The Best American Poetry

Happy birthday to the late Donald Keeene, born June 18, 1922

(1)  [The late] Donald Keene’s approach to teaching and writing bears the imprint of his freshman Humanities instructor, Mark Van Doren ’21 GSAS. “He was a scholar and poet and above all some­one who understood literature and could make us understand it with him,” Keene writes in Chronicles of My Life: An American in the Heart of Japan. “Van Doren had little use for commentaries or specialized literary criticism. Rather, the essential thing, he taught us, was to read the texts, think about them, and discover for our­selves why they were ranked as classics.”

The experience of taking the College’s general education cours­es was “incredible,” Keene says, and he fondly remembers the great teachers he encountered as an undergraduate. Among them were the “learned and gentle” classicist, Moses Hadas ’30 GSAS; Lionel Trilling ’25, ’38 GSAS and Jacques Barzun ’27, ’32 GSAS, who led Keene’s Senior Colloquium; and Pierre Clamens, a French instructor “who was very stern, but gave everything to his stu­dents,” Keene says.

His chief mentor, however, was cul­tural historian Ryusaku Tsunoda, a pio­neer of Japanese studies at Columbia whom Keene often refers to, simply, as Sensei. “He was a man I admired com­pletely,” Keene says, “a man who had more influence on me than anyone else I can think of.”

As a senior, Keene enrolled in Tsu­noda’s course in the history of Japa­nese thought. Fifty years later, in a CCT interview (Winter 1991) with David Lehman ’70, ’78 GSAS, Keene remem­bered: “The first class, it turned out I was the only student — in 1941 there was not much pro-Japanese feeling. I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be a waste of your time to give a class for one student?’ He said, ‘One is enough.’  >>>  -- Jamie Katz

(2) Donald Keene ’42, a distinguished professor of Japanese at Columbia, was awarded the Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation — a career achievement award — by PEN, a fellowship of writers, at the PEN Literary Awards at Lincoln Center on May 20. David Lehman ’70, an accomplished poet, author and contributor to CCT, was asked to compose the citation, which was engraved on the back of the medal. Lehman said, “Eschewing a conventional prose testimonial, I decided to use a Japanese verse form that I learned about from Professor Keene. These are linked ‘tankas,’ a form combining a haiku stanza with a two-line stanza, with strict syllabic requirements.”

To Donald Keene we
owe much of what we know of
Japan’s verse and prose.

In shadow of rising sun
stood the tree unobserved.

Then Keene could be heard:
in accents lucid and keen
he rendered the scene.

And the bare branch of winter
burst into cherry blossom

from Columbia College Today:(July 2003)

Donald Keene moves (back) to Japan [from the archive; December 14, 2011]

Pictured left: Jamie Katz followed by this cipher 9 8 44 72 280

Click here to read Jamie Katz's brilliant feature on Donald Keene, the Western world's leading interpreter of Japanese literature, a Columbia professor for more than seventy years. On a visit to Japan in 1990, I had the pleasure of meeting and interviewing Professor Keene, who, in addition to discussing everything from Basho and linked-verse to the merits of a traditional Japanese breakfast, taught me the two key rules of pronouncing Japanese and made my two-week stay go a lot more smoothly than would otherwise have been the case. With his books and anthologies, Keene taught an appreciation of Japanese culture to generations of students, not only at Columbia, his home base, but the world over.

In April 2003 Keene was awarded a medal of honor from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. At his request I wrote the inscription, appropriating the tanka as an appropriate form:

To Donald Keene we
owe much of what we know of
Japan's verse and prose.

In shadow of rising sun
stood the lean tree unobserved.

Then Keene could be heard:
in accents lucid and keen
he rendered the scene.

And the bare branch of winter
burst into cherry blossom.

Here's an excerpt from Katz's feature in the current Columbia College Today. -- DL

<<<
Keene’s approach to teaching and writing bears the imprint of his freshman Humanities instructor, Mark Van Doren ’21 GSAS. “He was a scholar and poet and above all some­one who understood literature and could make us understand it with him,” Keene writes in Chronicles of My Life: An American in the Heart of Japan. “Van Doren had little use for commentaries or specialized literary criticism. Rather, the essential thing, he taught us, was to read the texts, think about them, and discover for our­selves why they were ranked as classics.”

The experience of taking the College’s general education cours­es was “incredible,” Keene says, and he fondly remembers the great teachers he encountered as an undergraduate. Among them were the “learned and gentle” classicist, Moses Hadas ’30 GSAS; Lionel Trilling ’25, ’38 GSAS and Jacques Barzun ’27, ’32 GSAS, who led Keene’s Senior Colloquium; and Pierre Clamens, a French instructor “who was very stern, but gave everything to his stu­dents,” Keene says.

His chief mentor, however, was cul­tural historian Ryusaku Tsunoda, a pio­neer of Japanese studies at Columbia whom Keene often refers to, simply, as Sensei. “He was a man I admired com­pletely,” Keene says, “a man who had more influence on me than anyone else I can think of.”

As a senior, Keene enrolled in Tsu­noda’s course in the history of Japa­nese thought. Fifty years later, in a CCT interview (Winter 1991) with David Lehman ’70, ’78 GSAS, Keene remem­bered: “The first class, it turned out I was the only student — in 1941 there was not much pro-Japanese feeling. I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be a waste of your time to give a class for one student?’ He said, ‘One is enough."

On Jacques Barzun (1907-2012) [by Jamie Katz]

Nine years ago, on October 26, 2012, we received a few comments in response to David's post about Jacques Barzun,  the great Columbia professor, who once graced the cover of Time magazine. Jacques died on October 25th at the age of 104. 

Suggesting that we re-post the piece, David recalls meeting Barzun in 1974, at the suggestion of Lionel Trilling, whose research assistant David was. "I approached him on the subject of the prose poem, which I had chosen as the subject of my PhD thesis. This cordial, cool, elegant man of letters, in his impressive office at Low Memorial Library, amazed me with his eruditon -- he was speaking off the top of his head, in which many ideas and facts were active, but it was as though he had just that week made a preliminary study of the precursors of Baudelaire's prose poems. Years later, when I embarked on writing a book about murder mysteries, and approached Jacques for advice. He wrote me a two-page, single-spaced letter that I still consider the best such memorandum that I have ever received. I love Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence, a magisterial work, and his Catalogue of Crime, an annotated catalogue of his and his collaborator Wendell Hertig Taylor's immense reading in the literature of crime, detection, and espionage.

"Trilling and Barzun were professors of the old, nearly obsolete kind. They really knew their stuff, took ideas strongly, understood the social ramifications of art and the humanities, and could converse on important books from Plato to Freud with wit and charm as alums can attest who took the Colloquium on Important Books that Trilling and Barzun taught jointly for many years at Columbia."

Here's a piece by our friend Jamie Katz, who had the honor of toasting Barzun on the occasion of his 100th birthday. 

The Barzun Touch

On the day we learned Lionel Trilling [right] had died, in 1975, I was the very young editor of the alumni magazine Columbia College Today, and we were right on deadline. Obviously, we wanted to include a piece worthy of such a distinguished Columbia figure, but we needed it overnight. “I’ll call Jacques,” offered our formidable and almost-as-young college dean, Peter Pouncey. It seemed like a moon shot to me. But when I arrived at Hamilton Hall the next morning, I found a brown inter-office envelope bearing a beautifully crafted essay on Trilling, at precisely the specified length, initialed JB.

It was the first of many instances of Professor Barzun’s loyalty and just-right helpfulness I would experience over the years. He encouraged our project of making the magazine more than just a house organ; he contributed essays and talks for publication; he kindly and patiently shot down every one of my ill-considered editorial suggestions. Through all, he projected a degree of consideration and decency that glows warmly as I continue to learn from him — most recently by reading From Dawn to Decadence. I’m halfway there, strolling a few enlightening pages a day. It is a fine thing to be taught by Jacques Barzun.

In his work I am struck, not just by his erudition and elegant prose, but by his acknowledgement of fluidity, chance and human agency in culture and history. It is a liberating conception, giving weight to both daring leaps of individual genius and the smaller gestures and habits that form the tissue of society. He gives respect to our innermost selves, too. Speaking of Descartes and the split between rationalism on one side and impulse and intuition on the other, Barzun refuses to take sides: “The more science proves its worth, the harder it is for ‘nature’ or ‘the heart’ to feel free. Reason should guide — all moralists agree — but, as others point out, mind is not separate from heart. The astute Chinese have a character for heart-and-mind. They perceived that the urge to reason is itself a drive from the heart, which explains why rationalists are often fanatics.”

There is a keen sense of proportion, a dancer’s grace, in Barzun’s thought and action. Some have mistaken this for aristocratic haughtiness. I see it as poise. I had a piano teacher long ago who would occasionally lean hard on my forearms as I played for her. The point was for me to develop a finer touch — a Barzun touch, you might say — by balancing downward force with upward lift, so the hands could float comfortably above the keyboard.

One day in the late ’80s, Professor Barzun was invited to a luncheon gathering the editors of the various alumni publications on campus, from Columbia College, the law school, the medical school and so forth. My colleagues were thrilled to have such an eminent authority on writing, editing and publishing in our midst, and they peppered him with questions about gender-neutral pronouns, serial commas and other inside-baseball stuff. I then sought his perspective — as former university provost, dean of faculties and alumnus-of-more-than-one-division — on a suggestion then current in the university’s councils, namely, that the various Columbia periodicals be somehow organized to “speak with one voice.” He shook his head. “I don’t believe it’s possible for an individual to speak with one voice, let alone a university,” he said. “What we should aim for is a polyphonic effect.”

At that moment, I detected a trace of a grin — not a smirk, but the twinkle-in-the-eye of a man who knows he has found the mot juste.

Cent’ anni, Jacques!

Jamie Katz, editor-at-large, Smithsonian Magazine
More on Jacques Barzun by Jamie Katz

"The Brilliant Troubled Legacy of Richard Wagner" [by Jamie Katz]

<<<
If you’ve ever hummed “Here Comes the Bride” (from Wagner’s Lohengrin) or seen Apocalypse Now (the “Ride of the Valkyries” helicopter assault), you have already sipped at the well. Those who have immersed themselves in [Richard] Wagner’s full operas—lengthy and demanding, yet flowing and churning like a great river of thought and feeling—often experience a sense of awe. “It's so rich and deep—it's like a drug sometimes. If you give up and let go, it really drags you into a mysterious world,” Jonas Kaufmann, the celebrated German tenor, said on NPR in February.“His music is like nobody else’s, emotionally,” says Janet Ciriello, a member of the Wagner Society of Los Angeles who has attended the Bayreuth Festival “six or seven times” since 1985. “It grabs you, and you have to stay with it. Whatever the issue is—greed, or power or Eros—he somehow manages to encompass everybody’s feelings.” Adds her husband Nick Ciriello: “I love Donizetti, Mozart and Verdi, of course, and Puccini. All of these people stir you and grab you, but Wagner picks you up and slams you against the wall. You are in his hands. He’s the grand sorcerer.”
>>>

Click here for the rest of Jamie Katz's Smithsonian piece (from July 23, 2013) about the least likeable but arguably most gifted of the various Wagners (Billy, Mayor, Mayor's Pop, Honus as well as Dick).
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-brilliant-troubled-legacy-of-richard-wagner-16686821/

Mahler's Second Symphony -- with commentary [by Aaron Cohen]

Check out this podcast of Mahler's 2nd symphony with commentary. This link also leads to Aaron Cohen's similar treatment of Mahler's 1st.

Available July 7, 2021

The podcast series Embrace Everything – The World of Gustav Mahler^TM, a multi-season exploration of the composer’s complete symphonies, continues with Symphony No. 2.

The Embrace Everything^TM podcast series was created and is hosted by award-winning radio producer Aaron Cohen. It explores and celebrates the music of Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) by taking a journey through his symphonies. Using interviews with leading Mahler interpreters and scholars, readings from the letters of Mahler and his contemporaries, commentary from Mr. Cohen, and the sounds of the symphonies themselves, each season of the series guides listeners through one of these landmark works in the orchestral repertoire.

https://www.theworldofgustavmahler.org/

Herbie Hancock's "Maiden Voyage" [a Jamie Katz Recommendation]

Jamie Katz has been asked to select the ten musical albums that have made the greatest impact on him. He posts one album cover per day for ten consecutive days. This is his choice for day #3:

 

D-Day Hero 45 Years Later [by Jamie Katz]

<<<
As world leaders and assorted dignitaries join the throngs of grateful citizens and remembrance tourists in Normandy this year to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day, one group in particular will command a special reverence: veterans of the actual battle.

Their numbers are rapidly dwindling. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that fewer than 3 percent of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II are still living. For those who saw the fiercest combat, the numbers are even more sobering. One telling measure: As of mid-May, just three of the war’s 472 Medal of Honor winners were still alive. The youngest D-Day vets are now in their mid-90s, and it is generally understood, if not necessarily said aloud, that this year’s major anniversary salutes may be the final ones for those few surviving warriors.

One of the returning American vets is 98-year-old Arnold Raymond “Ray” Lambert, who served as a medic in the 16th Infantry Regiment of the army’s storied First Division, the “Big Red One.”

Lambert, then 23, was but one soldier in the largest combined amphibious and airborne invasion in history, a mighty armada of some 160,000 men, 5000 vessels and 11,000 aircraft—the vanguard of the Allied liberation of Western Europe from what Churchill had called “a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime.”
>>>

Click here for more of Jamie Katz's Smithsonian article.

"Rocky Colavito" [by Jamie Katz]

When Rocky Colavito was hitting forty-two home runs a year,
a dark-eyed, rifle-armed right fielder for the Cleveland Indians,
my monthly sports magazine said he made the bobby-soxers       swoon.
I wasn’t sure what that meant. I was nine or ten.

And when Rocky Colavito was traded to the Detroit Tigers,
even up, for the American League batting champion,
a crew-cut mean-eyed shortstop with a cheekful of chaw,
the magazine said the Cleveland bobby soxers were in     mourning.

Rocky hailed from the tough Crotona Park section of the Bronx,   they said.
One night he leaped the fence at Yankee Stadium, bat in hand,
because he saw his dad fighting with some bum in the stands.

The Rock always looked like he needed a shave. Charming but dangerous.
He was the clean-up batter. The slugger. Struck out a lot, too.
And when it was over, after he finished up back home in the Bronx,
we never heard another word about him.

And where are those bobby-sox grannies
who swooned for Rocky Colavito and mourned for him, too?

[from the archive; originally posted October 12, 2016, reposted today on the occasion of Mr. Katz's birthday. Photo above: Colavito in Cleveland, c. 2016]

When Rocky Colavito was hitting forty-two home runs a year,
a dark-eyed, rifle-armed right fielder for the Cleveland Indians,
my monthly sports magazine said he made the bobby-soxers       swoon.
I wasn’t sure what that meant. I was nine or ten.

And when Rocky Colavito was traded to the Detroit Tigers,
even up, for the American League batting champion,
a crew-cut mean-eyed shortstop with a cheekful of chaw,
the magazine said the Cleveland bobby soxers were in     mourning.

Rocky hailed from the tough Crotona Park section of the Bronx,   they said.
One night he leaped the fence at Yankee Stadium, bat in hand,
because he saw his dad fighting with some bum in the stands.

The Rock always looked like he needed a shave. Charming but dangerous.
He was the clean-up batter. The slugger. Struck out a lot, too.
And when it was over, after he finished up back home in the Bronx,
we never heard another word about him.

And where are those bobby-sox grannies
who swooned for Rocky Colavito and mourned for him, too?

[from the archive; originally posted October 12, 2016, reposted today on the occasion of Mr. Katz's birthday. Photo above: Colavito in Cleveland, c. 2016]

On Sonny Rollins's Birthday [by David Lehman]

                                        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

The Music Man [by Jamie Katz]

illustrations by Derek Heldenbergh

There’s a delicious scene in the third season of Amazon’s Mozart in the Jungle in which Nico Muhly ’03, Juilliard’04, playing himself, introduces an aria he has composed expressly for La Fiamma, a Maria Callas-style prima donna portrayed by Italian actress Monica Bellucci. He demonstrates her singing part on a grand piano in her Venetian parlor, explaining that the piece will also feature pre-recorded sounds and fragments of text that she will sing into a microphone and then repeat using a foot pedal. Before the proud La Fiamma will agree to this departure from her standard repertoire, however, she needs some convincing. “What is the story about?” she asks.

“The character is a young American woman named Amy Fisher,” Muhly tells her. “She’s having an affair with an older man, and she goes over to his house and shoots his wife in the head. His name is Joey Buttafuoco.”

He pronounces it the American way, the way newscasters did when the “Long Island Lolita” made sensational headlines in the early ’90s: Buttah-fewco. La Fiamma corrects him. “Boota-fwocko,” she says.

If this were an old-school sitcom, the laugh track would kick in right about here. But while Mozart in the Jungle is fun, it takes music seriously enough not to waste a cameo by the world-renowned Muhly, who in his 20s became the youngest composer ever commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera. So we’re treated to a glimpse of the real Nico: artistically adventurous, charming and sensitive to the hopes and agonies of Fisher or anyone else whose private passions lead to public tragedy.

“Fisher’s world is really intense,” Muhly reflects in his West 37th Street music studio in Manhattan. “Like Romeo and Juliet, she’s in this highly charged erotic and emotional situation — only it isn’t in a glamorous place. It isn’t Verona; it’s Massapequa. But I don’t like this idea of high versus low [culture], because it’s really just people.”

Continue reading . . . 

"Rocky Colavito" [by Jamie Katz]

 

When Rocky Colavito was hitting forty-two home runs a year,
a dark-eyed, rifle-armed right fielder for the Cleveland Indians,
my monthly sports magazine said he made the bobby-soxers swoon.
I wasn’t sure what that meant. I was nine or ten.

And when Rocky Colavito was traded to the Detroit Tigers,
even up, for the American League batting champion,
a crew-cut mean-eyed shortstop with a cheekful of chaw,
the magazine said the Cleveland bobby soxers were in mourning.

Rocky hailed from the tough Crotona Park section of the Bronx, they said.
One night he leaped the fence at Yankee Stadium, bat in hand,
because he saw his dad fighting with some bum in the stands.

The Rock always looked like he needed a shave. Charming but dangerous.
He was the clean-up batter. The slugger. Struck out a lot, too.
And when it was over, after he finished up back home in the Bronx,
we never heard another word about him.

And where are those bobby-sox grannies
who swooned for Rocky Colavito and mourned for him, too?

-- Jamie Katz

"He was out!": On Meeting Yogi Berra

Editor's note: I was going through boxes of old photos when I came across this gem. It's a picture of our good friend Jamie Katz in conversation with Yogi Berra. There had to be a story behind this picture so I wrote to Jamie to find out. Here's how he responded:

 

 It was a reception at Columbia University's Faculty House for the Yogi Berra Scholarship Fund, twenty or so years ago, at which Yogi met with members of the baseball varsity. I understand that he established the fund at the suggestion of the former Yankees announcer, Mel Allen, because Lou Gehrig had attended Columbia. Yogi was a sweet guy. We had a nice chat at the reception; I reminisced about playing catch with his sons Tim and Larry at the Yanks' spring training camp in the late 50s, while my stepfather Les Lieber was gathering material for magazine stories about Joe DiMaggio, Casey Stengel and Berra. ("There's No Place Like Home Plate," was the headline on that one). Then I brought up a perennial sore point.

 "So," I asked him, "in the seventh game of the '55 World Series, when Jackie Robinson stole...." 

 

"He was out!!" Yogi said fiercely, before I could finish the question.

It was as if Robinson had stolen home on them the day before. 

 

 

Here's a video of the memorable play:  

-- sdh

R.I.P. International Herald Tribune [by Jamie Katz]

Jean Seberg in Jean Luc-Godard's film "Breathless." photo by Raymond Cauchetier

It's like losing a friend. I looked forward to reading every page—the baseball scores available nowhere else, the smart editorials culled from papers around the world, Art Buchwald, the Times crossword. It was the last vestige of the snappy NY paper, with its distinctive Bodoni display face. . . As a student, I had Jean Seberg's job for a spell, late nights. The paper was literally fresh off the press—the ink smell was strong. My territory was the 6th arrondissement—blvd Saint-Germain, Montparnasse, the little streets in between. James Baldwin was a regular. Bartenders would pour me a cognac, American kids on teen tours would be snotty, but never buy the paper. Philippe Petit tightrope-walked between the chestnut trees. Rat Man would flash his rat from beneath an overcoat. My piano prof, Michel Sardaby, let me sit in for a tune with him every night (usually John Lewis's "Bluesology," in F) at the club where he gigged just off blvd Saint-Michel. On the way out I'd sell an extra 5-10 papers. Good times. JK

ed note: read about the demise of the IHT here. sdh

The Brilliant, Troubled Legacy of Richard Wagner (by Jamie Katz)

his bronze portrait bust of German composer Richard Wagner, by artist Arno Breker, resides in Bayreuth, Germany, home of the annual festival honoring his work. (Getty Images )

She is Richard Wagner’s great-granddaughter, and her life has been dominated by the light and shade of his genius. But as a teenager growing up in Bavaria in the 1950s and ’60s, Eva Wagner-Pasquier went googly-eyed for an altogether different musical icon: Elvis Presley. She remembers the excitement he stirred up more than half a century ago merely by passing through a neighboring town on maneuvers with the U.S. Army. So last year, joined by her American-born son Antoine, Eva finally trekked off to Graceland to pay homage to the King. “I’ve always wanted to go there,” she said, flipping open her cellphone to display the idealized image of Elvis she uses as wallpaper. “It was superb! We stayed at the Heartbreak Hotel, of course.”

The trip to Memphis was a lighthearted escape from the burdens of running a family business like no other. Since 2008, when Eva and her half-sister Katharina succeeded their father Wolfgang Wagner, they have directed the famed summer opera festival founded in 1876 by Richard Wagner and managed by his heirs ever since. In this bicentennial year of the composer’s birth, Wagner devotees are now setting forth on their annual pilgrimage to the seat of his still-powerful cultural domain: the charming city of Bayreuth (pronounced BY-royt), nestled far from Germany’s urban centers, in the rolling hills of Upper Franconia. “Wagner without Bayreuth,” observes the cultural historian Frederic Spotts, “would have been like a country without a capital, a religion without a church.”

From July 25 through August 28, the faithful will ascend the city’s famed Green Hill to the orange brick–clad Bayreuth Festival Theater—known globally as the Festspielhaus. It was built by Wagner himself to present his revolutionary works—among them his four-part Ring cycle, Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal—in the innovative architecture and stagings he felt they required. The Bayreuth Festival became the first full-fledged music festival of modern times, the granddaddy of everything from Salzburg and Spoleto to Bonnaroo, Burning Man and the Newport Jazz Festival. At Bayreuth, however, only Wagner’s works are presented. After his death in 1883, the festival and the theater became a hallowed shrine for his followers, many of whom embraced his ideology of fierce German nationalism, racial superiority and anti-Semitism. He was idolized by Adolf Hitler, whose rise was abetted by the Wagner family’s support in the early 1920s.

Continue reading here.

"If you love steak, you can love chicken, too!" An exchange between Jamie Katz and Lewis Saul

(ed note:  Lewis Saul's tribute to Dave Brubeck, who died last week, prompted this affectionate exchange between Jamie Katz and Lew, two musicians who know their stuff.  I thought it worth highlighting since both raise important points. A big thank-you as well to Jamie for turning me on to Lionel Loueke, whom I've been listening to with much pleasure.  Check him out! -- sdh)

December 11, 2012:

Lewis—
Thank you for this wonderful essay. Of course, as you know, you were the one who turned me on to what I still call the odd meters—how to hear them and think about them. Now we have artists such as Lionel Loueke routinely playing complex rhythms without any strain or feeling of unnaturalness and creating grooves that cook like 4/4. (You can go a whole week in New York jazz clubs without hearing 4/4 these days.) Loueke—who is originally from Benin—is a favorite of mine. After hearing him play at the Jazz Gallery in Manhattan a few years ago, I asked him if growing up with West African music had nourished his liking for polyrhythmic grooves and meters like 19/8. And he said, actually, it was more about Bartók and Stravinsky. I think possibly he said that to ward off any assumptions he thought I might have been making about his musical sophistication being "native." Black musicians have been dealing with that insulting assumption for a long time.

It took me a long time to come around to Brubeck. His popularity got in my way, as did the odd meters and my feeling that other pianists from his generation—such as Tommy Flanagan, Hank Jones, Ahmad Jamal and Bill Evans—were more deserving of acclaim. But that's stupid. As you also taught me, if you love steak, you can love chicken, too! I'm terribly glad I got to hear Brubeck when I could still enjoy him live, as I did at Damrosch Park in Lincoln Center three years ago. He was joyful! (And his alto player, Bobby Militello, is a motherfucker!)I was also influenced by stories I heard about Brubeck. When he became the first jazz artist on the cover of Time magazine, in 1954, he apologized (unnecessarily, but still appropriately) to Duke Ellington. And then there was the deeply moving clip Ken Burns included in his "Jazz" series. Brubeck, who grew up on a cattle ranch and served in Patton's Third Army during the war, was talking about racism.

“The first black man that I [ever] saw, my dad took me to see on the Sacramento River in California," Brubeck said. "And he said to his friend, ‘Open your shirt for Dave.’ ”

“There was a brand on his chest," Brubeck said, breaking down as he shared his horror, still fresh in mind some 60 years later. “And my dad said, ‘These things can’t happen.’ That’s why I fought for what I fought for.”

Brubeck was a mensch: a fine pianist, a beautiful composer, a musician's musician who somehow kept it going for generations, a generous friend and teacher—and a humble man, too.

I am grateful that you spent time with him, and have shared some of his goodness with me and many others.

-- Jamie Katz

December 12, 2012:

Jamie, you nailed two very important points.

First, Bartok and Stravinsky were doing things in odd meters in the first two decades of the 20th century -- at least 40 years before "Take Five."

What Bartok and Stravinsky is (obviously) infinitely more complex than ANY Brubeck tune ~ but Dave studied that music with Milhaud (who's no slouch with time sigs, either!) and TRANSMORGIFIED that dynamic to the jazz slash pop-music world -- and he did it with elan, polish and style.

And you were right (and brave) to admit that many many black pianists were ignored in the 60's while Dave basked in his Time Magazine cover glory. I think he felt much the same way as you did. He LOVED those guys and was most likely slightly embarrassed by all the (white)-media attention...

One more great example:

Check out Paul Simon's THE TEACHER from his CD "You're the One." In ELEVEN (6+5), but it sounds so perfectly natural and flowing that no one would think of it as an "odd" meter.

That's what I meant by following, but "trying to make sense of the past."

--Lewis

December 12, 2012:

One more salient point:

TAKE FIVE was recorded over a period of several weeks ~ perhaps 20-30 hours for composition, recording and editing.

TRUTH IS FALLEN (how many of you readers have ever heard it? [The LP is Out Of Print and there is no CD]).

Dave probably spent nearly 1,000 hours composing, COPYING (!), and rehearsing the massive combined forces for the performances and recordings.

The disconnect between "good" jazz and "this-is-good-for-you" classical is a deep, uncrossable chasm.

LS

More on Jacques Barzun by Jamie Katz

We've received a few comments in response to David's post about Jacques Barzun, who died on October 25th at the age of 104.  Here's an excerpt from a piece by our friend Jamie Katz, who had the honor of toasting Barzun on the occasion of his 100th birthday.  Follow the link to read more about this extraordinary scholar.

In his work I am struck, not just by his erudition and elegant prose, but by his acknowledgement of fluidity, chance and human agency in culture and history. It is a liberating conception, giving weight to both daring leaps of individual genius and the smaller gestures and habits that form the tissue of society. He gives respect to our innermost selves, too. Speaking of Descartes and the split between rationalism on one side and impulse and intuition on the other, Barzun refuses to take sides: “The more science proves its worth, the harder it is for ‘nature’ or ‘the heart’ to feel free. Reason should guide — all moralists agree — but, as others point out, mind is not separate from heart. The astute Chinese have a character for heart-and-mind. They perceived that the urge to reason is itself a drive from the heart, which explains why rationalists are often fanatics.”

Continue reading here.

--sdh

In praise of room 44, sous les toits de Paris, y compris toi, Jamie Katz [by David Lehman]

So your birthday is September 8
and we celebrated it on that day
or perhaps a day earlier
at La Closerie des Lillas where
the second bottle of wine cost
20 francs but tasted better than
the first bottle at 100 francs,
all figures approximate, and I will
not name the avid participants
but simply cite the occasion
as precedent for celebration
of you et les toits de Paris
whether on your birthday or
today or September 5, the date
of this poem from 1999:

September 5

Latrell Sprewell is the Marlon Brando
of the Knicks and the definition
of schadenfreude is my hollow laugh
when I tell you how Frank Kermode
lost two-thirds of his library
to the men he thought were movers
who were actually garbagemen
and the one-third of his library
spared was literary theory
which he used to be tolerant of
in a laissez-faire spirit but
has grown to detest now that
it no longer matters what
he thinks and you say Columbia
paid him not to teach the way
the government pays farmers not
to farm their land and now I know
how I want to spend this lazy day
the Sunday of Labor Day weekend
with a pot of coffee in my pajamas
all morning and you on the phone

from The Evening Sun (2002)

Donald Keene moves (back) to Japan

Click here to read Jamie Katz's brilliant feature on Donald Keene, the Western world's leading interpreter of Japanese literature, a Columbia professor for more than seventy years. On a visit to Japan in 1990, I had the pleasure of meeting and interviewing Professor Keene, who, in addition to discussing everything from Basho and linked-verse to the merits of a traditional Japanese breakfast, taught me the two key rules of pronouncing Japanese and made my two-week stay go a lot more smoothly than would otherwise have been the case..With his books and anthologies, Keene taught an appreciation of Japanese culture to generations of students, not only at Columbia, his home base, but the world over, In April 2003 he was awarded a medal of honor from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. I wrote the inscription, appropriating the tanka as an appropriate form:

To Donald Keene we
owe much of what we know of
Japan's verse and prose.

In shadow of rising sun
stood the lean tree unobserved.

 

Then Keene could be heard:
in accents lucid and keen
he rendered the scene.

And the bare branch of winter
burst into cherry blossom.

Here's an excerpt from Katz's feature in the current Columbia College Today. -- DL

<<<
Keene’s approach to teaching and writing bears the imprint of his freshman Humanities instructor, Mark Van Doren ’21 GSAS. “He was a scholar and poet and above all some­one who understood literature and could make us understand it with him,” Keene writes in Chronicles of My Life: An American in the Heart of Japan. “Van Doren had little use for commentaries or specialized literary criticism. Rather, the essential thing, he taught us, was to read the texts, think about them, and discover for our­selves why they were ranked as classics.”

The experience of taking the College’s general education cours­es was “incredible,” Keene says, and he fondly remembers the great teachers he encountered as an undergraduate. Among them were the “learned and gentle” classicist, Moses Hadas ’30 GSAS; Lionel Trilling ’25, ’38 GSAS and Jacques Barzun ’27, ’32 GSAS, who led Keene’s Senior Colloquium; and Pierre Clamens, a French instructor “who was very stern, but gave everything to his stu­dents,” Keene says.

His chief mentor, however, was cul­tural historian Ryusaku Tsunoda, a pio­neer of Japanese studies at Columbia whom Keene often refers to, simply, as Sensei. “He was a man I admired com­pletely,” Keene says, “a man who had more influence on me than anyone else I can think of.”

As a senior, Keene enrolled in Tsu­noda’s course in the history of Japa­nese thought. Fifty years later, in a CCT interview (Winter 1991) with David Lehman ’70, ’78 GSAS, Keene remem­bered: “The first class, it turned out I was the only student — in 1941 there was not much pro-Japanese feeling. I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be a waste of your time to give a class for one student?’ He said, ‘One is enough.’
>>>

Jazz at Noon: The Closing Chords

<<
Leslie Lieber wants to make it clear: His age is not the issue.

He turned 99 in March, and he quit playing golf last year, and maybe he takes a moment longer to step up onto the bandstand each Friday at noon and take his alto saxophone out of its case.

But none of the above are the reason he is ringing the death knell for Jazz at Noon, the regular end-of-workweek lunchtime jam sessions he founded in 1965 and has been running for the 46 continuous years since then.
>>

From "Jazz at Noon Is Closing Out a 46-Year Run" by Corey Kilgannon in today's New York Times
For more, click here.

Yes, Virginia-- You Can Say "Merry Christmas" by Jamie Katz

A pair of high-spirited teenage girls scurried across a busy Manhattan intersection, braving the crowds and frosty weather to hit one more Fifth Avenue shop before closing time. I was a step behind them as they passed a Salvation Army Santa ringing his bell and a traffic cop in earmuffs.

"Merry Christmas!" one of the girls sang out to the policeman, who returned the greeting with a big smile and a wave.

Right away the mood changed.

Continue reading in the Chicago Tribune here.

"Dottie insisted I sample the peach cobbler, which later caused me to slide the driver’s seat back an inch or two . . ." Jamie Katz finds the soul of Memphis.

In search of Memphis blues, our friend Jamie Katz explores the Mississippi Delta.  Read the full story here.

Thanks, Jamie.

-- sdh