The Best American Poetry

"Cats" [by James Cummins]

When Eliot wrote his thesis at Harvard,
He said philosophers doing philosophy was “ridiculous”—
That two thousand years of this insanity had gone on
Because they tried to explain existence
From the point-of-view of a platform outside it,
Which didn’t, and couldn’t, exist.  One has only
One's sightlines; and wherever you find yourself,
You're in the middle; and your sightlines
Are better or worse depending on the intelligence
You bring to whatever it is you’re looking at.
Avuncular language-riddles infuriated him,
And he made his disgust quite clear in his thesis.
Harvard offered him a chair on the basis of these ruminations;
And after he said no, Bertrand Russell screwed his wife.

From Recalcitrant Actors by James Cummins (2021). Published by Dos Madres (www.dosmadres.com). Cummins is pictured with John Ashbery, circa 2009.

Do you know who composed the theme of Perry Mason?

It was Fred Steiner, who died at age 88, at his home in the town of Ajijic in the Mexican state of Jalisco.

but let's not overlook, Jerry Goldsmith, who wrote the music for Patton and did some of the incidental music for many episodes of Perry Mason,

and while we're at it, let's saluter another Jerry, Jerry Fielding, who wrote the music of The Wild Bunch.

Between the Lines [by James Cummins]

                     after A Moveable Feast

We only have Papa’s account of this,
That Scott Fitzgerald asked him to weigh in
With ‘absolute honesty’ on the question
That filled Fitzgerald’s heart with fear and dread:
Was he big enough?  Was he man enough
To please a woman?  “Zelda?” his friend asked.
Scott nodded.  “Yes, Zelda.  Who else?”

It’s clear Hemingway wants to reassure
Fitzgerald with a comforting response.
He fumes at women.  “They’re all alike. 
They want to destroy a man—it’s true!
Crazy Zelda’s trying to kill you.”
Scott looks up from his cherry tart:
“You don’t know anything about Zelda!”
Hemingway backs off that one like hot
Potato soup dropped in his lap by one
Of old Michaud’s careless waiters. 
He dips a spoon in his own cherry tart;
Outside he hears the racket of a car.

“Have you tried a pillow?” he asks quietly.
“You’ve got to get some purchase on that slope.
A pillow can facilitate your mount.”
Scott stares at his wine glass.  “I never know
Whether I’m in or not,” he says.
“When I ask, she gets disgusted.  Cries.”

At this Ernest almost upsets his wine.
He can’t abide a woman’s tears—he can’t!
They’ve tried their tricks on him and found
He’s what a man should be: a stone. 
They’ve tried the “too small” line before;
And sure, he’d spent some sleepless night
Reviewing his performance in the sack;
But if a woman can’t be satisfied,
He wasn’t going to take that on himself.

“What if she’s right?  What if I’m just too small?
Scott’s question broke through his friend’s reverie,
Who then slammed his hand down on the table:
“Let’s check it out!  Let’s go to le water.”
Scott suddenly looked blank.  “Well, I don’t know,”
He said.  “I mean, they do that in Pigalle—”
“For Christ’s sake, Scottie, I don’t want your balls!
You asked for my ‘absolute honesty.’
Let’s get some sort of assessment in hand.
So to speak.”  “So to speak,” Scottie sighed.

“Michaud!”  Now Hemingway was all business.
“Michaud, come help us out?  And bring Pierre.”
Scott looked alarmed.  “Ernie, old man—old sport—”
But Hemingway brushed all dissent aside.
“Don’t ‘old sport’ me!  Save it for your prose.
Come on, we’ll have a good old show-and-tell—
You show, the rest of us will tell.”  But Scott
Held firm, and only he and Hemingway
Repaired to le water, the dank men’s room,
Where Scott undid his belt and dropped his trou.

Now Hemingway’s a bit unclear about
What happens next: we’re given to believe
He checks Scott out, and then they reappear,
Attabler, with their cherry tarts and wine.
But old Michaud fills in the blanks for us.
One of his waiters, Francois, had the runs
That day, and so was seated in a stall
Reading Le Monde when Scott pulled down his pants
Francois’ account is somewhat vague because
He had to stare through a narrow crack;
But evidently Hemingway squatted,
Then got down on all fours so he could find
The ‘angle of the dangle’ as he called it.|
And Francois swears he heard him say,
“Pull it a couple times, see if it moves.”
But Francois’ English wasn’t, say, the King’s.

Now they’re sitting above their lunch again,
And Ernest is expansive.  This might mean
What Scott showed his friend in le water
Wouldn’t keep Hemingway awake at night.
“It’s not the size that counts; it’s the motion—”
His pal was one big friendly smile.
“Let’s hit the Louvre and size the statues up.
You’ll see—their scale is pretty much the truth.” 
A frightening image flared in Scottie’s mind:
Ernie measuring statues with a tape.

The Louvre was just a short walk from Michaud’s.
Scott stammered out, “I really should get back”—
Ernie seemed more obsessed with … that ... than he.
“Zelda can't make you any more a man
Than some whore you could pick up in Pigalle.
A pal can boost your confidence, that’s all.”
But Scott was adamant outside the bar.
They let the tarts settle and had a smoke;
Ernie studied his friend as they stood there.
Was that the problem then?  Scott was a poof?
He’d never judge a friend.  Then he thought
Maybe he’d pushed him too far for one day.
“I guess you’re right,” he said, “it’s getting late.
The Louvre’s a project for another day.”

Except they did go to the Louvre that day;|
And Hemingway explained to Fitzgerald,
“The proper measurement of man is man.”
Scott still had his theories about finance,
How these abstractions can suck out your soul;
And Ernest still thought life a game
Between whose lines a man’s soul finds its measure.
They stopped at Dingo’s on the way back home
To drink apéritifs and watch the sun
Slip through the pink clouds of the Paris dusk.
Ernie held up his glass to catch the light,
And then intoned, without cracking a smile:
“A rosé is a rosé is a rosé.”

Poetic License [by Jim Cummins]

I booked a four-way once.  I was sitting in a bar when War & Peace sidled up and sat down on the stool next to me.  "Gotta light?" she asked in a heavy Moscow accent.  "I don't burn books," I replied; she laughed a long, low, melodious Russian laugh.  "Actually," she said, "I only smoke afterwards," and winked, as she gently dragged a long blood-red fingernail across my cheek.  "Have you met my friend, Naked Lunch?"  I'd been so transfixed by the Russian beauty--there was so much of her!--that I hadn't seen the thin, waif-ish tart slipping up behind me.  She looked like a walking STD--tattoos, piercings, nose & navel rings, wearing a black leather jacket that couldn't conceal the fact she had nothing on underneath.  She must've seen the involuntary look of revulsion that passed over my face before I could readjust my bar mask.  She looked hurt.  "I know," she whispered, "but I bring a lot of coke to the table."  I hadn't thought of that; this could be my lucky night!  We continued to drink until W&P suggested we go over to her apartment and "sort things out."  I agreed, but Naked Lunch said, "First we need a little spice."  We pretended we didn't know what she meant but she knew we did.  So we looked around the room.  I saw Beloved sitting at a table with The Bluest Eye, but NL pointed out that Beloved was too old and TBE a little too young.  War & Peace agreed.  She said, "I met The Intuitionist at a signing once," motioning with her chin toward a table in the corner where TI sat, drinking alone.  "Whoa," I said.  "That's too spicy for me!" and we all laughed.  "How about a poet?" Naked Lunch asked.  "Don't turn around but Thomas & Beulah is sitting a few tables over."  T&B was writing assiduously in a notebook, next to a half-empy (or half-full, depending on how you looked at it!) glass of wine.  "I'm in," I grinned, and W&P and NL flipped a coin to see which one would make the approach.  As it turned out, T&B was more than eager to join us--and in fact, showed us all what "poetic license" really

meant, "all night long," as the song goes.  Damn, I love curling up with a good book!

"What Men Want" [by James Cummins]

What Men Want

A man wants to move

with cat-like grace

through his life, spill his seed

occasionally, but never

bear responsibility for it;

win the love of his peers

and the veneration

of the older men while

commanding the respect

of the young Turks, too;

then, finally, at the end,

lean a still-powerful forearm

on the frame of a window,

gaze out over the sea

one last time and flick

a glowing cigarette butt

into the garden.

-- James Cummins

Drinking With Grad Students [by James Cummins]

You have to let these poets, half your age,
have every way with you they hanker for--
like stuff you in a bamboo tiger cage,
or stomp your eyeballs on the barroom floor.
The beer helps them imagine grinding "smokes"
out on your hands--they'd slide stilettos in
between your ribs and thread bicycle spokes
through both your balls like shish kabobs; and grin.
It's just their fantasies they've trapped you in;
tomorrow all this stuff will be forgot--
they'll get back to the rhythm of the days.
You'll all agree this is the "Age of Tin,"
and all of us are wise when we adopt
the cool, protective-coloring of praise.

Jim Cummins Takes a Noir Detour

We date the “classic” noir period from 1941's The Maltese Falcon (or even Orson Welles' 1940 Citizen Kane, itself a mystery about Fate) to the 1959 Welles tour-de-force Touch of Evil.  But noir wasn't noir until the French got hold of America's backlog of films after 1945.  Hollywood had to flush its war film stockpile through the pipeline before it could release its noirs on the Continent; and when it did the French, the beautiful French, went crazy.  Partly as a result, Detour is often regarded as the Ur-noir though it was made in 1945 on a very un-Hollywoodian shoestring. 

I can think of at least two reasons why this is so.  One is that films like Falcon and Murder My Sweet, the latter from 1943, were still “Hollywood” movies.  Despite the noir fixtures such as the private detective, the hard-boiled language, the femme fatale, and the sleazy subject matter (all elements that poets love!), Falcon still has elements of the filmed play, especially the last third, as well as “comic” moments such as Spade's anger ploy in Gutman's suite, followed by Sam laughing at himself in the hallway, looking at his hand shaking with adrenaline.  And Murder has the unlikely romance between Philip Marlowe and Ann. 

Detour has the requisite noir elements: good girl/bad girl contrast, downward spiral of events, an emotionally vicious femme fatale. It also has a voiceover narrator, a la Murder My Sweet, but in this movie the narrator is hugely unreliable; we don't identify with Al as we do with Phil. We aren't sure he didn't kill the guy, steal his money, clothes and car, and go whistling down the road.  And the “accidental” strangulation behind a locked door strains credulity. We don't even know whether Al is in fact a talented musician, or that Vera might just have wanted to get away from this loser. After Vera emotionally eviscerates him, it turns out she's dying of TB and wants him to have sex with her? The whole story might be a pack of lies, and Al merely a self-pitying narcissist.

The second reason Detour is often thought of as the first noir is its great noir subject: Fate.  Now if you believe, as I do, that “character is fate,” then you have a shortcut into understanding noir.  I wonder if poets secretly appreciate this even if, to be politically correct, they must blame social and cultural processes as the reason for everyone's unhappiness. And if you believe in great cosmic manipulations of a supernatural sort, then good luck to you.  Detour is about “fate” only in the sense that in 1945 the word still held a factor of fear and malevolence shrouded in thousands of years of human superstition.  As a word, it still had, even has, poetic resonance. In Detour Al is merely a sniveling, whiney, wretch-in-denial loser who blames his shortcomings on others.  He's the personification of self-pity. And at least in one case, probably two, a murderer.

No one could deny, of course, that social and cultural processes carry great weight and power in influencing one's external “destiny.”  But noir is about the inner life, and this is one of the main reasons any writer loves these movies.  “Fate” informs all noir because human beings are weak, yet they must act against the background of social norms which we the audience provide.  We're the Greek chorus, except that we deliciously slip the bonds of “normal” behavior and partake with gusto of noir's shady deals, viciousness, pathological sex, and black-and-white photography.  What's not to like?

"Feeling A Snack Coming On" [by Jim Cummins]

Maybe the best thing to compare it to
Would be the old cowboy-and-Indian movies
We used to endure on Friday night TV
Or Saturday matinees, before Psycho hit.
Indians whooping and chasing stagecoaches;
A strong-but-vulnerable woman holding a rifle,
Her face streaked with dirt, a white sleeve torn;
Or a lone half-naked buck sneaking up
Behind a blue-clad soldier to slit his throat—
Until the soldier proves the better athlete,
Wrestling the knife away and giving the Injun
What-for, before bayonetting the poor bastard
And rolling his painted body into the canyon.
A 16-ounce Pepsi could last a double feature.

So you’re riding through a desert, a third-rate
Monument Valley—this is no A-lister—
And the silence is starting to surround you.
Forty miles to the next pony-express station,
Where there’s water and human interaction
(Though you’re very appreciative of your horse!);
And the vast emptiness of endless desert
Is beginning to seem a metaphor for your life.
That’s the first sign your blood sugar levels
Are starting to fall.  Maybe it was the coffee
After dinner—never a good idea, that, but
You wanted to be alert crossing this terrain;
Now you’re starting to feel a little hollowed out.
That’s when the first cookie shows up.

It stands on a ridge, a sentinel silhouetted
Against sun.  You try to make out its markings.
Chocolate chip?  Member of the Oatmeals?
There’s icing, but what does the icing mean?
Then, to the left, two or three more cookies
Appear, their frosting glinting in the sun.
This is getting serious.  It’s as if they can see
The gnawing in the pit of your stomach.
Suddenly, up ahead, many cookies, a whole tribe
Of cookies, as if they’ve been waiting in ambush:
Butterscotch cookies, pecan candies, cookies
With chocolate swirls across their faces, jellies.
You eat until your throat is dry as the desert,
Hoping you’ll soon hear the bugles of milk.

4/12 /20

Poetic License [by Jim Cummins]

 

I booked a four-way once.  I was sitting in a bar when War & Peace sidled up and sat down on the stool next to me.  "Gotta light?" she asked in a heavy Moscow accent.  "I don't burn books," I replied; she laughed a long, low, melodious Russian laugh.  "Actually," she said, "I only smoke afterwards," and winked, as she gently dragged a long blood-red fingernail across my cheek.  "Have you met my friend, Naked Lunch?"  I'd been so transfixed by the Russian beauty--there was so much of her!--that I hadn't seen the thin, waif-ish tart slipping up behind me.  She looked like a walking STD--tattoos, piercings, nose & navel rings, wearing a black leather jacket that couldn't conceal the fact she had nothing on underneath.  She must've seen the involuntary look of revulsion that passed over my face before I could readjust my bar mask.  She looked hurt.  "I know," she whispered, "but I bring a lot of coke to the table."  I hadn't thought of that; this could be my lucky night!  We continued to drink until W&P suggested we go over to her apartment and "sort things out."  I agreed, but Naked Lunch said, "First we need a little spice."  We pretended we didn't know what she meant but she knew we did.  So we looked around the room.  I saw Beloved sitting at a table with The Bluest Eye, but NL pointed out that Beloved was too old and TBE a little too young.  War & Peace agreed.  She said, "I met The Intuitionist at a signing once," motioning with her chin toward a table in the corner where TI sat, drinking alone.  "Whoa," I said.  "That's too spicy for me!" and we all laughed.  "How about a poet?" Naked Lunch asked.  "Don't turn around but Thomas & Beulah is sitting a few tables over."  T&B was writing assiduously in a notebook, next to a half-empy (or half-full, depending on how you looked at it!) glass of wine.  "I'm in," I grinned, and W&P and NL flipped a coin to see which one would make the approach.  As it turned out, T&B was more than eager to join us--and in fact, showed us all what "poetic license" really

meant, "all night long," as the song goes.  Damn, I love curling up with a good book!

Drinking With Grad Students [by James Cummins]

You have to let these poets, half your age,

have every way with you they hanker for--

like stuff you in a bamboo tiger cage,

or stomp your eyeballs on the barroom floor.

The beer helps them imagine grinding "smokes"

out on your hands--they'd slide stilettos in

between your ribs and thread bicycle spokes

through both your balls like shish kabobs; and grin.

It's just their fantasies they've trapped you in;

tomorrow all this stuff will be forgot--

they'll get back to the rhythm of the days.

You'll all agree this is the "Age of Tin,"

and all of us are wise when we adopt

the cool, protective-coloring of praise.

"A Snail is What It Was" [by James Cummins]

Donovan thought Bob was jokin’
About the old San Remo—
How back then shit they were smokin’
Would put to shame D.’s “primo.”

All this was well before the laughs
At Max’s Kansas City:
Bob still carried a photograph
Of Joan Baez’s titty.

It seemed all Dylan cared about
Was conquering some snatch.
They smoked some more; then Bob was out;
He had a plane to catch.

We’re all failed stars, too, by this time;
Though some have way more loot.
D. figured Dylan for a mime,
While Bob thought D. a fruit.

Christ, let the purple rain rain down,
And let the winds go howling!
Don’t send me down to Hell to pound
Reruns of Father Dowling.

The Perry Mason Screen Tests [for Jim Cummins]

"Fragment for John Ashbery" [by Jim Cummins]

I wake, and a fragment, a wisp,
entices, then disappears into the forest
of an earlier time, and I am left
in a clearing where the sun is stale,
or the moon is not a pretty wafer,
and the day long ago when colors
were sounds, and sounds a masterpiece
of color and form, recedes again
into dream forests, crosshatchings.

You lifted the dish with melted cheese
for the soufflé you never touched,
being three martinis to the good already
at a lunch that comes clear again
in the forest, briefly — radiant eyes trapped
in the woods of your three companions,
who just want to laugh and love you
too young to have these dreams yet.
You say again, in this memory-forest,
"I hope you won't tell R—," then lift
the enormous ladle, using it like a spoon,
and that is your lunch, three martinis
and a bowl of lukewarm melted cheese.

Your eyes sparkle like a four-year-old's,
who sees something he wants, and takes it.
And I love you for this gesture, though
I'm old enough to see the forest I will enter
soon, the one you will be leaving, knowing
so much more than I of its bewilderment.
The gesture — willful, cold as it is warm —
admits the friendship of us three, even
as it stands beyond, untouched, looked at
by those who love you, who aren't privy yet
to the nightmare of too many fragments,
pieces of dreams left ragged on branches,
when the muse abducts you, carries you,
through word-forests, forests of words.

– James Cummins

Is This Thing On? Can You Hear Me Now? [by James Cummins]

I have no clue whether I'm actually posting or not.  I've never blogged before, even read a blog.  I wondered what to do until I saw DL's description of what we guest bloggers would produce: "brilliant insights."  Okay, now that's clear; I'm with the program.  What brilliant insight of mine would anyone care about?  Well, I just got back from lunch, which time I spent cleaning my dog's backside of the clumps of shit the poor constipated baby got glued into her hair and orifices.  My insight might be that it was remarkably not gross, since I love her so much; which gives me yet another glimpse into love. 

I was thinking all week about love, since Valentine's Day is at the end of this guest-blogger week, and something in me is celebrating this new "Best American Erotic" volume, too.  It's probably unwise to admit this, but it's the first book of poems that's made me read compulsively in a long time.  So many books have a sheen of coolness about them that puts me off; but this one is like playing doctor when you're a kid.  (In fact, it reminded me that I DID "play doctor" when I was a kid, with Susie and Jimmy Vecchio, another piece of the puzzle.)  My gold standard for erotic poem anthologies is the Faber Book of Blue Poetry, a pretty traditional, and English, and effective, compendium.  This (Best American Erotic) is so much more like an intimate sexy book.  I'm loving lines, images, whole poems, I'm eagerly loving and licking it up.  "Like a seltzer in my crotch"--that's so American, what can I say?  Deborah Landau's poem is like a combo of Whitman's woman watching the bathing young men and an Edward Hopper painting.  "Suck and tongue you till my touch is much"; Strand's and Dobyns's poems; Richard Howard's edgy photo of something the word "pedophilia" just doesn't capture--these are some of the highlights for me.  Tony H.'s gleeful misogyny; "A man is masturbating his heart out"--the anxious, the dreamy, the sublime that we are, is here. 

When my younger daughter was a baby she and I would often go for a ride at night, so she could calm down and maybe fall asleep.  We'd have these great talks some nights.  When she was three she had her tonsils out and it was a bit more traumatic than she supposed it would be; in fact, she was mad at me afterward for not warning her sufficiently.  But here's a transcription from a notebook of our first ride after the operation, starting as we pull out of the driveway:

"Daddy, I'm going to marry Gabriel and have six dogs, and four babies, and two cats."

"That's wonderful.  Do you love Gabriel?"

"Yes, I wuv him and he wuvs me."

"That's really neat."

"Daddy, Gabriel has a penis."

"Yes, he does."

"That's because he's a boy.  Steve and you and Gabriel have a penis."

"Yes, we do."

"And I have a vagina."

"Yes."

"It would be bad if boys had vaginas and girls had penises, wouldn't it?"

"Well, I guess it's better that boys have penises and girls have vaginas."

"Daddy, why would it be bad if boys had vaginas and girls had penises?"

"Well, I mean, it's good whatever a person has, don't you think?  Whether it's a penis or a vagina?"

"So it wouldn't be bad if a boy had a vagina?"

"No, honey, if he has a vagina, it's fine."

"And people shouldn't make fun of other people, and be mean to them and call them names, should they?"

"Oh, no, they shouldn't do that."

"They shouldn't call them names like--like--'Smudgy Face' or 'Tree Tree', should they?"

"No, sweetie, they shouldn't."

"And people shouldn't say to other people, 'Boy, you're really stupid!' should they?  They shouldn't say that, should they, Daddy?"

"No, honey, they shouldn't."

Then she fell asleep. 

Ah, American anxiety.  No brilliant insights about it, just the observation that after being the father of two daughters--the older one, at age two, once turned to me and said, her face beaming, "My bagina is so soft and fweet!"--it's impossible not to hear the longing in our sex poems, and nervousness, and because of that they seem so truly sexy to me.

I wonder if this is too much blog or not enough.  (Anxiously)  (Am I in?)

From the archives; originally published February 7, 2008

"Hick and Willie Get a Catalog from the 'Atheist Collective' Gallery" [by Jim Cummins]

Hick:

"Got the mail.  Here's a list of 'Easter Fun Facts,' straight from Jesus.
Did you know He suffered from 'Dysfunction, Resurrectile,'
until His Father threw a thunderbolt projectile?
It broke the stone to pieces--"


Willie:

"--'and scared all the feces
out of Magdalen, Peter, and John the Reptile'?
No, I didn't know that.  Let me open their 'Dreck File'--
maybe there's a paparazzi shot where Mary 'V's us."


Hick:

"You're disgusting.  Did you know if you have a Resurrection
lasting longer than 'Eternity'
by Calvin Klein, you should consult an attorney?
Or that John Calvin was saved in a run-off election?"


Willie:

"Well, he had a lot of followers.  He was a Twitterer,
after all.  Is that from the 'Atheist Collective'?  Do they want money?
Okay, I'll lighten up and try to be funny--
although the guy who wrote 'Snowbound' was Whittier."

[from the archives; originally posted May 2013]

"Good Bad Titles" [by David Lehman]

On May 30, 2008, in this space, Dan Nester posted about an afternoon he and Jonah Winter spent sending up the titles that adorn poetry books. The titles that occurred to them "all seemed so aggressively portentous, imbued with such fawning obsequiousness," Nester wrote. "To exorcise ourselves of the real-life titles we were mentioning, titles that shall not be mentioned here, we played a word association game wherein either Jonah or myself would think of the second word of a two-word poetry book title, which would “after after” whatever the other participant named as the first." The "after after" in that sentence is hard to parse, perhaps deliberately, but the list of titles that follows clarifies the idea and gives us a window into the lads' minds that day: "Technical Vulva," "Variegated Cock," "Airport Beaver," "Stiff Flowering," "Tremulous Beaver."

The best of the list formed a category of their own: "good bad titles." Such was the thought of Corey Zeller, who approached a bunch of other poets to see whether they would produce self-parodying titles on order. Zeller's objective: "to write a book of serious prose poems" borrowing the deliberately bad titles. That She Could Remember Something Other Than _________, a Nester / Winter nominee, is the working title for Zeller's collection. 

Among those who have responded to the summons thus far are  Dean Young ("Tears of My Shadow"), Major Jackson ("The Shoeshine Chronicles"), Nin Andrews ("Beta Male Ballads"), Kim Addonizio "What Color is Your Vagina," "What Do Assholes Want?" "My Despair"), Arielle Greenberg ("Four Thousand Short Notes on Heidegger") as well as Joe Wenderoth, Dana Levin, Tim Seibles, Matthew Zapruder, and Joyelle McSweeney. A few conclusions can be drawn. Heidegger, who figures in several titles, handily beats out Descartes as the bad philosopher of choice. Sex, body parts, and bodily function retain their ancient popularity, with Dean Young's "My Mother's Thong" rivaling Dorothy Lasky's "Sitting by Your Mom's Bush in Broad Sunlight" but topped in tastelessness by the simplicity of Peter Markus's "On the Rag."

Here are some of the titles Jim Cummins has punfully proposed:

NOSTROMOSEXUAL
THE INTERPRETATION OF JEANS
PRIMO LEVI'S
THE LIVES OF A CELLO
ALL THE PRESIDENT'S PERSONS

Jim also suggests some plausible pseudonyms, chosen from the imaginary "tablet of contents" that he has been tinkering with for years. W S Merlot pours well. With Kenneth Joch you wonders how to pronounce the surname: Jock? Joke? Josh?

 Not one to shirk a challenge, I came up with titles for books, not necessarily poetry books, that might appear in a publisher's catalog:

Useful Canadian Revenue-Sharing Plans
The Woodrow Wilson Story
Do It Yourself Dentistry vol. 1)
When the Manure Hits the Ventilator
Dead Money: Prizer, Cisco, and Other Value Traps
How to Get Rich While Saving the Planet
Shakespeare’s Happiest Couple: The MacBeths

The last on this list was prompted by the proposition that the Macbeths may be Shakespeare's happiest husband and wife -- in the tragedies at least. 

Speaking of Shakespeare, I thought of another such title during a phone conversation with John Ashbery. We were discussing a decision he had made and I called it shrewd. He couldn't hear what I said and asked me to repeat the adjective. Shrewd, I said, "as in 'The Taming of the Shrewd'."

Oh, the photo illustrating this post is -- Hmmm. Why don't I invite commentary from the blogosphere? 

DL [from the archives; posted August 7, 2011

"Lunch Noir" [by Jim Cummins]

He painted an apartment for her once,
just to get her off his hands;
then he was sayonara, gone. 
He never heard about the drugs,
the nude frolic in a public fountain,
the ward.  When she escaped,
naked under a stolen lab coat,
he was asleep in another city. 

She stuffed the coat in a mailbox;
she knew her ecstasy would be brief,
& she wanted all of it.
A black bus driver called the cops.

Now she wears a box on her hip,
electrodes stimulating what and where
he’d prefer not to know, at lunch.
She fluffs up her vegan salad,
and he lifts his glass of water,
to have something to do.
Both of them are counting on lunch
to somehow say they’re sorry.

But watching his cleverness,
she thinks he’s the same old dickhead
he always was, denying her; 
and he can’t believe he once pulled
toilet paper out of this woman’s
asshole, before licking same. 
He feigns delight in a cheeseburger
she declares revolting, even
as she hopes she’s not gulping
too much wine. Carefully,
they check out their reflections
in the mirror next to their booth,
each of them idly considering
what it might be like this time.

Batter Up! Poems Inspired by Baseball, Thanks to Jim Cummins [by Stacey Lehman]

Johnny Podres, 1955 World Series Game 3

We have our friend Jim Cummins to thank for this podcast of baseball-inspired poems that comes to us from University of Cincinnati Elliston Project. Jim is the innovator who curated the Elliston Poetry Collection for over three decades, beginning in the mid-1970s. He was inspired to record visiting poets and writers and compile the archive during an especially beautiful reading on a spring afternoon by Lucien Stryk. Alas the Elliston Project as it was shaped and steered by Jim Cummins no longer exists. But thanks to his vision, we have a rich and deep archive (800 hours!) filled with the voices of some of our most celebrated poets. Click on the links to hear these great poems: 

All tracks   Podcast [complete]
Track 01   Introduction
Track 02   Jim Hall reading Ernest Thayer's "Casey at the Bat" (1985)
Track 03   Jim Cummins reading Grantland Rice's "Casey's Revenge" (1985)
Track 04   John Drury, "Stadium" (2003)
Track 05   John Drury, "Ghazal of Baseball" (2003)
Track 06   Wyatt Prunty, "Baseball" (1999)
Track 07   Wyatt Prunty, "A Baseball Team of Unknown Navy Pilots, Pacific Theater, 1944" (1999)
Track 08   Robert Pinsky, "Night Game" (1991)
Track 09   Ada Limón, "The Good Wave" (2017)
Track 10   Alan Feldman, "Monday Evening Softball" (1979)
Track 11   David Lehman, "Ninth Inning" (1995)
Track 12   Arthur Smith, "Extra Innings" (1986)

Read Jim Cummin's posts about the Elliston Project here, here, and here, 

-- sdl

[First posted on the BAP blog April 14, 2017.]

"I just don't want to write the instruction manual . . . "

(Editor's Note: The first time I read John Ashbery's The Instruction Manual I was working for a large government bureaucracy. My desk, in a tiny cubicle, had no windows. Anyone who finds themselves in such a situation should read this poem and know that escape is possible. As John is quoted in David's The Last Avant-Garde:  "I'm aware of the pejorative associations of 'escapism' but I believe we need all the escapism we can get, and even that isn't going to be enough." I treasure this custom cartoon, a gift from the poet (and Ashbery aficionado) Jim Cummins.)

-- Stacey Harwood Lehman

Hemingway Reassures Fitzgerald on His Penis Size [by Jim Cummins]

Jim Cummins initially filed this report in 2009. It has become a classic. -- DL

<<<
Everybody my age knows about Hemingway's story about measuring F. Scott Fitzgerald's penis in A Moveable Feast, but maybe it's a good way to introduce a younger generation to Big Papa's work.  I've always wanted to write a poem about it, but nothing I ever came up with came close to matching Hemingway's account.  The story is this.  F. Scott Fitzgerald asked Hemingway to advise him about an important problem that had come up between Scott and Zelda.  (So to speak.)  So Scott and Papa go to Michaud's ("on the corner of the rue Jacob and the rue des Saints-Peres") for lunch and consultation.  Fitzgerald swore Hemingway to tell "the absolute truth" when answering.  Hemingway says, "He drank wine at the lunch but it did not affect him and he had not prepared for the lunch by drinking before it."  (This doesn't have a lot to do with the story, but the sentence knocks me out; I think it's the "did not" and "had not" constructions.)  Anyway, Zelda had told Scott his penis was too small.  Here's the Hemingway:

'Finally when we were eating the cherry tart and had a last carafe of wine he said, "You know I never slept with anyone except Zelda."

'No, I didn't.'

'I thought I'd told you.'

'No.  You told me a lot of things but not that.'

'That is what I want to ask you about.'

'Good.  Go on.'

'Zelda said that the way I was built I could never make any woman happy and that was what upset her originally.  [Ed. note: This conversation was held somewhat after what Hemingway describes as "what was then called her first nervous breakdown."]  She said it was a matter of measurements.  I have never felt the same since she said that and I have to know truly.'

'Come out to the office,' I said.

'Where is the office?'

'Le water" [the "WC," i.e. the men's room], I said.

We came back into the room and sat down at the table.

'You're perfectly fine,' I said.  'You are O.K.  There's nothing wrong with you.  You look at yourself from above and you look foreshortened.  Go over to the Louvre and look at the people in the statues and then go home and look at yourself in the mirror in profile.'

'Those statues may not be accurate.'

'They are pretty good.  Most people would settle for them.'

'But why would she say it?'

'To put you out of business.  That's the oldest way in the world of putting people out of business.  Scott, you asked me to tell you the truth and I can tell you a lot more but this is the absolute truth and all you need.  You could have gone to a doctor.'

'I didn't want to.  I wanted you to tell me truly.'

'Now do you believe me?'

'I don't know,' he said.

'Come on over to the Louvre,' I said.  'It's just down the street and across the river.'

We went over to the Louvre and he looked at the statues but still he was doubtful about himself.

'It is not basically a question of the size in repose,' I said.  'It is the size that it becomes.  It is also a question of angle.'

I explained to him about using a pillow and a few other things that might be useful for him to know.

'There is one girl,' he said, 'who has been very nice to me.  But after what Zelda said--'

'Forget what Zelda said,' I told him.  'Zelda is crazy.  There's nothing wrong with you.  Just have confidence and do what the girl wants.  Zelda just wants to destroy you.'

'You don't know anything about Zelda.'

'All right,' I said.  'Let it go at that.  But you came to lunch to ask me a question and I've tried to give you an honest answer.'

But he was still doubtful.

'Should we go and see some pictures?' I asked.  'Have you ever seen anything in here except the Mona Lisa?'

'I'm not in the mood for looking at pictures,' he said.  'I promised to meet some people at the Ritz bar.'"

****

I love so many things about this.  I love how throughout AMF Hemingway gives exact locations of the bars and cafes he frequents; I love how Scott hasn't drunk any whiskey to prepare himself for this manly lunch among manly men; I love how H. inspects Scott's, er, "junk" in the bathroom; and I really really love that they go to the Louvre to compare Scott's penis with the penises of sculptures and paintings.  Can't you just see Hemingway with a laser pointer?  And the "question of the angle" is a hoot.  So why have I been unable to write a poem about this?  Maybe from the point of view of old man Michaud, who has to take a leak and pushes open the door to the toilet, just as Hemingway is squatting down on his haunches to look at Scott's package in profile, saying, "Pull it a little, see if it does anything."

"Poem for D. L." [by James Cummins]

POEM FOR D. L. ("Then Ingmar Bergman shows up ...")

The answer to every riddle lay inside our bodies:
Life, the continuation of life ...
I wake at three a.m. with the guilt of it,
the guilt of life.  I haven't asked my body the question.

Exactly my age, but a month; and you lie
in a different city, asking yourself over and over,
Why?  The question for all of us is always When?
but instead we ask our bodies Why?

because we are afraid, and afraid to be afraid.
Why? keeps a part of us in the equation,
a part of what we are, in the face of the howling,
that we call "the wind" to frame it;

like a door to a cabin in winter in a play:
the characters take turns opening the door--
to get firewood, to check on the animals,
whatever of myriad reasons they can invent,

some Necessity they're obliged to bow to,
just to check it out, the howling, their bodies strong,
no matter their fear--the check it out, endure it,
then to stomp their way back into the warmth.

Life is a succession of rehearsals
for the closing we call "Opening Night."
We lay all evening in different cities, questioning;
then Ingmar Bergman shows up with a six-pack.

-- James Cummins