The Best American Poetry

Monsieur Hulot, Mademoiselle Heather, Au Revoir [by Simon Barraclough]

A couple of years ago, after reading some Eliot and watching some Jacques Tati, I thought it would be a smashing idea to write a parodic blend of the two and it started thus:

The Hulot Men

Mistah Hulot—lui mort.

We are the Hulot men

We are the French men

Smoking together

Pipe bowls filled with straw. 

but it didn't get much further, thankfully. But another entanglement of poetry and Tati has come together in this image of Monsieur Hulot's brother-in-law's swanky new car in Mon Oncle:

for the cover of Heather Phillipson's new book is inspired by this vehicle. Regardez-vous:

and this cover has already had an article devoted to it in Art Review (one of the perks of being a practising artist as well as a poet).

The reason I mention all this is that last night was the London launch of Instant-flex 718 (Bloodaxe) at the Art Review Bar just off Old Street ('Silicone Roundabout' as almost nobody calls it) and the great and the good (although I prefer the term 'the out and the about') gathered to start up this gorgeously hued vehicle and drive it away.

The first words I heard out of Heather Phillipson's mouth, back in 2007, were:

The only men it's safe for me to love are dead –

O'Hara, Stevens, Berryman.

when I read with her at The Poetry Café in Covent Garden and I became a fan at that moment. These are the opening two lines from 'Devoted, Hopelessly', which appears in the book. By the way, the title refers to the type of glue used to bind the book. I could talk about how the title and some of the poems inside speak of the materiality of language as used by the poet. But I won't. 

What I will say is that this debut collection contains many hilarious, touching, surprising, and intriguing poems with wonderful titles like 'German Phenomenology Makes Me Want to Strip and Run through North London', 'Red Slugs in Every Irrelevant Direction', You're an Architect and I Want to Make Dinner for You' and 'Actually I'm Simply Trying to Find My Dressing Gown Sash'. 

I like a launch to be more of a party than a reading and Heather chose to read a single poem, pushing the needle of the 'launchometer' almost as far away from the 'reading' end of the 'party – reading' scale as it is possible to do. But she left us wanting more, which is always a good thing. 

Another good thing is that four of us peeled off to eat fish and chips at Kennedy's on Whitecross Street, which is worth a visit if you're ever out East.

So. As Monsieur Hulot departs at the end of Mon Oncle to allow his nephew to bond with his formerly stuffy father, Monsieur Arpel, so must I depart at the end of my week as guest blogger. It's been a pleasure and there were many other things I wanted to write about, like how can we get people to stop saying "x won the Internet"? but perhaps I will continue with these over at Mo' Worse Blues.

Au revoir. I leave you with an apposite poem from Heather Phillipson.

The Distance between England and America

Much could begin like this: a large man,

tie slackened, voice buoyed up by altitude.

My mind's elsewhere –

the air-conditioning. It's cold.

Above the Atlantic he bellows long vowels to me,

and I'm cabined, window-seated, polite.

With my English tone, I'm inadvertantly provocative –

No more salted pretzels for me, thanks Jeff.

 

At the sound of Charles Darwin's bassoon,

earthworms, apparently, writhed.

Jeff booms: Pittsburgh, golf clubs, his search for a wife.

I twist in my seat – suggest something,

in my movement, of all evolution.

His blanket folds back like an invitation

to navy shadows and polyester.

Heat and anything could happen under there.

 

Oh, take your loafers off, Jeff –

throw them in the aisle.

Your gusto can conquer my boredom, our bed can be the sky.

It's warming up. We won't be sleeping.

For almost nine hours beneath United Airlines covers

we'll share everything but thought.

In the morning, white bread rolls and Columbus, Ohio.

Women distribute plastic cutlery in the night. 

 

For more information on Heather, click here.

 

 

 

Bank Holidays, Bunking Off, Pasolini [by Simon Barraclough]

Yesterday was a Bank Holiday in the UK. This is a day we occasionally grant to our banks so that they can take a breather from refusing to lend to businesses, insisting on unnecessary payment protection schemes, finding ways to turn public bailout money into private bonuses, and so on. They need to replenish their batteries.

And the rest of us need to go have lunch in cafés attached to museums and galleries. For a freelancer, depending on one's success or commitment, either every day is a Bank Holiday or Bank Holidays remain something that only other people enjoy. I must confess, I bunked off and practised my F major scale.

I also had time to reflect on a recent event I organised for the BFI (British Film Institute). The BFI has a generous and welcoming attitude to poets and it enjoys exploring the links between poetry and cinema. Over the last few years I've been involved in their poetry/film crossover event 'O Dreamland', which invited poets to write about their digital archive (The Mediatheque); I launched my collaborative Hitchcock homage Psycho Poetica at the BFI in 2010; and last year Isobel Dixon, Chris McCabe and I premiered The Debris Field there.

This year I was asked to organise something for their recent epic Pasolini retrospective and I considered various approaches. I thought of poetically 're-staging' Theorem using six poets playing each of the main characters, and I also toyed with comparing the 'swinging Sixties' of Pasolini, Antonioni and Bertolucci.

But in the end I took my lead from Pier Paolo himself and his love of the literary portmanteau movie, so I suggested A New Decameron: ten films, ten poets, ten film clips, one evening of poetic and filmic enthusiasm. 

I asked nine other poets and writers to join me: Jane Draycott, Charles Lambert, Glyn Maxwell, John McCullough, Valeria Melchioretto, Luca Paci, Cristina Viti, Stephen Watts and Chrissy Williams. We were also lucky enough to have Rosa Mucignat of King's College London reading some of Pasolini's poetry in the Friulian language, with translations by Cristina Viti.

The sold-out show was funny, moving and powerful by turns and I wanted to give you a little taster by posting Chrissy Williams's poem and a film clip here. Chrissy freely admits to being obsessed with Pasolini's clownish muse, the great Ninetto Davoli. I'm currently talking to the BFI and the poets about getting all the work online in the near future.

First a small sample of the irrepressible Davoli from Chrissy's chosen film The Canterbury Tales.

 

And now her poem.

Ninarieddo

for Davoli in The Canterbury Tales

"col tuo sorriso, fulmineo e buffo" — Pasolini

"My only enemy is time" — Chaplin

 

I step to the screen

with your face so big, a kiss

with my arms reached up

would wrap around me whole.

Slip tongue, slip lip to the camera.

I fell in love with a face once

until it swallowed me.

 

And all him loved that looked upon his face

That each him loved who looked upon his face

No length of time or death may this deface

 

Step, nod to the screen and wink the bride.

You, happy as a goldfish in a glade.

You, little tramp with laughter for a face.

The bride winks back, slips back into a stolen moment.

Slip tongue to the world and hope for many moments.

 

and your face    is a song, fool

your eyes         light a dance, fool

lip-tight             on the laugh of language

                        on the laughter

 

Step hip to dance with shadows till it's time

and it's always time to dance with shadows.

We dance against the day the music slips.

We dance the laugh of lips in bandages.

 

Thy face is turned in a new array

Your face is mottled in a new array

 

No step is left behind,

just kicked in a new way.

Stories shift, dreamed high,

kicked about in an angel's face

which changes, because

everything is always changing

although it stays the same.

No story is left behind,

just slipped on in a new way.

 

and I'll see you here       again and again.

I'll love you here             again       again.

I'll fall and catch my heart         in your constant face.

 

I fell in love with a clown once,

with a fool. Now I am the new clown

of no good, who falls with a cane

as time rearranges the stories of your face.

 

Is the face enough?

Is any one face ever enough?

 

In all his face there was no drop of blood

With his face pale and with a heavy cheer

Now list you down with face all pale of hue

 

I fell in love with your face once,

with the face I found, and I will follow it, 

love, through all our familiar stories.

 

More about Chrissy Williams here.

Thumbs [by John Beer]

 

The work of criticism is always, let’s say, ephemeral; Saint-Beuve’s name survives only because Proust was against him. Even more fleeting are the reactions of the mere reviewer. “No serious critic can devote himself, frequently, exclusively, and indefinitely, to reviewing works most of which inevitably cannot bear, would even be misrepresented by, review in depth,” sniffs Renata Adler in her screed against Pauline Kael.

So the outpouring of emotion in the wake of Roger Ebert’s death might seem a transitory thing; already, the passing of the Iron Lady (of whom more later) has moved him off the screens. The rise of Siskel and Ebert neatly paralleled in time the switch from the decade-long Prague Spring of New Hollywood to the blockbuster-driven economy still churning its way through the Marvel and DC lineups. Even if Ebert’s courage and openness in the face of his disfiguring illness and his resolute identity as a newspaper journalist in the twilight of that industry render him heroic, he and his partner might still seem like emblems in a narrative of cultural decline, banally and profitably celebrating the culture industry’s assembly line, whatever caveats they might have about individual products.

But I want to offer a different view. Sneak Previews and its successors enjoyed an astounding success, given how unpromising the show’s basic structure might have seemed: two untelegenic, middle-aged white guys bickering about movie clips. The show operated on the premise that arguing about culture could draw a mass audience. And it did. “Thumbs up or down” may have been the takeaway message, but both critics made clear that those decisions were made for reasons, and reasons that each would emphatically try to make the other acknowledge.

Maybe those arguments weren’t always the most sophisticated. And maybe the very act of treating Weekend at Bernie’s 2 as worthy of detailed consideration was as much a con as it was a tribute to critical open-mindedness. But in their humble way, Siskel and Ebert offered a model of rationality, one on which thinking wasn’t a matter of following an algorithm or asserting a purely subjective preference. In other words, it was a humanistic kind of education.

And it strikes me that poetry criticism, that much-lamented field, could do with more of a dose of At the Movies-style debate. We have our dramatic flareups, as with the fascinating byplay between Marjorie Perloff and Matvei Yankelevich last year. But too often, even when critical disagreements break out, they either proceed at an austere level of abstraction or wind up with people talking past one another. I’d love to see a pair of writers devote themselves to detailed and contentious consideration of recent books or poems of note. There are some excellent examples approximating this: Al Filreis’s Poem Talk, for instance, or the byplay between Christian Wiman and Don Share on the Poetry podcast, but I think there’s room for a similar effort that's neither tied to a particular publication nor emphasizing a scholarly conversation.

***

The use of thumbs in the poetic context, though, might have its risks:

What a thrill—

My thumb instead of an onion.

The top quite gone

Except for a sort of hinge

 

Of skin,

A flap like a hat,

Dead white.

Then that red plush.

(Sylvia Plath, "Cut")

Thanks for the Memory (It's lyricist Leo Robin's birthday!)

 

Happy Birthday Robert Frost

Who says poetry makes nothing happen?

-- sdh

Zero Dark Thirty: Katherine Bigelow Was Robbed [by Stacey Harwood]

David finally convinced me to see Zero Dark Thirty, a movie I avoided because in general I have a low tolerance for violent movies (insomnia, nightmares).  Now, having seen it, I have a theory of why there were so many complaints and objections. 

Some critics claim the film is an inaccurate depiction of how the CIA, by using torture, got crucial evidence in the hunt for Usama Bin Laden.  The complainers say that the CIA did not gain this intelligence as a result of using torture. Therefore, any depiction of waterboarding would mislead viewers. Does the movie raise a means-and-ends question, with torture the questionable means toward a justified ends?  It’s an arguable point, but condemning the film for this reason implies a standard of political correctness by which a great many movies people cherish would fall to the wayside.  Moreover, that’s not really what fuss is about. 

Here’s my theory and I’m curious to know what others think: Complaints against ZDT are coded misogyny – a protest against the idea that a woman might be a CIA agent, doing a manly man’s job, with a soldier’s stoicism and fortitude in a movie directed by a woman.  Maya happens to be beautiful – it’s a movie, after all – but the work she and colleagues do is as far removed as can be from the activities of acceptable feminist models, such as virtuous moms who oppose drunk driving, brainy attorneys who put up with philandering husbands, and courageous whistle blowers. Furthermore, war movies are the provenance of male directors.  One such movie (Hurt Locker) is fine, but two? It’s time to go home Ms. Bigelow and make Something’s Gotta Give.

Some have gone so far as to say that Zero Dark Thirty is an advertisement for the use of torture. As proof, they point to the demeanor of Maya, the CIA agent responsible for piecing together the evidence that led to Bin Laden’s hiding place.  She is, say the critics, not sufficiently undone by the scenes of torture.  Did I see a different movie? Maya is repelled by what she sees.  She flinches, backs away, crosses her arms in front of her body, and after one session runs to the bathroom to collect herself.  What would it take for the audience to believe that she is discomfited by the torture?  I know!  She should have become hysterical. That is the expected reaction of a woman who is upset.  Instead, she behaves like the trained CIA professional she is and uses her will to maintain her composure. 

In time Maya appears to grow comfortable with “enhanced interrogation” techniques. Yet Katherine Bigelow is careful to show the psychic consequences for the interrogators. Maya’s senior colleague grows weary and has to quit to “do something normal.” But people who think this is story about torture miss the boat. 

Zero Dark Thirty is a serious, gripping, and masterly telling of the long and difficult quest for a mass murderer in hiding. There is violence, but I’ve seen much worse.  The only violence that I found disturbing happens at the very beginning of the movie, when over a dark screen we hear the panicked 911 calls of the people trapped in the World Trade Center on 9/11.  They still haunt me.

Everyone Should Be a Critic [by Megin Jimenez]

I like it when someone doesn't like a movie (a novel, a painting, a poem). I like it so much more than anyone's bland acceptance, like the word "good," when presented with a manmade creation. A friend's passionate aversion to a work of art conjures my defense of it. Sometimes it changes my mind. It pushes me beyond sitting silently with only my unformed experience of the book (the play, the album).

 

"Connoisseur" by Norman Rockwell

Having a less-than-favorable opinion about a work of art does not mean you don't respect the artist, or that you can't recognize effort exerted or talent on evidence. It means that you considered the work on its own particular terms (i.e., its intentions, time and place) and you had your own reaction to it. It's a risk to say you didn't like something. 

 

(I guess a disclaimer is needed here: I'm not referring to personal attacks or opinions based on ignorance, which are really the worst. I am also not referring to comment trolls. I compulsively read comments; it's a curse, really, on my internet life. I have discovered people will have comment wars over anything, including a recipe for borscht or a YouTube video with instructions for replacing an oven door. I don't like that. The sort of critique I'm getting at is rarer.)

Needless to say, a friend, a party-mate, a colleague liking something with zeal is most welcome, too, but only if the approval is articulated to the same degree as the intense aversion (somehow people find the words more easily when they dislike). Tell me what was good about it.

Often people don't like to disagree on a work of art; they will back away from the conversation, as if disagreeing about a movie were a form of aggression or the argument were personal. As if aesthetics were on the list of topics to avoid at social occasions, along with politics, religion and sex: but then, what else is there? Please invite me to a party where the talk is mostly along the lines of politics, religion, sex and aesthetics!

Artist hosting a dinner party  

The saying goes that critics are failed artists. Because they cannot do anything, they critique others, spewing envy and frustration. I go back and forth with a friend who thinks that if you're not making something, you're not entitled to pronounce your own snippy thoughts, because making something--for example, directing even a crappy Hollywood movie--is hard. You haven't directed a movie, who are you to say it was crappy? To this, I say, Is there no room for the thinking viewer? We're being asked to give our attention, our time. Are we then supposed to withhold any thoughts it inspires, or offer only the favorable ones?

 I do think it's a different story when the critic represents a greater authority, like the notorious Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times Book Review. I can understand a novelist objecting to the fact that the king-maker, the executioner, has never struggled through writing a book herself.... But official critics shouldn't be rejected wholesale. They often account for the only culture coverage we get in the mass media, and they can help bring attention to worthy projects. They can serve the same function to your own thinking as a friend liking or not liking something. You just have to feel the courage as a nobody-reader to disagree with all of them, too, if necessary.

I don't mean that I would like to see everyone start a blog featuring their Very Important Opinions about what to read or watch. But wouldn't it be grand if a forum where people were expressing their thoughts and preferences, say, a Facebook feed, yielded more strong opinions about movies (books, etc.) and fewer photos of what is being eaten? I can appreciate a picture of a decadent meal in the way I can appreciate a funny picture of a cat. But sometimes it feels like the picture of the food has taken the place that an experience of art used to occupy. It confers the eater with a sense of having accomplished something, said something, of having acquired the creative spark used to create the food. Except that with the food, unlike a performance, what that person will be doing with it, basically, is putting it in his face and saying, "Mmmm." ...The question is whether people are afraid to speak strong opinions (fear of fewer thumbs-up "likes", fear of seeming unlikable), or whether we've lost the patience to find the language to express the opinion. 

Finding the words gets you on the path to pursuing your own sensibility, to go beyond passive consumption. That sounds like work, but is actually a thrill. It means going beyond categorizing books as good or bad, or art as high-brow or low-brow, or music as hip or lame (because some critic said so); it means being able to find what nourishes your thinking life, your sense of beauty, your cares, your sensibility in particular.

If you happen to make poems, drawings, those sorts of things, a strong reaction to a work is also a clue to your own aesthetics. You may not like something because it's the opposite of what you want to be doing with your own work. That is valuable information in a time when there's such a bewildering explosion of varying criteria for what constitutes art.

***

Thanks to Best American Poetry Blog folk, Stacey Harwood and David Lehman, for having me back this week! 

"Isn't it romantic?" (A-B-A-G-F-E-D-C-C-A-A-B flat. . .)

 

Isn't it romantic? A very catchy strain! I think I'll take that down. A-B-A-G-F-E-D-C-C-A-A-B flat. . .

"Zero Dark Thirty" [by DL]

I'm not an Academy member and I don't have a vote, but if I did I would cast it unhesitatingly for "Zero Dark Thirty" for the best picture award. And I lament that Kathryn Bigelow, who directed the film, did not get nominated.

While I enjoyed "Argo," the other best-picture nominee depicting covert ops), it is, in the end, a formula movie, spiced up by Hollywood's valentine to itself in the form of a move within a movie, a farceur's look at Farsi life, with the jovial irreverence of Alan Arkin and John Goodman. It has a poitically correct framing device concluding with a Jimmy Carter voiceover that reminded me of the mock-editorial that may have cost an enterprising Times or Globe man his job: "More Mush from the Wimp." The movie also has a conventional narrative arc, ending in a crescendo of suspense. The joke signaled by the title ("Argo fuck yourself") goes a long way toward neutralizing one's reservations.

"Zero Dark Thirty" is a more complicated, darker, less conventional movie. The arc is there but is ambiguous: the main character, a CIA agent  played by Jessica Chastain (left), achieves her aims but is last seen crying in an airplane in which she is the only passenger. The killing of Bin Laden does not override all the losses she (and the nation) have endured along the way.

The movie meticulously shows how intelligence works. It is highly dangerous and anything but glamorous. There are false scents, blind alleys, red herrings, b;atant lies, and the intelligence agent has no choice but to follow these even if, as may happen, a calamity may result. The hoodwinking of a sympathetic CIA agent, a friend of our heroine, leads to her murder and that of several of her colleagues.

The movie has been the victim of a smear campaign. Early on it shows scenes of waterboarding. The movie does not endorse this method of interrogation; it simply depicts it. Objections to the film's violence are also overblown. The violence pales next to the torture tactics used by the French in Algeria and shown graphically in more than one affecting movie. The conclusion of the movie, with Bin Laden finally located and killed, is managed without sensationalism. There are no celebrations and parades. The movie is as somber as the subject and it is dedicated quite eloquently to the victims of 9/11 in NY, of 7/11 in London, of other terrroist attacks across the globe (Pakistan, Afghanistan) and to the heroic sacrifices made by first responders.

Do not let the organized campaign against this extraordinarily intelligent and well-made movie deter you from seeing it. -- DL

How to Succeed in Hollywood in Eleven Easy Lessons [by Preston Sturges]

A pretty girl is better than an ugly one.
A leg is better than an arm.
A bedroom is better than a living room.
An arrival is better than a departure.
A birth is better than a death.
A chase is better than a chat.
A dog is better than a landscape.
A kitten is better than a dog.
A baby is better than a kitten.
A kiss is better than a baby.
A pratfall is better than anything.

-- Preston Sturges