The Best American Poetry

Black Bart, Po8 (by Laura Orem)

On August 3. 1877, a stagecoach was held up at gunpoint while traveling from Port Arena to Duncan's Mills, California, by a man disguised by rags and cloths covering his head and body.  He was notable, however, for his calm manner and the politeness with which he conducted the robbery. In a deep, pleasant, and courteous voice, he requested of the stage driver, "Please throw down the box."  After emptying the cashbox of its cash, the robber politely took his leave and disappeared into the brush, but not before leaving a piece of paper behind. On it was written:

"I've labored long and hard for bread,
For honor, and for riches,
But on my corns too long you've tred,
You fine-haired sons of bitches.

- Black Bart, 1877"

Underneath the poem was this note: Driver, give my respects to our old friend, the other driver. I really had a notion to hang my old disguise hat on his weather eye. While it probably didn't take the sting out of being robbed, at least the stagecoach driver could take some comfort in knowing that he'd been held up by one of the most colorful figures in the Old West: Charles Boles, aka Black Bart the Poet.

Charles Boles is believed to have been born in England in 1829. At the age of two, he emigrated to New York with his parents, where his father set up a farm. In 1849, Boles joined thousands of other hopefuls in the California Gold Rush - apparently without too much success, since by 1854 he was back East to get married, and by 1860 he and his wife Mary were living on a farm in Illinois.

At the start of the Civil War, Boles enlisted in the 116th Illinois Regiment. He served with distinction, was wounded in the battle of Vicksburg,and received two honorary promotions, to second and first lieutenant. After the war, however, Boles couldn't seem to settle back into farming. He left his wife and wandered West to try his luck at prospecting. After a while, the letters home stopped, and his family believed he had died.

Nothing is heard of him from 1871 to 1875, when a stagecoach was robbed in Calaveras County, California, by a mild-mannered, well-spoken bandit disguised in rags. Charles Boles had become Black Bart, gentleman thief and poet. (Boles apparently had cribbed his moniker from a dime-novel serial .)

For the next eight years, stagecoaches up and down California were relieved of their money by Black Bart. Victims remarked upon his pleasant demeanor, refined wit, and lack of profanity. When one stage driver asked him, "How much did you make," he replied ruefully, "Not that much for the chances I take."  On one occasion, after a robbery, he appeared at a lonely farmhouse, looking to buy his dinner; the family's 14-year-old daughter later described him to detectives as "intellectual in conversation, well-flavored with polite jokes."  After a while, Boles began leaving poems behind, signing some of them "Black Bart PO8," and newspapermen of the day fell over themselves to publish them. Black Bart was as colorful as any fictional character, but the best part was that he was real.

Boles was finally captured in 1883, when the laundry mark on a handkerchief he dropped at a robbery led police to his boarding house in San Francisco. The detectives were clearly impressed by him. In their report, they wrote that Black Bart was "a person of great endurance. Exhibited genuine wit under most trying circumstances, and was extremely proper and polite in behavior. Eschews profanity." Despite his charm, Boles was convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to prison for eight years. He served four years at San Quentin before being release early for good behavior. He assured the mob of reporters waiting for him that he was through with both robbing and poetry.

Black Bart, however, couldn't just fade slowly away. In February 1888, a month after his release, Boles' room in his boarding house was found vacated. While there were many copycat robbers after him, no definitive trace of Black Bart or Charles Boles was ever found.

from a stagecoach robbery on July 25, 1878 in Oroville, CA:

"Here I lay me down to sleep
To wait the coming morrow,
Perhaps success, perhaps defeat,
And everlasting sorrow.
Let come what will, I'll try it on,
My condition can't be worse;
And if there's money in that box
'Tis money in my purse.

Black Bart
PO8"

 

A Birthday (by Laura Orem)

Today would have been Sylvia Plath's 77th birthday. She left an astonishing number of good-to-excellent poems for someone who died at 30, a testament not only to her talent but to her dedication to her craft and iron Yankee work-ethic. Easily, so easily, she could have been writing still - imagine that raw voice honed by five more decades of experience and maturity.

Arguably, she is the single most influential poet of the mid-20th century. Not just her poems, written at the very edge of daring (how many of us are that psychically brave or foolhardy?), but her endlessly re-hashed and microscopically-examined life. Part of this the result of her own myth-making - at its best, her writing is so powerful, so compelling, that it creates its own epic biography. Part of this comes from the mythologizing by her own mother (her sanitized Letters Home, edited by Aurelia Plath, was a best-seller and obligatory reading by young female poets when it came out in 1978), and by the endless books and articles written about her. Anyone who knows anything about Plath knows all the details of her life: her suicide attempts, her marriage, her children, her death - and everyone has an opinion. The story continues into the present - it was just this year that her son, Nick Hughes, a biologist and expert on fishes, the baby of whom she wrote, "Love set you going like a fat gold watch," hanged himself in Alaska. Tragic, yes - but how oddly personally tragic this death felt to so many! We feel proprietary over her, as if somehow her story is part of our own.

But how can we really know someone we didn't know? The answer is, we can't . We can know the facts of Sylvia Plath's life, and we can know her work. The rest is filling in our own blanks, making Plath into something we each want her to be, something that fits our own mythology. We didn't (most of us, anyway) know her personally, and we don't, we can't, know her now, 46 years after her death. The details of a life aren't a life. And this detritus of detail and what we project onto Plath can obscure the poetry. When she writes, in the first line of "The Jailer," My night sweats grease his breakfast plate, we are pleased because we get exactly to whom she is referring and why; like teenagers whispering at a lunch table, we are in on the secret.  But maybe we are so invested in the backstory, the poem itself is compromised - Yeah, you tell him, Sylvia. Kick his poetic ass.

Sylvia Plath wasn't a symbol, and she wasn't ours. She was a gifted, difficult, dedicated, passionate, troubled, and brilliant woman.  Other than that, we cannot presume to say what went on in her heart. (After all, are we just what we write?) But what we can know is the work, because what we have is the work. Look, I like gossip as much as the next person. I've read the biographies and I've read her journals and letters and I know all the juicy bits. But today, on her birthday, I'd like to try to honor her poetry by untethering it from all this - to read it the way poems should be read, on their own merit, good or bad. And when Plath is good, she is transcendent. Today, I grieve in the only way I have any right to - for the poems that did not get written, for the work we will never have.

Poppies in October

Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts.
Nor the woman in the ambulance
Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly --

A gift, a love gift
Utterly unasked for
By a sky

Palely and flamily
Igniting its carbon monoxides, by eyes
Dulled to a halt under bowlers.

O my God, what am I
That these late mouths should cry open
In a forest of frost, in a dawn of cornflowers.

Written October 27, 1962

The Amazing Amelia (by Laura Orem)

Seventy-two years ago, Amelia Earhart flew into the wild blue yonder and never returned.  What happened to her has remained a topic of conjecture and much argument over the past seven decades. A new movie, "Amelia," starring Hillary Swank and Richard Gere, is out on Friday, and myriad books, articles, and documentaries have been produced to examine her story.

Most aviation experts agree, however, that what happened to her was simply the result of a miscalculation. Earhart was on the second-to-last leg of her round-the-world flight, from Lae, New Guinea to Howland Island, in her shiny silver Lockheed Electra. Without radar and with primitive (by our standards) radio equipment, the 2500-mile journey over open water between Lae and Howland was extremely risky (her route is traced above left). On top of this, Howland is little more than an uninhabited speck in the ocean - only 6,500 feet long and 2,000 feet at its widest point, and almost invisible from the air (right). Earhart was to land on Howland and get resupplied in fuel and food by the Itasca, a US Coast Guard cutter waiting off the island. But Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, operating by dead-reckoning and a compass, miscalculated the location of tiny Howland Island. After a series of weakening and ever more desperate radio signals picked up by the Itasca (Earhart had replaced the plane's original radio with a state-of-the-art model but was apparently unfamiliar with how to operate it correctly, so she did not hear the Itasca's repeated attempts to contact her), she either ditched or crashed the Electra into the water when it ran out of gas. In this area, the ocean reaches depths of over 17,000 feet (that's about three miles), so it is not surprising that no wreckage was ever found.

Some have called Earhart a publicity-hound or the pawn of her fame-hungry husband, George Putnam, and claim that she does not deserve the accolades she has received, both during her lifetime and posthumously. But a careful look at her life shows that she was no charlatan - she was an important figure in aviation history: brave, accomplished, and trailblazing. She was only the 16th woman in the world to receive a professional pilot's license. She broke the woman's world altitude record in 1922, reaching a height of 14,000 feet. She was the first woman to fly an autogyro (the precursor to a helicopter) and was the first person, male or female, to fly one across the United States. She was the first woman to fly the Atlantic solo -in 1928, one year after Lindbergh. She was the first person to fly the Atlantic twice. And on and on.

Earhart loomed large in my family - because, at the age of 15, my father met her. He was a member of an aviation-enthusiasts club, and in 1932, they heard that Earhart was going to be at Floyd Bennet Air Field on Long Island. So they made the trek from Brooklyn out to meet her. My father said she was gracious and kind, and he treasured the picture she posed for until the day he died. He carefully colorized it, then wrote out her accomplishments on the back, adding, in July 1937, the details of her final flight.

What Happened to Hot Toddy? (by Laura Orem)

Okay, I can't leave it alone. For your consideration: Hollywood murder mystery #3.

Blonde, voluptuous, and bubbly Thelma Todd was a popular film comedienne of the late silent/early sound era. Born in Lawrence, MA in 1906 (some accounts say 1905), she was a good student and wanted to become a schoolteacher, until she began entering beauty pageants in her late teens. Her exuberant beauty and poise got her noticed, and, after winning the "Miss Massachusetts" pageant in 1925, she was invited to Hollywood by a talent agent to begin working in movies.

Thelma found work right away in silent films, but it wasn't until the talkies arrived that she started to get some decent roles. She had a light, pleasant voice that recorded well, and Hal Roach cast her in several Laurel and Hardy features. Known as "the Ice Cream Blonde" and "Hot Toddy," she also gave a memorable turn in as Mrs. Miles Archer in the first version of The Maltese Falcon in 1931.  But it was in comedies where she really found her calling, proving herself a match for some of the best comedians of the day. Besides Laurel and Hardy, she worked with Harry Langdon, Joe E. Brown, Buster Keaton, and, most famously, the Marx Brothers in Monkey Business and Horse Feathers (right).

Unfortunately, her personal life was less successful. In 1932, she married Pat DeCiccio ( below right, with Thelma), a small-time hood with tenuous mob connections and a vile temper. He frequently beat her, and the marriage ended in 1934.Thelma then became involved with director Roland West. Thelma, savvy in business dealings, partnered with West in a Pacific Palisades restaurant, Thelma Todd's Sidewalk Cafe. It was successful with both the Hollywood crowd and tourist clientele. Thelma and West lived in adjoining apartments above the business, renting a garage up a long outdoor staircase behind the building for their automobiles. Their relationship, however, was complicated by Thelma's drinking and partying.  West apparently felt that Thelma was neglecting the business in favor of her social life, and the two frequently argued.

Thelma Todd's Sidewalk Cafe

Thelma Todd's life came to an abrupt end on or about Monday, December 16, 1935.

Collage and Poetry, Part Deux (by Laura Orem)

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a piece on poetry and collage and called for poets who work in the genre to send me JPEGs of one or two pieces, as well as a few words on any connections they see between the two art forms. I've gotten some lovely pieces and very cool insights, but I'd like some more. So, if you haven't sent me anything, please do! I will post something in the next few weeks about the topic (sending me the pictures says you are giving me permission to post them here on Best American Poetry).

Send one or two images and your words of wisdom to me at lauraorem@gmail.com.

Thanks!

(Pablo Picasso)

"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. 

"Happy Autumn" (by Laura Orem)

Today is the first day of autumn. In keeping with that, and in recognition of the buzz around the new John Keats bio-pic, Bright Star, here is perhaps the most famous autumn poem of all. (Forget that Keats was short, slightly paunchy, and had a high-pitched Cockney voice and an overbite - the new movie presents him as dashingly doomed and romantically handsome. Poetic license.)

"To Autumn"

1.

    SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
        Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
    Conspiring with him how to load and bless
        With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
    To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
        And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
            To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
    With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
        And still more, later flowers for the bees,
        Until they think warm days will never cease,
            For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

                                            2.

    Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
        Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
    Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
        Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
    Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
        Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
            Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
    And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
        Steady thy laden head across a brook;
        Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
            Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

                                            3.

    Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
        Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
    While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
        And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
    Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
        Among the river sallows, borne aloft
            Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
    And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
        Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
        The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
           And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. 

Keats, intensity and overbite in evidence

"Poetry and Collage" (by Laura Orem)

As a poet and mixed-media artist, I've been mulling over the connection between poetry and collage. So many poets also work in collage/mixed media (Joe Brainard, Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, Star Black, David Lehman are just a few), and I wonder why. It can't be because all of us can't draw.

So what I would like to do is hear from poets who also work in this area. Send me a reasonably-sized JPEG image of one of your works, and a paragraph or two about why collage/mixed media, and what connections you see between the two disciplines (lauraorem@gmail.com). I'll collect and post your responses. (Sending the image means you are giving me permission to publish it one time here.)

I'll go first. Here's one of my mixed-media pieces:

 

"At Night, All Cats Are Gray" (2008). Subject to copyright. Do not reproduce without permission.

I'm looking forward to seeing your work and hearing what you think!

The Crickets of September (by Laura Orem)

The cricket's chirping changes in September. It gets less frenetic, more melancholic, as if announcing that summer is winding down. The nights turn cooler, and the daylight takes on a thinner, clearer, bluer tone. Even the birdsong diminishes, no longer the passion-filled tumbled notes of high summer, but now a subdued, pensive twitter as if it is time to think seriously about things. And, not yet distracted by apple-picking, pumpkin patches, and goblins, we get a little sad at the change.

A poem that echoes this mood is Stanley Kunitz' s "Touch Me." I saw him read this when it was still in manuscript; I remember being thrilled that a poet in his 90s actually had stuff in manuscript. And this particular poem reminds us that, even though autumn and then winter encroaches, in the heart there is always summer.

"Touch Me"

by Stanley Kunitz. From The Collected Poems

Summer is late, my heart.

Words plucked out of the air   

some forty years ago

when I was wild with love   

and torn almost in two

scatter like leaves this night   

of whistling wind and rain.   

It is my heart that’s late,

it is my song that’s flown.   

Outdoors all afternoon

under a gunmetal sky

staking my garden down,

I kneeled to the crickets trilling   

underfoot as if about

to burst from their crusty shells;   

and like a child again

marveled to hear so clear   

and brave a music pour

from such a small machine.   

What makes the engine go?   

Desire, desire, desire.

The longing for the dance   

stirs in the buried life.

One season only,

                        and it’s done.

So let the battered old willow

thrash against the windowpanes   

and the house timbers creak.   

Darling, do you remember

the man you married?  Touch me,
remind me who I am.

More Murder, Hollywood Style, or The Magnate Did It (by Laura Orem)

Last week, I wrote about the unsolved 1922 murder of director William Desmond Taylor. This week, I thought it would be fun to continue by  writing about another mysterious Hollywood death of the silent era, that of Thomas Ince.

Thomas Ince (below) was a film actor, director, and producer, sometimes called the "father of the Western." Born in 1882 to a family of stage actors, he began working in the infant film industry in New York in 1911. Ince is credited with inventing the concept of the "shooting script" and of planning out all aspects of production before shooting - at the time, movies were essentially made up as they were shot - and of redefining the producer's role as the overseer of production from start to finish, rather than just the financier of the film. In 1915, he moved to Santa Ynez Canyon, not far from Hollywood, and founded his own studio, Inceville, where his organized and carefully thought-out system of film-making produced some of the finest Westerns of the silent era. One of his greatest stars was the cowboy hero, William S. Hart. He also had a reputation for discovering and grooming new talent.

The mystery surrounding his death begins in November 1924, when Ince and his wife Nell were invited for a weekend cruise aboard William Randolph Hearst's yacht, the Oneida, to celebrate Ince's 43rd birthday. Besides Hearst and the Inces, also on board for the festivities were Hearst's mistress, the actress Marion Davies (right, with balloons, on board the Oneida); Charlie Chaplin, with whom Davies was rumored to be having an affair; the then-unknown columnist, Louella Parsons; the author Elinor Glyn; and assorted other hangers-on and wannabes who had somehow cadged a coveted invitation to hang out with Hollywood's high and mighty.

The boat left San Pedro on Saturday, November 15. Thomas and Nell Ince joined the cruise in San Diego on Sunday for Ince's birthday celebration. By early Monday morning - or maybe Tuesday - Ince was dead.

What happened? Well, that depended on whom you asked.