The Best American Poetry

On Frank O'Hara's Death [by David Lehman]

The critic says FOH was smart to die at forty
because “Death is often a good career move in poetry”

as if he committed suicide
when all he did watch the tide

drunk as in a Sung Dynasty tune
trying to embrace the moon

Elaine Equi equals everyday euphoria [by David Lehman]

For Elaine Equi on July 24, 2017

I know it's your birthday
on the fifth floor of the building
where both of us work
although we're not there now
we were there when
you told me the twenty-fourth
of July was the day I said no
kidding that's also the day my 
son Joe was born and now I'm
here (Ithaca) and you're there
(the city) and I hope your sublet
is nice remember we have 
Belmont to look forward to
(even in Boston they 
call New York the city)

--  Click here and here for more about this all-star.

"Glad to be Unhappy (with Hart Crane and Lorenz Hart)" [by David Lehman]

Today is July 21. Hart Crane was born today, so I reread his “Chaplinesque,” a poem inspired by Charlie Chaplin’s movie The Kid. Crane recognized Chaplin as a kindred spirit on an artistic mission like his own. The “we” in the poem stands for the two of them: “We can still love the world, who find / A famished kitten on the step.” In a letter Crane makes it clear that the kitten stands for poetry, and what the poem appears to be saying is that the redemptive nature of modern art makes it a Romantic enterprise, a secular version of a spiritual project.

These are magnificent lines: “We have seen / The moon in lonely alleys make / A grail of laughter of an empty ashcan.” The key phrase here, “a grail of laughter,” is a great example of a poetic image that defies logical analysis, for we instinctively grasp it as a figure of the sublime, though we know that a grail cannot be “of” laughter in any conventional sense. It is a poem I have read many times, and on one of these it dawned on me that Crane’s first name was a hidden subject in the stanza of the poem in which “you” may or may not stand for the world:

We can evade you, and all else but the heart:

What blame to us if the heart live on.

I am not sure how to construe these lines regardless of whether heart refers to the organ of the body associated with sentiment and romance or to the artist in general and Hart Crane in particular. Why would “blame” attach itself “to us” in either case “if the heart live on”? Who are “you” that we – the artist as embodied by Charles Chaplin and the poet in their separate realms – can evade? It is a difficult poem -- most of Crane’s are -- but then again, conventional meaning is not necessarily what one prizes in Crane’s poetry. Rather it’s the promise of a new meaning, ambiguous and elusive but full of possibility, as exemplified in such a triumphant phrase as “a grail of laughter.”

Poetic logic works in unusual ways, and it’s no accident that several of Robert Frost’s signature poems take place on cold winter nights, or that Hart Crane depicts the heart as inescapable and enduring, or that in a Rodgers and Hart song you can’t be in love unless your “heart stands still.” When Larry Hart writes, in My Funny Valentine, “you make me smile in my heart,” is there a clue here about the nature of the love Hart felt for Rodgers, which the latter could not reciprocate? (Here’s how Frederick Nolan concludes chapter two of his biography of Hart: “Poor Larry,” one of his close friends said. “What a shame he had to fall in love with Dick.”[1]) Could the song’s “unphotographable” but lovable individual, whose “looks are laughable,” be Hart himself? Picture Hart in the splendor of his wit and the sadness of his being the next time you listen to "With a Song in My Heart" or "My Heart Stood Still" and see if it makes a difference.

[1]  Frederick Nolan, Lorenz Hart (Oxford UP, 1994), p. 19.

Why Poets Love Noir #3 [by David Lehman and Suzanne Lummis]

This is part three of a dialogue between two poets who are hooked on film noir.

Do you believe "The Maltese Falcon" should be categorized as "noir"?

Suzanne Lummis:
It's a terrific movie but ultimately not as dark as others -- Noir Gris. But regardless of the quality of darkness, I'd feel funny about any poet of my generation, or the one following, who hadn't seen John Huston’s classic with the great Warner Brothers cast (Bogart, Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Elisha J. Cook). I'd wonder what else they hadn't seen, or read. Had they seen On the Waterfront? Had they read Orwell's 1984, or only read about it?  Et cetera. But re. Noir or Not, there's an undercurrent of pessimism that we usually feel from film noir and don't in The Maltese Falcon. However, it has many noir elements, the dialogue certainly, especially in the final scene where Bogart tells Mary Astor,  "I don't care who loves who. I won't play the sap for you! You killed Miles and you're going over for it. If you're lucky you'll get life and be out in twenty years. I'll be waiting for you. If they hang you, I'll always remember you."   

David Lehman

The Maltese Falcon, one of my all-time favorites, is similar to a noir movie but not the same thing, mainly because the male protagonist does not succumb to the wiles of the femme fatale.  Compare Bogart in The Maltese Falcon to Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past. The former belongs to a different genre, the detective story, in which justice, however much compromised, does prevail in the end.  Sam Spade refuses to “play the sap” for his femme fatale; that is alas exactly what Mitchum does with Jane Greer in Out of the Past. The division is epitomized in Edgar Allan Poe’s stories. The detective stories such as “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Purloined Letter” stand on the one side, and the gothic horrors (“The Fall of the House of Usher”) on the other.  The detective story affirms the possibility of justice, of the restoration of order. The noir movie suggests the opposite and introduces the figure of a femme fatale to ensure that failure or death is the likely end of any criminal or questionable enterprise.

Beyond its antithetical relation to Out of the Past, there are plenty of reasons to consider this, John Huston’s first movie, in the context of noir.  Sam Spade is not unambiguously a servant of law, order, and ethical kashruth.  The brilliant Warner Brothers cast – Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Elisha Cook, Jr., and Mary Astor join Bogart – arouses noir expectations, and the status of the sculpted bird,  a fake responsible for at least three deaths, elevates the tale to the level of a parable about fortune, value, and desire.

There are a lot of other movies that I like to consider in relation to noir: Le Jour se leve [Daybreak] (Marcel Carne), if only because of the number of cigarettes that Jean Gabin smokes, and A Bout de soufflé [Breathless] (Jean-Luc Godard), primarily because of Belmondo’s imitation of Bogart. Neither is noir, but the former is like it, and the latter is an homage to it that testifies to the genre’s success. 

Click here for last week's exchange in which Night and the City and The Asphalt Jungle are discussed.

A Poem for Paul Violi, born today, 20 July

Romulus and Remus (for Paul Violi) [by David Lehman]

Look for Remus in the index of a book
And you are bound to get “See Romulus”
Which is perfectly logical but makes me wonder
About indexes, or indices, and why I prefer the former
As the plural except in a financial context, and how
An index to a book that may not exist may imply
A whole biography, as my friend Paul Violi
Showed in his poem “Index.” My late friend
Paul Violi, whom I still see in the street
Sometimes, walking along at an unhurried pace
So if I walk fast I will catch up to him at the corner
Before the light turns green.

IM Paul Viioli, 20 July 1944 -- 2 April 2011

Look for Remus in the index of a book
And you are bound to get “See Romulus”
Which is perfectly logical but makes me wonder
About indexes, or indices, and why I prefer the former
As the plural except in a financial context, and how
An index to a book that may not exist may imply
A whole biography, as my friend Paul Violi
Showed in his poem “Index.” My late friend
Paul Violi, whom I still see in the street
Sometimes, walking along at an unhurried pace
So if I walk fast I will catch up to him at the corner
Before the light turns green.

IM Paul Viioli, 20 July 1944 -- 2 April 2011

Half-Life (after Friedrich Hölderlin) [by David Lehman]

After Hölderlin

Yellow pears
wild roses
the lake
your swans
and kisses
your head
in water.

But where,
when winter,
is sunshine
and shadow?
The walls,
silent and
cold, clatter.

[from The Atlantic, October 2018]

My Mayakovsky (on His Birthday 7/19/19) [by David Lehman]

On my birthday, June 11, I write this
to salute the Russian poet born on this day,
this now future day commemorating the one
in 1893 when our hero sprang into life.

A statue of the poet stands in the square
facing the Moscow hotel where we stayed
which was once KGB headquarters
but now doubles as a casino
and offers the services of a brothel. 

"You see," the Russian professor said,
"We build statues of our poets." 
"But not before you kill them," I said.

For you, Vlaidimir, handsome, forever to be twenty-four years old,
who makes a bowtie, cigarette, and cap seem the ultimate in chic accessories,
I lift my glass of Russian Standard vodka. Nostrovia!
(Or as they say in Russian, Na Zdrovie.)

From The Cloud in Trousers (trans. David Lehman)

Maria, I want you
to ignore whatever they say about me.
I may have kissed a thousand girls
but you’re this madman’s favorite,
for I’ll gladly admit I’m a mad man,
mad about you.

Maria, I’d love it if you
and I took off all our clothes
and lie, naked and shameless,
or scared, if you prefer,
in bed.

Let me kiss you on the mouth.
On this May day come live with me
in the April of my heart.

Maria!
Poets write sonnets
to the souls of their lovers,
but I am every inch a man
and I want your body as much as
a devout Christian beseeches the Lord
to “give us this day our daily bread.”

Maria,
I confess I’m afraid I’ll forget your name
as a poet is afraid he’ll forget le mot juste
which he has looked for all his life,
the word born in a night to perish in a night,
while the soul glowed in rays of light.

Maria,
I promise you I will love your body
as much as a wounded veteran loves
his one remaining leg.

No? Why no?

But you say no.
Damn.

So once again I’ll have to carry my heart away
as a dog nurses the paw that was crushed by a train.

For more of the translation, go to LIT

For The Southern Revew, I recorded an excerpt:

https://soundcloud.com/lsupress_and_tsr/a-cloud-in-trousers-by

 

 

Why Poets Love Noir #2 [by David Lehman and Suzanne Lummis]

Name your favorite underrated noir movie?

Suzanne Lummis:

 Night and the City (1950) is only a bit underrated by film noir enthusiasts, who grudgingly say it's Good; but I think it’s better than Good. It was shot in London because director Jules Dassin was blacklisted, so the whole production got kicked out of town. (Studio head Darryl Zanuck continued to support Dassin and the production.) Richard Widmark, probably my favorite noir actor, plays a grifter always looking for a new angle, and now he’s aspiring to take over London’s underground wrestling world. The movie features so many delights, including some fine performances and, at the end, a stunningly shot footrace through the outskirts of the city. 

David Lehman:

While my hat’s off to Jules Dassin (Naked City is my own favorite of his films) and Richard Widmark (Pickup on South Street) -- and while I’m sorely tempted by D.O.A. in which Edmund O’Brien is in the perfect noir predicament of having to solve his own murder (“why me?”), not to mention Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past -- I vote for John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle. It’s not exactly underrated, but I’ve interpreted the question as an opportunity to talk about a second favorite. The cast is fantastic, up and down, with special kudos to

-- Sterling Hayden as Dix, the “hooligan” and “big hick,” brawny, trustworthy, an honest crook, no genius, but his instincts serve him well;

-- Sam Jaffe as the brains of the operation, Doc Riedenschneider, about whom Dix says “that squarehead . . . has plenty of guts”;

-- the suave Louis Calhern as Emmerich, who, says Dix, “even double-crossed himself”;

-- Jean Hagen as Doll, sweet, sincere, and smitten with as Dix – she’s even more underrated than Fred MacMurray, and as versatile: compare her work here to that in Singin’ in the Rain),

-- scene-stealing Marilyn Monroe as Angela, Emmerich’s backstreet girl; she calls him Uncle Lon (and tells off a cop, “Haven’t you bothered me enough, you big banana-head?”)

On a recent TCM viewing, I noted that “Soup” is slang for explosive; that, as in so many great noir movies, even the crooks wear jacket and tie, and the getaway car is beautiful; and that the plot – the caper and its deadly aftermath illustrate two essential noir precepts. Emmerich: “Crime is only a left-handed form of human endeavor.” Doc: “What can you do against blind accident?”

See the first in our series -- about Double Indemnity -- by clicking here.

"The American Journal of Poetry" Comes Through

With Kim Addonizio, Bruce Bond, Denise Duhamel,David Kirby, Nancy Mitchell, J. Allyn Rosser, Ryan Wilson, and a cast of baker's dozens

http://www.theamericanjournalofpoetry.com/index.html

Here is my own effort from the new issue: 

 

Texting

Does the triumph of the text message
over the phone call or voice mail
imply that they were wrong all along,
those analysts of the text
who said that the spoken word
is invariably valorized
to the detriment of the written word
in the most primal of binary oppositions
that the myrmidons of critical theory
were determined to dismantle
by valorizing the bottom half
of any ratio, be it day-night, white-black,
male-female, dominant-submissive,
the haves versus the have nots,
parents and children who dress alike,
and even truth-falsehood, fact-fiction,
cause and effect, as if each pair
were in perpetual conflict,
the universal dialectic having seen to that?

-- David Lehman

(The image above / is from a painting by Arthur Dove, "Me and the Moon," 1937)

"Signs of the Times" by David Lehman [reviewed by Merle Rubin}

A favorable review will warm an author's heart even if he becomes aware of it some twenty-eight years -- to the day -- after it was published.

De Man's Deconstruction [in the Christian Science Monitor, July 9, 1991]

Signs of the Times by David Lehman

Reviewed by Merle Rubin. Merle Rubin regularly reviews literature and contemporary fiction for the Monitor.

LONG before the scandalous revelations about Paul de Man's wartime writings for the pro-Nazi press came to light, deconstruction - the school of literary criticism most closely identified with him - was a hotly controversial topic inside and outside academe.

Proliferating in the hothouse climate of graduate-school literature departments in the 1970s, deconstruction had spread far beyond academia by the end of the 1980s. It has become the word of moment - in David Lehman's phrase, a sign of the times - applied to everything from new fads in clothing and architecture to the questionable tactics of Wall Street junk-bond dealers. David Lehman, a poet, mystery writer, journalist, and graduate school veteran who covered the de Man story for Newsweek, offers "debunking" as a rough-and-ready synonym for deconstruction.

In "Signs of the Times," his spirited, immensely readable guide to "Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man," Lehman also provides a far more complete summary of deconstruction's salient points: First, there's the assumption (derived from linguistic studies earlier this century) of an unbridgeable gap between signs (words) and the things they are supposed to signify. This leads to the supposition that language has a life of its own: It determines what we think and how we see, and not the other way around. We are its prisoners, unable to do without it or get around it. Therefore, when we read a text - be it a sonnet by Shakespeare or an ad for margarine, the United States Constitution or a Gothic romance - we are justified only in watching what the words are getting up to: Any effort to evaluate literary merit or discover the author's intended meaning is a pointless exercise.

For all the panache he displays in unmasking the pretensions of deconstructionists, Lehman is not entirely hostile to deconstruction. Nor is he the kind of writer who glibly dismisses what he fails to understand. His discussion of deconstruction in particular - and of literary criticism in general - is lively and well-informed. He even makes a good case for the value of "soft core" deconstruction as distinct from the "hard core" variety: The former is free-spirited, playful, creative, open-ended; the latter is a pseudo-religious cult that thinks it has all the answers and brooks no rival schools.

If the first half of Lehman's book is a shrewd, enlightening, witty, often entertaining look at the academic politics of literary criticism, the second half has the dramatic impact of a suspense novel. The deconstructionists' hubristic dismissal of biography and history met its nemesis in the form of incontrovertible biographical and historical facts. De Man, a Yale professor regarded by his colleagues and students as the most honest, intellectually rigorous, and disinterested of scholars, was discovered to have concealed the facts about his past. The silence he maintained to his death in 1983 was as disturbing as the transgressions themselves.

Ironically, it was a young Belgian graduate student - an admirer of de Man's work looking for more of the master's writings - who came across de Man's youthful contributions to Belgian collaborationist newspapers. The story came out in 1987, four years after de Man's death. De Man's colleague, Derrida, to his credit, advised full disclosure and publication of these wartime writings. But the elaborate contortions into which he and other die-hard deconstructionists twisted themselves to make excuses for de Man's pro-Nazi writings and his concealment of his past constitute what really amounts to a third scandal.

For a two-year period ending in November 1942, the young (20- and 21-year-old) Belgian-born deconstructionist-to-be contributed some 180 articles on literary and cultural topics, mostly to the French-language collaborationist newspaper Le Soir (popularly dubbed "Le Soir Vol," that is, "the stolen evening"), after the occupying Nazis took it over six months before de Man signed on to write for them) and for a pro-Nazi Flemish-language paper. As Lehman points out, these articles were written at a time when the outcome of the war was in doubt, when the Nazis were out to win the "hearts and minds" of conquered Europeans, and when European Jews were being fired from their jobs, deprived of their property, and sent off to concentration camps. Set in the context of history, de Man's pompous pronouncements on the "centrality" of Hitlerian thought in European culture and the "marginality" and second-rate nature of Jewish contributions are hardly difficult to interpret.

Some of de Man's defenders, however, as Lehman shows, came up with some ingenious - and utterly implausible - defenses: De Man may have meant his articles to be read ironically, they claimed. Since de Man never discussed his wartime activities (beyond allowing people to mistakenly assume he had been involved in the Resistance), his former colleagues were left to ponder whether young de Man had written these pro-Nazi pieces out of genuine conviction or mere opportunism. Colleagues like Geoffrey Hartman (a Jewish refugee from Hitler's Germany) had little doubt that de Man's wartime writings were morally wrong. But Hartman and others saw in de Man's later deconstructionist writings a kind of "atonement: a way of dissolving his former smug certainties in a thoroughgoing outlook of skepticism."

More strident - and bizarre - defenses took the line that "journalists" and others now condemning de Man for his past were themselves in the position of Nazis condemning Jews! But, in the final analysis, it is very hard not to agree with Lehman's conclusion: "[F]or a thinker ... whose hard-core brand of deconstruction stressed the 'indeterminacy' of texts - surely there was some relation between the texts he was intent on forgetting [his collaborationist articles] and the texts in which he campaigned to forget the 'author,' his 'ideas,' and his conscious 'meaning.' Deconstruction had long given people pause because it makes no provision for moral action and dismisses the historical dimension in literature. These omissions seemed all the more disquieting, and perhaps the more intelligible, in the light of the de Man disclosures." Beneath the dispassionate, disinterested tone that magisterially commends tradition on the one hand, post-modernity on the other, one senses the same motivating force: opportunism.
>>>

https://www.csmonitor.com/1991/0709/09132.html

Why Poets Love Noir #1 [by Suzanne Lummis and David Lehman]

We initiate a new feature today: a running dialogue between David Lehman and Suzanne Lummis, two ardent fans of noir.

Suzanne's film noir and poetry themed series, They Write by Night, can be found on YouTube and the website poetry.la, and features explorations such as "Damaged Women," "Separating the Dark from the Light," and "Are the Femmes Fatale?"  Her essays include "The Poem Noir--Too Dark to Be Depressed" in Malpais Review and "Never Out of the Past: Noir and the Poetry of Lynda Hull" in The Los Angeles Review of Books. Her most recent poetry collection, Open 24 Hours, won the Blue Lynx Prize.

Our columns will go up on Sundays at noon -- timed to coincide with the conclusion of Eddie Muller's noir movie of the week on TCM. Eddie, I like your period-accurate ties and your taste, and this, the first of our exchanges, is dedicated to you, with thanks for today's seventy-minute feature, The Tattooed Stranger, with the shootout amid the gravestones and with the detective and his botanist lady friend in Fort Tryon Park and the GW Bridge in the background. That -- Washington Heights --is where I grew up. -- DL

What is the greatest noir movie?

Suzanne Lummis:
I think Double Indemnity of 1944 is seminal, though a couple of others before it have strong noir elements. But Double Indemnity’s got it all, a terrific script and story, thanks to director Billy Wilder; smart, cracking dialog, thanks to co-writer Raymond Chandler, master of the hardboiled detective novel; and the best (worst!) crime: Two Lovers Kill Husband Then Shoot Each Other. In the annals of immortal crimes, that one’s hard to beat. However, although John F. Seitz is credited with some innovations—such as the smoky look of certain interiors—I prefer the hard, almost glossy, contrasting shadow and light of John Alton and Nicholas Musuraca.  

David Lehman:
We agree. Double Indemnity is the ne plus ultra of noir movies, and if we were to give out noir awards on the model of the Oscars I believe it would win for best picture, best screenplay, best femme fatale (Barbara Stanwyck), and best supporting actor (Edward G. Robinson). The underrated Fred MacMurray would get a nomination for best actor in a lead role but would lose to Robert Mitchum (Out of the Past). My favorite moments: Stanwyck as traffic cop, MacMurray as speeding motorist; Edward G. Robinson’s great speech on types of suicide; the movie’s last line (“I love you, too”). It’s a movie I watch at least once a year and could talk about it for an ardent hour.

"One Hundred Autobiographies": a starred review in PW

<<<
One Hundred Autobiographies: A Memoir

David Lehman. Cornell Univ, $22.95 (248p) ISBN 978-1-5017-4645-1

Poet and critic Lehman (Poems in the Manner of...), who was treated for bladder cancer in 2014, brilliantly captures the despair, uncertainty, and anger he felt in these 100 short reflections on life, death, and writing. Likening his ordeal to the plot of a novel, he declares, “the road connecting memory and desire is not linear... one lesson of any brush with death is that time is finite.” He muses on why he writes: “I write to assert my will to live. To prove I exist.” Throughout, he reflects on literature and pop culture figures to tell his story: arriving at the hospital for treatment wearing his fedora, Lehman recalls the movie Some Came Running and Dean Martin’s hat, “which he wears even in bed, even in a hospital bed.” After reading John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Lehman ponders the concept of evil: “the real question is not whether you believe in god as such but whether you believe there is such a thing as evil.” In his final reflection, being in excellent health—though, like many cancer patients, he acknowledges that this might just be a reprieve—he advises that “even on bad days, there are pleasant hours,” and “it is amazing how much pain the body can withstand.” Lehman’s exquisite essays illustrate the ways that beauty can flow out of pain. (Oct.)
>>>

https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-5017-4645-1

"You're the Top" [by David Shapiro]

After he read my book "A Fine Romance" in 2009, David Shapiro -- my friend since my freshman year at Columbia --wrote me one of the greatest letters I have ever received, ending with this off-the-cuff poem:

You’re the top
you’re the TS Eliot
you’re the mop
making clean the Shelley bit

You're the top
you’re the cream of Pop's crop
you're Warhol
despite the whore and the false goal

You're the top
you're where Jew and Jazz meet
you're the sweet
that makes the off-rhyme well met

You're the top
you remember your mom
you're dutiful and productive
as the jazzy beat of the tom tom

You're a memory device
you're falling on no thin ice
you're now like me pretty nice
when the jazz joins the blue night twice

Since I reached my circumcision and began to like sexual curls
And John Ashbery decried things Schuberty
I tell my son not to date too many girls
oh no, it's the wrong smile it's the wrong face

You're the top
You’re the bottom's eaglet
you're the top
you're eeyore eats piglet

you’re the top
you're the boat for Noah
you’re the top
You lunch at Goa-goa

you're the top
you’re Columbia and Cambridge
you’re the top
You're the Jewish language (lanvidge)

You're the top
you’re the martini bullet
you’re the top
you go on foot to shul (*Sit!)

you’re the top
of feminine endings
you're the top
where jazz and jew blended

you’re the top
you're as yizkor sadness
you’re the top
you don't know from badness

but baby if I'm not Jewish
who is doing the stew fish'
but baby if I'm not jazz
then who's the spaz

But baby if I'm not Jewish
its close enough for twoish

and baby if I'm not gefilte
you’re the Hilton
etc etc.

"A Conversation with Poet David Lehman" [for "Staying Thirsty" Magazine]

Dusty Sang and staff of the redoubtable "Stay Thirsty" magazine conducted an interview with David Lehman about his poetry in general and "Playlist" in particular.

Here's an excerpt:

STAY THIRSTY: Your poem references music, movies, people and events, often from the mid-twentieth century. What is it about that period of time that so attracts you?

DAVID LEHMAN: The music and movies of the 1940s and 1950s are superior to those of our own time. I value what you can see and hear in those old films and songs: wit, romance, glamour, charm, style, a belief in outmoded virtues such as honor and heroism.

STAY THIRSTY: Radio has played a character role in your poetry in the past and, in this poem, you credit Channel 71 on the Sirius radio network as almost a tour guide to the past as you drive from Ithaca to New York City. Of all the electronic media, you seem to be most enchanted with radio. Why?

DAVID LEHMAN: The radio – to use McLuhan’s categories – is a “hot” medium in the sense that it requires the reader to participate in a way that television does not. If you listen to a ball game on the radio, you feel impelled to visualize the stadium and the action. You’re more involved than when you watch the game on television or on your computer via an Internet server. Sirius 71, (“Siriusly Sinatra”) is excellent as are “Real Jazz” (67), “40s Junction” (73), and “Symphony Hall” (75).

STAY THIRSTY: From classical music to jazz, from Hoagy Carmichael to Nat King Cole, from Louis Armstrong to Ira Gershwin, and from Beethoven to Schubert, music appears to be the superhighway into your soul. What sparked your love of music and if there were three songs that most represent who you are, what would they be?

DAVID LEHMAN:

Impossible to answer, and I would name three different songs each time I am asked. But here are three all-time greats that I'd choose as among my favorites:

The Lady is a Tramp
Our Love is Here to Stay
Too Marvelous for Words

The first because of its superior irony; the second because of the marriage of lovely music and simple but lively lyric; the third because of the melody and the wonderful bridge crafted by Johnny Mercer: “You’re much, too much, and oh, too very, very, / to ever be / in Webster’s Dictionary.” Three of the best versions of the song are those of Jo Stafford, Doris Day, and Helen Forrest. May I mention two other songs? Harold Arlen’s “Come Rain or Come Shine,” a love song suffused with melancholy, and Jerome Kern’s “Make Believe,” a soaring ode to love at first sight and to the power of the imagination.

For more click on one of these links:
www.staythirstymagazine.com
https://staythirstymagazine.blogspot.com/p/poet-david-lehman.html

"Bread and Wine" by Friedrich Hölderlin [trans. David Lehman]

"I don't believe you have any notion of the pleasure that the arrival of the fourth volume of Hölderlin's collected works provided me. I had been waiting for it so long and so eagerly (you see, I had ordered the collected works in August(!) at a bookstore). Because of my excitement, I was almost incapable of doing anything else the entire day. I am now eagerly awaiting the sixth volume. After reading the Reich fragments, I must presume the sixth volume is also inordinately valuable. Another factor is that, at the moment, I need the broadest base imaginable for coming to terms with Hölderlin."

---Walter Benjamin, Letter to Gershom Scholem, December 23, 1917.

See Scott Thompson's chronology of Hölderlin's life. The picture of Hölderlin above is from 1792.

Here is part 7 of Holderlin's major poem "Bread and Wine":

But my friend, we have come too late. True, the gods are still alive
But somewhere high above us, in another world.
There they repeat themselves eternally, and don’t give a damn
If we live or die, so little do they care about us.
For a weak vessel cannot contain them. Only from time to time
Can humans bear the fullness of the gods. And therefore,
The life we know is a dream about them. But confusion
And sleep assist us, sorrow and night make us strong,
And soon heroes enough will emerge from the warlord’s cradle,
With hearts rivaling a god’s in courage.
In the meantime, I believe it is better to sleep than to live 
Without friends, waiting without hope, not knowing the right
Thing to say or do -- and what, after all, is the use
And purpose of poets in an age of darkness?
Yet you say they are like the priests of the wine god,
Moving from place to place in the sacred night.

–- translated by David Lehman

The Questions They Should Ask the Candidates (without telling them in advance) [by David Lehman]

1a) Which do you favor, the Rolling Stones or the Beatles, and why?

1b) Which do you prefer, Picasso or Matisse?

1c) Bob Dylan, Dylan Thomas, or Thomas Alva Edison?

2) Do you consider yourself a fox or a hedgehog?

3) Does Pete Rose belong in the baseball Hall of Fame?

4) Which if any of the following American composers do you like: Charles Ives, Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, and Elliott Carter?

5) What is your all-time favorite American movie?

6 a) Do you believe the bull market will continue for a) the S & P 500 and b) the NASDQ?

6 b) Which stock or mutual fund would you confidently recommend to a valued relative or friend?

7) Do you believe that "it sucks" should be considered profane or a proper colloquial idiom?

8)  If offered a hard drink, would you choose a generous shot of -- or cocktail based on -- bourbon, single-malt scotch, gin, or vodka?

9) What do you think of the way Ray Collins (Gittis) defeated Orson Welles (Kane) for the governorship in Citizen Kane?

10) Would you recite a poem, or song lyric, or prayer, or historical speech you know by heart? 

11) Do you believe Freud is overrated or underrated?

12) Why do you think Operation Market Garden failed in World War II?

13) Do you prefer the mountains or the seaside for a summer retreat?

14) Should a reading knowledge of a foreign language be required of all high school students?

15) What's your favorite American monument?

16) Do you believe women are smarter than men?

17) Who's your favorite character in the Bible?

18) Did you enjoy high school? What was the high point?

19) Do you think the US got taken at Yalta?

20) Is Churchill one of the great heroes of the twentieth century or a villain?

21) Do you think The Noble Savage is a) a rock group, b) a slur, c) an idea articulated by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (d) a cocktail concocted by John F. Kennedy's mixologist for the 1960 Inaugural party, or (e) the title of an essay by James Baldwin? 

22 a) Did you know that Anderson Cooper makes 11 million dollars a year? 

22 a)  Is Erin Burnett underpaid? She makes only 3 million a year.

23) If you were a high school senior, and money was not an issue, which college would like ideally to attend?

24) Which car chase is more exciting, Steve McQueen's in Bullitt or Gene Hackman's in The French Connection?

25) Among signs of the times, do you prefer "humble brag" or "virtue signaling"?

to be continued -- DL

Happy birthday, Willis Reed, Captain of the Championship Knicks

Is a market top on tap? "Noodles" weighs in [by David Lehman]

Everyone knows that stocks these days, especially US stocks, are overvalued. But picking a market top is no easy matter. David Aronson, former professor at Baruch College, now president of a research firm that develops methods to enhance stock market trading systems, says, "the process of topping out can take a really long period of time, evolving over a year or more."

Aronson demonstrated his credentials as a two-armed economist when he told Mark Hulbert of the Wall Street Journal that, on the one hand, only time will tell whether the coming top will precede a major bear market or something less dire, something of merely "intermediate-term significance." (See "The Myth of Stock-Market Tops," September 5, 2017, p. R1). On the other hand, Noodles acknowledged, the correction following the top could prove to be the so-called "valley of fear" preceding the renewal of a secular bull market.

Noodles? Admirers of Sergio Leone's masterpiece Once Upon a Time in America know that the character named David Aaronson, played by Robert de Niro (top left), bears the nickname "Noodles" from the time he and his buddy Maxie were the most notable personalities of a gang of Jewish teenagers in New York's Lower East Side in the early decades of the twentieth century.

Noodles remains "overweight" on emerging-market equities. as well as overweight in the old-fashioned sense, as befits a man of his mature years who has done his share of losing, done what he had to do and now finds it all so amusing to think he did all tha. "All that"  includes knifing a vicious rival, for which act he serves time. He has fallen hopelessly in love with Deborah (played by Jennifer Connelly as a youth [top center] and by Elizabeth McGovern as a grown up [top right]). She is his one true love, yet, alas, he date rapes her in the back of a rented limousine. He has also smoked his share of opium with "Amapola" in his brain, cried in his sleep, carried on with Tuesday Weld, a decoy during a jewel heist, and teamed up with "Uncle" Maxie (James Woods) and buddies to smuggle booze during prohibition and run a fabulous speakeasy,

Thirty years have gone by in some remote upstate burg after his gang buddies are shot in one fatal last caper. During this time, and prior to mysterious letters that lead him to return to New York City and learn that he had been deceived and betrayed, David Aaronson has had the opportunity to make an independent study of stock market trends. In the book that made his academic reputation, Aaronson writes that "bottoms are easier to identify, in real time, than tops." When asked whether he had in mind either Jennifer Connelly or Elizabeth McGovern, Noodles just winked, whistling a few bars of Cole Porter's classic "You're the Top."

The take-away: Major bull market tops are a process, not an event. The long-term topping process may have begun without anyone taking note. Many people have shunned the market since the 2008-09 collapse. Only when they start buying stocks will we know for sure that the long-awaited end has come. Will there be a deeper than usual correction -- or a crash? How painful will it be? The jury is still out. Meanwhile when they ask me what the market will do tomorrow, I always say: it will go up and down. -- DL

originally posted September 8, 2017

Everyone knows that stocks these days, especially US stocks, are overvalued. But picking a market top is no easy matter. David Aronson, former professor at Baruch College, now president of a research firm that develops methods to enhance stock market trading systems, says, "the process of topping out can take a really long period of time, evolving over a year or more."

Aronson demonstrated his credentials as a two-armed economist when he told Mark Hulbert of the Wall Street Journal that, on the one hand, only time will tell whether the coming top will precede a major bear market or something less dire, something of merely "intermediate-term significance." (See "The Myth of Stock-Market Tops," September 5, 2017, p. R1). On the other hand, Noodles acknowledged, the correction following the top could prove to be the so-called "valley of fear" preceding the renewal of a secular bull market.

Noodles? Admirers of Sergio Leone's masterpiece Once Upon a Time in America know that the character named David Aaronson, played by Robert de Niro (top left), bears the nickname "Noodles" from the time he and his buddy Maxie were the most notable personalities of a gang of Jewish teenagers in New York's Lower East Side in the early decades of the twentieth century.

Noodles remains "overweight" on emerging-market equities. as well as overweight in the old-fashioned sense, as befits a man of his mature years who has done his share of losing, done what he had to do and now finds it all so amusing to think he did all tha. "All that"  includes knifing a vicious rival, for which act he serves time. He has fallen hopelessly in love with Deborah (played by Jennifer Connelly as a youth [top center] and by Elizabeth McGovern as a grown up [top right]). She is his one true love, yet, alas, he date rapes her in the back of a rented limousine. He has also smoked his share of opium with "Amapola" in his brain, cried in his sleep, carried on with Tuesday Weld, a decoy during a jewel heist, and teamed up with "Uncle" Maxie (James Woods) and buddies to smuggle booze during prohibition and run a fabulous speakeasy,

Thirty years have gone by in some remote upstate burg after his gang buddies are shot in one fatal last caper. During this time, and prior to mysterious letters that lead him to return to New York City and learn that he had been deceived and betrayed, David Aaronson has had the opportunity to make an independent study of stock market trends. In the book that made his academic reputation, Aaronson writes that "bottoms are easier to identify, in real time, than tops." When asked whether he had in mind either Jennifer Connelly or Elizabeth McGovern, Noodles just winked, whistling a few bars of Cole Porter's classic "You're the Top."

The take-away: Major bull market tops are a process, not an event. The long-term topping process may have begun without anyone taking note. Many people have shunned the market since the 2008-09 collapse. Only when they start buying stocks will we know for sure that the long-awaited end has come. Will there be a deeper than usual correction -- or a crash? How painful will it be? The jury is still out. Meanwhile when they ask me what the market will do tomorrow, I always say: it will go up and down. -- DL

originally posted September 8, 2017

How To Be a Big-League Critic [by David Lehman]

<<<
1. Write that the subject of your choice, “as he [or she] recedes into history, seems more a product of his [or her] time than an agent of transformation.” This can be said of everyone except Napoleon, Jesus, and possibly Freud.

3. In high-minded discourse on philosophers and their quarrels, see if you can’t summarize the argument in 10 words or less, and conclude with an echo of The Godfather. Thus, “Plato had Socrates, Kojève had Hegel, Pop had Genco—look what I got: Saul Bellow.”

6. State the opposite of the prevailing consensus view, e.g., “Derrida was not really a deconstructionist.” Quote an unintelligible sentence from Judith Butler to buttress your argument.
>>>

For the other seventeen pointers, see the current issue of The American Scholar

The picture above is a detail from The Letter by Klavdy Stepanov (1893).

The Birth of the Blues: Classic Sinatra (1952)

This is the definitive recording of a 1926 song by Ray Henderson, Lew Brown, and Buddy de Sylva. Notic what the singer does with the word "weird." Brilliant. -- DL