The Best American Poetry

2AM, and the Rabbinical Students Stand in Their Bathrobes [by Yehoshua November]

2AM, and the Rabbinical Students Stand in Their Bathrobes

2AM, and the rabbinical students stand in their bathrobes
at the edge of the yeshiva parking lot, watching
the practiced motions of muscular firemen disembarking
from their engine. Soon, it will be determined
the youngest student in the building
pulled the basement alarm
after learning, over the dormitory pay phone,
his parents, back in Baltimore, intend to end
their nineteen year marriage before Passover.
The only one the rabbis have not accounted for
crouches in his closet behind a row of black sports coats.
And because the yeshiva caters to souls
but also bodies,
the early morning mysticism class
on why the Divine Presence cannot dwell
amongst those plagued by sadness
has been cancelled.

-- Yehoshua November

first posted on Verse Daily

RENOIR: Grand Illusion (1938) [by Lewis Saul]

 

 

Screenplay by Charles Spaak and Jean Renoir.

Renoir was 43 when he directed Grand Illusion.

One of the greatest filmmakers of all time, Renoir directed several terrific films before this one: Boudu Saved From Drowning (1932) -- an electric performance by Michel Simon -- and The Lower Depths (1936); and a few great ones after this one, Rules of the Game (1939), for example.

But I don't believe he made a greater film than this one, filmed between the two world wars.

**

 

If you haven’t seen this great masterpiece, do so immediately. We’ll wait.

 

SPOILERS AHEAD

 

Check it out:

• Lt. Maréchal (Jean Gabin) is singing along to a gramophone record of an old French song, “Frou Frou.” The gramophone itself clues us in that this is World War I.
• A dissolve and Captain von Rauffenstein (Erich von Stroheim) and his aide walk through the door. The transition is disconcerting. It is difficult to know where we are. A different gramophone dominates the right side of the frame and the observant viewer will notice that right behind it there is a poster on the wall — in German! Stroheim throws back a brandy with his stiff, unbending posture. Note how Renoir parallels this action in the scene when Boeldieu dies.
• Another dissolve and we are looking at the countryside through the window of a train. In a few seconds we land on a sign which reads, “Prisoner-of-War Camp Nr. 17 — Officers’ Camp.”
• The prisoners are lined up in a courtyard. Captain Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay) and Maréchal both yawn. The camp regulations are read. A humorous bit of business occurs towards the end of the commandant’s long list of “forbidden” actions: an older German officer begins to intone “strictly forbidden, gentlemen!” in German, after the commandant recites the rules. Maréchal — amused — repeats the German phrase to Boeldieu, ironically.
• We meet a Frenchman, a Jew named Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio) who is opening a large parcel from home, stuffed with delicacies which — as we will see in a few frames — is better food than what the Germans are eating.
• GERMAN OFFICER #1: “This tastes like an old sock.”
• GERMAN OFFICER #2: “What do they feed the French?”
• GERMAN OFFICER #3: “Cabbage. But they have their parcels.”
• GERMAN OFFICER #1: “And the Russians?”
• GERMAN OFFICER #3: “Cabbage roots. But no parcels.”
• GERMAN OFFICER #2: “And the English?”
• GERMAN OFFICER #3: (in English): “Plum pudding!”
• Cartier (a fantastic Julien Carette) is crawling through the escape tunnel the prisoners are digging. Something is happening outside, and one of them pretends to go to the latrine to check it out. He runs into the German officer, Sgt. Arthur (Werner Florian) who is accompanying a detail carrying a dead body on a stretcher. Arthur informs him that the man was shot trying to escape.
• After getting rid of some tunnel dirt in the garden (a scene reprised in John Sturges’ The Great Escape [1963]), the men gather around a trunk of feminine clothing. A young, angel-faced soldier is talked into trying on a dress. “Funny, isn’t it?” he repeats as he preens.
• But no one is laughing. Renoir gives us a gorgeous, slow leftward pan, revealing face after face of these women-starved men, stunned with shock at the sight of this beautiful “woman.”
• Renoir pulls the camera back as we see the men working on their “costumes.” Note how he never lets the scene become static — everyone is busy with their work, and the dialogue flows naturally.
• As the conversation winds down, the fifes begin to play outside. From a tight shot, he pulls the camera back as the men huddle around the window. He is shooting from outside the window now. Very effective composition.
• Cartier’s shtick when he burns the pants he was ironing is hilarious.
• After a FTB, we see a poster proclaiming a German victory at Douamont (the date would be February 26, 1916) …
• Later, Maréchal interrupts the variety show with the news that the allies have retaken Douamont. He orders the band to play The Marseillaise. Gabin moves towards the edge of the stage and glares ferociously at some German officers, as the surging patriotic feelings from the song swell up in the background. Michael Curtiz seems to have been inspired by this scene in his 1942 film, Casablanca.
• Elision: Maréchal is in solitary. We aren’t given any explanation, but it will later become clear that he probably was caught trying to escape.
• Yet another poster: “German Troups Recapture Douamont” (April 17, 1916) …
• [note all the parallelism in this film!]
• MONTAGE of the train ride to Wintersborn … another parallel.
• Another multilingual conversation:
• RAUFFENSTEIN: (showing a large gun): “We have 25 more guns like this one.”
• BOELDIEU: “Uh-huh.”
• RAUFFENSTEIN: “I suppose you know the Maxim gun?”
• MARÉCHAL: “Very well, sir.” (He jabs a finger towards his broken arm.) “But personally, I prefer the restaurant!”
• RAUFFENSTEIN: “Touché … Maxim.” (He suddenly switches to English.) “That reminds me. I used to know a girl there in 1913. Her name was, ah — Fifi.”
• BOELDIEU: “So did I!”
• Rauffenstein is showing off the impossibility of escape:
• “A 120-foot drop!” (He has inadvertently told them the exact amount of rope they will need!)
• BOELDIEU: “So kind of you to show us around the grounds.”
• The five new roommates are discussing the diseases of the different classes (Rosenthal caught something from a “brunette” who was a friend of his mother!)
• ROSENTHAL: “We’d each die of our own class diseases, if war didn’t make all germs equal.”
• Rosenthal has some kind of hand-made map. Maréchal comes over to see it. Notice the detail in the set design! Renoir pulls back the camera ever so slightly, and we suddenly notice a new character on the right side of the frame — a Black man, who is working on some kind of wood burning art.
• The map will become an important artifact much later. Kurosawa was inspired by ideas like this.
• ROSENTHAL: “That means walking 15 nights on six lumps of sugar and two biscuits a day.” Again, prefiguring a future scene …
• Maréchal is braiding a long section of rope. The lookout alerts everyone that the guards are coming to search the room. Boeldieu hides the rope outside the window.
• Inspection. Notice the way Renoir handles this scene; he creates a dramatic entrance for Rauffenstein. Six guards enter the room. The camera faces the door, and remains there until all six guards have walked past. He then pans left to Maréchal reading, while a guard searches his pillow. Reading from a book:
• “I am weary as a girl after 22 nights of love.” “Twenty-two nights of love. Imagine that!”
• The camera pulls back slightly and pans to the next prisoner, who is also reading a book. The guard taps his leg and he lifts them, allowing the guard to search his blanket.
• Another leftward pan and we settle on the Teacher (John Dasté) and his guard, who makes him stand up and inspects the stool he was sitting on.
• The camera pans left again, to a guard who is just standing there. Suddenly his expression changes and he snaps to attention and barks: “Achtung!”
• The camera now pans right, as Rauffenstein makes a dignified entrance. “Continue!”
• A conversation that would never occur in the next world war: Boeldieu rises as Rauffenstein approaches. They salute each other:
• RAUFFENSTEIN: “Give me your word that you’ve nothing in here against regulations.”
• BOELDIEU: (for a split second, Boeldieu offers up the tiniest of smirks [after all, the rope is hanging outside the window and is — truthfully — not “in here.”]) “You have my word.” Raufffenstein bows slightly and salutes … “But why my word and not theirs?” He indicates the others with a shake of his head.
• RAUFFENSTEIN: “The word of a … Rosenthal … and a Maréchal?”
• BOELDIEU (firmly): “It’s as good as ours.”
• RAUFFENSTEIN (not convinced): “Perhaps.”
• FTB. Boeldieu and Rauffenstein are in the Prussian’s chapel-like large room, conversing about their mutual acquaintance, Boeldieu’s cousin, the Count. Notice the way that the two are virtually mirroring each other’s movements — the walk, the cigarettes, etc. And then a perfect parallel of the previous search scene, with a bit more detail:
• BOELDIEU: “Why did you make an exception of me by inviting me here?”
• RAUFFENSTEIN: “Why? Because your name is Boeldieu, career officer in the French Army, and I am Rauffenstein, career officer in the German Imperial Army.”
• BOELDIEU: “But my comrades are officers, as well.”
• RAUFFENSTEIN: “A Maréchal and a Rosenthal, officers?
• BOELDIEU: “They’re fine soldiers.”
• RAUFFENSTEIN: “Charming legacy of the French Revolution.”
• BOELDIEU: “Neither you nor I can stop the march of time.”
• RAUFFENSTEIN: “Boeldieu … I don’t know who will win this war. But whatever the outcome, it will mean the end of the Rauffensteins and the Boeldieus.”
• BOELDIEU: “We’re no longer needed.”
• RAUFFENSTEIN: “And don’t you find that a pity?”
• BOELDIEU: “Perhaps …”
• Boeldieu’s plan is to stage a concert (the arts are “allowed”) with flutes and anything the prisoners can bang on …
• Another lovely composition. Maréchal on the left, Boeldieu on the right, and in the center a large cage with a squirrel within. Both Gabin and Fresnay have lots of cute business with the little fella.
• Just as Boeldieu predicted, the prisoners are lined up in the yard after their cacophonous concert. Roll call. Boeldieu’s name is called; no response. We hear a flute. Maréchal and the others look up, trying to locate the source of the sound.
• Cut to Rauffenstein, also looking for the culprit. The camera pans the walls of the fortress, and finds Boeldieu sitting on a beam, playing his flute.
• (Kosma’s score kicks into full gear here (wonderful!)
• All hell breaks loose. Cut to Maréchal and Rosenthal tying their rope to the window. Rosenthal goes first. Renoir ratchets up the tension by having Maréchal hide behind a post, as some guards walk by. He then makes it down, and the two men scurry off into the night.
• Where did they go? Eight minutes of film will elapse before we discover what happened.
• Cut to the guards, shining a spotlight on Boeldieu. He taunts them with his flute. They begin to fire at him.
• Cut to Rauffenstein, hearing the gunfire. He is alarmed. He arrives on the scene and tries to reason with Boeldieu — in English!
• RAUFFENSTEIN: “Have you really gone insane?”
• BOELDIEU: “I am perfectly sane!”
• After several warnings, Rauffenstein shoots him. Guards arrive to inform him about the escape. He leaves, moving past the camera, which does a quick rack-focus on the soldier who remains in the frame. Brief, but beautiful.
• Cut to a disconcerting ECU of a box which contains religious paraphernalia (a crucifix, two candles, etc.) … the camera stays close on the man holding the box. He is wearing a crucifix and German “iron cross.” He turns, as Renoir pulls the camera back a bit to reveal Rauffenstein and his aide. The priest puts on his coat which has a Red Cross armband on it.
• A lot of filmic information to absorb in a few seconds. Why a priest? Renoir is conveying that Boeldieu is not yet dead, but seriously injured.
• Last line from his deathbed:
• “For a commoner, dying in war is a tragedy. But for you and me, it’s a good way out.”
• Rauffenstein gets up for a drink. Boeldieu dies. Rauffenstein closes his eyes and gets up and goes to the window, where he prunes a dead bloom from his plant.
• Renoir now turns away from everything and everyone with whom we have spent the past hour or so. The film now becomes a duet, a trio … a quartet …
• Another disconcerting cut to a woman walking down a country road with a white horse.
• Renoir can be devilish with his set-ups. Here he pans 90 degrees right and stops — we expect to see our heroes. We do not. But momentarily, we hear Maréchal’s voice:
• “We should’ve avoided the road.”
• The camera now pans downward and we find the two men, huddled in the tall reeds.
• There is a lovely axial cut here, where the medium shot turns into a close-up.
• Again, some clever presagement:
• ROSENTHAL: “He’s gone.”
• MARÉCHAL: “What? Didn’t you notice it was a woman?”
• (It’s impossible to tell for sure if this is Elsa (Dita Parlo) or not, but this bit of dialogue reverberates later then they are lucky enough to stumble upon a house with only a woman and a child in it.)
• Rosenthal has a bad leg and is in obvious distress. Maréchal offers him his sugar ration. There is not much left. He gives the sugar to Rosenthal, who catches on and realizes that Maréchal has been doing without, saving what’s left for the crippled man. Maréchal is returning Rosenthal’s previous kindness when he shared his parcels.
• The journey continues. Rosenthal is resting, holding up his bad leg and balancing himself with a staff.
• MARÉCHAL: “You coming or what?”
• ROSENTHAL (starting to walk): “I’m doing the best I can.”
• They trudge along. Suddenly, some spectacular scenery comes into view. Watch carefully! Rosenthal seems to take a moment to appreciate the beauty. He turns his head, taking it all in, despite the misery.
• The companions are starting to get testy:
• MARÉCHAL: “You and your foot!”
• ROSENTHAL: “It’s not my fault! I slipped.”
• Immediately after this line, Renoir holds the camera on the scenery, as the two men pass the camera.
• Cut to a new view of a sloping mountain. The men re-enter the frame. The tension bursts:
• MARÉCHAL: “You slipped! That’s all I hear. If you get us caught, you’ll explain you slipped? We’re out of food. Might as well give up now.”
• ROSENTHAL: “Gladly. I’ve had enough too.”
• MARÉCHAL: “Had enough of me?”
• ROSENTHAL: “Damn right! If you only knew how you make me sick!”
• MARÉCHAL: “Well, the feeling’s mutual. You’re a dead weight. A ball and chain. I never could stomach Jews!”
• ROSENTHAL: “A bit late to realize that! Clear out, you’re dying to.”
• MARÉCHAL: “You said it!”
• ROSENTHAL: “Get lost! I’m sick of your ugly mug!”
• MARÉCHAL: “I’m going! You’re on your own now! So long! (Maréchal leaves.)
• ROSENTHAL: “So long! Go ahead! (he raises his staff above his head) … “I’m so happy I could sing …” (singing): “There once was a little steamboat / which had ne-ne-never gone to sea …”
• Cut to Maréchal, who continues the song:
• “After five or six weeks at sea / the supplies were al-al-almost gone for good.”
• He gradually stops singing, realizing the ugly reality of the last line. Note the camera’s hold on the countryside, as Gabin walks out of the frame again!
• Cut to Rosenthal, sitting, forlorn. He is centered perfectly in the frame. Suddenly, Maréchal appears, only his torso in the frame.
• ROSENTHAL: “Why’d you come back?”
• The camera pans up to Maréchal’s face.
• “Come on. Let’s go, fella.”
• He tenderly helps Rosenthal to his feet, as they exit the frame. Renoir again holds on the background for a second …
• DISSOLVE to yet another scenic backdrop. Maréchal is helping Rosenthal along, as they trudge up a steep hill.
• The richness of all that follows would not have been as powerful if Renoir had not taken the time to give us the men’s travels and travails.
• They arrive at Elsa’s little cottage house. They hide in the barn. They hear something. Maréchal stands ready with a big club. A cow walks in … followed by Elsa, making her entrance in the film at the 1:34 mark (she’s billed second in the credits!)
• Because the cultured Rosenthal can speak German, they can communicate with Elsa.
• FTB. Picture of Elsa’s dead husband, killed at Verdun.
• ELSA: “The table’s too big now”
• … as Renoir’s camera moves to the big table, which could seat eight — finally revealing little Lotte (Little Peters, who died of the flu just weeks before the film was released).
• Maréchal’s duet with the cow:
• “Relax, it’s only me! You don’t mind if a Frenchman feeds you?” (he gives the cow a firm pat) … “you smell like my grandfather’s cows. A good smell.” (he lets out a little laugh) …
• “You’re a good cow from Würtemberg and I’m a working man from Paris, but we can still be pals! You’re a poor cow. I’m a poor soldier. We each do our best.”
• Again, he gives the cow a little thump. He leaves the barn. But Renoir keeps the camera on Bessie. She lets out a loud moo.
• Renoir gives us some important information in a throwaway line. Elsa asks Maréchal to get some water in German. Rosenthal quickly translates, but Maréchal says he understood her.
• “For 18 months I never understood the guards. But her, I understand!”
• Thus we know how long they were imprisoned.
• FTB. They have constructed a little manger for Christmas. Rosenthal has carved some potatoes into little toy figures …
• ROSENTHAL: “Isn’t my little donkey cute? And my ox? And the infant Jesus?” He smiles broadly, turning towards Maréchal: “An ancestor of mine.”
• They’ve been there awhile now. The attraction between Elsa and Maréchal is evident.
• They’ve bid each other “bon soir.” He and Rosenthal enter the bedroom and close the door behind them.
• CUT. We see that there are two connecting rooms. Maréchal closes the door to his own room and picks up a little apple from the bureau, which he begins to eat. (The music swells.) Just as he reaches the other door — still open — Renoir shows us his mastery of composition …
• The camera is behind Maréchal with Elsa, beautiful in black, is just above Gabin’s right shoulder. He walks towards her, slowly. They embrace, and …
• FTB. (this is the only example in the entire film where we run into a rough splice, not corrected in the restoration.) The “swelling” music of the love scene is brutally interrupted by a new cue … faster, jaunty.
• FTB. The men are talking just outside the house. Maréchal can’t bring himself to tell Elsa that they are leaving. Rosenthal volunteers to do it.
• He enters the house and speaks with Elsa. He then opens the window, revealing Maréchal. Note the composition! The open window is like a painting framed within another painting!
• They say goodbye. The men disappear into the darkness and Renoir cuts back to Elsa, putting away the dishes.
• FTB. Huge snowy mountains. The camera tracking here is virtually identical (parallelism) to the previous scene when we first spot the two men in the ditch by the reeds! Ninety degrees to the right and then downward, where we find the two men in deep snow. Even the conversation is similar — about whether or not to leave this spot or wait until it gets dark …
• MARÉCHAL: “We’ve got to end this war and make it the last.”
• ROSENTHAL: “Don’t count on it”
• How prescient!
• CUT to German soldiers, following the tracks in the snow. One of the soldiers points. Others raise their guns. A few shots are fired before the sergeant tells them to stop firing — they’ve already reached Switzerland.
• SERGEANT: “Don’t shoot, they’re in Switzerland.”
• SOLDIER: “Good for them.”
• Final shot: the two men are trudging through a field of virgin snow.

 

 

The New York School Diaspora (Part Forty-Three): Rebecca Holifield [by Angela Ball]

Unidentified Apple Picker

(1)
Black-and-white 3/4 length re-
print of Grover Cleveland Alexander (left)
and an unidentified man (right), apple-
picking. Both wear three-piece suits, overcoats,
[canes] and [top] hats. Posing for the camera,
each reaches up to grab an apple
gloved in a branch. Down
to bite an apple. Back to throw
an apple like a baseball. Forward
to shake hands.

(2)
Grover Cleveland Alexander and unidentified
man here called Apple Picker. Yesterday
may forget your name, Mr. Picker, but
because of you I remember the whole round
feeling of apple in hand, the steady reach
up, the snapping pull down. The sluice
from the bite. The sun in our eyes.

-Rebecca Holifield

About the poem:

“Unidentified Apple Picker” was inspired by a photograph in the archives of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. This poem is part of my master’s thesis, “Digital Pastoral,” which theorizes a few ways in which the internet and the digital archive have altered the tradition of the pastoral poem, at least in my own work. If the internet is the city in which we get lost, it is also the pasture in which we can find ourselves again. This poem begins with stuffy-sounding found text, describing the found image, and gradually redirects until it ends on a connection to the personal, the sensory. From the vague and impersonal, we make our own connections and imbue things with our own meaning. From the search engine comes the search, from the search comes the image, and from the image comes the personal connection we form with it. - Rebecca Holifield

 Rebecca Holifield is a poet with a Master of Arts in English and Creative Writing.

The New York School Diaspora (Part Forty-Two): Rebecca Holifield

Rebecca Holifield’s brilliant and enticing poem, “Unidentified Apple Picker,” does not depend upon the photograph it speaks to. Indeed, the poem places the photo at further removes by telling us that it is “3/4-length” and a “re- / print.” Nonetheless, we are provided the positions of its two inhabitants and what they are wearing. One is a baseball player, a famous pitcher called “Grover Cleveland Alexander,” named for an even more famous person, a president, whose most notable accomplishment may have been marrying his much-younger ward.

Why the brackets around “cane” and “top”? For me, they function to emphasize the photo’s distance from us in time—and that time’s degree of formality.

Indeed, the poem’s details consistently emphasize one another, with “Grover Cleveland Alexander”’s almost too-elaborate name contrasting with “unidentified man”’s total lack of one.

Part of the poem’s quaint, Victorian formality is its highly posed nature, mimicked by the lineation of the second half of section (1). The poem is arranged as formally as the photograph, to humorous effect, as its images reference Grover Cleveland Alexander’s more famous role, as pitcher rather than “picker.”

Section (2) addresses itself to the speaker’s relationship to and with the second man, who is here somewhat more fulsomely identified as “unidentified / man here called ‘Apple Picker’.” Then, following a wonderfully deft personification of the past, “Yesterday / may forget your name,” the speaker exuberantly dubs him: “Mr. Picker,” a move all the more comic because parenthetical.

And it is “because of you,” because of the second, anonymous man, that the speaker, and we, receive the encompassing epiphany of the last four lines:

     the whole round

     feeling of apple in hand, the steady reach

     up, the snapping pull down. The sluice

     from the bite. The sun in our eyes.

Our kinesthetic, tactile experience of apple picking ends with the double climax of “The sluice / from the bite” and “The sun in our eyes”—the dazzlement of looking upward at a ripe apple—and our dazzlement by the photograph the poem develops just for us. Its darkroom, the poet’s mind; its emulsion, words.

-Angela Ball

Devil #2 [by Miranda Beeson]

   
      #2 Devil

Manolo me Mammon      

                You gold-encrusted god of plenty

Park me on Park Avenue

                Gild my walls. Chandelier my halls

 Jet my days. Jaguar my bluestone nights

                Pool me in my private Mediterranean

Yacht me & unstopper me

                Margaux & Coach me

Cover me in coin. Booty & Botox me

                Multiply my capacity for rapacity

Artichoke roast & spit me

                Braise & flambé me

Let me live in your insatiable need

Kaveh Akbar: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kaveh Akbar. Photo by Paige Lewis

________________________________________________________

Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before

 

I can’t even remember my name, I who remember

so much—football scores, magic tricks, deep love

so close to God it was practically religious. 

 

When you fall asleep in that sort of love

you wake up with bruises on your neck. I don’t

have drunks, sirs, I have adventures. Every day

 

my body follows me around asking

for things. I try to think louder, try

to be brilliant, wildly brilliant. We all want

 

the same thing (to walk in sincere wonder,

like the first man to hear a parrot speak) but we live

on an enormous flatness floating between

 

two oceans. Sometimes you just have to leave

whatever’s real to you, you have to clomp

through fields and kick the caps off

 

all the toadstools. Sometimes

you have to march all the way to Galilee

or the literal foot of God himself before you realize

 

you’ve already passed the place where

you were supposed to die. I can no longer remember

the being afraid, only that it came to an end.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Kaveh Akbar is the author of Pilgrim Bell (Graywolf 2021) and editor of The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse (Penguin Classics 2022). In 2024, Knopf will publish Martyr!, Kaveh’s first novel.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

                                         Fiona Banner, Simpleton, Simpleton, Simpleton, oil on found painting, 77 x 127.5cm, 2021.

                              

 

Squib 485 [by Alan Ziegler]

Baseball Portfolio #1: The Story is in the White Space

 

The Tears of Antigone: An Astrological Profile [by David Lehman]

Antigone, a classic Aries with Sagittarius rising and a fair amount of Leo and Gemini in her chart, epitomized the feminine powers extolled by Ovid in the Metamorphoses. She was very beautiful, with a profile like that of Greer Garson in Pride of Prejudice,and  a force of personality that overshadowed that of her  worthy husband, Walter Pidgeon, the perfect number two man, in Mrs. Miniver. He could cross the Channel in his little skiff to keep the evacuation of Dunkirk; she beat that by single-handedly disarming a German soldier.

In Chinese astrology, Antigone was born in the year of the rat, a sign that explains her quality of eagerness and readiness. The rat is the first of the twelve Chinese signs, representing industry, not disgusting vermin. As a matter of honor, a female rat will not procrastinate but will use trickery if need be to achieve her ends. In the competition to cross the river, the rat jumped on the back of the ox, and got off before the shore, winning the race over the tiger, the snake, etc. What she didn't realize was that she  (as a water sign) would need to unite with a cheerful, extroverted goat (earth). The goat doesn't always communicate his needs, but if he is able to keep up with the charismatic rat, the relationship will endure.

The ghost of Antigone continues to roam. She rates very high in intensity of sex appeal, the passion she arouses varying directly with the likelihood of no consummation. Her Capricorn asleep in midheaven January and her Mars victorious in April are usually cited as reasons for this particular enchantress's eternal fate, making her a symbol of resolve and heroic resistance, who would live to an grand old age if she weren't willing to die for the sake of a principle, then outlive her death as a myth.

Antigone lived centuries before the Gregorian calendar regularized things. Consequently, the exact date of her birth is the subject of controversy, with some favoring April 9 and others April 12.

Antigone, the daughter of Oedipus, was also his sister. As Sophocles recounts in the third play in his Oedipus cycle, she rebelled against the tyrannical rule of Creon, who didn’t let her bury the dead body of her brother Polyneices.  In a fierce display of hubris Creon ignored the contradiction between his son Haemon’s love for Antigone and his own authority to boss his son around.  Everyone died in the Greek manner, Haemon killing Antigone and then taking his own life.

If it was Creon’s tragedy, it would have been a bore and a box office failure. Just as Shakespeare preferred dealing with Antony and Brutus rather than wasting his genius on Caesar, so Sophocles cast into the starry heavens the vision of Antigone as loyal, faithful, rebellious, loving, self-sacrificing, steadfast. To be a rebel while proving your loyalty is a consummation devoutly be to be wished, and Antigone in Paris emerged as one of France’s most alluring leading ladies, a symbol of resistance against the Nazis during World War II.

As Sophocles maintained, one look at the world would prompt any baby to return instantly to the womb. Making the best of a bad business, Antigone decided to act even at the expense of her own life and love, thus ensuring that she would always be the young attractive woman she was at the time of her death. Did she want children? No one thought to ask. But her treatment of her brother came to a high erotic climax without violating the tabu on incest.

According to Indian astrology, merely bearing the name Antigone gives you a leg up on the trail to creativity.

When Antigone’s moon is in Jupiter or Neptune, she is willing to engage in moral dilemmas in the public eye. Of average height, with brilliant eyes, a mesmerizing oval face.

Asteroid 129, named after her,  was discovered on February 5, 1873 at Clinton, NY by C. H. F. Peters. It is about 84 miles in diameter.

Squibs 480-484 [by Alan Ziegler]

480:I strive to arrange my life like a European meal, concluding with my salad days.

481: By all means bring a knife to a gun fight in addition to your gun.

482: I see someone I used to know across the street. As I approach, I realize it is not my old friend. Undaunted, I say, “Hey, Stanley, great to see you! How’s Veronica and life on the rodeo circuit?”  The stranger stares blankly, then a glint of recognition. “Christopher,” (not my name) he says, “I still feel bad about that night, and how is Gloria and life at the clinic?” We talk until we are all caught up and part ways.

483: Paul Langston was once called upon to inquire, in response to a phone message, “Who in the Sam Hill is Sam Hill?”

484: Steve Allen interrupted himself while chatting with guests on his radio show to observe that the coffee he continued to sip was now lukewarm, and he would have sent it back had it been served that way. I feel similarly about my body.

Learning how to be dead [from "Mr. Palomar" by Italo Calvino]

<<< A person's life consists of a collection of events, the last of which could also change the meaning of the whole, not because it counts more than the previous ones but because once they are included in a life, events are arranged in an order that is not chronological but, rather, corresponds to an inner architecture. A person, for example, reads in adulthood a book that is important to him, and makes him say, 'How could I have lived without having read it!' and also, 'What a pity I did not read it in my youth!" Well, these statements to not have much meaning, especially the second, because after he has read that book, his whole life becomes the life of a person who has read that book, and it is of little importance whether he read it early or late, because now his life before that reading also assumes a form shaped by that reading. 

This is the most difficult step in learning how to be dead: to become convinced that your own life is a closed whole, all in the past, to which you can add nothing and can alter none of the relationships among the various elements. Of course, those who go on living can, according to their shifting experience, introduce changes in the lives of the dead, too, giving form to what had none or what seemed to have a different form: recognizing, for example, a just rebel in someone who had felt doomed to neurosis or delirium. But these are changes that matter mostly to the living. It is unlikely that they, the dead, will profit by them. Each individual is made up of what he has lived and the way he has lived it, and non can take this away from him. Anyone who has lived in suffering is always made of that suffering; if they try to take it away from him, he is no longer himself. >>>

-- sdl

Happy birthday, Mozart -- and Jerry Kern [by DL]

Spring 68 at Columbia was the season of the strike,
the occupation of the buildings (Low, Hamilton, Avery
Mathematics, and Fayerwether where a righteous
mininster married a young couple), and Mitch and I
went to the West End Bar to talk tactics because
we knew the "tactical patrol force" (TPF) was
going to come and hit hard. The days went by
and the arm bands worn by angry students
went from green (amnesty for protesters)
to black (mourning for Alma Mater). But I still
had my Music Humanities final to face and I
was so ignorant I did the only thing I could do:
bought Bach's "Ein Feste Burg Ist Unser Gott,"
Mozart's Jupiter, Beethoven's 3rd, 5th, and 7th,
and Brahms's 4th. On the final the professor
played something we had not heard in class.
It was the slow movement of the 7th.
And that summer in Oxford
I heard the opening of the last movement
of the Jupiter every hour
on the hour. Years later I learned
Mozart's birthday, the 26th of January,
was also that of Kern, Jerry Kern
of Show Boat and Swing Time,
"The Way You Look Tonight"
and "Long Ago And Far Away." So I will just say
to both of these great composers: happy birthday!

Spring 68 at Columbia was the season of the strike,
the occupation of the buildings (Low, Hamilton, Avery
Mathematics, and Fayerwether where a righteous
mininster married a young couple), and Mitch and I
went to the West End Bar to talk tactics because
we knew the "tactical patrol force" (TPF) was
going to come and hit hard. The days went by
and the arm bands worn by angry students
went from green (amnesty for protesters)
to black (mourning for Alma Mater). But I still
had my Music Humanities final to face and I
was so ignorant I did the only thing I could do:
bought Bach's "Ein Feste Burg Ist Unser Gott,"
Mozart's Jupiter, Beethoven's 3rd, 5th, and 7th,
and Brahms's 4th. On the final the professor
played something we had not heard in class.
It was the slow movement of the 7th.
And that summer in Oxford
I heard the opening of the last movement
of the Jupiter every hour
on the hour. Years later I learned
Mozart's birthday, the 26th of January,
was also that of Kern, Jerry Kern
of Show Boat and Swing Time,
"The Way You Look Tonight"
and "Long Ago And Far Away." So I will just say
to both of these great composers: happy birthday!

They Didn't Believe Me (Jerome Kern's breakout song: 1917 )

And when I told them

How beautiful you are

They didn't believe me

They didn't believe me

Your lips, your eyes

Your curly hair

Are in a class beyond compare

You're the loveliest girl that one could ever see

And when I tell them

And I certainly am going to tell them

That I'm the man whose wife someday you'll be

They'll never believe me

They'll never believe me

That from this great big world you've chosen me!

 

"Yonder, a Rental" [by Anna Maria Hong]

Time to howl at the celestial sphere,
that full frontal silver dollar, the very
paintball of pallor and elemental other.
It’s all or nada as noonnight’s empanada

discloses her pretty quarter, the priest’s collar
hung high on the hook of evening’s fluent
wall. Hung like a juror bent on acquittal
who can’t stall any longer, you’re a cobbler

hawking copper coins in an Oriental
bazaar. The Sultan’s power went horizontal
long, long ago. It’s fine to be sentimental,

though there’s no need to bother. Grab a handful
of shine like a disc of doll hair, a dollop of Neufchâtel,
                                                           valor and force, vital—

from Ecotone

Two Songs, Different Eras: Discuss. [by Stacey Harwood-Lehman]

WEDNESDAYS WITH DENISE: JANUARY 25, 2023

Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology was released January 19^th (on Dolly’s birthday) by Madville Publishing. Editors Dustin Brookshire and Julie E. Bloemeke are donating their annual royalties to Dolly Parton's Imagination Library in honor of the Book Lady. The anthology is already making a rainbow splash and was recently spotlighted by Richard Blanco on WGBH Boston Public Radio. (https://richard-blanco.com/poet-richard-blanco-spotlights-a-dolly-parton-anthology/) You can stay current with Let Me Say This events, news, and more by using this link: https://linktr.ee/letmesaythisanthology where you’ll even find a Spotify playlist called "Let Me Play This" in honor of the book.

Congratulations, Dustin and Julie!

Here are the Let Me Say This contributors:

Kelli Russell Agodon – Nin Andrews – Lana K. W. Austin – David-Matthew Barnes – Nicky Beer – Julie E. Bloemeke – Emma Bolden – Dustin Brookshire – Phillip Watts Brown – Marina Carreira – Denise Duhamel – teri elam – Rupert Fike – Diamond Forde – Chad Frame – Makayla Gay – Tyler Gillespie – Kari Gunter-Seymour – Robert Gwaltney – Beth Gylys – Karen Head – Raye Hendrix – Collin Kelley – Dorianne Laux – Chin-Sun Lee – Arden Levine – Katie Manning – Kelly McQuain – Lynn Melnick – Jenny Molberg – Rachel Morgan – Caridad Moro-Gronlier – Carolyn Oliver – Dion O’Reilly – Jeffrey Perkins – Stephen Roger Powers – Steven Reigns – Linda Neal Reising – Benjamin Anthony Rhodes – Micah Ruelle – Anna Sandy-Elrod – Roberta Schultz – Maureen Seaton – Gregg Shapiro – L.J. Sysko – Nicole Tallman – Kerry Trautman – Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer – Dan Vera – Isaiah Vianese – Donna Vorreyer – Julie Marie Wade – Jennifer Wheelock – Yvonne Zipter

Thomas Hauert’s “Efeu”: Where do we end? [by Tracy Danison]

"Efeu" (Ivy) Thomas Hauert and cie ZOO. Photo © Bart Grietens

Choreographer and performer Thomas Hauert says one of his concerns over the years has been how people are in their world. Through a celebration of 20 years of working with the eight players of his cie ZOO, his dance performance How to proceed ((2018), focuses on interpersonal emotions and relationships. Hauert considers the performance  If only (2020), as an expression of a dark shadow lurking behind human relationships, crisis, chaos. Hauert says that the dance performance  Efeu (German for “ivy”), is, tentatively, the third piece in this ad hoc series on people in their world. I saw it at the Atelier de Paris 12 January 2023.

Efeu, Hauert says, opens on the creaturely situation of humans in the material world. He writes,

The movement of the human body as raw material contains in its essence the resistance to the most destructive and implacable forces of the universe. Life needs very specific and improbable conditions in order to be born and to survive. [Efeu is a] kind of ode to life, to the earth and its fragile atmosphere.

Efeu works. It happens. It belongs to its spectators.

The performance gets its form and, to big extent, its substance from the two very distinctive dances that open and close it.

As a couple, Hauert, who is also a performer, and Federica Porello open by turning and soaring  to Gino Paoli’s and Ornella Vanoni’s 1961 Italian hit Senza fine (Endless): You push our life along/Without a break/To dream/To be able to remember/What we have already experienced/Endless/You are an endless moment. God is me. And you too. We’re time and the rest. It’s us as does it.

Also as a couple, Sarah Ludi and Fabian Barba close the piece by dancing with Marvin Gaye’s jarringly sensual 1971 consciousness-raising hit Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology): Ah, things ain't what they used to be/Where did all the blue skies go?/ Poison is the wind that blows/ From the north and south and east.

The dances gain a single identity in the contrast between them. This is especially visible in what seems to be each woman’s particular talent. Porello’s ultra-polished turns are Ludi’s emotion as skin. Porello’s expressive movement makes you breathless, agape. Ludi’s perceptive or interpretative movement tears at your heart.

With its shared 60s Heaven and Earth or mind and body themes, the two (classic) hits complement into a single evocation of the concerns of the so-called Age of Aquarius (1967), which we have entered, by the way.

As a spectator, Efeu is a retrospective experience – you must look backward to understand your present emotion.

“Concert in the egg”, school of Hieronymus Bosch. Photo Wikipedia

When I remember Hauert’s and Porello’s dance and Paoli’s and Vanoni’s music, I remember that I’m with you, the Others, in the driver’s seat. We’re unstuck in time.

The emotion of Ludi with her partner and Gaye’s hit together send me tumbling through time: the first Earth Day in April 1970 – bowled over by  the sense in “ecology”- Doesn’t that mean the flower and the bee are one thing? And in 2023, many pretend that though the bees are dying off, the flowers will continue. As if we live in a Dollar Store.

In October, 1971 The Staple Singers released Respect yourself – and the kind of gentleman who want everything their way are in Congress, in Teheran, their missiles across the strait of Taiwan, their tanks snorting at the gate of Europe.

The image Efeu produces in my inner eye is Hieronymus Bosch’s “Concert in the egg”.

The opening and closing dances mean that Hauert’s piece, like an egg, has two distinct ends that invent it as an identity: give it an up, down, sides, a middle.

I’m not the first to point out that the spectator or holder of an egg chooses its place in the world. Also, while an egg is very tough, it’s very fragile: a chance blow and it may be a goner.

While the opening and closing of Efeu invented the concert of movement against and with “the improbable conditions” in which we “are born and survive on earth in its fragile atmosphere”, the containing space of that egg got me wondering.

If I am in the driver’s seat, unstuck in time with you, the Others, where, in the material world, do “I” and “we” physically end or begin?

Where is our body in respect to each other, to the fragile shell underfoot, to the fragile shell over our heads, to the air around us? Life is not just endless moments where we are not able to remember what we have already experienced, it is also a co-evolutive living experience – an ecology. If the wind is poison, it delivers poison and we react to that.

But Efeu has made me think: what if our breath is not just a delivery system or a symbol in some narrative of ourselves but, in a way that we haven’t yet understood, an inseparable part of us?

Our gut bacteria are not exclusive to our gut; they part of other ecologies, further off. And if the wetness on my skin is not just on my skin but my wet skin, like bacteria, is part of wetness everywhere?

And if this evolution we are forcing on the world we make is not just evolving that world but evolving us who make the world?

And in ways so subtle that we will never become aware?  …

from "Julius Jaffe: The Poems" [by Mitch Sisskind]

The Shlump
Jess Rabin and Julius Jaffe were walking with a shlump.
Jess Rabin said to Julius Jaffe, "Open your mouth and
"Deliver words of Torah." Julius Jaffe replied, "'Her ways
""Are ways of delight.'" (Proverbs 3:17) The shlump said,
"A coin in a flask is found in this verse. Wherever in Torah
"One reads 'ways,' the ways were opened by our sages
"Who went to the bottom of the sea. Now the ways are
"Open on every side and in every direction in the world."
They said, "How do you know?" The shlump said, "I heard
"It from my father." Julius Jaffe asked, "Who was your father?"
The shlump said, "a great fish" and the shlump disappeared.

Shinderman

Shinderman approached Julius Jaffe.

He said, "I have a chance to make a

"Lot of money on a risky investment.

"What should I do?" Julius Jaffe said,

"Make the investment. You can make

"A lot of money."

Shinderman returned and said, "I lost

"My money but I still have some money

"For another risky investment. I can make

"A lot of money. So what should I do?"

Julius Jaffe said, "Make the investment.

"You can make a lot of money."

Shinderman reappeared and said,

"I lost my money again. I now have

"Only two dollars left to my name.

"Should I bet my two dollars on a

"Longshot at the horse races?"

Julius Jaffe said, "Yes."

That same night Shinderman said,

"I lost my two dollars! I have no money!"

Julius Jaffe said, "No money? Not even

"A dime?" Shinderman said, "Not a penny!"

Julius Jaffe said, "Mazel tov! Because now

"You can really pray."

Shtunk & Shlump

To embarrass the shlump, the shtunk

Asked how many women the shlump

Had shtupped. "Just one woman,"

The shlump replied and the shtunk

Laughed at him. "I have shtupped

"A hundred of them!" said the shtunk,

Whereupon Julius Jaffe interceded,

"If a man has shtupped one woman

"And really loved her, that man is

"A greater lover than if he shtupped

"A thousand of them." But the shtunk

Laughed again. "Only a thousand?"

"Ten thousand! A hundred thousand!"

Julius Jaffe excitedly exclaimed.

The Hollow Crown: From Shakepeare's "Richard II"

From Richard II

No matter where; of comfort no man speak:
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth,
Let's choose executors and talk of wills:
And yet not so, for what can we bequeath
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
Our lands, our lives and all are Bolingbroke's,
And nothing can we call our own but death
And that small model of the barren earth
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!
Cover your heads and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn reverence: throw away respect,
Tradition, form and ceremonious duty,
For you have but mistook me all this while:
I live with bread like you, feel want,
Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus,
How can you say to me, I am a king?

All The Things You Are [by Lewis Saul]

VARIOUS ARTISTS

All the Things You Are

Ten versions

Oh, I coulda picked 20 or 30, there are so many great recordings of this oft-played standard by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, which is from the 1939 musical Very Warm for May.

The intro appears in #3, 4, 9 and 10. Probably written by Bird or Diz, so as to have something prior to diving into the tune.

This ingenious composition relies on a constant shuffle of secondary dominants. Right after the first tonic, Kern spins a vi/ii/V/I to D-Flat Major, then again vi/ii/v/I to E-Flat Major. Then G Major, E Major, and finally A-Flat Major, the parallel tonic, before dropping a semitone to introduce ii/V back to the original tonic, F Minor..

1. Tommy Dorsey (1939)
Jack Leonard, vocal
(3:19)

Dorsey's warm tone and a beautifully filled-in arrangement sets up Leonard's vocal, with Dorsey playing behind him with a mute.

2. Frank Sinatra (1945)
Ken Lane Singers
(3:03)

Towards the end, he takes it up a half-step and finishes on a high G-Flat!

3. Charlie Parker (1947)
CP, alto saxophone
Miles Davis, trumpet
Duke Jordan, piano
Tommy Potter, bass
Max Roach, drums
(3:08)

A nice intro, which both Bird and Dizzy use, as well as Scofield and Mehldau (below). Bird plays the head with lots of little flourishes, but never loses the melodic line. Miles solos first, muted. Jordan goes next, back to Miles and Bird together; they finish with the intro music ...

4. Dizzy Gillespie (1955)
DG, trumpet
Charlie Parker, alto saxophone
Clyde Hart, piano
Frank Paparelli, guitar
Slam Stewart, bass
Cozy Cole, drums
(2:52)

Gillespie plays the head with a mute. Bird takes the B section. Stewart takes over, bowed, followed by Hart, Paparelli (B section); then Dizzy returns, followed by the intro as ending.

5. Art Tatum & Ben Webster (1956)
AT, piano
BW, tenor saxophone
Red Callender, bass
Bill Douglas, drums
(7:22)

At a very relaxed tempo, Tatum begins alone for two choruses, then the breathy Webster blows through the wind (what a sound!) ... Tatum returns with some soulful improvisation -- when Webster pops back in, Tatum is in full 88-key accompaniment!

6. Ella Fitzgerald (1963)
(3:19)

Nelson Riddle arrangement. Ella sings it pretty straight, but what pure vocal tone! Riddle writes out a softly fading finish.

7. Oscar Peterson (1970)
OP, piano
George Mraz, bass
Ray Price, drums
(6:10)

A little Latin tinge. Peterson plays bunch of cool substitutions in the head, and the he's off and running, bopping around the changes, but without ever covering up the harmonies. He also runs the gamut with dynamics -- smashing octaves melting into superb quiet coolness.

He finishes the tune playing over a two-bar riff (Fm7/Bbm7) ...

8. Tommy Flanagan (1978)
TF, piano
Keeter Betts, bass
Jimmy Smith, drums
(5:57)

Live at Carnegie Hall. Flanagan's solo alternates between strong block chords and high-wire ripplings. An amazing pianist.

9. John Scofield (1988)
JS, guitar
Anthony Cox, bass
Terry Lynne Carrington, drums
(7:40)

Scofield (electric guitar) runs through the head by himself, barely touching the  melody until the turnaround. He plucks out notes from the chord structure like he's catching raindrops.

Carrington is one my favorite drummers. She's like Elvin or Tony Williams -- keeping time while punching all kinds of offbeats and cymbals crashing -- without ever getting in Scofield's way.

Cox takes a beautiful solo, Carrington's brush work keeping things crisp, while Scofield comps, then gradually returns, again just touching the melodic outline. He then switches things up and finishes the tune with the Phrygian Parker intro.

10. Brad Mehldau (1999)
BM, piano
Larry Grenadier, bass
Jorge Rossy, drums
(13:44)

Live at the Village Vanguard.

Mehldau plays by himself, jerkily circling around the melody/harmony, with both hands syncopating -- resulting in a cloud of rhythmic uncertainty. It's captivating.

The bass and drums join in around the two-minute mark. Grenadier's solo is also heavily syncopated -- but this band always knows where one is!

Mehldau also introduces the Parker intro, over which Rossy solos.

One of the truly great talents of our day.

Love / Hate [by Terence Winch]

Ed. note: I had just about exhausted every crime series available on Netflix when Terence Winch [pictured here with a friend at La Maison blanche] wrote to suggest that I check out Love/Hate, an Irish crime drama series broadcast on RTÉ Television. The show is irresistible, and I was especially drawn to Darren, a central character played by the compelling young actor Robert Sheehan. Just the other day, this poem appeared in my in-box. I love it! Thank you T.P. Winch for letting me share it here. He is pictured on the left talking to a friend at the Maison Blanche. -- sdh

Love/Hate

                        for stacey harwood

I will be upstairs in just a minute,

I promise you. But first I must

compose a long, complex symphony

dedicated to Duke Ellington, which

I have pieced together from riffs

and bits off old tinny 78s, scratched

with skips but full of musical

notes, like A, G, and E.

If I could get out of this chair,

I would. And I would ascend

then to the Throne of the

Angelic Mobsters of RTE

who are right this very moment

murdering each other on those

dark Dublin streets. It would be

a laugh and a half times two.

But I can’t get up. I am not

able to keep my promises.

The serenity prayer is a cruel

joke. Baudelaire was an alcoholic

and so’s your mother, and

that's a fact, revealed in the third

act, which I can’t stay around for.

Sorry, sorry. My bad. I’m sorry.

from the archive; first posted January 13, 2014

Renia White: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

__________________________________________________

sometimes I flash forward and cry

 

I am afraid to have this thought.

a 1.5 bedroom apartment in a city I can bear,

metallic hangers and art featuring dark girls,
their faces obscured by large flowers
and overgrown fruit

a bed so heavy it startles the sinking hips

a man with my feet in his hands
who half-coos, “I bet you were hard
to find before I found you”

all the things glimmering,

the man’s eyes growling,

each fruit unripe

everything wishing
to be unfound

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Renia White is a poet and instructor originally from Maryland. Her first book, Casual Conversation, was named a BOA Editions, Ltd. Blessing the Boats Selection. She earned her BA from Howard University and her MFA from Cornell. She teaches writing in NYC, where she lives. Her work has appeared in publications such as The Recluse, Southern Indiana Review, Slice, and elsewhere. 

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

                                              Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Drown, 2012, acrylic, colored pencil, and solvent transfer on paper.