“People are going to feed you all kinds of oyster crackers about iambic pentameter. They’re going to say, Oh ho ho, iambic pentameter! The centrality of the five-stress line! Because “pent” is five in Babylonian, and five is the number of fingers on your hand, and five is the number, and five is the number of slices of American cheese you can eat in one sitting.”
–Paul Chowder
“I’m not from here.” That’s the first thing he said to me. It wasn’t out of fear or panic, and he wasn’t asking for help, at least not in a direct way. He was just stating a fact. Still, it made me uncomfortable. Then he said, “I’ll assume you are, though.” And he smiled, which made me feel better.
He was carrying a vague-beige knapsack, which he set down, as if to say to me, this is going to happen. You and I are going to have a conversation, right here, right now. And he said some interesting things, or at least I found them interesting.
First he told me about having to go through customs at the airport, then he talked about customs and rituals from home, the differences between ours and theirs. He seemed a bit flustered, like he was trying acclimate to his environment. I didn’t tell him that I wasn’t from around here either, at least not natively. I’ve been here for awhile, but is this my home? It made me think about all the people I’d met who were born and raised here, my reaction. There’d be a subtle defensiveness, like I was judging them, but I was just curious.
He talked about habitat, loves, death, mothers, fathers, tubas, trivia, good people, language, here and there, being home and being lost. He was amicable, and even though I didn’t really talk, he was often waiting to listen. And he asked me questions that I rarely answered except maybe in shrugs and non-committed mumbles. And if all of this sounds like it could’ve gotten heavy or intense (and it sometimes did), the man had plenty of charm and good jokes, too.
For instance, he says to me, “I’ve had occassion – this is embarrassing – to question my existence, just the plainest fact of it. Not in big ways, just little constant daily ones. This might be something the folks instilled in me. Bless their hearts, they loved me like only they could: out of the corners of their eyes, kind of, and with pentrating questions like, ‘Who exactly do you think you are?” and “And now where do you think you’re going?”” Then he said, “They brought me into this world, of course, and taught me the difference between right and left.”
I liked him very much.
He was often apologetic and slightly ashamed of certain things. For instance, he said to me, “I sound so dour, and I’m not,” as if trying to convince me of something. I wanted to tell him that he didn’t have to feel sorry all the time. He apologized with his shoulders. I eventually got around to asking him if he was homeless. He said that he was “unhomed.” Then he said, “Made-up word. What word isn’t?” Peculiar thing to say. What word isn’t, indeed. Pretty smart if you ask me. He might’ve been “unhomed,” but he was clean and well-spoken. He spoke plainly, and most of our colloquialisms and words the same, except for one: skipplejick. Sometimes he’d stop and stammer to find the proper or, more accurately, accurate word. Boy, could he ramble. Ramble, what a word…
You could tell that he was homesick. And lonely. And sensitive. Early on, he said, “Oh, so, one other thing – don’t hate me, if you wouldn’t mind. Thanks. I know that’s not something you can ask a person.” And he was very delicate with his words and phrases, his actions and steps backward and forward. He was always measuring distance between us based on how comfortable he felt. He stayed calm most of the time until he started hitting himself with his stick. We weren’t even drinking, but it was happy hour at the pubs. Pub. That’s a word I imagine hearing in his light, Irish brogue, but he never said it. And he definitely wasn’t intoxicated.
If the man was high on anything at all, it was words. “Lamp” and “horse” get the job done, he says to me. He loved the pragmatism of language, too, all things the two of you probably have in common, wUndertUNGE. Then he’d go full-blown enraptured and say something like, “Trace the origin of any word, and if you’re half a man, and I can say without bragging I am, or half a woman, which is sort of my type, you’ll shed some serious tear at the long and trembling history of these frail little sounds, made up out of nowhere.”
He wasn’t being cheesy or pretentious, no. There was plenty of profundity. And sincerity. And jokes! Did I mention the jokes? He wasn’t arrogant either, and even though he talked a lot (the whole time!), I miss him. Maybe that’s an overstatement. But seriously, was our conversation enough? What do you have to do to get the full meaning of a man? How well do you and I know each other? What about lovers? Friends? Do I know the characters from my novels better than they know themselves, or better than the other characters know them? I remember the names of his loves: Lisa and Lauren. How am I doing? Am I describing him adequately? Do you even care? If we’d shared accents, would it feel like I knew him better? I didn’t even get his name, not that it would help.
We would’ve had more time to talk that night. I might’ve been able to tell him a thing or two, or show him around, but things ended abruptly and a bit, well…it was so odd…
Towards the end, he pulls out a metal, blue lunch box. “This’ll offer us a little diversion,” he says. “Now, this object tells an interesting story.” And he stares at it, and his vision is so drawn to the object that I can’t help myself either. He held it up with his hands palm-up, like an offering, and I’m just stuck on it, too Someone goes by and laughs. He looks at me, irritated, so I give him a look like, I didn’t do it. Then he goes back to the lunch box. Just staring. Intently.
And we just stood there for a minute, maybe more, and it felt like that could’ve been the entire story. Beyond all the words, that silence was it. Then, even though the sun was completely down, there seemed to be more light. And then, stars. Dead stars hanging all around us, like we could touch them. Or maybe they were chunks of earth that had been torn out of the ground. I felt almost like I was dreaming at this point. “We should thank our stars,” he says, “if we believe in stars, for the listeners of the world. You’re doing fine, is what I’m saying. You’re doing very well and I thank you.”
Or maybe that happened earlier.I’m starting to get confused. I guess you had to be there. I was there and I don’t have many answers. Then again, I didn’t ask any questions. I’ve been going back to that place to see if he might still be there, but he said he was leaving Sunday. Come to think of it, he never told me where he was going, either. No name, no destination. Home, maybe? I hope so. It sounded like he really missed it.
In any case, this might be a good place to stop. Here. My jaw is starting to click, and it’s making me nervous. I might start repeating myself. I hope you respond soon. Hope you’re well. Hope…that’s another word. ”We don’t need hope,” he said. “Things move quickly enough.”
Let’s talk soon. I’ve forgotten the sound of your voice.
A few years ago, I was complaining to a friend about the trials of moving, a friend who we’ll call Mr. Fifths. This man was rather austere with his domestic possessions despite having a reputation for being somewhat decadent when it came to women, drinks, and drugs. He asked me if I had a lot of stuff. I mentioned that my books were really the toughest and heaviest things to move around. He asked me how many I had.
A lot, I said.
“Have you read them all?” he asked.
Of course. Of course I’ve read, well, most of them.
When I got home, I surveyed my room. At the time, I had a queen-sized bed, a futon-couch that folded out, a cheap twenty-dollar clothing rack, a desk made of pressed wood and colored caramel brown, the books, and the bookshelves, which numbered in three. I owned two copies of Shakespeare’s complete works, one brown and faux leather-bound Illustrated Globe edition, the other a Riverside anthology; four D.H. Lawrence novels, The Rainbow, Women in Love, Sons and Lovers, Lady Chatterley’s Lovers, as well as his complete short stories, along with his complete poetry; The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe; an ornate hardcover edition of nine plays by Eugene O’Neill published in 1932; anywhere from ten to twelve issues of The McSweeney’s Quarterly; Aldous Huxley’s Island and a collection of his essay, which I’d purchased from a second-hand seller on the street either on the Upper West Side or the West Village; Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis which another friend of mind had let me pilfer from his living room; The Lord of the Rings and a copy of The Hobbit purchased on impulse at the now bankrupt and defunct Borders booksellers at Columbus Circle; about twenty-seven issues of The Believer magazine; The Only Astrology Book You’ll Ever Need and Sextrology; Remember Be Here Now; The Catcher in the Rye and Nine Stories and Franny and Zooey; and on and on and on…
I don’t have an exact count, but along with all the books I had to purchase for school (mostly used through online booksellers), I probably had close to one hundred and twenty-five books. As I surveyed them all during the packing, I began to notice something peculiar. Surely, I’d read eighty-percent of the books. Yeah, that sounds about right. Eighty-percent. Huh. More books into boxes. Okay, maybe not eighty-percent. Surely, seventy-percent. Yes, seventy-percent. Then I was packing away more books into boxes. Well, I haven’t really touched the short stories by D.H. Lawrence and I definitely haven’t read the Democracy in America or the People’s History of the United States of America. I don’t even remember where I got that copy of
So I’d read every issue of the magazines from cover to cover, 80 pages of almost pure verbiage full of essays and interviews. I’d read the entirety of The Lord of the Rings and The Brothers Karamazov and The Mists of Avalon, not only once but twice! But as I really began to pay attention, the realization that I’d only read maybe half of these books was beginning to dawn on me. It wasn’t a frightening revelation, but it was humbling.
Over the years, books were passed on, but even there were even more books coming in. I know the signs of an addiction. There’s a sort of whirl and dizziness that comes into one’s vision. Feelings of elation and seeming clear-headedness while in the presence of the coveted item. My mom is a shoe-addict, but ladies and gentleman of the literary world, I am a book whore.
Now, some of the readers out there might be thinking to themselves, What’s wrong with loving books? Shouldn’t we value a well-read person? Aren’t books one of the world’s great inventions and technologies? There are worse things than being a book whore. Of course, I’ve often felt the same way despite some nagging thoughts about the compulsiveness of book-buying. Our American, liberal, culture takes pride in being well-read as it’s a sign of one’s sophistication. After all, it puts one above the person who sits on their laptop or sits in front of the television all day. John Waters says, “If you go home with somebody, and they don’t have books, don’t fuck ’em!” At a panel discussion with Werner Herzog, he told us in what was almost a battle-cry that he always tells his film students to “Read! Read! Read! Read! Read! Read! Read! Read! Read! Read! Read! …and read books! You’ll never be a good filmmaker if you don’t read.” So, of course it’s good to be a reader, even a voracious reader. This is the belief I’ve held for many years and one that I held until last week, that is, until I read this post.
It’s Consumption Awareness month at the Interdependence Project, a group and community of urban-dwellers dedicated to Buddhism. As you’ve probably just read, this last week was about buying less books. The post recounts a retreat where students were not allowed to read. That’s right, students weren’t allowed to read because they didn’t want the students comparing their own spiritual journeys with other’s, which might make one’s personal journey seem meager in comparison to the one’s read. After all, don’t stories and anecdotes in books always seems more dramatic and larger-than-life than the humdrum of the reader’s? (I always think the authors or the characters in books are always having more sex than I am or will ever have). Beyond this, though, there’s an account of the book-buyer’s dilemma.
The contributor of the post, Sharon Salzberg, talks about how she makes a deal with herself about just buying one book even though she’s promised herself not to buy any until she has given some away. To that, Henry Ward Beecher says, “Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?” Let’s face it, there’s a tumblr blog called Book Porn if one needs further example of just how insidious book-lust can be. Books are incredibly sensual. They have that musky (alright, some will argue musty) smell. I love the way a book feels, the weight of it when you’re holding it up or if it’s hanging at your side, the texture of the cover. We often talk about book covers and their design, whether they’re aesthetically pleasing or not, suggesting that a pile of 8 1/2 x 11 paper with the text of East of Eden on it wouldn’t be as pleasing an experience as having the Centennial edition printed on acid-free paper. Alongside the temptation and the more illicit connections we might have with books, though, I love the feelings of solitude and relaxation and curiosity that set in and are aroused when one is surrounded by books, especially in the bookstore. Yes, I’m alone, but the world and its history, its ideas, thoughts, stories, and secrets are all at my fingertips. Whenever my mom set me loose in the mall, I always went to the bookstores. It’s a sacred space.
Still, beyond all the good stuff, how easily one can slip into narcissism, arrogance, and downright compulsive consumption. On the subway or street, how many times have I turned the cover of my book towards someone who I found attractive? I’m like a flasher. How many times has my natural speech turned towards the bookish, trying to impress? How many times have I gone to the bookstore buying a book that I never intend to read. And then there’s this guy!
For all the knowledge we might obtain and no matter how large our libraries become, it’s all rubbish. On the one hand, Amos Oz says “…human beings come and go, while books remain forever,” but on the other hand, E.M. Forster says, “It is a mistake to think that books have come to stay. The human race did without them for thousands of years and may decide to do without them again.” Rousseau says, “I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.” Isn’t that why we read? Is all this knowledge just vapor? Well, he might have a point. I can’t tell you how many discussions about books turn into “my favorite part” discussions, not deep and heated debate. While I don’t agree with Rousseau’s statement wholeheartedly, the quote does make one think; whereas for Charles Lamb, there is no thought induced by a book because “Books think for me.”
So where and when does knowledge become power? Where are the limits of that power? I think (and hope) that we are part of a time where we are acknowledging the limits of the rational mind. Will we one day at the height of our knowledge and wisdom not only take breaks from our television, internet, and iPhones, but from the seemingly harmless pastime of reading and book-buying? When does a healthy love for books become a dangerous obsession? Erasmus says, “When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.” Not such sound advice. And let’s acknowledge the plain fact that books are consumable goods. They are things we own, and as Tyler Durden says…
Fine, Tyler. I will do what I like because the truth is I will never abandon my books. And hell, even a healthy dose of lascivious thought and action towards one’s spouse after years of marital bliss and torture (is this possible?) can be good for one’s sex life. So let’s say, too, that I’ll never wholly abandon my lust for books. And literature. And poetry. And theater. If that desire was diminished even a little bit, this blog would have no reason for existing. At the same time, just to add a little tonic to the liquor, I’ll try to remember this final quote from Robert Louis Stevenson: “Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life.”
—-
Disclaimer: Many (read: all) the quotes I’ve pulled were not from the bevy of books I’ve read. No sirree. As I’ve already stated, the Werner Herzog quote comes from a panel discussion I attended. The John Waters quote came from the internetz. And while I’ve read a good deal of books in my life time (he said without even the slightest hint of humility), all of the literary quotes used in this essay were pulled from the Oxford Concise Dictionary of Literary Quotations, edited by Peter Kemp.
An Iliad (Denis O’Hare, Stephen Spinella)
Date of Attendance – Saturday, March 3rd – Closed
I’m partial to a good one-man show, and before anyone gets confused, Denis O’Hare and Stephen Spinella performed this one-man show in repertory, meaning that they switched off night to night, performance to performance. The word was that the two actor’s performances were significantly different. The program note states that having “the two actors alternate as The Poet…uncannily echoes the ancient Greek tradition of the Rhapsodes–performers who memorized epic poetry and competed with each other at festivals.” I wish I could say that I had a chance to see both actors, but alas, I was only able to see Mr. O’Hare’s performance. Thankfully, I was able to see the play at all.
Now, as luck would have it, I happened to be sitting in the same audience as a good friend of mine, an actor and artist. We didn’t find this out until a phone call afterwards. Naturally, I asked her what she thought about it, and she told me that she was already going in with a handicap. The stakes are always way lower for the actor in a one-man show. He is the impetus and the receiver of all and any dramatic content in the show. He is his own protagonist and antagonist. It feels contrived and there’s very little to commend or applaud in the show. She wasn’t moved in the slightest, while I cried three times during the show.
For me, one man shows are where it is at! I’ve never read any Spaulding Gray, though I probably should. The act of one man on a stage who is able to keep the audience rapt, interested, and still pulled into the throes of good drama is most commendable and damn entertaining. Denis O’Hare did not disappoint. Most people will know him from American Horror Story and True Blood along with a host of cameos and supporting roles in a ton of movies. But my god, does the man’s acting muscle stretch and sing for the stage.
He comes out and begins an incantation in Greek. He’s dressed like a hobo, floppy hat and oversized brown coat. His grey sweater vest is moth-eaten, and he carries a suitcase containing a huge tumbler of bourbon. The stage is bare and spacious with only a stairwell in one corner and a catwalk. We’re in a bar, he tells us. He tells us a lot. He recounts the tales, describes the Trojan landscape, and embodies all the major players, giving them all a voice. Just as there are three tones and modes of language – the incantatory Greek, its formal English, and a more conversational tone – there are two arenas and sources for conflict. The first is the actual conflict between Greece and Troy, and the secondary conflict is the one that goes on internally for The Poet — can he tell this tragic story again? At various points during the show, he takes swigs of bourbon and calls on the muses to help him get through this story, that after all, continues in war after war, long after The Poet stops performing.
The first time I saw Taxi Driver (1976) was on the 13-inch television that the Italian lady gave me when I moved into the apartment below her. It didn’t have quite the same effect as when I saw it on a big screen revival at Film Forum. It’s still haunting me.
The poem below is a byproduct of having seen it, and the accompanying photos are of the old Checker Cabs that don’t really exist anymore. My friend and I just happened to run into these as we made our way through the village towards the movie house.Travis drives one just like it in the movie.
In the poetry world, we call this an ekphrastic poem. It’s a poem based on or in reaction to another work of art. I’d like to imagine that Travis Bickle might have written this himself in 3rd person…that is, if he was a poetry kind of guy. And if he was writing about himself in 3rd person. Which he probably would do. Psycho.
For those of you who might not have seen Taxi Driver yet, the trailer’s above. At 30 seconds, that’s Travis in the driver’s seat, then Sport and Iris a few seconds later. And Betty, well, she’s “the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.” Watch it. It’ll get you in the mood.
The Sorrows of Sport & Iris
(for Steve H.)
(Come to me Baby)
You ain’t no betty
but you want your Betsy
don’t you, Travis?
To wet the sheets with
to dry your war-tears with
& under that fine white
dress, sex (Baby,
I never wanted) acts, love
murmurs as the city murders
& politicks in the backseat.
Tick-click goes the meter,
with the itchy, trigger, giggle
of a man with a gun meant for
his wife. wouldn’t it
be nice, Travis
to have a life,
Travis? But she’s just like
(business, Baby) the rest
of them. But the messes
you’ll make, the wrongs
you’ll right! So what if
she’s not for you, man?
This .44 will do, man.
So what if you’re through,
man? Hit ‘em (square!)
inside the palm. Save
the city and the long lie
of a daughter undeserving,
as they all are,
of what’s coming,
what you’re bringing (Baby).
Aim it right, hold it (touch
-ing a woman who wants me
and needs me) true, Travis…
oh (How are you?) Travis…
Bonus – the soundtrack in the movie for Sport & Iris
Only a book this original could contain a passage like this: “Nineteenth-century novels were all-important to [Rhody]. It wasn’t a question of her liking them; they were a neurological necessity, like sleep. One Mrs. Humphry Ward, or a Reade, or a Trollope per week supplied her with some kind of critical co-enzyme, she said, that allowerd her to organize social sense experience. It was nice if the novel was good, but even a very mediocre one would do; without a daily shot of Victorian fiction she couldn’t quite remember how to talk to people and to understand what they said. I miss her.”
…and a sentence like this: “I need to pop my nuts on a pair of small sexy tits right this second!!”
But if I wanted to give any potential reader the best representational sentence for the book, it would be this one.
“She was bathing with her rubber dildo –oh poetry!”
Indeed, this book is pure, filthy, sensitive, sensible, insightful, lewd, and downright hot, poetry.
The Fermata is the fictitious autobiography of Arnie Steiner, a self-proclaimed career temp, who transcribes tapes and has the special ability to freeze time, or as he calls it, enter the Fold. What does he do with this special ability? Well, he undresses women, of course. Not only that, but he straps vibrating butterfly sex toys onto unknowing women. He gathers secret information from women he’s interested in (and he’s interested in almost all of them. “…it is much more surprising to me when a woman fails to attract me than when she does attract me.”)
After reading the premise of the book, it will be easy to label this guy and his story as a creep and creepy, of no redeemable value. This book must be smut, right? Well, no. The book is lewd and too, too funny. (And hot. Did I mention, hot?) What really makes the book a work of art, and yes poetry, is that Arnie is quite a sensitive individual. He doesn’t use his powers to steal. He’d feel far too guilty to do that. When he postulates a power like he has to others, he’s horrified to know that a man would just rape women. He does nothing to (truly) harm these women, and he often walks that fine balance between titillation and transgression, which is one of the most fascinating sources of conflict in the book. He admits that all he wants to do is give these women a little bit of novelty and pleasure in their basically humdrum lives, but also readily admits that many of the things he does are morally reprehensible.
Along the way, we’re given some serious thought on the implications and dangers of time-travel, insight into human desire, interaction, and intimacy, as well as romance. So much of our everyday world and life is eroticised, and thus elevated, in a book with such deftly produced prose. There’s nothing obvious or cliched in this book. Those who come (pun-intended) for the little spank material won’t be disappointed, but they’ll find a lot more under that surface. Those coming for artful and serious literature will find plenty of intellectualism here with plenty of humor, fun, and sexiness, as well.
Carlo has many artist friends. Naturally, they know him by one of his many aliases – Robert the Lover, Diego the Master Swordsman, and Douglas the Butcher – as he knows them by theirs. On this particular night, one of his artist friends, a man we will simply call ‘N’, asked Carlo if he knew anyone who might want to participate in a fundraiser for ‘N’s theater company, The Claque. Carlo immediately thought of me. The idea to write impromptu poetry for money came to Carlo after his friend asked if Carlo would like to be auctioned off as part of the fundraising. Carlo often told me that I had moderately good looks and an even higher sapiosexuality quotient, so he thought writing love poetry on the spot would be a perfect way to attract a suitable woman and mate. And to even raise some money for The Claque.
‘N’ had a Sears typewriter that he’d found in his parents baseement. It was non-electrified and white, and the carrying case was cornflower blue. It must have weighed fifteen to twenty pounds. When he first presented it to me, I laid it out on his kitchen table. At first, I babbled onto the page. All I wanted was to get a feel for the keys, the weight of a letter, the immediate imprint onto the page. Then I tried copying someone’s else’s words:
Poems being written on a typewriter
“my love is building a building
around you, a frail slippery
house, a strong fragile house
(beginning at the singular beginning
of your smile) a skilful uncouth
prison,a precise clumsy
prison(building thatandthis into Thus,
Around the reckless magic of your mouth)” – e.e. cummings
While I knew there was something different about this method of composition, I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I continued to experiment with the typewriter at home. The night of the party approach, and I felt totally unprepared. In order to focus my work and the poems, Carlo suggested that I provide order forms asking the poem-recipient for something they loved and something they hated. The first two entries provided were as follows: Love – magical unicorns, Hate – games. The finished product was surprising and unexpected.
Poetry Order Forms; Liz Clayman Photography - http://www.lizclayman.com
The idea of writing on a computer word-processor felt sterile and diffuse. The letters and the composition of words into sentences had a severe sense of gravitas with the weight of each key and the immediate impression onto the page. Over the next week, as I familiarized myself with the typewriter, I began to see how the scroll of the page became a process. I could scroll down a few lines and start over with my my rough draft above it. I’m sure many of you right now are thinking, “Can’t you do the same thing with a computer word processor?” Sure, you have the option to do so, but the impulse is to edit out, to erase. Because of the immediacy of the typewriter, it has to flow more. One has to move on from the previous word or line. This lead to alternating modes of writing, from a furious almost reckless pace to a more careful and thoughtful way of writing. The poems written that night were some of my best, and I was able to raise a whopping twenty-something dollars for The Claque. The poems are laid out below:
Hate: Flying - Love: My new baby Zooey
Love: Magical Unicorns, Hate: Games (Names have been changed to protect the intimate)
Hate: Anything generic, Love: Surprise Warm Berry Pie
The Great Poet Returns, a poem by Mark Strand, starts like this: When a light poured down through a hole in the clouds, We knew the great poet was going to show. And he did. Then Strand goes on to describe a poet with great wings in a white limousine, appearing for the adoring crowd. The poem ends:
Tell me, you people out there, what is poetry anyways?
Can anyone die without even a little?
Carlo says there are no great poets left. I’m not so sure. He kept saying it to me even as we got off the train and approached the building where we would see and hear Mark Strand read. He has a new book coming out in March 2012, a collection of prose poems. But he doesn’t call them prose poems. “I don’t know what prose poems are…” Strand says from the stage. The hall could hold a hundred people, maybe two hundred. At first, Carlo and I were one of only a handful. We went to the fourth row then tried to go into the first, but the seats were reserved. So we settled into the second row. Two pretty but fairly conservative but good-looking women, long hair half-up and plainly down, sat to our left. To our right were two old Upper East Siders, poring over the program, fawning over Strand’s biography. “He’s so accomplished.”
Indeed, looking over his short bio, I couldn’t help but be impressed myself. He has written such a volume of work and done so many different translations, that even a non-poetry reader like myself couldn’t help being curious. He also taught at Columbia University and lived in Spain when he wasn’t living in New York. Not bad for a poet. A Canadian poet. The hall, which was like a more luxuriousn school cafeteria stage, filled quickly, and the poet – the Great Poet – arrived.
The reserved seats were for him and the other poet. Two women approaching that point of middle age where they might stop being attractive laughed and flirted with him. He indulged them, mumbling under his breath, which elicited a few girlish titters from these shameless women. Then he handed them a some folded up bills, another action that made them laugh all the more. The man, who was well over eighty, was thin, wrinkled, and he wore a hearing aide. Still, he was magnetic and sexy that was made almost perverse by his old age. Carlo would later show me the picture used for the cover of his Selected Poems. He couldn’t have been much older than 30, and the man was enviably handsome. Even though when I saw him, his good looks had faded, he still walked and talked like he was the sexiest man at the reading.
First, Susan Stewart read. While she was quite talented, her poems were a bit more abstract, fluid, and dreamy than Strand’s. They were so beautiful and lulling that I caught Carlo and other members of the reading audience falling asleep. Then, when she finished her noticeably nervous reading, Strand’s man went up for his introduction. He made remarks about Strand’s accomplishments, citing a specific collection, Darkness, as one of his favorites (Out of the Selected Poems, it was one of my favorite sets of poems, too). Then he goes on to remark that Strand disappears from the poetry world for a number of years, only to reemerge with longer lines and a great deal of humor. Then the poet approached the stage.
Strand’s poetry career can be divided into two eras or phases, much like Dylan’s folk and rock phase. His early poems indeed have shorter lines, and the subject matter is almost exclusively darker and more treacherous than his later poems. Still, his talent is apparent in lines like these:
The house is set.
The carnation in my buttonhole
precedes me like a small
continuous explosion.
(“The Man in the Mirror”)
Or these:
The door is before you again and the shrieking
Starts and the mad voice is saying here here.
The myth of comfort dies and the couch of her
Body turns to dust. Cloud enter your eyes.
It is autumn. People are jumping from jetliners;
Their relatives leap into the air to join them.
That is what the shrieking is about. Nobody wants
To leave, nobody wants to stay behind.
(“The Door”) In the transition from young Strand to older Strand, what doesn’t change is the clear and straightforward use of language. Neither does his penchant for strange, absurd, and surreal images and situations. In one poem from the earlier era, “The Tunnel”, a man is at home, afraid because there is a watcher out on his lawn. To escape, he digs a tunnel to another person’s house, waiting for them to come out because he needs their help. In another earlier poem, a group of adults gather around a baby and ask the speaker to break its legs. Then from a newer collection, “Five Dogs” muse about the universe and their place in it. For all this silliness and absurdity, there is also seriousness, tragedy, fear, and despair. And hope. And revelation. And beauty. And mystery.
Even this late it happens:
the coming of love, the coming of light.
You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,
stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,
sending up warm bouquets of air.
Even this late the bones of the body shine
and tomorrow’s dust flares into breath.
(“The Coming of Light”)
To stare at nothing is to learn by heart
What all of us will be swept into,
(“The Night, The Porch”)
But for all the seriousness and mystery that one comes to expect from a “Great Poet,” the man read in his gravelly voice with the pride and arrogance of a drunken rock star. There was a flippancy in his tone that night. He read a lot towards the front row, towards his opening act, as if challenging her. As if challenging us. It belied the spirit and generosity of what I read and what Carlo told me. But still, we laughed, every single one of us, even when it might not have been appropriate.
Carlo and I left, opting to skip the wine reception. Carlo had many questions, but he was feeling intimidated by the whole proposition. On the train, we discussed the even, and he said to me, “Even though I was slightly disappointed or maybe just taken aback, I couldn’t get these words out of my mind:
The worm of desire bore into the heart of everyone there.
There were tears in their eyes. The great one was better than ever.”
Many years ago, Carlo the Bandito, had a crazy idea of movie-going . He thought the more difficult the material both in accessibility and content, the more valuable a piece of art. Forget about entertainment and enjoyment. He went to only see films at art houses made by directors with last names like Cuaron and Fellini. And just for the record, he has never seen a film my Fellini. He rejected good taste for a semblance of good taste. It didn’t matter if it was enjoyable so long as there was a foreign director and subtitles involved. In short, he was an indie snob.
One such film was Pedro Almadovar’s Talk to Her, a film that followed a journalist, an ambiguously gay-slash-mentally handicapped nurse, a dancer in a coma, and a matador. Was the film good? Enjoyable? It had moments, certainly, most of which he can’t remember. It had something to do with longing, sex, loneliness, abandonment, and raping girls in a coma. Other than that, he can’t remember much. But he does remember the opening scene of two men at a movie theater watching a dance piece. Two women shrouded in long white night dresses are dancing around, stumbling around a stage space scattered with black wooden chairs. Others are clearing a path for the women continuously, saving the women from running into said chairs. But they’re also running into walls and being lifted. It was an evocative moment for Carlo then, as it is for him now.
Many years later, I would see Talk to Her, and it was this opening moment of the film that has stuck with me. The dance piece in question is called “Cafe Muller” by German choreographer Pina Bausch. “Cafe Muller” along with a host of other dances by Bausch have been documented and cut together in a documentary-slash-homage to the late choreographer in Pina, a film my Wim Wenders.
A nother member of the Collective was so moved and affected by the film, that at the time of this writing she has seen the film four times. When I finally saw the film, my jaw dropped at one moment and didn’t close until…well, my mouth is wide open.
There is very little in the film about Pina Bausch’s life. Instead, the movie focuses on her work because the work was her life and the life for her dancers. They are as much a subject in this film as Pina. One dancer recalls an encounter with Pina in which she realized that all of their experiences were Pina’s, “…or perhaps Pina’s were ours.” This highly personal approach and humanism in the dance is evident throughout.
“Cafe Muller”, the piece used in Almodovar’s film, shows a host of characters looking for love, losing love, trying to move past dead loves. The two blind women could be dead. Two lovers cling to each other, while one man moves them through the motions, eventually lifting the woman, now limp, into the arms of her male lover. He drops her. She gets up and clings to her lover again. The other man moves them through the motions again, where she is dropped from her lovers arms, and then in an instant clings to her lover’s neck again. Over and over. Cling, drop, cling, drop, cling, drop, until they don’t need help from the third party because they are caught. The movement is abstract, but there is such a ferocity of emotion exhibited in the choreography and the commitment of each dancer, that they give characters fully-fleshed out with stories and wants and desires and longings. None of it has been articulated into words, though, yet, to those who are open to it, feel and know exactly what is happening in the dancers as well as if it were happening to the spectator. The dance is abstract, but always accessible.
If the content of this dance seems a bit heavy, be assured that there is plenty of humor and whimsy in the film. One huge ensemble piece shows a school dance. The students are lined up against the back wall, and each moves forwards one at a time to be scrutinized. They smile and turn, then walk back to their chairs. By the end, it is a full on hormone bath of jitters and frisks as the girls stand to one side ruffling their skirts, as the boys approach in a sort of marathon sprint, awkwardly and anxiously approaching the women, trying to restrain their hormonal impulses but still attain their goal. It’s the sexual explosion of pubescence through the medium of dance, and it’s a riot.
A dancer runs up to chairs and stands on them, places her foot firmly on the backing, and tumbles down with the chair. A man resets them. She created her piece for (and with?) Pina because she said Pina made her feel light and free. One gets the sense that there was an alchemical collaboration between choreographer and dancer, an intimacy between all the creators, that one senses in each dancer’s testimony and recollection of Bausch. There is also a deep loss as each person speaks, as if one had lost a friend, lover, parent, and fellow artist all at once. (Bausch passed away a few days before filming began) And still, the dancer climbs onto her chair only to collapse it in a moment of utter and unutterable joy that she must squeal and sigh like a little child against the backdrop of a blue sky.
That image, along with all the others, can’t be taken out of context of dance performance on film. Wenders has created such a cinematic experience of dance that is as integral to the success of the film as the genius of Pina Bausch and her dancers. Dance on film is a medium of its own, and Wenders makes it evident that he understands this completely. The 3-d element faded into the background until I was just lost in the dream of the dance. Wenders takes us away from the typical fourth wall perspective, then inserts a frame of a curtain and a film screen to remind us that we are watching a film.
The pieces are staged on a conventional stage, but then many of them are put into real-life locales: modern flails on a sand dune, stomping and stamping on a skyline metro, a despairing fall on a pulley train. A quick cut in the middle of a dance shows us older footage of Bausch herself dancing or rehearsing a piece with her company. The interviews shot for this movie never actually show the dancers speaking. Wenders opts to have them viewed sitting with voice over of them speaking, which further cements the idea that for these people, their true language is the dance. Each moment, each directorial decision was made with such deliberation and contributes to the way we are experiencing the dance on film as film.
Carlo and I were moved to tears, laughter, feelings of anxiety and longing and awe throughout the movie.This is a film that could be viewed multiple times and ought to be, not only because of the complexity of the work, but also because it’s just damn entertaining. It awakens, stirs one out of the doldrum of everyday life. This film, along with all the documented work, is a gift. It’s a dream machine, too. But most of all, the film is just well crafted, damn good, and entertaining.
How much I paid: $15
How much the film was worth: priceless
wUnder tUnge 