Cunningham’s choreography: sound, spontaneity (chance) and situation. Soundance, to David Tudor’s original composition, reveals bodies in recursive deconstructive movement while Fabrications brings out how Cunningham used the model of the throw of dice of I Ching divination to model in chance. Ω Sounddance Chorégraphy: Merce Cunningham / Music: David Tudor / Choregraphic arrangement: Thomas Caley, Meg Harper / Performers: 10 CCN – Ballet de Lorraine troupe performers TBA / Lighting, costuming and décor: Mark Lancaster / Coaching: Thomas Caley / Fabrications Choreography: Merce Cunningham / Music: Emanuel Dimas de Melo Pimenta / Choregraphic arrangement: Thomas Caley / Performers: 15 CCN – Ballet de Lorraine troupe performers TBA / Lighting: Josh Johnson / Costuming and décor: Dove Bradshaw / Production CCN – Ballet de Lorraine (Nancy) / Four Walls Choreography: Petter Jacobsson, Thomas Caley / Music: John Cage / Performers: 24 CCN – Ballet de Lorraine troupe performers TBA / Musical performance: Vanessa Wagner, piano / Lighting: Eric Wurtz / Set design: Petter Jacobsson, Thomas Caley / Costumes: Petter Jacobsson, Thomas Caley with Martine Augsbouger, Annabelle Saintier Dying on Stage – Performance • Creation 2019 • 150 minutes x 3 • Christodoulos Panayiotou • Musée d'Orsay, Paris, 19 October - 14 December 2019 • Festival d’Automne 2019 performance arts festival  • Α In opera there is nothing so risible as Don Juan’s death; there is nothing so risky in performance as a death scene. By taking his cue from Rudof Nureyev’s last days of life as dance, scuptor and performance artist Christodoulos Panayiotou manages to get a look at stage death in the round. In three “danced lecture” performances themed around the spectacle that is death, Panayiotou covers the gamut of genre choreographies, including by taboo and by mortal tragedy as well as by accidental trespass and fatal idealism. Dying on Stage presents over its three performances the entirety of Panayiotou’s collection of (mostly) film-death scenes. Ω Conception & performance: Christodoulos Panayiotou, with Jean Capeille / Production: Brave New Media Trois Ballets: Pond Way, Walkaround Time, Cross Currents - Merce Cunningham – Dance performance • 80 minutes • Pond Way (1998, Opéra national de Paris): Opéra Ballet Vlaanderen / Walkaround Time (1968, State University College, Buffalo, New York): Ballet de l'Opéra national de Paris; Cross Currents (1964, Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London): Royal Ballet of London • 80 minutes • Season 2019-20 Théâtre National de la Danse, Paris, 22-26 October 2019 • Festival d’Automne 2019 performance arts festival  • Α Each of these pieces puts on display Merce Cunningham’s notions of scenography and cross-artistic collaboration, literally. Opéra Ballet Vlaanderen explores Pond Way (score by Brian Eno). Walkaround Time, performed by the Opéra de Paris, is focused on the body with Marcel Duchamp’s abstract Le Grand Verre (Originally: “The bride uncovered by her suitors”) integrated into the set. Royal Ballet takes on Cross Currents, with its  complexly criss-crossing soloists. Ω Cross Currents Choreography: Merce Cunningham / Music: Conlon Nancarrow / Choregraphic arrangement: Daniel Squire / Performers: 3 performers of the The Royal Ballet of London TBA / Lighting: Beverly Emmons / Costuming: based on the orginal by Merce Cunningham Pond Way Choreography: Merce Cunningham / Music: Brian Eno / Choregraphic arrangement: Andrea Weber / Set design: based on the original by Roy Lichtenstein / Performers: 13 performers of the Opera Ballet Vlaanderen of London TBA / Lighting: David Covey / Costuming: Suzanne Gallo Walkaround Time Choreography: Merce Cunningham / Choregraphic arrangement: Meg Harper, Jennifer Goggans / Music: David Behrman / Text: Marcel Duchamp, La Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même [La Boîte Verte], Paris, 1934 © Succession Marcel Duchamp, 2019 / Decor: based on the orginal by Marcel Duchamp, La Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même, dit Le Grand Verre, originally supervised by Jasper Johns/ Performers: 9 performers of the Ballet de l’Opéra national de Paris TBA / Costuming: based on the original by Jasper Johns, which is now in the Walker Art Center / Lighting: Beverly Emmons / Technical Coordination: Davison Scandrett / Sound engineer: Jesses Stiles Disparitions – Music performance • 45 minutes • 2019 • Antonin Tri Hoang • Eglise Saint Eustache, Paris, 24 October 2019 • Festival d’Automne 2019 performance arts festival  • Α Disparitions, “disappearences”, recalls pas perdus, the intriguing quality of a sound wandering into the universal silence. Antonin Tri Hoang knows how to play jazz clarinette, sax and piano like nobody’s business and he can lead a band of the best musicians around. His new challenge is to fill the great Gothic Ship of Saint Eustache – 105 meters long, 44 meters wide, 33 meters high – with music. Hoang intends to make it the great soundbox its architects intended (though, perhaps, not then envisaging jazz) by disposing twelve musicians throughout the church in resonance with its architects. Ω Conception & composition: Antonin Tri Hoang / Artistic collaboration: Julien Pontvianne / Performers: Elena Andreyev, violoncello; Prune Bécheau, violon; Elsa Biston, electronics; Gulrim Choi, gamba; Richard Comte, guitar; Jozef Dumoulin, organ and keyboards; Stéphane Garin, percussions; Amélie Grould, percussions; Antonin Tri Hoang, clarinet and saxophone; Julien Pontvianne, clarinet and saxophone / Lighting: César Godefroy / Production: Festival d’Automne à Paris

 

For Summer: Florida Poets: Sean Sexton [by Emma Trelles]

stump garden, 9" x 12" etching on zinc, sean sexton

Nest Eggs
by Sean Sexton

Yesterday morning I prepared the roe of the mackerel queen
my son caught on a Saturday morning off-shore excursion.
I exhumed two swollen, pink, vein-bound bags from the silver
damsel, and sliced them into pieces to sauté.
I lament her demise, eggs never laid, fish lives
that never will be--eaten and relished with shame.

And the pea-hen that set five eggs in our dooryard
at the foot of St. Francis beneath the penumbra of a sapling
as we watched in awe of her sorry chosen nest, her
unfaltering devotion to the task. She'd stand
a moment, shift the eggs like a careful cook frying
chicken pieces, managing warmth, and some kind of order.

The curvature and needling devise of her beak revealed
its perfection for such, as did her shape, crouched
like morning fog upon a hollow. Day or night, rain or shine,
she stayed. In a downpour at dusk, we tried to help her,
swiped a shower curtain from the guest bath, to drape
in the branches of the tree, affixed with clothespins
and best of intention. We left a radio blaring through the night,

wakened to the crying, same as last month's hen that hatched
three fuzzy balls with legs she led half a week, feeding,
gathering them in when they strayed, until in a single
obliterating moment they were taken. For days she wandered
yelping, searching aimlessly. Now shells lie asunder
like smashed crockery. She's afoot and again, loose in the air--
the sound the world makes. 


Sean Sexton was born in Indian River County and grew up on his family's Treasure Hammock Ranch, eight miles west of Vero Beach, Florida.  He divides his time between taking care of a 600 acre cow-calf and seed stock cattle operation, painting, and writing.  He is married to artist Sharon Sexton; they have two grown children and live on their ranch in a house they built with their hands. He has kept journal-sketch books drawn from his life since 1973 and was awarded an Individual Artist’s Fellowship from the State of Florida in 2000-2001. He is the author of Waldo’s Mountain: A Brief History of a Small Elevation; (Waterview Press, 2001); Blood Writing, Poems (Anhinga Press, 2009), and The Empty Tomb (University of Alabama's Slash Pine Press, 2013). He was a presenter at the National Grazing Lands Coalition Conference in Orlando on the subject of Art and Agriculture. He has been a panelist at the Florida Literary Arts Coalition Conference in St. Augustine, FL, since 2012, and a regular performer at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada, since 2011. He became inaugural Poet Laureate of Indian River County in 2016. "Nest Eggs" is from his most recent collection of poems, May Darkness Restore (Press 53, 2019).

 

"Odd Man Out" -- noir ou non? [by David Lehman and Suzanne Lummis]

This is the seventh in a series of exchanges between noir enthusiasts David Lehman and Suzanne Lummis

Let’s go to the land of tea at four, a pint of bitter, roast beef, Yorkshire pudding and Brexit. Would you consider Carol Reed’s Odd Man Out (1947) a noir?

Suzanne Lummis:

No, it’s better than noir, bigger than noir, more terrible than noir, an ancient thing—it’s Tragedy, and Tragedy of a high order. Also, it’s excruciating. I can’t bear the prolonged ordeal of the central character, James Mason’s “Johnny.”  I managed to watch it all the way through years back, but in re-watching it—so as to address this question—I fast-forwarded through half an hour. It was killing me, the slow death of this wounded man, hallucinating from loss of blood as he staggers through a city in Northern Ireland.  And we emphasize with him; unlike a film noir protagonist, he didn’t rob money for himself but to support a political cause. The story’s set during the “Troubles,” and he’s a leader of a group similar to the IRA. But, far more important, though he made a terrible mistake, a tragic mistake, he’s lately reevaluated his life while in prison and now abhors violence. Now, even more than fear of his own death he’s afraid that in a struggle over a firearm he might’ve killed a man. He asks everyone he encounters who’s seen the news of the robbery, Did I kill that man?   Because of this and his suffering, physical and emotional, we feel for him. Moreover, it’s James freaking Mason, for Krist’s sake. That beautiful man, that beautiful face. What a performance.

One element that’s absolutely noir--the cinematography. Five minutes in I was on the Internet—who lit this?!  And that was even before the story hits the streets, those night-time shots of shadow blackened figures fleeing through long alleys, and the faces of children and the aged peering out windows… Crazy beautiful.  Robert Krasker, Australian guy, also cinematographer for one of director Carol Reed’s other great ones, The Third Man. Who can forget the first appearance of Harry Lime? - 40% acting, 60% lighting.  

To paraphrase that irascible critic Kenneth Tynan, anyone who finds the stock CGI effects of, say, Avatar, with blue people looping around in the air inside cartoon-colored environments fantastically cool, but thinks the fierce lyricism of Odd Man Out is boring because it’s black and white. . .  Cannot be my friend. 

 David Lehman

Odd Man Out is one of the great British films of the late 1940s, the era of Brief Interlude, Dead of Night, The Third Man, and The Fallen Idol. I didn’t appreciate the greatness of Odd Man Out until the second or third time I saw it, and now I try to see it every chance I can. Is it a noir? It can certainly be discussed in this context, as we are doing. If noir involves failure, a caper or heist or mission gone wrong, with dead bodies piled up on the stage at the end, preferably in black and white, it qualifies – but then, so does Olivier’s Hamlet, and we have another category for it. Jean Negulesco’s wonderful film The Mask of Dimitrios (1944) -- with a sneering Zachary Scott cast perfectly as the villain and Peter Lorre as the detective story writer who joins Sydney Greenstreet on his trail – has many noir elements, but we wouldn’t hesitate to characterize it as an espionage thriller.

This returns us to the problem of how to define noir, which Caroline Seebohm brought up when we talked about Hitchcock. In the Wall Street Journal today (August 13, 2019), the critic Terry Teachout ventures this definition: a noir is a movie “in which a flawed by basically innocent protagonist is presented with a moral choice, makes the wrong call, and is plunged into a violent after-hours world of passion and crime.” I admire Teachout’s stab at the problem, though, to take Teachout’s two examples, I wonder how “innocent” Fred MacMurray and Robert Mitchum are in Double Indemnity and Out of the Past. It seems to me also that no definition of noir will work unless it takes into account the distinctive lighting, the shadows, the chiaroscuro, and other atmospherics characteristic of noir classics.

Odd Man Out, because of its political and religious themes, differs from the noir films that readily come to mind when the subject arises, but I am happy for the chance to talk about it here. The evocation of Belfast in a dream-tangle of shadows is haunting. At the moral center of the movie is the doomed love affair of the revolutionary leader Johnny McQueen (James Mason), an escaped convict, and the steadfast Kathleen Sullivan (Kathleen Ryan). Father Tom, Lukey, Shell, the bartender, the little girl who lost he bar -- the secondary characters around them -- are like figures in a nightmarish allegory, and the movie has the feel of a dream. As one film professor puts it, the film is "festooned with gargoyles" (Kevin Hagopian, Penn State University). Naturally the robbery Johnny and his cohorts plan is meant to be his last, and it is his last though not in the way he planned. Naturally the robbery Johnny and his cohorts plan is meant to be his last, and it is his last though not in the way he planned. Naturally something goes terribly wrong. Johnny kills a man and is wounded in the process. Nobody was supposed to get hurt. And Johnny wasn’t supposed to fall out of the getaway car and get abandoned by his none-too-bright buddies.

I particularly like the scene in the deserted bunker when Johnny wakes up to find that the strange dream he had is true – he lies wounded and alone, susceptible to hallucination, hunted by the authorities. It is a very episodic movie, with Johnny’s progress like that of a pilgrim on his way to purgatory. There is the time Johnny is in the back of a hansom cab, which the police do not inspect believing that the passenger there is an ordinary drunkard. There is a wonderfully weird scene featuring the crazed painter Lukey (Robert Newton), who sees in Johnny’s suffering face the perfect model for an masterpiece of portraiture. Movies that make intelligent use of poetry or scripture hold a charm for me, and in a hallucinatory moment Johnny quotes lines from I Corinthians (13-11 and 13-2): “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. . . and  though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.” The dialogue before the bloody finale is moving. “Is it far?” Kathleen “It's a long way, Johnny, but I'm coming with you.”

Click here to read last week's installment and here for the whole series, of which this is #7 in the series.

It Had To Be You & All the Things You Are w/ Helen Forrest, Dick Haymes, Artie Shaw

Possibly the best swing version of "It Had To Be You": Helen Forrest and Dick Haymes, vocals; the Artie Shaw band.

and then comes Helen's peerless rendition of "All the Things You Are":

 

Met Percent: Week Four [by Alec Bernstein]

Almost a Hero

I was given the middle initial “C” in memory of my grandmother Celia, who had not yet died. The “C” was a placeholder for a middle name I would select. At 15, I chose Clisthenes, the Athenian tyrant and founder of the first democracy. 

History contains so much quiet violence.

After 9/11, my “C” and my Clisthenes were removed by the Social Security Administration. Apparently my parents had not included  the “C” on the birth certificate, and I never filed a legal name change (who knew). 

“On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.”- Montaigne

 

Difficult Vocabulary

Catullus, Tibullus, Horace and Ginsberg [Carpe Diem, 1968-1972]. 

It was a difficult time. As teenage poets, Simon Schuchat and I published Buffalo Stamps, a poetry magazine, costs partially paid with my Bar Mitzvah money. We would take the Greyhound Bus to NY and search for poets. We found them, and kindly many gave us poems: Ted Berrigan, Charles Bukowski, Allen Ginsberg, Anselm Hollo, Lewis MacAdams, Bruce Andrews. Simon continued on (and continues today!).

Simon somehow got Allen Ginsberg’s phone number and got him to read at our high school. The condition was an airport pick-up and drop-off at his hotel. Simon agreed, not mentioning we weren't old enough to drive. A prize moment, the master reading in the gym, including what our faculty deemed “difficult” vocabulary. “Mouth my tongue touched once or twice all ash [ . . . ] youthful cock tip, curly pubis” - “On Neal’s Ashes” (1971).

Catullus, Carmen 16: My Harvard Loeb Classic edition includes the “difficult” lines  (“Fuck you, up your ass and in your mouth”) in Latin but excludes them in the English on the opposing page. Other editions presented this complete poem as a “fragment”. Ancient censorship! I was proud that our high school allowed vocabulary that Harvard Press did not.

Mesmerized then and now: the comfort of re-reading Kaddish and “Ave atque vale” (“Hail and farewell”) when my father passed away. Two musical tongues: one with and one without definite and indefinite articles. 

 

Honey, Milk, Wine and a Prayer

No matter how humanistic it got, much of the ancient arts served as entry tickets to the underworld.

“The Romans, by reason that this poor syllable death sounded so harshly to their ears and seemed so ominous, found out a way to soften and spin it out by a periphrasis, and instead of pronouncing such a one is dead, said, ‘Such a one has lived,’ or ‘Such a one has ceased to live’ . . . provided there was any mention of life in the case, though past, it carried yet some sound of consolation”. - Montaigne

 

Lonely?

I was drawn in: Greek sculptures: their anatomy, their balance, their contrapposto. But also static: perfect musculature but never tense. Repressed, idealized, or both? The abstraction was key. Ivins remarks there are few groups of interacting subjects. A singular wrestler. “The figures are frighteningly lonely.” *

I spent many years engrossed in the Classics. My shift from Beat poetry was triggered by the sounds of Virgil’s Bucolics in Latin. I stepped away from the contemporary: the counterculture, DC politics, and student riots, after my unplanned presence at the Chicago Democratic convention of 1968 (not to mention being arrested for high treason; I was 14). I entered abstraction and stayed there for a very long time.

Art and Geometry, William Ivins, Harvard University Press, 1946. (Curator of the Met’s Department of Prints, 1916 - 1946).

 

Gary Cohen Calls Endy Chavez's Catch (2013)

<<< Edmonds at first and one out, and Pérez deals. Fastball hit in the air to left field, that's deep, back goes Chávez, back near the wall, leaping, and... HE MADE THE CATCH! He took a home run away from Rolen! Trying to get back to first is Edmonds... he's doubled off! And the inning is over! Endy Chávez saves the day! He reached up high over the left field wall, right in front of the visitors bullpen, and pulled back a two-run homer! He went to the apex of his leap, and caught it in the webbing of his glove, with his elbow up above the fence. A miraculous play by Endy Chávez, and then Edmonds is doubled off first, and Oliver Perez escapes the 6th inning. The play of the year, the play maybe of the franchise history, for Endy Chávez, the inning is over. >>>

For Summer: Florida Poets: Neil de la Flor [by Emma Trelles]

these are messages i'm sending to you, neil de la flor

The Vagabond

by Neil de la Flor

We bond over electronic music and make out. On the dance floor, his arms are dumbbells destined for the seabed. We pray for the abyss to relinquish the red lights of the world. Adora welcomes the world batting her eyelashes like a flamenco dancer bats her abanico. She is ridiculous in her beehive wig.

A boy and a girl wear leather dog collars as Lola spins the Cure, Depeche Mode, The Clash, New Order. We order two shots of tequila and photographic memories. Each shot is a declaration of love or something close to a crossbow. The arrow of time is a cosmic phenomenon divined in blue agave. The cosmos quarrels behind us in a black veil.

He reveals his history of histories beneath yellow street lights—a pair of binary stars fight for more space. Vampires move over. Rats get out. He bends dangerously in awe of his own angels.

We (don’t) share secrets.

The shadow on the left puts his left hand in the right pocket of the shadow on the right. We (or they) are nouns and verbs created in a foreign language. Each lie a point of light in the sky.

Neil de la Flor is a writer, educator, photographer, and executive director of Reading Queer, a Knight Foundation funded organization dedicated to promoting queer literary culture in South Florida. He is the author of Almost Dorothy (Marsh Hawk Press, 2010), winner of the Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize and An Elephant’s Memory of Blizzards (Marsh Hawk Press). He also co-authored four collaborative books of poetry, including Sinead O’Connor and her Coat of a Thousand Bluebirds (Firewheel Editions, 2011), co-authored with Maureen Seaton and winner of the Sentence Book Award; Facial Geometry (NeoPepper Press, 2006), co-authored with Maureen Seaton and Kristine Snodgrass; and Two Thieves and a Liar (Jackleg Press, 2012), also co-authored with Maureen Seaton and Kristine Snodgrass. He graduated with an MFA from the University of Miami, where he was a Michener Fellow, and can be reached at neildelaflor.com