Oy vey, my country! I would sob if it weren't such … an American crisis: goofy, headstrong, distracted, with a bunch of old men in dark suits running around looking for their mommies. And we're poets: what do WE know?
-- Jim 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.
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?
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.
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
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.]
(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
Radio
I left it
on when I
left the house
for the pleasure
of coming back
ten hours later
to the greatness
of Teddy Wilson
"After You've Gone"
on the piano
in the corner
of the bedroom
as I enter
in the dark
from New and Selected Poems by David Lehman
