First Graders at Opus 40

Here are some photos from today's visit by first graders at the Woodstock Elementary School to Opus 40.



They will be building their own Opus One in their garden at school, and we'll be invited to its grand opening.















But sometimes even a great work of art can be upstaged by a Baltimore Oriole...


...or...










...a puppy.

Amy King's Exercises

Check out the poetry teaching exercises on Amy King's excellent blog.

Jon Richards on McCain's Accuracy Problems

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A Wedding at Opus 40

From the New York Times, Sunday, May 25 -- a feature article on the Opus 40 wedding of environmentalists Lisa Rainwater and Andy Mele.

Coulda Been a Contender

Capitol Records

Peter Jones and I -- don't ask me why -- just spent a half hour trying to remember every significant act who recorded on Capitol in the 50s. Here's our list, and this is all off the top of our heads -- Googling occasionally to verify, but no Google-fishing.

Jack Teagarden
Frank Sinatra
Gene Vincent
Stan Kenton
Nat Cole
birth of the cool
Jonah Jones
the cheers
the five keys
June Christy
Jackie Gleason - which was Bobby Hackett
Geoge Shearing-
Peggy Lee
Artie Shaw
Yma Sumac
Stan Freberg
Eartha Kitt
Ferlin Husky
Duke Ellington (at least one album)
Mark Murphy
Dean Martin
Louis Prima
Keely Smith
Dinah Shore
Tennessee Ernie Ford


There must be a use for this knowledge.

There isn't?

New From Jon Richards

Ron de Laura

A sad farewell to Ron deLaura, who died suddenly this week. Ron has done the stone masonry repair work at Opus 40 for many years, originally for my mother, Barbara Fite, and later for us...and we've been here twenty years. Ron had the enthusiasm of a youth, the skill of a master. He was a friend to Opus 40, and a friend to us, and a friend to all who knew him. He will be deeply missed.

Why does Budu McRae keep haunting me? And why does she keep haunting the guy in the song, who clearly doesn’t have a chance with her? She’s so close, but so distant. She’s around the corner, not on his block. She’s just out of reach.

How else is she around the corner? Is she twisted? Perverted? Or just unbalanced – just crazy that way?

The real question, however, is…who’s crazy? Budu may be crazy that way, but the singer seems to be crazy in a the best definition of the word – doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result. He expects to Budu to choose him as her partner, in spite of the fact that Butch Stover, his competition, makes love like Casanova. What chance does he have?

He takes another tack. But he’s not really moving anywhere – understandable, since being told that his rival makes love like Casanova. He tries to give us a cute, non-threatening story about a childlike Budu in an innocent, pastoral setting, but he comes up with sadistic overtones, and the truth that he can’t get away from. The bumble bee is Butch Stover, the stinger is Butch’s penis. Budu has had oral sex with him 5 times, and genital sex three more times. This fellow really is a Casanova. He can’t escape the truth of it: “Five times in the eye! Three times in the knee! Butch Stover! Casanova!”

And if the ability to make incredible love is not enough to rule him out, it develops that our hero also doesn’t have the money like Rockefeller. So if he doesn’t have the big bucks, and he doesn’t have the sexual prowess, what does he have?

Only one thing that we know about. Intellectual gifts, If she chooses him, she won’t be getting a dummy.

And that’s the heart of it. The ineffectual cri de coeur of the intellectual. Against Butch? Rocky?

So, like any ineffectual intellectual, he keeps making his case more and more ineffectually, willing to settle for less and less – “hug me don’t you kiss me, kiss me don’t you bite me, love me don’t you hurt me.” He tries to appeal to her working class instincts – “digging a ditch, so we’ll both get rich,” but like any academic, he doesn’t really know how to do it.

He really is crazy that way.

Poem a Day -- day 17

Write a poem in the 3rd person. You can describe a scene, an event, whatever. But there's to be no use of "I," "me," "my," etc.--not even "you" or "we." No, keep yourself completely out of this poem. I'll leave the subject of your poem up to you. (Note: There is a way, of course, to include yourself. You can write about yourself as "he" or "she" depending on your gender. If you would normally write, I woke up in the morning, then for this prompt write, He woke up in the morning.

I disagree with Robert Lee Brewer here. If you're going to write in the third person, write in the third person. Create a character. And I disagree about limiting yourself to your own gender.

Easy enough advice for me, because writing personal lyrics is nice and ease, and I never, ever do anything nice and easy. I do it nice and rough.

So here's today's poem. Our hero still hasn't crossed the border. Now he's keeping an eye, and filing a report on, this border guard who may or may not exist.


He carries a
Kalashnikov rifle
with a red dot scope
night vision
binoculars

sometimes he walks sentry
with a vest made of
dynamite
his hand on the
detonator button

age and hair color
unconfirmed
may not always
be the same but what is
and what doesn't change

that cell phone
that woman's breasts
those coded messages
if they fell into
the wrong hands

could change the shape
of the whole eastern front
curious they'd trust
him so close
to the border

Poem a day -- 11 thru 16

11. describe something--only one thing--that is either very interesting to you or something you think is often overlooked and taken for granted.

This is easy, if you're paranoid.

the mushrooms
outside the cabin door
I knock them down
but every morning
they’ve grown back

always different patterns
there’s a message
if I could read it
but no help
nothing in the code books

or the short wave
got to work this out
for myself
first the geometrics
then the colors

they’ve shaded from blue
to coral
no way that’s just random
time to move out
proceed with caution

wait for the
woman with the red dress
what I really
wonder about is
who’s leaving them?



12. write an apology poem.

How else do you start an apology poem?

This is just to say
I found the
naked pictures
of your wife and mailed them
to the enemy

I had to
do something to
get the dogs off my scent
and I didn’t know
you’d be back

excuse this note
sorry I couldn’t wait
I would have served tea
but there’s none
and by the way

I did save a couple
of shots for myself
to trade in
case of capture
or for those lonely nights

you know how it is
or you don’t
you’ve probably never
had to cross the border
or thought about it


13. write a poem based off your response to a song.

I wish I could be like
the guy in Warren
Zevon’s song
about jungle work
they parachuted in

parachuted out
with sten guns
clutched in each hand
Mozambique Zimbabwe
Sierra Leone El

Salvador
Nicaragua
a true mercenary
strength and muscle and
jungle work

or steal secrets
from trusting employers
like James Mason in
Five Fingers
or betray my

partisan comrades like
Victor McLaglen
anything but
this cold vigil
this infernal border



14. write a poem with the title "How (fill in the blank) behaves"--with the poem inspired by whatever you put in that blank.

This border
is often unguarded
makes me suspicious
why guard at all
if you don’t

have some purpose in mind?
So I monitor
the patterns of
the sentry
he’ll tip off their approach

through binoculars
on the screen of
his cell phone
pictures of a girl’s breasts
always the same girl

different poses
negligee
dropped to reveal one
or the other or
both some kind of

semaphore
morse code like the mushrooms
which I should report
I tested by
eating one



15. Write an insult poem


Today we faced
each other across
the border
I was armed to the teeth
with invective

I called him a swine
a mongrel
I mentioned several things
all of them vile
about his mother

her habits
pertaining to hygiene
her sex partners
her choice of footgear
(combat boots)

I was just warming up
I questioned his
racial and ethnic
ancestry
his taste in underwear

none of it seemed
to have an effect
perhaps he
speaks a different language
or else he’s deaf




16. Poem With a Twist at the End

Well, most of these have had some sort of twist at the end, so what could be different?

Time to file a report
they’ll be worrying
about me
its been three weeks
since I last made contact


short wave radio
shorted out
I’ve repaired it
so many times but now
flux exhausted

torch burned out
can’t heat solder
it won’t flow up the joint
have to improvise
getting there

crackling static
sound fading in and out
got to let them know
I’m still here
it’s dead again

the last thing I hear is
they’ve got a new dance
it goes like
this and its name
is the peppermint twist

Poem a day -- 6 thru 10

Catching up on posting these here -- and I'm a couple of days behind on the challenge -- still have to make up 11 and 12.

6. The mandate: today's prompt involves recording all the details of your day and generating a poem from that material. My guy would have to be very careful in recording what he did on any given day, so I translated the poem into Morse code:


- --- -.. .- -.-- .. ..-. --- ..- -. -..
.-. --- .- -.. -.- .. .-.. .-.. .- .--. --- ... ... ..- --
... -.- .. -. -. . -.. --. ..- - - . -..
--.- ..- .. -.-. -.- .-.. -.-- ... . .- .-. . -.. --- ...- . .-. .-
-.-. .-.. .- -. -.. . ... - .. -. . ..-. .. .-. .

-.- .. -.-. -.- . -.. -.. .. .-. - --- ...- . .-. - .... .
.- ... .... . ... -- --- ...- . -..
.- --.- ..- .- .-. - . .-. --- ..-. .- -- .. .-.. .
-... . ..-. --- .-. . . .- - .. -. --. .. -
.. -. .- ... ..- -- .- -.-. --. .-. --- ...- .

...- --- -- .. - . -..
-... ..- - .... . .-.. -.. .. - .-.. --- -. --. . -. --- ..- --. ....
- --- .-. . -- . -- -... . .-.
-.- . . .--. .... ..- -. --. . .-. .- - .-
-.-. .-.. --- ... . .-. . -- --- ...- .

- .... . .-. . ... - --- ..-. - .... . -.. .- -.-- ..
... .... .. ...- . .-. . -.. .-- .. - .... -.-. --- .-.. -..
.. -- .- ... - ..- .-. -... .- - . -..
- --- -.- . . .--. -- -.--
-... --- -.. -.-- .. -. .... .- .-. -- --- -. -.--

that’s my report
all anyone needs
tomorrow
I should reach the border
with new papers

If anyone is curious -- yes, there is an actual poem here.


Day 7: Today's prompt is to write a "ramble poem." That is, I want you to write a poem where you just start rambling without worrying about where you're headed.

Well, I always write that way, so I decided to put my character into a state where'd have to ramble.



Temperature
103
I don’t know where I am
or how I got here
starting to

hallucinate
a childhood I never
had a governess
given to
nude sunbathing

on the promontory
overlooking the
universe
she’s getting up
shaking drops of water

like a dog from her
pubic fur
each drop becomes
a new version of her
like the dragon’s teeth

phalanx of
naked nannies
where are they taking me?
powerless to re
fever down


8. Painting -- today's prompt asks you to write a poem that is inspired by one of the two paintings linked below. Please indicate the title of the painting or the artist's name somewhere in your comment as well. Of course, there is also the possibility that you could blend the two together. Hmmm...

Anyway, here are the paintings:

Painting #1: Piazza d'Italia, by Giorgio de Chirico

Painting #2: The Little Deer, by Frida Kahlo.

I took The Little Deer.

Everywhere reminders
many have tried
this same route
and many have failed
the border is littered

with their remains
some picked clean
by scavenger crows
bones polished by fire ants
others bloated

and right here
mortally wounded
becoming animal
as life leaches
out of her

my predecessor
who sent dispatches back
sealed with a kiss
I ask her
for any last words

but she can barely talk
I settle for
what’s death like?
It’s nothing special
not really worth the wait


Day 9: Today's prompt is to choose a word (any word) and then write a poem either about that word or using that word in different ways.


Today’s code word is “night”
I get it
over short wave
radio at 10:
45 every night

“night must fall”
means the border
is closed don’t try it
“cows often move at night”
means I can

make it across
if I can procure
an armored vehicle
--like a cow?
I see myself

a knight in armor
my childhood fantasy
where honor
was everything
and one rode bravely

into the teeth of war
Sir Gawain
Sir Lancelot
General Custer
Charge of the Light Brigade




10: Today, the poetry prompt is to write a location poem. You can write about a city, a building, a planet, etc.

Here, by the way, is the only place you can read an unexpurgated version of this poem.

I’ve spent three nights
shivering
in this woodsman’s cabin
can’t risk a fire
in the corner

next to the
black potbellied stove
a stack of cordwood
on the table
a candle

I can’t light not even
with the shutters closed
the bare mattress
stinks of piss
and more curiously

unmistakeable
the lingering
scent of sex
who would have wanted to
fuck here? But I know

anyone would
if I could
wrap myself in a warm
human body I’d
fuck my sister

Poem a Day -- day 5

Today's mandate -- something you're worried about



Suppose I don't
reach it by nightfall
should I sleep
under a bridge or
take my chances

at a local farmhouse
my contact
tells me they're mostly
partisans here
so the odds are with me

but that's not
what worries me most
human contact
I've had too much of it
too much sex

and too much sharing
confidences
other people's secrets
I don't want
to know what they fear

what they hope the
revolution will bring
don't want to
break the news to them
it never does

Poem a Day -- day 4

A poem in which you're thankful for something. And it isn't even November.

Well, this theme didn't come from nowhere. We're all haunted by this and that, and some part of the creative corner of my mind has been haunted for a while by Samuel Hynes' The Auden Generation, and his evocation of the young Isherwood creating a mythical country, the young Auden writing about journeys to and across borders, as a generation of poets embraced socialism, prepared for war, argued about the purpose of poetry in a workers' paradise.




thanks to Auden
for inspiration
the leftist
poets of the Thirties
they believed in


the revolution
in borders
murky not safe to cross
Isherwood
staying in Berlin

for the sex
then to watch the rise of
Hitler's Third Reich
ideals smashed close up
Kristallnacht


the front now everywhere
some went to Spain
Spender John Cornford
who died there
along with idealism


Auden to New York
hopes expired but that
came later
this is thanks to Auden
who crossed borders

Poem a Day -- day 3

Today -- write a haiku. I hate haiku, never write haiku, was hoping Robert wouldn't prescribe specific forms for any of these, since I had been working in my own form. But I'm committed.




border unguarded
message tucked into new growth
not the time to cross

April Poems Day 2

Wasn't expecting this -- the Day 2 assignment is to write a poem where you speak in someone else's voice. Of course, I always speak in someone else's voice, but this was to be a little different.

Put yourself in someone (or something) else's skin and write a poem about the experience. Who (or what) ever you become, please make that the title of the poem.

Someone else. The Communist courier of the first poem? No, obviously the directive was leading me to a different point of view, but I wanted to get farther away than that. The Communist girl is a mysterious figure, and I want to leave her that way...so someone who watches over her. From across another border.


Dolores Ibárruri (La Pasionaria)

I still control
the fervent strategies
the intellect of
young women
when their bodies

become an extension
I am the one who
lets them loose
so their bodies
shimmer from inside out

but holds them on course
true to the
revolution
the directive that they
never lose themselves

give in to
weakness give up
control but in my dreams
such dreams as we have
in this place

I abandon
the borders unguarded
myself to desire
I let them
all cross over



I hadn't realized she lived so long, or died so recently (1989). But I think that works for this character.

A Poem a Day

That's Robert Lee Brewer's challenge, on his Poetic Asides blog. For National Poetry Month, write a poem a day for thirty days, each one on a theme or word of his choosing. Here's the first challenge:

Since today is the first day of the month, write a poem about a first or a series of firsts. This first could be a first love, first job, first funeral, first marriage, first divorce, first child, first Wal-Mart shopping experience, etc. You could also flip this around to be a poem about beginnings (after all, the beginning of anything is also a first step in a process).

So here's my first one. I knew I didn't want to write about first love or first kiss. and I ended up not exactly writing about first anything, although "first" is the first word of the poem. After that, it went its own way.

It's a 5/4, and I'll try, although I may give this idea up at some point, to write them all as 5/4s and keep developing this story.

First stop the bank
I’ll need cash
for travel expenses
and at the border
for bribery

in case they
stop and check my luggage
but with any luck
no one will care
about the

dark music that only
appears to come from
my portmanteau
hypnotic
yet strangely arousing

it got me this far
though in Madrid
I was forced to
use it I was afraid
once more than was safe

the Communist
courier
with eyes that never slept
even after sex
obscure cravings

This is a poem a day, so there's no revision to speak of. If I come up with anything I like, I'll revise later.

For Opening Day

Bring the Dodgers Back to Brooklyn

Easter Sunrise Service Pictures

Sunrise Service

Tomorrow, the High Woods Reformed Church will once again be holding their Easter Sunrise Service at Opus 40. All are invited.

Battle of the Decades

Beck swept the field last time, with one vote for Pat Benatar from Caitlin, and Mike Kaufman entering the game because I finally got his e-mail address right, and he immediately disgraced himself with a vote for Georgia Gibbs. Well, a student of mine wrote a brilliant paper a couple of semesters ago, comparing the LaVern Baker and Georgia Gibbs versions of "Tweedle Dee" and finding much to admire in Her Nibs.

Here's the new one, and I can predict two votes: Charis for the Kinks and Alex for Hootie.



THE 40s
Charlie Barnet
Skyliner

THE 50s
The Chantels
He's Gone

THE 60s
The Kinks
You Really Got Me

THE 70s
The Bee Gees
How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?

THE 80s
Hall & Oates
You Make My Dreams

THE 90s
Hootie & The Blowfish
Time

I'll eliminate Hall and Oates first. They were there, they made hit records, they were terminally boring.

The Chantels were one of the first and one of the best girl groups, and if this were "Maybe" they'd rate higher with me -- and this is almost as good. The BeeGees in their disco days were the kings of disco, but you can't say much else for them. This was pre-disco, when they were still heavily Beatles influenced, and actually very good, and this is from that era, although no "Massachusetts" or "New York Mining Disaster 1941" (was there a New York mining disaster in 1941?) And hoots though I may get for this, I'll put Hootie in the same list of songs you'd like to listen to but not actually vote for.

We haven't had a contender from the 40s for a while, but Charlie Barnet was one of the good ones, and "Skyliner" is one of his best -- not as good as "Cherokee," which became a jazz standard and the basis for Bird's "Koko." Barnet was a rarity among jazz musicians, a rarity to the point that he may well be the only one, in that his parents were millionaires. He was also one of the first jazzmen to integrate his band, although not the group he had for this video. It's nice reading the comments on the YouTube video -- one from the son of Barnet's trumpet soloist and one from the grandson of one of the other trumpet players.

And the Kinks. Ray Davies is one of the three British rock songwriters I use when I teach my British lit survey course (Lennon/McCarney and Strummer/Jones are the others). "You Really Got Me" is one of his good ones (well, they were all good). If this were "Superman" or "A Well Respected Man" or "Young Conservatives" or especially "Lola" I'd vote for the Kinks in a second. On the other hand, if it were "Cherokee" or one of the Charlie Barnet numbers with a scat-singing telegram from Bunny Briggs, I'd tip that way.

As it is...oh, I dunno...the Kinks. Or maybe...but no, I've made my choice. But watch this anyway.

Poetry, Issue 1, Continued

If the Whistler poem isn't Pound st his apex, more credit to Harriet Monroe for recognizing tha incredible talent that was emerging. Modernism, at this juncture, is definitely an iffy proposition, and Poetry is hedging its bets. There's nothing modernist about Emilia Stuart Lorimer, next up on page 9 (did I say page 11 for Pound? That was wrong -- he's 7 and 8) with "Fish of the Flood," a poem swaddled in language that looked backward to a poetic diction that might have seemed a little archaic to Keats, full of thees and dosts and needeths,

Harold Monro, no relation to Harriet but important during the same era, in London, for introducing new poets, said of Lorimer that her poems "may seem almost ingenious through the sheer force of[their] sincerity (quote taken from A New Matrix for Modernism: A Study of the Lives, by Nelljean McConeghey).

I'm ttrying to decide whether I agree that the sheer force of sincerity can ever produce ingeniousness, or whether I see that in "Fish of the Flood." I don't automatically take archaic language as evidence of forceful sincerity.

Fish of the flood, on the banked billow
Thou layest thy head in dreams;
Sliding as slides thy shifting pillow,
One with the streams
Of the sea is thy spirit.

I like the sound of "fish of the flood," and almost like the shifting pillow. See no reason but rhyme for the enjambment on "streams," the only one in the poem, and don't know what the streams of the sea signify -- there are things like the Gulf Stream, but i don't think she's being that precise. I have to say that if this weren't the first issue of Poetry, I wouldn't linger over this -- and again, I like the Georgians, and I very much like some of the sentimental poetry of the 19th Century.

Next up, Helen Dudley, who as near as I can figure out is best known for having had a discreditable episode with Bertrand Russell, when she may or may not have been 16. From Paul Johnson, quoted by Edward Babinski:

Then in 1914 followed a discreditable episode with a young girl in Chicago. Helen Dudley was one of four sisters, the daughters of a leading gynaecologist, with whom Russell stayed while lecturing. According to Russell's account, 'I spent two nights under her parents' roof, and the second I spent with her. Her three sisters mounted guard to give warnings if either of the parents approached.' Russell arranged that she should come to England that summer and live with him openly, pending a divorce. He wrote to Lady Ottoline [his then-mistress] telling her what had occurred.

Babinsky says he doubts that the young lady was really 16, and if she's the same Helen Dudley (seems like yes), she probably was older, because otherwise she'd have been 12 when she appeared in the first issue of Poetry.

There is a schoolgirl quality to the poem,

I have seen the proudest stars
That wander on through space,
Even the sun and moon,
But not your face.

I have heard the violin,
The winds and waves rejoice
In endless minstrelsy,
Yet not your voice.

And it's kind of appealing. I especially like the third stanza:

I have touched the trillium,
Pale flower of the land,
Coral, anemone,
And not your hand.

But it's not the voice of the future, in any measure except Helen's youth.

More anon.

Poetry: The First Ten Years

This is a real online treasure trove, facsimile editions, page by page, of the first ten years of Harriet Monroe's Poetry Magazine. I'm going to try and work my way through a play-by-play, issue by issue, which may take a while, and is certainly a quixotic endeavor. Still, a journey of a thousand poems starts with a single metaphor, so let's look at Issue 1, from October 1912, priced at 15c, and beginning, not with a manifesto (although there is a statement of purpose at the end), but with a poem -- a tw0-sonnet sequence by Arthur Davison Ficke. best remembered now for being Witter Bynner's co-conspirator in the Spectrist Hoax of a few years later.

How forward-looking was Poetry? Well, we know how forward-looking it was -- the epicenter of Modernism, champion of Pound. But you wouldn't prove it by Ficke, who looked more toward the mid-Victorian uplift of a poet like William Ernest Henley. I don't demand that poetry reflect today's tastes -- in fact, I rather prefer it not to -- but I'm hard pressed to find much in Ficke's homilies about poetry, that "little isle amid bleak seas."

Curiously, it contains a typo -- Harriet Monroe must have agonized over that after it was off the presses -- a typo in the very first poem of the very first issue.

Ficke goes on to compare poetry to a holy war, which makes it a manifesto of sorts. He's followed by William Vaughn Moody, the late William Vaughn Moody at this point -- he died young, of brain cancer, in 1910, leaving behind

one play, yet so full of promise was The Great Divide, so American in the best sense, that his early death cannot but be the source of the deepest regret.

His posthumous entry here is mid-Victorian, too, but it looks back toward a more promising model, Robert Browning. He has some of Browning's pomposity, and some of his gift for characterization -- the woman of Moody's "I am the Woman" is more archetypal than Browning's finely tuned individuals, but at least she doesn't roar or bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan. Moody gives us some nice metrical variations between iambs and anapests, and some nice rhetorical flourishes, like this chiasmus:

I comfort and feed the slayer, feed and comfort the slain.

He remains readable.


Then, on page 11, we get to what we've been waiting for -- the leap into the future, with Ezra Pound. He leads off with an homage to Whistler that reads too much like most homages and most poems about art. He singles out Whistler and Abe Lincoln from the "mass of dolts" that populate and have populated America.

Then "Middle Aged: A Study in Emotion" takes from romping tourists down into the sarcophagus of a long-dead king, but Pound's snobbery gets subsumed in the sudden brilliance of insight and imagery, and here we are, moving into the 20th Century.

As the fine dust, in the hid cell beneath

Their transitory step and merriment,

Drifts through the air, and the sarcophagus

Gains yet another crust

Of useless riches for the occupant

And back next time with more.

The Realist

Have I posted this this before? There's a new website devoted to scanning and uploading -- eventually -- every issue of The Realist. So far, they've put up one of the issues with me in it -- my very first Realist appearance.

THE 40s
Four Voices
The One I Love

THE 50s
Georgia Gibbs
Seven Lonely Days (1953)






THE 60s
Secret Agent
Johnny Rivers







THE 70s
Donny & Marie Osmond
Deep Purple






THE 80s
Pat Benatar
Invincible







THE 90s
Beck
Loser


"Get a Job" waltzes off with the honors for last time, since Tony deFranco wasn't in the running.

I started one a few days ago, and it would have been interesting -- the two top contenders were The Spencer Davis Group doing "Gimme Some Lovin'" from 60s, and Salt-n-Pepa doing "Let's Talk About Sex" from the 90s, and I was probably going to go for Salt-n-Pepa, in spite of considerable affection for "Gimme Some Lovin,'" but realizing "Let's Talk About Sex" was probably the better song...but my computer froze and I lost the list.

So here's yet another, and...guess what? It's like I never left home.

I'm hoping not even Charis will go for Donny and Marie. I'm fairly certain the 40s and 50s will get left at the gate.

Pat Benatar was OK, but it would take an awfully weak set of competitors to make me vote for her.

So we come down to the 60s and 90s again, with a 60s song that I have even more affection for, and 90s song I know I have to vote for. Beck's an original, an elite talent. So although I am in fact a man who lives a life of danger..

Battle of the Decades

I haven't done a Battle of the Decades in a while, but I have an excuse. I got a download of the Complete Buddy Holly, in ten volumes, boing back to a home tape recording he made when he was 12, and I've been cataloging it. A lot of it is great -- Holly, fooling around in the studio but more than just fooling around, did his version of a whole lot of rock 'n roll hits of the day, from Bo Diddley to Rip it Up to Smokey Joe's Cafe. One not-very-effective cover is Ferlin Husky's Gone -- Buddy's strength wasn't in country ballads. Which explains why, when he started out in the early 50s in Texas, as Buddy and Bob, Bob did most of the lead vocals. Buddy had a different muse. This follows the theory that so much innovation in art comes from artists who don't have the ability to imitate -- Dizzy Gillespie tried to sound like Roy Eldridge but couldn't, so he moved on to create his own unique style. Miles Davis tried to sound like Dizzy but...

THE 40s
Glenn Miller v/Ray Eberle
Moon Love

THE 50s
The Silhouettes
Get a Job

THE 60s
Paul Revere & the Raiders
Him or Me (What's It Gonna Be?) (67)

THE 70s
Donny Osmond
Puppy Love


THE 80s
Survivor
High On You

THE 90s
Heart
All I Want To Do Is Make Love To You


I trust I don't have to explain to anyone why I'm eliminating Donny Osmond first.

Paul Revere and the Raiders were always mediocre, but they recorded some very catchy songs -- this isn't one of them. Survivor was just another disco group. Ray Eberle leading the Glenn Miller Orchestra isn't exactly breaking any new ground.

Speaking of Survivors, who would have expected Heart to craft one of the longest-lasting careers in rock? But they're still going, and they were particularly strong in the 90s, rocking as hard as they ever did, and adding those nice harmonies to a full-tilt rock sound.

But I have to go the fogey route again. Peter, Wendy, Jon and Tad as teenagers, cruising around Woodstock and surrounding areas, listening to George ("The Hound") Lorenz, sponsored by Mother Goldstein's Top of the Vine New York State Wine , and -- one suspects -- sampling the Mother's Malaga. I don't know how much Payola entered the picture, but when the Hound liked a song, he'd play it over and over -- the DJ in "The Buddy Holly Story" who locks himself in the studio and plays Buddy Holly until they break the door down -- that was The Hound. Here's a good web site for him (even though they do mention "Clyde McFatter).

On this night, when he broke "Get a Job," we knew what we had to do. WKBW Buffalo was clear channel, but it drifted in and out of clear reception in the valley of the Catskills. So we drove around for hours, looking for good reception areas, because we knew that if a new song was this good, The Hound would keep coming back to it all night. That was back when music was still magic.

Revision

Not revision of poems -- that's a different subject, and deserving of its own post, or series of posts. This is about teaching Freshman Comp students to revise -- a dark and tangled task, but someone's gotta do it. After going over a student's first paragraph recently, making editorial suggestions, then explaining why I made the changes I did, I wrote:

If this seems an improvement over your paragraph (I hope it does), and if my explanation of my rationale is clear, it’s not necessarily because I’m a better writer than you are. It’s because I revise constantly as I write, changing the connectives between thoughts, breaking sentences differently, looking for the right word and changing my first choice if I decide it’s not right, moving thoughts around, making sure that my afterthoughts are moved up so that they don’t sound like afterthoughts. Some time, I should try to save every correction that I make to a critique like this, to show you all how horribly I can write, too, if I leave everything as first draft stuff.

But I couldn't really do that...the process is too fast, too intuitive. Nevertheless, I tried to do it for one sentence:

I started writing this:

Look at all the good things you do later on in

“Good things?” blah….

Look at all the good insights you present later on in the paper – desire to live in a world where he still has the option to pursue, obsession, inner turmoil due to the fact that she might be out of his reach, cannot grasp, fear of commitment, difficult to conceive why she’d marry, life is incomplete, jealousy and greed, incompetent,

“Insights” is better. Then, midway through making a list of the words the writer uses, I realized that the insights gain their force by this forceful language. So I went back:

Look at all the good things you do insights you present powerful and expressive language you use later on in the paper, and the insights you are able to offer with this language:

“Good powerful and expressive language”? That’s awful. “Good” doesn’t belong there – at which point I realized that it didn’t belong with “insights” either, and I should have cut it out in the earlier revision.

Look at all the powerful and expressive language you use later on in the paper, and the insights you are able to offer with this language:

“Language” used twice? I could tighten that:

Look at all the insights you are able to offer with the powerful and expressive language you use later on in the paper:

But for my taste, now I’ve tightened it too much. I’d rather start with language, move to insights, and then finish with language, which is the word that has to go before the colon (changed from a dash), because it’s the word that introduces the list:

Look at all the powerful and expressive language you use later on in the paper, and the insights you are able to offer with this language: Look at all the good insights you present later on in the paper – desire to live in a world where he still has the option to pursue, obsession, inner turmoil due to the fact that she might be out of his reach, cannot grasp, fear of commitment, difficult to conceive why she’d marry, life is incomplete, jealousy and greed, incompetent…

Scratches the surface. But at least it shows a little about the process -- as i do it, anyway. Everyone is different.

THE PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY

Tom Paxton calls them "short shelf life songs." They're the ones you make for a moment in time, but six months later you’d have no reason to sing them. So why do they persist in memory? Mine, anyway. Perhaps summoned up by the re-emergence of Raul Castro, another Castro sibling came to mind – sister Juanita, who denounced the revolution and left Cuba early on, and who makes a guest appearance in this mid-60s song that Peter Jones and I wrote. Memory then took over, and a host of others came flooding back. Here they are, with links for the younger generation. The first is to the tune of “Rosin the Beau”:

HUAC SONG

Well, I’ve traveled all over Havana
And now to the US I’ll sail,
And I know that the HUAC Committee
Will be waiting to put me in jail.

Will be waiting to put me in jail, boys,
Will be waiting to put me in jail,
And I know that the HUAC Committee
Will be waiting to put me in jail.

I see the committee approaching,
That cruel remorseless old foe,
They say, “You’re found guilty of treason,
In the words of Juanita Castro.

In the words of Juanita Castro
In the words of Juanita Castro
They say, “You’re found guilty of treason,
In the words of Juanita Castro.

When I’m jailed and deprived of my passport,
A voice I will hear coming through,
“You’re unjustly deprived of your freedom,
Take your case to the ACLU.”

Take your case to the ACLU
Take your case to the ACLU
“You’re unjustly deprived of your freedom,
Take your case to the ACLU.”

Then get me a dozen stout liberals
To come to the aid of a friend,
And ask them to give an opinion,
And watch them cop out in the end.

And watch them cop out in the end,
And watch them cop out in the end
Then ask them to give an opinion,
And watch them cop out in the end.

When I’m dead and my obit is written,
The liberals will kick up a fuss,
They’ll say, “He’s a martyr to freedom,
We’re proud that he was one of us.”

We’re proud that he was one of us
We’re proud that he was one of us
They’ll say, “He’s a martyr to freedom,
We’re proud that he was one of us.”


And this one, from the same period, also with Peter Jones, to the tune of “The Wild Colonial Boy”:

THE WILD MIDWESTERN BOY

There was a wild Midwestern boy, Bob Zimmerman his name,
He was raised in Minnesota, the Mesabi iron range
He left his mother’s cozy home, he changed his father’s name
He called himself Bob Dylan, and to New York town he came.

He wandered through the Village, a-strummin’ his guitar,
He wore a cap of corduroy, and sang of peace and war,
He said the times were changing and filled young men’s hearts with joy,
A terror to the establishment was this wild Midwestern boy.

One day upon MacDougal Street, as Bob he strode along,
A-strummin’ on his guitar, and a-singin’ a protest song,
A vision came before his eyes, as plain as he could see,
The All-American Super Hits on WABC.

“Surrender now, Bob Dylan, and a millionaire become,
Surrender to the Establishment, you aren’t the only one.”
Bob plugged into an amplifier, and said, “I like the tone,”
Then promptly he sat down and made “Just Like a Rolling Stone.”

Now Dylan is a hero, with an amplified guitar
He sings of screwed-up women, and forsakes the Vietnam War,
He claims he’s got the misery, but he’s havin’ a lot of fun,
Gunnin’ his motorsickle down on Highway 61,

There was another from the same period, about Joe Namath, and I remember it all except for two lines, but that doesn’t count for a perfect memory. So I’ll go back farther into the past, to my college days at Bard, and this one I wrote with Lenny Rosen, to the tune of “The Frozen Logger”:

THE FROZEN BEATNIK

I sat down one evening,
‘Twas in an espresso café,
An 18-year-old waitress
To me these words did say:

“I see that you are a beatnik,
And not just a common weird,
For nobody but a beatnik
Stirs his coffee with his beard.

“My lover was a beatnik,
There’s none like him today,
If you told him there was pot in it
He would smoke a bale of hay.

“My lover came to see me,
‘Twas on a winter day,
He read to me his poetry
And rotted my mind away.

“I saw my lover leaving,
He was leaving on the sly,
When two men came up behid him
It was the FBI.

“And so I lost my lover
And in this café I’ve appeared,
And here I wait till someone
Stirs his coffee with his beard.”


And again from Bard, this one written all by my lonesome, to the tune of “Barbara Allen.” It contains one word that I’ve never actually heard used, though its meaning is clear. I have, however, seen it written, in Evan Hunter’s The Blackboard Jungle: “Do you know what planked means, West?” Here’s the song:

BARBARA FELDMAN

In New York town, where I was born,
There was a wild chick dwelling,
Made every cat to blow his cool,
Her name was Barbara Feldman.

All in the merry month of May,
When maidenheads were fallin’,
Sweet William in his own pad lay,
Dreamin’ of Barbara Feldman.

He made a phone call to her house
In the Bronx where she was dwellin’,
“Oh come ye to MacDougal Street,
The joint is really wailin’.”

When she first walked into that place,
A strange smell she was smellin’,
“What is that strange smell that I smell?”
“It’s a reefer, Barbara Feldman.”

Then slowly, slowly, she took a puff,
The first one she was tryin’,
Then slowly, slowly, she lay down,
“Oh, man, I’m really flyin’.

“You’ve turned me on to a great new kick,
How can I ever thank you?”
“That’s very easy, Barbara dear,
For now I’m going to plank you.”

Just then two cops knocked at the door,
While they were still a-ballin’,
“Oh come ye to the station house,
If your name be Barbara Feldman.”

They took them up before the judge,
And said to him, “Your honor,
We’ve arrested these two beatniks here
For possessing marijuana.:

They took them up before the judge,
Barbara Feldman and Sweet William,
She went to the Women’s Detention Home,
He went to Riker’s Island.

It had not been two months or three,
When she began a-swellin’.
“Sweet William, babe, what have you done?
You’ve knocked up Barbara Feldman.

“You should have used a contraceptive,
Why didn’t you think of it?”
Then tenderly he said to her,
“I thought you were on Enovid.

“A cruel blow’s been dealt to us
By the fickle hand of fortune,
But don’t you worry, Barbara dear,
We’ll get you an abortion.”

“Oh, not so fast, sweet Willie boy,
That’s not why I let you mount me,
You’ll marry me, and get a job,
And move to Fairfield County.”

Now he works for BBD and O,
And goes to the city to labor,
While Barbara’s having an affair
With the milkman and a neighbor.


And retreating back further in time, this is high school vintage, and a joint venture between me, my brother Jon, Peter Jones, and his brother Wendy. It’s not too PC, but it has a happy ending, and I’ve sung it for gay activists, who’ve loved it:

FRANKIE AND JOHNNY

Frankie and Johnny were fairies,
Oh Lordy how they could love,
Swore to be true to each other,
Just as true as the stars above,

He was his man,
But he done him wrong.

Frankie and Johnny went walkin’,
Johnny was dressed up in drag,
“Oh lordy me,” says Frankie,
“Don’t my Johnny look like a fag?”

He was his man,
But he done him wrong.

Frankie went down to the barroom,
Bought himself an imported beer,
Said to the gay bartender,
“Have you seen my lovin’ queer?”

He is my man,
But he’s doin’ me wrong.

“Well, I don’t want to cause you no trouble,
But I don’t want to raise no false hope,
I seen your lover Johnny,
Makin’ love with Truman Capote,

He is your man,
But he’s doin’ you wrong.

Frankie went to Fire Island,
He was hopin’ against hope,
But he seen his lover Johnny
Makin’ love with Truman Capote,

He was his man,
But he done him wrong.

Frankie went back to the Village,
Washed off all of his rouge,
Wiped off all his lipstick,
Kicked off his high heeled shoes,

He was his man,
But he done him wrong.

Frankie he went to the barber,
Said “Give me a big crewcut,
I’m gonna join the Marine Corps,
Just to cut my Johnny up,

He is my man,
But he done me wrong.

Now Frankie he is a Staff Sergeant,
Stationed down at Fort Dix,
Every weekend he comes to the Village,
Just to see his Johnny for kicks,

He is his man,
Does him no more wrong.

Dean and Sylvia

SYLVIA

--When are Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan going to make another of those wonderful romantic comedies, like Sleepless in Seattle or You’ve Got Mail?

--Tom and Meg will certainly be looking for scripts they can do together. But meanwhile, they each have projects going on their own. They’ll both be going in front of the cameras in biopics—Tom playing Dean Martin, while Meg does the life of Sylvia Plath.

Give up those adorable
Tom and Meg romances?
It’s too much to ask.

And there’s a better way.
Sylvia loses the Mademoiselle
competition. To make it up,

her parents take her
for a week in Havana. She meets
Dino--handsome, gifted, unfulfilled.

She tells him he needs a partner,
a wisecracker, zany—“What about you,
sweetheart?” Dean asks, eyes twinkling.

Her parents take her back to Boston.
She’s shoved into Wellesley, Lowell, poetry,
Ted Hughes, and Dean meets Jerry,

who looks sort of like Sylvia, without her
vivacious wit. Life pulls them apart,
their chance at happiness lost…forever?

It looks that way for Sylvia. One day,
she decides to end it all. She goes to turn on
the gas jet, but by mistake, hits the radio,

hears, through the static, Everybody
loves somebody sometime…Dean! He’s playing
the Albert Hall, with Jerry! She leaves

Ted and his mistress minding the kids,
she takes a cab, gets backstage to find
Dean in his dressing room, a gun to his head.

She pries it gently from his fingers. They talk
all night, walking beside the Thames. Dean tells her
he can’t stand another night with Jerry.

They’ve found each other. Jerry
goes off to France, Dean and Sylvia
head for Vegas, where he teaches her

how to laugh again, she writes
new material for him, brings
a touch of profundity to his act:

When a boot hits your eye
like a big Nazi spy
that’s a Daddy…

It’s a happy ending for Sylvia,
and there’s a lesson to be learned
for all of us:

Peggy Sue Got Analyzed

Freshman comp paper -- first graded assignment of the semester, actually, and I love it.

“Please don’t tell, no-no-no…” Repression and self-doubt are expressed by a struggling Holly in his original nervous ditty, “Peggy Sue.” This apprehension turns into indifference with a hint of anger in the second, more rockin’ version.

Holly, like most males, is struggling with an Oedipus complex- essentially wanting to love his mother and get rid of his father. With this comes a castration complex; he is afraid that his manhood could be taken away from him, thus making him fail at loving Peggy properly. Even though Holly’s mother is the ultimate goal, Holly invests his emotions in Peggy instead; loving her is okay but loving his mother is not. The relationship between Peggy Sue and Holly’s mother is evident with lines like, “She’s the one, I’ve been told/ Now she wears a band of gold.” This “band of gold” must represent something for Holly. It must have had some sort of effect on his life prior to Peggy Sue- it seems as if it had caused him some sort of pain. Holly saw his mother’s band of gold as the reason he couldn’t be with her- a constant reminder that his father had what he needed.

Peggy Sue, being a woman, naturally wants to be taken care of by a man. She is inclined to submit to the societal norm of marriage when she realizes her natural female Penile envy. Since she couldn’t be satisfied by Holly, she had to find someone else to fulfill her needs. This meant that she had to leave Holly and now he’s alone and emotionally confused . This only furthered his Oedipus complex and now he is dealing with feeling even more inferior. First he was rejected by his mother and now Peggy Sue.

The unconscious is the main site of creativity and obviously thoughts of Peggy Sue have been deep-seeded into Holly’s unconscious, “You recall the girl that’s been in nearly every song.” Being sensitive about this subject, and being bombarded by the anger he feels toward Peggy Sue’s new husband and his own father, he quickly gets uncomfortable and focuses again on his confusion, “This is what I heard, of course the story could be wrong.” He is comfortable describing his confusion because that’s one feeling that is socially okay to have.

In the second, more upbeat version of Peggy Sue, Holly’s self-doubt develops into indifference and apathy toward the situation. He has realized why Peggy Sue left him and he has come to the conclusion that he lacks the ability to please the women he loves and is too embarrassed to admit to it. Now he has been so emotionally beaten down by that fact that he is pretending to not really care. He has somewhat gotten over it, or is atleast trying to ignore his feelings so he can move on. He feels as if he has wasted too much time on this girl and has recognized that every relationship he has wanted in his life (his mother, Peggy Sue) has been ruined by a wedding ring and he is trying to recover and move on with his life.

Peggy Sue was just a medium through which Holly acted out his feelings toward his mother. The let down of this relationship was devastating to Holly and left him emotionally drained and embarrassed to admit his true feelings. In the second version, Holly’s situation is turned into a renunciation of these same girls and is portrayed as sick of being left behind and is ready to forget the pain both women have caused him.

Over There! Beside the Red Wheelbarrow! Could it Be...?

WHAT’S THAT OVER BY THE WHEELBARROW?

in the approximate vicinity
of the albino poultry.

Donald Hall

Whatever chicken, broad or narrow,
That pecked beside that red wheelbarrow,

May have appeared, to judge or wino,
It certainly was not albino.

Mr. Hall, a farmer-poet-
New Hampshireman, should surely know it.

It may have been Ameraucana,
Imported from Brazil or Ghana,

Both noted for abundant fauna.
Perhaps the Rumpless Araucana

-- But could so much indeed depend
On barnyard fowl with no rear end?

Aseel, Cochin, or Barnevelder
(You won't forget one once you've held her),

The Cubalaya's a petite bird,
but also Cuba's fighting meat bird.


Antwerp Belgian, Belgian D'Uccle
Booted or Sabelpoot, a muckle,

Not likely it's a Chantecler,
Even in Canada they're rare.

Cornish, Delaware (rare), Dorking,
Dutch or Hamburg might be working,

To get an egg one fries or boils
He might have chosen Faverolles,

For an egg that's truly fresh,
Langshan, Phoenix, or La Fleche,

For oven or for frying pan
American Holland, or Houdan.

Chabo or Japanese (still called
Japs in some parts of the world).

Since so much depends upon her,
Better not choose a Lamona,

Red-ear-lobed and quite distinct,
But quite possibly extinct.

If the farm was near foreclosing
Dr. Will might well have chosen

Leghorn , big and white and mean,
The ultimate egg-lay machine.

He could have gone to court a dame
With the Modern English Game,

The game bird with style and carriage
(Courtship might then lead to marriage).

Or, if he's only after sex,
Transylvanian Naked Necks

Enchant the girl who loves to swing
Or Russian Orloff, that wild thing.

Orpington is big and friendly,
Nothing fancy, nothing trendy

Plymouth Rock, Rhode Island White,
Yokohama, Rosecomb might

Be dependable commodities,
Not Silkie (oddity of oddities).

Wyandotte's the "bird of curves,"
Still, that might get on your nerves.

Sultan? No, it's all for show.
Dr. William C. should go

For something local, large, compliant,
Dependable -- the Jersey Giant.

With apologies to Donald Hall, William Carlos Williams, and poetry in general, and thanks to Ithaca College’s ICYouSee Handy-Dandy Chicken Chart

Not Bloody Enough

How do I create these images? (For the show advertised below.) It's kind of a technique of my own invention. When Rachel Loden and I were doing "Affidavit," my art work for that was black and white, drawn directly on my computer screen using Microsoft Paint and one tool -- the one called "free-form select," shaped like a star on your MSPaint toolbox. I'd draw a shape, then invert it (using a little trick I had to discover -- you can't just invert with MSPaint), and keep working positive and negative space against each other until I had an image I liked. It's the same technique I use for the Film Noir images.

Then, because Rachel's amazing poem was about a gruesome murder, I decided I'd put some blood into each picture, which meant adding red, which scared me a little, because I'd always worked in black and white, and had no confidence in my ability to use color. So I started sending the new bloody images to Rachel, and she kept responding "Great! But not bloody enough." So I kept changing the color, looking for ever-gorier shades of red. Which should have been relatively easy -- you just take the paint bucket tool, and pour the new red over the old. (Note: this image has one of the early, discarded blood colors -- can't locate where I filed the final version at the moment.)

Except it wasn't. I discovered that MSPaint was an inefficient program that could not save color true. Once you saved an image, when you retrieved it, the middle of it was true, but it pixillated around the edges. It became discolored, mottled, and the new color wouldn't cover that part. None of this is a problem with PhotoShop, but fortunately I didn't have PhotoShop then, so I had to work with the frustration, and ultimately get it to work for me. While the mottled effect was driving me nuts for "Affidavit," it was also intriguing me, and it occurred to me that if you worked with dots of color, and saved frequently, every part of the image would have that effect. So I gathered up all my courage and made the jump into color -- computer pointillism, beginning an image with separated dots of color, and gradually merging them.

It is a horribly painstaking process -- each one of these can take up to three months to finish. But it keeps me off the streets.

Exhibition Opening

"It was easy," I said.

There's a connection insisting its way in here, try as I will to stop it. My spellcheck red-flags "Villanelle," and one of the alternatives it offers is "Spillane."

There has to be a villanelle in that somewhere, and I'll work on it -- even though the trochee-iamb of "Mickey Spillane" is unpromising - maybe anapests? Or a catelectic line with a two-unstressed-syllable patter?

This is the story of Mickey Spillane

...that sort of thing?

Anyway, connections between poetry and Mickey Spillane won't let go of me. I'm working on a series of chapbooks based on film noir stills, and I suddenly remembered I had done a series based on Mickey Spillane paperback covers. I wondered if I could find them in a file somewhere, so I Google-Desktopped "Spillane," and the first place I was directed to was a list of literary contemporaries of Donald Justice.

"How c-could you?" she gasped.
I only had a moment before talking to a corpse, but I got it in.
"It was easy," I said.

ABC WXYZ -- The cat's in the cupboard but he can't see me

Mike Snider is gracious enough to say nice things about my "Barefoot in Florence," my ABC villanelle for Anny Ballardini (see a couple of entries below), and to extend the fledgling tradition with an ABC villanelle of his own.

I do seem to be inventing forms these days, without really setting out to do so. But I've always been a tinkerer, I guess. At Iowa, in my frighteningly extreme youth, the first time I tried to write a sestina, I didn't know how to do it, and so instead of making the second stanza FAEBDC, I just made it BCDEFA. I suppose I could have claimed that as an innovation, but it was just dumb. But in the same poem I did something else deliberately, that I hadn't thought of as an innovation, but Don Justice was very generous in praise of -- the Walking Enjambment. The first line of the first stanza was enjambed into the second line, then the second line of the second stanza into the third line, and so on. When I got to the last stanza, of course, there was no place for the enjambment to go, so I hit upon the perfect terrible idea of enjambing it in a circle, putting a caesura at the beginning of the first line of the last stanza, as if it had been enjambed from somewhere or other. Fortunately, no one noticed that, and Justice complimented the gracefulness of just letting the device disappear.

It's a device I haven't overused, I hope, but I did use it again in The Map of the Bear, which you can find on my page on Anny's Poet's Corner. There, I took the refrain line, "The only map is the map of the bear," and enjambed it on a different foot at the end of every stanza, so one foot of it appears at the end of the first stanza, two at the end of the second, three at the end of the third, and the whole line, unbroken, at the end of the poem.

And then there are my 5/4 syllabic poems, which are featured in my new chapbook "Take Five: Poems in 5/4 Time."

Here's the youthful sestina:

IF YOU'S WHITE

"They are developing some very strong feelings about this music -- so much so that I have heard some white country blues singers say, `I want to be Negro.'"

John Cohen, Sing Out!


A young man with dark sweater and a white
Face, in the sidewalk shadows of New York,
Shading his eyes to dim his skin toward black,
A battered (by choice) guitar held in his hands
While in his mind he sees a soulful blues
Moaning along the highways of the South.

There is no earth--it's barren in New York--
He tries to pluck a bass string with a black
Thumb, but the sterile whiteness of his hands
Is not for digging roots and picking blues
That grow along the highways of the South.
He pulls up milkweed, fluffy, dry and white.

The woman that he's living with is black,
He sees the race's character in her hands;
The suffering that goes to breathe the blues
Alive, in the fields and road gangs of the South
Whispers beyond the range of any white--
Although she's never been outside New York.

He'll tell you, "Man, just look at that spade's hands!
They look like they were born to play the blues!
(You know the way they breed 'em in the South.)
There's nothing wrong with him except that white
Soul, from the shallow spirit of New York
That robbed him of his birthright (which was black).

Sometimes a weary voice sings him a blues.
It may have drifted upward from the South,
He scarcely hears it: "Fella, be glad you're white!
You can buy better guitars up in New York
To sing about what happens to a black
Man, with cold iron shackles on his hands."

The kind of thing that happens in the South,
And hate the cops--that's safer if you're white,
Yes, fella, even up here in New York.
This is the time, you're thinking, to be black;
Well, if that's so, you have it on your hands."
"Was that an eight-bar or a twelve-bar blues?"

He sits in a White Castle in New York,
A cup of black coffee warming his cool hands
Too frigid for a blues bred in the South.

The Death of Dick Stillwell

A reminiscence of Woodstock in the 50s, from David McDonald's movie, featuring yours truly.

1965 at Opus 40

The Hudson River Valley Heritage Society has recently posted a home movie of a visit to Opus 40, shot in 1965 by Dean Tonkin.

Barefoot in Florence

Here's the background from Poetryetc.

Joseph Duemer wrote:
> Well, Anny, If you keep telling us stories about being barefoot in Florence
> at four in the morning wearing a pink dress -- is that how the story went?
> -- how can you blame us?

> On Jan 27, 2008 9:52 AM, Anny Ballardini wrote:
>
>
>> Me fetishized? Is it a severe condition, does it have secondary effects?

And here's the villanelle I spun from it. I'm kind of modestly pleased with my solution to the problem of an ABC-first stanza villanelle. At least, I've never seen it before.

Anny assures me that she wasn't actually barefoot -- that was Joe Duemer's poetic license.



BAREFOOT IN FLORENCE

Barefoot in Florence --
A dress that was pinkish
At four in the morning.

Pleasure in torrents,
Adventure to relish
Barefoot in Florence.

Tourists, take warning:
Pleasure can vanish
At four in the morning;

Borne by those currents,
The young and the foolish
Are barefoot in Florence.

Libidos are churning --
It's something to cherish
At four in the morning.

Anny – concurrence
To any such yearning
May still be a fetish
At four in the morning.
Barefoot in Florence.

Another Winter Photo

Winter View

Put Them All Together...

P is for the promises it never keeps,
O is for the ode, no longer hip,
E is for ekphrasis, in the Musee d’Oasis,
T says that it’s been a long strange trip,
R is for the readers that it doesn’t have,
Y? Because we don’t like you, you see,
Put them all together, they spell CHAOS
That’s a word that means The World to me.

Battle of the Decades

Here's a game I've been playing with my family and a few friends over email. The premise is simple: I open up XM Radio online when the spirit moves me, copy the songs which are playing at that moment on XM's Decades channels, whatever they may be, and send them out to my Battle of the Decades mailing list.

The rules are simple: Vote for the best song. You must vote for one (hard if none of them are any good, which can happen) and only one (hard if there are two or more really strong candidates -- this last rule is broken so frequently that I've abandoned it).

As the game has developed, I've taken to writing desultory notes -- criticism, reminiscence, biography, trivia -- on the list. These have gotten lengthy enough, and at least no less interesting than most of the nonsense here, that I thought I might as well start posting them. Y'all are welcome to join in and vote.


In the last competition -- a two-way race, which surprised me a little -- it was 4 Non Blondes over Elvis. I'm certainly not surprised that none of my daughters voted for Elvis. But I'm surprised that neither Queen not Marvin Gaye/Martha and the Vandellas got any votes. I


So here's the new one, and I predict near-unanimity between young and old.


THE 40s
Freddy Martin
Easy To Love


THE 50s
Bobby Darin
You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby


THE 60s
James & Bobby Purify
I'm Your Puppet


THE 70s
Paul McCartney & Wings
With A Little Luck


THE 80s
Janet Jackson
The Pleasure Principle


THE 90s
Right Said Fred
I'm Too Sexy


But first, a word about young and old, and the generation gap. I'm certainly not going to vote for Freddy Martin, and I feel confident that no one else will, unless my brother is in a really weird mood, but there is a memory attached to him. When Jon and I first started listening to music, and buying records, naturally we listened to, and bought, rock and roll, which was in its early days back then. This was so long ago that for those of you who don't remember 45s, and barely remember LPs, this goes back further -- our first purchases were 78s. Jon can maybe correct me on this, but I remember our very first being "Bazoom (I Need Your Lovin')" by the Cheers. The Cheers are mostly noted for having, as lead singer, a future TV game show host -- according to Wikipedia,

Convy soon took the podium himself as host of several game shows, including the fourth edition of Password, Super Password (1984–1989), but he remains best known for his first television game show, Tattletales (1974–1978, 1982–1984), for which he was awarded an Emmy for "Best Game Show Host" in 1977.

He also hosted the syndicated version of Win, Lose or Draw (1987–1990), which he co-produced with Burt Reynolds (under the firm Burt and Bert Productions). The final season of Win, Lose or Draw was hosted by Robb Weller, freeing up Convy to host his last game show, 3rd Degree, a syndicated program that ran during the 1989–90 TV season. He was also slated to host the 1990 revival of Match Game but was too ill to do so (comedian Ross Shafer took the role instead).

The Cheers also recorded "Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots," an early entry into the rock and roll world by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, at that point mostly known for R&B classics like Big Mama Thornton's "Hound Dog." Loyal rock and rollers, we listened to the Cheers' version and scorned the pop cover by Vaughn Monroe, but actually the Cheers didn't bring much to rock 'n roll, and Vaughn Monroe's version was just as good.

But I digress. My mother, hating everything we listened to, and really hating the idea that we were wasting our allowance money on rock 'n roll records, tried out the classic parent ploy of assuming that all pop music was the same, and if we wanted to listen to records, why didn't we listen to her old records from the 30s? So she got them out, and when we listened to them, we immediately had the answer as to why we didn't listen to them. But the one we kinda didn't mind, because it was a mildly clever novelty and we were, even back then, into clever, was "The Broken Record," a 1936 for both Freddy Martin and Guy Lombardo -- the general gist of which was that this broken record kept sticking, fortuitously, just at the places which delivered the young swain's message most punchily: "My sweetneart, I love you -- I love you -- I love you -- I love you..."

Yes, it's as corny as it sounds. But it conjures up a memory of Nonna, and so gets a sentimental nod. But no vote.

I pretty much hate everything Paul McCartney & Wings ever recorded, and Janet Jackson's Super Bowl breast (as opposed to Super breast) didn't do anything to win me over, and Bobby Darin was mostly boring -- so much so that even a major fan like Kevin Spacey couldn't make his movie life interesting. Of course, Jerry Lee Lewis' movie bio was boring too...

Here's one of my favorite exchanges in movie-bio-making history.

Dennis Quaid: Jerry Lee, I just don't feel I can play this part right if I can't sing the songs myself.
Jerry Lee: Well, son, that gives me a pretty good idea of your acting ability.

"I'm Your Puppet" was a great song. Maybe not given its due, because it was one of many great soul numbers during an era of great soul records by masters like Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett, and James and Bobby were one-hit wonders. Interestingly, for one-hit wonders, and for apparently a brother act, they had a personnel change. James was a real Purify, but the original Bobby, actually named Bobby, was his cousin Bob Dickey. He was replaced in the group by Ben Moore, neither Purify nor Bobby, nor related to Scotty Moore, Sam Moore, Wild Bill Moore, Johnny Moore, the other Johnny Moore, Mandy Moore, or Thurston Moore. Quick trivia quiz -- who can identify all the above Moores? I didn't include Dudley, Mary Tyler or Henry, because they weren't primarily associated with music, although Dudley was a brilliant musician.

"I'm Too Sexy" was also a great song -- also by a one-hit wonder group, but more distinctive, more readily identifiable, and terminally catchy. It gets my vote.

Opus 40 on YouTube

A surf of YouTube reveals these home videos of Opus 40, by imtubester:




And two by raymilauren:






And we're included in this one from WeirdUSTV:



And don't forget our own wedding promo video.

A Low Dishonest Decade

I've been reading The Auden Generation: Literature and Politics in England in the 1930's by Samuel Hynes.

It's about Auden, Spender, Isherwood, etc. -- the intellectuals who were too young to have served in World War I, who felt the strain of having missed a defining experience, and by the late 1920s they were already defining themselves in terms of the coming war. There was a powerful feeling that WWI had proved liberal democracy a failure, and a strong pressure to turn either Communist or Fascist. It's the "low dishonest decade" that Auden came to repudiate, and a powerful cautionary tale to those who feel a demand to politicize art.

As EM Forster said at the time, and this should be required reading for the Bush administration:

As for their argument for revolution – the argument that we must do evil now so that good may come in the long run – it seems to me to have nothing in it. Not because I am too nice to do evil, but because I don’t believe that the Communists know what leads to what. They say they know because they are becoming conscious of the ‘causality of society.’ I say they don’t know, and my counsel for 1938-39 is rather: Do good, and possibly good may come of it. Be soft even if you stand to get squashed. Beware of the long run. Seek understanding dispassionately, and not in accordance with a theory."

And as Johnny Cash said a couple of generations later,

"Don't go mixing politics with the folk songs of our land."