Number 264: Robert Pinsky "ABC"

ABC

Any body can die, evidently. Few
Go happily, irradiating joy,

Knowledge, love. Many
Need oblivion, painkillers,
Quickest respite.

Sweet time unafflicted,
Various world:

X=your zenith.

--Robert Pinsky

Hap Notes: Pinsky's clever verse has a deep level in that the alphabet is one of the tools with which we first learn to communicate. It is elemental, a box of spoons (or knives), a set of crayons, a rack of spices for cooking, building blocks, and keys – skeleton, Allen, West, mon, piano, of the Kingdom, of Romulus or Enoch or Solomon and don. What we do with the keys is a very individual process. But, throughout one's life, the "keys" often define the world.

Here is Pinsky reading the poem aloud: www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MzM-CJmlRI

Here's where we have talked about Pinskey before: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/09/number-258-robert-pinsky-forgetting.html

It's Saturday (yay!) so here are some cartoon bits and songs:

Of course we have the double punch of the Jackson Five in their cartoon with the classic "ABC": www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wsxn6fwLEk0

Here they are for Alphabits cereal: www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jWY27wt5y4&NR=1

and again: www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEvprxTpGMY&feature=related

Here's a charming Sesame Street madrigal-like alphabet: www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eLPPxSdwJw&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PL41F229CF76200FD5

And a Sesame Street Rube Goldberg-like alphabet: www.youtube.com/watch?v=B17OvPYM040

This is Lowkey with Faith SFX with "Alphabet Assassin": www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToZUIdbgqjE&feature=list_related&playnext=1&list=AVGxdCwVVULXePTEqEScmuH50jLcwSZ1Rf

Here's India's famous ZENiTH Dance Troupe performing at a wedding: www.youtube.com/user/zenithdanceinstitute?blend=9&ob=5#p/u/13/pLCEwdvKuAg

Alphabits with "magic sprinkles": www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv6XxS8-5MY

An oldie but a goodie from Letters To Cleo (remember them?): www.youtube.com/watch?v=whr5g88bSAA&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PLD4E010CEDF27BFBD

And finally- this just cracks me up: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp22m4PEZUA
(taken from "Family Guy")

Number 263: A.E. Stallings "Fairy-tale Logic"

Fairy-tale Logic

Fairy tales are full of impossible tasks:
Gather the chin hairs of a man-eating goat,
Or cross a sulphuric lake in a leaky boat,
Select the prince from a row of identical masks,
Tiptoe up to a dragon where it basks
And snatch its bone; count dust specks, mote by mote,
Or learn the phone directory by rote.
Always it’s impossible what someone asks—

You have to fight magic with magic. You have to believe
That you have something impossible up your sleeve,
The language of snakes, perhaps, an invisible cloak,
An army of ants at your beck, or a lethal joke,
The will to do whatever must be done:
Marry a monster. Hand over your firstborn son.

-- A.E. Stallings

Hap Notes: Alicia Elsbeth Stallings (born 1968) was a classics major and studied at both the University of Georgia and at Oxford. She is described as being part of the contemporary "New Formalists" school of poets. However, I think it is wise to leave the naming of the so called "schools" of poetry to future generations but this "formalist" category will do for now. Formalists usually keep to a metrical style with somewhat traditional rhymes and patterns. (This is a general rule more than a specific one so sometimes these "school" names are somewhat useless, but let it pass for now, eh? I'm often sort of vexed that the word "new" enters into it. They're Formalists. Period. Just sayin'.)

She has written two books of poetry and has translated Lucretius. For such a small output of poetry she has won a plethora of prizes including the James Dickey award, the Pushcart Prize, and the Eunice Tietjens Prize. She lives with her journalist husband in Athens, Greece.

Today's poem starts out talking about the odd tasks the heroes/heroines of fairy tales are given to do in order to find happiness or a fortune or true love or break a spell etc. The poet amusingly adds a few things that would equal these tasks in today's word, like memorizing the phone book. Remember that Stallings is schooled in the classics so she makes a nod to Virgil's Aenied with the leaky boat that takes Aeneas to the underworld. Myths and fairy tales are often in place to teach us valuable lessons about life, are they not?

So there's the whimsy of fairy tales that makes us think that this poem is saying that with the "logic" of a fairy tale you must fight magic with more strange magic. But there is something far darker and more mysterious going on in this poem.

What would it really be like to marry a monster? Who could literally do that? What kind of person could give up a first born child? In fairy tales this happens, to be sure, but in reality what do we call a spouse who is an abusive monster? What sort of real world circumstances would lead a person to give up a child?

We are read fairy tales when we are young but we learn early in our adulthood that marrying a monster will break no evil spells and that giving up a child is painful and difficult. So what is the poet telling us about fairy tales and logic and life and will and magic?

Here's a great Stallings quote: " I always liked the fairy tales—the original, uncut versions, the ones with violent, horrible endings. I think the unexpurgated fairy tales are actually comforting to children. They are a lot more cathartic. I mean something happens to the bad people, and they get put away, so you feel safe when the story is over. I never remember having a nightmare because of a fairy tale, and I liked Hans Christian Anderson's tales. They often have sad endings. The Little Mermaid, for instance, has a very sad ending."

and another: "Form is just a tool, another way to get where you're going, and you should be able to use it any way you want to. Maybe I should feel more reverent about it, but poets in the past pretty much used form however they wanted to. Shelley's "Ozymandias" is a sonnet with a nonce rhyme scheme, so I feel pretty free to do whatever I want."

You can read the whole interview here: www.cortlandreview.com/issue/19/stallings19.html

You can find more Stallings' poetry and prose here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/ae-stallings

Number 262: Lawrence Ferlinghetti "Retired Ballerinas, Central Park West"

Retired Ballerinas, Central Park West

Retired ballerinas on winter afternoons
walking their dogs
in Central Park West
(or their cats on leashes—
the cats themselves old highwire artists)
The ballerinas
leap and pirouette
through Columbus Circle
while winos on park benches
(laid back like drunken Goudonovs)
hear the taxis trumpet together
like horsemen of the apocalypse
in the dusk of the gods
It is the final witching hour
when swains are full of swan songs
And all return through the dark dusk
to their bright cells
in glass highrises
or sit down to oval cigarettes and cakes
in the Russian Tea Room
or climb four flights to back rooms
in Westside brownstones
where faded playbill photos
fall peeling from their frames
like last year’s autumn leaves

-- Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Hap Notes: Ferlinghetti's word picture of aging ballet dancers is both slightly amusing and deeply moving. Living their faded upper class lives, walking cats on leashes, still spry but old, the ballerinas know that they chose a profession that would and did eject them as they aged. But their lives are still exotic to us – smoking their imported cigarettes, having tea at fashionable spots – they are the divas of the dance and are used to being treated like a hot-house orchid, even if now they have to treat themselves this way.

The Goudenov reference is to Boris Goudenov (the Russian Tsar of the 1600s, also famous opera by Mussorgsky) or possibly Alexander Goudenov, the ballet dancer (although this is unlikely as Goudenov was probably in his 20s or 30s when the poem was written, although it's a possible reference. It does add a special tang to the poem. Sad, too, because Goudenov had a bit of an alcohol problem towards the end of his life (which ended when he was only 45). [Side note: Yes, Boris Badenov in Rocky and Bullwinkle is a pun on the Tsar/opera, if you did not know it already)

A "swain" is a young man from the country or a man who is the lover of a girl or young woman. It's worth noting that ballerinas in their prime are usually pursued by many a swain.

The taxis blare out the final judgment call, the ballerinas return to apartments like "cells" to wait out their final days.

Because of that "autumn leaves" line, this poem really always makes me think of this season, even though it's winter both literally and figuratively for the ballerinas in the poem.

Here is where we have talked about Ferlinghetti before: http://happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/07/number-218-lawrence-ferlinghetti.html

and here: http://happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/06/number-174-lawrence-ferlinghetti-two.html

The masthead pictures are of the famous Russian Tea Room in the poem. For many years it has been a fashionable place to eat or have tea for the wealthy residents of the Upper East Side in New York.

Number 261: John Magee 'High Flight"

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air....

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.
Where never lark, or even eagle flew —
And, while with silent lifting mind I have trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
- Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

-- John Magee

Hap Notes: John Gillespie Magee, Jr. (1922-1941) was an American flyer who joined up with the Royal Canadian Air Force before the U.S. entered WWII. He was killed at 19 in a collision, an accident over Lincolnshire, England involving his plane and a trainer plane.

Magee wrote poetry all through his high school years (and won prizes for it) and was influenced by the soldier poetry of Rupert Brooke.

I include it for several reasons. First off, its lines are memorable and Magee's description of flight is possibly unsurpassed. Second, it is an amazing work for an 18 year old, and would be for a poet far older. Third, while the last line is strictly metaphoric, it certainly makes one feel the wonder and splendor of soaring through the sky. Fourth, anyone over 40 will probably remember it. Why? Well, because many television stations, back when the broadcast day was rarely longer than 18 hours, signed on or off using this poem.

At one or two in the morning, a film clip of airplanes (sometimes fighter planes or jets) would be shown with a narrator reading the poem. A flag waving in the wind was usually the last shot, then the television would go to what we used to call "snow" or static.

Some stations played footage of a waving flag while ""The Star Spangled Banner" played in the background before "signing off" for the day. Some stations opened their broadcast day with the "banner" and closed with "High Flight" or vice versa. But if you were a night owl or an early riser you would remember today's poem.

Here's one version of what this looked like: www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzQYd_INSOg
There are many more versions of this, of course.

While Magee was certainly a young poet, I don't know that a better description of gravity exists than the "surly bonds of earth."

Even folks who say they don't know or like poetry, often remember and dig this one.

Number 260: Philip Levine "M. Degas Teaches Art And Science At Durfee Intermediate School--Detroit 1942

M. Degas Teaches Art And Science At Durfee Intermediate School--Detroit 1942


He made a line on the blackboard,
one bold stroke from right to left
diagonally downward and stood back
to ask, looking as always at no one
in particular, "What have I done?"
From the back of the room Freddie
shouted, "You've broken a piece
of chalk." M. Degas did not smile.
"What have I done?" he repeated.
The most intellectual students
looked down to study their desks
except for Gertrude Bimmler, who raised
her hand before she spoke. "M. Degas,
you have created the hypotenuse
of an isosceles triangle." Degas mused.
Everyone knew that Gertrude could not
be incorrect. "It is possible,"
Louis Warshowsky added precisely,
"that you have begun to represent
the roof of a barn." I remember
that it was exactly twenty minutes
past eleven, and I thought at worst
this would go on another forty
minutes. It was early April,
the snow had all but melted on
the playgrounds, the elms and maples
bordering the cracked walks shivered
in the new winds, and I believed
that before I knew it I'd be
swaggering to the candy store
for a Milky Way. M. Degas
pursed his lips, and the room
stilled until the long hand
of the clock moved to twenty one
as though in complicity with Gertrude,
who added confidently, "You've begun
to separate the dark from the dark."
I looked back for help, but now
the trees bucked and quaked, and I
knew this could go on forever.

-- Philip Levine

Hap Notes: I'm always flummoxed as to what to do on 9/11. It's a strange and haunting tragedy in U.S. political and cultural history. One wants to mourn the loss of life without getting too syrupy or maudlin or dragging the poor tattered flag into it. It is inarguable that those who perished in the Twin Towers perished because they were Americans. It's what America means to the world and to ourselves that stands at the crossroads of this incident. I prefer to think of Americans as being folks who, like Levine, lived through tough times and were yet still touched by art and poetry and literature. All of us are made of snow and once fully formed, proceed to melt into and through the years.

Levine's poem is a fantasy in which his junior high class is sitting in a class with M. Degas, "M." is the abbreviation for "Monsieur" and yes, he's talking about Edgar Degas (1834-1917) the painter. (and no, Degas did not really teach there.) What is going on in the poem? Well, I want you to think on why this poem could be appropriate for 9/11. It has to do with discovery, art, depth and life.

Here's Levine reading the poem aloud: www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15940

Here's the actual school (Durfee) with some comments on Levine and the school in general (a good read- it will help you discern things in the poem) :www.marygrove.edu/academics/undergraduate-academics/undergrad-programs/detroit-studies/757-durfee-middle-school.html

Here's where we've talked about Levine before- this also will help you with today's poem. happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/01/number-45-philip-levine-they-feed-they.html

The masthead is artwork by Degas, the inset on this page is a portrait of the artist.

Number 259: George Cooper "Come Little Leaves"

Come Little Leaves

"Come, little leaves" said the wind one day,
"Come over the meadows with me, and play;
Put on your dresses of red and gold;
Summer is gone, and the days grow cold."

Soon as the leaves heard the wind's loud call,
Down they came fluttering, one and all;
Over the brown fields they danced and flew,
Singing the soft little songs they knew.

"Cricket, good-bye, we've been friends so long;
Little brook, sing us your farewell song-
Say you're sorry to see us go;
Ah! you are sorry, right well we know.

"Dear little lambs, in your fleecy fold,
Mother will keep you from harm and cold;
Fondly we've watched you in vale and glade;
Say, will you dream of our loving shade?"

Dancing and whirling the little leaves went;
Winter had called them and they were content-
Soon fast asleep in their earthly beds,
The snow laid a soft mantle over their heads

-- George Cooper

Hap Notes: I know very little about George Cooper ( 1838-1927). This was in a little book my Danish cousins gave me for my (16th!) birthday. I think it had been theirs when they were children but as a 16th birthday present, I must admit, I was hoping for something a little less juvenile. They also gave me a book of Anderson's fairytales. Now, at the time, I wanted Ferlinghetti or Robert Lowell or maybe a collection of Romantic poets or even Steal This Book! by Abbie Hoffman. So I was nonplussed. However, getting a book as a present at all was wonderful to me because I loved reading anything. In retrospect, I am very grateful to these older cousins for the books. I still have them, after all the moving and thinning out of my library a dozen or more times over the course of several decades.

Cooper, studied to be a lawyer under Chester A. Arthur but gave up the law to write. He wrote dozens of popular verses, most notably for a "children's" audience. It's a very familiar poem to older folks. It was a fairly popular song. Here's what it sounded like: www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9SmYPUD8ks


It' Saturday (Yay!) so here's our cartoons and music:

Here's Ub Iwerks take on the coming of Jack Frost: www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1YNoGmCChc

On a serious note, this animation shows an autumn festival taking place in a refugee camp: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CMgXQKUp10 it's very moving and charming.

Monday would be a good day to eat moon cakes- it's the 2011 mid-autumn festival day: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyZAWq5Qnxc&feature=related

Has nothing to do with anything but I love Annoying Orange in an annoying way: www.youtube.com/user/realannoyingorange

Speaking of my youth (yeah, I was annoying) here's the classic Fleischer "Little Dutch Mill":www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gzUjihBOZU&feature=related

Remember this from Sesame Street? www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX9J7WcYtxI

Here are fairies changing the leaves: www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTLTyeGVdBg&feature=related

The classic "Falling Leaves" with Nat King Cole: www.youtube.com/watch?v=684eg6S8dCw

Edith Piaf also does the song but I like this one better: www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfmguyDRBwU&feature=related

And this one, my personal favorite Piaf song, (hey- it's my blog...just sayin'.) www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zq_xVZVKDkc&feature=related

Number 258: Robert Pinsky "Forgetting"

Forgetting

The forgetting I notice most as I get older is really a form of memory:

The undergrowth of things unknown to the young, that I have forgotten.

Memory of so much crap, jumbled with so much that seems to matter.

Lieutenant Calley. Captain Easy. Mayling Soong. Sibby Sisti.

And all the forgettings that preceded my own: Baghdad, Egypt, Greece,

The Plains, centuries of lootings of antiquities. Obscure atrocities.

Imagine!—a big tent filled with mostly kids, yelling for poetry. In fact

It happened, I was there in New Jersey at the famous poetry show.

I used to wonder, what if the Baseball Hall of Fame overflowed

With too many thousands of greats all in time unremembered?

Hardly anybody can name all eight of their great grandparents.

Can you? Will your children’s grandchildren remember your name?

You’ll see, you little young jerks: your favorite music and your political

Furors, too, will need to get sorted in dusty electronic corridors.

In 1972, Zhou Enlai was asked the lasting effects of the French

Revolution: “Too soon to tell.” Remember?—or was it Mao Tse-tung?

Poetry made of air strains to reach back to Begats and suspiring

Forward into air, grunting to beget the hungry or overfed Future.

Ezra Pound praises the Emperor who appointed a committee of scholars

To pick the best 450 Noh plays and destroy all the rest, the fascist.

The stand-up master Stephen Wright says he thinks he suffers from

Both amnesia and déjà vu: “I feel like I have forgotten this before.”

Who remembers the arguments when jurors gave Pound the only prize

For poetry awarded by the United States Government? Until then.

I was in the big tent when the guy read his poem about how the Jews

Were warned to get out of the Twin Towers before the planes hit.

The crowd was applauding and screaming, they were happy—it isn’t

That they were anti-Semitic, or anything. They just weren’t listening. Or

No, they were listening, but that certain way. In it comes, you hear it, and that

Self-same second you swallow it or expel it: an ecstasy of forgetting.

-- Robert Pinsky

Hap Notes: Contemporary culture will become history, some of it remembered, some of it exaggerated, some of it swallowed up in disinterest. What will your grandchildren remember about 9/11, a date soldered into our thoughts as a shockingly painful memory? Think on this– do you remember the Alamo? The shock and pain of the occurrence? Or does it just seem like an old time historical fact to you? The ravages of the Civil War, will your children feel it? With contemporary culture so multi-faceted thanks to the 100+ cable channels and the thousands of sites on the web, what will be your shared cultural memories? And how soon will we forget them as the next fresh scandal, shock or controversy comes up? What are memories made of?

Memories are made and forgotten swiftly now. Our shared cultural experiences come down to the day Kennedy was shot, or John Lennon, or the day Curt Cobain committed suicide or 9/11. Something we remember with shock and horror, if we remember it at all. Does it matter that we remember? George Satayana (who?) said "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." So did Edmund Burke (who?) Of course, Henry Ford (who?) said "History is bunk." Henry Ford, I think it should be noted, was a major participant in something that irrevocably changed our history/culture.

In Pinsky's poem are mentioned several cultural touchstones you may or may not know. You might know about the Charlie Sheen hijinks but Lieutenant Calley was a principal military player in the murdering of Vietnamese civilians in My Lai (the "My Lai Massacre.) You might know who the X-Men are but have never read a Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune, comic. You might remember Nancy Reagan but do you recall the influential Madame Chiang Kai-shek AKA Mayling Soong? You know A-Rod but not Sibby Sisti? (Okay, Sibby Sisti is pushin' it, but he's obviously part of Pinsky's cultural history the way Albert Belle is part of mine. [ Soapbox: Belle will never make it into the Hall of Fame, even though he has the numbers, because he was a hotheaded jerk sometimes. It just ain't fair.]) The poetry reading I think Pinsky is referring to is a Baraka one (we've talked about that before here: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/08/number-245-amiri-baraka-leroi-jones-air.html )

He's right Zhou Enlai did say, when asked about the effects of the French Revolution, that it was too soon to tell. But all this does get mixed in with our memories of Chairman Mao and the little red book and more cascades of memories that sweep by and then ebb away like the tides.

Pinsky is bringing up a very interesting point about memory being a form of forgetting. Huh? Well, we've gradually become a country of rapid experiences. We get upset about the O.J. trial and then, it fades as a new incident takes its place. Who will remember Casey/Caylee Anthony in 20 years? G. Gordon Liddy (uh, remember Watergate?) ends up as a celebrity on a game show. We remember, we forget, we forget to remember, we remember to forget. The brain is a fascinating mechanism. Pinsky likens our cultural memory riffs to Jazz. It's a heartening analogy.

Robert Pinsky (born 1940) is near and dear to my heart because of his Favorite Poem Project that he initiated while he was Poet Laureate/Consultant to the U.S. from 1997-2000. Pinsky believes that Americans are far more effected, transformed and fond of poetry than the culture would have you believe. In the project thousands of Americans of different backgrounds and ages from every state shared their favorite poems. You can still see it and it is most moving to read, see and hear: www.favoritepoem.org/ The project has inspired hundreds of community poetry readings.

Pinsky was born in New Jersey and much of his poetry is inspired by his geography. He went to Rutgers and received both of his graduate degrees from Stanford. He majored in Philosophy and also studied under poet Yvor Winters. He is an award and endowment winning poet who currently teaches at Boston University and is the poetry editor at Slate.

Those of you who played interactive computer role-playing games will also know him as the author of the (really fun and extraordinary) "Mindwheel" game (Synapse/Broderbund). He was a guest vocal talent on "The Simpsons," too.

Here's Pinsky's remarkable 1999 commencement speech at Stanford: www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/pinsky/speech.htm

Here's a good Pinksy quote from that speech: "Improvisation characterizes our music, our clothes, our blue jeans, the get-ups that you have on today, the headlong invention and energy of our businesses, our mass entertainment. But the spirit of improvisation alone, though we may be proud of it, it alone cannot sustain the process that transmits the ways of glassmaking and papermaking, or the ways of understanding ourselves across the generations."

You can find more Pinksy here: www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/200