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.
Ray DiPalma told me something recently, over the phone, that
he repeats in this book—that his “intention is always to write something, not necessarily to write about something.” He delivers on that intention in this imposing
new collection from Otis Books, the very busy imprint of Otis College of Art and Design in L.A.
DiPalma scatters clues throughout the book, hinting at what
this writing is all about, the most revealing being:
The subtitle of this collection is Journals and Daybooks 1998--2008, and the journal-day book framework
really allows DiPalma to showcase the astounding eclecticism and erudition he
brings to his work. A meticulous attention to language has always been central
to DiPalma’s writing, and a macaronic spirit inhabits The Ancient Use of Stone (no surprise, really: he has corrected my
Latin—with which, like most Catholic schoolboys, I have a fading
familiarity—and I know Ray’s first language was Italian).
[above: DiPalma in the '70s]
Forest and Cave
The book is an album not a final set of solutions
The real discoveries Are to be found elsewhere
What the book exhibits Are the ways to them
The collection is filled with incisive quotes from a huge
cast of thinkers and writers (Breton: “Our brains are dulled by the incurable
mania of wanting to make the unknown known”; “Raids are our
agriculture”—Bedouin Proverb), wry autobiographical complaints and comments
(“Short noon walk for Georgie. Encounter no unpleasant dogs—unlike earlier this
morning when the 3 vicious dogs from two doors west showed up in the park.
Exchange of words with the dogs’ owner. More than a few profanities”), lists of
neologisms (among my favorites: gratiturd,
improversion, neolurkism, nocturinal), and
more than forty of his collages:
[left: part of p. 85]
“Fuck the posthumous! We want to sit down, eat, and drink
sometime today!,” DiPalma proclaims.And
I won’t argue with that.I’m hungry.
“Keep commentary to a minimum,” he admonishes elsewhere, and
thus I will stop here.
Armistice Day. The day the fighting ended. The day the weapons were put down. The day people turned, again, toward imagining what peace would be.
Eisenhower warned us how hard it would be. Imagine any President—even this President—sounding the alarm about a permanent culture of war and the dangers of the military-industrial complex.
Counting back November on five hands, I remember a letter from an old, decorated World War II veteran who was the father of a college friend of mine. He had written to me after some Reagan mischief and Hollywood tears. It was November 11th and he wrote that he was always unhappy the name had been changed to Veterans Day. “Sure, we live in a culture of narcissism,” he wrote. “But however great the sacrifices soldiers and their families make, this day is not about honoring people. It’s about holding on, for dear life, to peace.”
"I many times thought Peace had come When Peace was far away—" Emily Dickinson
I thought about holding on to peace this morning when I read that the President’s advisors are advocating escalating the war in Afghanistan. I thought about peace this morning when I read that the private military contractor Blackwater bribed Iraqi officials to silence them from investigating Blackwater’s murders of Iraqi civilians.
Congress and the tv talking heads shouted and pounded the table for days about Acorn’s supposed corruption until its witch hunts were begun and funding was cut for the census, for community organizing, for housing and health care, for neighborhood safety. Funding slashed, not held onto, for peace.
And, of course, the tables of power are not being pounded tonight over Blackwater—though their illegalities directly besmirch and dishonor the veterans our country honors today. We’re shocked but not surprised.
So I looked for some peace to hold onto. It’s amazing the poets who are there to point the way. In a few hours, I’m going to be reading with one of them, Carolyn Forché, here in New York. And for the last few hours, I turned to others. I have the excellent website open for Sam Hamill’s “Poets Against the War” and his essential anthology right next to me.
Sam Hamill is experiencing some serious financial hardship at present—medical treatments not covered by insurance, an inability to teach, a very modest pension. The poets Marilyn Hacker and Alfred Corn have been raising funds to help. Donations of all sizes will be appreciated. They can be sent care of Alfred Corn to: P.O. Box 214, Hopkinton, RI 02833 U.S.A.
I’ve also been reading an eloquent, rigorous and wise anthology that came out last year from Bottom Dog Press, “Come Together, Imagine Peace.” The title may sound a little too feel-good and aesthetically soft, but the poems are strong and brilliantly-chosen. And there is an excellent introduction by Philip Metres.
I opened to Robert Creeley’s brief, lovely “paean of patience”:
For No Clear Reason
I dreamt last night the fright was over, that the dust came, and then water, and women and men, together again, and all was quiet in the dim moon’s light.
A paean of such patience— laughing, laughing at me, and the days extend over the earth’s great cover, grass, trees, and flower- ing season, for no clear reason.
If peace can be dreamt, if it can come for no clear reason, that’s because, however mocked, abused, ignored, it’s already here, already put to practice—hard to hear amidst the violence, difficult to see underneath the dark canopy of our aggression.
It's Armistice Day. Wherever you find peace, hold on to it, for dear life.
The protagonist in David Markson’s staggeringly brilliant novel, “Wittgenstein’s Mistress” believes she is the last person on Earth. Fortunately for us, that gives her plenty of time to ruminate on art and philosophy. She spends much of it rattling around in abandoned museums, sometimes burning paintings for heat. And she shares: anecdotes, supposed encounters, verbal swatches of art history, religion and the history of philosophy.
In one extraordinarily funny passage, our anonymous heroine--this intellectual post-Apocalypse Survivor™--imagines an encounter between Rembrandt and Spinoza in Amsterdam, circa 1656.
“…it is probably safe to assume that Rembrandt and Spinoza surely would have at least passed one the street now and again.
Or even run into each other quite frequently, if only at some neighborhood shop or other. And certainly they would have exchanged amenities as well, after a time. Good morning, Rembrandt. Good morning to you, Spinoza. I was extremely sorry to hear about your bankruptcy, Rembrandt. I was extremely sorry to hear about your excommunication, Spinoza. Do have a good day, Rembrandt. Do have the same, Spinoza. All of this would have been said in Dutch, incidentally. I mention that simply because it is known that Rembrandt did not speak any other language except Dutch. Even if Spinoza may have preferred Latin. Or Jewish.”
There is so much wry learnedness and—to me at least—laugh-out-loud understatement packed in here. But what I love most about what Markson makes of this imagined encounter is the sudden, heightened sense we get of absurdity: Amsterdam was a pretty small town in the 17th century. Two giants of Western civilization happened to live—each in a moment of striking adversity—within a few blocks of one another in the Jewish Quarter of a very N.J. city. This is the best they can do? This is how great the distance would be for these great men to travel over the landscape stretched out between their different moral imaginations—even if they really almost lived next door?
This week's Economist reports that Thames and Hudson has published the 819 surviving letters of Vincent van Gogh. I have a dog-eared 1996 Penguin Classics edition of his selected letters and love to read them for his precise descriptions, his insights, his humor, and the illustrations. Here are a few lines from a June 18, 1888 letter from van Gogh to his friend Emile Bernard:
" . . . the most beautiful paintings are those which you dream about when you lie in bed smoking a pipe, but which you never paint.
Yet you have to make a start, no matter how incompetent you feel in the face of inexpressible perfection, of the overwhelming beauty of nature."
And later in the same letter, this bit of advice: "Painting and fucking a lot don't go together. It softens the brain. Which is a bloody nuisance."
The good news is that you don't have to shell out $600 for the six volumes. They're all accessible, free, at www.vangoghletters.org.
With this post we inaugurate a new series to showcase poets who cook. We're delighted that Grace Cavalieri agreed to be our first contributor. Grace founded and produces "The Poet and the Poem," now recorded at the Library of Congress for public radio. Her series celebrates its 32nd consecutive year on-air. Grace and co-author Sabine Pascarelli have just published The Poet's Cookbook, with photographs by Dan Murano (A Solitary Moment). The Poet's Cookbook includes full menus with more than 75 recipes for Antipasti, Minestre, Primi Piatti , Secondi Piatti, Verdure, Insalate, and Dolci.
Here's what Grace has to say about today's recipe:
Pomodori Ripieni is something my mother used to make. She even made this for my lunch when I came home from school. In the first part of the 20th century, there were no lunch rooms and cafeterias, no "Subway" or sandwich shops. Children walked home from school and back in one short hour. Nettie made Pomodori for me on toast. I guess that was our version of an open-face sandwich. Nettie's family came from Sicily and my father, Angelo, who was truly a great chef, came from near Venice. If there were a class war between regions of Italy, it was never in the kitchen. This is the place that always smelled wonderful.
Dan Murano arranged these tomatoes beautifully in the pan. Mine are not always as symmetrical.
Stewed Tomatoes – Pomodori Ripieni
8 Fresh tomatoes
2 Cloves Garlic
½ cup of mixed herbs (parsley, basil and garlic ground together)
1/8 lb butter
Salt and pepper
1 T olive oil
Cut
tomatoes across in half. Scoop out seeds. Lay first layer in large pan.
In place of seeds add the herb mixture and a dot of butter in each
pocket. Place another layer of tomatoes on top. Drizzle with olive oil.
Put ¼ cup water in bottom of pan, cover and cook on low for 45 minutes.
Serves 4-6.
I hadn't planned to go anywhere in
New York. It was Sunday, September 27th. Monday was Yom Kippur and the city was
quiet. I decided to walk downtown with my new camera and photograph whatever I
saw, and since I like to photograph people, I headed for Broadway. I had been
in hiding during the summer, swimming every day in a lake near Sag Harbor and
reading thick biographies by the lakeside. I decided to replace swimming with
walking, and my dog-eared copies of
James Atlas' Bellow and Deirdre Bair's
Jung with a camera. I got hungry and found a Chinese
eatery in SoHo where I photographed a gorgeous couple having coffee at the
table behind me, and then was drawn to a nearby art gallery.
The exhibit on view was tiny and consisted
of black and white photos of Russia in the l960s. Much to my
surprise, I found myself looking at the work of one of Joseph Brodsky's closest
friends, the photographer Lev Poliakov, who had taken the last picture of
Joseph in Leningrad on the morning before he went into exile in l972.
Joseph had written the introduction to one of Lev's books of photos: Russia, A Portrait. His essay, "In
Praise of Grey," contains this beautiful passage: "For grey is the
color of time and time's wardrobe here knows very few changes."
Poliakov's photographs were in the
old-fashioned 8" by l0" size and depicted, in a 50-millimeter
straight-on lens-way, ordinary scenes of people: in an alley in a small town,
with farm supplies on roads between farm fields, or gazing out of windows. It
was up to the viewer to slowly comprehend what these scenes revealed, a harsh
yet dignified survival or maybe, more accurately, a survival without the
ability to compare itself to other survivals, a locked-in life, a given.
Brodsky's essay continues: "A great mistake for a photographer is to bring
his color film here. The net result would be like Turner'd talkies..." I
knew Joseph and remember him telling me that his father wanted to join the navy
but was prevented from doing so by the state because he was Jewish and that he had
worked, upon occasion, as a news photographer.
Clearly, judging from the essay, Brodsky knew the craft. Writing on Poliakov,
he adds: "A quarter of a century ago this photographer himself was part of
the landscape he was depicting, and the material he had at his disposal was
manufactured by this country's equally gray extension: Agfa, in the DDR."
The exhibit included a magnificent
1964 photograph of Anna Akmatova in Kamarovo, printed in 1974 as a silver
gelatin print, as well as a wonderful 1981 photograph of Brodsky in Maine.
I wanted to photograph the photographs and post them but Andrew C.
Sarewitz, the gallery director whose family is from Russia, said I should ask
the photographer first and that Poliakov would probably be stopping by soon.
While waiting, Andrew mesmerized me with his knowledge of Russian Noncomformist
Art. He brought out from storage a small drawing by Boris
Sveshnikov, made at the Vetlosian camp, near Ukhta, 1,200 kilometers northeast
of Moscow in the "Komi Autonomous Region," a place that sounds eerie
and very cold. Rather than lines made by a single sweep of the pen, Sveshnikov,
who was an art student before he was sent to Stalin’s gulag at 19,
broke his lines into tiny feather-marks so that a scene emerged as if it were
almost shaking. Andrew gave me a book: Painting
for the Grave: The Early Work of
Boris Sveshnikov,
(image, right) a catalogue from the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers in
New Brunswick, New Jersey. Lev Poliakov didn't return to the gallery
that afternoon. When I left the Mimi Ferzt gallery I wanted to "see"
the streetas Lev Poliakov might had seen what was right before him in 1960s Russia.
Star Black is a poet and visual artist. She is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Ghostwood.
Her photographs are in the Berg Collection of the New York Public
Library and the Library of Congress. Her collages have been exhibited
in various galleries in New York City and Long Island. She lives in New York City.
Congratulations to David Yezzi, for The Swallow Anthology of New America Poets. To celebrate, Yezzi is hosting a reading this Wednesday night, 7:00 PM, at Unnameable Books, 600 Vanderbilt Avenue, Brooklyn (718) 789-1534. Yezzi will be joined by Pricilla Becker, Joshua Mehigan, and Mark Wunderlich.
Thunder storms shock and roll through Seoul over the past few nights and days, scrubbing the skies and streets and electrifying leaves through the parks. My roommate and I often walk to the park. As we get closer, even the sidewalks turn soft green.
There are over 3.85 million Parks in Korea. Why should there be any less? Many of these are in Seoul. Most of them
are people. Some of them are public. I notice as I walk that there is a person in every park. Is there a park in every person?
Both Lorca and Rilke wrote poems in Parks. Rosa Parks.
What is your favorite poem written in, about, or on a Park?
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.
