The Mind Body Problem by Katha Pollitt

Katha Pollitt is an acclaimed essayist. Her writing in the Nation defines for many women how we feel about ourselves in regards to abortion and other feminist issues. Her poetry is prized because it is rare. Publication of a new book, her first in 25 years, is cause for celebration. Here is the beginning of a poem:

Lives of the Nineteenth Century Poetesses

As girls they were awkward and peculiar,
wept in church or refused to go at all.
Their mothers saw right away that no man would marry them.
So they must live at the sufferance of others,
timid and queer as governesses out of Chekhov,
malnourished on theology, boiled eggs, and tea,
but given to outbursts of pride that embarrassed everyone.

Katha Pollitt speaks for me, and for so many other women who feel underrepresented, or unnoticed, not that she carries a political banner in her poetry. In fact, she is very careful about her politics, and almost apologizes about it in a touching poem for her daughter. But she cannot help but demonstrate her bracing intelligence, and her wit, which are most welcome.

Fresh Peas by Valerie Mendelson

The intercom buzzed

"Post Office with a package"

It's the painting of the peas

 Freshly picked, the peas lay on

linen, bunched up to make folds and bumps,

the lumps inside the pods

show where the peas lie

inside their rippled green skins.

It was June.  We had just come in

from the garden.  At five o’clock

the sun hit the peonies in

shocks of striped light. It was easy

to pick the peas from the vine

on the painted green fence.

Later there would be a painting.

Today a cocktail will do,

a cocktail and raw sugar snap

peas eaten fresh from the vine.

Greenberg

Ben Stiller's  pitch perfect line readings reveal the excellent writing of the script. His performance, as well as those of Rhys Ifans and Greta Gerwig, are consistently just right. There is also a remarkable acting job from a dog who it turns out is the most lovable character in the movie.

The movie dares us to warm up to the narcissistic title character.  He thinks he is having a party when he serves guac and chips and creamsicles as the refreshments (wait, I think this might catch on).  It is  hard to believe that the charming Florence played by Greta Gerwig would find anything worth pursuing in this Greenberg who acts weirdly wrong every time he sees her.  I wanted to protect her from the boorishness of a man who never grew up (he turns 41 in the movie).  Besides he is petulant and crabby.  Even, so his concerns are still oddly worth thinking about.  I agree with his assessment of Starbucks.  And I stuck around to see if the dog would be okay.

At the Frick

The fingers curl in delicate gesture, keeping a secret. A gold chain necklace hangs out of view.  A  sleeve has textured embroidery on the cuff. The girl gazes serenely.  How different these details are from  other portraits of Rembrandt.  








Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (1606–1669), Girl at a Window, 1645

 What are the glass objects just near the maid's hands?  The mistress seems dressed to go out, yet she is also engaged in some household business, something looking like the settling of the accounts.  The maid has just brought in a fresh receipt, or invoice.  A question remains unanswered.





 Johannes Vermeer
Mistress and Maid, 1666-1667

 The velvet's black shadowy plush invites you to touch it.  The green, black, brown, and red contrast, drawing attention to the saint's face with his pursuit of rigor and truth and justice. 








Sir Thomas More, 1527 
Hans Holbein the Younger 

 Again, such expert use of color contrasts.
And such piggy little eyes. How could anyone trust a man with a face like this? 









Thomas Cromwell, 1532
Hans Holbein the Younger

Paul Taylor, March 12, 2010

Dance has no words.  The dancers move to express themselves.
Here are some of the verbs that might describe Paul Taylor's choreography.

 Leap
 Explode
 Jump
 Crawl
 Fold
 Sigh
 Turn
 Revolve
 Sashay
 Puzzle
 Think
 Decide
 Seduce
 Repel
 Bomb
 Primp
 Slink
 Twist
 Reconnoiter
 Consider
 Cross
 Examine
 Point
 Hide
 Slither
 Somersault
 Backwards Somersault
 Rise
 Propel
 Wave Good-Bye

Since this is his 80th birthday year, there is a feeling of celebration and holding dear the great creative energy we have grown to count on year after year.  When he came out to take his customary bow, Paul Taylor looked a little bit shorter than last year.  Long may he live. 

Syzygy

 



Brief Encounters

 

Spindrift

Ghost Writer

Like another thriller, Rebecca, The Ghost Writer features a protagonist whose name the audience never learns.  Hired by a recently disgraced ex-prime minister modeled on Tony Blair, Ewan McGregor's character is referred to simply as the ghost.  He   walks into a position vacated by a man who died by his own hand or was it something more sinister? Things are not what they seem in this movie.

First, there is the prime minister's wife who seems to hold quite a bit of decision making power.  She sulks about the personal assistant's relationship with Blair, I mean Lang, which seems to be very personal indeed.

There are clever cuts that lead the viewer to think just a bit ahead of the Ghost, who becomes more and more sympathetic as he seems to be the only honest person in the movie, honest to the point of carelessness.  This puts him in danger and lets Polanski demonstrate his finesse for filming paranoia, and McGregor's ability with a clean line like "I'm in trouble."  

What a relief to be in the hands of an expert filmmaker like Polanski who is adept at telling a tricky story without an excess of explosions or noise. 

Marie Ponsot workshop at Poets House, February 27 and 28

Marie Ponsot

Day one.  

We write "running dragons" with each other.  This is a form Ponsot learned in Beijing.

Alternating stanzas of three lines, then two lines.

Choose one word in the last line of the previous stanza to repeat in the first line of the following stanza.  Begin poem with a location, or non-human subject.  Continue to write stanzas without a person in mind or implied, until after at least three stanzas.  Once you do introduce a person, you finish poem with the same number of stanzas you wrote before the person appears.  The last stanza introduces the idea of spring, either explicitly or implied.

Here is mine.

Day after day of rain. The mushrooms bloomed.

Nearby, the Indian pipes had penetrated

the leafy carpet from last year's autumn.

Their vertical stems formed a carpet

over the moss.  Is this what they mean

by a fairy ring?  Is this what they mean

by enchantment, the nodding white heads

attached to vertical white stems.

Impossible to think they're attached

to the seeds buried since spring.

Some things Ponsot said that resonated:

It is essential to be able to write about the non-human. 

Competition and testing are not intellectually respectable.

Learn something by heart every day.

People like to create.

In a crowded life, try Running Dragons (or Dragons Running, the phrase works either way.)

Your world of language is inside somewhere -- you need to get access to it.  Write ten minutes every day.

William Blake said "Without contraries there can be no progression."

"The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction."  (from Proverbs from Hell)

(We wrote revisions and takeoffs of these proverbs as an exercise)

Ponsot's mother was a teacher.  Good teachers assign work they cannot fail at.  

The challenge of writing is working from the inner life to the spoken life to the written life.

Question:  What do you think of self publishing?

Answer: It is important to show your work and have someone show you theirs.  

Practice re-writing which is elemental not remedial.  Once in a while you get it first crack.  Mostly it takes handling, like a potter with clay.  Take it into yourself and see if you can say it differently.  Rewriting can be productive.  Go to the strength, or to the bad knot, and unfurl it.  Say it in other words.

Day Two

What is the mystery that makes a poem hit you forcibly in the diaphragm?  Here is a poem that does that.

From Shakespeare's Cymbeline:

Fear no more the heat o' th' sun,

Nor the furious winter's rages;

Thou thy worldly task hast done,

Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages.

Golden lads and girls all must

As chimney sweepers come to dust.

Everyone wrote what they thought was meant by truth for the poet.

Another useful technique for poets is to widen the range from the constant I voice to include another person's point of view, either in a dramatic monologue, or as a dialogue, like Stevie Smith's.

Stevie Smith's "The Sea widow"

How fares it with you, Mrs. Cooper, My bride?

Long are the years since you lay by my side.

Do you wish I was back? Do you speak of me, dearest?

I wish you were back for me to hold nearest.

Who then lies nearer, Mrs. Cooper my bride?

A black man comes in with the evening tide.

What is his name? Tell me! How does he dare?

He comes uninvited.  His name is Despair.

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Marie Ponsot is a wise woman, a great teacher, and an inspiring poet.  I felt that I was learning even when she wasn't saying anything.