As one who believes
in the poetics of the big tent,
I say we make this an annual event
in the season of changing leaves.
And this year, as you turn seventy-seven,
whom do I see
in heaven
but Igor Stravinsky
speaking for all
In celebrating, as a rite of fall,
your birthday, Mr. Pinsky.
Happy Birthday, Richard Howard
If you’re 84 today that means you were 47 when we met
You came to read poems and give two lectures
One on “The Art of Digression” the other on “The Art
Of Hesitation” I think but could be wrong and when
A man in the audience quoted Eliot on James (“too fine a mind
For any idea to violate it”) you observed that this was not
A problem from which Eliot suffered. Baudelaire, Gide,
Camus, Barthes, Stendahl, and how many others plus de Gaulle
Were translated by a boy who learned French from an aunt
When he was five years old in a car from Cleveland to Florida.
And today is your birthday and I made you laugh on the phone.
Once when I rented your flat I was talking to Louise Gluck when,
Thanks to “call waiting,” then a novelty, Galway Kinnell called
For you, and from that moment on, dear sir, I felt justified
Answering the phone, “poetry headquarters.”
10 / 13 / 13
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)
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
<<<
The perch was on the roof, and the puck was in the air.
The diffident were driving, and the daunted didn't care.
When I came out to search for you the lauded hit the breeze
On detonated packages the bard had built to please.
The century was breaking and the blame was on default,
The smallest mammal redolent of what was in the vault,
The screeches shrill, the ink-lines full of interbred regret—
When I walked out to look for you the toad had left his net.
The discourse flamed, the jurors sang, the lapdog strained its leash—
When I went forth to have you found the tenured took the beach
With dolloped hair and jangled nerves, without a jacking clue,
While all around the clacking sound of polished woodblocks blew.
When I went out to look for you the reductions had begun.
A demento took a shopgirl to a raisin dance for fun,
And for you, for me, for our quests ridiculous and chaste
The lead sky leered in every cloud its consummate distaste.
The mayors queued for mug shots while the banner rolled in wind
That beat at bolted windows and bore down upon the thin,
And everywhere warped deliverers got bellicose and brave,
When I walked out to find you in the reconstructed rave.
The envelopes were in the slots and paperweights were flung.
When I came down to seek you out the torrents had begun
To rip the pan from handle and horizons from their shore,
To rip around your heady heart looking there for more.
>>>
from Smokes by Susan Wheeler (1998). (It's Susan's birthday.) -- DL
Happy birthday, Judy Garland. Our love affair never grows old. It's you for me, dear, and you for me.
Moreover,
I like New York in June. How about you?
I like a Gershwin tune. How about you?
I love a fireside when a storm is due.
I like potato chips, moonlight, and motor trips. How about you?
I'm mad about good books, can't get my fill.
And Franklin Roosevelt's looks give me a thrill.
Holding hands in the movie show
When all the lights are low may not be new
But I like it, how about you?
I'd like to dream of fame. Maybe I'll shine.
I'd like to see your name right beside mine.
I can see we're in harmony, looks like we both agree, on what to do,
and I like it. How about you?
I get a kick out of you, Cole Porter. It's de-lovely. . .to hear your songs sung.
Your lyrics remain as young and "easy to love" as ever. So here's "looking at you," chum.
Furthermore, you know how to "do it":
\
We don't think of her as a singer, but Marilyn Monroe (whose birthday it is) sang -- and sang well. Unlike Rita Hayworth and Kim Novak in Pal Joey, Deborah Kerr in The King and I, Natalie Wood in West Side Story, and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, she needed no dubbing. (They shouldn't have dubbed Ava Gardner in Show Boat but that's another story.) See Marilyn as the very embodiment of curvaceous sexuality in Niagara, or making the most of a minor role in The Asphalt Jungle, or fighting with her beau in Bus Stop, or teaming with Jane Russell in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, or joining Ethel Merman and Donald O'Connor on the Irving Berlin bandwagon in There's No Business Like Show Business, or cavorting with cross-dressers Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in Some Like it Hot. She sings in each of these movies and the songs are noteworthy, each and all.
Some songs with male chorus and big brass solos, such as "Heat Wave," are extravaganzas of sexual desire and energy. You can't keep your eyes off her, which is as it should be, but one consequence is that you don't hear enough of the voice.
Listen to her sing "I'm Through with Love," or "I Wanna Be Loved By You," "My Heart Belongs to Daddy" or "Bye Bye, Baby" -- but listen to the songs without looking at the visuals. You'll hear a melodious voice of limited range, thin but accurate, with a husky low register, a breathy manner, and a rare gift of vibratro. When her voice trembles over a note -- over "you" or "baby" -- the effect is seductive and yet is almost a caricature of the seductress's vamp. The paradox of her singing is that she reveals her sexual power and flaunts her vulnerability -- to flip the usual order of those verbs. She can be intimate and ironic at the same time.
Compare her version of "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" with Carol Channing's definitive Broadway treatment, and you get the essential difference between theater and cinema, New York and Hollywood. Channing's is the superior theatrical experience: funny, charming, a show-stopper of the first order. But Channing serves the song where Monroe makes her songs sound like illustrations of her life. Monroe's treatment of "Diamonds" may not be as effective as Channing's in its service to Leo Robin's marvelous lyric for Jules Styne's delightful tune. But Monroe's version is younger, friskier, sexier. When she sings it, the song is about her. Music is the food of love, and sexual ecstasy is on the menu, for dessert.
Nowhere is she better than "I'm Through with Love," which she sings in Some Like It Hot. Gus Kahn's lyric, which rhymes "I'm through" with "adieu," is as apt for Marilyn as "Falling in Love Again" was for Marlene Dietrich. In "I'm Through with Love," the singer feigns nonchalance, affects an uncaring attitude. But melodically during the bridge, and lyrically in the line "for I must have you or no one," the song lets us know just how much she does care. Monroe implies this pathos in "I'm Through with Love" at the same time as she struts her stuff. She vows that she'll "never fall again" and forbids Love -- as if the abstraction stood for a Greek god or for the entire male sex -- to "ever call again." But we don't quite believe her, because we know temptation is just around the corner. In a sense, her voice thrusts out its hips when she sings. It's a feast for all the senses.
-- DL
It's been a great
two hundred years since you joined the race
and you're still out in front
by a length or more,
Walt Whitman,
whom I still see in the supermarket.
-- Alien Ginsberg
See the celebration of Whitman organized and edited by Brian Clements in association with North American Review. Brian calls the project "Every Atom" and every day for the next 200 days he will be posting a refelction and annotation of Whitman's lines starting with this one from Martin Espada. Brian writes, " Over the next 200 days you will see contributions from Rosanne Cash, Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams, Billy Collins, Julia Alvarez, Colum McCann, Bill McKibben, Gary Schmidgall, Ed Folsom, Robert Hass, Erica Jong, and many, many other poets, writers, historians, songwriters, critics, postal workers, nurses, leaders, and neighbors. Please follow along, enjoy some excellent writing, and refresh your knowledge of the complex legacy of Walt Whitman, which is the complexity, as Whitman says, 'of these United States.'"
May 21
Black Jack I beat the dealer
and no use complaining
even though one or another souvenir
of my bout with cancer may act up
throwing a left hook that I didn't evade
and the embarrassment of a knockdown
will be mine
I will get up at the count of eight and
On May 21
Fats Waller's birthday
I'll be living in a great big way and I will play
"Honeysuckle Rose" and "Your Feet's Too Big"
yes, "your pedal extremities are colossal"
As I write this
It is November 10 of the previous year
but I can do it I can sit right down
and write myself a letter
and make believe
it came from you
for Jamie Katz
Speaking of the devil
you know and the tenor
saxophonist your father
played with, today is
Sonny Rollins's birthday
(September 7, 1930) how's
that for good luck his
rendering of “I've Got You
Under My Skin” is on Blue
Note Plays Sinatra (1995)
I knew they called him Newk
because he looked like Don
Newcombe of the Brooklyn
Dodgers and for a while he
practiced daily on the
Williamsburg Bridge
but not until I talked to you
today, dear friend, did I learn
he said it was a good place
to practice because no
one complains about the noise
9 / 7 / 17 5 PM
Invocation
Come Inspiration,
sweet as two beautiful hookers
in a dream.
Don't go girls --
even if you don't know a thing
about poetry,
at least help me decide
what to wear
-- Elaine Equi (whose birthday is today, July 24). Click here for more about this all-star.
We got together in secret the other day
and discussed the center field position
We decided among ourselves
you are the greatest in New York,
which means everywhere.
Sincerely,
Joe DiMaggio,
Mickey Mantle
Duke Snider
Happy birthday
to John Ashbery
born July 28, 1927
Great American Poet
a Leo with Virgo rising
who shares a birthday with Gerard Maney Hopkins, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Marcel Duchamp, and Malcolm Lowry
On the left below: JA by Larry Rivers; on the right below JA with Jim Cummins chez Lehman (2009). Center: "Birthday Whoopee," a 2016 collage by John Ashbery
Radio
I left it
on when I
left the house
for the pleasure
of coming back
ten hours later
to the greatness
of Teddy Wilson
"After You've Gone"
on the piano
in the corner
of the bedroom
as I enter
in the dark
from New and Selected Poems by David Lehman
THE RULE OF THUMB
by T.P.Winch
Ringfinger was nervous
Pinky terrified
when they learned
that Hand might succumb
to the rule of Thumb.
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