Parting Looks — Tom Jones

Posted on June 5, 2019 by JMN

James Thomas “Tom” Jones (1920 — 2000) (c) 2019 JMN

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More Jesus for Me

Posted on June 4, 2019 by JMN
colbert

Colbert at the White House in 2007 before the taping of a press-conference skit for “The Colbert Report.” Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images.

Reading this interview with Stephen Colbert gave my day a good start.

… I work very hard not to proselytize. I would never want anybody to think I was trying to convince them of my point of view. Because, hey, more Jesus for me.

If I’m enjoying a meeting I’m having with someone, I interrupt them constantly. If I’m bored by the meeting, I look like I’m very attentive… My mind is something of a squirrel cage. I scramble all over the place… Oh, I also cry easily.

The behavior I’m exhibiting fits my genre [comedy], which is not supposed to have respectability. There’s a reason it’s not a central part of polite society. But there’s supposed to be a polite society out there! It’s not my fault there isn’t one anymore.
(David Marchese, “Stephen Colbert on the political targets of satire,” NYTimes, 5-31-19)

(c) 2019 JMN

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Language As Landscape

Posted on June 4, 2019 by JMN

Adverbs Ahead

“Deadwood” (HBO, 2004-2006) created by David Milch, repelled and astounded me when I caught it adventitiously in re-run several years ago. I couldn’t look away from it as I kept thinking, “What the hell is this? It’s amazing!” I told someone it was as if Shakespeare were cussing obscenely, women would say modestly, “I’m just a whore,” and Ian McShane regularly pissed in a pot before all and sundry. I was let down when it ended abruptly after three seasons.

In his review of the new “Deadwood” movie, James Poniewozik does what I like for a good critic to do: He corroborates an enthusiasm of mine, and states better than I could have done precisely why I liked the thing so much.

… “Deadwood” did not modernize its old-movie types. Just the opposite: Milch created idiosyncratic, quasi-Shakespearean dialogue (and monologues) that combined the diction of a print culture with the dirty funk of the frontier. It was productively alienating — subtitles help — in a way that imagined a world: language as landscape.
(James Poniewozik, “In One Last ‘Deadwood,’ the Future Prevails and the Past Endures,” NYTimes, 5-29-19)

(c) 2019 JMN

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More Wit, Less Affirmation!

Posted on June 4, 2019 by JMN
aphorism

Illustration by Linda Huang; Photograph by Ophelia, via Getty Images.

Jessa Crispin cites two writers to illustrate the distinction she draws between aphorism and affirmation.

Aphorism: “He who fears death will never do anything worthy of a man who is alive.” (Seneca)

Affirmation: “I do not need the kind of love / that is draining, / I want someone / who energizes me.” (Rupi Kaur)

Poetry already has much in common with the aphorism, using structure, rhythm and metaphor to say something essential in a deceptively simple way. But somewhere along that road with the Instapoets, aphorism got confused with affirmation — those things you tape onto your mirror to remind yourself not to text your ex. The purpose of the aphorism is to bring unexpected perspective. The affirmation… only reinforces what we think we already know.

Crispin also plugs humor and brevity as useful tools.

With our highly divided attention, it is perhaps only humor that can provide us with a moment to pause and reflect… You know what they say: “If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.”

(Jessa Crispin, “Why Isn’t Instagram More Witty?” NYTimes, 6-1-19)

(c) 2019 JMN

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Poetry for the Kitchen Slops Bucket

Posted on June 4, 2019 by JMN
letitia

Leigh Guldig.

Lucasta Miller is the author of “L.E.L.: The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated ‘Female Byron.’” Landon’s “scandalous” death occurred at her own hand with prussic acid at age 36.

Even today, Letitia Landon provokes a virulently gendered response, as I have discovered after publishing a biography of her. One male critic wrote that I should have left her in the “kitchen slops bucket” of literary history. A female critic in the Italian press, on the contrary, thought Landon ought to be taught in schools.
(Lucasta Miller, “The Cautionary Tale of the ‘Female Byron,’” NYTimes, 6-1-19)

I don’t know the full context of the male critic’s remark; however, it seems unsuitably poisonous even in a dismissive appraisal of an artist’s work. There may be something other than strict weighing of poetic merit in play. Did Lucasta Miller flaunt feminist rhetoric in her narrative of Letitia Landon’s life?

To be fair, there might be perceived gender taint in the judgment of the Italian female critic who wants Landon taught in schools. Her language, however, doesn’t appear as fulsome as the male critic’s is feculent. Doubts flap in the wind absent a firsthand reading of the texts.

(c) 2019 JMN

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Guide by the Perplexed — No Money Shot

Posted on June 3, 2019 by JMN
gris guitar

Juan Gris, “Guitare sur une table,” from 1916, at Helly Nahmad. Credit via Helly Nahmad Gallery.

An old advertising tag-line for an investment firm was voiced by the British-American actor John Houseman: “We make music the old fashioned way; we earn it.” Houseman, of course, said “money,” not “music.”

In my effort to show with strong, plain words how I want to earn music, an inconvenient analogy has surfaced. There is something called PornHub. I’m going to imagine its analog as “MusicHub.”

On MusicHub, the dude pulls some sweet riffs and licks from his Fender. Then he tells how you can make those sounds, too, especially if you subscribe. The orientation is positional and result-minded; a tad exhibitionistic. Do this, do that, until “Sweet Home Alabama” happens.

Let’s be glib: PornHub is sexual but not sensual; MusicHub is digital but not musical. I want note awareness and the architecture of song before release. I want to explore a nuanced relationship with the instrument — slow, not fast; soft, not loud; tender, not dominating; intuitive and expressive, not wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am.

But, you say, “I merely want to learn several chords and strum some accompaniment. Maybe hammer out a few bars of ‘Smoke on the Water.’ I’m not looking for a committed relationship with a guitar.” Well, yes, there is that too, I concede. MusicHub does have its uses if your needs are basic and your standards are modest.

The way of perplexity is the long way around. It hinges on a dawning awareness that there’s no quick fix for musical longing. This isn’t self-help pablum; if anything it’s self-hindrance apologia, though the shame of nakedly hitching my wagon to difficulty and not gratification shines through.

There you have it. It’s time to get back down to brass tacks — coming next.

(c) 2019 JMN

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Francophilia

Posted on June 1, 2019 by JMN
notre dame

Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris at sunrise on April 17, two days after it was badly damaged by fire. Credit Dan Kitwood/Getty Images.

Where I live I have not encountered in recent memory an American who knows, or wants to know, French. Roger Cohen’s encomium to the language and culture is touching. It’s poignant to share French love with another outsider.

To be a Francophile is a life sentence… a slightly illicit gift of ever-renewed pleasures… Paris has been important to me… It’s where I began to see that writing is not a choice but a need…
Style, as Flaubert observed, is “the discharge from a deeper wound.” … Paris reassures me. It is a repository of our fantasies, a redoubt of hope, a source of courage.
(Roger Cohen, “The Lessons of Paris and the Violence of Hope,” NYTimes, 5-31-19)

(c) 2019 JMN

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Second Take

Posted on June 1, 2019 by JMN
art critic schjeldahl

The art critic Peter Schjeldahl. Credit Gilbert King.

Learning something about a picture — how it’s made or its origin, for example — can trigger or enhance appreciation. I wonder if an artist really wants that? Wouldn’t he or she prefer that the work commune directly and totally with the viewer? (Poets do, I think.)

Art critics make a living telling people what they (the critics) think and feel about art works. Although they’re not necessarily prescribing how viewers should react, critics qualify as influencers if they’re good at what they do.

What does being good at criticism entail? The looking is important, of course, but a large part of the knack is in the writing. Charles Finch (a novelist and critic) bestows the crown of “artist” on Schjeldahl’s output straightaway in his review.

Peter Schjeldahl is a great artist… Is criticism an art? It’s a valid, exhausting question. Criticism follows other people’s work; then again, so does all human invention. What lab-pure operant-conditioning chamber do we imagine “real” artists spring from?
(Charles Finch, “The Penetrating Gaze of One of America’s Most Brilliant Art Critics,” NYTimes, 5-24-19)

Weakness for a glib turn of phrase makes me vulnerable to critical rape. Something Roberta or Peter (or Charles) has written may have me looking anew at a painting, searching for what she or he saw, before realizing I’ve been molested.

When I was a professional student (irony noted), I would bridle internally when literature professors called me to account for the critical theory surrounding a particular school or period — the secondary writings. Wait! I would think. Let me have my unfiltered moment with the primary writings first!

(Flashback: The most awkward moment during my dissertation defense was when Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce asked me had I read so-and-so’s book on the subject. My reply in the negative felt lame. Excuse me, I was busy with the subject! I harrumphed silently).

(c) 2019 JMN

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Pursuant There Two

Posted on June 1, 2019 by JMN

hyena

The threads of spirituality and of blogging are starting to intersect for me.

The bedrock of my spirituality is the intuitive knowledge (not faith) that what made me made every virus. If I were assisted by something religious it would be the sixth commandment and the golden rule. In the latter, “others” would include rocks.

The bedrock of my bloggery is “… if you orient your life around attention, you will always feel slighted. You will always feel emotionally unsafe.”
(David Brooks, “When Trolls and Crybullies Rule the Earth,” NYTimes, 5-30-19)

Everything flows from these knowledges. How do they intersect? Well, they’re both bedrock. What made bedrock made me.

(c) 2019 JMN

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Cricket Talk

Posted on June 1, 2019 by JMN
viv richards

Vivian Richards takes part in the festivities on the Mall in central London. Photograph: Charlie Crowhurst/IDI via Getty Images.

[Paraphrase] The bowlers were boys from the groundstaff. One had the temerity to bowl a beamer at Viv Richards. Viv shot the kid an icy glare. The kid bowled him an apologetic delivery. Richards creamed it for four into the tree at cover point.

(Andy Bull, “Sodden World Cup opening ceremony puts anticipation in deep freeze,” The Guardian, 5-29-19)

This account creamed it for me.

(c) 2019 JMN

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