The Best American Poetry

Happy Birthday, Dean Martin (June 7)

Happy birthday, Dino. Ain't that a kick in the head?

Today's Playlist: The Toreador Song, Amapola, Frenesi, Volare, Granada

with Girogione's "Three Philosophers"

"The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on" [Oscar Willde]

and therefore:

 

The Meaning of Style

Style is the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward.  -- Robert Frost (pictured)

Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings. -- W. H. Auden

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ― Mark Twain

If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. –Emily Dickinson

Style and structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash.  -- Vladimir Nabokov

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. ~Oscar Wilde

 

Give Me the Man [by Marlene Dietrich]

Happy birthday, Marlene

<< Dietrich added something vital to every film she was in, from Stage Fright (1950), a second-tier Hitchcock effort, to Judgment at Nuremburg (1961), where, as the widow of a German general executed by the Allies, she spends quality time with Spencer Tracy, a judge at the trial of accused Nazi war criminals. “We hated Hitler,” she tells him. In my own allegorical understanding of that film, her character, a magnificent proud ageless blonde who claims that the populace didn’t know about the death camps,  stands for nothing less than Germany herself. >> -- DL

Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!

while juicing an orange on tv

as a love song on the radio

Die Hard!

 

Paul Robeson "There is a Balm in Gilead" and "Curly Headed Baby" [by Stacey Harwood Lehman]

"The Essential Paul Robeson" was the first record album I bought myself after my dad gave me the gift of a stereo record player and speakers. It was on repeat for years and to this day during the Jewish holy days of Passover I listen to the songs of struggle, so many of which Robeson recorded over his lifetime. 

But it is his moving version of "There is a Balm in Gilead" that came to mind today, as I read in the New York Times of the successful germination in Israel of a 1,000 year old seed believed to be akin to Judean Balsam, the source of the balm of Gilead. It is a fascinating story. You can read more about it here. 

Here is Paul Robeson:

What a voice!

And just because so many friends are either having kids or becoming grandparents (and also because I have curly hair), here's Robeson singing the lullaby "Curly Headed Baby" another favorite from the same album:

 

The Byronic Fallacy [by Charles Ives]

The Byronic Fallacy

It is possible that a day in a Kansas wheat field
will do more for Mr.Smith than three years in Rome.
Many men, some of whom possess genius, have gone
downhill since trying to write
a thousand dollar prize poem
or a ten thousand dollar prize opera.
How many masterpieces have we killed this way?

A cocktail will stimulate the appetite but not satisfy it. 
No bishop would give a prize to the priest
who would love God the hardest for fifteen days.
Free thought and free love do not frequent 
the same cafe. Everyone has the right to say
"fuck you" in the most cordial way --
but himself not his patrons must he obey.

Judy Garland's spoken tribute at the Jerome Kern memorial of December 19, 1945

And now Judy Garland's spoken tribute from the Jerome Kern memorial of December 19, 1945

 

And now Judy Garland's spoken tribute from the Jerome Kern memorial of December 19, 1945

 

 

Fifteen Glorious Minutes (on Beethoven's Birthday)

Eighty years on, V-discs "for our servicemen overseas"

There's a thin young man named Frankie hanging around the theater.
who is glad to be making more V-discs for the men overseas.
Now he'd like to sing
"If You are but a Dream."
"Sunday, Monday, and Always" -- "Dick Haymes, Dick Todd, and Como."
"There'll be a Hot Time in the Town of Berlim"

Come out, come out, wherever you are. . .

 

The Birth of the Blues (1958 duet, Sinatra and Keely Smith)

On Frank's birthday (12/12).  .a rarity. . . with Louis Prima's trumpet as fanfare

 

"On Sinatra's Birthday"

On Sinatra’s Birthday

Nobody loves you when you’re down and out.
But why try to change me now?
An Englishman is happy when he's fighting for his queen
and the dawn comes up like thunder.

What a guy. What a fool am I.
It’s a quarter to three. Fools rush in.
Why do I do just as you say?
You broke my heart, you took it apart.

That’s life.  I'm just a mess without you.
A lady doesn’t blow on some other guy’s dice,
those fingers in my hair, a whole gang of love,
and I laughed to think it might turn out that way.

When I bit off more than I could chew,
why should I cry over you?
My kind of people, too.
What a world, what a life, I’m in love.

-- David Lehman 12/12/12

"Tea for Two" times six

"Tea for Two"
music by Vincent Youmans
lyrics by Irving Caesar

"Tahiti Trot": Shostakovich's take on"Tea for Two"
John McGlinn and the Ambrosia Chorus ("Broadway Showstoppers")
Art Tatum (1933, 1939, 1953)
Nat King Cole (1957)
Doris Day (1950)
Frank Sinatra and Dinah Shore (1958)
Yuja Wang (2023) pictured above 

A tip of the fedora to Ira Gershwin, born December 6

There are still two hours left before the sixth
of December gives way to the day of infamy
enough time to mark the birth of Ira,
George's older brother, and what better
way to honor the lad who wrote the words
than to quote some whch should I choose
"Embraceable You" (you irreplaceable you)
or "Someone to Watch over Me" or maybe
"But Not for Me" one of the greatest (for me)
a brainy boy who outlived his genius brother
born the same year as Yip Harburg
and Howard Dietz a very good year for lyricists
was 1896
well, Ira, no use complainin', the odds were
a hundred to one against you,
a stranger in the city,  yet
you're with her who wanted
to add your initial to her monogram

-- DL (frem the archives; December 6, 2009)

Elegy for the Matador

For theToreador . . . this is your reward

The Matador of Metaphor

The grapefruit in the tropical orchard
has ripened into a globe in Hartford
for him to look at, not to eat.
If he had a tin can, he would beat
it as a drummer in a band beats
his drum and steadily with a swish
and sometimes a gong. It’s his wish
to escape from gray walls and sky
into a Denmark of the inner eye
or a bullring south of the border
or a sky espied from the trenches
of a battlefield in Flanders. Wenches
wander into his wonderland. Order
is disorder squared. We are nowhere
else but here, yet live we do in metaphor
like that elegant square-shouldered matador.

-- DL

Depicted: Ava Gardner

"Love Me or Leave Me" with Doris Day (1955) plus Jack Sheldon ("How About You?") & special guest Judy Garland

l

 

Ralph Freed's lyric for Burton Lane's tune as sung by Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney in Babes on Broadway

When a girl meets boy
Life can be a joy
But the note they end on
Will depend on
Little pleasures they will share
So let us compare

I like New York in June, how about you?
I like a Gershwin tune, how about you?
I love a fireside when a storm is due.
I like potato chips, moonlight and motor trips,
How about you?
I'm mad about good books, can't get my fill,
And Franklin Roosevelt's looks give me a thrill.
Holding hands at the movie show,
When all the lights are low
May not be new, but I like it,
How about you?

I like Jack Benny's jokes.
To a degree.
I love the common folks.
That includes me.
I like to window shop on 5th Avenue.
I like banana splits, late supper at the Ritz,
How about you?
I love to dream of fame, maybe I'll shine.
I'd love to see your name right beside mine.
I can see we're in harmony,
Looks like we both agree
On what to do,
And I like it, how about you?

 

On Hoagy Carmichael's Birthday: The Best Years of Our Lives

Dana Andrews ("Fred") left, and Teresa Wright ("Peggy"), steering the wheel, in The Best Years of Our Lives.

 Born today (November 22), Hoagy Carmichael plays the wounded sailor's Uncle Butch, the piano player who performs  "Among My Souvenirs" as Al (Fredric March) and Millie (Myrna Loy) dance and Fred meets Peggy at Butch's bar in William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)..

https://youtu.be/L20LQTrUgUo

And he's thinking: if only I could get a good job. 
And she's thinking: when I think that he's married, I sob. 
And he's thinking: I married a stranger.
And she's thinking: a divorce would be a game-changer.
And he's thinking: wait till my friend gets married and I'm the best man, Okay?
And she's thinking: Okay.
Well, it's been a long war. . .

[dialogue as rewritten to the tune of Frank Loesser's "Been a Long Day:" in How to Succeed]

See, too, this piece in The American Scholar.

Hoagy Carmichael's songs include "Stardust," Skylark,""Baltimore Oriole," and "How Little We Know," which Lauren Bacall sings while Hoagy plays piano and Bogart watches in To Have and Have Not.

How the Title of the Song Came to Him (one line at a time)

Why be at the dune?
I see the juice of prune.
Sigh me until June.
My Lai to the wound.

Try tea on the mound.
Guy way, or the ground.
Fry bee to the sound.
Highway not too soon.

Live free in cartoon.
Lie, flee to the ruin,
Zero at the bone.

Hero in the zone.
Free me to the tune.
Fly me to the moon.

--  DL

Fact-checker: Bart Howard wrote the wong in1954 under the title "In Other Words."

What a swell party this is!