For
a selection of five new poems by Michael Davidson, click below:
December 23, 2012
“Notebook of a Return to the Native Land” | by Aimé Césaire (29-37, from the original version, 1939) [link]
Aimé
Césaire, from the original version (1939) of “Notebook of a Return to the
Native Land” (29-37), translated by Clayton Eshelman and A. James Arnold, here:
December 6, 2012
"Pure Poetry" | essay by Douglas Messerli (on the lyrics of Cole Porter's Anything Goes)
pure poetry
by Douglas MesserliThe musical Anything Goes has been rewritten so many times, adding Porter’s songs from other musicals while subtracting several of the original songs, that one might almost describe what I witnessed the other day as a shadow of its first conception, even if, arguably, the layering revisions have burnished it into a better work. Most of the changes, however, have been to the story, and since the silly couplings and un-couplings of the work hardly matter, it is hard to be interested in the “ur-text.” I will be glad to except Timothy Crouse’s and John Weidman’s assurances that they were “purists” “but only to a point.” What is important is that they restored as much of Porter’s score as they could, adding only three wonderful Porter songs “Friendship,” “It’s De-Lovely,” and “Goodbye, Little Dream, Goodbye.”
The story, in fact, pretty much lives up to the musical’s title, the characters almost changing partners willy-nilly. This time round nightclub singer (former evangelist?) Reno loves Billy, Billy loves Hope, Hope pretends to love Lord Evelyn Oakleigh but really loves Billy, Lord Evelyn loves Reno, Elisha Whitney loves Evangeline Harcourt, and Erma loves everybody. Enough said. The book—whatever version you choose—makes soap operas, by comparison, look like grand operas. “Frothy” is the appropriate word.
Yet
this chestnut has been immensely popular since its 1934 opening in New York,
running 420 performances even during the great depression, and reappearing in
successful productions in England and New York in 1935 (261 performances),
1962, 1987 (784 performances), 1989 and 2011 (521 performances). What I saw was
a sold-out performance of the touring version of the 2011 production. Why has
it succeeded again and again?
The answer, quite obviously, is not just a
cast of talented singers and dancers (a requirement of course!) but Cole
Porter, who in this and other works turns what might have been tin-pan ditties
into pure American poetry. Sure, the music itself is spritely and often borders
on a kind regularized jazz. But those words! No one, not even Stephen Sondheim,
can write as wittily idiomatic lyrics while pulling his audiences into a kind
of licentious world that hints of everything from adultery and drug addiction
to sexual orgies and open homosexuality, with his characters simultaneously
hoofing up innocent-seeming line dances across the stage.
The fun begins with this show’s very
first song, “I Get a Kick Out of You,” where Broadway libertine Reno Sweeney (the
talented Rachel York) tells Billy about her frigidity concerning everyday life:
I get no
kick from champagne.
Mere
alcohol doesn’t thrill me at all,So tell me why should it be true
That I get a kick out of you?
Some get
a kick from cocaine.
I’m sure
that if I took even one sniffThat would bore me terrific’ly too
Yet I get a kick out of you.
Or consider the wonderful shifts in the notion of “friendship” in the song titled that. It begins as a song of spirited support of one being for another, in this case the musical’s two major “hustlers,” Reno and Moonface Martin (the 13th most wanted criminal):
If you’re ever in a mess, S.O.S.
If you’re so happy, you land in jail. I’m your bail.
But gradually as they each try to outdo
one another in imagining life-saving necessities, the song becomes a kind of
contest which reveals that underneath their “perfect friendship” there is not
only an open competiveness but a true hostility:
If they ever black your eyes, put me wise.
If they ever cook your goose, turn me loose.
If they ever put a bullet through your brain, I’ll complain.
The
lyrics grow even more outlandish as they imagine the worst for one another:
If you ever lose your mind,
I’ll be kind.
And if you ever lose your shirt,
I’ll be hurt.If you ever in a mill get sawed in half, I won’t laugh.
It
finally ends with imagining each other being eaten by cannibals, in which the
second half answers “invite me.”
These are not the words of supportive
human beings, but of criminals who might turn on each other in a minute.
Pluming the unconscious depths of Americans’ fascination with violence—notably
present in the entertainments of the 1930s—Porter has created almost a paean to
the macabre, a world wherein people land up in jail, put bullets through
brains, lose their minds, get sawed in half, and are consumed by cannibals,
lines somewhat reminiscent of William Carlos Williams’ observation “the pure
products of America / go crazy” and Allen Ginsberg’s opening line in Howl: “I saw the best minds of my
generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked….”
Hearing once more the musical’s title
song, “Anything Goes,” I realized that, again, the most important thing about
this work is its lyrics—which unfortunately, in the quick-paced rhythms, got
somewhat lost in York’s rendition; suddenly it became clear to me that the
original Reno, played by Ethel Merman, with her emphatic pronunciations of
every word, may have been the perfect Porter interpreter—ensuring that the audiences
heard every one of Porter’s quips.
Like the peeved reactions of conservative
parents through the mid 1960s, Porter presciently reiterates the very same
issues of change in his opening refrain:
Times have changed
And we’ve
often got a shock,
When they
landed on Plymouth Rock.
If today,
Any shock they should try to stem,‘Stead of landing of Plymouth Rock,
Plymouth Rock would land on them.
The
song goes on to explain the topsy-turvy morality of the contemporary world:
The world
has gone mad today
And good’s
bad today,
And
black’s white today,And day’s night today,
When most guys today
That women prize today
Are just silly gigolos
Porter
might almost have added: “Or are gay today.” Indeed, Porter does add himself,
indirectly, to that list:
Good
authors too who once knew better words,
Now only
use four letter words
Writing
prose, Anything Goes.
In such an “anything goes” atmosphere
Porter was freed up to even question the normal structure of his songs, to
query and even challenge the standard introductory lead-ins and normalized language
of Broadway music:
[hope]
I feel a
sudden urge to singThe kind of ditty that invokes the spring.
[billy]
I’ll control my
desire to curse
While you
crucify the verse.
[hope]
This verse
I started seems to me
The
Tin-Pantithesis of a melody.
[billy]
So spare us all
the pain,
Just skip
the darn thing and sing the refrain…
Of
course, what they sing is “delightful, delicious, de-lovey, delirious” in its de-construction
of the English language, letting themselves go in thrilling, drilling
(de-de-de-de) of words that suggest being out of control.
Porter’s lyrics almost always seem to be
slightly over the top, about to spill over into pure ridiculousness as they
finally do in “You’re the Top,” where the same couple, Reno and Billy, again in
an attempt to outdo one another, compare each other with almost anything that
comes to mind, from the Louvre Museum, to a symphony by Strauss, to a
Shakespeare sonnet and even Mickey Mouse, blithely jumping across the bodies of
outstanding individuals, expensive drinks, glorious visions of nature, national
institutions, celebrity salaries, to end in marvelous industrial creations,
moving across the whole society as if it were all of one piece—not unlike
Williams in his Spring and All. *
You’re the top!
You’re Mahatma Gandhi.
You’re the top!
You’re Napoleon Brandy.
You’re the purple light
Of a summer night in Spain,
You’re the National Galley
You’re Garbo’s salary,
You’re cellophane.**
Never
has the simple metaphor been used to such an extreme example! At one grand
moment the couple compare each other to the great romantic poets only to
suddenly drop into the most banal of American consumer products:
You’re
Keats.
You’re
Shelley,
You’re
Ovaltine. (,)
*Compare,
for example, these lines from Williams’ Spring
and All from 1923:
O
“Kiki”
O
Miss Margaret JarvisThe backhandspring
I:
clean
cleanclean: yes . . New York
Wrighley’s,
appendicitis, James Marin:
Skyscraper
soup—
**Surely
it is not coincidental that in the very same year as the Broadway production of
Anything
Goes, 1934, Four Saints in Three Acts,
Gertrude Stein’s and Virgil Thomson’s noted opera, premiered in Hartford,
Connecticut, the set festooned with cellophane. The opera had been previously
performed in Ann Arbor in a concert version in 1933.
December 4, 2012
Zbigniew Herbert (Poland) 1924-1998
Zbigniew
Herbert (Poland)
1924-1998Born on October 29, 1924 in Lwów, Poland. Herbert
was attended the Państwowe VIII Gimnazjum I Liceum im. Króla Kazimierza
Wielkiego we Lwowie until the German and Svoiet invastions in 1939. During the
German occupation the poet continued his studies at secret meetings organized
by the Polish underground, graduating and passing the A-level exam in January
1944.
Herbert worked as a lice-feeder in the
Rudolf Weigl Insstitute, production anti-typhus vacines and as a salesman in a
metal shop until passing his exam, upon which he began Polish Philology studies
(also held in secret) at University of Jan Kazimierz in Lwów. He had to drop
out however when the family moved to Kraków before the 1944 invasion of the
Soviet Red Army. After the war his hometown of Lwów, no longer within the
Polish borders, would become a Ukrainian Soviet city.
The family originally lived near Kraków in Proszowice, while Herbert studied Economics in Kraków and attended lectures at the Jagiellonian University and the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1947, he received his Trade Academy diploma and moved, with his parents to Sopot, working at several different jobs, in the Polish National Bank, as a sub-editor for the journal Prezgląd Kupiecki, and, in Gdańsk, in the department of the Polish Writers’ Union. During this time he met Halina Misiołkowa at the Union, developing a relationship that would last until 1957.
Herbert also continued Law studies at the
Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, where he ultimately received a Master
of Law. Shortly thereafter he worked in the District Museum and as a primary
school teacher.
In 1951, he moved to Warsaw to study
Philosophy at the University of Warsaw, living in poor conditions, at one point
living in a room rented by 12 people. He attempted to live from his writing,
but his style did not follow the social-realistic dictates, and he refused to
write political propaganda. He did publish, however, in the weekly magazine Tygodnik Wybreż his poetry cycle, Poetyka dla Laikó (Poetry for the Lay
People), as well as reviewing for the journal Slwo Powszechne under both name and the pen name Patryk. Under another
pen name, Stefan Martha, Herbert published in Dziś I Jutro, a publication of Catholic-based PAX Association. But
with the closure of the more oppositional magazine, Tygodnik Powszechny, Herbert felt he could no longer cooperate with
the more collaborationist PAX. He earned some money froom writing biographies,
for a period in 1952, becoming a salaried blood donor. For a short period of
time he worked as the manager of the management office of the Union of
Socialist Composers.
Although he had published other works of
poetry previously, it was not until the end of Stalinism in Poland that he
could devote himself to poetic writing. In 1956 he was offered a small studio
and won a scholarship of 100 US dollars, that permitted him to travel abroad.
Throughout the next several years, Herbert would become a traveler, moving
throughout Western Europe, to England, Scotland, the United States, and
elsewhere while living off of awards and small stipends. In 1968, he married Katarzyna
Dzieduszycka at the Polish consulate in France.
From 1971 to 1973, he returned to Poland,
living in Artur Międzyrecki’s flat in Warsaw, and joining the board of the
Polish Literary Association. That same year he also joined the Polish P.E.N. club.
But he 1975 through 1981, he was again traveling through Germany, Austria, and
Italy, returning to Poland in 1981, joining the editorial board of the
underground journal Zapis and writing
under his own name. In 1986, Herbert returned to Paris, where he joined the
Polish Writers’ Association and became a member of the American Academy and
Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1991 he received the Jerusalem Prize, giving
him an opportunity to travel to Israel, where he became a close friend of
Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai.
Seriously ill, Herbert returned to Warsaw
in 1992, and by 1994 was wheelchair bound, although he continued to write and
traveled even to Holland. On July 28, 1998, Herbert died, awarded, posthumously
the Order of the White Eagle, but his widow declined to accept. In 2007,
however, he was invested with the Order of the White Eagle, which his family
finally accepted.
Because his poetry was often rejected or
banned, Herbert’s book publications were relatively late in his life, most of
them published over a period from 1961 to 1999. But he also wrote essays,
fiction, and drama, and his work quickly found an international audience, most
of his work being translated close to its original Polish publication in
English. Among his many international awards was the Austrian State Prize for
European Literature (1965), the Herder Prize (1973), the German Petraca-Preis
(1979), the Struga Prize (1981), the International Literary Prize of the Arts
Council of Wales (1987), The Bruno Schulz Prize (given by the American
Foundation of Polish-Jewish Studies and American P.E.N) (1988), and the
previously mentioned Jerusalem Prize.
BOOKS
OF POETRY
Struna światł (Warsaw:
Czvtelnik, 1956); Hermes, pies I gwiazda (Warsaw:
Czvtelnik, 1957); Stadium przedmiotu (Warsaw:
Czvtelnik, 1961); Napis (Warsaw:
Czvtelnik, 1969); Pan Cogito (Warsaw:
Czvtelnik, 1974); Raport z oblężonego
Miasta I inne wiersze (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1983); Elegia na odejście (Paris: Instytut
Literacki, 1990); Rovigo (Wrocław:
Wydawnictwo Dolnośląskie, 1992); Epilog
burzy (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Dolnośląskie, 1998); 89 wierszy (Kraków, 1998); Podwójny
oddech. Prawdziwa historia nieskończonej miłośi. Wiersze dotąd niepublikowane (Gdynia:
Małgorzata Marchlewska Wydawnictwo, 1999)
ENGLISH
LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS
Selected Poems, Czesław Miłosz
and Peter Dale Scott, trans. (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Modern European
Poets, 1968; reprinted by New York: Ecco Press, 1986); Report from the Besieged City, trans. by John Carpenter and Bogdana
Carpenter (New York: Ecco Press, 1985); Mr.
Cogito, trans. by John Carpenter and Bogdana Carpenter (New York: Ecco
Press, 1993); Elegy for the Departure,
trans. by John Carpenter and Bogdana Carpenter (New York: Ecco Press, 1999); The Collected Poems: 1956-1998, trans.
by Czesław Miłosz, Peter Dale Scott, and Alissa Valles (New York: Ecco Press,
2007); Zbigniew Herbert, Selected Poems,
trans. by Czesław Miłosz, Peter Dale Scotjt, John and Bogdana Carpenter
(Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2007)
For
a selection of poets by Zbigniew Herbert, go here:
December 3, 2012
Ana Christina César (Brazil) 1952-1983
Ana
Cristina César (Brazil)
On October 29, 1983, César committed suicide, apparently as a result of her sexual involvements in Rio de Janeiro during the Military Dictatorship.
Several of her manuscripts were collected
after he death as Escritos da Inglaterra in
1985. Her posthumous work also includes the book of poetry Inêditos e Dispersos.
BOOKS
OF POETRY
Nada esta
espuma; Cenas de abril (Rio de Janeiro: Edição do autor, 1970); Correspondência Completea; Luva de Pelica: A
tues pés (São Paulo: Editora Brasilense, 1982); Inêditos e Dispersos (São Paulo: Editora Brasilense, 1985)
ENGLISH
LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS
selection
in The PIP Anthology of World Poetry ofthe 20th Century, Volume 3: Nothing the Sun Could Not Explain—20Contemporary Brazilian Poets (Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2003)
Summary
Polly
Kellogg and the chauffeur Osmar.
Rapid
but intense dramas.Photo romances of the conceptual heart.
Of the navy blue strapless dress.
I swallow insults but with sincerity.
Giddy with good sense.
Aerial of the square.
Artist of savings.
Absolutely blind.
Lust for the perhaps.
Mincing gait.
Water in my mouth.
An angel that registers.
—Translated from
the Portuguese by John Milton
Nothing,
This Foam
To confront desire
I insist on the evil of writing
but I don’t know if the goddess comes up to the surface
or if she just punishes me with her howls.
From the bulwarks of this boat
how I long for the mermaid’s breasts.
love is here
to stay
on this open veranda
night falls over the city
under construction
on the small constriction
on your breast
anguish of happiness
car headlights
slashing time
road works
at rest
a sudden recoil from the plot
—Translated from
the Portuguese by John Milton
Traveling
Late
at night I put the whole house back in its
place.I put all the leftover papers away.
I make sure of the soundness of the locks.
I never said another word to you.
From the top of the hills of Petrópolis,
With a pointed hat and a watering can,
Elizabeth confirmed, “The act of losing
isn’t hard to master.”
I rip up the leftover paper.
“Your eyes sin, but your body
doesn’t,” said the precise, simultaneous translator,
and it was his hands that trembled. “It’s dangerous,”
laughed the skilled Carolina on Kodak paper.
The lowdown camera panned.
The voiceover in the hills, indestructible
tamed fire of passion, the voice
of the mirror of my eyes
denying all the journeys,
and the shrill voice of speed,
I drank a little of all three
without noticing
like someone looking for a thread.
I never said another word to you,
I repeat, I state firmly,
late at night
while I lose direction
with no luxury
thirst
pricks
the seemings I heard in an endless day:
without seeming more like the dazzling light of this
same interminable day
—Translated from
the Portuguese by John Milton
________
Poems
reprinted from Régis Bonvicino, Michael Palmer, and Nelson Ascher, eds., The PIP Anthology of World Poetry of the 20th
Century, Volume 3: Nothing the Sun Could Not Explain—20 Contemporary Brazilian
Poets (Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2003). English language copyright ©by
John Milton. Reprinted by permission of Green Integer.
"Décio Pignatari (1927-2012)" | short obituary by Charles Bernstein [link]
For
a short obituary on the Brazilian poet and theorist, Décio Pignatari, go to
link below:
December 2, 2012
Eugenio Montale (Italy) 1896-1981
Eugenio
Montale (Italy)
1896-1981
In 1915 he worked as an accountant, but
was allowed a great deal of free time to frequent the public libraries and to
attend his sister Marianna’s private philosophy classes. He studied opera with
Ernest Sivori.
In the war of 1915-1918, Montale became an infantry officer, but with the death of Sivori, he turned to literature, devoting himself to poetry. In 1921 he contributed to Primo Temp, demonstrating what the Nobel committee has described as “a rare critical talent through his acuteness and independence of conventional patterns.” Montale also contributed to the newspaper, Corriere della Sera, and wrote a large number of essays on literature, music, and art, including a foreward for an edition of The Divine Comedy.
His first collection of poetry, Ossi di seppia (1925, Cuttlefish Bones)
quickly became one of the major works of contemporary Italian poetry. Critics
praised its interlinking poems, which created a sense of a continuous narrative
not unlike a novel.
In 1928 Montale moved to Florence,
becoming the director in the Gabinetto Vieusseux library. During this period,
her contributed to the magazine Solaria
and frequented the literary café Le Giubbe Rosse (Red Jackets). An
anti-fascist, he refused to join the party then in power, and was dismissed
from his job.
Now hindered with financial difficulties
and having to face the conservative demands of the authorities, Montale still
found a way to publish one of his most important collections, Le occasione (1939, The Occasions).
Having developed a close relationship with the Jewish-American Dante scholar,
Irma Brandeis, he represented her several times in that collection, as a
mediatrix figure not unlike Dante’s Beatrice.
Throughout World War II and immediately
after, Montale continued to publish new works, often however in small print
runs, including Finisterre (1943),
published in Lugano, translations, Quaderno
di traduczion (Milan, 1948), and a book of poetry criticism, La fiera letteraria (1948).
In 1956 the poet published another
collection poems, La bufera e altro (The
Storm and Other Things) in Venice. A collection of stories, Farfalla di Dinard was printed privately
that same year.
In 1961, Montale was awarded an honorary
degree at the University of Rome, and soon after, similar degrees from the
universities of Milan, Cambridge, and Basel. Appointed in 1967 as a senator for
life “in recognition of his distinguished achievements in the literary and
artistic fields,” Montale was freed from his daily writing chores as music
critic at the Corriere della Sera.
Throughout this period, he was able to publish a wide range of poetry (Satura, 1962; Xernia, 1966; and his collected poems in 1977), as well as travel
writing, cultural criticism, and other works.
In 1975, Montale received the Nobel Prize
for Literature.
He died in Milan in 1981.
Ossi de seppia (Lanciano:
Carabba, 1925); La casa dei doganieri e alter
poesie (Florence: Vallecchi, 1932); Le
occasioni (Turin: Einaudi, 1939); Finisterre
(Lugano, Collano di Lugano, 1943); La
bufera e altro (Venice: Neri Pozza, 1956; reprinted as a larger edition:
Milan: Arnaldo Mondadori, 1957); Satura (Verona:
Oficina Bodoni, 1962); Xenia (private
edition, 1966); Il colpevole (Milan:
V. Scheiwiller, 1966); Satura (1962-1970)
(1971); Diario del ’71 e del ’72 (Milan:
Mondadori, 1973); Tutte le poesie (Milan:
Mondadori, 1977); L’opera in versi
(1980; reprinted as Altri verse e poesie
disperse Milan: Mondadori, 1981); Tutte
le poesie, ed. by Giorgio Zampa (1991)
Poems,
trans. by Edwin Morgan (Reading, England: University of Reading, 1959); Poesie: Poems, trans. by George Kay
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1964); Selected Poems, trans. by Glauco Cambon (New York: New Directions,
1965); Provisional Conclusions: A
Selectionof the Poetry of Eugenio Montale, trans. by Edith Farnsworth
(Chicago: Regernery, 1970); Xenia,
trans. by Ghan Singh (Santa Barbara:
Black Sparrow Press, 1970); Motetti: The
Motets of Eugenio Montale, trans. by Lawrence Kart (Grabhom Hoyem press,
1973, reprinted Minneapolis: Gray Wolf Press, 1990); Selected Poems (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1975); New Poems, trans. by Ghan Singh (New
York: New Directions, 1976); Xenia and
Motets, trans. by Kate Hughes (Agenda Editions, 1977); It Depends: A Poet’s Notebook, trans. by Ghan Singh (New York: New
Directions, 1980); Otherwise: Last and
First Poems, trans. by Jonathan Galassi (New York: Random House, 1984); The Storm and Other Things, trans. by
William Arrowsmith (New York: W. W. Norton, 1986); The Occasions, trans. by William Arrowsmith (New York: W. W.
Norton, 1987); The Coastguard’s House:
Selected Poems, trans. by Jeremy Reed (Tarset, Northumberland, England:
Bloodaxe, 1990); Cuttlefish Bones:
1920-1927 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992); Collected Poems: 1920-1954, trans. by Jonathan Galassi (New York:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997); Collected
Poems, trans. by Jonathan Galassi (Manchester: Carcanet, 1999); Collected Poems: 1916-1956, trans. by
Jonathan Gallasi (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997); Collected Poems: 1920-1954, trans. by
Jonathan Galassi (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998); Selected Poems, trans. by Jonathan
Galassi, Charles Wright, and David Young (Oberlin, Ohio: Oberlin College Press,
2004)
For
a small selection of 7 poems by Montale, click below:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)