The Best American Poetry

Film Still Series #58

From the forthcoming film by Bill Hayward, Asphalt, Muscle and Bone, about a man at risk, the persistence of imagination and the impossibility of love. Produced by Bill Hayward and Anna Elman.

Pilgrim's Pride Chickens Out

It was when he saw the headline in Forbes, "Pilgrim's Pride Chickens Out," about the travails of the poultry producer (symbol PPC on the NYSE), that Lehman knew he had to act.

"The weakening economy," he said slowly, "will be concentrated in the index of present conditions."

The statement spread like a rumor of sexual harassment.

Economists were divided as to the import of Lehman's words. Some saw in it an allusion to Isaac Bashevis Singer's story written from the point of view of chickens on their way to the slaughterhouse.

The official "mea culpa" line was mouthed by the vice president in charge of upward risk.

"We misread the spread between derivatives and underlying cash assets."

"Big of you to admit it, old chap."

"What's your system?"

"It may be counter-intuitive, but I am betting everything on black, even, and my wife's birthday."

Woud events vindicate the brothers Lehman? Or would the indifferent beak drop the terrified girl in a rush of white feathers?

http://www.forbes.com/markets/economy/2008/05/13/pilgrims-pride-closer-markets-equity-cx_mlm_0513markets40.html

Two Poems by Nicole Santalucia

Nicole and Deanna had a whale of a time in Provincetown two weekends ago!

Here is "Domestic Life" by Nicole Santalucia:

Domestic Life

I live with a deaf painter
she stares at me and moves her hands
I have no idea what she's saying
I just want to pull her pants down and run
but I smile and nod and pull my pants down
she knows what I'm saying when i just stand there

And here is Nicole's poem "Wife-Dog":

Wife-Dog

Meet Anthony my watchdog
Anthony is my wife too
her real name is Deanna

When you meet Anthony
you'll be introduced to Deanna
but it's really Antony my watchdog

-- Nicole Santalucia

Sam Spade and Odysseus: Aries Triumphant (by Jill Baron)

            In the previous discussion on astrology I presented W.H. Auden as a convincing though in the end inauthentic Aquarius, whose exact birth date falls not under the sign of the Water Bearer, but that of the Fish, Pisces.  Therefore I propose that we butterfly stroke out of these murky waters and try something different. 

            Let’s undergo astrological rebirth!  And what better place to do so than in Aries, the first sign of the zodiac cycle, harbinger of new beginnings. This time around, I would like to consider the Arian qualities of a character or two from literature and the books that begot them.  That’s right – I’m asserting in a very Arian way that not only does a literary character possess an astrological sign but that a book does too.  I would like to inaugurate this study with a profile of four Arians in literature: Sam Spade, his prototype, Odysseus, and the two books that birthed them, The Maltese Falcon and Robert Fitzgerald’s translation of The Odyssey.

            Sam Spade, for those of you who don’t know noir, is the protagonist of Dashiell Hammett’s novel The Maltese Falcon, published in 1929.  From the first page of the book, on which Hammett describes Spade as looking “rather pleasantly like a blond satan,” we know that Spade is a tough, no-nonsense guy with a penchant for trouble, but willing to go to any length to solve a crime, or, in this case, get his hands on the coveted black bird.  Odysseus, as you, kind reader, already know, is the great warrior and wanderer who spends much of his adult life overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles.  I am profiling these characters in tandem because when I read The Maltese Falcon, I couldn’t help recalling Odysseus every time that Sam Spade outsmarts an adversary with his cunning and physical strength.  It appears that one has begotten the other.

            What makes these characters a pair of Aries?  A fire sign, the Arian archetype is the Ram.  Those born under the sign of the Ram, according to Steven Forrest, astrologer, “come forth into the world armed with intelligence, vitality, and an instinct for survival.”  The Arian is a warrior, a daredevil: courageous, assertive, energetic, competitive and often impulsive.  Sam Spade is nothing but courageous, daring, and, as his primary love interest Brigid O’Shaughnessy says time and time again, “altogether unpredictable.” When Joel Cairo, also known as "The Levantine," first visits Spade to solicit his services in recuperating what Cairo calls "an ornament……that has been mislaid," a "black figure of a bird," he holds Spade at gunpoint. Spade barely flinches at the threat: "Spade did not look at the pistol. He raised his arms and, leaning back in his chair, intertwined the fingers of his two hands behind his head." During the crisis Spade, to all appearances, is perfectly at ease. When Cairo pats Spade down to make sure he is not armed, Spade gets the better of the man, striking him in the face with his elbow and rendering him unconscious.            

            Similarly, Odysseus, a “raider of cities”, who outsmarts a one-eyed giant, excels in athletic competition. and fights a houseful of men intent on his demise, is a man who relies on his physical and mental prowess to get the better of his adversaries.  He is the Hero of all heroes, the archetype itself, made plain by a straightforward narration that does not delve too deep – or at all - into the psyche of the exiled Ithakan.  This is not to suggest that Odysseus does not have an inner life, or that an Arian is emotionally vacant.  Yet as a “positive” sign, Aries tends to be extroverted in its sensibility.  The classic Arian revels in communication and action and is less inward than a “negative” sign, such as a Scorpio, Capricorn, or any earth or water sign.  It is undeniable that Odysseus is an outwardly expressive character.

            So too Sam Spade: “Red rage came suddenly into his face and he began to talk in a harsh guttural voice.  Holding his maddened face in his hands, glaring at the floor, he cursed Dundy for five minutes without break, cursed him obscenely, blasphemously, repetitiously, in a harsh guttural voice.  Then he took his face out of his hands, looked at the girl, grinned sheepishly, and said: ‘Childish, huh?  I know, but, by God, I do hate being hit without hitting back.’”  Brigid O’Shaughnessy responds: “You’re absolutely the wildest person I’ve ever known.”  This passage shows Spade being angry as opposed to feeling angry; he glares, curses ad infinitum, and then excuses himself.  To his sense of honor, there is injustice in a man not being able to hit back, and he makes his feelings perfectly clear. 

            When Odysseus triumphs over the Cyclops, it is not enough that he and his men escape.  At sea he taunts the giant, putting his crew at risk of further harm: “Kyklops, / if ever mortal man inquire / how you were put to shame and blinded, tell him / Odysseus, raider of cities, took your eye.”  This soon meets Poseidon’s revenge: “and whelming seas rose giant above the stone.”  In another instance, when a Phaiákian boy mocks him, asserting that Odysseus cannot throw a discus, he responds with “I find my heart inside my ribs aroused / by your impertinence…You spoke heart-wounding words.”  Odysseus then rises to the challenge and wins, spurred on by an innately competitive nature.   

            If a person has an astrological sign, then why cannot a text?  To understand The Maltese Falcon and The Odyssey as Arian texts we must return to this notion of the “positive” sign, and realize that the exteriorized narration of The Maltese Falcon and The Odyssey adheres to this principle of outward expression.  It is as Erich Auerbach writes about The Odyssey in his essay “Odysseus’ Scar”: “Clearly outlined, brightly and uniformly illuminated, men and things stand out in a realm where everything is visible; and not less clear – wholly expressed, orderly even in their ardor – are the feelings and thoughts of the people involved.”  In The Odyssey, we know the character Odysseus through his actions and through his physical responses to situations.  Of The Maltese Falcon this is also true. Every movement of the hand, twitch of the eye, tap of the foot is documented, rendering an almost cinematic quality to the narration. 

There is one moment in The Maltese Falcon that requires introspection: the Flitcraft episode.  Here the narrative digresses from the quest for the black bird and requires the reader to ponder why Spade is recounting a story about a man he knew that has nothing at all to do with the narrative at hand.  In fact, the Flitcraft episode is so unique in The Maltese Falcon that filmmaker John Huston omitted it in an otherwise faithful 1941 adaptation of the novel.  In general, however (and by astrologizing we must do a good deal of generalizing), The Maltese Falcon follows the model of The Odyssey, possessing, according to Auerbach, “the Homeric style [that] knows only a foreground, only a uniformly illuminated, uniformly objective present.” 

           One detail in The Odyssey surely proves the protagonist’s astrological provenance, if not that of the book itself.  It is hardly an accident that a certain domesticated animal enables Odysseus’ escape from the Cyclops’ den: none other than the “woolliest ram, the choicest of the flock.”  Odysseus and the ram, “the leader…weighted by wool and me with my meditations” become a single body that outwits the blinded giant.  The Hero finds salvation in the Ram.

-- Jill Baron 

Odysseus defeats the suitors [Greek postage stamp]

Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade

The Most Important Thing You Can Do

The single most important thing you can do to get your finances in order is to pay off your credit card debt, in toto, ASAP! And never charge more on a card than you can pay off in the thirty-day grace period following the billing date. Use your credit cards this way and they will work for you. Allow the debt to mount and you're one only step removed from the sharks. No one will come along and break your knees -- or put you in debtors' prison (see Dickens's Bleak House) but --

Charles Dickens

but they will take away your house, your Subaru, your Ella Fitzgerald record collection, your self-respect -- everything except the two-way television set that will be mandatory in every household just as Eric Blair predicted!

The Writer's Almanac

Listen to Garrison Keillor today -- and every day -- reading a poem of his choice. . .

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/

"Parvus," "Trotsky," "Mr. Natural" (by Mitch Sisskind)

Not too many people are familiar with Israel Helphand, who later called himself Alexander Parvus. From early in life his ambition was to be a revolutionary and a millionaire. He achieved both ambitions. During the First World War he was both a Bolshevik and a German spy. He is said to have arranged for Lenin's return to Russia from Switzerland in March 1917. Lenin crossed Germany in a locked railroad car. The negotiation for this journey has been memorably brought to life in a surreal chapter of Solzhenitsyn, in which Parvus explodes out of a suitcase. In 1924 Parvus died on a private island off Germany where he was shamelessly debauching himself with squirt guns and inflatable pool toys.

The figure in the center of the photo, Lev Bronstein -- aka Leon Trotsky -- needs no introduction! But aren't you surprised to learn that Mr. Natural (born Shmul Schmeltzer) was also a revolutionary? Well, photos don't lie, or at least they didn't in the old days. Decades before he was introduced to the world by Robert Crumb, Mr. Natural "hung around St. Petersburg, when he saw it was the time for change." Indeed, prior to the 1905 uprising he was a member of the notorious St. Petersburg Committee For Struggle. Together with a radical anarchist known as the Old Pooperroo (a member of The Black Hundred group) Schmeltzer on two occasions disrupted Tsarist military parades by shouting the revolutionary slogan,"Up with dresses, down with pants!" In 1907, sentenced to ten years of internal exile in Siberia, he opened the first soft ice cream store in Ekaterinburg, later expanding to Murmansk, Novosibirsk, and as far south as Pinsk. In 1917 he returned to St. Petersburg in time for the October Revolution, arriving in a reindeer-drawn troika. Lenin personally awarded him the rank of Narthex of the Nomenclatura.

Here's one of Crumb's depictions of Schmeltzer...

I'm not sure why I feel so compelled lately to expatiate on Russia and the Russian Revolution. I think it started a few years ago with a book called "Court of the Red Czar." When I read about Stalin manning the phonograph and forcing people like Khrushchev and Molotov to dance the foxtrot, I was hooked. Well, let's not feel as if we have to question these things. Comrades, have the courage of your perversions!

A Muse in Drag...or Fur? (by Jenny Factor)

Has it ever bothered anyone else that the convention of the Muse is typically female? Is this purely a sexual preference (which could then be unhinged successfully by a writer's gender or by her romantic affiliation)?

Or are we all just hanging upside down on the Monkey Bars, waving to our Mommas?

One culprit may be the stereotype of the Woman as Good Listener. But whoever is clinging to that patootie must be forgetting many women: Gertrude Stein, for instance, who famously opined of writers that "it is necessary always to be talking and listening". Me? Woman though I be, I'm even less good at the listening. I have to sit on my hands at family dinners to remind myself to let my son get a word in edgewise, dammit.

Then there's the Beauty bit--that the female muse is desirable, her luminous fertile attention like a ray of sun, her limpid eyes worth courting.

Or is it the Grace of Muses that makes our language teacup-delicate, careful and deliberate?

Why couldn't a pet poodle be a muse, his head leaned in as if to ask yet another open-ended question....? Why not Cary Grant with that tender, wry attention? Or old Walt, smiling benignly and a bit scandalously over his damp beard? Have you ever written a poem that interlocutes with a different sort of listener....?

Yup, I'm sure I'm saying what you already know, but: The Muse Issue--at its root--has everything to do with (1) wanting to be heard (and at the same time not heard)--(2) with audience (and at the same time with privacy, with intimacy)--and (3) with how the desire to communicate (to someone--i.e., not to declaim) changes speech.

Cause How-can-it-be-worth-it-that-I'm-this-fabulous-if-nobodys-out-there?

-J.F.

Francis Bacon's Triptych Goes for $86.3 Million

Sotheby's/Associated Press

Francis Bacon's "Triptych, 1976," auctioned Wednesday night, broke records. Expected to fetch $70 million, it sold for $86.3 million, the most money ever paid for a work of contemporary art. See Carol Vogel's article in the New York Times, May 15.

-- DL

Really good artist paints Stalin and everybody! The whole gang!

A talented young woman! She also plays the guitar!