#2 Devil
Manolo me Mammon
You gold-encrusted god of plenty
Park me on Park Avenue
Gild my walls. Chandelier my halls
Jet my days. Jaguar my bluestone nights
Pool me in my private Mediterranean
Yacht me & unstopper me
Margaux & Coach me
Cover me in coin. Booty & Botox me
Multiply my capacity for rapacity
Artichoke roast & spit me
Braise & flambé me
Let me live in your insatiable need
Antigone, a classic Aries with Sagittarius rising and a fair amount of Leo and Gemini in her chart, epitomized the feminine powers extolled by Ovid in the Metamorphoses. She was very beautiful, with a profile like that of Greer Garson in Pride of Prejudice,and a force of personality that overshadowed that of her worthy husband, Walter Pidgeon, the perfect number two man, in Mrs. Miniver. He could cross the Channel in his little skiff to keep the evacuation of Dunkirk; she beat that by single-handedly disarming a German soldier.
In Chinese astrology, Antigone was born in the year of the rat, a sign that explains her quality of eagerness and readiness. The rat is the first of the twelve Chinese signs, representing industry, not disgusting vermin. As a matter of honor, a female rat will not procrastinate but will use trickery if need be to achieve her ends. In the competition to cross the river, the rat jumped on the back of the ox, and got off before the shore, winning the race over the tiger, the snake, etc. What she didn't realize was that she (as a water sign) would need to unite with a cheerful, extroverted goat (earth). The goast doesn't always communicate his needs, but if he is able to keep up with the charismatic rat, the relationship will endure.
Antigone rates very high in intensity of sex appeal, the passion she arouses varying directly with the likelihood of no consummation. Her Capricorn asleep in midheaven January and her Mars victorious in April are usually cited as reasons for this particular enchantress's eternal fate, making her a symbol of resolve and heroic resistance, who would live to an grand old age if she werren't willing to die for the sake of a principle.
Antigone lived centuries before the Gregorian calendar regularized things. Consequently, the exact date of her birth is the subject of controversy, with some favoring April 9 and others April 12.
Antigone, the daughter of Oedipus, was also his sister. As Sophocles recounts in the third play in his Oedipus cycle, . She rebelled against the tyrannical rule of Creon, who didn’t let her bury the dead body of her brother Polyneices. In a fierce display of hubris Creon ignored the contradiction between his son Haemon’s love for Antigone and his own authority to boss his son around. Everyone died in the Greek manner, Haemon killing Antigone and then taking his own life.
If it was Creon’s tragedy, it would have been a bore and a box office failure. Just as Shakespeare preferred dealing with Antony and Brutus rather than wasting his genius on Caesar, so Sophocles cast into the starry heavens the vision of Antigone as loyal, faithful, rebellious, loving, self-sacrificing, steadfast. To be a rebel while proving your loyalty is a consummation devoutly be to be wished, and Antigone in Paris emerged as one of France’s most alluring leading ladies, a symbol of resistance against the Nazis during World War II.
As Sophocles maintained, one look at the world would prompt any baby to return instantly to the womb. Making the best of a bad business, Antigone decided to act even at the expense of her own life and love, thus ensuring that she would always be the young attractive woman she was at the time of her death. Did she want children? No one thought to ask. But her treatment of her brother came to a high erotic climax without violating the tabu on incest.
According to Indian astrology, merely bearing the name Antigone gives you a leg up on the trail to creativity.
When Antigone’s moon is in Jupiter or Neptune, she is willing to engage in moral dilemmas in the public eye. Of average height, with brilliant eyes, a mesmerizing oval face.
Asteroid 129, named after her, was discovered on February 5, 1873 at Clinton, NY by C. H. F. Peters. It is about 84 miles in diameter.
<<< A person's life consists of a collection of events, the last of which could also change the meaning of the whole, not because it counts more than the previous ones but because once they are included in a life, events are arranged in an order that is not chronological but, rather, corresponds to an inner architecture. A person, for example, reads in adulthood a book that is important to him, and makes him say, 'How could I have lived without having read it!' and also, 'What a pity I did not read it in my youth!" Well, these statements to not have much meaning, especially the second, because after he has read that book, his whole life becomes the life of a person who has read that book, and it is of little importance whether he read it early or late, because now his life before that reading also assumes a form shaped by that reading.
This is the most difficult step in learning how to be dead: to become convinced that your own life is a closed whole, all in the past, to which you can add nothing and can alter none of the relationships among the various elements. Of course, those who go on living can, according to their shifting experience, introduce changes in the lives of the dead, too, giving form to what had none or what seemed to have a different form: recognizing, for example, a just rebel in someone who had felt doomed to neurosis or delirium. But these are changes that matter mostly to the living. It is unlikely that they, the dead, will profit by them. Each individual is made up of what he has lived and the way he has lived it, and non can take this away from him. Anyone who has lived in suffering is always made of that suffering; if they try to take it away from him, he is no longer himself. >>>
-- sdl
Spring 68 at Columbia was the season of the strike,
the occupation of the buildings (Low, Hamilton, Avery
Mathematics, and Fayerwether where a righteous
mininster married a young couple), and Mitch and I
went to the West End Bar to talk tactics because
we knew the "tactical patrol force" (TPF) was
going to come and hit hard. The days went by
and the arm bands worn by angry students
went from green (amnesty for protesters)
to black (mourning for Alma Mater). But I still
had my Music Humanities final to face and I
was so ignorant I did the only thing I could do:
bought Bach's "Ein Feste Burg Ist Unser Gott,"
Mozart's Jupiter, Beethoven's 3rd, 5th, and 7th,
and Brahms's 4th. On the final the professor
played something we had not heard in class.
It was the slow movement of the 7th.
And that summer in Oxford
I heard the opening of the last movement
of the Jupiter every hour
on the hour. Years later I learned
Mozart's birthday, the 26th of January,
was also that of Kern, Jerry Kern
of Show Boat and Swing Time,
"The Way You Look Tonight"
and "Long Ago And Far Away." So I will just say
to both of these great composers: happy birthday!
And when I told them
How beautiful you are
They didn't believe me
They didn't believe me
Your lips, your eyes
Your curly hair
Are in a class beyond compare
You're the loveliest girl that one could ever see
And when I tell them
And I certainly am going to tell them
That I'm the man whose wife someday you'll be
They'll never believe me
They'll never believe me
That from this great big world you've chosen me!
From Richard II
No matter where; of comfort no man speak:
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth,
Let's choose executors and talk of wills:
And yet not so, for what can we bequeath
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
Our lands, our lives and all are Bolingbroke's,
And nothing can we call our own but death
And that small model of the barren earth
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!
Cover your heads and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn reverence: throw away respect,
Tradition, form and ceremonious duty,
For you have but mistook me all this while:
I live with bread like you, feel want,
Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus,
How can you say to me, I am a king?
Ed. note: I had just about exhausted every crime series available on Netflix when Terence Winch [pictured here with a friend at La Maison blanche] wrote to suggest that I check out Love/Hate, an Irish crime drama series broadcast on RTÉ Television. The show is irresistible, and I was especially drawn to Darren, a central character played by the compelling young actor Robert Sheehan. Just the other day, this poem appeared in my in-box. I love it! Thank you T.P. Winch for letting me share it here. He is pictured on the left talking to a friend at the Maison Blanche. -- sdh
Love/Hate
for stacey harwood
I will be upstairs in just a minute,
I promise you. But first I must
compose a long, complex symphony
dedicated to Duke Ellington, which
I have pieced together from riffs
and bits off old tinny 78s, scratched
with skips but full of musical
notes, like A, G, and E.
If I could get out of this chair,
I would. And I would ascend
then to the Throne of the
Angelic Mobsters of RTE
who are right this very moment
murdering each other on those
dark Dublin streets. It would be
a laugh and a half times two.
But I can’t get up. I am not
able to keep my promises.
The serenity prayer is a cruel
joke. Baudelaire was an alcoholic
and so’s your mother, and
that's a fact, revealed in the third
act, which I can’t stay around for.
Sorry, sorry. My bad. I’m sorry.
from the archive; first posted January 13, 2014
Scarface Nation: The Ultimate Gangster Movie by Ken Tucker (St. Martin’s Press)
Not merely the behind-the-scenes making of the 1983 De Palma/Pacino film (and the 1932 Howard Hawks/Paul Muni version), but also a critical analysis of how Scarface has influenced pop music, TV shows, YouTube videos, and political culture (see the chapter “President Scarface,” starring Bill Clinton and Dick Cheney, among others). "Insightul, intelligent, memorable, true." -- Lawrence Starling
The most dramatic moment in The Big Heat, a memorable Fritz Lang noir for the early 1950s, is when Gloria Grahame turns the tables on her tormentor, Lee Marvin, by emptying a pot of boiling coffee on his face.
LAST WORDS
by Mary Jo Salter
Forgive me for not writing sober,
I mean sooner, but I almost don’t
dare see what I write, I keep mating mistakes,
I mean making, and I’m wandering
if I’ve inherited what
my father’s got.
I first understood it when he tried
to introduce me to somebunny:
“This is my doctor,” he said,
then didn’t say more, “my daughter.”
The man kindly nodded
out the door.
I thought: is this dimension
what I’m headed for?
I mean dementia.|
Not Autheimer’s, but that kind he has,
possessive aphasia: oh that’s good,
I meant to say progressive.
Talk about euthanasia!
I mean euphemasia,
nice words inside your head not there,
and it’s not progress at all.
No, he’s up against the boil
after years now of a sad, slow wall
and he’s so hungry,
I mean angry.
Me too. I need to get my rhymes in
while I still mean. I mean can.
from Zoom Rooms by Mary Jo Salter ( Knopf, 2022).
All day yesterday I tried to write a song in the Cole Porter manner beginning "My goal is to go to Mongolia," but the melody of "Columbia, the gem of the ocean" kept getting in the way. Well, I'll see what I can come up with when I'm over there. It's flattering to know they're prepping for my visit, though the cyclones and quakes do seem somewhat excesssive.
Tomorrow Stacey and I fly to Beijing; we will visit that city and two others in China, giving readings and lectures, in the next week. Then comes a week in Mongolia, where I'm hoping to ride a camel and hang out with Mongolia's poet laureate, who has promised to teach me a Mongolian verse form. If I can manage to post from those outposts I will do so, and if not I'm sure we'll have lots to tell when we get back in early June.
My Goal Is to Go to Mongolia.
My goal
Is to go
To Mongolia.
In Mongolia
I shall know
The whole of ya.
“Let me seduce thee,”
Said he.
“Only if I be
The wlling accomplice
Of a kiss,”
Said she.
O let me kiss
Her and win her back,
And ride the back
Of a camel,
An ornery animal
With the smell
Of magnolia,
In the desert
In Mongolia.
-- DL from the archive; first posted May 15, 2008
In 1995, Henry Rathvon and Emily Cox ran a clerihew challenge, and Rick Winston made a copy of the results:
<<< ***Results of Clerihews in the News***
Mr. Rathvon and Ms. Cox
Don't fit any convenient box.
They push one to wax Ogden Nashish
For contests more addictive than hashish.
Such is the opinion of contestant RPhill5136, whose views are expressed above in Clerihew style. The Clerihew, that odd little verse form invented 100 years ago by Edmund Clerihew Bentley, proved wonderfully fertile in a 1990s context. But it also proved quite challenging, as its staggered rhythms required an artful touch in order to elicit the proper funny-bone twang. Contestant Glemward mused:
Why choose
Clerihews?
How much sweeter
Are things that rhyme with the usual sort of meter!
And VCRogers, reflecting on the havoc we word-gamers were wreaking, concluded:
E.C. Bentley
Did not go gently
Into that good night--
But after this, he might!
Suffice it to say that your Clerihumor--from the subtle to the sledgehammer--gave us a lot of laughs. We'll conduct another of these Clerihew festivals in a future contest. Meanwhile our favorite verses are listed below, topped by three jauntily witty winners. (Contestant Sean Med quipped, "Could the prize for this contest be considered a 'hew grant?") Each of our winners will receive 5 free AOL hours plus a book of his or her choice from the Atlantic's online bookstore. Congratulations Ravensegg, Cruciver, and JebMar!
***The Clerihew Winners***
General Shalikashvili--
Now, I ask you, really.
With a name like that
Shouldn't he wear a much bigger hat? (Ravensegg)
The Kennedys
Are used to having all of the amenities.
Their wealth's so great it even beggars
Schwarzenegger's. (Cruciver)
Peter McNeeley
Had a great deal. He
Fought Tyson from the deck and
Made thousands per second. (JebMar)
Five of the runners-up:
Dorothy Gish
Choked on a fish
At the cotillion
Embarrassing Lillian. (G8ly)
Henry Kissinger
Covets Kim Basinger.
If she were his frau
He'd be Kissinger now. (G8ly)
Jean-Paul Sartre
Despised Descartes
Because of his insistence
On meaningful existence. (G8ly)
Warren Beatty
Loved to date, he
Fooled around with every girl he
Met except of course for Shirley. (StefSpad)
Elizabeth Taylor
Diets constantly so as to look frailer.
"Though I may at times be chubby,"
She says, "I'm never without a new hubby." (Epithenas)
 |
Join NYC piano monster Dave Frank for a thoroughly unique, in-depth introduction to the life and music of America's greatest composer! ...
"I found this video that explains Ives's use of dissonance. If you start at 10 minutes and 30 seconds, the speaker explains the dissonances that Ives used." -- STL
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Let us look away from the individual to the great war that is still devastating Europe. Think of the colossal brutality, cruelty, and mendacity which is now allowed to spread itself over the civilized world. Do you really believe that a handful of unprincipled place-hunters and corrupters of men would have succeeded in letting loose all this latent evil, if the millions of their followers were not also guilty? Will you venture, even in these circumstances, to break a lance for the exclusion of evil from the mental constitution of humanity? -- Ninth Lecture, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
Bill Wadsworth, executive director of the Academy of American Poets, organized the launch readings of the 1992 and 1993 editions at the Alliançe Francaise in New York City. Bill kept these photos from the 1992 event, including a group portrait of the participants, a portrait of the series editor and one of Lynda Hull with Charles Simic looking over her shoulder.
from "Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Big Fat Nonbinary Mistake" by Blake Smith
Tablet, January 12, 2023
Subhead: "The queen of queer theory sought to relieve the persecution complex that haunted the West. Instead, her work has intensified it"
<<
There are (at least) two sorts of women who love gay men in a way that makes gay men like me nervous. Camille Paglia is one of the best-known representatives of the first sort—along with those other Italian American celebrity fruit flies, Madonna and Lady Gaga: energetic, pretentious, (pop-)cultured women who imagine gay men as their “creative” and “interesting” counterparts.
The second kind—stereotypically nerdy, mousy, and frumpy sweater-wearing—loves gays not as a gaggle of chattering slags who support her self-conception as someone sexy and scandalous, but rather from the safe distance of books. These women read and often write about gay men and gay sex, in an intellectualized fantasy through which they escape their own sexuality. (Why young women of this type increasing purport to be gay men, and pursue surgery in an attempt to make themselves so, is a mystery for another time.)
Perhaps the most intellectually significant example of the second type was Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, one of the founders of queer theory. In her books Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (1985) and The Epistemology of the Closet (1990), Sedgwick laid crucial theoretical groundwork for the study of how male homosexuality, and queerness more generally, shaped and were shaped by the literature, philosophy, and culture of the modern West. As a gay man and an academic, I have long felt a pull of gratitude toward her, and also a push of revulsion against what I can’t help but recognize as her cringe-inducing type.
Sometimes reading an author you have the unsettling certainty that if you’d known them in high school, you’d never have let them sit with you in the cafeteria. In the same way that I shudder inwardly at the sight of a dowdy, apparently asexuated woman reading “boys’ love” manga or The Song of Achilles, I am troubled whenever I read Sedgwick—a fat straight woman who recounted the miserable paucity of her sexual relations in Dialogue on Love (1999)—write about male anal eroticism with annoyingly evident delight at her transgression of academic propriety. The gay male thinkers who made her work possible, like Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault, never insisted on such ostentatiously provocative specificity in their writing, whatever they did in practice—not least because they imagined that the erotic, as Barthes’ American translator Richard Howard put it, is what the writing intellect can obliquely evoke but not directly enact.
>>>
For the rest of this article, click here.
It used to be God whose decomposing corpse made the big stink. Nietszche announced the death. Freud put forth the exposition in The Future of an Illusion and Civilization and Its Discontents. In its cover story of April 8, 1966, Time made it official in a cover story wisely phrased as a rhetorical question: “Is God Dead?”
If religion had been the opium of the masses, and masses on Sunday mornings were a casualty of deicide, people could turn to the usual alternatives – politics and art – but the youth culture was in full swing in 1966, and the nearest thing to transcendence was an acid trip at a rock festival or blowing yourself up making a bomb in a Greenwich Village townhouse. Meanwhile, the subject has receded to the terrorism and fundamentalism pages of the newspaper, and the obituary focus has long since shifted to literature.
The death of the novel had worried all-star panelists for years. Now, with Updike and Roth dead, a new consensus started to form around the notion that the TV serial as exemplified by The Sopranos, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Fauda, House of Cards, and Homeland has displaced and supplanted the novel as a mass entertainment form -- one that can aspire to be both wildly popular and notably artistic, as the novel was at its best. The past tense in that last clause makes me sad, though I have the seen the future and it is even more enthralling than Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga as done BBC-style with Damian Lewis as Soames.
The death-of debate of the moment centers on poetry and takes the form of essays, sometimes jeremiads, in wide circulation monthlies. Last month the NY Times declared that poetry is dead because T. S. Eliot murdered it, which was a novel though not poetic way to note the 100 anniversary of ”The Waste Land.” If you wonder at magazine editors who run variants of the same article, rehashing the same tired arguments, don’t. Think of the ingenuity that goes into the packaging. This time: poetry as the corpse in a detective story whose culprit was the least-likely suspect.
“People who are not poets make fools of themselves talking about poetry,” La Rochefoucault said. “It is the one thing they have in common with poets."
-- DL
Radio
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
from New and Selected Poems by David Lehman
