The Best American Poetry

Ken Tucker on David Lehman's 'Yeshiva Boys' and H. L. Hix's 'Incident Light'

We like what Ken Tucker has to say about David Lehman's Yeshiva Boys, just out from Scribner, and H.L. Hix's Incident Light (Etruscan Press):  Hix's Incident Light is a "sustained feat of emotional and intellectual representation" and Lehman's Yeshiva Boys "is always bracing and tough-minded, brimming with a rare generosity."  Read the complete reviews here. 

Congratulations David Lehman and H. L. Hix.  And a reminder:  Roughly one year ago, H. L. Hix's Twenty Questions was one of our most popular features.  

-- sdh

Facing the Music - David Lehman's Podcast about "A Fine Romance"

David Lehman talks with Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry talks about his book A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs.  They discuss the songs and the Jewish themes buried in some of the best-known classics. He even sings a little.  Listen here.

As a bonus, there's a play-list of Lehman's faves.  Check it out here.

What are your favorites? 

Next up: A Fine Romance by David Lehman

A Fine Romance from Tablet Magazine on Vimeo.

Get your copy here.

-- sdh.

"All the Things You Are": The Greatest Love Song?

The other day, David proclaimed that Jerome Kern's "All the Things You Are" is the greatest of all love songs and Jill Alexander Essbaum asked why. David played a Sinatra cover from 1944 and Stacey searched vainly for the "Broadway Showstoppers" album that John McGlinn put together, which features a full operatic version of the song, verse and all, as it would be presented theatrically. But Jill's question lingered in the air. Jamie Katz talked about how the changes in the song held a great appeal for jazz musicians, something you couldn't say about "Some Enchanted Evening," for example. David talked about the soaring melody, the changes in key and the range that make the song so challenging to a singer. Stacey talked about how the lyrics expressed longing and epitomized the poem in praise of one's sought-for partner. Laura Orem recalled that Oscar Hammerstein wasn't very proud of the inversion toward the end: "Someday I'll know that moment divine / when all the things you are are mine" -- the inversion was forced on him by the rhyme. David remembered reading that Hammerstein fan Stephen Sondheim preferred the same songwriters' "The Song Is You" perhaps for that reason. We sat and we talked and we listened and we hope you will listen to -- two versions below -- and weigh in with your opinion. Leaving superlatives aside, since they are there to emphasize a point and not as statements that can be logically verified, what makes "All the Things You Are" a consummate example of the romantic love song in the great American songbook?

If you listen to Barbara Streisand's interpretation, you will hear the introductory verse Sills and Forrest leave out. 

The Best American Poetry 2009: GALA LAUNCH READING SEPTEMBER 24, 7:00 PM The New School, 66 W. 12th Street FREE

Join series editor David Lehman as he introduces an all-star line up of the following contributors to this year's volume, chosen by guest editor David Wagoner:  John Ashbery, Mark Bibbins, Suzanne Cleary, Billy Collins, Jim Cummins, Mark Doty, Margaret Gibson, Douglas Goetsch, Michael Grabell, Dolores Hayden, Jennifer Michael Hecht readingSarah Hannah's "The Safe House," Richard Howard, Tina Kelley, Philip Levine, Phillis Levin, Susan Blackwell Ramsay, James Richardson, Martha Silano, Mitch Sisskind, Craig Morgan Teicher, and Matthew Zapruder.

Here's what Entertainment Weekly's Ken Tucker has to say: Lehman’s particular theme this year is the state of poetry criticism, and he doesn’t hold back: “Poetry criticism at its worst today,” Lehman asserts, “is mean in spirit and spiteful in intent,” and he goes on from there to apply an especially vigorous flogging to the critic William Logan . . . Read all of Tucker's review here.

This from Publishers Weekly (starred review):  * From the moment series editor David Lehman invokes the myth of Jacob wrestling the Angel in his introduction, the gloves are off in this year's installment of this popular annual anthology. Lehman devotes much of his introduction to throwing jabs at longtime sparring partner and professional poetry grump William Logan,whom Lehman calls “wounded” and “thin skinned.” Guest editor Wagoner chooses to abstain from the scuffle, but there's no denying the

Sneak Peak II - David Lehman, Mark Bibbins, Tina Kelley on WBAI

Listen to the series editor and two contributors to this year's volume on today's Cat Radio Cafe radio!  Get a taste of the feast to come at this Thursday night's launch reading at The New School (7:00 PM, 66 West 12th Street, NY FREE). 

-- sdh

"For it was the first day of Rosh Ha'shanah. . ."

For I Will Consider Your Dog Molly
by David Lehman

For it was the first day of Rosh Ha'shanah, New Year's Day, day of
       remembrance, of ancient sacrifices and averted calamities.
For I started the day by eating an apple dipped in honey, as ritual required.
For I went to the local synagogue to listen to the ram's horn blown.
For I asked Our Father, Our King, to save us for his sake if not for ours,
       for the sake of his abundant mercies, for the sake of his right hand,
       for the sake of those who went through fire and water for
       the sanctification of his name.
For despite the use of a microphone and other gross violations of ceremony,
      I gave myself up gladly to the synagogue's sensual insatiable vast womb.
For what right have I to feel offended?
For I communed with my dead father, and a conspicuous tear rolled down
      my right cheek, and there was loud crying inside me.
For I understood how that tear could become an orb.
For the Hebrew melodies comforted me.
For I lost my voice.
For I met a friend who asked "Is this a day of high seriousness," and when
     I said yes he said "It has taken your voice away."
For he was right, for I felt the strong lashes of the wind lashing me by
     the throat.
For I thought there shall come a day that the watchmen upon the hills
     of Ephraim shall cry, Arise and let us go up to Zion unto the Lord
     our God.
For the virgin shall rejoice in the dance, and the young and old in each
     other's arms, and their soul shall be as a watered garden, and
     neither shall they learn war any more.
For God shall lower the price of bread and corn and wine and oil, he shall let
     our cry come up to him.
For it is customary on the first day of Rosh Ha'shanah to cast a stone into
      the depths of the sea, to weep and pray to weep no more.
For the stone represents all the sins of the people.
For I asked you and Molly to accompany me to Cascadilla Creek, there being
      no ocean nearby.
For we talked about the Psalms of David along the way, and the story of
      Hannah, mother of Samuel, who sought the most robust bard to remedy
      her barrenness.
For Isaac said "I see the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for
      the offering?"
For as soon as I saw the stone, white flat oblong and heavy, I knew that
     it had summoned me.
For I heard the voice locked inside that stone, for I pictured a dry wilderness
      in which, with a wave of my staff, I could command sweet waters to flow
      forth from that stone.
For I cast the stone into the stream and watched it sink to the bottom where
      dozens of smaller stones, all of them black, gathered around it.
For the waterfall performed the function of the chorus.
For after the moment of solemnity dissolved, you playfully tossed Molly into
      the stream.
For you tossed her three times, and three times she swam back for her life.
For she shook the water off her body, refreshed.
For you removed the leash from her neck and let her roam freely.
For she darted off into the brush and speared a small gray moving thing
      in the neck.
For this was the work of an instant.
For we looked and behold! the small gray thing was a rat.
For Molly had killed the rat with a single efficient bite, in conformance
    with Jewish law.
For I took the rat and cast him into the stream, and both of us congratulated
    Molly.
For now she resumed her noble gait.
For she does not lie awake in the dark and weep for her sins, and whine about
     her condition, and discuss her duty to God.
For I'd as lief pray with your dog Molly as with any man.
For she knows that God is her savior.

-- 1980
from Operation Memory by David Lehman (Princeton University Press, 1990)

"For Lehman's Employees, the Collapse is Personal . . ."

A year has gone by. Last year it started on 08/08/08 and this year the echoes grew too loud to ignore on 09/09/09. A year ago Lehman, like Lana Turner in 1959, collapsed. This year the memories grow strong in such headlines as these:

"Lehman Died So Global Finance Could Live": The New York Times [9/12/09]
"Tales from Lehman's Crypt: The New York Times [9/13/09]
"Lessons of Lehman" adjacent to "The Marjuana Paradox": cover of New York [September 21, 2009]
"Lessons from Lehman": Bloomberg [9/ 15 / 09]
"Welcome to Lehman Brothers, You're Fired!" Reuters, [9 /14, 2009]
"The Day Lehman Died": FoxBusiness.Com [9/14/09]
"The Day That Lehman Died": BBC World Drama [9/14/09]
And too many others to list here. . .

Coming soon to this blog, we shall bring you, inspired by these headlines and teasers, Lehman: The Afterlife. For now, we nostalgically bring back this report, written a year ago in collaboration with Lazarus Frere (and posted in the special "Poets and Artists" issue of Oranges and Sardines, ed. Didi Menendez):

<<<
For Lehman's Employees, the Collapse is Personal [9/ 12 / 08]

A sampling of today's headlines:
"City Bracing for Lehman's Demise": The New York Sun
"Should You Dump Lehman Or Is It Too Late?": CNBC
"Lehman's Assurances Ring Hollow": The New York Times
"For Lehman Employees, the Collapse is Persona" [The New York Times]
"Lehman's Long Weekend": US News and World Report
"Lehman's Worst Gamble Ever": Motley Fool

What a day, Lehman said, rolling out of bed. The Sun reported that the whole city was bracing for his demise. "Commercial real estate may take hit." Lehman resisted the impulse to tell the Sun guy that when the Sun goes down, which is inevitable, the city will probably not go into mourning and property values will almost certainly remain unaffected.

Both CNBC and the Times were looking into Lehman's personal life. Goddamn journalists. The stock jock on the TV was saying it was already too late to "dump" him. Like any jilted lover he tried to take some consolation from the idea that his girl friend, Hannah Barbaro, might not break up with him, or might at least postpone the dreaded phone call, if CNBC had it right. The Times devoted several headlines to Lehman. "Lehman's Assurances Ring Hollow," on the front page of the business section, undercut the promises he had made to Hannah on the previous day. "I can change," he had said. "I will change. You'll see. In ten years the Lehman family is going to be completely legitimate.

The adjacent article on the same page announced that "For Lehman Employees. The Collapse Is Personal." He thus stood accused of violating the oldest rule in the book. Everyone knows that it is fatal to mix "personal" and "business." And yet, according to US News and World Report, Lehman was going to take a "long weekend." Well, why not? Wouldn't you?

"Lehman Shares Slide," said Reuters, and it took Lehman a moment to realize that "Shares" in that headline was not a verb but a noun. Or was it both? Was the wire service insinuating that Lehman's famous generosity amounted to sharing his fall from grace, his swift decline down the slippery slope? There was, he had to admit, some truth to the thought. Just yesterday he had taken up an hour of Glen's time on the phone complaining about Hannah and her sisters, whom she had enlisted in the struggle with Lehman.

Reuters also gave readers a timeline on the Lehman family. Henry Lehman, who came to this country from Germany, set up shop in Montgomery (Alabama), in 1844. His brothers Manny and Mayer joined him six years later. The brothers established a private investment firm in 1929, perhaps not in retrospect the best year to have initiated such an enterprise. But "Lehman's Worst Gamble Ever," according to the Motley Fool, may not have occurred then, or even a year ago, when the firm that bore his name had record revenues and earnings per share and yet did nothing to avert a calamity that it should have foreseen.

In Lehman’s mind, the worst gamble is still to come and has to do with his choice of partners to the dance. His record here doesn’t inspire confidence. In a marriage arranged by the matchmakers at American Express, Lehman wed Libby Shearson back in 1984 and let her talk him into changing his name. Only with their divorce in 1994 did Lehman become Lehman again. If autonomy remains the goal, Lehman had better proceed cautiously in the next few days when choosing among seemingly reluctant suitors proposing a merger of convenience.

-- David Lehman (9 / 12 / 08)
>>>

The girls of VOGUE were once by Petty; now they are all by Giacometti . . .Dwight Ripley Travel Posters

The Esopus Gallery in Greenwich Village has launched of show of travel posters by artist, botanist, linguist, poet Dwight Ripley. (That's his witticism, above, about the changing curves of models.) As you can see from these photos by Star Black, the posters are amazing. The show will run through October 24 and is certainly worth a detour:

[photo (c) Star Black, 2009]

Nicholson Baker takes on "The Oxford Book of American Poetry"

Advance word has it the narrator of Nicholson Baker's new novel The Anthologist has some pretty interesting things to say about The Oxford Book of American Poetry (ed. Lehman, 20006) and its two predecessors, The Oxford Book of American Verse, edited by F. O. Matthiessen (1950), and The New Oxford Book of American Verse, edited by Richard Ellmann (1976). The book being a novel lacks an index, of course, but if there were one it would point you to page 134. Listening, David, wherever you are?
-- Molly Arden