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At one time, Carl Sandburg was everywhere: as a working-class people’s poet, a folk music populist, and an award-winning historian. He’s not as widely listened to anymore, but recently Linda Shalom and I performed some of his poems, broadcast over WBAI radio, on the Arts Express program.
We had great fun becoming familiar with, and voicing, these poems. You can listen by clicking on the grey triangle above.
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
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As we end the year this Monday, we might think on Robert Burns. His most famous poem, written in 1788, was first set to music five years later. But it wasn’t until 1799, a few years after Burns premature death, that the poem was set to the melody we know today. Here’s our friend and Arts Express colleague Mary Murphy performing Auld Lang Syne with the original Scottish pronunciation and words of Robert Burns. Wishing all our readers a happy 2019, and remembrances to friends past and present.
Click on the grey triangle to listen.
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Deming Street
Woodstock, New York
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Union Square,
New York, New York
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Precocious schoolboy Hugh has written a naughty poem, and Stephen takes him to task.
Thanks to YouTuber sunnydalegal
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It’s the last half of April which means it’s Shakespeare’s Birthday Sonnet Slam time once again. I’ve been participating in the slam for the last four years, and I’ve written about how to analyze a sonnet for performance several times before (see here and here as well). Each year participants are assigned a sonnet, and within the space of about three hours all 154 sonnets are performed at the Naumburg Bandshell in Central Park, New York City.
This year I was randomly assigned Sonnet #43. As I’ve written before, I enjoy being told which sonnet to do, because it exposes me to sonnets which I would not necessarily have been drawn to by myself. Here’s the Sonnet:
Sonnet 43
When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see,
For all the day they view things unrespected;
But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,
And darkly bright are bright in dark directed;
Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright,
How would thy shadow’s form form happy show
To the clear day with thy much clearer light,
When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so?
How would, I say, mine eyes be blessed made
By looking on thee in the living day,
When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade
Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay?
All days are nights to see till I see thee,
And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.
Unlike some of the previous sonnets I have been assigned, at first glance this one seems fairly straightforward, if somewhat repetitious. As usual, the first step is to divide the sonnet into three quatrains and an ending couplet:
When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see,
For all the day they view things unrespected;
But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,
And darkly bright are bright in dark directed;
Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright,
How would thy shadow’s form form happy show
To the clear day with thy much clearer light,
When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so?
How would, I say, mine eyes be blessed made
By looking on thee in the living day,
When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade
Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay?
All days are nights to see till I see thee,
And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.
The first quatrain sets the conceit that runs through the poem: I see more clearly at night, when you are present in my dreams, than the dull day when you are absent.
The second quatrain seems to say nearly the same, but it’s always useful to see what is new in each quatrain. After a few read-throughs I realized that here there is a request underlying this sonnet, and here the poet is expressing his desire to see his beloved, physically, in the daytime.
The third quatrain seems to be marshaling the same argument for your presence. How to distinguish it from the previous quatrain and make it more interesting? Oh, there it is. In the second quatrain, I say your presence would make me happy—but in the third quatrain I say your presence would make me feel blessed. That’s something to hang my hat onto. Two distinctly different appeals.
The final couplet is usually either a summation of the first three quatrains or a distinctly contrary upending of the previous lines. Here, it seems to be the former, but the last phrase of the last line seems peculiar to me. It reads “when dreams do show thee me.” But that seems backwards to the sense of the rest of the poem. Throughout the poem, I have been doing the dreaming, so I was expecting “when dreams do show me thee.” It scans exactly the same so that can’t be the reason the pronouns were switched. I don’t know the reason for that yet, but I do know I can’t ignore it. I’ve found through past experience that the one difficult word or line is often the key to unlocking everything else.
Here’s an early Happy Shakespeare’s Birthday to all.
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At one of the online magic forums, there’s a game I’ve contributed to through many years concerning limericks. One person suggests a first line for a limerick, and the next person has to complete the limerick. Many of the limericks have a magic-oriented theme, but that’s not a requirement. Here are a few of my better efforts. (Remember, all first lines were given by others):
A young man from the wilds of Peru
Bought a very new gnu from the zoo
But the gnu didn’t know
What a gnu ought to know
So he bought a new gnu who knew news.
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I “invented” a new spelling trick
With 21 cards, it’s so slick
I deal seven piles
But I never get smiles,
They all want it over real quick.
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When presenting the spec’s queen of hearts
Some magi take leave of their smarts
They prance and parade
(No, they’ll never get laid)
Not knowing they’re just some old farts
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I considered a life on the stage
Not easy for someone my age
But I just got hired
No longer retired
Come see me, the geek in a cage.
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I found in my old photo book
The claw of the mean Captain Hook
And also the mug
Of some vicious thug
For Sale: by Hook or by crook.
More limericks here
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I was completely taken in. It’s an ad for an insurance broker.
The Q train
Brooklyn, New York
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The former Pavilion movie theater
Prospect Park West
Brooklyn, New York
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Prospect Park West
Brooklyn, New York
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Prospect Park West
Brooklyn, New York
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Prospect Park West
Brooklyn, New York
Our Way
A tree
Breathing steadily
No reason to move
Gives its fruit freely
Calm strength of wood prevails
One hundred and fifty years
Birds
Travel water roads, air streams
Flocks and formations
Uncover a secret geometry of the universe
Threading the sky’s tapestry
Ten years
We
Fall in love with vaccination marks
Dance with our underwear half off
Tattoos of birds and trees burnt into our thighs
Hold each other syncopatedly afraid to fall
In the morning, relieved, we send the children to school
Then, lost again, search the I Ching once more
Our way
Eighty years
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Revolution II–by Sasha Chavchavadze
Phrases from Walt Whitman’s “The Centenarian’s Story,” Leaves of Grass
Bergen Street and Smith Street
Brooklyn, New York
More info about the project here.
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On my way home yesterday, my attention was caught by a gentleman sitting in the middle of Union Square at a makeshift table. He was contemplating his manual typewriter, or at least the piece of pastel-colored card stock that was rolled into his typewriter’s batten. The sign hanging from his table said POET FOR HIRE, so I asked him if he could write a poem for me. I told him I didn’t have a lot of cash on me, but I could pay him $5, all the cash I had on me. After a brief conversation he agreed to write a poem for the $5, although it was evidently below the going poetry rate. He asked me a couple of questions about myself, and then asked what I would like the poem to be about. I looked down at his typewriter and suddenly at a loss, I asked for a poem about typewriters. He nodded, murmured, “Very good,” and then said I could also have the poem be about another subject as well. I felt like I needed to reach deeper, so I told him about what had been on my mind for the last few weeks: death. “Uh-huh. Typewriters and Death,” he nodded, unfazed. Rolling a new sheet of stiff pink-colored card stock into the typewriter, he told me to come back in ten minutes.
I was feeling guilty that I had had so little cash available, so I went to a nearby food stand in the park and bought an apple, brownie, and croissant for the poet. I wandered back into the area after ten minutes, and he called me over, telling me the poem was ready. I gave him my $5, and the snacks, which he seemed to like. The poet, Benjamin Aleshire, introduced himself, saying that he was originally from Vermont and now based in New Orleans, but he had spent the last five years going around the world making his living by selling his poems for hire. He was stopping off in New York City for a few weeks now before knocking around Europe. He pulled the poem out of the typewriter and handed it to me. I was a little shy about reading the poem in front of him, as if it were a birthday present one didn’t want to open in front of guests, but I felt I kind of owed him a reading there. It turned out to be a very good poem. I blushed at reading it, thanked him, and took my leave.
You can read the poem here:
TYPEWRITERS // DEATH
Inked & spooled
on a silk ribbon,
a feral creature
lies waiting
among the hammers
& keys
while you search
for a hidden codex
some secret combination
of hieroglyphics
that will let it out,
that will set you free
from your own fear
of your life story
being written
in disappearing ink.
-– for Jack
5.23.17
Union Sq, NYC
by benjamin aleshire
www.poetforhire.org
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I had long known of Langston Hughes’s poems, but I didn’t know until very recently what a delightful speaker and storyteller he was. In this audio clip he is talking to a group of graduate students in Berkeley about his upbringing. What a lovely man. Click on the grey triangle above to hear.
The audio clip is just the beginning of a one-hour Hughes talk from an astounding collection of over 1300 hours of audio from the archives of Pacifica Radio. The collection is called Voices That Change The World. It’s not cheap, but on the 64GB flash drive (you get two for the price of one) there is an extraordinary range of audio from the most remarkable people of the last fifty years—singers, poets, writers, politicians, artists, scientists, religious figures, audio books. It’s an amazing resource.
More here: http://www.give2wbai.org/product_p/fd0007-w17.htm
And if you buy one, please mark down that you’re donating for the Arts Express program.
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Today is Shakespeare’s birthday. If you’ve never read it, this very short story about Shakespeare by Borges comes closest to describing the man who I imagine WS to be.
I had the pleasure two days ago of participating in the 7th Annual Shakespeare’s Birthday Sonnet Slam. It was a drizzly, misty day that made all of Central Park look like a French Impressionist painting. The producers told us that if it rained hard, we would simply continue and gather up the audience to join us up on the outdoor bandshell stage in Central Park. It never happened, but it was a cozy thought to think about.
This was my fourth Sonnet Slam, so I knew what to expect. All 154 sonnets are read in about three hours. Producer Melinda Hall has a very democratic approach to the slam, and it’s fun to see the way professionals and non-professionals alike approach performing the sonnets. One reader brought her dog up with her, and another set her sonnet to music. Each year brings some surprise guests, and this year veteran actor Richard Thomas made an unannounced visit to read Sonnet 29, “When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes…” It’s also always fun for me to hear others perform the sonnets to which I had been assigned in previous years. I feel a kind of special bond with those particular readers even if we’ve never met, because I can appreciate the struggle that goes into wrestling with those shared sonnets.
I’ve written about analyzing a sonnet before, but based on what I’ve learned this time, I’d humbly like to make a few suggestions about performing sonnets. These suggestions may seem sonnet-specific, but I believe they have wider acting implications as well.
The first thing is this, and it’s not as minor as it may sound at first: You have to pay allegiance to the final couplet’s rhyme. In the rest of the sonnet, the interpretation can spread over line breaks and rhymes, but if you don’t hit the rhymes in the final couplet, there is a real sense of incompleteness for the listener. It’s like a piece of music without the final resolving chord; the rest of the sonnet can be performed beautifully, but if you don’t get the final rhyme stressed, you haven’t closed the deal. Rhyme, even at the expense of sense or archaic pronunciation. (“Love” doesn’t rhyme with “prove” anymore? It doesn’t matter. Make it rhyme in your performance.) Go for the rhyme.
The second thing to remember is that the vast majority of these sonnets are love poems. They are meant, in the end, to win the heart of someone special. So while actors are wont to build little mini-dramas of the sonnets—not a bad thing—it should be remembered too that objectives such as to woo, to praise, to kiss, to seduce, to reassure, to flatter, should take precedence over objectives such as to scold, to complain, to dismiss, to chastise. Not that there aren’t elements of the latter, but in the end, the sonnets are love poems and should end up that way. So humor and self-reflection about the more negative aspects of love are in order, even though the anger may seem flashier to perform.
Finally, make every noun, metaphor, verb as visual and specific as you can for yourself. It’s Acting 101, but it’s especially true in playing Shakespeare that one should not lapse into the generic meaning of the words. The first line from Sonnet 70 should suffice to illustrate:
“That thou be blamed, shall not be thy defect.”
“Thou”: Who am I talking about? What does that person look like? What is my relationship to that person? Where are we?
“Blamed”: Blamed for what? In what manner? By whom? To what end?
“Thy defect”: What form might that defect take? How has this affected my lover? How has it affected our relationship? What do I want to do about it?
And so on. The wonderful thing about the fourteen short lines of a sonnet is that they allow you to do this kind of close work without getting overwhelmed. The important thing that I learned for myself here is that it’s not enough to make intellectual choices, but to pick vivid images that will spur feelings and imagination. Make the metaphor real.
Well, one more nice thing about Shakespeare’s birthday is that it comes around every year, and if the producers so wish, so will the next Shakespeare’s Birthday Sonnet Slam. So if you’re in the NYC area next year, consider signing up in April for one of the sonnets at www.shakespearesonnetslam.com . You will have a wonderful time.
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It’s April, which means that its time again to celebrate Shakespeare’s birthday with the 7th annual Sonnet Slam at the Naumburg Bandshell in Central Park, April 21st.
This year, I’ve been assigned Sonnet 70, which seems a little less daunting than some of the others I’ve had in past years.
That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect,
For slander’s mark was ever yet the fair;
The ornament of beauty is suspect,
A crow that flies in heaven’s sweetest air.
So thou be good, slander doth but approve
Thy worth the greater, being woo’d of time:
For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love,
And thou present’st a pure unstained prime.
Thou hast pass’d by the ambush of young days,
Either not assail’d or victor being charg’d;
Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise,
To tie up envy, evermore enlarg’d:
If some suspect of ill mask’d not thy show,
Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts should’st owe.
As always, the key to interpreting these sonnets is to first unpack the form into three quatrains and a couplet, and then to make sure that every word is understood with its original Elizabethan meaning. I found the first ten lines here fairly straightforward to understand: beautiful people attract envious slander, so don’t feel too badly about it.
It’s the last four lines which present me with syntactical and comprehension difficulty.
I think the sense of them is something like, thank goodness the power of this poem is not enough to ward off slander —because if it did, then you would be besieged by suitors, and by inference, the poet would not have you to himself. But it’s a little tricky, and I still have to work out its exact meaning.
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I have not written a real letter for over thirty years. A real letter—not a condolence card, a thank-you note, or an email.
I don’t think I’m alone in that. There are those of generations after mine who have never written a letter or received one. More, not been part of the whole process of letter writing. A letter is not just the object itself and its container— the envelopes, enclosures and clippings, circled pieces of newspapers, glitter, stickers, ink smudges, stationery—“-er-” like “pap-er,”—little 2×3 photos, scrawled identification on the back—but also the whole rhythm and trust of back and forth, the framing of communication in bursts of captured time, even as time passes.
And pass it does. Or did. Now, there is no time, for we can access anyone, anytime, instantly. We see the whole of the universe like a map before us, able to point our finger to any star. But then, time existed, meant something in human terms. Waiting, for example. We knew that even as we were writing that it wouldn’t be received for days, maybe weeks, and who knows when we could get the reply to our comments, our bits of news, our declarations, our entreaties, our losses? What to do, in the meantime, while waiting, was a real issue. How different our lives were. Now our communication is nearly all in almost-real time: over Skype, over text, over email. There is no anticipation anymore, what we see is what we get, albeit screen-mediated: if not now, then never.
The letter reminded us of this essential fact: there are gaps in our perception of the lives of the other. The hard thing in human relationship is to assimilate the fact of mutual change, how both of us are always changing, have changed.The continuity of modern communication lulls us into a false familiarity. But when waiting two weeks for a letter’s reply and two weeks for the reply to the reply, one can rightly wonder whether the person on the other end is still the same and knowable.
I was set thinking about this by a Denise Levertov poem, “Writing to Aaron,” which I read recently with a group of friends. In the poem, the narrator struggles to find a way to respond to a letter that she has taken too long to answer. The narrator understands that with each passing day, the gap between who we were and who we are is growing greater and greater. In those letter-writing days that awareness fostered in us a kind of responsibility, an obligation to answer in a timely manner. If you didn’t, then there was the double problem of not knowing how to explain your tardiness, and the fear that the person to whom you were responding may have changed beyond all recognition. And for the more literary of us there was still another fear: it was too easy for us to fall in love with our own writing, so at times we wrote to and for ourselves, rather than to and for the person whose name we put on the envelope.
Faced with this, the letter-writer must develop methods of how to talk about the gap, how to talk about all that has occurred in the time that has passed, and equally how to talk about what will happen until the next communication occurs.
Levertov’s narrator suggests several strategies. Her narrator considers just putting the dry facts of change up front, then rejects that plan as inadequate, the external facts don’t account for the internal ones:
“…Which beginning to begin with? ‘Since I saw you last,
the doctor has prescribed artificial tears, a renewable order…’ But that leaves out
the real ones.”
She also considers a chronological narrative, but too much time has passed, and that too would be inadequate, too much to tell in too little space:
“Or chronological narrative? ‘In the spring
of ’73,’…’That summer,’
‘By then it was fall…’
All or nothing—
and that would be nothing,”
So this too is inadequate. She finally thinks that perhaps she can only bridge the gap by calling upon a shared memory, hoping the recipient can fill in the rest.
“Maybe I’ll leave the whole story
for you to imagine,
telling you only, ‘A year ago
I said farewell to that poplar you will remember,
that gave us its open secret…”
After reading this poem, I started to imagine myself writing a letter. This act of imagination sent me to a place, a consciousness, in which I hadn’t been in a long time. I felt myself in an intimacy before I had even written down a word. I rebelled, I wanted to write an email. It requires so much less of one. A letter is an act of intimacy and truth, and I haven’t the emotion anymore for that. To see my own scrawl of a handwriting in ink, on paper? Too naked, too unseemly, at this age. I don’t even write down a shopping list anymore.
But what I can’t get away from is how excited my poetry friends, Connie, Evelyn, Teresa, and I got talking about letters, the thrill of pages double-sided leafed through again and again, folded and re-folded, stuck in pockets and books to take out on a windy bus-waiting day, or found years later, at the bottom of the untouched stuck drawer, the ink a witness to the truth of that moment, because I’m looking at your handwriting and I’m deciphering the distance and time that separates us but joins us, as if some part of your presence were truly here in this paper in this time, with these words, in this letter.
This is what we talked about Sunday, and I don’t know that I can bear to write one more letter.
(You can view Denise Levertov’s poem by clicking here: https://www.questia.com/read/93938346/life-in-the-forest and doing a bit of navigating.)
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A Langston Hughes poem set to music and performed by Nina Simone.
Thanks to YouTuber rANKo TINTORetto
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There have been many attempts over the years to set Shakespeare’s sonnets to music, as at least some of them were probably originally meant to be. Rufus Wainwright, the popular singer-songwriter did this a few years ago with several of the sonnets, my favorite of which is this lovely rendition of Sonnet #29.
Click on the video to play.
Thanks to YouTuber sacroom91
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The parade sound wafting from the sidewalk Monday morning is Sidney Bechet on soprano sax playing “Maple Leaf Rag.” Click on the video above to hear.
by Philip Larkin
Building for some a legendary Quarter
Of balconies, flower-baskets and quadrilles,
Everyone making love and going shares—
Oh, play that thing! Mute glorious Storyvilles
Others may license, grouping around their chairs
Sporting-house girls like circus tigers (priced
Far above rubies) to pretend their fads,
While scholars manqués nod around unnoticed
Wrapped up in personnels like old plaids.
On me your voice falls as they say love should,
Like an enormous yes. My Crescent City
Is where your speech alone is understood,
And greeted as the natural noise of good,
Scattering long-haired grief and scored pity.
The Shakespeare Sonnet Slam is coming up soon, so here is my preliminary analysis of the sonnet that was chosen for me this time, #62.
Here it is again:
SONNET 62
Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye,
And all my soul and all my every part;
And for this sin there is no remedy,
It is so grounded inward in my heart.
Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,
No shape so true, no truth of such account;
And for myself mine own worth do define,
As I all other in all worths surmount.
But when my glass shows me myself indeed,
Beated and chopp’d with tann’d antiquity,
Mine own self-love quite contrary I read;
Self so self-loving were iniquity.
‘Tis thee, myself, that for myself I praise,
Painting my age with beauty of thy days.
My approach is to memorize the sonnet, even though it’s not required for the Sonnet Slam. I think that until I actually sit down to memorize a piece, I don’t fully realize the particularity of the structure of the sonnet, the weight of each word, the peculiarity of each phrase, the rhythm and emphasis of the piece. Often when memorizing, I’ll have one phrase or more that I keep getting wrong—it seems like it should be what I’m saying, not what is on the page—but it is exactly that discrepancy that needs to be explored and uncovered for meaning and logic.
So, first things first: most of the Shakespearean sonnets have the same structure: 14 lines, made up of three rhyming quatrains, abab, and then a rhyming couplet, cc. Let’s break up Sonnet # 62:
SONNET 62
Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye,
And all my soul and all my every part;
And for this sin there is no remedy,
It is so grounded inward in my heart.
Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,
No shape so true, no truth of such account;
And for myself mine own worth do define,
As I all other in all worths surmount.
But when my glass shows me myself indeed,
Beated and chopp’d with tann’d antiquity,
Mine own self-love quite contrary I read;
Self so self-loving were iniquity.
‘Tis thee, myself, that for myself I praise,
Painting my age with beauty of thy days.
Typically, each quatrain is a variation on one theme, each with its own point to make. The final couplet is usually either a clever summation of the preceding lines, or a clever opposition to them. I think the word “clever” here is apropos, because cleverness is an integral part of a Shakespearean sonnet. No matter how much sentiment is contained in each of these sonnets, they are almost always also self-conscious objects for show. Will just couldn’t help himself on that score. Many of the sonnets were commissioned and many were the objects of public and private performance. In my opinion, a major subtext of all of these sonnets is: “I love you so much, that I wrote this clever witty poem for you.” They are, in the old-fashioned sense of the word, “conceits.” Without this acknowledgement, the sonnets can become lugubrious; as I’ll talk about next time, a more interesting choice for me for performance is to find the playfulness in each composition.
Okay, Quatrain #1: I’m struck by the word “all”:
all mine eye,
And all my soul and all my every part
The accented beats all fall on the word “all” and it’s almost always a good idea to pay attention to the iambic pentameter and not fight it. So, the sonnet writer (“I” from now on), talks of himself in no half-measures. I fully admit my faults. Whether sadly or mockingly or gleefully remains to be decided.
I note also that the structure of the sonnet indicates that “eye” and “remedy” should rhyme—at least it did in Shakespeare’s day. Sometimes it’s pretentious in today’s world to go for the rhyme, but since it’s an unaccented syllable, I’ll probably go for it.
Next, Quatrain #2: I ask myself, what is this quatrain doing that the first did not? It seems to be more specific: “face,” “shape,” “truth,”; but also it stresses that not only do I think that I am wonderful, but I am the best, better than everyone else! —“As I all other in all worths surmount.” And again, the “alls” are hit hard. It’s like Muhammed Ali, “I am the Greatest!”
On to Quatrain #3: Now the turn of the sonnet. “But when my glass shows”…these “buts” in the sonnets are always important, they signal, “I used to think x, but now I realize y.” The acting issue here is to make that emotional turn real by having some specific internal sensory stimuli to allow that change in thought and emotion to happen. Shakespeare provides the impetus—looking in the mirror and seeing the reality of my physical shape, rather than just what I’d like to imagine or feel. Those of us of a certain age have all had those awful moments when the light is too harsh and the wrinkles too deep and the mirror refuses to lie. That’s what I need to capture.
But there are two revelations going on in this quatrain: not only that I am not the physical and mental specimen that I think I am, but that my self-love has been deeply unfair.
The final couplet explains: I only look good to myself because I am basking in your glow, your beauty, and mistaking your aura for my own. This, I think is the hardest part of the sonnet from an acting point of view. It’s a complicated realization that has to be done in a very few words, and the structure of the lines seems difficult right now to me. This is where I think I have the most work ahead of me.
Okay, that’s enough for now. Next time, I’ll talk about actually trying to memorize the sonnet, and seeing how that informs me further.
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Constance Norgren is a wonderful Brooklyn-based poet, teacher, and political activist. She is the author of the award-winning Tonight’s Quiet, which was selected as the winner of the Bright Hill Poetry Book Competition; she is also the author of several other excellent poetry compilations. Yesterday, radio station WBAI 99.5 FM, NYC, aired an interview I did with her in which she talks about the crafting of, and the necessity of, poetry. In addition, she reads some of her evocative poetry of domestic detail, everyday frailty, and the struggles and joys of modern life. Click on the gray triangle above to listen to this wise poet’s words.
