As all these, through her eyes, have stopt her ears.
On my First Son
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.
Seven years tho' wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O, could I lose all father now! For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon 'scap'd world's and flesh's rage,
And if no other misery, yet age?
Rest in soft peace, and, ask'd, say, "Here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry."
For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such,
As what he loves may never like too much.
see also https://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2024/06/sonnet-73-great-poems-of-the-world-episode-2-with-david-lehman-and-mitch-sisskind-.html
Sometimes you're tired maybe because you Didn't sleep last night or you drank too much So even if you did sleep it wasn't a real sleep Yet somehow you make it through the day Until around 4 or 5 pm you lie down and sleep Till maybe midnight when you briefly wake up To check the time and then go back to sleep Clear until morning when you at last awaken To the sun shining and the birds chirping And any dog or cat you had in your life
Is there jumping up and down with joy and Some even peeing with wild excitement and
Because they can all talk now they're saying
"We've been waiting for you!" That's how it will be.
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse A persona che mai tornasse al mondo, Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero, Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all.”
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
Warning: around a third of the way through a HIATUS suddenly takes place. Don't be alarmed. The HIATUS doesn't go on for long. That's almost the definition of a HIATUS, isn't it? Something that doesn't go on for long. "The Godfather Part III" is not a HIATUS.
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
Here, using the latest technology, David and Mitch invite you to a discussion of great poetry. First up is John Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale" -- and there will be more where that came from, a lot more. So please drop whatever you're doing and click below. Do it now! What have you got to lose?
Ode to a Nightingale
John Keats (1819)
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,—
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
Tom’s Restaurant The waitress brought some hamburgers to our booth. Paul said, “What if the food suddenly started eating us? That would be amazing.” A few years later I wrote a story based on Paul’s speculation. It was called “A Day I’ll Never Forget,” Paul showed it to Maxine Groffsky, the fiction editor of The Paris Review, and she published it in that esteemed periodical. George Plimpton was furious.
The College Inn The College Inn was a restaurant down the street from Tom’s. A day or so after the big police bust in 1968 Paul and I had lunch there with one of the most radical students, an intense guy who could really inspire a crowd. He had made his bones in the Progressive Labor Party. He had been a track star in high school. He had a tic that caused him to keep bouncing up and down on his chair. But now he seemed concerned. He said, “Well, I liked how the Barnard girls were chanting the cops eat shit, but we need to get the cops back on campus. Get more kids hit over the head. As many as possible.”
Living Hand In Paris we started a literary mag called Living Hand. The title was from a fragment Keats wrote in the margin of a poem he was working on. Paul got some French heavyweights – poets, not boxers – to contribute their work. Best of all, Joan Mitchell gave us a pen and ink drawing for the cover.
Joan Mitchell Paul and I took a train to meet with Joan Mitchell. She was in a town outside Paris, in a house where Monet had lived. Joan Mitchell was an artist proprement dit. At about eleven o’clock in the morning we met her in a bar, drinking with some truck drivers. One of the drivers walked back with us to the Monet house. He never spoke during the light lunch served by a servant girl. Some dogs were lying around. Paul mentioned that a movie producer in Paris had hired him to go to Mexico to help his wife write a play. Joan seemed skeptical that writing a play was what this was all about. But Paul disagreed: “He just wants her to be happy.” Paul said the producer also wanted to put him in the new “Three Musketeers’ movie but he’d have to learn to sword fight.
The Cockroach We were at an expensive restaurant in Los Angeles with Ricky Jay, his wife Chrissann Verges, and the novelist Mona Simpson. Suddenly a cockroach jumped down from the ceiling onto Chrissann’s plate. Or was it a startling illusion by Ricky Jay? No, it was the real thing. The staff was very apologetic. But they didn’t comp us for the dinner and maybe added the cost of the roach.
Envoi A few years ago I asked Paul what he was working on and he mentioned a new book called 4321. He said it was very long. “Don’t drop it on your foot.”
The truth is, until a few weeks ago I had not read any of Paul’s books, but when I saw a review of Baumgartner I got it immediately. The book describes a lonely older man, a retired academic, whose wife Anna was killed years ago in an accident at the seashore.
Baumgartner is still intensely mourning Anna. He’s kept her writings and photographs as a kind of shrine. Later he’s contacted by a female grad student from Michigan who’s eager to meet him, and is even driving halfway across the country to do so. But by the book’s end they haven’t met and maybe never will.
Well, Anna was taken by the ocean, and the new young woman may never reach Baumgartner. But what comes across in the novel is a man’s inexorable disconnecting from a woman’s touch and his mourning for that specific loss.
I sensed that in my last phone conversation with Paul about two weeks before he died. He talked about his illness and the treatment and even seemed mildly optimistic. But then he spoke about Siri and his love for her, about what she’s meant to him, how he treasures every minute he’s ever been with her.
It was so moving to hear this. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard a man express himself in quite this way before. Whatever else I may remember about Paul, I’ll never forget this. Farewell.
4321 Paul
Note: All posts by Mitch Sisskind are copyright (c) 2024 by Mitch Sisskind. All rights reserved
It was suggested to me that, as a sort of continuation of Mark Strand's posting about beautiful women in Hollywood, I could write something about attractive men. It's an interesting opportunity. For one thing, I think of myself as a male lesbian -- with that identity's idiosyncratic response to men. I'm not turned on by them either as objects of desire or of identification. But maybe that gives me a useful objectivity about what makes men attractive to other people, especially to women. And I do wonder about how that works.
To get our feet wet in this vast topic, I will consider the film Giant -- in my opinion a gigantic masterpiece that deserves much fuller discussion than it can get here. In this film we meet a number of actors whom I believe most people would consider attractive in their different ways: Rock Hudson, James Dean, Dennis Hopper, and even Sal Mineo. But I'll speak only of the two male leads, Rock Hudson and James Dean.
Rock Hudson initially presents as an old fashioned "hunk," though without the grudgingly suppressed violence that's apparent in the hunk of hunks, John Wayne. Hudson is big and strong, rich, good looking, and doesn't seem burdened by too much intelligence. He's a fairly conventional handsome man. I believe audiences of all eras would have recognized him as such, whether on stage or screen.
But James Dean is something very different. He's not physically strong. He looks down at the floor. He sometimes has a kind of stammer. He seems brittle, breakable.
In these two characters, appearing in the 1950s, we have avatars of both the past and future attractive man. True, James Dean-style characters have always been around. Rimbaud was a good one: "I've lost my life though sensitivity." But they were rarely official leading players. The years after Giant saw the ascendancy in pop culture of the skinny, sometimes even flaccid attractive and sensitive male. It really went into orbit with Lennon and McCartney. Meanwhile, the bulky hunk a la Rock Hudson has been devalued in the heterosexual marketplace.
You have to understand that for men in the 1950s the hunk seemed like what you had to be or at least had to want to be. In the famous "Charles Atlas" ad on the back of comic books, the skinny guy got sand kicked in his face by the muscle man -- so he had to become a muscle man to win back the girl. After James Dean, the skinny guy gets sand kicked in his face and then he gets laid.
There's a lot to say about Giant, and we all know that Rock was gay and James Dean was "everything." In fact, the film is much more in touch with these ambiguities than I may have suggested above. In one of the final scenes, Rock the hunk gets in a fistfight with a bully -- and he loses! He gets sand kicked in his face! "Quel étonnement!" (Flaubert) What's more, Elizabeth Taylor loves him now more than ever, or maybe loves him for the first time. She says something like, "I've never seen you so strong as when you got punched by that gorilla." It's a wonderful scene, and a forward-looking one, though maybe we're now in a retro Don Draper era. Whatever, dudes. Onward.
Man, you're being way too hard on yourself; Don't bang a hammer on your own head. If you want to make a good statue of an elf, Use a big piece of wood or a rock instead; People's weak spots are always easy to find, Especially your own, which is why they're weak; So find something else to occupy your mind Like how an eagle only carries food in its beak; Like how if we compare a bald eagle to an elf, How the bald eagle flies like a silver streak, While meanwhile the elf is too hard on itself And at best is considered something of a freak Luckily I came along to point this out As when rain falls after a long drought.
Barrelling down Bumblebee Mountain We are! All of us hauling ass down Bumblebee Mountain but most of us Don't even know it barreling down Bumblebee Mountain in the $19.95 U-Haul towing a 1980 Buick Skylark! Do we even realize it? Do we have The barest inkling of what's going on? Racing down Bumblebee Mountain At tremendous velocity but somehow Oblivious of it so we imagine ourselves Someplace else until we inevitably get To the bottom of Bumblebee Mountain And then we know! O yes then we know!
I had not written a poem for decades. Then at a re-union of old poets of Columbia University I was mysteriously inspired. In my alter ego of the AK-47 carrying Kalashnikover Rebbe, I had found an ancient text in which rabbis rank the most beautiful women in the Bible. Eve wins, but still falls far short of Adam's (phallic) foot. "Like a monkey" is a sort of refrain in the original text.
The Kalashnikover Rebbe, by the way, is only armed against the negativity in himself. David easily defeated Goliath because he had already defeated his inner Goliath. The Kalashnikover Rebbe is still fighting that battle.
Like A Monkey
Our sages tell us Rachel was a beautiful woman. Light brown hair brown eyes Five feet six or seven Not a clothes horse But always looked great whether getting ready for work In white cashmere sweater pleated navy skirt Or in the bleachers at a Cubs game In cutoffs and t-shirt Yet beside Sarah our sages tell us Rachel was like a monkey Rachel was like a monkey beside Sarah.
For our sages tell us Sarah was a beautiful woman And most of all she loved to dance. People try to move too much she said Diamonds and rust on the stereo Really you don't even need to move your feet. You don't even need to move at all Or just a little really Yet beside Eve our sages tell us Sarah was like a monkey. Sarah was like a monkey beside Eve.
For our sages tell us Eve was a beautiful woman She dyed her hair to a metallic purple sheen Wore matching purple eye shadow And silver jewelry Goth look but she made it work, Teardrop tattoo by left eye So small you might not even notice And to the surprise of many she majored in cosmology Physics journals on the floor In her bathroom by the toilet Yet beside Adam our sages tell us Eve was like a monkey Eve was like a monkey beside Adam. Beside Adam’s foot our sages tell us Eve was like a monkey His foot shining brighter than the sun Brighter than a thousand suns Flash across the just-created sky Fission burn Of which though hidden, A single spark still burns in you.
-- MS
10 April 2008; David Wagoner chose "Like a Monkey" for The Best American Poetry 2009
Though not a Jew himself Powys somehow Intuited Kabbalistic teachings on humiliation Through his sexual failures and constipation As we learn in his Autobiography where he also Spares us the rodomontadian strutting whereby Lesser writers dramatize their accomplishments In the bathroom or bedroom. Powys hated science Especially vivisection of animals which for him Was all of science in a nutshell nor did he use Typewriters, telephones or linen napkins. Wait! Am I painting him as some quirkily funny SNL-host Faux-awkward here-to-amuse-you Steve Martin type?
No! Who is another quirkily funny SNL type? Tina Fey? No, no! Read Wolf Solent, you pogues! Read Porius!
I left it
on when I
left the house
for the pleasure
of coming back
ten hours later to the greatness of Teddy Wilson "After You've Gone" on the piano in the corner of the bedroom as I enter in the dark
