The Best American Poetry

The Origin of "Cops" [by David Lehman]

How did the police acquire the nickname "cops"?

1) It's an acronym for the dread "Committee on Public Safety" that wreaked havoc during the French Revolution.

2) The initial shields worn by uniformed policemen in nineteenth-century New York were made of copper.

3) They got the name from David Copperfield -- the Dickens character, not the magician -- who aspired to a career in law enforcement, idealizing the day job of a decent and humane beat policeman, but who was tragically prevented from reaching his goal by the machinations of Mister Macawber and Uriah Heep.

4) In 1876, a London bobby, also known as a peeler-- both names deriving from Robert Peele -- was sipping a concoction consisting of eight parts gin and two parts vermouth. This put him in such a good mood that, when the waitperson returned with a refill, the randy fellow smacked her bottom, "copped a feel," and went home sheepishly with a black eye. His wife asked him what happened. He lamely said he had walked into a door. "Rubbish," she said. "I bet you went to the local and copped a feel." The fame of the anecdote was legendary and the man on the beat never did get credit for the modern martini, which the bobby had accidentally invented. NB "copped" shortened to "cop" lives on.

5) The coinage is John Milton's from Paradise Lost, Book XI, as Adam gratefully accepts the knowledge that his future offspring will redeem the race. "Peace returned / Home to my breast, and to my memory, / His promise, that the cops shall bruise our Foe; /  Which then not minded in dismay, yet now / Assures me that the bitterness of death / Is past, and we shall live."

from the archive; first posted August 16, 2016

How did the police acquire the nickname "cops"?

1) It's an acronym for the dread "Committee on Public Safety" that wreaked havoc during the French Revolution.

2) The initial shields worn by uniformed policemen in nineteenth-century New York were made of copper.

3) They got the name from David Copperfield -- the Dickens character, not the magician -- who aspired to a career in law enforcement, idealizing the day job of a decent and humane beat policeman, but who was tragically prevented from reaching his goal by the machinations of Mister Macawber and Uriah Heep.

4) In 1876, a London bobby, also known as a peeler-- both names deriving from Robert Peele -- was sipping a concoction consisting of eight parts gin and two parts vermouth. This put him in such a good mood that, when the waitperson returned with a refill, the randy fellow smacked her bottom, "copped a feel," and went home sheepishly with a black eye. His wife asked him what happened. He lamely said he had walked into a door. "Rubbish," she said. "I bet you went to the local and copped a feel." The fame of the anecdote was legendary and the man on the beat never did get credit for the modern martini, which the bobby had accidentally invented. NB "copped" shortened to "cop" lives on.

5) The coinage is John Milton's from Paradise Lost, Book XI, as Adam gratefully accepts the knowledge that his future offspring will redeem the race. "Peace returned / Home to my breast, and to my memory, / His promise, that the cops shall bruise our Foe; /  Which then not minded in dismay, yet now / Assures me that the bitterness of death / Is past, and we shall live."

from the archive; first posted August 16, 2016

"I look like I paint. Who am I?" [by David Lehman]

Rhapsodic blues. . taciturn Cal Coolidge. . ."you lose"
as the market reaches record highs, speculators buy on margin,
Babe Ruth makes more money than the president, having had a better year,
Lucky Lindy to Paris, Showboat on Broadway, Al Jolson on screen,
Bernice bobs her hair and wears the diamond bigger than the Ritz,
Flappers flirt, philosophers drink bootleg gin,
And this singular fellow may be looking out the window
Of a hotel room with luggage beside the bed
A woman, maybe his wife, puts on her lipstick,
There's neon at night in the city, but where he is
The people turn their back and look at the sea.

Clues:

1) Dennis
2) William
3) Edward
4) Hedda

"The Judgment of Paris" [by Peter Paul Rubens]

Peter Paul Rubens's Judgment of Paris hangs in
1) The Louvre in Paris
2) The National Gallery in London
3) Nuremburg
4) Le Bateau ivre

The painting refers to 
1) The origin of the Trojan War
2) A competition among Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite
3) Hector's brother
4) The golden apples of the sun, the silver apples of the moon

Peter Paul Rubens's paintings are taught not only in art histoiry classes but in
1) Classes on body shape
2) The Waning of the Middle AGes (Huizinga)
3) Modern dance
4) Greek mythology

Sexy Poets Quiz [by Molly Arden]

Match the poet with the quote from his or her poem:

1.  "I groped for him before I knew"

2.  "you slip/ half-a-foot deep into someone you like"

3.  "new memory like a seltzer in my crotch"

4.  "he kissed her Anne Sexton/ and she returned the favor, caressing

            his Ted Berrigan"

5.  "that slippery ingress ... its complicated fragrance"

6.  "Gently, with my lips/ loosen the button./ Have them slip into my hands/

            Like two freshly poured beer mugs"

7.  "she wanted him hung up on her breasts, not on her feet"

8.  "The clam shell opens./ The oyster is eaten."

9.  "At each beat of his heart it threw/ An odd little nod my way.  From the

            slot of the spout/ Extended a drop of transparent viscous goo"

10. "nude ghosts seeking each other out in the silence"

Charles Simic                Marge Piercy                    Albert Goldbarth

Emily Dickinson             David Lehman                  Allen Ginsberg

Elizabeth Alexander       Michael Ryan                    Jim Cummins

                                    W. H. Auden

If you know the right match-ups, please let me know -- in a comment.  I need to know because I lost the sheet on which I wrote the identifyuing names. It's not easy being a mother. Also, if you have a good sexy line thaty belongs in a poem that has not yet been written, go right ahead and let us know. It will enter the public domain of ouir collective consciousness. Immature poets imitate. Mature poets steal. --Molly

Poetry and Dance: Quiz of the Week [by Mindy Aloff and David Lehman]

In 1893, the Symbolist poet and occasional dance critic Stéphane Mallarmé wrote in an essay on the American modern dancer Loïe Fuller that her programs using many yards of silk and complicated lighting constituted “the theatrical form of poetry par excellence.” However, a poem by Mallarmé himself became the wellspring for a much more renowned dance artist, by way of the composer Claude Debussy. Name the ballet and its choreographer.

Answer: 

(1) "The Rite of Spring" by Igor Stravinsky is based on Mallarmé’s most experimental poem, "Un Coup de des.  . . " The ratio of accident to chance or mistake is the sub-subject -- secondary to the rage of primitivism (les Fauves, Picasso) vanquishing the  vulnerable statuary of the superceded era.

(2) Debussy’s 1894 symphonic poem for orchestra, Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, a musical response to Mallarmé’s poem L’après-midi d’un faune (“Afternoon of a Faun”), served as the score for Vaslav Nijinsky’s 1912 ballet, L’après-midi d’un faune, made for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. In Nijinsky’s rendering, the Faun (performed originally by the choreographer) appears to pleasure himself on a scarf dropped by a nymph who evades his advances.

 (3) Balanchine choreographed "Stars and Stripes" (Sousa) as an explicit rejection of Mallarmé's belief that “Tout, au monde, existe pour aboutir à un livre.”

(4) Jerome Robbins based the choreography of the opening number of West Side Story on a Mallarmé aphorism: “I have made a long enough descent into the void to speak with certainty. There is nothing but beauty--and beauty has only one perfect expression, Poetry. All the rest is a lie.”

Hell(o) Young Losers: You, Too, Can Be Choosers [by David Lehman]

 

As a sort of aphoristic aphrodisiac, the multiple choice is a versatile form begs to be applied to subjects across the board. Let's start with hell. Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" Let us go and make our visit.

Hell is

(1) "Other people" (Sartre)
(2) The title of the first section of Dante's Divine Comedy
(3) Cowering in a trench in Flanders beside the dead bodies of two fallen comrades
(4) Faculty meetings
(5) "Myself" (Milton)
(6) A book of poetry consisting entirely of unedited traffic reports
(7) A substantive formed from the Anglo-Saxon helan or behelian, cognate to "hole" (cavern) and "hollow."
(8) The edifice at the end of the road paved with good intentions
(9) An empty place populated by devils (Shakespeare)
(10) Being naked  ion bed while Saul Bellow reads his just-finished novel Mr. Sammler's Planet out loud

"It's not what You Make It" (Breathe Carolina, 2011). "It's what it is, and what is is."

So what does Liz Taylor in Butterfield 8, the image above, have to do with it? Well. . .

from the archive; first posted December 7, 2014.

As a sort of aphoristic aphrodisiac, the multiple choice is a versatile form begs to be applied to subjects across the board. Let's start with hell. Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" Let us go and make our visit.

Hell is

(1) "Other people" (Sartre)
(2) The title of the first section of Dante's Divine Comedy
(3) Cowering in a trench in Flanders beside the dead bodies of two fallen comrades
(4) Faculty meetings
(5) "Myself" (Milton)
(6) A book of poetry consisting entirely of unedited traffic reports
(7) A substantive formed from the Anglo-Saxon helan or behelian, cognate to "hole" (cavern) and "hollow."
(8) The edifice at the end of the road paved with good intentions
(9) An empty place populated by devils (Shakespeare)
(10) Being naked  ion bed while Saul Bellow reads his just-finished novel Mr. Sammler's Planet out loud

"It's not what You Make It" (Breathe Carolina, 2011). "It's what it is, and what is is."

So what does Liz Taylor in Butterfield 8, the image above, have to do with it? Well. . .

from the archive; first posted December 7, 2014.

W. H. Auden's "September 1, 1939"

 

Here it is again: September 1, 1939, eighty-two years later. Can you picture Auden at The Dizzy Club, 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.

Click here for the poem and here for the program that Michael Braziller and I did in fall 2008 on this and other of Auden's poems written after Wystan moved to New York City from England in 1939. 

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!

Posted by The Best American Poetry on September 01, 2020 at 01:47 PM

Here it is again: September 1, 1939, eighty-two years later. Can you picture Auden at The Dizzy Club, 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.

Click here for the poem and here for the program that Michael Braziller and I did in fall 2008 on this and other of Auden's poems written after Wystan moved to New York City from England in 1939. 

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!

On Hitchcock's birthday, His Jokes, Heroes, Villains, and More: Multiple Choice [by David Lehman]

 

 

When August 13 falls on a Friday, as it does this year, let us honor Alfred Hitchcock, born on this August day. In the spirit of macabre and bemused jollity, I recommend that you listen to Shoistakovich's amazing Symphony no. 5 and ponder these multiple choice questions if you like the form, as I do. -- DL

Which of the following is not an authentic Hitchcock moment?

-- Grace Kelly cozies up with Harper's Bazaar while her beau, nursing a broken leg, takes a nap
-- Raymond Burr signs a contract to play first base for the New York Yankees after the death of Gary Cooper
-- Grace Kelly offers her beau "a leg or a breast" as they stand on the terrace on a tropical evening
-- Grace Kelly finds the scissors on the desk and with a desperate lunge wards off the intruder and kills him
-- Jospeh Cotten deprecates the ordinary people of Santa Rosa, where the Hitchcock family lived (his house is pictured right), as if he were Orson Welles atop the Ferris Wheel in The Third Man

The better the villain, the better the film." Acknowledging that "better" is an elastic term, which of the following is the best villain? Discuss at least three.

(a) James Mason in "North by Northwest"
(b) The birds in "The Birds"
(c) Robert Walker in "Strangers on a Train"
(d) Claude Rains and his mother in "Notorious"
(e) Anthony Perkins and his mother in "Psycho"
(f) Ray Milland in "Dial M for Murder"
(g) Joseph Cotten in "Shadow of a Doubt"

What conclusions can we come to?
(a) some bad guys tend to be guys with mother complexes or enraged beasts
(b) "the more deranged, the better"
(c) the "suave index" (Ray Milland, James Mason) makes the movies less threatening
(d) murder like sex can be considered either as an art, a sport, a battle, a competition, or an act of passion

 Which of the following does not qualify as a typical Hitchcock joke?

-- to cuff his hero and heroine, leave the room and lock the door
-- to pose as the fat man in a weight-reducing ad that is espied if not read on a lifeboat full of the survivors of a shipwreck 
-- to employ Otto Preminger to play the commandant of a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp
-- to suggest the act of fornication by showing a speeding train enter a tunnel
-- to kill Kim Novak twice, in both cases at the top of the church tower at Mission San Juan Batista in California

In the auction scene in North ny Northwest, Cary Grant makes contradictory and ludicrous bids in order to

-- attract attention because he is a certified narcissist who thinks he is Cary Grant
-- attract attention and get ejected because the cops are preferable to the killers awaiting his exit
-- fulfill his part of the bargain with Ingrid Bergman, who has done her part by going to Brazil and enduring a near-lethal dose of poison administered slowly so it looks like sickness and not murder
-- warn about an imminent terrorist threat in a way that wouldn't panic the public because only one man present would understand the message, and what better way to do that than to to be caught holding the knife that killed the US Ambassador to the UN when that instiution was not yet immoral, irrelevant or fattening (to slightly misquote Irene Dunne on life's pleasures)
-- arouse the admiration of co-star Eva Maria Saint, who has aired her doubts about his skill as a comic actor

Good luck! -- DL

Summer Camp Quiz [by David Lehman]

1) Bug juice is

a) an experiment conducted by the nature counselor
b) insect repellent for canoe trips
c) the fruit drink that is served at meals
d) none of the above

2) The song beginning "Great big gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts"  has all these words except

a) "mutilated monkey meat"
b) "chopped-up little birdies' feet"
c) "beetles and beets and other things unsweet"
d) "and me without my spoon"

3) A marine is

a) a John Wayne-type
b) a strict counselor
c) a humorless head counselor
d) a camper who occasionally has an accident in bed

4) When a waiter drops a full tray, the campers spontaneously sing

a) "You'll Never Walk Alone"
b) "What Kind of Fool Am I?"
c) "He's a hero (he's an all-American jerk)"
d) the Notre Dame fight song

5) OD means

a) off drugs
b) on duty
c) O Delice, the name of a cheap condom stashed in a sleeping bag
d) an ordinary day

6) Color War is

a) an extension of finger-painting in Arts and Crafts (for the youngest bunks)
b) a week when the camp is divided into two teams competing in athletics, dramatics, music, and art (posters, stage scenery)
c) a recreation of a Civil War battle with everyone in either a gray or a blue uniform
d) the summer camp equivalent of war games in "advanced" basic training (army)

7) Arts & Crafts was popularly known as

a) "Faigala Fiesta"
b) "Arts & Farts"
c) "Farts & Crap"
d) "A one-hour time out"

8) On Palm Sunday

a) the girl campers wear grass skirts and carry a palm branch while they dance to Neal Sedaka singing "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do."
b) even the irreligious attend services
c) the counselors (shirts) play the waiters (skins) in basketball
d) parents visit and counselors stick out their hands for tips

9) General Swim is

a) the nickname for the chief lifeguard
b) the time when everyone is in the pool,(or lake) except the lifeguards
c) any group activity that is mandatory for all except those in the infirmary
d) the required weekly test of the buddy system

10) To keep bottles of Coke and Pepsi cold,

a) campers pool their resources to buy a mini-fridge
b) counselors bribe the cook for use of the kitchen refrigerator
c) campers stash the bottles in the back of the toilet
d) see (c) above

As a counselor, the author of this quiz

a) excelled at no sport other than ping pong and archery
b) once received a letter consisting entirely of the complete lyrics of "To know know know him / is to love love love him"
c) wrote the songs and plays for his team in competitions
d) broke curfew twice and was duly punished
e) gained weight by drinking a nightly rum collins or two at the local bowling alley slash cocktail lounge, where they had Tommy Dorey's "Marie" (Jack Leonard, vocal) on the jukebox
f) lost weight by swimming daily and drinking skim milk
g) never had a serious girlfriend though he had a crush on Norman's sister Anna
h) read Hemingway and Norman Mailer
i) listened to Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, and Patrick Sky because Norman brought a record player
j) edited the camp newspaper slash yearbook that was distributed to everyone on the bus going home
k) wore hooded sweatshirts before they were the rage
l) was friendly with guys majoring in English and philosophy
m) played second base and caught a line drive to end the game
n) learned to drive
o) sneaked into Grossinger's on one memorable day off
p) wrote rhymes about the kids in his bunk
q) learned the words and music of all the songs in Guys and Dolls
r) made Norman and the other guys laugh by saying that The Old Man and the Sea was "shallow"
s) was counseled, by a potential girlfriend (Barbara), to wear cordovan penny loafers with cream-colored socks
t) disdained the universal gesture for "big deal" (a finger held up and slowly rotated)
u) got letters from his father with clips from the New York Times on the exploits of Koufax and Drysdale
v) saw Viva Las Vegas on a day off
w) felt that the best TV and radio jingles were for Buick cars, L & M cigarettes, and Schaefer and Rheingold beer
x) accompanied friends, after camp ended but before school began, to Yonkers racetrack, Freedomland (an amusement park in the Bronx), Shea Stadium to see the Mets play, and the Gaslight cafe on MacDougal Street where we -- Norman and I and maybe Milty -- drank champagne cocktails and heard a waitress sing Jerome Kern's "Cleopatterer"
y) watched Larry pin Norman in an impromptu wrestling match
z) felt solemn each sunset when the flag was lowered and "Taps" was played

from the archive; first posted March 2016

1) Bug juice is

a) an experiment conducted by the nature counselor
b) insect repellent for canoe trips
c) the fruit drink that is served at meals
d) none of the above

2) The song beginning "Great big gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts"  has all these words except

a) "mutilated monkey meat"
b) "chopped-up little birdies' feet"
c) "beetles and beets and other things unsweet"
d) "and me without my spoon"

3) A marine is

a) a John Wayne-type
b) a strict counselor
c) a humorless head counselor
d) a camper who occasionally has an accident in bed

4) When a waiter drops a full tray, the campers spontaneously sing

a) "You'll Never Walk Alone"
b) "What Kind of Fool Am I?"
c) "He's a hero (he's an all-American jerk)"
d) the Notre Dame fight song

5) OD means

a) off drugs
b) on duty
c) O Delice, the name of a cheap condom stashed in a sleeping bag
d) an ordinary day

6) Color War is

a) an extension of finger-painting in Arts and Crafts (for the youngest bunks)
b) a week when the camp is divided into two teams competing in athletics, dramatics, music, and art (posters, stage scenery)
c) a recreation of a Civil War battle with everyone in either a gray or a blue uniform
d) the summer camp equivalent of war games in "advanced" basic training (army)

7) Arts & Crafts was popularly known as

a) "Faigala Fiesta"
b) "Arts & Farts"
c) "Farts & Crap"
d) "A one-hour time out"

8) On Palm Sunday

a) the girl campers wear grass skirts and carry a palm branch while they dance to Neal Sedaka singing "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do."
b) even the irreligious attend services
c) the counselors (shirts) play the waiters (skins) in basketball
d) parents visit and counselors stick out their hands for tips

9) General Swim is

a) the nickname for the chief lifeguard
b) the time when everyone is in the pool,(or lake) except the lifeguards
c) any group activity that is mandatory for all except those in the infirmary
d) the required weekly test of the buddy system

10) To keep bottles of Coke and Pepsi cold,

a) campers pool their resources to buy a mini-fridge
b) counselors bribe the cook for use of the kitchen refrigerator
c) campers stash the bottles in the back of the toilet
d) see (c) above

As a counselor, the author of this quiz

a) excelled at no sport other than ping pong and archery
b) once received a letter consisting entirely of the complete lyrics of "To know know know him / is to love love love him"
c) wrote the songs and plays for his team in competitions
d) broke curfew twice and was duly punished
e) gained weight by drinking a nightly rum collins or two at the local bowling alley slash cocktail lounge, where they had Tommy Dorey's "Marie" (Jack Leonard, vocal) on the jukebox
f) lost weight by swimming daily and drinking skim milk
g) never had a serious girlfriend though he had a crush on Norman's sister Anna
h) read Hemingway and Norman Mailer
i) listened to Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, and Patrick Sky because Norman brought a record player
j) edited the camp newspaper slash yearbook that was distributed to everyone on the bus going home
k) wore hooded sweatshirts before they were the rage
l) was friendly with guys majoring in English and philosophy
m) played second base and caught a line drive to end the game
n) learned to drive
o) sneaked into Grossinger's on one memorable day off
p) wrote rhymes about the kids in his bunk
q) learned the words and music of all the songs in Guys and Dolls
r) made Norman and the other guys laugh by saying that The Old Man and the Sea was "shallow"
s) was counseled, by a potential girlfriend (Barbara), to wear cordovan penny loafers with cream-colored socks
t) disdained the universal gesture for "big deal" (a finger held up and slowly rotated)
u) got letters from his father with clips from the New York Times on the exploits of Koufax and Drysdale
v) saw Viva Las Vegas on a day off
w) felt that the best TV and radio jingles were for Buick cars, L & M cigarettes, and Schaefer and Rheingold beer
x) accompanied friends, after camp ended but before school began, to Yonkers racetrack, Freedomland (an amusement park in the Bronx), Shea Stadium to see the Mets play, and the Gaslight cafe on MacDougal Street where we -- Norman and I and maybe Milty -- drank champagne cocktails and heard a waitress sing Jerome Kern's "Cleopatterer"
y) watched Larry pin Norman in an impromptu wrestling match
z) felt solemn each sunset when the flag was lowered and "Taps" was played

from the archive; first posted March 2016

Who said it? [A Challenge]

Remember when the Sunday Times Book Review, frankly middlebrow and proud of it, used to run author's queries ("for a biography of Maxwell Anderson I would be grateful . . .") and legitimate questions from college grads who wanted to track down a favorite quotation (was it Scott Fitzgerald who said "live fast, die young, and have a handsome corpse?") In that spirit I offer you this cocktail party line that would have beguiled Flo Bear.

"If the Kennedy White House was decadent; the Clinton White House was sordid." Who said it? I have asked a lot of smart people, to no avail, and would be grateful for any leads. Meanwhile, my friend Burt Hooton proposes this multiple choice list of possible candidates:

1) Jane Fonda
2) Arthur Schlesinger
3) Diana Trilling
4) Senator Susan Collins
5) Jacques Barzun
6) Lawrence P. Berra

I'm not convinced by any of Burt's suggestions, though the terms of the distinction do sound as though they could have come from #3 or #5, and I appreciate the convention observed in #6.

You get extra points if you can say what Ava Gardner is doing in this post or if you can make a convincing case in favor of Oliver Stone's theory of JFK's assassination. -- DL

Games Poets Play [by Heather Christle]

This evening I was reading this post on The Hairpin, all about "low-effort toddler games" like "Do You Like My Hat?" and "Hide Things in Your Clothes," and it reminded me of a passage from the children's book Pinky Pye, wherein a cat types up a list of suggested games:

The very clever cat then goes on to explain more complicated games, which you might enjoy reading (beginning on page 118).

And this led me to thinking of all the games I've played with poet friends, which now I will tell you how to play, in case you find yourself with guests or selves to entertain this weekend.

1. Game of First Lines

This is just like Balderdash, only instead of inventing definitions for obscure words, you invent first lines for titles. Pull a literary journal off the shelf, open to the first poem, read the title aloud, and then have your friends write down a convincing option for a first line, while you write down the actual one. Gather them all together, read them out loud, and have everyone guess which is real. Points to anyone who guesses right, or whose line manages to fool someone. Or don't keep track of points. Then pass the journal to the next person, so you get a chance to invent.

2. Game of Following the Rules of Vasko Popa's Game Poems

I just made this up, but I think it would end in tears. Here is how you play "Seducer"

One caresses the leg of a chair
Until the chair moves
And motions him coyly with her leg

Another kisses the keyhole
Keeps kissing it and how 
Until the keyhole returns the kiss

A third one stands to the side
Watches the other two
And shakes and shakes his head

Until his head drops off

3. Game of Not Listening

When you are stuck in an audience listening to someone who is dull or going on for too long, write down words and phrases she says, in order, but very selectively, so that by the time she finishes you have a much better speech she could have made had she only known how to edit herself. Extra points if you arrange her own words into an entirely different subject.

4. Game of Constant Similes

Pretend that every time someone says "like" as filler (of the "um" variety) he is embarking on making a simile it is your job to understand.

5. Game of Stacking Books

This game I borrowed from Matthea Harvey, who borrowed it from the artist Nina Katchadourian. Go to a place full of books. Find titles you'd like to arrange into a poem. Stack them in an order that pleases you. Depending on whether or not you think the place is trying to keep the books in a different order, you might consider leaving them there for someone to discover. Or take a picture.

6. Game of "Life of Game"

Listen to Loren Goodman.

7. Game of Thinking of Something

Think of something. Tell your friends you are thinking of something. See if they can guess what it is. If you are not with friends, try just thinking of something.

Those are all of the games I know. I'm lying. Those are half of them, but I am trying to raise my level of mysteriousness, which is part of a game I'm not telling you about.

--Heather Christle

from the archive; first posted January 17, 2013.

The Course of a Particular [by Wallace Stevens]

Wallace Stevens (1952)

The Course of a Particular

Today the leaves cry, hanging on branches swept by wind,
Yet the nothingness of winter becomes a little less.
It is still full of icy shades and shapen snow.

The leaves cry . . . One holds off and merely hears the cry.
It is a busy cry, concerning someone else.
And though one says that one is part of everything,

There is a conflict, there is a resistance involved;
And being part is an exertion that declines:
One feels the life of that which gives life as it is.

The leaves cry. It is not a cry of divine attention,
Nor the smoke-drift of puffed-out heroes, nor human cry.
It is the cry of leaves that do not transcend themselves,

In the absence of fantasia, without meaning more
Than they are in the final finding of the ear, in the thing
Itself, until, at last, the cry concerns no one at all.

– Wallace Stevens

Question: What does this poem mean?

a) What it says.
b) That "in the absence of fantasia," everything amounts to nothing.
c) Nature is indifferent to human beings and their imaginary or deceased gods.
d) When "the nothingness of winter becomes a little less," it is a positive thing,  though the phrasing and the rhyme of "nothingness" and "a little less" make you think things are even bleaker than they were.
e) One grows old and one's powers decline. (Born in Reading, PA (Oct 2, 1879), died Hartford, CT (Aug 3, 1955).)
f) The "meaning" of any sound depends on the existence of an ear.

Your Assignments for Next Week [by Mindy Aloff]

In Ezra Pound’s 1934 ABC of Reading, Pound cautions: “Music rots when it gets too far from the dance. Poetry atrophies when it gets too far from music.” In a posting on Twitter, analyze why the poet didn’t take his own advice when it came to The Cantos.

When George Balanchine was the company choreographer for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, in the mid-1940s, he told Frederic Franklin—the dancer on whom Mr. B. built the part of The Poet in his Ballet Russe work The Night Shadow—that Franklin should do two things: “Read War and Peace and The Sermon on the Mount.” In an Op-Ed article for The New York Times, explain why this advice might come in handy for the Secretary of the Treasury, a disgraced ex-journalist, the manager of the New York Mets, and Susan Stroman.

The phrase “Black Swan” has been applied to:

a) the character Odile, the evil enchanter’s daughter in the ballet Swan Lake;

b) the pas de deux that Odile dances with clueless Siegfried in Swan Lake’s third act;

or used as

c) a commonly implied element in philosophical discussions on the fallibility of inductive inferences, as in the comparison of the statements “All ravens are black” with “All swans are white”;

d) the metaphor in “the black swan theory,” advanced by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, to explain why the largest, most unpredictable, and most powerful events in history, economics, and just about everything else always wing in from left field just when we thought it was safe to go back in the water;

e) the exquisite and mysterious title poem in an early collection by James Merrill;

f) a much-lauded and Oscar-nominated 2010 feature film, by Darren Aronofsky, about a ballerina going berserk, which will be remembered by ballerinas not only for the special effect that put the head of the actress Natalie Portman onto the dancing body of American Ballet Theatre soloist Sarah Lane but also, even more so, for the fact that the director didn’t mention the effect or Lane’s name in public until after the Oscars were decided;

g) the Cygnus Atratus, native to Australia, and, prior to the 17^th century, believed by Europeans to be imaginary. Write a Ghazal that incorporates all these references for a readership who, to understand the poem, requires no more than a sixth-grade education and will be reading it while texting the Molly Bloom chapter of Ulysses.

from the archive; first posted on June 2, 2014.

Who Wrote It? [A multiple-choice quiz]

I am not of those miserable males
Who sniff at vice, and, daring not to snap,
Do therefore hope for heaven. I take the hap
Of all my deeds. The wind that fills my sails,
Propels; but I am helmsman. Am I wrecked,
I know the devil has sufficient weight
To bear: I lay it not on him, or fate.
Besides, he's damned. That man I do suspect
A coward, who would burden the poor deuce
With what ensues from his own slipperiness.
I have just found a wanton-scented tress
In an old desk, dusty for lack of use.
Of days and nights it is demonstrative,
That, like some aged star, gleam luridly.
If for those times I must ask charity,
Have I not any charity to give?

This poem was written by
1) Robert Lowell on the subject of Lyndon B. Johnson
2) George Meredith in Modern Love
3) Meredith Wilson in The Music Man
4) Meredith Vieira in Thoroughly Modern Millie
5) George Sherbet during World War I

The picture on top, "The Death of Chatteron," is a big clue, but not because of the poet named in the title.

W. H. Auden's "September 1, 1939"

Here it is again: September 1, 1939, eighty-one years later. Can you picture Auden at The Dizzy Club, 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.

Click here for the poem and here for the program that Michael Braziller and I did in fall 2008 on this and other of Auden's poems written after Wystan moved to New York City from England in 1939. 

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!

The French and the British Vie for the Yankee Dollar

Who said it:

<<<
The French try to deal with us by making us feel foolish, to prove to us that we didn’t have the brain power to follow them; the British dealt with us by making us feel guilty that we had let them down. 
>>

a) Julia Louis-Dreyfus
b) Art Buchwald
c) Henry Kissinger
d) Walter Lippmann
e) Walter Neff

Hint: “There were differences at the beginning of the relationship," he said about himself and Marilyn, or Byron and Castlereagh, or the US and China, or the Dodgers and Yankees. "Nevertheless, we’ve learned to live with each other for many decades." Red herrings: “There is still a tiny Seventh-day Adventist inside of me screaming to get out every time I make a pass at a tuna fish sandwich.”"When all men think alike, no one thinks very much."  "Elaine is just in pain." "How could I know that murder can sometimes smell like honeysuckle?" 

 

Who is the real hero of "Citizen Kane"? (and other pressing questions) [by David Lehman]

1) Who is the real hero of "Citizen Kane"?

a) Barry Kane
b) Marshall Will Kane
c) Charles Foster Kane
d) Xanadu
e) Captain Queeg

Name the three other relevant movie titles implied by the choices.

2) St. Patrick's Day special: When the hero played by Victor McLaglen shouts "Frankie, your mother forgives me," he is referring to

a) Frankie Machine
b) Frankie 5 Angels
c) Frankie McPhillips
d) Fred Derry
e) General Frank Savage

Name the novel on which the movie is based.

3) Which of these characters does not figure in "Les Enfants du paradis"?

a) Garance
b) Baptiste
c) Pepe Le Moko
d) Jericho
e) Frederic Lemaitre

Who directed the movie?

4) Who says it? "I wouldn't even have to act, just be myself."

a) Moe Green
b) Khartoum
c) Johnny Fontaine
d) Solozzo
e) Barzini

Did he also say, "You don't buy me out. I buy you out"?

5) Which of these personages survives the bloody finale of "The Wild Bunch"?

a) Pike Bishop
b) Deke Thornton
c) Mrs. Froy
d) Robert E. Lee Prewitt
e) Joel Cairo

True or false: "Pike Bishop" was Sam Peckinpah's sneaky way of predicting the disappearance of Bishop Pike in the summer of 1969.

Auden Changes His Mind [by David Lehman]

Here it is again: September 1, 1939, eighty 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, the fifth, 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!

Who Said It? [by David Lehman]

Remember when the Sunday Times Book Review, frankly middlebrow and proud of it, used to run author's queries ("for a biography of Maxwell Anderson I would be grateful . . .") and legitimate questions from college grads who wanted to track down a favorite quotation (was it Scott Fitzgerald who said "live fast, die young, and have a handsome corpse?") In that spirit I offer you this cocktail party line that would have beguiled Flo Bear.

"If the Kennedy White House was decadent; the Clinton White House was sordid." Who said it? I have asked a lot of smart people, to no avail, and would be grateful for any leads. Meanwhile, my friend Walter Neff proposes this multiple choice list of possible candidates:

1) Jane Fonda
2) Arthur Schlesinger
3) Diana Trilling
4) Phyllis Dietrichsen
5) Jacques Barzun
6) Lawrence P. Berra

I'm not convinced by any of Walter's suggestions, though the terms of the distinction do sound as though they could have come from #3 or #5, and I appreciate the convention observed in #6.

You get extra points (which you will need this Sunday) if you can say what Barbara Stanwyck is doing in this post or if you can make a convincing case in favor of Oliver Stone's theory of JFK's assassination. -- DL

"If the Kennedy White House was decadent; the Clinton White House was sordid." Who said it? I have asked a lot of smart people, to no avail, and would be grateful for any leads. Meanwhile, my friend Walter Neff proposes this multiple choice list of possible candidates:

1) Jane Fonda
2) Arthur Schlesinger
3) Diana Trilling
4) Phyllis Dietrichsen
5) Jacques Barzun
6) Lawrence P. Berra

I'm not convinced by any of Walter's suggestions, though the terms of the distinction do sound as though they could have come from #3 or #5, and I appreciate the convention observed in #6.

You get extra points (which you will need this Sunday) if you can say what Barbara Stanwyck is doing in this post or if you can make a convincing case in favor of Oliver Stone's theory of JFK's assassination. -- DL

Pride or Prejudice: You be the judge [by David Lehman]

In the current issue of New England Review, a highly respected journal, the editor prefaces the issue with a note in which she admits to being captivated by Les Miserables by Victor Hugo [left]. But to get into the book she says she had to overcome obstacles. The musical, for one thing. "Also it's from old white Europe -- what news could there be?"

This sentence stopped me in my tracks. And I wanted to ask you, dear reader, how you would sum up your reaction:

(1) Forget it. She was trying to be clever.
(2) The three least appealing words in the language used to be "dead," "poets," and "society." Now they are "old," "white," and "Europe."
(3) Forget it. Who, even among readers of lit journals, reads the editor's note?
(4) Forget it. She is trying to prove that she's virtuous.
(5) Forget it. It's the end of Western Civilization as we know it. (So what else is new?)

"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!