The Best American Poetry

Bitchin' with Nin and Whitman [by Nicole Santalucia]

Bitchin' with Nin and Whitman [by Nicole Santalucia]

I've been bitchin’ with Nin Andrews about what it’s like to live like a gypsy, about how being a poet has led to a vagabond life.

I got a degree (hurray!), made a move for a job (at least I am lucky to get a job), and now I can’t help but think of how a lot of poets live out of a suitcase. And, it’s a little scary.

As I was in the last stretch before my move—I had till Monday, July 14th to finish packing—the sea of boxes and clutter and exhaustion consumed me. I was already worried: will I have to do this again and again?   

I always feel vulnerable in the process of upheaval... I know it's normal to get nervous before starting something new. But it's all new: the job, the school, the town, the people, etc.—and for me that brings up self-doubt. I have this fear, what if I can never write again?  Sorry to be dramatic. Moving brings out the drama in me, too. I wonder how many poets are out there, thinking these thoughts as they, too, move to another college town. 

To calm myself, I started bitching to myself, and then I started bitching to Nin, and then to Whitman as if he were my friend on Facebook. And that perked me up. Just the idea of Whitman on social media made me laugh. I am jealous of Whitman because he didn't have to worry about a classroom of freshman staring at him.  And I am jealous of Emily Dickinson, too. She just stayed in one room as long as she liked.  

As I was preparing to make my big move, it was a late afternoon, a Sunday, and Walt had just updated his Facebook status, There is no loss of time in the mountains! I sing on this day: happy birthday to you, Fanny Fern. On the off-chance that Walt had his iPhone while he was riding the ferry back to the main island, I sent him an instant message because I worried that no one would ever read my first book. I wanted him to promote me, loud and gregarious man that he is.  But I evaded the topic; instead, I started questioning him about what all of this means.

NS: But Walt, what about the loss of identity? I fear that I am really no longer here, in the flesh. If I exist at all, how is it that I no longer know how to splay myself on a grassy knoll and look out at the emptiness?

WW:  Answer.

Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,
No birth, identity, form—no object of the world (“Continuities”).

NS: But Walt, every time I am on Facebook I feel lost in space and time. It’s as if my senses have been removed—carved out of my being by a motherboard manufactured in some foreign country.

WW:  Answer.

That you are here—that life exists, and identity; 
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse. (“O Me! O Life!”)

NS: But Walt, I am faithless and foolish and full of myself—there is nothing but emptiness in front of me, behind me, between my fingers, between my ears, my breath.

But then the conversation stopped. Later Walt mentioned how he almost dropped his phone overboard, just as the ferry was approaching the port at the tip of Manhattan. He was on his way to pay back Fanny Fern the five bucks he borrowed from her over a year ago. I think he was telling me how his debts never go unpaid as a way to enlighten me. He also said it’s not good to burn people with a high profile. 

High profile. Is that what we're all looking to become?

from the archive; first posted October 30, 2014

Nin Andrews: How to Write the MFA Poem

For Nin Andrews's must-read "Learning to Write the MFA Poem," click here. We printed the poem in its entirety on February 22, 2010, as you'll see if you use this link, but I can't resist offering this excerpt:

there is a certain kind of poem I was taught to write
when I was earning what my husband calls my mail-order degree
from a low-res program in the Northeast.  And I guess
I would call this kind of poem an MFA poem,
though the truth is, I never learned to write one very well
(though this is one of them, or is trying to be),
but I do see them everywhere now, these MFA poems,
which I despise, not because the poems are bad
but because I was taught how to write them
by this asshole professor (he was such a creep)
who was abusive to women, mostly,
fucked with their heads if not their bodies,
you know the type.  Back then
the women took whatever he dished out
because he was famous I guess.
I hated that, and how he would write poems
about being an asshole, which he was and is,
and about everything and anything else
because, he would explain, everything is happening at once,
so everything is happening in his poems, and happening so fast,
that the past, present, and future are all there in the poems
though nothing is ever really happening
because the poems are usually in some static place

The next stanza takes the poem to that particular place and does amazing things with the set-up. It's a tour de force -- the truth, the poetry, and the parody are one. Mega kludos, Nin.

I remember writing a poem called "The Guggenheim Poem," aping the kind of poems people used to write on their fellowship year funded by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. The poems uusally took place in Italy -- in Venice, often, but sometimes Florence or Rome, with side trips to Siena, and maybe Arezzo, and certainly Rapollo, and once in a while Naples. The poet had gone to a museum in a flimsy skirt in the fierce heat and the eyes of the men were upon her as she walked on the hot brick or cobblestone streets and she wore sunglasses and imagined she was Audrey Hepburn but all pretense and fantasy fell away when she came face to face with the Titian of Venus and Adonis or the David of Donatello in Florence or Piero's Madonna and baby Jesus in Urbino or a Giorgione self-portrait in Venice, which she saw as a vision of her father or her husband, she's not sure which, though she has spent many hours analyzing the possibilities, but this she knows this: it was a sudden flash, an epiphany even, like seeing a broken statue and realizing you had to change your life. -- DL

from the archive; first posted May 30, 2012

For Nin Andrews's must-read "Learning to Write the MFA Poem," click here. We printed the poem in its entirety on February 22, 2010, as you'll see if you use this link, but I can't resist offering this excerpt:

there is a certain kind of poem I was taught to write
when I was earning what my husband calls my mail-order degree
from a low-res program in the Northeast.  And I guess
I would call this kind of poem an MFA poem,
though the truth is, I never learned to write one very well
(though this is one of them, or is trying to be),
but I do see them everywhere now, these MFA poems,
which I despise, not because the poems are bad
but because I was taught how to write them
by this asshole professor (he was such a creep)
who was abusive to women, mostly,
fucked with their heads if not their bodies,
you know the type.  Back then
the women took whatever he dished out
because he was famous I guess.
I hated that, and how he would write poems
about being an asshole, which he was and is,
and about everything and anything else
because, he would explain, everything is happening at once,
so everything is happening in his poems, and happening so fast,
that the past, present, and future are all there in the poems
though nothing is ever really happening
because the poems are usually in some static place

The next stanza takes the poem to that particular place and does amazing things with the set-up. It's a tour de force -- the truth, the poetry, and the parody are one. Mega kludos, Nin.

I remember writing a poem called "The Guggenheim Poem," aping the kind of poems people used to write on their fellowship year funded by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. The poems uusally took place in Italy -- in Venice, often, but sometimes Florence or Rome, with side trips to Siena, and maybe Arezzo, and certainly Rapollo, and once in a while Naples. The poet had gone to a museum in a flimsy skirt in the fierce heat and the eyes of the men were upon her as she walked on the hot brick or cobblestone streets and she wore sunglasses and imagined she was Audrey Hepburn but all pretense and fantasy fell away when she came face to face with the Titian of Venus and Adonis or the David of Donatello in Florence or Piero's Madonna and baby Jesus in Urbino or a Giorgione self-portrait in Venice, which she saw as a vision of her father or her husband, she's not sure which, though she has spent many hours analyzing the possibilities, but this she knows this: it was a sudden flash, an epiphany even, like seeing a broken statue and realizing you had to change your life. -- DL

from the archive; first posted May 30, 2012

Poem Beginning with a Line after Yehuda Amichai [by Didi Jackson]

Past the window in the room where we make love
waves follow one another like lines of laundry
as the cliffs unfold, spilling like bolts of cloth into the bay,
and it is the anise, they say, the snails
are after, defining the roads of Serifos
like small-change coins, curled and climbing fierce
as soldiers up each stalk in numbers so thick
they could be plucked like white berries ripe
with June, and they too would taste of licorice
succulent in a time of honey and nettles.

from Moon Jar by Didi Jackson. Red Hen Press, 2020.

from the archive; first published July 29, 2020

R.I.P. Robert Coover (1932-October 5, 2024) [by Stacey Lehman]

Ed. note: I just learned that Robert Coover died on October 5, 2024. I read and loved several of his books. I had a terrific chapbook of his short-short stories "In Bed One Night and Other Brief Encounters". One of the "encounters" describes a rolicking night in a convention hotel that makes me wonder if he was describing an experience at the MLA or AWP. Unfortunately, the chapbook went the way of books that are loaned to friends: I no longer have it. Here's a post I wrote way back in 2009. Don't forget to read the comments:

 

A Tale (Tail) of Two Covers [by Stacey Harwood]

 

David Yezzi’s post a few days ago about Philip Larkin prompted this post by Jim Cummins, which prompted a comment string about Robert Coover’s Spanking the Maid, a book I read and loved when it was published in 1982 (Grove). I was living in Albany, NY at the time and Coover came through to promote another book. When I asked him about Spanking, he told me that the book was really about “language.”  I was confused, felt dumb.  The book I read was about the S&M relationship between a man and his maid. Oh well.

Anyway, Jim Cummins hasn’t read the book, though he would like to, so I did a quick search to see if it is still in print.  It most certainly is, yet with a different cover than the Coover I read and loved.  Check this out.  On the left is the book I read in '82; on the right is the cover as it appears today.

 

Which cover would you like, Jim? 

Letter to Cummins from the Island of Idyllwild [by David Lehman and David St. John]

Letter to Cummins from the Island of Idyllwild

Dear Jim, forgive the long delay in writing
But the feasts go on from dawn to dawn
And the natives insist on feeding us by hand, slices
        of papaya
And mango with orange beer. Last night
We stood beneath a sky of white and green silk sea
Anemones pulsing like parachutes above an amphitheater
         as wide
As a valley, and a single child walked out to sing to
        the crows
Rasping above us in nearby pines. You may not remember
        this, but
That child, circumcised and blond, outshouted the sea
That summer when amnesia invaded our sleeping bags
Like bugs transmitting the intimacy of an illness.
You had sex with a friendly neighbor and woke up without
A hangover or any memory of how she seduced you.
The island was full of enchantments, and still is.
There are lotus flowers, young goddesses with liquid bodies
In loose summer frocks, craters of quicksand and
       rushing rapids.
On this island no news is fair weather, and the women
      write poems.
And so whatever you might have feared for us, don’t
      worry now.
The six points of the pirate’s compass will guide us
As the six breezes from the seven continents return like
A sestina’s consolation and the envoy’s delight. Here, on our
Perpetually new isle, we can imagine you imagining us, idle
      as the natives
Of Idyllwild, yearning to be as wise, and as wild. David
      & David.

-- David Lehman & David St. John

from the archive; first posted September 30, 2009. Pictured: Jim Cummins

Charles Bukowski: Woodcut by Loren Kantor

 

Charles Bukowski (c) Loren Kantor

Woodcuts are by their very nature brusque, harsh & bold," writes woodcut artist Loren Kantor.  "What makes a woodcut portrait come to life are age lines, wrinkles and weathered faces." 

Kantor has been posting images of his woodcuts of actors, writers, artists, family, and friends over at Woodcuttingfool for about a year.  He sent me this likeness of Charles Bukowski last week and I love it, especially because of the way he's captured the weariness in Bukowski's eyes.  Thank you Loren for letting us share this image with our readers.  See more about Bukowski here.  Read Bukowski's The Laughing Heart (a personal favorite), here.

-- sdh

from the archive, first posted May 25, 2012

Charles Bukowski (c) Loren Kantor

Woodcuts are by their very nature brusque, harsh & bold," writes woodcut artist Loren Kantor.  "What makes a woodcut portrait come to life are age lines, wrinkles and weathered faces." 

Kantor has been posting images of his woodcuts of actors, writers, artists, family, and friends over at Woodcuttingfool for about a year.  He sent me this likeness of Charles Bukowski last week and I love it, especially because of the way he's captured the weariness in Bukowski's eyes.  Thank you Loren for letting us share this image with our readers.  See more about Bukowski here.  Read Bukowski's The Laughing Heart (a personal favorite), here.

-- sdh

from the archive, first posted May 25, 2012

Lawrence Joseph on "The Great Modern City"

<<<
The Observer and the poet Lawrence Joseph, two Detroiters living in New York, were talking in a café in Battery Park City.

“You asked me about the connection between Detroit and New York,” Mr. Joseph said. “Detroit is the great modern city. And it becomes metaphorically the great industrial city. Céline writes about two cities when he comes to America in Journey to the End of the Night: New York and Detroit. Why? In 1932, when he writes perhaps the first great international novel of the 20th century, why does he choose New York and Detroit? What are your central metaphors internationally in 1932, when you’re going into a Depression? The center of the United States was Detroit and New York.” He slapped the table. “And I’m aware of that. Is Detroit still the center? It doesn’t matter. Detroiters will tell you that it is. And the world seems to think it’s pretty important.”
>>>
For the rest of this New York Observer interview, click here.
From the archive, first posted September 28, 2011.

The Gala Launch [of BAP 2009]: A Report [by Liz Howort, with Star Black's photographs]]

The Best American Poetry 2009 gala launch reading on Thursday, September 24 featured prize-winning poets (such as John Ashbery, Billy Collins, Mark Doty, and Richard Howard), but it will also be remembered for the record-breaking number of readers, twenty-one poets in all, some traveling from as far as California, Seattle, Cincinnati, and Kalamazoo.

The New School's Tishman Auditorium in New York City was filled to capacity, and the standing-room-only audience responded most appreciatively and with no loss of attention from 7:15 when the proceedings began until it was Matthew Zapruder's turn to read at 8:50.

David Lehman, the anthology’s series editor, hosted the evening, and his introductory remarks surely resonated with writers of all genres. He imparted this advice to aspiring poets: “Don’t postpone writing the poem.” A renowned poet himself, Lehman cited a passage from Nicholson Baker’s new novel The Anthologist culminating in these sentences:

“Put it down, work on it, finish it. If you don't get on it now, somebody else will do something similar, and when you crack open next year's Best American Poetry and see it under somebody else's name you'll hate yourself.”

John Ashbery, the first featured poet, read “They Knew What They Wanted,” a poem comprised of movie titles that were brilliantly ordered, each beginning with "They." The audience guffawed when Ashbery recited, “They met in the dark./ They might be giants” (The Best American Poetry 2009, pp. 1-2)  Mark Bibbins also had the audience in stitches as he chronicled the state-by-state oddities of America. “It is the custom in Maryland to honor the stegosaurus on Stegosaurus Day,” for example, and “Mississippi means gesundheit in esperanto.” Prior to reading his "Freud" sestina, James Cummins brought the house down by explaining that there was something the audience needed to know prior to hearing the poem. That something, Cummins said with perfect poker face, is that Freud was an influential psychologist who lived in Vienna.

In acts of generosity, Philip Levine read Kevin Young’s poem from the anthology and Billy Collins read Bruce Bond’s “Ringtone,” a chilling poem about the shootings at Virginia Tech. Mark Doty's poem concerned a recital of "Ozymandias," and he followed by reading Shelley's great sonnet. Princeton professor James Richardson had to cancel his appearance at the last minute, so Richard Howard read Richardson's poem before reading  "Arthur Englander's Back in School," his own poem about a fifth grade class. It’s hard to imagine anyone capturing the voice and sentiment of a fifth grader as astutely as Howard. Martha Silano’s unexpected addendum to her paradoxical poem, “Love,” with its multiple iterations of the word hate, was her tremendous imitation of a seething espresso machine.

It is not possible to characterize all the many poets that graced the stage, but they will surely be remembered for their varied voices and themes ranging from religion and justice to the recent change in government in the United States. Hats off to guest editor David Wagoner and series editor David Lehman for compiling such a rich anthology and organizing a most memorable evening! 

     -- Liz Howort

Literary agents Glen Hartley and Lynn Chu hosted a post--launch cocktail party in their nearby loft.  John Roode Catering provided gourmet food and poet Matthew Yeager served as the evening's expert mixologist.  Poet Star Black shares these photos:

l to r Mark Strand, John Ashbery, David Schloss (Photo(c)2009 by Star Black)

l-r BAP '09 contributors Tina Kelly, Billy Collins, and Susan Blackwell Ramsey (Photo(c)2009 by Star Black)

BAP series editor David Lehman (second from left) with (l-r) Katie Freeman, Molly Peacock, Rachel Shukert, and Mark Stevens (Photo(c)2009 by Star Black)

L-R Paul Violi, George Green, and David Shapiro (Photo (c) 2009 by Star Black)

L-R Jill Alexander Essbaum, BAP '09 contributor Jim Cummins, and Stacey Harwood [Photo (c) 2009 by Star Black]

The cover art for BAP 2009 is a collage by John Ashbery.

In acts of generosity, Philip Levine read Kevin Young’s poem from the anthology and Billy Collins read Bruce Bond’s “Ringtone,” a chilling poem about the shootings at Virginia Tech. Mark Doty's poem concerned a recital of "Ozymandias," and he followed by reading Shelley's great sonnet. Princeton professor James Richardson had to cancel his appearance at the last minute, so Richard Howard read Richardson's poem before reading  "Arthur Englander's Back in School," his own poem about a fifth grade class. It’s hard to imagine anyone capturing the voice and sentiment of a fifth grader as astutely as Howard. Martha Silano’s unexpected addendum to her paradoxical poem, “Love,” with its multiple iterations of the word hate, was her tremendous imitation of a seething espresso machine.

It is not possible to characterize all the many poets that graced the stage, but they will surely be remembered for their varied voices and themes ranging from religion and justice to the recent change in government in the United States. Hats off to guest editor David Wagoner and series editor David Lehman for compiling such a rich anthology and organizing a most memorable evening! 

     -- Liz Howort

Literary agents Glen Hartley and Lynn Chu hosted a post--launch cocktail party in their nearby loft.  John Roode Catering provided gourmet food and poet Matthew Yeager served as the evening's expert mixologist.  Poet Star Black shares these photos:

l to r Mark Strand, John Ashbery, David Schloss (Photo(c)2009 by Star Black)

l-r BAP '09 contributors Tina Kelly, Billy Collins, and Susan Blackwell Ramsey (Photo(c)2009 by Star Black)

BAP series editor David Lehman (second from left) with (l-r) Katie Freeman, Molly Peacock, Rachel Shukert, and Mark Stevens (Photo(c)2009 by Star Black)

L-R Paul Violi, George Green, and David Shapiro (Photo (c) 2009 by Star Black)

L-R Jill Alexander Essbaum, BAP '09 contributor Jim Cummins, and Stacey Harwood [Photo (c) 2009 by Star Black]

The cover art for BAP 2009 is a collage by John Ashbery.

Larry Rivers Addresses the Economy

In an interview with the late Larry Rivers, Suzanne Blazek brought up Warren Butffett, saying, "Buffett, it is safe to say, has a different relationship to money than you and me. For us it's a means to an end. For him, it's a vocation. He is called to it. If it's for anything, it's for getting more of. The man is a collector. He just happens to collect dollars."
 
Well, Larry said, I don't know. It's "safe to say" -- a locution implying that saying the wrong thing will get you punched -- that the famous exchange between Fitzgerald ("the rich are different from you and me") and Hemingway ("yes, they have more money") floats behind the "different. . .than you and me" in the first sentence above. But I still have trouble figuring out who "we" are.  Do you know anyone, even among the poor, for whom money is simply "a means to an end"? Doesn't money almost always stand for something besides money? Status, for example, or achievement. Or security: there's nothing like a million bucks in treasuries to give you a warm sense of security. Or shit (see Norman O. Brown). Or manners (see Proust). Seems to me that money is not only Buffett's vocation but his vacation as well. Then there's the idea of collecting. What is the difference between collecting dollars and collecting stamps, art, coins, fedoras, ashtrays? Aesthetics?

"Reader, Why I Married My Harlequin" [by Molly Arden]

My Harlequin

Reader, this is why I married him, my harelquin,
At the Punch-and-Judy stand amid children's din.

Ok. Here's why. Because he hollers at the TV set
I believe in America, the underfaker said (stet).

And he throws beer cans at the TV set.
Do I have to tell you about every offer I get?

He buys the SI swimsuit issue and keeps them all.
How did things ever get this far? It's all

Because of what we did in the car.
No shame, no games, just a late-model used car.

Also, because he doesn't look like a scared rabbit
And we don't discuss business with George Babbitt. 

I went to "the Copacabana School of Dramatic Art,"
And got the part. He gave me a new smart

Phone, and sang "I'm not that clever, I just adore you,"
To me, and to me alone! (It's true, too.)

(2019)

30 Years On: Archie Ammons and friends at the launch reading of BAP 1994

from left to right, A. R. Ammons, James McManus, James Cummins, A. E. Stallings, Angela Shaw. The reading was sponsored by the Academy of American Poets, William Wadsworth executive director. The Academy sponsored the BAP launch reading from 1992 through 1995. For digging up the photo, we're indebted to Jim McManus.

A Scary Prediction from June 2012 [by David Lehman]

On January 6, 2012, we ran this piece under the heading “A Scary Prediction -- China: Better Dead Than Red”:

<<<  Back in January 2008, when the media was fixated in Iowa, I predicted that Barack Obama would win the presidency and be re-elected. Stacey can confirm this prediction. Scarcely infallible, I picked Kerry to win in 2004. Nevertheless -- I think it's fun to go on the record with a prediction, and here is mine of the season:

I believe that in my lifetime the Unted States will go to war with China. And by war I mean military conflict -- to be fought primarily on the sea. It will require the shifting of our navy to the Pacific, which is under way, and our disengagement from the fruitless and basically irrational forays into Iraq and Afghanistan, which are winding down, as the Obama Administration replaces boots on the ground with drone strikes in Pakistan and computer hacking in Iran.

Since this is an interactive blog, I invite you to choose the Sarajevo or pretext for the naval battles to come in the ironically named Pacific Ocean:

(1) China's ancient cultural conflict with Japan rears its head. The Chinese interfere with a Japanese ship, and the loss of face in Japan is such that they ask the US to intervene.
(2) Chinese efforts to control North Vietnam spills over into South Korea
(3) China presses spurious claims to mineral-rich islands off Japan and the Philippines
(4) On the corporate level, China eats America's lunch because Chinese regulations put US firms at a decisive disadvantage
(5) A recession in China exposes the fundamental contradiction between the capitalism the Chinese practice and the government's repressive policies. Google makes its inroads. Riots break out among people whose consciousness has been raised. Among the rioters are parents dying to have more children than the government permits, laborers who feel exploited, and an intellectual class that learns there is a discrepancy between the government's official line and the truth -- as in: what were the real reasons the earthquake of May 2008 was so devastating?
Your pick, dear reader?  -- DL >>>

The collage is by David Lehman Copyright (c) 2012

Jack Kerouac, Columbia's football star [by Mitch Sisskind]

I have enjoyed reading on this site about Jack's outstanding work in Mark Van Doren's class at Columbia. However, while it may be true that Jack quit the football team after receiving an 'A' in the class, this is not actually why he quit the team. In 'Vanity of Dulouz,' one of his last books -- it may even have been posthumous -- Jack makes it very clear that he left the team out of frustration at the Columbia Coach. The Coach's real name was Lou Little, and I believe in the book Jack refers to him as Lou Libble. Here he is...

As the book describes it, Little (or Libble) had a tremendous fixation on a reverse play called KF-79. He had won a game with it thousands of years ago, when he was so happy he fell off his dinosaur. Now he kept insisting that Kerouac practice this play over and over, which pissed Jack off. Plus, Jack had broken his leg sometime earlier and Lou had moved him down in the depth chart, very unfairly in Jack's opinion. So Jack left the team. In fact, not long afterward he left Columbia altogether.

Jack was a good player in high school in Massachusetts, and I believe he did a postgraduate year at Horace Mann School where he also played. He was probably the best football playing writer ever, certainly the best since U. of Penn All-American T. Truxton Hare in the early years of the 20th century. 'Vanity of Dulouz' is one of the best books ever about football, although only the opening section actually deals with the game. Jack had the ability (like Homer) to magnify a small incident like a football game into something on the scale of the Normandy invasion. 'Dulouz' is really good, and you feel like you're right next to Jack on the field, or on your barstool.

However, the all time best book on football -- in fact, it's in a completely different league than any other football book -- is Don Delillo's End Zone. Which is wonderful, because unless I am mistaken Delilo did not play the game past the high school level and I'm not sure he even played high school ball. In this sense he's a kind of Stephen Crane, who wrote convincingly about combat without having taken part in it. Well, Tolstoy said if you've seen a street fight you can write about a war. If you've seen Mr. Smee, you can write about Captain Hook. If you've seen a dachshund, you can write about a Shar Pei. Trust me!

from the archive; July 27, 2008

See "Picnic" on Labor Day [by DL]

Hal Carter (William Holden), a football star in college and a failure at everything since, hops off a freight train with nothing but the ragged shirt on his back. He arrives at a last resort: the small town in Kansas where his fraternity mate, Alan Benson (Cliff Robertson), the well-to-do son of an industrialist, lives. It is Labor Day, 1955, and everyone has the day off, but Hal offers to do back-yard work for Mrs. Potts (Verna Felton), the kindly old lady who feeds him and obligingly offers to wash his shirt, thus giving us a look at his buff, shaven chest.

The “us” in that last sentence includes Benson’s girlfriend, Madge Owens (Kim Novak at her most stunning). At the town’s annual Labor Day picnic, Madge will be crowned the Queen of the Neewollah (Halloween spelled backwards). Many, including Millie (Susan Strasberg), Madge’s young sister, drink too much at the picnic, and Hal gets blamed for everything that goes wrong.

Neither Holden nor Novak is a natural dancer, but when they dance at the picnic to the tune of “Moonglow,” the sparks fly. Whereas Novak and James Stewart play out a passionate romance on the interior level of the psyche in Hitchcock’s Vertigo, the physical attraction between Novak and Holden is electric. Benson castigates the “same old Hal” to whom he had earlier promised a job, albeit as a “wheat scooper” rather than the executive positon Hal had unrealistically hoped for. Hal leaves town the same way he arrived, only this time, Madge packs a suitcase and plans to take a bus to meet him in Tulsa.

Rosalind Russell and Arthur O’Connell give outstanding performances as the town’s frustrated schoolmarm and her reluctant suitor, who must settle for what small-town life can give them. Joshua Logan directed this film adaptation of William Inge’s Broadway play. See Picnic on Labor Day weekend if you can. It’s hot.

For recommendations on movies for Halloween (Arsenic and Old Lace) and Thanksgiving (Hannah and Her Sisters), click here  for my "Talking Pictures" feature that appeared in The American Scholar of August 28, 2021.

from the archive; posted Labor Day 2022

September 1, 1939” [by W. H. Auden]

Here it is again: September 1, 1939, seventy-eight years later. Can you picture Auden at that "dive" on Fifty-Second Street, (aka Swing Street) on that terrible day when the Germans invaded Poland and quaked the earth? One of the best stanzas is a metaphorical description of that bar and others like it.

Quiz of the day:
WHA disliked the last line of the penultimate stanza because he felt it was "dishonest," by which I think he meant "untrue."

He changed it to
(1) We must love one another and die
(2) We must love one another or die
(3) We must love one another or diet
(4) One must love mother nature or die
(5) If winter comes, can spring be far behind?

Light up a Winston and think of dear Wystan. Bragging rights go to the winner!

Erasers [by Mary Jo Salter]

Erasers

As punishment, my father said, the nuns
     would send him and the others
out to the schoolyard with the day's erasers.

Punishment? The pounding symphony
     of padded cymbals clapped
together at arm's length overhead

(a snow of vanished alphabets and numbers
     powdering their noses
until they sneezed and laughed out loud at last)

was more than remedy, it was reward
     for all the hours they'd sat
without a word (except for passing notes)

and straight (or near enough) in front of starched
     black-and-white Sister Martha,
like a conductor raising high her chalk

baton, the only one who got to talk.
     Whatever did she teach them?
And what became of all those other boys,

poor sinners, who had made a joyful noise?
     My father likes to think,
at seventy-five, not of the white-on-black

chalkboard from whose crumbled negative
     those days were never printed,
but of word-clouds where unrecorded voices

gladly forgot themselves. And that he still
     can say so, though all the lessons,
most of the names, and (he doesn't spell

this out) it must be half the boys themselves,
     who grew up and dispersed
as soldiers, husbands, fathers, now are dust.

"Erasers" is from Open Shutter by Mary Jo Salter (2003). The poem was Terence Winch's "Pick of the Week" on June 13, 2021.

And summer's lease hath all too short a date. . . [the best comments of 2021]

<<< On August 10, 2021, Barbara Lemon said: I was very interested and studied "New Trilling Essay the Talk of the Town" at my leisure. To be honest, I really liked it. In fact it displays a high level of professionalism. I recommend my own blogsite in addition to "The Liberal Imagination," which is boss, also "The Opposing Self," although I didn't get all the references, and "Beyond Culture," which really points the way forward by looking back over the other's shoulder and seeing something as grim as what Lot's wife may have witnessed, although reports of that event disagree. >>>

<<<Martha Ullman West said: This is a wonderful interview with [Suzanne] Farrell, questions and answers, both. Farrell, in describing the specifics of working with Balanchine, says many of the same things Todd Bolender told me and and many others about working with him in the studio (which he did from 1940 to 1960, originating roles in Four Temperaments, Ivesiana, and Agon, to name a few). I interviewed Bolender extensively for my book, Todd Bolender, Janet Reed and the Making of American Ballet; Bolender, who was arguably Balanchine's first choreographic apprentice, was particularly interesting about analyzing roles, which Balanchine left up to the dancers, never in fact seems to have mentioned. And Emily [Fragos], my copy of the Everyman anthology of dance poetry was given me by Ursula Le Guin. I value your work.>>

<<< Bruno Anthony said:
I totally agree with Ms. [Lilly] King and hate the idea of "going for gold" and "settling for silver" as if the latter were a consolation prize. Another thing the announcers can do to improve their presentation is to shut up -- to allow some silence rather than talking all the time. Also, to honor the athletes who finished two seconds slower than the top three. >>>

Howard Bass wrote regarding Gardner McFall's "First Kiss", our pick of the week, on July 4, 2012):
<<<This terrific poem brought back a vivid memory from my own elementary school years. In 4th grade (or thereabouts) we were taught to make candles by dipping our wicks (ok, there's a vulgar image for you) into a big vat of melted wax. We'd file into the school kitchen, dip, and go out, circling in and out of the kitchen as the wax hardened and our candles thickened. So some students were in the kitchen, others outside waiting to go back in. A couple of the boys kissed Lynn Kaiser and they dared me to do it, too. So I did, kissing her on her forehead, just at the moment when the teacher looked out at us from the kitchen (no doubt we caused something of a commotion). So while Larry and Mark got away with it, I had to stay after school and receive a stern lecture from said teacher. I was not, she declared, a gentleman! I took my punishment like a gentleman and did not implicate the other kissers. Poetry can have a powerful effect on memory--this one really worked for me! Many thanks for posting it, T >>>

On June 13, 2021, Dr. Earle Hitchner said, re a "pick of the week" selection by Terence Winch:
<<< Among the questions simmering in Mary Jo Salter’s skillfully constructed poem is this: What gets erased in the formation of character by inculcating and then enforcing acquiescence in adolescents? Salter shakes off the dusty notion of rote compliance and imposed silence as conducive to learning. The noisy boys turn affliction into fun, thus temporarily thwarting their martinet nun’s discipline by speaking and behaving as the boys they are. Brava to Salter for this bravura verse lending voice to these “unrecorded voices,” including her father’s. >>>

 

 

 

 

On May 14, Ken Deifik said, responding to Lera Auerbach's "Viennese Traffic Lights": << I'm sure you know the German saying that the Austrians want us to think Beethoven was Austrian and Hitler was German. I got to visit with my mother in '75. She was born and raised there, and sent to America at 16. She showed me the concrete tool shed on the Ringstrasse where she was imprisoned overnight for the crime of sitting on a bench while Jewish. It was still there 36 years later, probably still holding tools. Her parents got her out of the country ASAP after that. They were not so lucky, themselves.>>

May 14, 2021 on Viennese Traffic Li…

 

On January 31, Don Berger wrote appreciatively of Ron Padgett, whose poem "Morning" was chosen by Terence Winch as his "pick of the week." << This fable is characteristically fabulous work from Ron Padgett, whose poems I've loved since first learning of him from James Tate in the late seventies. His translation of Cendrars is my Bible and will always be (I own two copies, just in case!). In this poem "Morning," myth marries history--imagination's in its highest gear, clarity and direct speech form the great groundwork, fun wins! >>> Posted by: Don Berger | January 31, 2021 at 12:30 PM

On May 7, 2021, Emily Fragos responded to Mindy Aloff's piece on Jacques D'Amboise: <<< I well remember seeing Jacques d'Amboise partnering the great Suzanne Farrell in Balanchine's late masterpiece, Davidsbundlertanze, music by Schumann. It was at the end of his glorious career. When he carried Farrell offstage, the audience gasped. It was one of Balanchine's most breathtakingly beautiful and haunted moments. What genius! What divine dancers! I am so grateful that I got to see it. >>>

On May 6, 2021 in resonse to "On Freud's Birthday: The Definitive What Do Women Want?", Jill Newnham wrote:
<<<
Is Peace Corpse [a] typo or error for Peace Corps?
>>>

<<< Emily Lloyd said, regarding this post by Jenny Factor on the subject of Sappho:

"Transgressive love has to unmake the world a little before it gets on with loving. All other love only has to knock over the Self. So Sappho (who existed in the day when Hera could still order Zeus around) was the first non-transgressive lesbian erotic poet because there's not an iota of shame in her. Take a look at this fragmentary sample..." Yes, but--for whom was Sappho writing? Herself, her lover/beloved? In which case, the idea of apology or shame or identity consciousness or politics wouldn't really enter (or be near as likely to enter) into it, would it? How often are we writing in such deliriously pure circumstances? Good post. Thanks. >>>

<<<

Timothy Swain said, re "An Interview with A. E. Stalling by Aspen Matis":

A.E. Stallings is one of our greatest poets today. I've been following her for years--her translations, too; everything is superb!

May 29, 2021 >>>

 

<<< Molly Arden said, in response to "Larkin, Uncensored":

Bill Lawgen und Mary Syer

Wurden letzten Mittwoch Mann und Frau.

Hoch sollen sie leben, hoch, hoch, hoch!

Als sie drin standen vor dem Standesamt,

Wusste er nicht, woher ihr Brautkleid stammt,

Aber sie wusste seinen Namen nicht genau.

Hoch!

Wissen Sie, was Ihre Frau treibt? Nein!

Lassen Sie Ihr Lasterleben sein? Nein!

Hoch sollen sie leben, hoch, hoch, hoch!

Billy Lawgen sagte neulich mir:

Mir genügt ein kleiner Teil von ihr!

Das Schwein.

Hoch!

-- Brecht und Weill, Die Dreigroschenoper

 

 

 

Richard Kirschenbaum said re Lawrence J. Epstein's post "The Little-Known Film That Changed History" (Pimpernel Smith, 1941), a post that went up on July 12, 2013:
<<< All true with the possible exception of the Churchill inspired mission to keep Spain out of the war. By June 1943 there was little danger of Spain joining the Axis. Franco was far too savvy for that. Hitler had pressured Franco to join him in October 1940 when nobody could give you a reasonable scenario by which the Nazis could lose. Even then Franco said no, causing Hitler to state that he would rather have three or four teeth yanked out than have to deal with Franco again. Still a great film with no small amount of humor from that "Finest Hour" of British history when they held the line for civilization and all looked bleakest. The author of this post is sooooooo correct about the significance of the time line.  May 21, 2021 >>>

 

Alan Ziegler writes, re this post of May 14, 2021 ("Poets, Law and Order, and Criminal Intent")

<<< And there's this dialogue from [Dick Wolf's] Law and Order the Original:

Librarian: Verlaine was the real talent, you know. Rimbaud just latched onto his coattails and wouldn’t let go.
Briscoe: We were just saying that on the way over here.
Librarian: He shot him.
Briscoe: Who shot who?
Librarian: Verlaine popped Rimbaud. Paul loved Arthur. Paul also loved Matilda. It was a whole mess. The French—what do you expect?
Briscoe: So can you tell us if you sold any copies recently?
Librarian: If you really want decadent, I’d stick with Baudelaire.
May 19, 2021 at 09:04 AM  >>>

Alan Ziegler writes, re this post on The Asphalt Jungle:

<<< My father told me it was essential that I see The Asphalt Jungle in order to understand his father, a bank robber, jewel thief, and frequent convict. My grandfather always worked with a crew of specialists (he was the one who could crack the safe).>>> April 20, 2021 at 05:22 PM

On "Remembering Bob Hershon" by Terence Winch, Justin Jamail writes on March 24, 2021.
<<<<
Bob published my first book. He and Charles North invited me to read with them at Zinc Bar. Just two of countless generosities large and small. I used to bring beers and my children to his house for talks. When we would leave, he would say "goodbye sweetheart" to my then two year old daughter in his gruff voice and she would shout in a tiny voice "goodbye sweetheart!" in return, and Donna would wonder what was going on downstairs. He was a good hugger and a good neighbor.

I think I never left a conversation with Bob without learning the names of writers or other interesting people who had been part of his life in one way or another. >>>

[Pictured left to right: David Lehman, Bob Hershon, Bill Zavatsky, Michael Lally]

Also re "Remembering Bob Hershon" by Terence Winch, Maureen Owen writes on March 25, 2021 09:19 AM:

<< One of my greatest joys has been hanging out with Bob and Donna [Brook] in their kitchen, talking poetry and perfect avocados. Whenever I visited NY, after I moved to Denver, Bob and Donna would insist I stay with them and even set up museum visits and readings we must go to. In the evenings we would walk over to one of their favorite Brooklyn restaurants, having invited others to join us, and have amazing delicious rollicking dinners. Pure fun to be in the presence of Donna, who could tell all wonderful stories about Hanging Loose authors, and Bob, a rigorous, generous, co-editor of one of the most important small presses ever and all his incredible, passionate energy transforming the space around him. That energy and zen-of-the-moment presence flooded his poetry and gave us all a bigger than life poem that was totally a poem about everyday life and all of its sense and nonsense. A poet of his beloved Brooklyn, of place and all place, his voice spoke to and for us all. He will be sorely missed, but never missing. >>>

Joanie Mackowski wrote, in response to "Most Popular Funeral Songs" (March 6, 2021):

<<< Great post. Songs to go out to, to be gone by. I second or third Denise's nomination for "Is That all There is"-- such a weird & wonderful song. My own nomination is "Words of Love," as sung by Mama Cass Elliot: a song for going to new places-- https://youtu.be/2b6rm5yTx44 >

Hey, that’s not Mama Cass, that’s Helen Forrest!

Mark C Minton said, re "The Haiku Masters of Japan Drop in For a Visit" by David Lehman (Feb 15, 2021)

Thanks, David. This might be a bit more Japanese:

Pond
Splash
Frog

The reason I worried this small point is that the second half of the haiku is very ambiguous in Japanese. The first item in the sequence referring to the "old pond" is followed by the "cutting phrase" "ya," which separates it as an object from the remainder of the haiku. The second half is meant to be read as one flowing unit -- frog jumping and water sounding. Basho chose to express this grammatically in a way so that the leaping frog modifies the water sound. So, it is literally something like "frog-leaping water sound." So, in English word order this would conventionally lead to putting the frog last in the sequence, such as "the sound of water made by a frog leaping into it" But this is pedestrian, awkward and not mysterious in any way. The manner in which Basho did this, however,creates a "which came first, chicken or egg?" feeling, fusing the splash and the leaping frog into a single phenomenon. This is reinforced because Basho places no cutting phrase "ya" between the mention of the leaping frog and the water sound. Thus, he enacts what haiku is made for: like a koan, a bit of cognitive confusion provoking thoughts about the true nature of perception. Seems to me the sequence I suggested -- Pond,Splash, Frog-- best recreates this authorial intention in English. Best, Mark
February 22, 2021
>>>

[What I wrote was "Frog, / Pond, / Splash." I am sure the very syntax reveals my subjective Western response to Basho's situation. I instinctively identified the frog as the actor; the more Japanese way of looking at it is from the point of view of the tranquil pond.-  DL]

 

 

Ron writes, in response to "The Master of Gamblers" (January 17, 2021)

 

"Do not, beloved, regret that you yielded to me so quickly:
I entertain no base, insolent thoughts about you.
Arrows of Cupid work divers effects. Some do but scratch us:
Slow and insidious these poison our hearts over years.
Yet with a head freshly honed and cunningly fledged, certain

     others
Pierce to the marrow, inflame rapidly there our blood.
When gods and goddesses in days of heroes made love, then
Lust followed look and desire, with no delay, was indulged.
Surely you don't think the goddess of love lost a moment

    reflecting
When, in Idean grove, Anchises caught her eye.
Nor did Luna delay about kissing that beautiful dreamer—
Jealous Aurora had else hastily wakened the lad.
At the loud banquet Hero regarded Leander—then promptly
Into dark waters he plunged, ardently swam toward his love.
When Rhea Silvia, princess and virgin, came down to the Tiber
Just to fetch water, a god seized her and that is the way
Mars begat himself sons, a pair of twins whom a she wolf
Suckled. Today a proud Rome claims to be queen of the

    world..."

 

 

On April 10, 2021,Suzanne said in response to "Who Said It?"

<<< What is Ava Gardner doing in this post? Answer: Ava Gardner knows who said "If the Kennedy White House was decadent, the Clinton White House was sordid." But -- as we can tell by the expression on her face -- she's not talkin'. Where can I redeem my points? >>>

 

 

<<< On August 21, 2021, Derrida invoked his concept of the Pharmakon in relation to this New York Post cover of 8/21/21:

“(the pharmakon is neither remedy nor poison, neither good nor evil, neither the inside nor the outside, neither speech nor writing; the supplement is neither a plus nor a minus, neither an outside nor the complement of an inside, neither accident nor essence, neither penis nor vagina; the hymen is neither confusion nor distinction, neither identity nor difference; the clitoris is neither consummation nor virginity, neither the veil nor unveiling, neither the inside nor the outside, etc., but hidden as if by common tribal consent; the left tit is neither a signifier nor a signified, the right tit is neither a sign nor a thing, neither a right wing presence nor a left wing absence, neither a position nor a nightgown, etc.; spacing is neither space nor time; nyet; et la langue Doc (Papa); neither you nor he nor any of my envious enemies can define what you can’t define and that includes deconstruction, the big-time bug spray at the border of Plato and solider Aristotle; the incision is either the circumcised integrity of a beginning, or of a simple cutting into, and the orgone-box lather as prescribed by Wilhelm Reich, no longer in favor, but tested only in theory; that is, simultaneously either or, but also, and not even; the mark is also the marginal limit, the march, etc., and not just the victim of a hoax.”) DL  8/21/21>>>

On August 30, 2021 at 08:33 AM David Beaudouin responded to Chaucer Gets Canceled 
<<< Sadly, this critical attitude, couched in current correctness, is strangely blind to the fact that folks in the 14th century simply did not behave or think the way we do today. It's thus a specious argument to expect them retrospectively to do so or else be censored. And may I add that Chaucer authored what's considered to be one of the first feminist narratives in the English Language, the Wife of Bath's Tale. >>>

The Winning Entry: "When Charles Bukowski Met Bob Dylan" [by Angela Ball, with judge Jim Cummins's comments]

Charles Bukowski in One Corner; in the Other, Bob Dylan

If anyone should take eighteen-shot Dylan Thomas’s name,
it’s me. I challenge you to a duel
with two bottles of Four Roses.

--Chuck, that may be you, but
me, I crossed the green mountain
I slept by the sea.
you’re walkin’ in dreams
where black is the color
and nothing the number.

Bob, I got to tell you
I’m sorry for my wife
I’m sorry for anyone’s wife.
If you want me, find me clinging to a freight car,
Find me underground.
But you’ll never find me
vagrant in the rain, nabbed by a rookie cop,
a skirt, no less,
in Long Branch, New Jersey.

-- Angela Ball

James Cummins writes:

As with most of David's prompts, this one resulted in some terrific entries.  I went with Angela Ball's poem for the first prize, but there was a good pool to pick from (I counted eight entries as possibles).  For me, it came down to some great lines.  Angela wrote (in Buk's voice) "I'm sorry for my wife / I'm sorry for anyone's wife" which seemed to me to combine the compassion B. tried to keep hidden with the world-weariness we love about the guy.  And the ending, referring to Dylan's run-in with the police in 2009, who thought he was a homeless vagrant, was perfect; the word "skirt" was inspired.  George Schaefer's prose-poem "scene" takes second; it combines the grittiness of many of the entries with a lyric grace I love.  "The bluebird in him allows him to order a round for the idealistic young troubadour" and "Poetry only happens when nothing else can" are two examples.  And again, the ending is perfect.  Finally, Adam Baron's poem gets honorable mention for the use of the word "dumb," the moon sitting on Bukowski's solipsistic rim, and the friendly atmosphere of two schmucks having a moment together.  The difference between these three and at least four or five other entries is as thin as the bill Buk slides into his favorite pinball machine.  Thanks to all. 

Monday Cartoon [by Nin Andrews]

"Suggested by post-game broadcasts.” Radio as the source of action, the white ball "speeding towards its treetop nest, / one-handing the souvenir-to-be / meant to be caught by you or me.”

For more of Nin's cartoons go here.

For more of Nin's cartoons go here.

I return to the symbol of lion honey [by Jennifer Michael Hecht]

Dearest Bleaders,

I’ve been enjoying reading Lera Auerbach here and am loving the Levine clip Laura Orem posted below. I use the gerund because it keeps returning to my attention, mentally.  I left out the “Philip” in the first line, above, because of all the terrific Ls and aura eara sounds, I didn’t want to dampen them with a ph and then a puh.  Seriously, go back and read from Lera to below.  Pretty right?

The sky is white over the island today and the squirrels are grey in the trees.  Candily speaking, before all this sugar, what was there, for sweetness?  Fruit just before it turned, and of course if you had some sweet corn, or sweet beets, or trees or cane with sweet sap, but not everybody did, so mostly honey.  Which is bee stuff.  The squeeze of bees.

I call this blog The Lion and the Honeycomb out of Yeats' “Vacillation” and am brought back to it today.  (Yeats is pictruired above.) Samson kills a lion, leaves the carcass, then a long while later he visits it and finds a hive has built a honeycomb within the lion’s ribcage.  He takes the honey, feeds it to his bride’s wedding party and challenges them to a riddle: “Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweet.”  

It’s not much of a riddle because the answer is not really guessable because lion honey isn’t normal.  It’s more of a witty tag line to a weird nature story, say, if it were made into a movie. 

If the riddle means anything it’s that from a human point of view this planet is horrific and explicable.  Why say inexplicable when it is so easy to explicate, as in: Everything, happening all at once, happens to each other, but at this rate and scale, hardly happens at all (hard to matter), though to the degree that it does there are some wild confluences which may make you smile, or even laugh, or even keep laughing kind of hysterically until people come over and offer you a glass of water, looking worried, only they never bring the water. 

So what does Yeats mean when he says, “The lion and the honeycomb, what has scripture said?” and then ditches the thought in favor of dismissing a leading contemporary voice of consoling mythos and legends of meaning: “So get ye gone Von Hugel, though with blessings on your head”?  

I think he means that life is nothing like the way it imagined itself, it is okay that it is horrible, it is okay for some people some of the time but a lot of the time for almost all of us, there is a lot to go through.  Go through.  Is what I take Yeats to be saying.

Yours decidedly,

Jennifer

Ps. Above please find that I hung a mirror in the tree in Spring and here's how it looks now.

Comments

On August 30, 2021 at 08:33 AM David Beaudouin responded to Chaucer Gets Canceled 
<<< Sadly, this critical attitude, couched in current correctness, is strangely blind to the fact that folks in the 14th century simply did not behave or think the way we do today. It's thus a specious argument to expect them retrospectively to do so or else be censored. And may I add that Chaucer authored what's considered to be one of the first feminist narratives in the English Language, the Wife of Bath's Tale. >>>