Tad's Night With the Language Thieves Blog

Groupthink

2012-01-26T16:22:00.001-08:00

Some advice I offered to a friend who's teaching her first creative writing class:

The one thing I'd emphasize -- workshopping student work is an important part of the course. You're expected to do it, and the students sort of expect it. But once you give it to them, they don't know what to do. Because critiquing the work of others isn't something that comes naturally. It has to be learned, and it's not always easy to learn. So -- you'll find you own way to teach this, but it has to be taught.

One way is to offer discussion questions. I can't really do this -- it's not natural to me. But it's one way.

Another -- and this works better for me -- is to set up forums on Blackboard. Divide the class into smaller discussion groups -- say, for to six in each group. Everyone in the group is to post his or her assignment, and everyone is to critique the work of the other members of the group. Then you start a dialogue, critiquing their critiques, suggesting things they might have thought of, encouraging perceptive critiques. Most of the first ones will be awful. I loved this -- it reminded me of my own grandmother. This had a really good flow to it. That sort of thing. As I said, they won't know what to say -- they won't have any sort of critical vocabulary. You encourage them to do the same things you encourage them to do in writing about literature -- go to the text, focus on specifics. What more could the author do to make this the poem it wants to be?

Don't do in-class workshopping right away. Start giving them that vocabulary first, and the encouragement that it's all right to be critical, and how to constructively bring out the things that are good about the piece -- not all criticism has to be negative.

Do some workshopping in small groups, and some in the whole class. But this will be one of the most important skills you'll teach them all semester.

You MUST read the article I just read today in the New Yorker -- Groupthink, by Jonah Lehrer. It's absolutely fascinating about the ways people make progress in groups, and the ways that they don't.

And some more thoughts on Lehrer's article. He discusses the history of brainstorming. It was a technique invented and promoted by advertising genius Alex Osborn in the 1940s -- its most important tenet, encouraging a free flow of ideas by absolutely forbidding any negative feedback at all. Negative feedback discourages creativity by inhibiting the participants. In this stage, Osborn says, you're looking for quantity, not quality. "You're loosening up an unfettered imagination -- making your mind deliver." Lehrer gives a little more history -- the idea was an instant smash, and has been used by businesses and other organizations ever since, He also gives a history of research on the technique. Research emphatically shows that id doesn't work. Blind studies of one control group who brainstormed an idea, and another who split up so that each member worked on the problem individually, invariably showed the same results. You got more ideas, and more good ideas, from people working individually. And working in groups? It has value too, but much more value if people are allowed to criticize and argue. I have been in writers' groups, and I have friends who have been in other writers' groups -- the kind which are about sharing and mutual support, and don't allow any criticism. Well, any writers group is good for one thing -- it makes you write. If you meet a bunch of folks every week to talk about your writing, you're going to want to write something every week. But outside of the fact that it would drive me crazy, I never believed the sweetness and light approach would do anyone much good. Now I stand validated.

What's my name?

2012-01-24T12:55:00.001-08:00

I've been talking to my daughter about characters' names. She says that one of the reasons it's so hard for her to write a novel is that she can't name her characters. Most of her short stories, she says, are about lost, lonely women who don't really have names, and I think actually that this is one of the strengths of those stories. The characters have a haunting, unsettlingly memorable quality that could be blunted by naming them. But in a novel you pretty much have to name your characters, and what if you choose the wrong name? Will it throw everything off, or get you pointed in a wrong direction.

Poe did very well with unnamed characters. But what about full-length fiction?Are there novels -- other than really experimental ones -- where the character doesn't have a name? There's Proust. We generally call his character "Marcel" because that's Proust's name, and the novels are so clearly autobiographical. But actually, he only refers to himself as "Marcel" once in the seven volumes, and that fairly far along. Mostly, he has no name.

Can you go through a private eye novel without naming the lead character? I bet you could. Spenser only has one name. In the Sergio Leone Westerns, Clint Eastwood is The Man With No Name. In Lady in the Lake, Philip Marlowe has a name but nothing else -- we never see him except for a couple of shots in mirrors, we just see what he sees. A first person narrator can tell or withhold whatever she likes, and no reason that she can't withhold her name. Instead of saying "My name's Honey West," or whatever, it can just be "I told him my name."

Anything you deny yourself can be made into a strength. Those writers who self-censored, or were censored, away from George Carlin's seven dirty words lost a certain realism, but gained the creativity of circumlocution --"He told me to do the impossible to myself!"

Here's a nice use of that device from Tom T. Hall, in "A Week in a County Jail."

Well, I told him who I was and told him I was working steady
And I really should be gettin' on my way
That part about me bein' who I was did not impress him
He said, "The judge'll be here any day."

Perhaps not naming a private eye cloaks her/him in a layer of invulnerability. Someone who won't even share her name with her readers is a very guarded, close-to-the-vest person. Just as naming a character makes, consciously or unconsciously, certain character choices, so does not naming a character.

More Descort

2012-01-21T18:00:00.000-08:00

The Byronic stanza, of course, had ended with a couplet, and I decided to take that couplet, sandwich a third line in the middle, and make it a villanelle stanza. But you can't really give the flavor of a villanelle in one stanza, so I had to write the whole villanelle.

Here the question of form dictating mood gets a little wobbly. Certainly it's possible to write a comic or sardonic villanelle. The form is wonderfully flexible, and if you don't believe me, look at the new anthology edited by Annie Finch and Marie-Eizabeth Mali. (I'm in it -- not with this one -- but there are lots of real poets, too -- using that famous question that was put to Carl Sandburg -- "are these real poems or do you just make 'em up yourself?")

Anyway -- forms that use repetition can be playful and not so playful, and of course the blues goes in both directions too.

I think there's a real connection between the blues and the ghazal. But use repetition, both come from Africa, and both frequently make use of the poet/singer's name. I don't think there's much likelihood of a cultural connection between the blues and the villanelle, but as Joseph Campbell pointed out, we're all part of one big mother myth, and there are many cross-cultural correspondences.

So I found myself going back to the grim fatalism of "Betty and Dupree" with the villanelle, but I also found myself being more literary -- the villanelle pushed me that way, as a blues would not.

His mind was fixed. He took a .44,
The frame was cool and dry; the grip was warm.
To get that ring, he’d rob a jewelry store.

No use to try and hold him back—the door
Clicked softly shut behind him. Like a charm
Or talisman, he held his .44.

You knew that this would be a night for gore.
He smashed the glass with gun and bloodied arm,
And blindly crashed into the jewelry store.

He scarcely seemed to care what lay in store,
And, heedless that he’d triggered the alarm
He grabbed the ring, and waved his .44.

He killed two cops, and wounded several more.
Then, weary in his soul, and sick of harm,
Threw down the ring, and fled the jewelry store.

The law all vowed they'd even up the score.
Dupree beat west, and hid out on a farm
With no companion but the .44
And stalked by nightmares of the jewelry store.

Descort part 2

2012-01-16T09:03:00.000-08:00

My descort included a 12-bar blues stanza, a Rubliw (a syllabic form invented by Richard Wilbur), an ottava rima stanza in iambic pentameter, a villanelle in iambic pentameter (because one villanelle stanza does not demonstrate the form, I used a whole villanelle), a ballade stanza in a catalectic dactyllic tetrameter (Lew—not sure I described that right), an alexandrine with ABABA rhyme scheme, and a cinquaiI'm not exactly certain that a descort -- this descort, anyway -- is as interesting to read as it was to write. But I found that writing it gave a real insight into how form influences content.I decided to do variations on a theme, because I suspected that there'd be a problem with, if nothing else, emotional continuity, so it made sense to come at the same thing in different ways. "Betty and Dupree" is a blues ballad, with a story line, so I could advance a plot at the same time I was working out stylistic variations, and whatever came with them. Also, by choosing a blues, I had my first stanza form.

DESCORT: DUPREE VARIATIONS
Betty told Dupree she wanted a diamond ring
Betty told Dupree, I want a diamond ring
Dupree told Betty, I’d buy you most anything

"Betty and Dupree" begins with a hopeless situation. Dupree will do anything for Betty, but he will never be able to afford a diamond ring. The blues stanza is not particularly designed to carry a plot. Its AAa form presents a statement, generally an emotional predicament, repeats that statement for emphasis, and then resolves it, with a fatalistic inevitability or an ironic twist. "I've got 19 men, and I want one more / I've got 19 men, and I want one more / If I get that one, I'll let those 19 go" (Bessie Smith). Bt "Betty and Dupree maks it work. Each stanza is a separate and complete chapter in the story.

Just sleep
little Betty
see what tomorrow brings
Go to sleep my little Betty
see what tomorrow brings
Now it’s only
Dupree

I got this form wrong (sorry, Lew!) A rubliw, invented by Richard Wilbur (hence the name) is supposed to be a monorhyme -- each line rhymes to the same sound. But I did have the syllabic pattern -- 2, 4, 6, 8, 6, 4, 2 -- and I chose it because I could keep the AA lines of the blues, using the second stanza of "Betty and Dupree" almost intact. But then I needed to shrink the final line, which in the original is "When you wake up in the morning, you just might have your diamond ring."I had thought that in spite of the tragic nature of the original, all this playing with form would result in a playful, mostly comic poem, but that didn't happen here. As the form closed in on itself, so Dupree's options were closing in on him, awake and alone in the dead of night.

If history and legend have it right,
A man will risk it all to please a mistress.
We know from witnesses that Dupree’s night
Was fueled by coke and weed; his mood was listless,
Then near berserk; at last, by early light
His eyes were bloodshot and his hands were restless.
His mind was fixed. He took a .44,
To get that ring, he’d rob a jewelry store.

The ottava rima stanza is Byron's, and it's hard to approach it without Byron's ironic distancing. Nothing could be farther from the blues, which is all about empotional directness and intensity. I think this is one of the main reasons that the blues has lasted as important art form -- it is uniquely able to express deeply personal and powerful emotion. "Betty and Dupree" tells a story in the third person, but it's still Dupree's story, and the narrator is powerfully involved with him. The first important artist to use the blues as a storytelling vehicle with an ironically detached narrator was Chuck Berry.My third stanza ends with the song's third verse -- "Dupree took a pistol, it was a .44 (2x) / To get that diamond ring for Betty, he had to rob the jewelry store." The song gives us Dupree's isolation and desperation. Byrony irony puts Dupree in a historical/psychosical context, and moves us away from Dupree. We only know his story from witnesses.More later.

Descort part I

2012-01-06T10:25:00.000-08:00

At the encouragement of Lewis Putnam Turco, for the fourth edition of his Book of Forms, I tried my hand at writing a descort -- a form characterized by its infidelity to any one form. Each stanza is written in a recognizable form, but a different one. Lew said that he had never actually seen one, so my entry didn't have much competition.

A little research into the form: there is actually a wiki entry on it, in which the invention of the descort is credited to Garin d'Apchier, whose exact dates are lost to history, but he did write the first descort, and I would share it with you, but it, too, is lost.

Gautier de Dargies, for whom we do have approximate dates (ca. 1170 – ca. 1240 -- he lived to be approximately 70, a ripe old age in those days), is said to have written three descorts.

Dargies has his own Facebook page, which I am the only person, as of this writing, to like.

Here's one by Raimbaut de Vaqueiras (1180-1207). It's written in a variant of the form -- each stanza is in the same verse form, but in a different language. And it's quite beautiful. English translations are interspersed between the verses.

Eras quan vey verdeyar
Pratz e vergiers e boscatges,
Vuelh un descort comensar
D'amor, per qu'ieu vauc aratges;
Q'una dona.m sol amar,
Mas camjatz l'es sos coratges,
Per qu'ieu fauc dezacordar
Los motz e.ls sos e.ls lenguatges.

Now that is see becoming verdant
lawns and bowers and woods,
I want to begin a contrast
about love, on whose account I am distraught;
for a lady used to love me,
but her mind has changed
and therefore I sow enmity
among the words, the sounds and the languages.

Io son quel que ben non aio
Ni jamai non l'averò,
Ni per april ni per maio,
Si per ma donna non l'o;
Certo que en so lengaio
Sa gran beutà dir non sò,
çhu fresca qe flor de glaio,
Per qe no m'en partirò.

I am the one who have no good
nor ever shall I have it,
either in April or in May,
unless I have it through my lady.
True, in her own language
I cannot describe her great beauty,
fresher than gladiolus' flower,
the reason of my persistence.

Belle douce dame chiere,
A vos mi doin e m'otroi;
Je n'avrai mes joi' entiere
Si je n'ai vos e vos moi.
Mot estes male guerriere
Si je muer per bone foi;
Mes ja per nulle maniere
No.m partrai de vostre loi.

Fair, sweet dear lady,
to you I give and give up myself;
I shan't have my whole joy
unless I have you and you me.
You are a most treacherous enemy,
if I die through my good faith;
but still, there is no way
I shall part from your dominion.

Dauna, io mi rent a bos,
Coar sotz la mes bon' e bera
Q'anc fos, e gaillard' e pros,
Ab que no.m hossetz tan hera.
Mout abetz beras haisos
E color hresc' e noera.
Boste son, e si.bs agos
No.m destrengora hiera.

Lady, I surrender to you
as you're the best and truest
that ever was, and sprightly and valiant,
if only you weren't so cruel to me.
Most fair are your features
and fresh and lively your hue.
I am yours, and if I had you,
nothing would be lacking to me

Mas tan temo vostro preito,
Todo.n son escarmentado.
Por vos ei pen' e maltreito
E meo corpo lazerado:
La noit, can jatz en meu leito,
So mochas vetz resperado;
E car nonca m'aprofeito
Falid' ei en mon cuidado.

But so much I fear your anger
that I am in complete despair;
for you I have toil and torture
and my body is racked:
at night, when I lay in bed,
I am awoken many a time;
and since I gain no good for myself,
I have failed in my intent.

Belhs Cavaliers, tant es car
Lo vostr' onratz senhoratges
Que cada jorno m'esglaio.
Oi me lasso que farò
Si sele que j'ai plus chiere
Me tue, ne sai por quoi?
Ma dauna, he que dey bos
Ni peu cap santa Quitera,
Mon corasso m'avetz treito
E mot gen favlan furtado.

Fair Knight, so precious is
your honoured thrall
that every day I despair.
Alas, what shall I do
if she whom I call my dearest
kills me, I know not why?
My lady, by my faith in you
and by the head of Saint Quiteria,
you have taken away my heart,
and stolen it by most sweet talk.

English translation follows each stanza. The original is in Provençal, Italian, French, Gascon and Galician respectively. In the envoi, the five languages are mixed together.

I did find one contemporary descort, in Drunken Boat. it's pretty good, and for some reason is unsigned.

Anyway, that's enough for one blog entry. I'll get to mine next time.

Played with Bird

2011-12-31T13:27:00.000-08:00

Add one more to the list of living musicians who played with Charlie Parker -- Clora Bryant, who played R&B and swing with all-girl orchestras -- including the Prairie View Co-eds and the International Sweethearts of Rhythm.

Then she discovered bebop and entered that world, the only female musician to play with Charlie Parker on his West Coast dates.

Deserving of much wider recognition.

More Christmas carol thoughts

2011-12-23T11:38:00.000-08:00

Contemporary Christmas songs have lines like "Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow" and "I don't know if there'll be snow, but have a cup of cheer." "Silver Bells," which is not an awful song, has lines like "Ring-a-ling, hear them sing." "The Little Drummer Boy" is actually a pretty good song -- decent, if done-before, plot, a retelling of "Jongleur de Notre Dame" and a bunch of other things, and it does have one interesting image -- "Mary nodded, ba-rup-bup-bup-bum, the ox and lamb kept time..." It could be a windup Swiss clock version of the Nativity scene.

But the old carols have moments of inspired language -- the sweet assonance of "Sleep in heavenly peace." The disturbing yet reassuring concept of "God and sinners reconciled." The Robert Burnsian imagery of "The Holly and the Ivy." The compounded swell of descriptive adjectives in "faithful, joyful and triumphant."

Merry Christmas, all.

More Jazz Portraits

2011-12-19T18:55:00.000-08:00

Dewey Redman

Frank Foster

Teddy Wilson

Have Yourself a Cliched Christmas

2011-12-19T18:16:00.000-08:00

Christmas is the time for beautiful traditional music, and mostly awful contemporary music. So many cliched lyrics -- "The Christmas Song" has most of them. Yes, nice melody, yes, always nice to hear Nat King Cole, but the tiny tots, and the reindeer, and the carols being sung by a choir, and the turkey and the mistletoe...song after song after song, the same cliches.

Are there any good lyrics to modern Christmas songs? "White Christmas" is in a class by itself, not because the lyrics are spectacular, just because they're right. No one but Irving Berlin could write that simply, and there's no use trying to imitate him.

Stevie Wonder's "Someday at Christmas" has a different slant and a good lyric.

And I like "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane aren't on anyone's list of legendary masters of American song, but they outid themselves with "Meet Me in St. Louis," and they hit a touching, bittersweet note with this one.

Any others?

Jazz portraits

2011-12-15T14:40:00.000-08:00

A few more:

Ben Webster

James Moody

Gerry Mulligan

The Metropole Wiki'd

2011-12-13T08:17:00.000-08:00

Wrote and posted my Metropole entry at Wikipedia.

Jazz portraits

2011-12-13T08:05:00.000-08:00

Recent additions to my jazz portrait gallery:

Big Mama Thornton

McCoy Tyner

Bennie Moten

A brief history of homosexuality

2011-12-13T07:07:00.000-08:00

Stuff I didn't know. Gleaned from Gotham by (the other) Mike Wallace -- Homosexuality was invented in the 1880s. Before that, no one thought it necessary to have such a concept. In the 1840s and 50s, which is the era I'm reading about, Society was basically organized along gender lines, and men worked together, played together, clubbed together, partied together, and frequently slept together. Women shopped together, lunched together, sewed together, and often slept together. It was pretty much an accepted norm.

It was not entirely an LGBT-friendly world, though -- not to the T part. Cross-dressing was a serious breach, because that was an affront to the social separation of men and women.

What you can learn about writing from a lungful of smoke and a gun to the head

2011-08-15T13:29:00.001-07:00

Started reading a mystery novel that I downloaded on ebook library loan, and I hate it already. I won't name names, because I may get to like it more, but here are my reasons for hating it so far..

In the first sentence, someone points a gun at the hero's head. This is not bad in itself. Raymond Chandler said that whenever he started to run out of ideas, he'd have someone come busting through a door with a gun in his hand. This is very good advice -- often metaphorically -- and I've cited it more than once. But maybe you shouldn't have run out of ideas before the first sentence? But OK -- gun to his head. Then we have a couple of pages of flashback to the previous 15 minutes, then back to the gun to the head. So this makes it feel like a really cheesy device. If your flashback is only going to cover 15 minutes, why not just start the story 15 minutes earlier?

In the gun-to-head sentence, we get the character's name, which sounds like a retread name from the 40s. Well, people have more or less the same range of names they did in the 40s, but if you're dangerously flirting with 40s private eye cliches anyway, maybe a little more work on the name?

And if you're flirting with 40s private eye cliches, why have the character smoking Luckies? Are they making a comeback? Or are we really channeling Mike Hammer?

And what does he do with the Luckies? He inhales a lungful of smoke. There are two things almost guaranteed to make me lose all respect for a writer: telling us that a character chewed and swallowed something, or that he/she inhaled a lungful of smoke. This is stuff we could have figured out for ourselves.

Sue Grafton, a terrific mystery writer, has one annoying little tic -- unnecessarily specific action. Kinsey Millhone (not a 40s name), her detective, is always sticking keys into ignitions or turning the handles of doors. But she's good enough that she can get away with it.

The writer of this novel does advance beyond 40s cliches at one point, to an 80s cliche -- the bad guys wearing masks of presidents of the US. He shows some restraint here, though. Only one is wearing a George Bush mask. The others are a gorilla, a vampire, and a death's head. Clinton, Nixon and Reagan?

Well, back to reading.

Billy Faier

2011-08-15T12:02:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was the Saugerties Artists Studio Tour, and I had my studio/showroom open in the Barbara Fite Room at Opus 40. It was a great weekend -- sold a few prints, a few books, and met some old friends. Sunshine, one of my mother's dearest friends.

And a guy with a big bushy white mustache, who introduced himself to me. I remembered him, though he didn't remember ne -- which is as it should have been. I was a teenager, hanging around Woodstock, just starting to find out who I was and who I wanted to be, and he was one o the people I wanted to be. Billy Faier, banjo virtuoso. Wandering troubador, itinerant folksinger.

Turns out he's still around, and still -- after a bout with carpal tunnel, and an operation to correct it -- playing the banjo. He lives in Texas now -- "One of the biggest reasons I like living in Texas; it's the only place I ever saw where the inhabitants love to sit around the campfire half the night singing songs about their home state. Can you imagine this happening in New York? New Jersey? Of course not." He has a website which contains a fascinating mini-autobiography, and a great account of the folk scene in the 40s and 50s. Even better than that, it has a treasure trove of Billy's music from over the years, available for streaming audio or download.

My friend, banjo legend George Stavis, when I told him about running into Billy, said "I consider him one of my true progenitors."

For locals, Billy Faier will be playing at the Woodstock Farmers Market this Wednesday, Aug 17, 5-7 pm.

The Metropole

2011-08-10T09:58:00.000-07:00

In one of my old jazz posts here, I lamented how little there is on the Internet about the old Metropole Cafe, the Times Square jazz spot. I remember hearing Henry "Red" Allen there, and I regret, now, being too caught up in the bebop/moldy fig wars to appreciate fully that great traditional jazz. But I decided to look again, to see if anything new had gone up.

For those who don't remember, the Metropole was not your classic tiny, smoky dive of a jazz club, like the Village Vanguard or the Five Spot. It opened up boisterously onto boisterous Times Square, and the bandstand was a long runway behind the bar, seemingly more designed for strippers than jazzmen (and in a later incarnation, before it vanished completely, it was a strip club).

I found this photo from 1966, with Dizzy Gillespie headlining. It's one of a collection of photos of NYC in the 60s by kdavidclark, including a couple of beauties of folksingers in Washington Square Park.

And this one from 1948, by the great jazz photographer Herman Leonard (whose brother, Dave Leonard, did some of the best photos of Opus 40 and Harvey Fite that I have ever seen).

This one, from 1960, featuring the Dukes of Dixieland on the marquee, is by Anonyme, and you can buy it for $900. Why so much? I looked up Anonyme, and there's a Societe Anonyme, founded by Katherine Dreier, Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp -- but they closed up shop in 1941.But if you're in a nostalgic spending mood, you can also bid on a menu from the old Metropole.

Here's one with Cozy Cole on the marquee, from a great jazz reminiscence blog called Stomp Off, by the noted jazz producer Chris Albertson.

And there's one one more picture, of a rock band called the Teemates, opening at the Metropole. Their web page is a fascinating glimpse at the career of a group of 60s rockers who almost made it.

And still no history of the club. No Wikipedia entry, although in the entry for avant-garde artist Barbara Rosenthal, it's mentioned that she did a stint as a go-go dancer at the Metropole. Someone should write one. Not me -- I don't know enough. Someone like the late Arnold Shaw, whose Wiki entry I did write.

Streets named after blues musicians

2011-08-09T06:44:00.000-07:00

With the recent designation of Buddy Guy Way in Chicago, I started to wonder what other streets -- or public places -- I knew about W. C. Handy Park in Memphis and Duke Ellington Boulevard in Manhattan -- were named after blues musicians. Some don't have to be -- you wouldn't rename Beale Street, for certain. Here's what Yahoo searches found.

Chicago

Beaumont, TX

Holt, AL

There's also a street in Old Cape Cod named after Patti Page, who wasn't a blues singer, but good for her, anyway.

iPad art

2011-07-26T19:16:00.000-07:00

I've been working with iPad as an art tool, following the extraordinary trail blazed by David Hockney. I'm not that far along the trail, but I've been starting to feel my way through.

I've beem using ArtStudio. Hockney has said he uses several different programs, but most commonly Brushes. ArtStudio doesn't even make this list of the best programs, and maybe I'll experiment with a couple of others, but no one would list Microsoft Paint among the best programs for PC, and it's the one I use most.

The nice thing about iPad apps, as opposed to computer programs, is that they're cheap.

Tad's Night With the Language Thieves Blog

2011-07-26T07:15:00.000-07:00

I've changed the name of this blog. I started it to post news and commentary about Opus 40, and various other odds and ends, but the other odds and ends have pretty much taken it over, and I've mostly moved the Opus 40 stuff to its Facebook page.

I know not everyone has Facebook, but not everyone reads this blog, either -- Opus 40 has close to a thousand FB followers, and my blog...well, less.

I've steadfastly eschewed politics in this space as long as it had Opus 40 in it, but I may include a political post or two now that it's just mine. I have mixed feelings about that, and perhaps I'll still mostly stay away from the political arena. I will post links to my brother Jon's HuffPost cartoons.

What People Look Like

2011-06-24T15:18:00.000-07:00

Wow. I thought I'd finished this subject, but look what Balzac can do with what someone looks like. We're introduced, as the story begins, to Michu, who is cleaning is gun, but not casually,

A huntsman does not take such minute precautions with his weapon to kill small game, neither does he use, in the department of the Aube, a heavy rifled carbine.

No, Michu is not to be taken causally, In fact, as Balzac points out,

There is such a thing as prophetic physiognomy. If it were possible (and such a vital statistic would be of value to society) to obtain exact likenesses of those who perish on the scaffold, the science of Lavatar and also that of Gall would prove unmistakably that the heads of all such persons, even those who are innocent, show prophetic signs. Yes, fate sets its mark on the faces of those who are doomed to die a violent death of any kind.

So he's committed himself, more than a little, to prove his case of prophetic physiognomy. And boy, does he ever.

Now, this sign, this seal, visible to the eye of an observer, was imprinted on the expressive face of the man with the rifled carbine. Short and stout, abrupt and active in his motions as a monkey, though calm in temperament, Michu had a white face injected with blood, and features set close together like those of a Tartar,--a likeness to which his crinkled red hair conveyed a sinister expression. His eyes, clear and yellow as those of a tiger, showed depths behind them in which the glance of whoever examined the man might lose itself and never find either warmth or motion. Fixed, luminous, and rigid, those eyes terrified whoever gazed into them. The singular contrast between the immobility of the eyes and the activity of the body increased the chilling impression conveyed by a first sight of Michu. Action, always prompt in this man, was the outcome of a single thought; just as the life of animals is, without reflection, the outcome of instinct. Since 1793 he had trimmed his red beard to the shape of a fan. Even if he had not been (as he was during the Terror) president of a club of Jacobins, this peculiarity of his head would in itself have made him terrible to behold. His Socratic face with its blunt nose was surmounted by a fine forehead, so projecting, however, that it overhung the rest of the features. The ears, well detached from the head, had the sort of mobility which we find in those of wild animals, which are ever on the qui-vive. The mouth, half-open, as the custom usually is among country-people, showed teeth that were strong and white as almonds, but irregular. Gleaming red whiskers framed this face, which was white and yet mottled in spots. The hair, cropped close in front and allowed to grow long at the sides and on the back of the head, brought into relief, by its savage redness, all the strange and fateful peculiarities of this singular face. The neck which was short and thick, seemed to tempt the axe.

Believe in prophetic physiognomy now?

What people look like

2011-06-21T13:45:00.001-07:00

Still with John Dickson Carr, and finally we are introduced to the great man himself, Sir Henry Merrivale. Since this is, I believe, the first book in this series, and we'll certainly be seeing more of HM, you might think we'd get a full description, but no, we only see his face in action, or inaction, since his face rarely changes We're told that expression, No matter what his mood is. We're told that it's big, wrinkled, impassive, and that his rarely-changing expression involves turned- down corners of his broad mouth, making him look as though he has just swallowed a bad breakfast egg.

That's pretty much it for description until, a good deal later in the book, we meet Mrs. Sweeney.

Mrs. Sweeney was a large woman, with a heavy face which seemed to come sailing at us as she got up from her seat by the small round table in this waxy best-parlor. She was not ill-featured; she resembled one of those old ladies who sit and knit in boarding-houses, but larger, harder, and more archly cunning. Her grayish hair was folded into buns over her ears. She wore the black coat “with black feathers”; and a rimless pince-nez attached by a gold chain. This last she twitched off with a gesture which tried to indicate that she had been improving her time by studying the Bible on the center-table.

“So!” said Mrs. Sweeney. Her dark eyebrows went up. She lifted the pince-nez slightly to one side of her eyes, as though she had been removing a mask, and rasped accusingly:

We also learn that she has an ample bust, because she shakes it "rather as though she were dislodging worldly cares; but it was a gesture curiously like that performed by the chorus in a musical comedy."

This is all excellent description, and certainly fixes Mr. Sweeney in one's mind, but why? She's a minor, tangential character, and as I was marking descriptions of faces in my Kindle copy, I asked myself exactly that question.

Of course -- and here comes a three-quarters-of-a-century-later spoiler alert -- if I were a better detective story reader, I would have known the answer instantly-- what if she's not a minor character? What if she is, in reality, the mysterious, shadowy second wife of the murdered Darworth????

She isn't, as it turns out, so even the better detective story reader than me can be fooled.

But there you have it. Why does a novelist use a few broad brushstrokes for his main character, and bring painstaking to bear on a minor character? It ain't just carelessness.

What people look like

2011-06-13T20:12:00.001-07:00

The Girl -- you have to describe her, because she's Young Halliday's love interest, and she's in danger, and young Halliday has been telling Blake about her pretty much since the start of the book. We first see her in a moment of high tension -- as Blake and Halliday step into the room,

"Marion Latimer stayed motionless, a tense figure in the candlelight; and the Shadow seemed to tremble at her feet. She had that thin, classic, rather cold type of beauty which makes face and body seem almost angular. Her hair was set in dark-gold waves next to the somewhat long head; her eyes were dark blue, glazed now with a preoccupied and somehow disturbing quality; the nose short, the mouth sensitive and determined."

Buried in that paragraph is a description that young tad could have written. Dark - gold waves of hair, a short nose, dark blue eye, a mouth.But there's more, isn't there? First of all, this is certainly Blake's dispassionate description, not that of an ardent young swain. More than that, she is at this point still a potential suspect in the murder that has yet to be committed, so we get the suspicious descriptive phrases -- the cold beauty, the disturbing quality to the eyes -- as well as the reassuring ones -- the sensitive and determined mouth. The point is, Carr wants us to fix her -- not so much the blue eyes, gold hair and short nose as her -- so he lingers over her introduction. In fact, he goes on longer --

"She stood there crookedly, almost as though she were lame. One hand was thrust deep into the pocket of The brown tweed coat wrapped around her thin body; as she watched us, the other hand left the window sill and pulled the collar close round her neck. They were fine, thin, wiry hands."

In the same scene, we next meet Halliday's aunt, who, like Marion, has been falling under the spell of the enigmatic charlatan Darworth, and like her, will fall under suspicion For Darworth's murder (I warned you there'd be spoilers). We see the aunt's white hair, her face like a wax flower -- which is wonderfully descriptive but wouldn't help you pick her out a lineup. We learn that her eyes were gentle -- and hard. Again, a description that could suggest her as innocent -- or guilty. Mostly, though, Carr refers us to "people who are supposed to look like eighteenth century marquises by Watteau. Lady Anne Bennington looked like a thoroughly modern, sharp-witted old lady got up to resemble one. Besides, her nose was too large."

You can say someone looks like a Watteau (or like a Dali, but that would be weirder), or that someone looks like John Cusack or Annette Bening, but you can't do it too often, because it's kinda cheating, and it signals to the reader that you're really not very good at this sort of thing. Like Carr, put it in a context, and like Carr, don't do it too much.

What people look like

2011-06-11T18:38:00.001-07:00

On my free Kindle reading jag, I've also reconnected with John Dickson Carr, great mystery novelist of an earlier generation and master of the locked room puzzle. But even if the corpse is found in an impregnable room, locked from the inside, there are still people outside the room, and they all have to look some way or other. Or at least some of them do. In The Plague Court Murders, young Halliday, who calls the narrator in to consult on the mystery, has no trace of humor in his low chin, high forehead, and high-muscled jaws. I'm not exactly sure what young Halliday looks like, given that, but at least I know something of his state of mind. And I guess he's sort of handsome and aristocratic--more so than if he had a low forehead. The narrator, Blake, and young Halliday go to see Masters of Scotland Yard, who has a bland, shrewd face, And grizzled hair combed carefully to hide the bald spot.
This is pretty good stuff -- a face that's both bland and shrewd, certainly an asset to a cop. But a little vanity to balance his blandness (and portliness). Blake continues, "His Jaw looked heavier and his expression older since I had last seen him -- but his eyes were young." Carr is now two for two on jaws, or two more jaw descriptions than young Tad would have thought of. And we really are starting to get a sense of Masters. Here's the rest:

Masters suggests the Force, though only slightly: something in the clump of his walk, the way his eyes go sharply from face to face, but there is none of the peering sourness We associate with Public Protectors.

This, of course, is not the Force you get from Yoda or Obi-Wan Kenobi; Blake merely means that Masters looks sort of, but not overbearingly, like a cop. There are two good description gambits here: describe through action (the eyes that go sharply from face to face), and describe people in terms of what they don't look like -- in this case, a typical cop. But to come with a phrase like "peering sourness" you just have to be really good.

Anyway, Masters looks enough like a cop to inspire confidence, but not so much as to be a stereotype. In fact, Halliday immediately unbends and feels at ease before his practical solidity. But Carr has laid some nice groundwork here -- Masters is enough of a typical cop to be thoroughly baffled by a thoroughly baffling case, which means his clumping practical solidity will have to give way to the unorthodox genius of Sir Henry Merrivale.

But more about Sir Henry later.

As we go on, there may be some spoilers, which may not be a serious issue considering that this is a nearly 80-year-old book, but on the other hand, if you're just getting.a kindle, it's free, and it's good, so why not give it a read? In which case, watch out for spoilers.

Unreliable

2011-06-01T12:30:00.001-07:00

Writing

I'll continue with my blather about what people look like presently, but a small digression to discuss something else about Middlemarch -- a very cool conceit that I haven't exactly seen before: the unreliable omniscient narrator. In Middlemarch, the narrator is constantly misconstruing the motives or reactions of her reader, is unclear or just plain wrong about the motivations of her characters, and is frequently guilty of passing judgments that turn out to be wrong. This is downright masterful, and I'm loving it.

What people look like -- part 2

2011-05-30T19:43:00.001-07:00

I started out wondering what different authors say about how people look, but found myself moving on to wondering why. Why does Eliot spend so much space on Mr Cadwallader's looks, none at all on Sir James? Maybe it's because this is all we really need to know about Mr. Cadwallader. He's a flat character, in E. M. Forster's phrase. He's keenly observed and memorable, and he's in the novel to do a job.

I don't know about Young Ladislaw. I'm only about 1/3 of the way through the book, and I assume he'll come back in and play a larger role. So why does he get essentially a Young Tad treatment, fleshed out with the prominent, threatening aspect to mouth and chin? I'm guessing it's because Dorothea would like to pigeonhole him, but she can't quite do it.

Mr. Casaubon gets two vivid synechdocal descriptions, the deep eye sockets and the moles with hairs sticking out, because that's all that's needed. We have both views of him as well as could possibly be desired: we don't need to know what shape his nose his, or which direction his hair falls.

What People Look Like - part 1

2011-05-29T05:48:00.000-07:00

My earliest efforts at writing--I'm talking about my first serious, professional efforts at, say, 13 or 14 -- were always stymied fairly early on. I'd start a story, which meant I'd have to introduce a character. And that meant I'd have to describe what the character looked like.

It seemed to me that I couldn't continue until I'd managed a description, and basically, I had no idea what people looked like. I'd get as far as "He had two (brown/blue) eyes, a big/small nose, and a mouth." I don't think I ever got as far as (full, thin) lips or (even/crooked) teeth. And there went my professional career, down to defeat with a wry grin or the wink of an eye.

Many years and some actual books later, I'm not sure I'm any better at it. So, for the benefit of those similarly challenged, I thought I'd make a desultory examination of how other writers tell you what people looked like. I started with the books closest to hand, which were the books I'd downloaded to my new iPad because they were free.

Mostly, they don't, which is something that never occurred to the younger professional me. Jane Austen's famous for it. There is not a single word of physical description in any of her novels,and yet we all know what her characters look like. (Well, we know for sure that Mr. Darcy looks like Laurence Olivier.)
George Eliot does look into her characters' faces, even if they're often only sidelong glances. We get two different views of Mr. Casaubon, from the lovestruck Dorothea, who sees his iron-grey hair and deep eye sockets, to her repulsed sister Celia, who is more inclined to notice his two white moles with hairs on them, his sallow complexion, and the way he always blinks before he speaks. In any event, mere looks don't impress Dorothea. If they did, she might take an interest in that nice Sir James, who is presumably handsome, although we only know for sure that he is red-whiskered (and made of excellent human dough, if that counts).

We get much more detailed head-on looks at Eliot's minor characters, such as Mr. Cadwallader, a large man with full lips and a sweet smile. Fourteen-year-old professional Tad could actually have managed that one, once I'd mastered the full lips part. But Eliot gives us more:

Very plain and rough in his exterior, but with that solid imperturbable ease and good humor which is infectious, and like great grassy hills in the sunshine, quiets even an irritated egoism, and makes it rather ashamed of itself.

Young Ladislaw with the curly hair gets a fairly conventional treatment:

A pair of gray eyes rather near together, a delicate irregular nose with a little ripple in it, and hair falling backwards; but there was a mouth and chin of a more prominent, threatening aspect than belonged to the type of the grandmother's miniature. Young Ladislaw did not feel it necessary to smile, as if he charmed...but rather wore a pouting air of discontent.

In Medias Res -- what then?

2011-04-24T14:49:00.000-07:00

Another Creative Writing I exercise. Again, these are students just beginning to learn something about the craft.

Christine sat on the tacky pleather couch, her vision blurred by her heavily matted black makeup. It took her a minute realize what was happening when her friends began lowering their heads to the table. This was her first time in a nightclub; it was a night of a lot of firsts. Earlier that evening she slipped on a skin-tight sequin dress and dug her feet into a pair of much too high heels. All borrowed from Janessa. Christine knew any moment that the offer would come her way. She felt the sweaty hand of a stranger on her bare thigh and couldn’t help but picture her mother. Home in bed for hours now, no doubt. She imagined her mother was dreaming of her “perfect daughter” at her prestigious college, studying or finding a cure for some nefarious disease. Christine quickly brushed the thought from her mind. Her heart thumped heavily in time with the bass of the loud music as the stranger leaned in and whispered in her ear. And without another thought she took the rolled up dollar bill and followed suit.

This is from an exercise -- write a scene that uses action to develop or illuminate character. It might be the beginning of a story, it might not. But in either case, the paragraph plunges us into a situation.

One of the books I use in a beginning Creative Writing class is Learning to Write Fiction from the Masters, by Barnaby Conrad, a novelist who also worked as secretary to Sinclair Lewis. Conrad has some good, workmanlike advice about the craft of fiction, particularly in a chapter on opening paragraphs. He presents, with examples, twelve different ways of starting a story. One of them is in medias res, "Rather than setting the scene or describing the situation in detail beforehand, the writer plunges the reader directly "into the middle of things."*

This student has started with in medias res, and here's what I said to her.

The in media res opening to a story, or a scene, can be very effective, but it has its pitfalls. What do you do next, after you've thrown your character -- and more importantly, your reader -- into the middle of the action?

This paragraph, unfortunately, is what you don't do. You can't then back up to the beginning and fill the reader in on everything. That kinda negates the whole point of in media res, which is to hit the ground running and let the reader know that she/he is going to have to run too, to catch up. It creates momentum, a sense of breathless excitement.

What if you just leave the exposition out?

Christine sat on the tacky pleather couch, her vision blurred by her heavily matted black makeup. She felt the sweaty hand of a stranger on her bare thigh and couldn’t help but picture her mother. Home in bed for hours now, no doubt, dreaming of her perfect daughter finding a cure for some nefarious disease. Christine's heart thumped heavily in time with the bass of the loud music as the stranger leaned in and whispered in her ear. And without another thought she took the rolled up dollar bill and followed suit.

What do you think? How does it work for you now? It's all action, except for the imagined vision of her mother. And with all the exposition cut out, you have room for more action, more description, more development of that scene. You can maybe put the sequined dress back in -- I guess slit up the side, or a mini, to expose the thigh. I like slit up the side better, but that's just me. In any event, you can put her in the dress, and describe it, but describe it there -- don't take us back to earlier in the evening.

Remember the point of both of these exercises -- a scene with description of concrete detail, a scene with action -- is to use description and action to reveal and develop character. Is that happening here? With the exposition cleared out of the way, it's starting to.

What do you want to show in this scene? Christine's desire to go beyond her limits, some sense of what those limits are, some idea of her motivation, how she deals with the unknown becoming the actual? Probably something like that. But once you sort of know that, forget it. Get into the scene. What's happening? What is she doing? What are other people doing around her?

At first reading -- too much makeup, the hand on the thigh, the whisper in the air, the exchange of money -- I thought she was turning a trick for the first time. But then I realized no, she wouldn't be doing that for a dollar. She's doing a line. But still, the hand, the whisper -- there's dangerous sex lurking around the edges of this scene. Is she doing the line to enhance the experience? Or -- perhaps more interesting, because it's emotions in conflict -- because this is what she came for, but now she's not so sure it's what she wants, and she's using the cocaine as a way of putting it off? How would the action of the scene -- just this scene -- be different if it were the one or the other?

But, reiterating my point -- once you've got her in the room, with a strange hand on her thigh, it's too late to go back to exposition. You're in the scene, and you need to be there.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

* I discovered, checking Amazon, that Conrad has expanded this into a whole book -- 101 Best Beginnings Ever Written: A Romp Through Literary Openings for Writers and Readers. Looks good. Still, my favorite book on this subject is First Paragraphs: Inspired Openings for Writers and Readers, by Donald Newlove.

Trust the story

2011-04-23T10:53:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be posting a few scenes from student writers. These are from Creative Writing 1 students, so they're a little raw, but they all have some value, and they all illustrate some points about writing.

Gillespie was half way down the street when he heard Gracie calling for him. “You are still going after Edwin, after what I had told you?”
“The stars can’t always be right, they couldn’t even give you the correct time of my arrival!” Gillespie triumphantly proclaimed. “That’s not the point you fool! Look at everything around you, nature and all its beauty. Are you willing to risk never being able to appreciate this?” Gracie asked as she held her arms open and had her palms pointing up towards the sky. In that moment, Gillespie’s focus was caught by a butterfly, floating towards shrubberies with hummingbirds suspended at their blossoms. All the colors -- red, pink, blue, turquoise, orange -- overwhelmed him as he felt a lump in his throat approaching. A family of deer were grazing peacefully on the foliage in the background under the shade of the deciduous forest that Gillespie was on the outskirts of. In that same instance, Gracie and Gillespie caught sight of a pack of wolves stalking the deer under the cover of the forest, waiting for the right time to strike. Like a bolt of lightning, the wolves pounced on their prey, ambushing from every direction, tearing the deer limb from limb. With admiration for the grotesque carnage, Gillespie regained focus and remembered Edwin’s favorite place to hang out. A little bar by the docks called The Lone Wolf. He felt even more ready as the only thing on his mind was taking back what Edwin had stole from him: his dignity.
“See Gracie, in order to truly appreciate nature in all its beauty, you also must bear witness some of nature’s atrocities.” Gillespie said as he walked off, in search of his culprit. “Yes, but are you the witnessing an atrocity or are you the atrocity?” Gracie said to herself as Gillespie walked.

The point here -- trust the story. As much as you can, let it tell itself -- don't feel that you constantly have to step in and explain it. For instance:

You don't need to tell us that "Gracie and Gillespie caught sight of" -- we know they're there, and we know we're seeing what they're seeing. We don't need to be told that it's grotesque carnage, we can see it. And we don't need to be told Gillespie admires it -- we get that from the dialog. We don't need to be told Gillespie regains focus -- we see him regaining it.

Also "triumphantly proclaimed" and "In that moment" -- just keep remembering you don't have to give the reader all those signposts -- the story will do it.

You have all the good stuff here -- you just need to trust it.

Thoughts on writing

2011-04-04T06:24:00.000-07:00

· David Mamet states that human beings do not "communicate our wishes to each other, but we communicate to achieve our wishes from each other. We do not speak the desire but speak that which is most likely to bring about the desire."

People may or may not say what they mean... but they always say something designed to get what they want.

· Italo Calvino: "Both in art and in literature, the function of the frame is fundamental. It is the frame that marks the boundary between the picture and what is outside. It allows the picture to exist, isolating it from the rest; but at the same time, it recalls--and somehow stands for--everything that remains out of the picture. I might venture a definition: we consider poetic a production in which each individual experience acquires prominence through its detachment from the general continuum, while it retains a kind of glint of that unlimited vastness."

· Howard Hawks, on what makes a great movie: “Three great scenes. No bad scenes.”

· F. Scott Fitzgerald: “Start with a person in mind and you can create a character, but start with a character (stereotype) in mind and you create nothing.”

· Raymond Chandler: “When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.”

· Kurt Vonnegut:
Now lend me your ears. Here is Creative Writing 101:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things - reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them - in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Thoughts on music

2011-03-30T13:44:00.001-07:00

Most of American music was made by people who never had any idea it would be listened to beyond the moment, and much of it will live forever. Somewhere around 1970 that changed. Every pop band thought they were making music for posterity, and most of it isn't.

Why it keeps getting harder

2011-03-16T11:09:00.000-07:00

Thomas Mann once defined a writer as "a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." And a corollary -- the better you get at writing, the harder it becomes. It pretty much has to. Your standards get higher -- you demand more of yourself. And as a writer, you're in competition with everyone else who's writing and everyone who's ever written. In a sense, that's a fairly steady level of competition, but in a more significant sense, it's not, because you recognize more of your competition's salient points as you get more experience.
And in an even more significant sense, it gets wildly difficult, because your main competition is always yourself, and as you get better, it means your principal competition gets stiffer.

Revision in a workshop setting

2011-02-18T11:22:00.000-08:00

there's no guarantee that any suggestion I make will actually make the poem better. Sometimes a suggestion can be perfectly good, and it'll end up making the poem worse. There's a movie called Rio Bravo, made by director Howard Hawks, starring John Wayne, and co-starring Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson, who were both better known as popular singers than dramatic actors -- this was Ricky Nelson's only dramatic role. Hawks liked the story, and he made almost the exact same story into another movie, called El Dorado, also starring John Wayne, this time with Robert Mitchum and James Caan in the two supporting roles. Mitchum and Caan were both extremely gifted actors (Caan still is--he's still around). But for some inexplicable reason, Rio Bravo is the better movie. But you learn by trying different things, even if they don't always make the poem better.

Played with Bird...one more time

2011-02-15T14:10:00.000-08:00

We forgot another one from our list of living musicians who played with Charlie Parker -- George Shearing, who died today.

Shearing came to New York for the first time in 1946. On meeting Charlie Parker, he asked to play something with the great alto saxophonist. Parker suggested “All the Things You Are,” though in the difficult key of B. Shearing was ready for the test. “I really love those awkward keys,” he said later.

From an obituary in the Louisville Courier-Journal

Interview with Marvin Bell

2011-02-13T08:46:00.000-08:00

Great interview on poetry with my old friend Marvin Bell.

Changing things around

2011-02-13T08:40:00.000-08:00

Often, when I'm trying to find something in a poem that's not quite there yet, I'll experiment with tense or person. Interestingly, this is something I worked out on my own, but once when I mentioned it to my mentor, Donald Finkel (I stayed in touch with him for his whole life, so this would be after we'd been talking and corresponding for 30 years or so), he told me he did the same thing. He told me a poem he'd written about an experience a friend had told him about. The friend had been struck by lightning while standing at a window, and knocked clear across the room. Don said he knew that there was a poem there, and he kept trying to write it, and it kept not working. He tried it in present tense and past tense. He tried in first person and third person. I don't think he tried gender-switching -- making his first person narrator or third person character a woman -- although that's something I'll do from time to time. Finally, he said, he got the poem to work by using two strategies, both of which he didn't believe in and would never use in a poem...but they were right for this one. He put in the second person and the future tense ("You will...")

Here's one I experimented with in that way. I had wanted to write a poem about the days when they still talked about jazz, and I had planned to make that the subject of the poem -- impersonal third person voice, a nostalgic/philosophical musing about a bygone era. It actually came out of listening to a Bill Cosby monologue. But it kept coming out hopelessly hokey and sentimental, which is probably OK for Bill Cosby, but not for me. Then I got the hot asphalt, crushed stone, sand and gravel from a sign on the side of a road which I was driving on when I got lost, and the poem started coming together, but gradually. I started with the present tense, I'm sure about that -- putting myself on that byway, seeing that sign. But that didn't work, so I started to try to get closer to the crushed stone by putting someone to work in the paving company. I'd put myself at some distance from a company like this in the past ("The Gravel Business"), but this had to be different.

I had, not long before, written one poem about a woman, daughter of a jazz musician, leaving her husband and trying to find herself. So suppose I put it in the third person, made it about her, had her move upstate to Kingston -- I pictured her living somewhere down around Abeel Street -- gave her a job with the paving company, and worked around to the jazz line that way?

HOT ASPHALT, CRUSHED STONE

By spring, she was living in upstate
New York, working for a paving company:
hot asphalt, crushed stone, sand and gravel.
The view from her window was great heaps
of stone, scooped, conveyed to barges,
an inlet of water, a distant high bridge, mountains.
Below her flat, old white men drank and talked
about guns and rights. She could hear,
late into night, the tunk! of darts, like
the patter of of raindrops slowed way, way down
by a drummer intent on mastering their rhythms.
She thought about her father, Ellis Perkins,
in the days when they still talked about jazz --
Louis Armstrong and Jabbo Smith at the Rockland Palace
and the next day it was all over Harlem
how Satch had smoked him with F over high C.
How Cootie left the Duke.
How one day everyone opened the windows, and played
Illinois Jacquet’s solo on “Flying Home”
to the streets and stoops: blat... blat... blaat... blaat... blaat...

Music blogs

2011-02-06T09:42:00.000-08:00

I've always been remiss about keeping up my links list, but I'm making a stab at it today by adding a list of some of the music blogs and websites that I love, inspired by discovering a new one, JazzWax, which describes itself as "Marc Myers blogs daily on jazz legends and legendary jazz recordings."

I found it through a random web surf that led me to this interview with Jackie Cain, best known for her Jackie and Roy duets.

So...this entry, and this list, starting with my two favorite music blogs.

Bebop Wino Done Gone is devoted to finding and offering for download some great and forgotten rhythm and blues wax, and this one goes straight to my heart, which beats to the rhythm and blues of the 40s and 50s.

And The Old Weird America, which may just be the best blog in all of the Internet. This guy is blogging his way through the entire Harry Smith anthology, with explorations taking off from each entry, including links and downloads. He's currently at #50, “John The Baptist” by Rev. Moses Mason.

Walrus vs. Eggman

2011-01-31T14:28:00.000-08:00

Working with my Creative Writing 1 class on a couple of things -- what Richard Hugo calls "writing off the subject" and I call "writing away from the subject," and learning how to talk about literature. One of my frequent first assignments is to write a poem that doesn't mean anything, and I often follow that up by assigning peer critiques, in which they have to find meaning in each other's meaningless poems.

Being able to do peer critiques of each other's work doesn't come naturally -- the language of criticism has to be learned, as does the confidence that ond can find something to say. So I spent today splitting the class up into small discussion groups, and asking each group to come up with an interpretation of this:

Now, John Lennon wrote "I Am the Walrus" in response to a letter he'd gotten from an old teacher, telling John that he was having his students analyze Beatles songs. John's response was essentially "Oh yeah? Analyze this!" He wrote "I Am the Walrus" quite deliberately to have no meaning, and therefore to be analysis-proof. But that's never stopped anyone from analyzing it, and I got some really nice results.

A couple of groups noticed that Lennon puts himself together with everyone else (he's the eggman, but so is everyone else) and apart at the same time (he's the only walrus). One group suggested that the eggmen referred to the larval state of human spiritual development -- none of us have advanced past being eggmen -- except, or course, the walrus.

Another group focused on "sitting in an English garden waiting for the sun to shine" -- the sun is enlightenment, and perhaps they're waiting on an enightenment that never comes. Or maybe it does -- the waiting itself is the enlightenment -- you get a tan from sitting in the English rain.

Another group pointed out the sterility of official answers -- the expert textperts, the answers of organized religion like Hare Krishna -- and maybe Catholicism, if the penguins are nuns -- and suggested Lennon was saying the real spiritual answers come from babies -- goo goo goo joob.

One group said -- and this was really stretching, but I wanted them to stretch, to think outside the box -- that if you take on O out of "joob" it becomes "job" -- jobs are nonsense, like the guys in the corporation T shirts.

So I was pleased -- I got what I was hoping for -- imaginative, inventive thinking.

The Bat Test

2011-01-29T16:45:00.000-08:00

Bats in your poem, now a more or less complete essay on my website.

Meaningless

2011-01-28T11:48:00.000-08:00

My first assignment for Creative Writing 1 -- write a poem that's 3 stanzas long, 5 lines per stanza, 8-12 syllables per line, each stanza featuring assonance and governed by a different vowel sound.

And it can't mean anything.

The idea -- start thinking about process, rather than message.

The first problem -- students confused assonance with rhyme, or mostly thought that they had to use rhyme. My fault for not making that clear. So I'm having them do it again.

Second problem -- how do you write a poem that doesn't mean anything? Of course, you can't. So all too many of them ignored that part of the assignment. But it's possible to try to write a poem that doesn't mean anything.

Then what do we do with a poem that doesn't mean anything? We make it mean something. That's what we do. Our minds are meaning-generating, connection-making machines.

Stanley Fish has an interesting essay on this, although that's not really his point.

Anyway, for my next class, I'm going to bring in a famous example of a poem that was deliberately written not to mean anything, and split up my class into groups, and have them come up with meanings for it.

Happy Birthday Bobby "Blue" Bland

2011-01-27T13:34:00.000-08:00

From my pal Ken Kogan on Facebook, a reminder that it's the birthday of this blues great, and Ken posted a link to Mr. B doing this number:

Bobby Blue doing a Merle Haggard song and making it sound great. And isn't that the greatness of this wonderful art form that's our cultural heritage, our pride and joy? As Huck Finn says, the flavors are all swapped around. How about the Everly Brothers doing Ray Charles?

Or Sam Moore and Conway Twitty doing a duet:

Notes on persona and revision

2011-01-27T13:17:00.001-08:00

When I write a poem, no matter how personal it is, when I get it down on paper (or computer screen) and start to revise it, I depersonalize it. The poem may say "I" on the page, but I think "he." I'm aware that the person in that poem is a character I've created, a fictional character--a persona. So when I'm critiquing a poem, I'll always refer to "the speaker," or "the character," or "he" or "she" -- never "you." It's not you any more, no matter how much it may be based on you. It's a character you've created. And as you revise, your responsibility is not to keep that character true to you, but to make that character true to his/her own self.

The Cold Hard Facts of Life

2011-01-26T16:15:00.000-08:00

This is one of my favorite album covers ever. I couldn't find a jpg of the back cover, but it's the same scene, this time shot from behind Porter, showing the cheating couple from his POV.

Fucking your sister

2011-01-26T06:32:00.001-08:00

Since I haven't taught a section of creative writing in a while, and perhaps I've lost some of my edge, I decided not to start out the semester with the fucking-your-sister exercise (well, I don't actually call it that when I give it), although former student Ian Brent tells me on Facebook that it was one he really liked – “I appreciated it as a great way to knock us off our horses right out of the gate, so to speak. It was a great way to look at our writing habits and thought processes without a whole lot of time for us to think about it.”

I'm sure I've blogged about this before, but since I haven't blogged about anything in a long time, I'll start off with this again, since it's on my mind. Here it is:

Write a letter to someone -- you choose who, real or imaginary -- but it's someone you, for purposes of the exercise, you haven't talked to in a few years. You're filling this person in on what's been happening to you, and what's been happening to you is not so good. You have a twin sibling -- probably, though not necessarily, of the opposite sex, and your twin committed suicide a year ago by jumping off a cliff.

It was a terrible tragedy, but you know you need to put it behind you and move on with it. But your mother can't move on -- she keeps taking you back to the cliff, and asking why it had to happen. And the worst part of that is, you know something that might possibly explain it, but you can't tell her: just a couple of days before the suicide, your twin came into your room and had sex with you.

You were maybe half awake -- it was like a dream, but you know it really happened. But you're not sure of anything more than that. You're not even quite sure whether you were forced or willing.

That, I tell them, is your assignment. You can turn it in and leave when you finish it, and we'll talk about it next time.

This only works as an in-class assignment given verbally – written out, as it is here, the information is too concrete. I don't repeat any of it. And I do it on the first day of class, when they don't know me at all, or what to expect of me. Heh heh.

What we talk about next time is not what they've written, but the experience or writing it. How did they feel about the assignment -- what, if anything, was difficult about it, what -- if anything -- was fun or interesting or challenging about it?

I get a range of answers, but generally they're something like this. Difficult -- the subject matter; deciding what tone to take; imagining it happening – and just the organization. Fun – the challenge to the imagination, the chance to write something taboo.

Anyway, what it all adds up to, and this is the reason I give the exercise, outside of a natural tendency toward sadism, is that basically, this is what poets do. We deal with emotionally dangerous or unexplored areas, we imagine ourselves in situations that challenge us – and there's a thrill in doing it.

Establishing a space

2011-01-18T10:49:00.000-08:00

A family challenge we've just started -- answering a writing challenge. This one from my brother Jon:

Establish a room or space. It can be anything from a closet to a large public space. Locate it temporally and geographically. Introduce a character into the space. Have the character alter the space in some way, and then leave.

And here's mine:

Steven Hawking says that before the big bang, the speck that may have been ready to explode and become the universe was there, but you couldn't have seen it, because there was no light yet, and even if you had some sort of night vision goggles that would pick up no light at all, and even if you had been able to see something that small, you couldn't have seen it, at least not its outer contours, because space didn't exist yet, So inside the speck there's this seething cauldron of everything, and maybe nothing is differentiated yet, so there can't be any sexual urges, because if nothing is differentiated, who are you going to have a sexual urge for? But if there's a consciousness inside that speck, call it God, because it has no physical shape yet, just consciousness, then that consciousness must become aware of its separateness from everything else, even if there is no everything else, and the consciousness gives itself a name, and its name is Me. So God, which is Me, begins to create Myself in My own image, which is as yet a formless image. But as I conceive Myself as separate, My conception grows to encompass want, and as I begin to realize that want has to have an Other, I feel the first helplessness, the first hopelessness, hopelessness preceding hope, as I acclimatize Myself to the formlessness around Me, and the lack of otherness to the otherness which is everything outside of My consciousness. Out of hopelessness comes another formless awareness, which is longing, and the longing begins to localize itself in one part of something which can't have parts, since it has no form, but this one part begins to swell, and harden, and the quantum space which has no provision for any hard object begins to glow, then bulge.

And this is how I created the universe.

Nick & Jake

2011-01-18T10:39:00.000-08:00

You'll want to listen to the current episode (#9) of Nick and Jake, if only for the introduction of "Rue de Nostalgie," a haunting melody by Dave Grusin that becomes Nick's Paris theme.And you'll want to follow the unfolding relationship between Nick and Ronnie, as each of them begin to explore new cities and new lives. And what is the CIA planning now?

http://www.nickandjake.com

Back in action

2011-01-18T10:38:00.000-08:00

I'm going to start maintaining my blog again -- I'd pretty much let it go when I started doing my Examiner page, but I think I'd just as soon have my thoughts on writing, or whatever else, be my own instead of Examiner's. So I'm reopening the old newsstand.

Poetry in Albany

2010-02-28T16:00:00.000-08:00

Here's me reading as an open miker at the Third Thursday Poetry Night at Albany's Social Justice Center. The star of the evening was Victoria Rivas, and Dan Wilcox describes her work well:

sad, funny, even angry at times & raise broad issues about poverty & the role of teachers in the education system. She touched on ignorance & lack of manners, teen pregnancy, & the innate creative sense children have in spite of the conditions they are raised in.

New York Music

2010-02-25T01:01:00.000-08:00

All Hopped Up and Ready to Go: Music from the Streets of New York 1927-77 by Tony Fletcher

The whole range of New York music, lovingly rendered. How could I have been so shortsighted, back in the 50s, not to go to the Palladium to hear the likes of Machito and Tito Puente?

View all my reviews >>

Don Jack - III

2010-01-30T17:57:00.001-08:00

Since adolescence, amour had perforce been
Jack's fate, if not in every way his plan:
A merry widow led him by the foreskin
to where a chaplain named them wife and man.
Luck smiled on him that time: she soon divorced him,
Took up with Bill O'Reilly, and began
A life of telegenic demagoguery.
And with his second chance, Jack turned to roguery.

Tribute to Carl Perkins

2010-01-27T12:13:00.000-08:00

With the inestimable Billy Troianni on vocals.

He Wrote Blue Suede Shoes

Don Jack I and II

2010-01-26T17:02:00.000-08:00

I

She wore a purple satin domino
   --She'd wrapped it round her tightly, like a shawl --
And crimson slippers, anything but common, though
   She scuffed them carelessly -- and that was all.
A breeze let just a glimpse of her abdomen show;
   He cast a sidelong glance. He was in thrall.
Around the capital, a throng in revelry;
Jack stood apart, his mind intent on devilry.

II

Her father planned to keep her chaste: he'd set
   A labyrinth of snares, locks bolted fast,
Stored crossbows, catapult and trebuchet,
   A crocodile-stocked moat. If any passed,
Defenestration from a parapet,
   Impressment, and two years before the mast.
Jack wove a rope with strands of llama's hair,
Attached a grappling hook: tonight he'd dare.

Just Like Starting Over

2010-01-26T16:57:00.000-08:00

I've reconsidered the whole sonnet crown idea. Given that I'm irresistibly drawn toward turning everything into a narrative, a sonnet crown ain't the best form. So I'm going to take each one of these triads and build a narrative on them, using Byronic ottava rima. It's a more narrative form. And with Byron as my model, I'll be able to get away with outrageous rhymes.

               Bob Southey! You're a poet--Poet-laureate,
                 And representative of all the race;
               Although 'tis true that you turn'd out a Tory at
                 Last--yours has lately been a common case;

So here's the list of words that I've been saddled with by Facebook friends...or I thought they were friends. The first canto of "Don Jack" begins in my next post.

Capital, domino, long

Defenestration, Llama, Trebuchet

foreskin, Chaplain, demagogue

lipstick, ambulance, flour

Lexis, Foreclosure, Gout

Higs, cereal, bedspread

Ready, aim, file

Monkey. Pulchritude. Segway.

pterodactyl, wicker, metadata

Leonardesque, flamen, adumbration

cupid, water, massage

Insects, musk, flag.

Albuminous, Recalcitrant, Plumply

tiddliwinks, tutelage, babble.

Asgaard, flea, traffic

Crown of sonnets: I

2010-01-24T13:35:00.000-08:00

My challenge, on Facebook:

Mike Snider did this a while back. and it worked for him, so I'm trying it now. And Steve Allen used to it with musical notes. So...anyone...give me three words, and I'll write a poem around them.

On reflection -- if you can call it that -- I decided to go for a crown of sonnets, using the three-word groupings in order. This one uses domino, capital and long. Next up -- and therefore worked into the hook line for the crown of sonnets: Defenestration, Llama, Trebuchet.

She wore a purple satin domino
She clasped around her tightly like a shawl,
And crimson slippers--anything but common, though
She scuffed them casually--and that was all.

Among a throng of revelers at the capital,
She danced a rivulet of flame -- unique
Even within a crowd turned out for Carneval;
He trailed behind her, costumed as a sheik.

With half a chance, into her tent he'd creep.
Rebuffed, he'd lay a siege -- no need to ask.
He'd marshal all his troops, he'd spread the net,
No wall too long for him, no moat too deep,
An armory well suited for the task,
Crossbow and catapult and trebuchet.

Happy birthday J. J. Johnson

2010-01-22T09:38:00.001-08:00

Happy birthday, and some clips from Jazz on the Tube.

Memories of the Iowa Workshop

2010-01-22T06:53:00.000-08:00

I wrote this as a response to a wonderful reminiscence of Iowa Workshop days by Lewis Turco, at his Poetics and Ruminations blog. But while there was a comments box, I couldn't find a button to submit the comment, so I've transferred it over here.

His reminiscence included this paragraph:

If these on-campus events are vivid, so are scenes like the one that took place at an M.L.A. convention in Chicago a few years later when, after the annual Iowa get-together, a bunch of the poets from various eras adjourned to my room for an all-night one-upmanship word-game marathon. -- Don was there, and Bob Dana, Steve Parker I think, and several others. Toward morning, Justice, who was lying on the bed -- or, rather, dripping half off it -- whenever a particularly good bon mot was passed, grunted feebly in a gesture of humor appreciated. I believe we kept it up so long largely to see if we could elicit just one more grunt of approval from Don Justice.

My response:

Lew - I was one of the others at that marathon wordplay night in Chicago -- in fact, that was the night we first met. You had left the Workshop before I got there, and I had inherited your title of World's Most Egregious Punster. So when word came that you were on your way up to the suite, there was a hush of expectation, reminiscent of an old Western saloon before the meeting of two legendary gunfighters. As I recall, we did not disappoint.

Don Justice ended up back at the suite, as you recall, but much much earlier in the evening, some of us had been sitting around -- Marvin Bell, Steve Parker, Nick Crome, Tod Perry, among others -- and the conversation came around to Justice. A little sozzled and sentimental, we began talking about how sad it was that poets were not more honored -- here was Donald Justice, one of the great 20th Century poets, in Chicago, and was there any ceremony to honor him? No! He was unsung and un-honored. So we would do something about it. We would arrange a testimonial.
At that moment, the door opened, and there stood Don, resplendent in tuxedo. "Sorry I can't spend the evening with you, gentlemen -- the French Ambassador is taking me to dinner at Maxim's."

How to Wear Opus 40

2010-01-21T19:50:00.000-08:00

Now this is odd, though nice. East Ocean Wearable Arts has a link on its Wearable Arts page to Opus 40. Well, we do have, on the side of the house, the Giant's Necklace.

New on Examiner

2010-01-20T08:15:00.000-08:00

New on Examiner...

RIP Erich Segal and Robert B. Parker
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010
Two skilled and popular novelists died this week. Robert B. Parker was best known for his series of mystery novels about Boston private eye Spenser....

What thought should you give to your title? What you can learn about writing from Tennessee Williams
Saturday, January 16th, 2010
Here's the kind of thought that Tennessee Williams gave to his titles, and their evolution shows the growing intensity that our most poetic of...

Do your research...all of your research
Thursday, January 14th, 2010
Reading a mystery novel by Sara Paretsky in which her heroine, tough Chicago private eye V. I. Warshawsky goes after the killer of her cousin, Chicago...

When you're stuck in the middle of your novel
Tuesday, January 12th, 2010
Ways to jumpstart your imagination when you're stuck in that great slough of the middle of a novel: Do a search and replace -- change the name...

Why it's hard to write a novel
Sunday, January 10th, 2010
You'll constantly hear poets and short story writers saying "You know, in a way, it's really more difficult to write something...

New Year's Resolution #5: Make writing a priority (what you can learn from Dear Abby)
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010
A long long time ago, Dear Abby was fresh and impudent and full of wry common sense, a breath of fresh air in the publishing world, and someone whose...

Review: Adam and Eve, by John Erskine

2010-01-20T08:13:00.000-08:00

Adam and Eve: Though He Knew Better by John Erskine

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Why is Erskine completely forgotten? Actually, there appears to have been a paperback reprint of this one in 2003, but it went out of print right away. Anyway, he's warm, witty, wise, philosophical and readable Adam and Eve, like The Private Life of Helen of Troy, is a novel of ideas, and of a whole lot of talk -- clearly Erskine was influenced by G. B. Shaw, and if he's not on the level of Shaw at his best, he's not far under. As with Shaw, the talk is good.
This came off my grandmother's bookshelf, and fortunately, she seems to have been a fan of Erskine, so there are a few more, and I plan to get to them.
On the evidence of these two, one of Erskine's favorite themes is the ever-popular Men Just Don't Get It, and he handles it deftly.

View all my reviews >>

Played with Bird, part 6: RIP Dick Johnson

2010-01-12T07:15:00.000-08:00

From Enterprisenews.com --

Brockton jazz great Dick Johnson dies at 84

Dick Johnson, a nationally known jazz musician and longtime city resident, died Sunday in Boston at the age of 84.

Widely considered a master of the clarinet, Johnson had a long musical career that included leading the acclaimed Artie Shaw Band for more than two decades.

“Dick was a giant, a fabulous, fabulous musician known all over the U.S.,” said Vincent Macrina, longtime Brockton school music director.

Johnson grew up in Brockton and graduated from Brockton High in 1943.

He began his musical career as a member of the U.S. Navy band, and would go on to tour with big bands before returning to live in his home city.

While living in Brockton, he formed several jazz groups and became a staple on the Boston music scene.

Among the luminaries he performed or recorded with over the years were Charlie Parker, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett and Dizzy Gillespie, according to his obituary.

In 1983, Johnson was hand-picked by jazz legend Artie Shaw to lead a re-formed version of Shaw’s famous band.

Johnson headed the Artie Shaw Band until 2006, performing at events including the inaugural ball for President George H.W. Bush and the dedication of the National World War II Memorial.

Johnson also paid numerous visits to his alma mater over the years, often stopping in to work with band students, Macrina said.

In 1999, city officials declared May 1 to be “Dick Johnson Day,” and Johnson spent the day meeting students and ultimately performing alongside school band members at Brockton High.

We missed Dick on our "played with Bird" list, and now he's gone. Anyone who gives this much to the music world and to the kids in his community deserves to be remembered.

Happy Birthday Max

2010-01-10T11:34:00.001-08:00

An interview with Max Roach courtesy of Jazz on the Tube.

2010-01-07T17:27:00.000-08:00

I wrote this one with Fred Koller, who asked me for "a Willie Dixon-type blues." So I thought, what about a blues about Willie Dixon? And since Fred had, actually, written with the great blues master, I moved in the direction of that persona -- a young songwriter meeting Willie Dixon.

I am the Blues

Lesson Plan for an Opus 40 Class Trip

2010-01-05T17:15:00.000-08:00

From 2007, but it just popped up on my Google alert -- a very nice lesson plan for a 4th grade field trip to Opus 40.

The Given Day - Dennis Lehane

2010-01-03T10:35:00.000-08:00

The Given Day: A Novel by Dennis Lehane

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Epic. This is the novel I've always wanted to write. Powerful history, blended just right with fiction. Good and evil characters totally believable, as well as the characters in between. Strongly recommended (well, 5 stars would give a hint).

View all my reviews >>

Happy Birthday Milt Jackson

2010-01-01T19:04:00.000-08:00

Jazz on the Tube has a great tribute.

A new poetry sampler

2010-01-01T18:55:00.000-08:00

Blogger Joseph Hutchison offers, instead of reviews of new books of poetry, sample poems from books he's read and liked, on his blog The Perpetual Bird.

Chris Lott, on Cosmopoetica, always has interesting commentary on contemporary poetry.

Edward Byrne's One Poet's Notes is still my favorite poetry blog.

Rejecting the Rejecters

2009-12-29T19:12:00.001-08:00

If you've ever dreamed of writing a scathing letter to an editor who's rejected you, making him seem like the oaf instead of you the ingrate supplicant, take heart. It can be done. Just look at this one by William H. Gass.

Happy Birthday Chet Baker

2009-12-23T11:50:00.000-08:00

Don't bother

2009-12-22T07:55:00.000-08:00

Paths of Glory by Jeffrey Archer

My rating: 1 of 5 stars
Can you give zero stars? That's what I'd prefer to. I found nothing to like about this book. There's no characterization at all. The minor characters are virtually nonexistent, and the one major character is cardboard. The historical background is shallow; the plot drags, the mountaineering stuff gives no insight. And did nobody tell Jeffrey Archer that "Paths of Glory" has already been used as the title for a great Stanley Kubrick movie, a twentieth century masterpiece?

View all my reviews >>

Harvey and Barbara in Italy

2009-12-13T09:10:00.001-08:00

I don't have any words for this. Just trembling with excitement at finding it.

A Storm in the Blood

2009-12-10T09:46:00.000-08:00

A Storm in the Blood: A Novel by Jon Stephen Fink

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
A novel about a historical era I not only didn't know about, I didn't know it existed: Latvian revolutionaries/terrorists in London in 1910. The story was interesting -- I wished I had been made to care more about the characters.

View all my reviews >>

The End of Music?

2009-12-02T09:11:00.000-08:00

Glenn Branca thinks so, in the NY Times.

I posted this response to Branca, which is buried somewhere on page 18 of the responses, but easier to read here.

I don't know that music is over, but the American Century in music -- blues and blues-based music, that is to say jazz, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, even country -- is over. And ... See Moreit will be considered one of the great artistic flowerings, like Elizabethan drama, Renaissance painting, baroque music, the Victorian novel. Those all came to an end, and so has the American Century in music.
That doesn't mean music is over. But we may not have the ears to hear the new thing.

New Hudson Valley guide

2009-12-02T07:48:00.000-08:00

Opus 40 is given a writeup in a new online guide to Hudson Valley attractions -- Design Sponge. They're listed under "Woodstock" -- no section for Saugerties. The Hudson Valley stuff is written by Raina Kattelson, who is currently a Tivoli resident, but she grew up above the Tinker Street Cinema in Woodstock, then owned and operated by her father.

Happy Birthday Dizzy

2009-10-21T07:45:00.000-07:00

Photos of Opus 40

2009-10-07T10:11:00.001-07:00

Some beautiful work by photographer Chris Davis Cina on her travel blog.

Opus 40 in Best American Poetry

2009-10-03T08:15:00.000-07:00

An entry in the Best American Poetry blog (it's hard to tell by whom, since the blog is not set up as well as it could be) recounts a visit to Opus 40 -- I'm going to guess it's by Dara Wier, since she's their resident guest blogger right now. Entitled "why going to Opus 40 is a wistfully true okay thing to do," it's wistfully poetic and evocative piece.

Unfortunately, Ms. Wier did not inquire as to whether there were any resident poets at Opus 40, but you can't ask for everything.

Opus 40 in the Little Rebellion

2009-09-18T17:51:00.000-07:00

A very good article by student Sarah Calandra Fine in a SUNY New Paltz publication called The Little Rebellion.

New Opus 40 photos on the web

2009-08-25T17:55:00.001-07:00

Very nice work by Fred Miranda.

This weekend at Opus 40

2009-08-09T18:05:00.000-07:00

The Peace Walk gathered at Opus 40 this morning. I wasn't able to take photos -- if anyone has any, I'd love to see them - tad@opus40.org

The 7th Annual Saugerties Art Tour was a success once again. I was much too busy to take photos at the opening reception for the group show Friday night -- the turnout was exponentially larger than any we've ever had. And too busy showing work over the weekend to take photos, but here are a couple of the pieces I had on display.

The Vanaver Caravan's performance on Saturday evening was sublime. I've posted a slide show at the Opus 40 website. Here's one image:

Peace Walk

2009-08-08T05:31:00.000-07:00

Take a Walk for Peace in Woodstock Saturday and Sunday with the United Nations-affiliated World Peace Prayer Society.

Walkers will begin gathering at 8 a.m. Saturday at the intersection of routes 375 and 212. The walk kicks off at 9:40 a.m. with a parade of flags through the town to Comeau Field, where the World Peace Prayer Ceremony will be held. After the walk, the Olatunji Drummers and Kodi Drummer's Drums for World Peace will perform at the Wok 'N' Roll Café, 50 Mill Hill Road in Woodstock. And, beginning at 3 p.m., the Bearsville Theater, Route 212 in Bearsville, will host the annual Upstate Reggae Festival.

Events continue at 7 a.m. Sunday with a nondenominational Sunrise Peace Vigil at Opus 40. Also, the Church of the Holy Transfiguration of Christ on the Mount, 125 Mead Mountain Road in Woodstock, hosts music, prayers and celebrations throughout the day.

Historic New York

2009-08-03T17:52:00.000-07:00

A wonderful series of videos on historic New York State, including Opus 40.

Fieralingue Four Seasons

2009-07-28T15:22:00.000-07:00

Now online, and dedicated to Antonio Vivaldi, Anny Ballardini's Four Seasons Anthology.

Summer

Autumn

Winter

Spring

I'm represented in all four seasons, and lots of other good poetry is there too.

Opus 40 in the Albany Times-Union

2009-07-26T18:11:00.000-07:00

A reminiscence about Opus 40 and another magnificent obsession.

Broad Street Books (Middletown, CT) Reading

2009-07-21T15:50:00.000-07:00

Featuring Tad Richards!

On the first Tuesday of every month, Broad Street Books hosts a featured poet followed by an open mic. All are welcome to come and read, recite, perform their work!

Tad Richards is the author of three books of poetry – My Night With the
Language Thieves, Situations: a Novel in Verse, and Take Five: Poems
in 5/4 Time. His work has been compared to Terry Gilliam, Byron,
Pushkin and Tom Waits. His songs have been recorded by Orleans, John
Hall and Fred Koller. He has written nonfiction on such diverse subjects
as poetry, music and money, if those subjects are diverse. He is the
author of a dozen or so novels, most recently Nick and Jake, a
lighthearted romp through the McCarthy Era and the CIA’s overthrow of
the Mossadegh government in Iran, which will presented this fall on the
Internet in serialized form, and as a podcast starring Alan Arkin and
Tom Conti.

Come help us welcome Tad Richards to the store and share some of your own work too!

Broad Street Books
45 Broad Street
Middletown, CT 06457

For more information contact:

Brian Mitchard
(860)685-7323

Two prints in Saugerties

2009-07-17T10:07:00.000-07:00

Two of my prints, "Easter Egg Hunt" (pictured) and "Stream with Kids and Dogs" are currently on view in the window of Smith's Hardware Store in Saugerties.

New on Examiner

2009-07-14T07:09:00.000-07:00

A series on Chris Anderson's book "Free."
Great Beginnings Mondays -- Frances Osborne and Ralph Ellison.
The National Book Award fiction winners.
Sex and chicks and dudes.

Check it out!

Opus 40 noted by MJ

2009-07-13T09:05:00.000-07:00

...who has yet to actually visit, but we hope she will. Here's her blog entry.

Artists of the 50s

2009-06-24T18:51:00.000-07:00

Who were the greatest artists of the 1950s? Artists whose careers blossomed in the 50s, either reached their zenith or (in the case of artists with long careers) their first flowering? Peter Jones and I put this list together off the tops of our heads -- certainly we've forgotten people.

Allen Ginsberg
Bill Evans
Chuck Berry
Edward Albee
Elvis Presley
Fats Domino
Hank Williams
J. D. Salinger
Jackson Pollock
James Baldwin
Jerry Lee Lewis
John Updike
John Coltrane
Johnny Cash
Miles Davis
Robert Lowell
Sonny Rollins
Walt Kelly
Willem deKooning
Willie Dixon

All men, which probably says something negative about the way our minds work, but it also says something about the 50s. So who did we miss?

Transitions at The Gallery at Opus 40

2009-06-17T17:03:00.000-07:00

Battle of the Decades

2009-06-17T17:01:00.000-07:00

Jerry Lee takes the last one with 12 (maybe 13), but it wasn't unanimous, and it wasn't the whippersnappers who dampened the Killer's great ball of fire.
Elvis gets 2, or maybe 1, depending on who Caitlin's "ditto" was for, the vote just above hers, or the majority.
One for Patty Smyth, one for Frankie Laine, both of them deserving.

40s on 4*
Duke Ellington
The Gal From Joe's http://www.lala.com/#search/the%20gal%20from%20joe%27s%20duke%20ellington

50s on 5*
Playmates
Beep Beep
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-h27xvUGbo

60s on 6
Steam
Na Na Hey Hey
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsaTElBljOE

70s on 7*
Orleans
Love Takes Time
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WESBLOPiuM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdSa5GMWCmY&feature=related

80s on 8* Wham!
I'm Your Man
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qwm-okcskVA

90s on 9*
Jane's Addiction
Jane Says
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xh-5FI21s6M

Not hard to figure out what gets the gate first here. What is hard to figure is why "Beep Beep" would inspire this arty film-student video.

And for me, second out the door isn't hard either, but there are a few George Michael fans here who might disagree with me. I can't see how.

Jane's Addiction did some interesting stuff, and this is representative of it, quirky and ranty but arresting. Although I have to say I think Sergio is better off -- and don't worry, Sergio, there's nothing much good on TV anyway. And I definitely wouldn't have dinner with Jane.

For cultural relevance, you'd have to go with Steam, who became a ballpark staple first for White Sox fans and then for the world. As I understand it, this was cut as a demo with a scratch vocal -- they were planning on coming back and adding real lyrics to it later. But someone recognized its terminal catchiness, and a group was hastily thrown together to tour behind the song.

For musical value, you'd have to go with Ellington, Cootie Williams and Johnny Hodges. Here's another neat version of the song by Nina SImone -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwBqW26FBgo

But I'm going with nepotism. Orleans and "Love Takes Time."

Recently on NY Writing Examiner

2009-06-17T16:53:00.001-07:00

Recently in NY Writing Careers Examiner:

What you can learn from Keats, Coleridge and Harold Arlen
Great Beginnings Monday: Lorrie Moore, Mark Strand and Maxine Kumin
Can creative writing be taught?
E this book
Kindle -- what you can and can't do
Private eyes and cliches
Great Beginnings Monday: The Good Soldier
How much control does a writer have?

http://www.examiner.com/x-2862-NY-Writing-Careers-Examiner

Who not to submit to

2009-05-21T08:00:00.000-07:00

Who not to submit to.

Besides authority, that is.

NY Writing Examiner's Great Beginnings Monday

2009-05-18T18:55:00.000-07:00

James Joyce.

New Examiner Post

2009-05-14T11:51:00.000-07:00

What you can learn from Elizabeth Edwards and Ricky Nelson.

Battle of the Decades

2009-05-12T17:20:00.000-07:00

The battle of the icons. John goes up over Fats by 9-5. Only slightly less iconic, the Tempts get 2 votes, and only slightly less iconic than that, one for the Dave Matthews Band. Some strong temptation to vote for Duran Duran, but they didn't quite break through. Oh, well, Hungry Like the Wolf or James Bond will hit BOTD at some point, and they'll come roaring back.

This time around:

40s on 4*
Cab Calloway
Blues in the Night

50s on 5*
Elvis Presley
Can't Help Falling in Love
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7VG4I_b2Fk

60s on 6*
Blood, Sweat & Tears
You Made Me So Very Happy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y168CNQyO7g

70s on 7*
The Eagles
Peaceful, Easy Feeling
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrc8XOlJsm0

80s on 8*
Naked Eyes
Promises, Promises
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJP2PH8WKaI

90s on 9*
House of Pain
Jump Around
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwQbPgouUYo

I hate David Clayton-Thomas's voice, and his style, and his songs. One down.

Naked Eyes -- hey, if I were going to vote for an Eagles-sounding group, I'd vote for the Eagles.

House of Pain -- ah, Irish hip-hop. A Big Ten football fight song, for the Wisconsin Badgers, and I still have my Big Ten roots. Lively and angry, always good qualities in a song. And the guys are ugly, which is a nice change of pace from Naked Eyes. I do think that Naked Eyes and House of Pain are both good group names.

Elvis and the Eagles. These are a couple of listenable songs. "Peaceful Easy Feeling" is neither lively nor angry -- in fact, it's peaceful and easy, "Can't Help Falling" is really peaceful and really easy, but it's one of Elvis's better ballads. Written by Hugo and Luigi, perhaps the most soulless bandleaders in America, but it turned out they could write a pretty nice ballad. Also, to my surprise, it turns out they produced the Stylistics, and the Isley Brothers' "Shout." Maybe they weren't quite so soulless. I really like the Eagles, although many have accused them of soullessness too. But if someone asked me to put on Eagles record, this isn't the one I'd choose.

Harold Arlen. Johnny Mercer. Cab Calloway is great even with mediocre material -- how can he not be great with great material? Even without the Nicholas Brothers. "Blues in the Night" gets my vote.

NY Writing Careers Examiner: Death of a Poet

2009-05-12T16:20:00.000-07:00

Craig Arnold.

NY Writing Careers Examiner: Great Beginnings Monday

2009-05-12T09:11:00.000-07:00

This week, from another area of American literature, Fats Domino.

Charting Opus 40's Place in the Universe

2009-05-12T09:08:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure exactly what VizWiki is, or who makes up these charts, or what their purpose is, but I found it fascinating.

Mole on the Web

2009-05-10T16:26:00.000-07:00

In Episode XXII of Situations, our story takes a dark turn. Wisdom comes at a steep price, and we say a farewell.

Recently on NY Writing Examiner, tributes to John Cheever, Marilyn French and M.F.K. Fisher, some bloggers who've turned their blogs into books, how to raise the stakes in your fiction, the death of literature (again), and Sit, Click, Drive!

Random New Paltz Memory: an Old Tramp Named Bob

2009-05-02T10:06:00.000-07:00

It’s probably late afternoon, and I’m in the Homestead. George Montgomery is tending bar. In walks a gentleman, tall, shabbily dressed but with excellent posture, unshaven but with an exquisitely shaped mustache. He looks like an oversized Lord Buckley. He sits down on a barstool and says, in a sonorous voice, “Does anyone here have a beer for an old tramp named Bob?”

George does not for a moment question his mandate, but places a beer in front of the old tramp.

Old Bob starts to open up to me and George and Larry the Fluff – I don’t recall all that much of it, but I remember that he was a logger from the Adirondacks – how he had happened through New Paltz, I don’t remember. I drift off at some point, but later in the evening I wander back past the Homestead just as Old Bob is walking out the front door. He gets halfway down the path, suddenly turns stiff as a board, pitches forward flat on his face – directly between Henry Cavanagh and Michael Weissberg, as it happens.

I go over to see if he’s OK, and so does a scruffy young kid. He’s not OK. Between the kid, me, Weissberg and Cavanagh, none of us are really qualified to deal with this situation – too bad someone like Ron Fields isn’t there, but we’re all he has. The kid and I try to help him to his feet, and more or less succeed, but he’s still out of it. What are we going to do next? “Let’s take him back in the Homestead and prop him up in a booth,” the kid suggests.

“We can’t do that…” but I don’t have a better suggestion.

Old Bob stirs into consciousness. “You’d better get me to the police station, boys. I’m an epileptic.”

The obvious answer – but none of us are really police station-oriented enough to think of it. So the kid and, supporting him with his arms around our shoulders, half-walk, half-carry him to the police station. The kid is terrified – he’s a junkie, he informs me later, and he’s terrified that they’ll see the tracks in his arm. But he hangs in there. We get him to the police station, and they’re no better prepared to deal with the situation than we are. Louie Olson is there, I forget who else. So we stay, the kid and I. We lay him down on the floor, and hold him gently so he doesn’t hurt himself when he starts thrashing. He has a can of beer in his pocket, which we remove for the same reason.

And he has plenty of time to thrash. An ambulance is dispatched from Kingston Hospital, but it takes about an hour and a half to get there. I find out later that the first ambulance driver dispatched had a heart attack on the way down, so they had to dispatch a second one to take care of him before dealing with Old Bob.

But finally he’s on the way to the hospital, and the kid and I leave. Louie Olson gives me the warm can of beer, sort of like the state trooper giving Johnny his motorcycle trophy at the end of The Wild One. I drift back down to the Homestead.

It’s after hours, and they’re not serving any more, but they let me in. Fluff is there, and I tell him the story. “And here’s Old Bob’s last beer. I guess I’ll take it home for a souvenir – and someday I’ll bring it back into town and give it to some other old tramp for whom it will have no symbolic meaning.”

There’s a girl there – I don’t remember who, now, but someone who was around town a lot for a short time, and she asks, “Can I have it?”

I think for a moment. It occurs to me that this is exactly what I had planned to do with the beer, just not quite so quickly.

So I give her Old Bob’s last beer, and call it a night.

Memories of the 60s

2009-04-30T10:30:00.000-07:00

Originally posted to a group on Yahoo remembering New Paltz in the 60s -- the protest movements of 1967, when protest was not yet fashionable.

About 5 years earlier, living briefly in NYC, I had known a young man named Vinnie, very troubled, from a conservative Irish Catholic family, no longer sure of very much in his life but still tied closely to that background.

A couple of years later, I ran into a mutual friend. He'd recently seen Vinnie, who had apparently found a substitute for his CYO: "I've found this swell group -- they have dances, and meetings, and the kids are really great -- did you ever hear of a group called 'Progressive Labor'?"

Fast forward again to 1967, and I'm faculty chaperone to a group of New Paltz students going down to the city for a march against the war, culminating in a rally at UN Plaza. The rally was interrupted by a downpour, so we left, and took shelter from the storm under the eave of a building -- a bank, misappropriately enough. Suddenly someone comes dashing across the street and squeezes in beside me under the same eave.

It's Vinnie.

"Hey, how have you been?" "Oh, I've been great -- I've been traveling a lot -- Holland, Germany..."

"That's great, Vinnie."

"You know, there's a real revival of the Nazis over there."

"Is that so?" And it's here that I notice, under Vinnie's raincoat, a brown shirt.

"Yes -- I'm one of them!"

A momentary speechless pause from me.

"Were you at that peace rally just now?"

"Yes, we were, Vinnie."

"I notice you had a lot of Jews at that rally."

Rain coming down even harder.

"Gee, great to see you, Vinnie. Well, it looks like the rain's letting up. We've gotta be going. Come on, everyone!"