The Best American Poetry

The Real Hero (Xanadu versus Khartoum)

(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 (left) shouts "Frankie, your mother forgives me," he is referring to

a) Frankie Machine
b) Frankie 5 Angels
c) Frankie McPhillip
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
3) Frederic Lemaitre

Who directed the movie?

4) Who says it? "I'm a businessman. Blood is a big expense."

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) Phyllis Dietrichson
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.

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 (left) shouts "Frankie, your mother forgives me," he is referring to

a) Frankie Machine
b) Frankie 5 Angels
c) Frankie McPhillip
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
3) Frederic Lemaitre

Who directed the movie?

4) Who says it? "I'm a businessman. Blood is a big expense."

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) Phyllis Dietrichson
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.

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.

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!

 

Poet Spotlight: Karyna McGlynn [by Kristina Marie Darling]

 

This week, as Guest Author, I will be spotlighting innovative work by women poets in the form of new writing and review-essays.  Today I'm delighted to share a new poem by Karyna McGlynn.  Karyna McGlynn is the author of Hothouse (Sarabande Books 2017), I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl (Sarabande Books 2009), and several chapbooks including The 9-Day Queen Gets Lost on Her Way to the Execution (Willow Springs Editions 2016). Her poems have recently appeared in The Kenyon Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Witness, Georgia Review, New England Review, and The Academy of American Poet’s Poem-A-Day. Karyna is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Christian Brothers University in Memphis. She’s an avid collagist and is currently working on a new book, 50 Things Kate Bush Taught Me About the Multiverse. Happy summer, and enjoy!  

 

 

A New Poem by Karyna McGlynn

HOW TO TALK THE MANIC AWAY

I used to be so mad—I had daggers coming out
of my puffed sleeves. I decorated Easter baskets
with the plastic daisies of my Fury & mounted
them on Playtex-pink three-speeds.
Every bike I ever owned suffered
a spectacular death: hit by a grey Grand Am,
tossed like a stone into the quarry, snatched
through a broken window, found mangled
in a ditch.  I shook my swampy sobs
out of their frames & ironed my playbills
for breakfast. I mounted my miscues
on the walls of a rocket. I covered
my mistakes in neon & called it Art.
I charged people to listen to me scream.
I moved to the desert because I'm supposed to
be capricious like that. Some people said
my hubris would be better in the mouth
of a dinosaur, or as the silhouette of
a disgraced news anchor. In a West Texas bar,
some girl asked if I'd seen the Marfa Lights.
I stood up whiskily on my stool & said,
“Bitch, I AM the Marfa Lights!”

I used to collect lace collars & white gloves
made for the Nervous & the Consumptive.
I stalked old ladies’ estate sales.
Some of still had boxes of seamed stockings
wrapped in tissue paper
& lavender water & bakelite hair combs.
None of this stuff ever fit or endeared me
to others. Imagine going through life
with white cotton seams around
your fingers. Imagine the Whole World
saying, “Don't Touch.” Still, in several
nightdresses I clambered over
a field of sods. There was a desk
in the distance with one light in its
Top Drawer. The night was open to me.
I took out my loudest shears
& cut a hole in the landscape
to make a space for the Silence
I was immediately accused of violating.  
My afterlife was a trial of ill-
fitting hats, spilled sugar & Little Girls
who loved their pet bunnies too much.
So much, they squeezed their lights out,
nestled their bodies in the doll carriage.
What shall I paint for the mourners:
an old schooner marooned in a field
of clover? A corpse that stinks its way
to the Truth? A bottle of warm
poppy milk? A dumbshow? Shall I
keep up appearances even though
I am slowly losing my sawdust
through an open seam? I know:
I should.

Poet Spotlight: Virginia Konchan [by Kristina Marie Darling]

 

This week, as Guest Author, I will be spotlighting innovative work by women poets in the form of new writing and review-essays.  Today I'm delighted to share a folio of poems by Virginia Konchan.  The author of a poetry collection, The End of Spectacle (Carnegie Mellon, 2018), a collection of short stories, Anatomical Gift (Noctuary Press, 2017), and two chapbooks, including That Tree is Mine (dancing girl press, 2018), Virginia Konchan's poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Boston Review, and elsewhere.  Happy summer, and enjoy!  

 

 

A Folio of Poems by Virginia Konchan

 

Spring

Out of view, more galaxies.
Out of time, more light. A naturalist
or archeologist can decipher symptoms,
messages engraved in the flesh
of ordinary things. When the engine begins
to purr again, the crowd applauds.
Lord of tissue, lord of hieroglyphs
and a puzzle full of theological quibbles,
it’s prettiness that counts in china dolls. 
Lord of allegory, of hidden meanings,
of radical fissures in the heart of rain,
I have a skeleton underneath my skin, 
I am serious. I careen through the house
like a killer. Lord knows I tried, like a dove,
to mate for life. I failed. It was the trash,
the detritus, I adored. No images but in things.
No things but in images. There could have been
so many versions of us, why this one?
Love will creep where it cannot go,
through the eyes of the dead horse
that burns slower than my hair.
It’s spring—meta chirp, meta chirp,
goes the bird, philosopher’s stone.
It is a conduit between what was,
will be. It is, like everyone, alone.

 

_________

 

Guiding Light

I wasted my life on language
and other soft constructions,
held the clammy hand of death
as if death was the snot-nosed kid
last to be picked for any team
where skill actually matters.
I could be a bride, and was,
was bridled, harnessed, and
groomed. Now I live in, and by,
a burning timetable, abetting
the landfill crisis by buying
ream after ream of paper.
The bright white paper.
The laser paper.
The paper whose opacity
rivals that of God.
I indicate I would like
the dessert menu by pointing to it
with my bony finger.
When it comes, I order a financier.
As The World Turns, I remain still,
Mona Lisa’s resting bitch face
blunted only by my silky curtain of hair.
Throw it all in the cauldron, I don’t care.
People keep mistaking me for a doll
when in fact I am a cyborg,
surrounded by The Young & Restless
snorting coke and drinking corpse revivers
in the General Hospital—downward,
I mean backward, glance of Orpheus
softening my every blow.
My fantasy for this script is simple:
I just want to edit out the boring parts,
the parts where I forgot to scream.
Guiding Light is my real life:
the world around me is the dream.

 

______________________

 

Meridian

I’ve been in this body so long.
My ace in the hole body, my one
bird in two hands body, my rut.
What does it mean to understand?
I count the syllables on my hand. I don
my leisure suit and stroll the boardwalk.
O bituminous coal. O indiscriminate
hulk. My Ikea bookshelf body
is bookended by equine statuettes.
The world is full of tall strangers
and I haven’t seen a face
that loves me for days.
O moon, you are a hangnail.
O moon, your hair’s a fright.
Note bene, this product has been
enlarged to show texture.
The cure’s a subtle realignment
between one’s inner monster
and the line of longitude that scores
the earth. I thought beauty would
save me. No, I really thought
beauty would save me.
I’ve been in this body so long;
I’ve forgotten how to flee.
Objects in the mirror may
be closer than they appear:
they too ache with unknown
want, dumb weight of destiny.

 

_______________

 

Epistemology

The bleeding title has bled like the idea of triumph,
white flag manifesting on the top of a summit or heap,
and the church bells sounding from the home’s interior
are in fact part of a discontinued sitcom, blaring from the TV.
Doubt takes over. What if there is no outside, no other side?
Dread takes over. How can the subject cross the divide?
Descartes curls up into the safety of his stove, while you
tightrope walk the abyss, or go through contortions
to deny it is there. Any way you twist it, the moon is a cop
and you can’t afford a vowel so as to spell it out, carefully:
with all certainty, nothing. Any purported solution
is smoke and mirrors. I am the planet Pluto in a play.
I mime the grief economy. The death economy.
The libidinal economy. There are so many kinds
of poverty, and the body is a kind of forgetting.
There is no magical leap across the chasm.
There is no way to make it disappear, either,
with a flourish of the metaphysical wand.
The sun, in this equation, is a ticking bomb,
and the lawn is a field where a field once was.
My desire is to be your shape, your data, your
blind spot, your moan. Ashes to ashes, art to art,
object to object. Now let us pray. Now let us
differentiate between the knower and the known.

Freud Quiz -- Bonus Round [by David Lehman]

If you went “beyond the pleasure principle,” where would you be going, and with whom?

(a) the Italian Renaissance with Vasari

(b) the Spanish Inquisition with Loyola

(c) the French Revolution with Saint-Just

(d) the Trojan War with Agamemnon

(e) the American century with Henry Ford

Extra credit:

Although this question has no correct answer, the question mattered to Freud because

(1) The patient’s answer would indicate whether she was an Alice or a Mabel.
(2) When the tide ebbs you can see which bathers are naked.
(3) He had set out to refute Henry Ford’s line that “history is bunk”
(4) He knew that “the present is a future that came through” (Frank O’Hara”)
(5) He was certain that the Great War would have been prevented had they heeded his counsel.

The Cliff Robertson Quiz

What was Cliff Robertson's most memorable role?

as JFK in "PT 109"

as the Nixon-like Cantwell in "The Best Man"

as the guy who loses Kim Novak to William Holden in "Picnic"

as the fellow who falls in love with the same woman twice in "Obsession"

as the mentally-impaired bigamist whose wives are Joan Crawford and Vera Miles in "Autumn Leaves"

For extra credit, (1) Would you have voted for Henry Fonda or his opponent in "The Best Man"? (2) Who wrote the American lyrics for "Autumn Leaves"? (3) Compare Genevieve Bujold, New Orleans and Florence in "Obsession" with Kim Novak and San Francisco in "Vertigo."

The winner's photograph will be posted on this site next week.

The Rule of Three: Movie Multiple Choice # 1 [by David Lehman]

Why are there always three sailors or soldiers, never two or four, on shore leave or furlough?

(a) Because Gene Kelly favored the “rule of three”

(b) Because one can sing, one can dance, and one can provide comic relief

(c) Because human kind cannot bear very much reality

(d) Because, according to Freud, “three” is a magic number and a phallic symbol

(e) Because the sergeant tells the captain to lay off his daughter until the sailer marries Wilma.

 

Which movie illustrates the condition described by T. S. Eliot in the garden?

(a) All of them 

(b) All musicals except It's Always Fair Weather

(c) .Hitchcock's Hollywood films except Rear Window and Vertigo

(d) The Third Man but only if seen in Vienna on a Friday evening

(e) Casablanca

 

Who is "the third man" in The Third Man?

(a) Fred MacMurray 

(b) Claire Bloom's lover when they reach the Berlin Wall and begin to climb

(c) Harry Lime

(d) Hamlet

(e) Franz Kindler 

 

 When Carol Reed made The Fallen Idol,

(a) he understood that he could not be faithful to Graham Greene's story

(b) he asked Orson Welles for advice on casting the butler

(c) he cast his own butler as the butler 

(d) he was dating Carol Burnett

(e) he and she sang carols with Carroll O'Connor

 

The star of the movie was

(1) Arletty

(2) Ilse Lund

(3) Laurence Olivier as Hamlet

(4)The man who didn't shoot Liberty Valance

(5) Madeleine Elster's gray dress at Ernie's

 

Who is the “odd man out” in Carol Reed’s film with James Mason?

(a) Shell

(b) Lukey

©  Kathleen

(d) Johnny McQueen

(e) Father Tom

 

How did the British top brass get William Holden to volunteer for the dangerous mission to blow up the bridge in a Burmese jungle?

(a) Because they appealed to his sense of fair play.

(b) Because he was a queer bird, even for an American.

© Because he has done what Don Draper will do in Korea: he steals the identity of an officer killed in an action that he survives. But unlike Draper he is found out and hasn’t any choice.

(d) Because Holden was a natural hero, the American who has to get talked into putting his life on the line for a good cause.

(e) Because he is depicted shirtless at the POW camp reminding the viewer of Picnic with Kim Novak.

 

What made Barbara Stanwyck scream?

(a) She phoned the number her lover gave her and the voice on the other end said, "City Morgue."

(b) She said we're both rotten and he said only you're a little bit more rotten

(c) She beat Henry Fonda at poker

(d) She saw Addison De Witt commit a murder and try to pin it on her

(e) When she went to bed with Robert Taylor, he called her Ruby Catherine Stevens

 

What are the last words spoken in Double Indemnity?

(a) "Round up the usual suspects."

(b) "Straight down the line."

(c) "I love you, too."

(d) "How fast was I going, officer?"

(e) "Sorry, baby, I'm not buying."

 

In The Best Years of Our Lives, Hoagy Carmichaael

(a) orders a beer for the navy but lets army and air force get drunk as a skunk

(b) doesn't play "How Little We Know" on the piano for Lauren Bacall to sing 

(c) teaches Homer to play "Chopsticks" with his hooks while Al watches and Fred in the phone booth breaks things off with Peggy

(d) owns the bar where Dana Andrews meets Teresa Wright 

(e) invented the hoagy by shoving in a roll everything he could find in the icebox.

On Hitchcock's Birthday [August 13]: His Cameo in "Marnie" [by David Lehman]

From Marnie (1964; screenplay by Jay Presson Allen, based on a novel by Winston Graham) is the second most Freudian of Hitchcock's movies, two quotes:

Marnie: "Men! You say 'no' to one of them, and bingo! you're a candidate for the funny farm."

*

Mark Rutland, to Marnie, re Mr. Strutt, the man who has threatened to blackmail her: "He's a businessman. That means he's in business to do business."  
"So?"
"So we try to do business with him." 

*

Quiz question: where does Hitchcock make his cameo in Marnie?

a) leaving one hotel room as Tippi Hedren enters another
b) walking across an elevated pedestrian bridge between two buildings
c) in New York, with a bus door slammed in his face
d) in a newspaper ad for a weight-reduction program
e) in the room where the pianist keeps playing the same theme

*

Happy birthday to the "master of suspense," who observed astutely that "Drama is life with the dull bits cut out," a statement that justifies tagging this post under not only "Hitchcock quiz" but also "spontaneous aphorisms." When August 13 lands on a Friday, watch out --  a drunken poet may phone you at midnight while a couple of bats sneak in through the bathroom window.

-- 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 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
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

-- DL

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 he had accidentally invented. ND "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."

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 Burt Hooton proposes this multiple choice list of possible candidates:

1) Jane Fonda
2) Arthur Schlesinger
3) Diana Trilling
4) Pat Lawford
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 (which you will need this Sunday) 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