A while back Justin Taylor sent along this link, to his essay about novels that feature poets as protagonists. It's worth a read, and when you're done, pick up the books he's highlighted and weigh in. And add your own favorites to his list.
Unsung heroes Arthur Freed (who produced "The Wizard of Oz" and rescued "Over the Rainbow" from extinction) and Roger Edens (who composed the "Dear Mr Gable" intro to "You Made Me Love You" for Judy Garland) wrote the "Love Affair" that I prefer of the two great contenders in movie history. The rival, composed by Harry Warren, orchestrates the 1957 Cary Grant-Deborah Kerr tear-jeker, "An Affair to Remember." That one has its appeal, god knows; I believe Nore Ephron regards the film and everything about it as the epitome of romance, and it's great for the string section. But the one I vote for is the musical emblem of "Strike Up the Band" (1940) -- a movie directed by Busby Berkeley, in which, in one show-within-a-show scene, "demi-tasse" is the unlikely euphemism for hanky-panky. "Our Love Affair" carries the overture beyond the Gershwin title track, is sung thirteen minutes into the movie by Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, and recurs throughout as background music for the young romantics. I love Freed's lyrics in general -- he also wrote the songs in "Singin' in the Rain." I will write more about him some other time -- about Roger Edens, too, who, according to reliable sources, shared a birthday (November 9) with Kay Thompson. (From 1942 through 1957 they gave joint birthday parties during which each presented a surprise production number using special material featuring their friends— Garland, Lena Horne, Gene Kelly, Dorothy Dandridge, Maureen O'Hara, Ray Bolger, Ann Sothern, Danny Kaye, Charles Walters, Cole Porter, Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane — with secret rehearsals, and neither telling the other what to expect.) Anyway -- See "Strike Up the Band" once and you'll know "Our Love Affair" forever. The tenderness here coexists with brass. It can be done in swing time or full of the most wistful longing. If you click below you will hear it ably performed by the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra with the Sentimental Gentleman himself on the 'bone and boy singer Sinatra (24 or 25) crooning the words.. -- DL
Zeros of the world punch holes in the page. Put away chairs in an emptying auditorium. Make a space. When I can widen the gap between us (the gasp between us) I am glad. I am glad to rip
the poem in half. Collapsed between light & night a zero is rising. The mark of the zero on your cheek, sub-wake, sub-sleep. Somewhere between fuck & luck the zero on your mouth before you say away
or stray. Draw a straight line and think it through. Draw a lake and think it blue. I think I think I think I feel the zero at the bone. I think I lost you. Counting backward on the pillow again
the wake of white space, the every, the invitation.
My first impression of a poet came from listening to my mother and her friends talk about their attempts at being hipsters in high school. Apparently, my mother was not aware that the dark sunglasses, black turtleneck sweaters, berets and bongoes came straight from Madison Avenue and Hollywood. In fact, the 1958 B-movie High School Confidential seemed to be a major reference point for the youth of Oak Ridge High School. In the movie, Phillipa Fallon plays a beat poetess who performs at The Drag, a teen hangout. As Poetess recites her verse, a band interjects snatches of ragtime.
"My old man was a bread stasher all his life.
He never got fat. He wound up with a used car,
a 17 inch screen and arthritis.
Tomorrow is a drag, man.
Tomorrow is a king sized bust.
They cried ‘put down pot,’ ‘don’t think a lot,’ for what?
Time, how much? And what to do with it.
Sleep, man, and you might wake up digging the whole
human race giving itself three days to get out.
Tomorrow is a drag, pops, the future is a flake.
I had a canary who couldn’t sing.
I had a cat who let me share my pad with her.
I bought a dog that killed the cat who ate the canary.
What is truth?"
Since I was not able to see High School Confidential until my early thirties, the image of the poet influenced me via my mother's interpretation: What she found pertinent became my experience. But now I giggle when I read the poem from the film and wonder how many teenagers took it to heart.
The stereotype of the beat poet was not confined to the big screen. As an adolescent, I constantly watched reruns of the 1960s television show The Munsters. In one episode, Herman Munster improvises a poem for the guests of his beatnik party. With earnest innocence and a nervous smile, Herman speaks:
"Ibbitty bibbitty, sibbity sab,
Ibbitty bibbitty, canal boat.
Dictionary. Down the ferry."
The poem continues with nursery rhyme and novelty song references, and the young, hip guests, dressed in black jumpers and trousers, are delighted. Albeit The Munsters was a comedy, I somehow interpreted the beatnik episode as a truthful portrayal of a poet. Of course, Herman's poem makes no sense in and of itself; the audience of hipsters is responsible for attributing meaning to the words. For them, the poem is a deep commentary on the establishment. For a ten year old, the poem sounded like nonsense but the reception of it by the audience infused the words with a mysterious meaning.
More recently, in Billy Bob Thornton's film Sling Blade (1996), the character Morris writes lyrics for a song that seem to be descended from beatnik genes. In the scene, redneck Morris and his band are drinking when they begin to discuss their future as musicians:
Doyle: Morris here is a modern-day poet, kinda like in olden times.
Morris: Yeah, I got a new tune in composition entitled "The Thrill." And it goes somethin' like this: "I stand on the hill, not for a thrill, but for the breath of a fresh kill. Never mind the man who contemplates doin' away with license plates. He stands alone, anyhow, bakin' the cookies of discontent by the heat of the laundromat vent. Leavin' his soul!" Then like in poetry I go dot-dot-dot, you know, kinda off center, then I drop down and then I go: "Leavin' his soul! And partin' the waters of the medulla oblongata of - -brrrrrr! - -mankind!" That was a damn good song, wasn't it Doyle?
Of course, Thornton intends the men in the band to be laughable, but I wonder how many viewers might find that the image is an accurate portrayal of a poet.
I imagine my preoccupation here is a concern about what other people think about poets, but it could also be that I think posturing is ugly. I'm not sure what a poet is supposed to look or sound like, but I do know that a stylized version of a bard is not what I trust.
Take a look at what Tom Devaney has artfully done with "OnandOnScreen," which is devoted to poets' pairing their work with a video of their choice. The current issue includes Catherine Wagner and Wayne Koestenbaum and Matt Hart and Leonard Gontarek annd other worthies. A tip of the fedora to Tom, who writes that the site is meant to present a dialogue between "moving words and moving images," enhancing "the essential strangeness" of each medium. What happens when poetry and video join forces? Here, for example, is a poem featuring a boy, a girl and "Fly Me to the Moon." You'll see. You'll hear. -- DL
You and Mozart share this day. Happy birthday, Jerry (and you too, Wolfgang). I know you liked Frankie's version of this song cicra 1942. . . Just listent to that last falsetto note.
From "Out the Window" by Donald Hall in the New Yorker, January 23, 2012: <<< [My mother] died a month short of ninety-one. Her brain was still good. A week before she died, she read "My Antonia" for the tenth time. Willa Cather had always been a favorite. Most of the time in old age she read Agatha Christie. She said that one of the advantages of being ninety was that she could read a detective story again, only two weeks after she first read it, without any notion of which character was the villain.
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New poems no longer come to me, with their prodigies of metaphor and assonance. Prose endures. I feel the circles grow smaller, and old age is a ceremony of losses, which is on the whole preferable to dying at forty-seven or fifty-two. >>>
