The Best American Poetry

Bach's Goldberg Variationzzzzzzzzzzzz (by Stacey Harwood)

Of Jerome Robbins's 90-minute ballet to J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations, New York Times dance critic Clive Barnes wrote:

Jerome Robbins's new ballet, seen for the first time in its final version at the New York State theater on Thursday night is a work of such amplitude and grandeur that it can make you fall in love with the human body all over again. What a piece of work is man! And with what ballets does Mr. Robbins celebrate that workmanship!

I was in the audience with my parents for the Sunday matinee following the Thursday night premiere. It was May, 1971. We sat in the 5th ring, where the seats were $1.00 and arranged in a single row along the railing (in which, during a previous attendance, I had carved my initials with a hairpin). My father insisted that watching ballet from that vantage point was ideal; you took in the entire stage and sometimes, depending upon how many dancers took the floor at once and the variations in their costumes and movements, you could imagine you were looking into a kaleidescope with its magical changing patterns.

The other day the local classical music station played the Goldberg Variations and I finally learned the story behind Bach's composition, comprising 30 variations on a theme. According to the program host, legend has it that Count Kaiserling, the Russian ambassador to the Saxon court, commissioned Bach to compose the piece, to be performed by Kaiserling's musician-in-service, Johann Gottlieb Goldberg. Kaiserling, it seems, was frequently troubled with insomnia, and requested Bach to write some reposeful keyboards pieces which Goldberg could perform as a soporific.

It pleased me to hear this anecdote. Though I was in the audience for a historic performance, and though the original cast of the Goldberg Variations included some of the most celebrated dancers of all time -- Sara Leland, Gelsey Kirkland, John Clifford, Patricia McBride, Helgi Tomason, Karen Von Aroldingen, Peter Martins, Anthony Blum, Merrill Ashley-- I missed the show. As soon as the curtain lifted and the pianist struck the first cords, I placed my head on the railing and fell asleep, only to awaken, 90 minutes later, in time for the record seventeen curtain calls.

-- sdh

Quote of the Day: Mark Lasswell on Kate Chopin, WSJ May 25-26, 2013

Readers will have to forgive Mr. Cambell his obsessions. He brings race into the book with a dull frequency, sometimes to unintentionally comic effect. We're told that black St. Louisans including Chuck Berry, Miles Davis and Tina Turner "struggled for recognition behind such noted white St. Louisans as Williwam S. Burroughs, Kate Chopin, and T.S.Eliot." This is a double-bankshot of academic claptrap. Burroughs and Eliot barely count as sons of St. Louis, and Kate Chopin--who was she again? Oh, yes: a late-19th-century fiction writer retroactively declared interesting by feminist reputation fabricators. Only a captive of the faculty lounge could be under the impression that Kate Chopin was ever so celebrated that her fame overshadowed the genius behind "Johnny B. Goode."

                 -- Mark Lasswell, Wall Street Journal review of "The Gateway Arch" by Tracy Campbell (May 25-26, 2013)

-- sdh

A Feast for Bards: 13 Favorite Food Poems by Stacey Harwood (from Saveur.com)

Credit: Hiroko Ishikawa

(Author's note:  A couple of months ago Saveur.com asked for my favorite food poems along with a brief introduction. This piece ran yesterday.)

Had he but world enough, and time, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin would have added a selection of gastronomical poems to his  magnum opus The Physiology of Taste to demonstrate “the inseparable alliance which has always existed between the arts of speaking well and eating well.”

Scratch a poet, find a gourmand.  “The true Muses are cooks,” writes Charles Simic. Every aspect of gastronomy, from planting to harvest to cooking to eating, has inspired poets for centuries; poets are sensualists, and these are among life's most sensual experiences.

Like much gastronomical writing, poetry about food is often about something else: memory, sex, joy, love, shame, longing, loss. The simple detail of food can concentrate the emotion in a poem, like the couple cooking for themselves alone in William Matthews' Misgivings. A food reference can quicken our most primitive emotions: Keats's stanza-long description of wine, "Tasting of Flora and the country-green, / Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!" makes longing palpable. 

Continue reading here. 

What are your favorite food poems?  I'd love to add to my collection.  -- sdh

What I Wore by Stacey Harwood

“My loose rule of thumb: if I don’t know the designer, I don’t wear the clothes.”
     Amy Fine Collins, What I Wore, April 12, 2013, The New York Times

Wed, April 3. 

Worked at home. I haven’t done the laundry in a while so I borrowed a pair of boxers from the stash my bf keeps here. He’s only worn them a couple of times. (Yes, they’re clean) I love the plaid.  I paired them with a vintage Old Navy tank top and flip flops from Ricky’s with a really cool animal print pattern except they’re mostly pink. 

Thursday, April 4. 

I’ll probably go out at some point so I went with jeans that I got a couple of years ago at Housing Works? The one in Hells Kitchen? They’re Sevens?  I think new they would have been, like, $200 but the zipper was broken so I only paid $5).  The first owner was probably short because on me they pass as capris  which I never thought I could pull off because I’m a little top heavy and short-waisted but they work! I like mixing high and low so I paired the jeans with a purple tunic from H&M  and sneakers that one of my neighbors left by the mailboxes.

Friday, April 5.

Turns out I didn’t go out on Thursday.  I ended up spending the entire day with my girls Ina and Giadia.  What this means is that I had an outfit all picked out and ready to go. Don’t you love when that happens?  I met my friend Jenny for lunch at the Kimchi Taco truck but when we got there we decided we really wanted falafel so we walked over to some random falafel place where it turned out they had the most awesome falafel! I swear the guy who served us was into me and I know it’s because the jeans make my butt look totally hot.

Anyway, we weren’t that far from the shuttle to Ikea and I need new Lack side tables (bf, playoffs, weed, crash). We ended up staying for dinner (thank you Swedish meatballs).

Saturday, April 6.

Boyfriend, significant other, partner, whatevs, said he would stop by today and maybe take me to Murray’s bagels for brunch.  Well, a few years ago I was taking the bus home from my friend’s apartment in Inwood (she has the biggest apartment of anyone I know in the city but look where she has to live). It was pretty late but there was a lot of traffic in Times Square.  So we’re sitting in traffic on Broadway and this guy runs by and he’s jogging, like, seriously running, except he’s wearing lingerie. Totally Victoria Secret lingerie. It was gross and I wanted to take a picture but my phone was off (low battery) and by the time I got it on he was gone. I’m only telling you this because the memory of him came rushing back and I figured it was a sign that I should wear one of my grandma’s slips that my mom gave me when she moved in with that guy  a couple of –two? three? -- years ago. Granny had quite the bod when she was my age because the slip is little tight (thanx spanx)!  I think it looks good though and I had a popit-bead necklace left over from Mardi Gras that matched perfectly.  I would say the outfit was success because me and bf never did make it to Murray’s.

Sunday, April 7

Gawd, who can remember? 

Monday, April 8

Yes, I did my laundry and as they say that opened up a world of possibilities clothes-wise but it was head-to-toe Gap.  Gap T Gap jeans Gap flats. Gap. Gap. Gap.  I’m useless.

After I got dressed I hated myself so much that I walked over to Sephora and gave myself a smoky eye with the new Urban Decay shimmer shadow.  Love it.  My tip? Go to Sephora on a Monday. It’s dead and all of the testers are filled up.  

Then I went to the new Israeli place in the Village and had a shawarma, extra hot sauce.

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.

Challenge for Valentines Day: Who Wrote the Lyrics?

Here is the opening scene from the 1995 film adaptation of Shakespeare's Richard III, which sets the play in fascist England.  For extra credit, identify the lyricist(s) who wrote this catchy song.  The talented Stacey Kent starts singing at 2:15:

 

-- sdh

Quote of the Day: Walt Frazier

(JOSHUA C. CRUEY, ORLANDO SENTINEL)

"The diminutive [Jameer] Nelson is a Lilliputian among Gullivers."
                               -- Walt Frazier (NY Knicks vs. Orlando Magic 1/5/2013)

-- sdh

"Just Let Me Investigate a Little De-er": Bill Hayward's Latest

(c) Bill Hayward

Two links landed in our inbox last week and I haven't been able to keep myself from returning to their landing pages.  Both links lead to work by Bill Hayward, the brilliant photographer, filmaker, and chronicler of the body whom we've been following since we started this blog.  I love the way Bill captures the raw emotion of his subjects and when I watch his film and dance productions and look at his portraits, I'm aware of tension building in my own body.  It's the kind of tension you feel when a jazz singer sings behind the beat; by holding back the performer creates suspense that doesn't resolve until the singer "catches up" with the music. It's uncomfortable . . . and thrilling. The best classical dancers can do this even though they're working within the constraints of precise choreography.

Forgive my meandering way of saying you must check out these recent publications of Bill's work.  The first appears in the current issue of The Coffin Factory alongside work by Lydia Davis, T.C. Boyle, and Charles Simic, among others. “Postcards” is from “The Museum of Emotions” from Bill's film Asphalt, Muscle & Bone, which we've written about elsewhere on this blog. 

The second link leads to Psychology Tomorrow magazine and Wilhelmina Frankfurt's memoir of George Balanchine.  Bill's photos of Frankfurt illustrate the piece and they're stunning. In her piece, Frankfurt describes her final encounter with Mr. B.  Shocking but not surprising.

-- sdh

Myth(ologies) in the Making in Chicago [by Stacey Harwood]

About a year ago, the Chicago based theater artist Erica Barnes approached David Lehman for permission to adapt his poem "Mythologies" for the stage. According to Erica, she was in the midst of a somewhat fallow period when on a whim she visited the Poetry Foundation website, clicked on the "Poem of the Day" and "fell in love." David's sequence of thirty sonnets "Mythologies," first published in the Paris Review issue 106 (1988) and awarded the Bernard F. Connors prize, was the Foundation's featured poem. Erica has this to say about David's poem:

We need new myths. Our old heroes are too unattainable, too perfect, too… heroic. David Lehman’s poem ‘Mythologies’ tells the story of a man struggling to construct new myths in the wake of the disintegration of his expectations. Blending the language of poetry with the ritual of theatre, ‘Mythologies’ searches for the answer to the age-old question --  what is it to be human?

David granted permission and over the next several months Erica dispatched periodic updates of her work- in-progress. She secured funding, hired a full cast and crew, found performance space, and held rehearsals. On November 1, "Mythologies" opened at the Hamlin Park Fieldhouse Theater in Chicago.  "It was a success," writes Erica, and her excitement is palpable. She sends along this preview video, which makes us wish we could put the production on the road:

Erica promises to send more photos of the performance, which we will share here.  Meanwhile, you can find out more about "Mythologies" in Chicago by visiting the dedicated website.  You will find Erica's interview with David here.

Congratulations Erica!

"Mythologies" will be included in David Lehman's forthcoming New and Selected Poems (Scribner).

-- sdh

Just Another Day at the Neighborhood Polling Place [by Stacey Harwood]

The wait to vote was only about an hour this morning, not too bad on a brisk sunny day.  My polling place is an NYU building a few blocks away and as I approached I could see that the line extended from inside the building into the street. I was prepared to settle in for a long wait but after about five minutes a helpful young man called for voters in my district. “I can get you in right away,” he said, something I would expect to hear while waiting to enter a hot new club, not a polling place.  

I soon learned that what he meant by “get you in” was that he could get me into the building, where the line for my district was still quite long, though shorter than the lines for other districts. We all stood patiently in a crowded hallway as the lines crept along.  From time to time we cleared a path down the middle to allow an elderly man or woman to come through on the way to or from voting.  A blind elderly man made his way confidently.  When he passed, my neighbor, a tall striking young woman whom I assumed was either a model or an aspiring actress (there are many in these parts), looked at me and shook her head. “Amazing,” she said. “When do you ever see such determination?”

From there we started a conversation that made the remaining wait go by too quickly. We traded Sandy stories and agreed that it was strange to be in Manhattan, where things seemed to have returned to normal when just a short distance away so many were suffering. 

She was originally from Albania, and has lived in the US for fifteen years. (I had detected a slight accent.) “This is home,” she said. She’s in her first of four years of graduate studies at the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis, nearby on 13th Street.  When she completes her studies, which require 750 supervised hours of treating patients plus classroom work and her own thrice-weekly sessions with a psychoanalyst, an experience she described as life-changing, she hopes to treat children and young adult victims of sexual abuse. I asked if before she began her studies she considered herself to be a happy well-adjusted person. She seized upon “happy.”  “What does it mean to be happy?" she wondered.  "Isn’t that the big question?”  Well, yes.  We decided to use the word “satisfied” instead but after batting that about came up with “leading a well-integrated life with intimate relationships and satisfying work,” a much less satisfying phrase than the simple “happy.”  I never did get her answer, but she seemed like a happy person to me, at least during the time we were together. 

As I approached the sign-in desk, I was disappointed to learn that we were using paper ballots that we would fill out in a “privacy booth” and scan on site to be delivered to  . . . where?  The Board of Elections?  I had always looked forward to the private moments in the voting both, concealed from view by the grey curtain, when I moved the little red nob to indicate my vote and the check mark appeared in the box next to my candidate.  And, having made my selections, I liked to believe that when I shifted the big lever from left to right and the curtain swung open, I was connected with millions of  Americans who were doing the same thing.