War and Peace

Since we are living in a time of many wars, with polarized feelings right here within the United States, it seems like a good time to reread War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.  What strikes me at the beginning is how much wheeling and dealing goes on at the soirees.  A benevolent uncle jockeys for position by granting a favor to an old luckless impoverished woman who is quite the wheeler dealer herself.

I am also struck at the words "joy" and "merry" in relation to the men's view of battle.  They so look forward to the adventure of war that they approach it like children playing  game. 

Women Lawyers

I have been thinking of women lawyers, and the image of women lawyers portrayed by the media and  movies.

Sunday the New York Times featured a story about Gloria Allred, a lawyer who advocates for women  victimized by criminals, discrimination, and less, including Tiger Woods' publicity team after it became known that she was one of the women he had had sex with.  Throughout the article, mention is made of what Allred is wearing, how well put together she is, how tall she is, how old she is,  elements of a professional's life that probably would not be mentioned if the subject were a man. 

On television that day was Legally Blonde, a movie that made it safe for smart girls to be froufrou in movies (let's face it, Hepburn dressed for success, not to charm in her smart girl roles, ditto Rosalind Russell et al-- can you imagine any of those black and white film strong women heroines from the 40s in pink?) or was it the movie that made it safe for froufrou women to be smart. I always watch the movie when it is on tv just to see the face off of Elle in her curvy dress with the white frill and high heels and perfect accessories, waiting for the elevator with her counterpart played by Selma Blair in a turtleneck sweater, conservative suit, pearls, and black pumps.  It is easy to see who will win the man, the case, and the career in this bit of costuming.

In 1992, Marisa Tomei wore skintight, outrageously flamboyant dresses in My Cousin Vinny when she demonstrated, in a courtroom, in front of her doofus lawyer boyfriend, her superior knowledge of cars and the skid marks they make, which helped to  save two young men unjustly accused of murder.

The Times article condescended toward Allred, a highly successful lawyer,  because she excelled at publicity, and tended not to turn down any highly celebrated client.  But  how clearly she states her case:

“The concept of fairness is always culturally defined,” she said. “Even here, where we think we are such an advanced nation, people advise women to grin and bear harassment in the workplace. I say, ‘Do complain.’ It’s only going to get worse. We have rights so that we don’t have to go like beggars with cups in our hands asking for mercy. We have to be heard in the court of public opinion as well as in the actual courts. Silence is the enemy.”

                            Gloria Allred in her office




Reese Witherspoon as Elle Woods

Marisa Tomei as Mona Lisa Vito in
My Cousin Vinny

The house sparrows have no houses.

They settle in the cross beams of steel

posts suspended from street lamps.

You might hear a cheep and looking up

see feathers sprouting

from the cold metal hollows.  The proud

mothers sing their hearts out. 

Success!  Success!  Success!

Dean Street at Carlton Avenue
Prospect Heights
Brooklyn, New York

Photo by Tracy Collins 

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work

 
photo by Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times
 In the documentary of her last year leading up to her victory on Celebrity Apprentice, which signalled a bit of a resurgence in her career as a comedian, Joan Rivers shows her floor to ceiling card catalog of jokes.  As a librarian, I loved the fact that the jokes were in alphabetical order.  Cooking jokes were just before Tony Danza jokes.  Does she write all her own material?  She seems to in this film.  Some of the jokes are very very funny.  The movie does not lionize her in all her difficulties, but it does document how terribly hard she works.  And how personally she takes slights.  And how sad she is  when her long time manager and she break off their business relationship.

Happy Birthday, Ruth Stone

Ruth Stone

At Poets House on Tuesday night family and friends of Ruth Stone gathered to celebrate her 95th birthday.  It was a beautiful day for any kind of celebration,  full of fresh air, sun, and skidding clouds over the Hudson.  Inside, it was standing room only for visitors who crammed into the small auditorium.  We were greeted by the expert program coordinator Stephen Motika.   Twelve people saluted the poet described by Sharon Olds as the "mother of humor and mourning."  

Chard de Niord began the evening with a telephone call to Stone in Vermont the way David Letterman on live TV used to phone his mom  for the whole studio and TV audience, with enhanced sound so that we could hear each other across the miles.    Stone's voice rang out loud and clear how "she loved us all very much!" and then she read her poem, "The Orchard."

Sidney Wolinsky, a filmmaker who made Stone's acquaintance in the 1970s, showed a few minutes of his documentary "Excuses."  Even though Stone was not present at Poets House, we all did get to see her at home slicing up carrots and mushrooms for a casserole while she talked about her work and her life.

Her oldest daughter, Marcia Croll,  read love letters between Ruth Stone and her husband Walter. The letters were erotic, charged with love and longing.  Walter's suicide in 1959 made Stone an expert in grieving, loss, and the surreal turns that life takes.  Now, more than fifty years later, she survives, continuing to write and read aloud with her clear firm voice.

Dorianne Laux delivered by heart  brilliantly the poem, "Curtains."

CURTAINS
Putting up new curtains,
other windows intrude.
As though it is that first winter in Cambridge
when you and I had just moved in.
Now cold borscht alone in a bare kitchen.
What does it mean if I say this years later?
Listen, last night
I am on a crying jag
with my landlord, Mr. Tempesta.
I sneaked in two cats.
He screams NO PETS! NO PETS!
I become my Aunt Virginia,
proud but weak in the head.
I remember Anna Magnani.
I throw a few books. I shout.
He wipes his eyes and opens his hands.
OK OK keep the dirty animals
but no nails in the walls.
We cry together.
I am so nervous, he says.
I want to dig you up and say, look,
it's like the time, remember,
when I ran into our living room naked
to get rid of that fire inspector.
See what you miss by being dead?

 Dorianne Laux




Sandra Gilbert read the poem, "The Song of the Absinthe Granny."

The Song of Absinthe Granny 

Among some hills there dwelt in parody
A young woman; me.
I was that gone with child
That before I knew it I had three
And they hung whining and twisting.
Why I wasn’t more than thirty-nine
And sparse as a runt fruit tree.
Three pips that plagued the life out of me.
Ah me. It wore me down,
The grubs, the grubbing.
We were two inches thick in dust
For lack of scrubbing.
Diapers and panty-shirts and yolk of eggs.
One day in the mirror I saw my stringy legs
And I looked around
And saw string on the floor,
And string on the chair
And heads like wasps’ nests
Full of stringy hair.
“Well,” I said, “if you have string, knit.
Knit something, don’t just sit.”
We had the orchard drops,
But they didn’t keep.
The milk came in bottles.
It came until the bottles were that deep
We fell over the bottles.
The milk dried on the floor.
“Drink it all up,” cried their papa,
And they all began to roar, “More!”
Well, time went on,
Not a bone that wasn’t frayed.
Every chit was knicked and bit,
And nothing was paid.
We had the dog spayed.
“It looks like a lifetime,”
Their papa said.
“It’s a good life, it’s a good wife,
It’s a good bed.”
So I got the rifle out
To shoot him through the head.
But he went on smiling and sitting
And I looked around for a piece of string
To do some knitting.
Then I picked at the tiling
And the house fell down.
“Now you’ve done it,” he said.
“I’m going to town.
Get them up out of there,
Put them to bed.”
“I’m afraid to look,” I whimpered,
“They might be dead.”
“We’re under here, mama, under the shed.”
Well, the winters wore on.
We had cats that hung around.
When I fed them they scratched.
How the little nippers loved them.
Cats and brats.
I couldn’t see for my head was thatched
But they kept coming in when the door unlatched.
“I’ll shave my head,” I promised,
“I’ll clip my mop.
This caterwauling has got to stop.”
Well, all that’s finished,
It’s all been done.
Those were high kick summers,
It was bald galled fun.
Now the daft time’s over
And the string is spun.
I’m all alone
To cull and be furry.
Not an extra page in the spanking story.
The wet britches dried
And the teeth came in.
The last one cried
And no new began.
Those were long hot summers,
Now the sun won’t tarry.
My birds have flocked,
And I’m old and wary.
I’m old and worn and a cunning sipper,
And I’ll outlive every little nipper.
And with what’s left I’m chary,
And with what’s left I’m chary.

Sandra Gilbert


To get more of a sense of how her mind works, read this  interview with Ruth Stone.  In reading several interviews over the past few days,  I find it amusing to see how  she learns about the interviewers, how she disarms them with her curiosity about everyone she speaks to.

Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo

Beauty and transience are linked in Japan. Think of cherry blossoms, and how they are celebrated in ritual gatherings, adored for their short lives as much as for their visual splendor. In Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo, a first film by Jessica Orent, the Japanese people show their love of insects through collecting. In the US if you go into a pet store, you see the cuddly puppies and cute kittens. In Japan, children yearn for the stag horn beetle in the square plastic box. Women go to pet supply stores in search of the best bedding for their insects, and the best insect snacks. At night, the hunters of the beetles are out with flashlights and special nets to capture the beetles who climb trees. Anyone in the beetle business seems to know just how to kick the base of the tree to dislodge the unsuspecting bugs. Overhead images of people swarming at intersection in the rain, their heads under colorful umbrellas, link our species to the insects. Constant voiceover relates how poetry, art, nature, and philosophy relate to the Japanese love of insects. Most of it is in Japanese, requiring the viewer to read the subtitles which takes our eyes off the images. This is a minor flaw, but it leaves the audience somewhat exhausted after watching.

Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo Trailer from Myriapod Productions on Vimeo.

Please Give

Nicole Holofcener makes movies about people I recognize.   It is a relief to sit in the theater and not have to watch young men shooting each other, or middle aged men pairing off with very young women, or young men in buddy movies where the arc of the story begins with pure foolishness and ends with a little less foolishness. I know that I will see the Iron Man movie (I love Robert Downey Jr) and will be tempted by Robin Hood (Russell Crowe is no slouch) but still, superheroes and medieval legends are not the concern of my everyday life.

So when middle aged women with inner lives are portrayed on the screen I snap it up.  Why should  Meryl Streep have a lock on this?

This is Holofcener's specialty, and Please Give is her latest and most wonderful. I read  that Catherine Keener is her muse.

Long live Catherine Keener.

The movie begins with a series of mammograms shown while the Roches sing "No Shoes" in the background.  It was inevitable that mammograms would feature in a film at some point.    Accompanying the images with such a finger snapping tune leavens the tone and introduces a breast technician as a leading character. The movie shows how we feel about cast off furniture and clothes of the dead, and our ambivalence at living in the richest city in the world while surrounded by the homeless.

Any mother who has ever lived with a daughter whose whole feeling of self worth centers on having the right pair of jeans will also recognize herself in this movie. 

Good Morning

Good Morning

In the sink the cat’s dish gets a swish.

The dregs need rinsing

from yesterday’s coffee.

The kettle needs filling.

The pilot light clicks then whooshes

 into flame, and turns the copper bottom red.

In the tub, three minutes for the sponge bath end

just in time for the kettle’s whistle.

Damp feet step gingerly beneath a bath towel.

The filter sits in the cone,

the cone on top of the carafe,

 the coffee, one half cup, in the cone.

Steamy the water that falls on the coffee,

then the scent of beans

The cat begins to eat

 The day can now begin

Marina Abramovic at MOMA

Marina Abramovic has a great head.  Her  eyes stare intently under strong brows, her mouth shows no emotion yet her lips are expressive with curves, and her hair and her body and her whole presence are at peace with themselves and the world.  Her face and demeanor remind me of Georgia O'Keeffe.  She is a very serious performance artist. 

She creates works designed to make you uncomfortable.  It is legitimate art, but when she throws her naked self at a pillar over and over again, and then walks back to repeat this gesture of futility, all I can think of is the physical damage she is doing to her body, which is her medium.  I know it is her right to do that to herself, but I can't help but feel sorry for the chronic masochism involved.

I liked best the work on video and in photographs that showed her performances with her partner, Ulla.  Below is their piece, "Rest Energy."
There was tension between the two of them that took a little bit of the heat off the audience.

As it is, many people are participating in "The Artist is Present" by sitting across from her in a chair, and being photographed under magnificent lighting.



Artsy's page on Marina Abramovic

No Sherman Alexie, alas

 PEN International Voices Festival  for some reason replaced Sherman Alexie with Christopher Hitchens, an intellectual and excellent polemicist who thought that Henry Kissinger should have been tried for war crimes, and made an excellent case for it in his book.   But Christopher Hitchens is no Sherman Alexie.

Here is a clip of Alexie on the Colbert Report explaining why he won't put his books on the Kindle.

Times Square May 1, 2010

On the way to the theatre last night, I ran into a police barricade.  No matter what block we turned to, from Seventh Avenue to Eighth Ave, from 45th St to 46 St., police insisted that we stand back,  get out of the way.  I had a flashback to the Republican National Convention when we tried to march peacably along a preordained route and police kept yelling at us to go a different way as if we were the source of the trouble and not the war in Iraq and other misconceived political decisions that brought us out to have our say.

Last night was a simple matter of walking to the theater and being redirected to the curb. When I asked a police officer what was the matter, she only said, "A smoking car."  Then she said very indignantly, "get out of the way. You aren't doing any good standing there."

Another person said, "Its the Islamists."

Times Square requires advanced pedestrianship in the best of circumstances, that is when thousands of tourists, vendors, residents, crooks, and others are walking in a zigzag pattern.  You have to bob and weave just to get through the street.  But when people are in the way because of a police barricade, and then you try to get to the front of the line and ask a police officer what is going on, you have to be pretty aggressive with your zigging and zagging.

 I had bought tickets to see a play.  The play was going to start momentarily.  The police prevented us from attending. After a while the police said that all performances were canceled.  This was after they said to call the theaters.  There was no way to get through to the theaters by phone or foot or email or anything.  Now I have two tickets for last night's performance. When I wrote to NY1, they forwarded this announcement from the Broadway League:

"There were no evacuations from Broadway theaters last night. Due to police activity that closed a few streets in Times Square, there were some late curtains but all shows did go on. For exchanges or refunds, theatregoers should contact their point of purchase. All Broadway matinee and evening shows will go on as scheduled today. 

The proper authorities are doing their jobs to keep Times Square safe for everyone, and Broadway shows are setting their stages to delight audiences."

- Charlotte St. Martin, Executive Director, The Broadway League

The smoking car was treated as a serious terrorist threat.   It contained two containers of gasoline, some propane, a couple of alarm clocks, and some fireworks.

I know that there are people trying to do us harm, and that it is the job of the police to keep us safe, but I hate it when the police lie to me. 

Bomb Scare Times Square May 1

Heather McHugh

Wednesday night, the Poetry Society hosted a conversation with the brainy poet, Heather McHugh.  The evening was billed as a

NEW SALON: READINGS AND CONVERSATIONS
Heather McHugh, with Robert N. Casper

A reading and conversation in an intimate format.

Robert Casper introduced the poet as a former teacher of his, and it was clear how much respect and awe and admiration he had for her.  However, when he asked her to start the evening with a reading, she was expecting conversation, and her post-it note laden notes on topics showed that she was prepared for an interview more than for a poetry reading.

McHugh was good-natured and even joyous throughout her remarks, which were many and beautifully spoken in perfect English about what has meaning to her in her writing.  " I write in order to find what I mean," she said at one point.  She read the poem that was provided for those of us who did not come with books in hand, "Fastener,"

Fastener

One as is as another as.
One with is with another with;

one against's against all others and one of
of all the ofs on earth feels chosen.  So the man

can't help his fastening on many
(since the likes of him like

look-alikes)...When the star-shower crosses
the carnival sky, then the blues of the crowd

try to glisten, to match it; and the two
who work late in the butcher-house touch,

reaching just the same moment
for glue and for hatchet.

When I heard her read it it made sense.   Reading it on the page I struggle with the meaning and the sounds crashing into each other.    Those first four lines trip me up with their use of conjunctions and prepositions as nouns.  But McHugh's playfulness and lightness of touch made it all clear.  She was almost apologetic about how she got expressive after the first four lines, as if it were the weakness in her writing, when in fact it is the part that I like best.

She was very at ease riffing on ideas, pulling snatches of poems by Emily Dickinson out of her fecund brain by heart, and she quoted Borges, and Wittgenstein ("Our lives are endless precisely in the ways our visual lives are endless.")

Here is what I remember:

--We live in our senses.  All five senses have verbs that can be used either in the transitive or intransitive case.

--It is important to entertain both sides of every question, consider opposites, to not just go for the knee jerk response or emotional simplicity of things.  Dare to be complex.

--The root of skepticism is in looking. 

There is a beautiful more accessible poem on the poets.org website,

What He Thought. 

For Fabbio Doplicher

We were supposed to do a job in Italy
and, full of our feeling for
ourselves (our sense of being
Poets from America) we went
from Rome to Fano, met
the Mayor, mulled a couple
matters over. The Italian literati seemed
bewildered by the language of America: they asked us
what does "flat drink" mean? and the mysterious
"cheap date" (no explanation lessened
this one's mystery). Among Italian writers we

could recognize our counterparts: the academic,
the apologist, the arrogant, the amorous,
the brazen and the glib. And there was one
administrator (The Conservative), in suit
of regulation gray, who like a good tour guide
with measured pace and uninflected tone
narrated sights and histories
the hired van hauled us past.
Of all he was most politic--
and least poetic-- so
it seemed. Our last
few days in Rome 
I found a book of poems this
unprepossessing one had written: it was there
in the pensione room (a room he'd recommended)
where it must have been abandoned by
the German visitor (was there a bus of them?) to whom
he had inscribed and dated it a month before. I couldn't
read Italian either, so I put the book
back in the wardrobe's dark. We last Americans

were due to leave
tomorrow. For our parting evening then
our host chose something in a family restaurant,
and there we sat and chatted, sat and chewed, till,
sensible it was our last big chance to be Poetic, make
our mark, one of us asked

"What's poetry?
Is it the fruits and vegetables
and marketplace at Campo dei Fiori

or the statue there?" Because I was
the glib one, I identified the answer
instantly, I didn't have to think-- "The truth
is both, it's both!" I blurted out. But that
was easy. That was easiest
to say. What followed taught me something
about difficulty, 

for our underestimated host spoke out
all of a sudden, with a rising passion, and he said:

The statue represents
Giordano Bruno, brought
to be burned in the public square
because of his offence against authority, which was to say
the Church. His crime was his belief
the universe does not revolve around
the human being: God is no
fixed point or central government
but rather is poured in waves, through
all things: all things
move. "If God is not the soul itself,
he is the soul OF THE SOUL of the world." Such was
his heresy. The day they brought him forth to die

they feared he might incite the crowd (the man
was famous for his eloquence). And so his captors
placed upon his face
an iron mask
in which he could not speak.

That is how they burned him.
That is how he died, 
without a word,
in front of everyone. And poetry--

(we'd all put down our forks by now, to listen to
the man in gray; he went on softly)-- poetry

is what he thought, but did not say.

The Good, The Bad, The Weird

The Good, The Bad, The Weird takes a spaghetti western, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly and sets it in Manchuria during World War II when the Japanese have occupied Korea, and perhaps bandits would want to get an ancient Chinese dynasty's treasure to fuel a nationalist movement.   Or is the movie just an excuse to use horses again in a way that is bound to be thrilling as they are seen galloping across a huge expanse of horizon in the desert?

There are three main characters, a man who seems to be a doofus (be careful about your preconceived stereotypes), a psychopath, and a handsome cowboy who can shoot with a rifle while riding a horse at top speed.

The most interesting thing to me about this movie is the strain of nationalism running through it, though the stunts are amazing and the action is good when it doesn't go on too long.  The three main actors are captivating.  I know it isn't a great movie, but I have been hearing about Korean movies and this is my first brush with one.  I find its joy in the cinematography.

Connie Wanek, Duluth poet

 Connie Wanek's book, On Speaking Terms, is reviewed in the NYT Book Review this week, and the short excerpts appealed to me, so I found more about her, and these two poems posted on the Minnesota Arts website.


Checkers

Red was passion, black was strength.
Yet one checker always had gone missing.
a deserter discovered eventually
cowering under a chair cushion.
What was there to fear?
Only time itself would be killed.

I was one who never planned ahead,
who sent my infantry into any open field.
Under my command they aspired
merely to be captured,
jumped and hauled off, bearing the smiles
of the successfully defeated.

Who really wanted to be kinged?
To stagger under a crown
heavy as a headstone,
to wander the board without a court
or even the escort of a fool?
What was glory? I never understood the word.

Often some idle soul of a certain age
taught checkers to the young,
offering stratagems
continually overruled by blind luck.
Then came snacks and naps
and afterwards, the balance of the day.


Hartley Field

The wind cooled as it crossed the open pond
and drove little waves towards us,
brisk, purposeful waves
that vanished at our feet—such energy
thwarted by so little elevation.
The wind was endless, seamless,
old as the earth.
Insects came
to regard us with favor. I felt them alight,
felt their minute footfalls.
I was a challenge, an Everest …

And you, whom I have heard breathe all night,
sigh through the water of sleep
with vestigal gills …

A pair of dragonflies drifted past us, silent,
while higher up two bullet-shaped jets
dragged their roars behind them
on unbreakable chains. It seemed a pity
we’d given up the sky to them, but I understand so little.
Perhaps it was necessary.

All our years together—
and not just together. Surely by now
we have the same blood type, the same myopia.
Sometimes I think we’re the same sex,
the one in the middle of man and woman,
born of both as every child is.
The waves came to us, one each heartbeat,
and lay themselves at our feet.
The swelling goes down.
The fever cools.
There, where the Hartleys grew lettuce eighty years ago
bear and beaver, fox and partridge
den and nest and hunt
and are hunted. I wish I had the means
to give all the north back to itself, to let the pines
rise in the hayfield and the lilacs go wild.
But then where would we live?

I wanted that hour with you all winter—
I thought of it while I worked,
before I slept and when I woke,
a time when the tangled would straighten,
when contrition would become benediction:
the positive hour, shining like mica.
At last the wind brought it to us across the pond,
then took it up again, every last minute.

Obituaries

I read the obituaries every day.  I think many people my age do.  What I notice is that the New York Times publishes obituaries of men mostly.  When a woman is featured, in the exalted company of the men selected to have a free obit (not the paid death notices that loved ones buy at a very high price), I pay special attention. 

Recently, there was an obituary of an actress I never really followed but I liked her name: Dixie Carter.  What I look for in an obituary is the whole narrative thread, the beginning, middle and end of the story.   Somehow seeing it all laid out in chronological order makes sense of the life.   Aren't we trying to make sense of the stories of our lives?  Obituaries lay it all out  and you can follow along with the subject's passions, their successes, their final illnesses, what their next of kin said.  To me, obituaries are short short stories based in real life.

The obituary of  Dixie Carter (who was married to Hal Holbrook, the esteemed American actor) included a quote that explained a phrase I was unsure about, "bless her heart." Here are the last several paragraphs of her obituary:

Although Ms. Carter long ago moved to California for her television career, she and Mr. Holbrook also kept a home in McLemoresville. In 1999, she told The Palm Beach Post that she treasured the courtesy and kindness she found in Tennessee, a welcome contrast to the backstabbing and sniping of Hollywood. 

“Of course in the South we talk about people too,” she said. “But if you end your comments with ‘Bless her heart,’ you’re off the hook.”

Today, two more women got obits in the Times, two women whose careers are important to me, film and poetry.

Dede Allen, an important film editor died.  She edited Bonnie and Clyde, and Reds, and sort of changed the rhythm of how we want to watch movies.  She punched things up quite a bit.

And Carolyn Rodgers, a black poet, died. 

She wrote these lines:


I’ve had tangled feelings lately
About ev’rything
Bout writing poetry, and otha forms
Bout talkin and dreamin with a
Special man (who says he needs me)
Uh huh And my mouth has been open
Most of the time but
I ain’t been saying nothin but
Thinking about ev’rything
And the partial pain has been
How do I put my self on paper
The way I want to be or am and be
Not like any one else in this
Black world but me

The Secrets in their Eyes (movie from Argentina)

A retired lawman (lawyer? policeman? -- I never figured out how the Argentinian justice system worked  -- people kept calling each other counselor and dottore, and other forms of address that I couldn't translate into American equivalents) decides to write a novel based on a most haunting murder/rape case that ended without resolution.  In the process of raking through his past, and his role in the case, he comes upon all of his relationships in the office where he worked, especially a certain  supervisor named Irene.  Irene is beautiful, intelligent, and accomplished.  She is obviously the object of his affections.

She helps to crack the case, while subtly breaking the heart of would be writer.  The stories of the love between the two court employees and the chase to bring to justice the vicious killer are intertwined in a most intriguing way. 
I enjoyed the seventies decor and styling.  The whole subject of memory is profound, and treated in a sophisticated way.

Bronzino

 

Standing Nude Seen from the Rear, ca. 1541–42

 

Study for a Portrait of a Seated Man, ca. 1535

Comparing the original drawing of a nude man crawling on his belly with the copy side by side took a lot of time.  The placard tells you to notice that the line of the thigh in the true Bronzino shows many false starts where the fake only has one confident line throughout.  But there are other differences.  The muscle of the thigh is bigger in the Bronzino, and there is  more tension in the way the man is crawling, all coiled ready to spring.  The composition of the leg cut off before his ankle adds to the tension.  These differences are slight.  I admire  Bronzino's  subtle shading, the tiny cross hatches in the contours.   All around me, museum goers were murmuring, "technique, technique." One detail of a leg with its velvety shadows in the curves near the shin is breathtaking.  

I loved best of all the emotional content in the hands and feet.  The biblical figures of Jacob's feet next to Joseph's  clearly express the aged next to youth.  Hands wringing each other in jealousy are all snarled up in agony.

 

Head of a Smiling Young Woman in Three-Quarter View, ca. 1542–43

Haiku

The legs of bees slice
through the pollen posited
inside the tulip

Photo by Jesse Hickman

Car Trip

I was  driving on the Palisades, trying not to go too fast or too slow, keeping with the traffic, veering to the right and left at every curve, when all of a sudden from the east came a long gangly skinny necked bird, bigger than a hubcab, smaller than a house, aiming right at my car, perpendicular to the windshield.  I didn't even have time to panic,  just prayed the glass would not smash.  Then came the heart sickening thud  as the creature made impact and disappeared.     I barely slowed down, I was so afraid to stop suddenly and cause a pile up.

It was a wild turkey.   It was not the first time I had hit a wild turkey on the highway.  Last time my friend said, why didn't you bring it home for dinner. 

National Poetry Month

Here is a poem I know by heart, by Emily Dickinson.

We grow accustomed to the Dark –

When light is put away –

As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp

To witness her Goodbye -- 

A Moment -- We uncertain step

For newness of the night –

Then -- fit our Vision to the Dark –

And meet the Road -- erect -- 

And so of larger -- Darkness –

Those Evenings of the Brain –

When not a Moon disclose a sign –

Or Star -- come out -- within -- 

The Bravest -- grope a little –

And sometimes hit a Tree

Directly in the Forehead –

But as they learn to see -- 

Either the Darkness alters –

Or something in the sight

Adjusts itself to Midnight –

And Life steps almost straight.

The Scar Project

 Nadia Myre's work is on display at the National Museum of the American Indian.  Her Scar Project is nestled within the Hide exhibit.  For the past five years,  Myre has been teaching workshops about healing your scars.  She gives participants a ten inch square of linen framed like a small canvas, and then asks you to describe a painful event or wound that left a scar.  It can take the shape of a tear in the fabric which then might need to be sewn up or something to add to the surface of the linen.  I am thinking of a woven dress on top of the frame.

Some people write on the linen.  One piece of writing that spoke to me was "You should be here with me."

As Richard and I were exploring the different frames and there were many of them, some people with children came in and triggered  the alarm.  There was carpeting leading up to the wall where the work hung, and if you stepped off the carpet and got too near the wall the alarm would go off.

After I was gesticulating to Richard to read the what was written that spoke to me so directly "You should be here with me," the guard came up to me and said "careful."

What interested me about this show was the idea of healing behind it, that everyone has scars, and by creating something out of them you might be healed.

I had heard the story on the radio today about the Seattle area artist Michael Reagan: Fallen Heroes Project drawing portraits of dead soldiers based on their photographs.  These  portraits helped ease the pain of families who've lost loved ones in Iraq and Afghanistan.   It was a form of healing to get the pictures, and reconnected them in a way nothing else had. 

 Amanda Pinson, drawn by Michael Reagan




The guard said, " If you would like to know more about the exhibit I can tell you some things that I know since I am familiar with the work and what it means."  She explained how the artist conducted workshops, and how each work has an accompanying written piece that explains the back story behind the sewn or written word on the canvas.  Each of the mounted works has a number that corresponds to the entry in the book that lay on the table near the exhibited frames.  The one that the guard thought might interest us was 246, it was sad she explained.  The canvas had been sewn in three places, a star in the lower right corner, a diagonal line of stitches dividing the two halves of the frame, and a small dot in the upper left corner.

These three objects were explained in the writing.  "My sister had been addicted to drugs since she was 13.  When she killed herself she was 44.  She ran up the railing really fast, and the star is to show how she became part of the night sky.  The little dot is me."

 I could be misremembering this, but it was very sad, as the guard had warned.  A story.  The power of art to heal.

The High Line

High Line

Friday morning, I went walking on the High Line with my friend Janet.  On our way to the elevated park, we passed many blossoming fruit trees.

Janet said it was like fireworks going off, all of the sudden flowers.  The magnolia blossoms in particular are spectacular, like someone who has opened her hand as far as possible, her fingers splayed wide.

At the highline itself, the young people sketching, the sound of foreign languages being spoken, the views out to the harbor, the fresh air and sun were all uplifting on my last day off.

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.