The Best American Poetry

Ogden Nash's Advice to Husbands

A Word to Husbands

To keep your marriage brimming,
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you're wrong, admit it;
Whenever you're right, shut up.

from Candy is Dandy by Ogden Nash (1962).
Did you know that rhymester Nash wrote the lyrics for Kurt Weill's beautiful love song "Speak Low"? 

Quote of the Day: The one point of unity . . . [by Mark Twain]

Mark Twain, on the Viennese Parliament in 1897:  "As to the make-up of the House itself, it is this: the deputies come from all the walks of life and from all the grades of society. There are princes, counts, barons, priests, mechanics, laborers, physicians, professors, merchants, bankers,shopkeepers. They are religious men, they are earnest, sincere, devoted, and they hate the Jews." Lionel Trilling, who quoted this, added that "This hatred of the Jews was the one point of unity in a Parliament which was torn asunder by the fiercest nationalistic and cultural jealousies." Still true.

-- DL

Mark Twain, on the Viennese Parliament in 1897:  "As to the make-up of the House itself, it is this: the deputies come from all the walks of life and from all the grades of society. There are princes, counts, barons, priests, mechanics, laborers, physicians, professors, merchants, bankers,shopkeepers. They are religious men, they are earnest, sincere, devoted, and they hate the Jews." Lionel Trilling, who quoted this, added that "This hatred of the Jews was the one point of unity in a Parliament which was torn asunder by the fiercest nationalistic and cultural jealousies." Still true.

-- DL

All-Time Great Sentences

From Kissinger by Walter Isaacson (Simon & Schyster, 2005), p. 131. This sentence appears after the author has presented several rival versions of an incident during the 1968 presidential election campaign:

“Where does the truth in fact lie?”

Beautiful. Where is the truth? Or where does the truth tell a lie?

What Paul de Man could do with this sentence! Professor Joel Cairo, a circuit judge of the Food Court, explains that it is “a perfect example of two antithetical meanings: ‘What is the truth [of the matter]?’ versus 'where [in what circumstances] does the truth become a lie thanks, perhaps, to the agency of fact, that seemingly hard but notably elastic thing [or word]?’ Caspar Gutmann wondered: ‘Are there invisible hyphens linking the words truth-in-fact? And what then?’"

You know what I think?
No, what do you think.
It ranks right up there with Kissinger's assessment of the Iraq war in 2003:
"It all depends on how it ends."
Perfect iambic tetrameter.

-- DL

Yeats on Friendship (for Paul Violi)

Last evening, when listening to the late Paul Violi's friends, colleagues, students and admirers read his poems, I thought of the last two lines of Yeats's "The Municipal Gallery Revisited." Here are the culminating lines of this multi-part poem. DL

 You that would judge me, do not judge alone
This book or that, come to this hallowed place
Where my friends’ portraits hang and look thereon;
Ireland’s history in their lineaments trace;
Think where man’s glory most begins and ends,
And say my glory was I had such friends.

From the archive; first posted December 2, 2011

The Most Underrated Poet in America

<<< 

I remember a poet's writing to me several years back, You are the most underrated poet in the country. But then, he added, that's better than being the most overrated poet in the country. I was and remain impressed by the short distance between the two extremes.

-- Howard Nemerov, Journal of the Fictive Life (1963)
>>>

On the other hand, keep in mind what R. G. Collingwood wrote in 1924:

". . . in art, a school once established normally deteriorates as it goes on. It achieves perfection in its kind with a startling burst of energy, a gesture too quick for the historian's eye to follow. He can never explain such a movement or tell us how exactly it happened. But once it is achieved, there is the melancholy certainty of a decline. The grasped perfection does not educated and purify the taste of posterity; it debauches it. The story is the same whether we look at Samian pottery or Anglian carving, Elizabethan drama or Venetian painting. So far as there is any observable law in collective art history it is, like the law of the individual artist's life, the law not of progress but of reaction. Whether in large or in little, the equilibrium of the aesthetic life is permanently unstable."

Didn't Paul Valéry say poetry was language beyond paraphrase, language so vital it is irreducible?

Therefore, I shall return to thee, Samuel Taylor Coleridge: "  poem is that species of composition which is opposed to works of science, by proposing for its immediate object pleasure, not truth; and from all other species (having this object in common with it) it is discriminated by proposing to itself such delight from the whole as is compatible with a distinct gratification from each component part.”

The Spymaster as Vacuum-Cleaner Salesman [by DL]

<<<

And the sad man is cock of all his jests.

-- George Herbert

>>>

Epigraph to Graham Greene's novel Our Man in Havana (1958). The protagonist -- an English widower living in pre-Castro Cuba -- is a vacuum-cleaning salesman named Wormwold, as unattractive a name as Greene could manage. In order to satisfy the demands of intelligence officers in a gray faceless London building, Wormwold dupes them by creating "purely notional spies" and killing them off, "like a bad novelist preparing an effect." (Alec Guiness plays him in the movie.) The book is in a comic tenor but is less a spoof than a forcible statement of the extent to which military intelligence work and espionage fiction resemble one another.

-- DL

And the sad man is cock of all his jests.

-- George Herbert

>>>

Epigraph to Graham Greene's novel Our Man in Havana (1958). The protagonist -- an English widower living in pre-Castro Cuba -- is a vacuum-cleaning salesman named Wormwold, as unattractive a name as Greene could manage. In order to satisfy the demands of intelligence officers in a gray faceless London building, Wormwold dupes them by creating "purely notional spies" and killing them off, "like a bad novelist preparing an effect." (Alec Guiness plays him in the movie.) The book is in a comic tenor but is less a spoof than a forcible statement of the extent to which military intelligence work and espionage fiction resemble one another.

-- DL

Maugham of the Day

From The Razor's Edge (1944):

"Have you never thought of divorcing Gray?"
"I've got no reason for divorcing him."
"That doesn't prevent your countrywomen from divorcing their husbands when they have a mind to."
She laughed.
'Why d'you suppose they do it?"
"Don't you know? Because American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers."

-- Somerset Maugham

Kierkegaard on systems

<<
In relation to their systems most systematizers are like a man who builds an enormous castle and lives in a shack close by.
>> 

Elsewhere Kierkegaard says that people correspond to parts of speech. "How many people are merely adjectives, interjections, adverbs; and how few are substantives, verbs, etc. . . .There are people whose position in life is that of the interjection, without influence in the sentence." Think about it.

From the archive. Posted on The Best American Poetry on July 02, 2011.

 

Elsewhere Kierkegaard says that people correspond to parts of speech. "How many people are merely adjectives, interjections, adverbs; and how few are substantives, verbs, etc. . . .There are people whose position in life is that of the interjection, without influence in the sentence." Think about it.

Said Disraeli to Gladstone. . .

 

 

At a social gathering, Gladstone said to Disraeli, "I predict, Sir, that you will die either by hanging or of some vile disease."

Disraeli replied, "That all depends, Sir, upon whether I embrace your principles or your mistress."

Disraeli replied, "That all depends, Sir, upon whether I embrace your principles or your mistress."

Eliot on Becket, and Beckett too

And yet it is useless not to seek, not to want, for when you cease to seek you start to find, and when you cease to want, then life begins to ram her fish and chips down your gullet until you puke, and then the puke down your gullet until you puke the puke, and then the puked puke until you begin to like it.

--  Samuel Beckett in Watt, which Erica Cairo believes is a veiled reference to Thomas Becket and his king.

“They know and do not know, that acting is suffering
And suffering is action. Neither does the actor suffer
Nor the patient act. But both are fixed
To an eternal action, an eternal patience
To which all must consent that it may be willed
And which all must suffer that they may will it,
That the pattern may subsist, for the pattern is the action
And the suffering, that the wheel may turn and still
Be forever still.”

― T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral

What is "The Longest Pleasure"? Lord Byron Knows

And is there not religion, and reform,

            Peace, war, the taxes, and what's call'd the "Nation"?

The struggle to be pilots in a storm?

            The landed and the monied speculation?

The joys of mutual hate to keep them warm,

            Instead of love, that mere hallucination?

Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure;

Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.

      
                                                by Lord Byron from Don Juan, Canto the Thirteenth

--sdh

Emerson on Compensation

<<< And yet the compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts. The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character. It permits or constrains the formation of new acquaintances and the reception of new influences that prove of the first importance to the next years; and the man or woman who would have remained a sunny garden-flower, with no room for its roots and too much sunshine for its head, by the falling of the walls and the neglect of the gardener is made the banian of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to wide neighborhoods of men.  >>>

<<< And yet the compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts. The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character. It permits or constrains the formation of new acquaintances and the reception of new influences that prove of the first importance to the next years; and the man or woman who would have remained a sunny garden-flower, with no room for its roots and too much sunshine for its head, by the falling of the walls and the neglect of the gardener is made the banian of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to wide neighborhoods of men.  >>>

"Perhaps a Sentence": The Rationale for Creative Writing [by Irwin Shaw]

<<<
It is generally believed in literary cricles that everybody has at least one novel in him. I doubt that. I have found a few men and women who do have one novel in them, but the greatest number of people I have met have perhaps a sentence in them or at the very most a short story.
>>>

<<<
He'd written a very good review of a picture of yours, and you said, "That man writes so badly I get angry at him even when he gives me a rave."
>>>

<<<
How easy it was to make someone hate you for life. With one sentence.
>>>

from Evening in Byzantium by Irwin Shaw -- DL

RIP Walter LaFeber, the distinguished historian & Cornell professor

Walter LaFeber, the legendary Cornell professor of history, with many devoted students included who went on to hold oimportant posts in the US government, died yesterday in Ithaca at the age of 87. The Clash: U.S.-Japanese Relations Throughout History (1997) won the Bancroft Prize in American History. LaFeber’s book on Michael Jordan makes brilliant use of a central metaphor, arguing that the marketing and promotion techniques of the National Basketball Association are exemplary of globalization. He was a neighbor of man and a great gentleman. I posted this quote of his in our "Spontaneous Aphorisms" series on November 2, 2012.

<<<< 

Anyone can have a bad century.

-- Walter LaFeber

>>> 

The eminent historian Walter LaFeber -- author of The American Age: U. S. Foreign Policy At Home and Abroad, from 1750 to the Present, as well as the more recent Michael Jordan and the New Global Capitalism (Norton) -- turns out to be a diehard Cubs' fan, the experience of which has to have a chastening effect on the mind and heart.

The line reminded me of a remark made by Marv Levy, coach of the Buffalo Bills, the team that was always the bridesmaid, never the bride, to use that most curious of all sportscaster's cliches. The Bills would get to the Super Bowl and lose it -- not a bad fate, all in all, when you consider the history of teams that have been to the Super Bowl once in forty-three years. One week Levy was asked whether the following Sunday's game was "do or die." No, Levy said firmly, putting things in perspective. "D-Day was do or die," he said. Sunday against the Packers or Giants was just another game.

--- DL

Auden (& Others) on the Difference between Authors and Critics

There are people who are too intelligent to become authors, but they do not become critics.

-- W. H. Auden, "Reading" (in The Dyer's Hand, 1962)

Compare with Kenneth Tynan's: "The critic knows the way but can't drive the car"

and Hemingway's "Critics are men who watch a battle from a high place then come down and shoot the survivors."

 

-- W. H. Auden, "Reading" (in The Dyer's Hand, 1962)

Compare with Kenneth Tynan's: "The critic knows the way but can't drive the car"

and Hemingway's "Critics are men who watch a battle from a high place then come down and shoot the survivors."

 

"Dependable Epigraphs" [by Tony Towle]

                       

Dependable Epigraphs

My epigraphs will prepare you for the excursion
                         but not for the ruts in the road.

                                                                           — Virgil                                                                                       

Stay well ahead of your turnips in the garden of life. 

                                                            — Michel de Montaigne

Never parade your ignorance; a discreet amble down a side street will suffice.

                                                                 — Benjamin Disraeli

Don’t swat flies close to the ear of God.

                                                            — St. Francis of Assisi

Metaphors are the unstable companions of an already impractical fellow.

                                                                                                — Henry Ford

Those who are not willing to subvert the law do not have sufficient stake in the outcome of events.

                                                                        — Niccolò Machiavelli

 If patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, religion is certainly the first.

                                                                                                          — Voltaire

Everywhere I go I find a poet has already been there neurotically before me.

                                                                                                 — Sigmund Freud

Socializing is networking to no purpose.

                                                                        — Oscar Wilde

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

                       — Paul Valéry, as quoted in the original French at a press conference by George W. Bush

Farewell, O insatiable biographers of the future.

                                                            — William Shakespeare

Pimp my soporific and annoying orchestral arrangements, bitch.

                                                                                    — Lawrence Welk

The peasant’s place is in the hovel.

                                                 — Harry & Leona Helmsley

The woman’s place is in the novel.

                                                — Henry James

Never let Henry James have the last word.

                                                             — Edith Wharton

You’ve got to know when to stop.

                                                 — Leo Tolstoy

from Winter Journey (Hanging Loose Press, 2008)

The Secret of Secrets [by Sir Henry Taylor]

From Sir Henry Taylor, "On Secrecy" (1836:

<<<

A secret may be sometimes best kept by keeping the secret of its being a secret.

>>>

I believe Poe was paying attention. Borges, too. -- DL

Soviet Humor

 

 

 

American reporter: "How's it going?"

An engineer in Moscow (circa 1948-1989): "We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us."

Preceded by a shrug. 

Followed by a shot of vodka.

 

Woody Allen, "Apropros of Nothing": "I'm eighty-four; my life is almost half over.. ."

Woody Allen's autobiography, Apropros of Nothing, is full of pithy bon mots, good humor, and unfailing generosity toward the actors and other professionals he has worked with.

His self-deprecating humor is natural to him, a gift that yields spontaneous one-liners on every other page.

His tips on courtship are valuable. A brilliant French meal prepared by the suitor (blanquette de veau with clafoutis for dessert) works so well that it is "an express ride to the boudoir to work off some of the calories in the sack." 

Lots of juice, lots of dish, lots of inside baseball, and the personality of the genius rises to the occasion, 

His true ambition: "If I could trade my talent for any other person's, living or dead, who would it be? No contest - Bud Powell." 

"Nothing in the The Wasteland or Pound or Auden moves me as much as Cole Porter's 'You're not worth the ransom of asparagus out of season.'"

"I'm eighty-four; my life is almost half over. Not believing in a hereafter, I really can't see any practical difference if people remember me as a film director or an amateur clarinetist or at all. All that I ask is my ashes be scattered close to a pharmacy."

On posterity: "Rather than live on in the hearts and mind of the public, I prefer to live on in my apartment."

-- DL

Quote of the Day: Sylvia Plath

"August rain: the best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd uneven time."

            — Sylvia Plath The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, August, 1952

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?"