The Best American Poetry

Mad Men: Was This a Great Season? [by Ken Tucker]

Mad Men: Was This a Great Season?

Why are there going to be rave reviews of the season finale of Mad Men festooning the internet today? Because MM creator Matthew Weiner gave his fans what they’ve been dying for all season, even if they strenuously denied wanting it — that is, liveliness, jokes, action, and even the suggestion of a few plot-line resolutions. SPOILER ALERT IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN LAST NIGHT’S MAD MEN SEASON FINALE.

Yes, the marriage of Don and Betty took a turn toward dissolution. Yes, the children clung to the parent who occasionally shows them some semblance of affection. (That would be Don; I know it’s sometimes hard to tell with the Drapers.)

But after all the agonizingly calibrated anguish that began this season with Sal’s love-that-dares-not-speak-its-name-in-1963 hotel scene, and continued on through Betty’s zombie-like attraction to a man who’s more like a safe father-figure than the safe father-figure she started being snippy with when her real father died, Mad Men finally had to get a little madcap in its season finale to keep us primed for its next batch of new episodes.

The season-ender was directed by Weiner, and it turned out to be an extremely well-choreographed, wacky 1960s sitcom about starting an ad agency, with scenes of slamming-door farce set in the hotel room where the firm of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce is taking shape. Instead of going the screw-the-viewers route his old boss David Sopranos Chase regularly travelled, Weiner brought back fan-faves, foremost among them Joan. (You know Sal cannot be far behind.

For the rest of Ken Tucker's EW piece, click here.

"The Hucksters"

As part of its all-Deborah Kerr day, TCM showed "The Hucksters" at midnight last Sunday, the day of the ballyhooed opening of the new (third) season of "Mad Men."  About the Madison Avenue geniuses of soap jingles, the 1947 movie is underrated on its own terms and contrasts usefully with "Mad Men." 

Like Don Draper in "Mad Men," but even more so, army veteran Vic Norman is the movie's informing personality and Gable is great in the role. Maybe that's because he is playing a version of himself. With his dashing looks and charm, and his ultra-male confidence, Vic can talk his way from being, say, a nobody who can drive a truck to being Hollywood's acknowledged "king," the very embodiment of Rhett Butler. The script does nice things with the notion that sincerity is something you can imitate or simulate. Looking for work as the movie begins, Gable buys a new necktie, because it makes him look sincere. I wondered whether Lionel Trilling saw the movie, which anticipates an argument he makes in "Sincerity and Authenticity."

Gable can sell nearly anything to almost anyone. and when he walks into an ad agency and demands to see the top man, he naturally walks out with the firm's biggest account. Don Draper has epiphanies that guide him unerringly; Gable has his swagger and charm and uses shrewd psychological ploys to get people to do his bidding. He can make a veiled threat sound like a pep talk to get a guy to do the right thing, can bet a nothing hand as if he were holding a straight flush, can con an agent into a rock-bottom contract for the agent's client -- in this case a second-rate comedian named Buddy Hare (played by Keenan Wynn). The stand-up comic in "Mad Men" is nasty. Buddy Hare is just juvenile.

The movie has Sydney Greenstreet, always fun to watch, as an entertainingly boorish villain, on whose oversized white hat Gable pours a pitcher of water. The hero as a good guy with a conscience who turns his back on Mad Ave: Gable makes impressive speeches ("your foreman is fear") after deciding that he'd rather have a defeated opponent's "forgiveness" than his "respect" and be sincere instead of playing at it. The movie -- which exists on the edge between comedy and drama -- was adapted from a novel that was undoubtedly angrier and more biting.

As befits Hollywood's "king," Gable is regaled with a double dose of frabjous femininity. He has Deborah Kerr, a general's widow, on one arm, and Ava Gardner as night club singer Jean Ogilvie on the other. In the terms proposed by "Mad Men," he gets to woo the high-slung proper Jackie ("I like being on a pedestal, but don't overdo it") and to revisit a romance with soulful, low-slung, big breasted Marilyn ("the cocktails are in the icebox"). The plot obliges Gable to be honorable, Gardner to be understanding, a model drinking buddy, and demure Kerr in her stud earrings and short hair to win the man. Kerr is a wonderful actress, easy to embrace in her convertible under the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. Her best moment: "Stop being a breadwinner and kiss me." But Ava is a rare enchantress. She is 24 and this is her breakout film. Her best moment: when she-- the former Mrs. Artie Shaw and the future Mrs. Frank Sinatra -- explains that singing on the beat (as in George M. Cohan's "Over There") is square. "Modern singing is soft and off the beat," she says. But of course Gable, hep from the start, knew that all along.

-- DL

Bruce Handy on "Mad Men" in Vanity Fair

Jon Hamm and January Jones. Photo by Annie Leibovitz.
Click here for Bruce Handy's behind the scenes view of the show and its creator, Matt Weiner, in Vanity Fair.

Mad Men Season Premiere: August 16

Here, from the New York Times, is Alessandra Stanley's preview of the new season.

(To the left: Christina Hendricks as top secretary and chief voluptuary Joan  -- the greatest piece of ass of all time, as boss Sterling tells her, even if she is unmaried on the wrong side of 30

From Stanley's review:
<<<
The show’s period clothes, cocktails and allusions to Hitchcock, Bob Dylan and Frank O’Hara are no longer new. Neither are the narrative feints that spike suspense by deflecting it — though the trick continues to work. There are still mysteries to even the most closely examined lead characters. Peggy; Joan (Christina Hendricks), the office manager; and even Pete (Vincent Kartheiser), the weaselly account executive, are so familiar, yet they remain enigmatic — protected by a thin, exotic veil of weirdness.

And, most of all, so does Don’s beautiful wife, Betty (January Jones), who is in the last stages of pregnancy with their third child and worried about her increasingly senile father, Gene (Ryan Cutrona). Betty is even more concerned that her brother and his wife have designs on their father’s property.

Don, an incorrigibly unfaithful husband but a loyal spouse, decides that the old man can live with them. Gene repays the hospitality by instructing his granddaughter to read aloud to him from Gibbon’s history of the fall of the Roman Empire. When Don comes home, Gene asks acidly, “How’s Babylon?” >>

Obama in the Play-by-Play Booth

The pitcher-in-chief throwing out the first ball at the All Star Game in St. Louis.

Hail to the Chief

In White Sox jacket
walking with Albert Pujols
roots for the Sox but doesn't hate the Cubs
met Stan Musial met Bob Gibson
two for two in predictions
North Carolina (NCAA basketball)
Steelers (NFL)
So who's going to take it all?
It's a little early for that.

Is the NL finally catching up to the AL?
David Wright singles
Shane Victorino singles
Molina singles
Wright scores
Throw gets away
Victorino scores
And the game is tied
And then untied
by a Prince Fielder
ground rule double
And the NL has the lead!

It's about time, Obama says.

-- DL

WTF!!?!

Hey, what does Law and Order Criminal Intent have against poets?  In last night's episode, "Passion" an arrogant poet/editor pimps out his young attractive assistants to potential financial backers.  During tonight's episode, "Folie a Deux" a poet who is likely involved in the caper (I'm writing this mid-show) is a plagiarist.  Why so many poet-criminals? 

Maybe one of the show's writers is an aspiring poet.  What do you think? 

-- sdh

The Return of "Mad Men"

Regular readers of our blog know that the editors follow the adventures of "Mad Men" with the zeal others reserve for their I-phones, gossip about Brangelina, or wardrobe malfunctions in Super Bowl halftime shows so with pleasure undisguised we announce:

Mad Men Season 3 to Premiere August 16

AMC has announced that it will be premiering the third season of Mad Men on Sun., Aug. 16 at 10PM ET | 9PM C. The premiere will be presented with limited commercial interruptions.

Leading up to the new season will be a Season 2 marathon starting Mon., Aug. 10, from 7AM to 8PM EST. Also, starting today (Jun. 10), Season 1 of Mad Men is available On Demand in both standard and high definition. Season 2 will be available starting Mon., Jul. 20. The pilot episode from Season 1, "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," is now available for live streaming on amctv.com.

AMC has announced that it will be premiering the third season of Mad Men on Sun., Aug. 16 at 10PM ET | 9PM C. The premiere will be presented with limited commercial interruptions.

Leading up to the new season will be a Season 2 marathon starting Mon., Aug. 10, from 7AM to 8PM EST. Also, starting today (Jun. 10), Season 1 of Mad Men is available On Demand in both standard and high definition. Season 2 will be available starting Mon., Jul. 20. The pilot episode from Season 1, "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," is now available for live streaming on amctv.com.

In the News . . .

Czech journalist Milan Dezinsky interviews David Lehman for Eurozine about the history of the Best American Poetry here.

Beginning Sunday at midnight, AMCTV will reprise season two of the celebrated series Mad Men.  See the Mad Men blog here for a discussion of how Frank O'Hara's poetry hovers over the sequence of events that take place in 1962.

-- sdh

Ernie Kovacs plays games

I was searching YouTube for footage of Ernie Kovacs' character Percy Dovetonsils; I thought the comedian's portrayal of an effete poet might make for an amusing entry here. Turns out there's not much Dovetonsils material available, but what I did find was a small mind-blower: Footage from Kovacs'game show, Take A Good Look, which aired from 1959-61, a year before his death in an auto accident.

Now, I knew Kovacs' work from his startlingly surreal sketch show, but this gimpse of Take A Good Look shows Kovacs in fine, deconstructive form working in the game-show genre:

At the top of the show, Kovacs plays around with the audio in a disorienting, technologically sophisticated way for the era, playfully confusing the home viewer about who's talking. The opening credits verge on abstract art, fracturing famous faces by showing close-ups of only parts of them: noses, chins, ears. Ever genial, ever-puffing on a long cigar, Kovacs greets his panel of celebrity guests, Ceser Romero, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and Jim Backus,  doing so in such a blithe, chipper manner, who almost don't catch Kovacs' throwaway insult: "We're going to explain the game to you at home, and to the panel, who aren't particularly bright." He nods to the era's game-show scandals by noting that the prize money is "three hundred dollars--not enough to be crooked."

You get the feeling the game was less important than the way in which the game was presented, a signature of Kovacs' delightfully self-conscious style.

Revelatory Visions [by Laurence Goldstein]

 Let me introduce myself as the guest blogger for this week.  I grew up in Culver City, an enclave of Los Angeles frequently called the true homeland of the movies because it hosted M-G-M, Selznick, Hal Roach, and other studios.  I attended UCLA and Brown, and have taught since 1970 at the University of Michigan, where I have edited Michigan Quarterly Review since 1977.  My first two blogs will be movie-and-poetry themed and then I’ll move out to other areas.  Reader feedback is welcome!

     When I finished researching my book on the response of American poets to the movies (The American Poet at the Movies: A Critical History, 1994), I assured myself that I had read every worthy poem on the topic ever published.  Of course I had missed a few, and because I had stopped short at making my way through the archives of movie magazines and the files at movie studios, I had failed to take note of poems (mostly doggerel) by the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Preston Sturges, Gene Lockhart, and James Mason, not to mention fawning fanmail in verse.  I direct the starry-eyed reader to Anthony Slide’s anthology, The Picture Dancing on a Screen, for a glimpse into that abyss.  In making my case for the genre, I was not seeking low-camp or high-camp homages so much as revelatory visions of the impact on American culture of a compelling twentieth-century art form.  As I stated at the beginning of the book, my task was not to chronicle yet another triumph of film, but to record the triumph of poetry over film.  Just as Dickinson claimed that the brain is wider than the sky, I wanted to argue that the linguistic imagination was wider than the global empire of cinema.  Everything on the big screen is potentially subject to the re-shaping and critical re-focusing of well-crafted poems made by capacious minds.

    I keep a folder of poems-since-1994 about the movies.  What a huge majority are mournful  remembrances of the dear departed!  Mark Rudman on Mary Ure.  Alexander Theroux on Thelma Ritter.  Anne Carson on Monica Vitti (pictured, right).  John Yau on Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre. Mary Jo Salter on Myrna Loy.  Paisley Rekdal on Bruce Lee.  Barbara Hamby on Roy Rogers.  Reynolds Price on James Dean.  (Aren’t Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott ever going to weigh in on Marilyn?)  It’s no surprise that poets haunt the Forest Lawn of famous ghosts for their subject matter, since elegy is their business.  Still, one wonders about the obsession with celebrity portraiture in so-called contemporary poetry.  I mean, haven’t we advanced at all from Vachel Lindsay’s lament for John Bunny in 1915?

    I guess not.  In a recent essay in Boulevard David R. Slavitt remarks, “What movie stars are for,after all, is to provide an iconography for our private lives.  From their enlargements, distortions, and simplifications, we find a kind of clarity.”  I find in this statement the kind