Art in the city

I've just returned from a stay in New York City with my Yale Divinity group. Many of things we did were special--a private talk with Ed Baynard about "Re-emerging," the current show at Sara Tecchia Gallery, a visit to Makoto Fujimura's home and studio, listening to Hank Jones on piano and Joe Levano on saxophone at Lincoln Center, etc.--and I'll write about some of them over the next few days. The talk with Ed Baynard was, I suppose, the most unusual, as Mako says that he simply does not discuss his pictures. It seems a tribute to Makoto Fujimura the person and painter that Baynard was willing to do so. I won't repeat what Ed Baynard said about the pictures, as I believe that to be "in confidence," but I'll have some things to say about the experience.
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The photograph of Grand Central Station and the Chrysler Building is by Gabor Erdos of Veszprém, Hungary. It is a royalty free picture from www.sxc.hu.

Dear Mr. Keillor,

I rather like you, and don't have any mean thoughts about you, the way some people do. You are a nice man and can talk about important things to people who might not think so often about them without you. You are well-known in the world, and I am not. To boot, one of my children adores Guy Noir with a great adoration, and so I often hear your voice, telling stories, introducing songs. But I just don't get Writer's Almanac a lot of the time. I'm saying this despite the fact that an e-pal of mine recently had a poem chosen for inclusion. I congratulate him, though I am still bemused.

Recently I mentioned that someone wondered if we had lost the ability to tell a joke from a poem. This was after he had heard a poem on Writer's Almanac. It was not a funny poem. It was not light verse.

This morning he said that he wondered if we had lost the ability to tell an anecdote from a poem. So I looked up today's poem on the NPR site. I'll link to a chance to purchase the book. This is the fairest kind of a deal for today's poet, I think, because no doubt there are masses of people out there who will be amused and not bemused, as I am bemused. NPR informs us that it is TUESDAY, 25 APRIL, 2006. They give us the chance to Listen. They tell us How to listen. And here we can buy the book containing today's poem: "A Girl in Milwaukee and a Girl in Brooklyn" from Eavesdrop Soup. © Manic D Press (buy now)

Here it is without those all-important line breaks:

A Girl in Milwaukee and a Girl in Brooklyn
My wife is talking on the phone in Milwaukee To her girlfriend in Brooklyn. But, in the middle of all that, my wife has to go pee.And it turns out that the girl in Brooklyn,At the very same time, also has to go pee.So they discuss this for a moment,And they're both very intelligent people.They decide to set their phones down and go to the bathroom(This was back when people set their phones down).So they do this, and now we have a live telephone line openBetween Milwaukee and BrooklynWith no one speaking through it for about two minutes asA girl in Milwaukee and a girl in Brooklyn go to the bathroom.

And here it is with line breaks:

A Girl in Milwaukee and a Girl in Brooklyn

My wife is talking on the phone in Milwaukee
To her girlfriend in Brooklyn.
But, in the middle of all that, my wife has to go pee.
And it turns out that the girl in Brooklyn,
At the very same time, also has to go pee.
So they discuss this for a moment,
And they're both very intelligent people.
They decide to set their phones down and go to the bathroom
(This was back when people set their phones down).
So they do this, and now we have a live telephone line open
Between Milwaukee and Brooklyn
With no one speaking through it for about two minutes as
A girl in Milwaukee and a girl in Brooklyn go to the bathroom.

I look at this poem without line breaks. I look at the poem with line breaks. Somehow I am wholly unable to find a poem in either version. This is a grief to me. It is probably even more a grief to me than it would be to the author, because somehow it feels to me like the end of the world.

Mr. Keillor, this may be a greater grief to me than seems warranted by one small passage called a poem, by a person who is naturally pleased to be given national and even international airspace. Somewhere in Nepal, somebody heard that poem and learned about American poetry. Somewhere in China, somewhere in Iraq. Astonishing, really: the power of the human voice, wafting through the air.

But could this poem possibly be about less than it is?

Could it matter less?

Could it be tasteless in a sillier way?

Could it be more devoid of music?

Is this what poetry has come to--an anecdote devoid of all the beauty and truth of poetry, a poem that does not dare to sit at the same table with a lyric like "The Song of Wandering Aengus"?

I wish that you would write me and explain. I wish that somebody would write to me and explain. Because I simply do not understand, and I feel faint with despair of ever, ever understanding.

*******
The notebook pages showing women and children at Borders bookstore were sketched by Laura of Laurelines. That makes three of her pictures in a row. Thank you to Ms. Frankstone! Interesting that not one blessed book is in sight...
http://laurelines.typepad.com/my_weblog/.
Creative Commons License.

In the Valley of Lilies

1.
The redbuds at their frothy, ecstatic peak along Hwy 81 in Virginia.

2.
The Cullowhee community chorus singing Down by the Salley Gardens, one of my favorite songs in the whole world—I adore Yeats, flat-out adore his poems and give not a hoot for any talk of his silliness. His gift most definitely survivied it all.

3.
The tropical fish and live coral tanks at the Aquarium of the Smokies in Tennessee. My youngest child's face, watching the sharks and sawfish slide by overhead.

4.
The Altamaha azalea by the house, with its pink bouquets held above the blue of creeping phlox and the yellow ulularia and the thousand shades of leaf and stem.

5.
An Easter egg hunt in my mother’s wildflower garden.

6.
Green leaves of ramps on the slope, with a wild turkey rambling by.

7.
A long wavering blue ridge in the Shenandoah Valley, with a series of clouds tipped over the top and drifting downward like dream glaciers, a long bar of cloud dividing the ridge halfway down—all that above emerald and yellow fields of blooming mustard.

8.
My mother’s grand cooking, particularly that astonishing raspberry and white chocolate cake for my husband’s birthday. Also, deep South things that are a little rare even in North Carolina: green peanuts, okra, black eyes.

9.
Paging through the Lovedahl family pictures at a wake—and seeing the old mountain images gone sepia, standing in frames among the arrangements of flowers.

10.
Faces from childhood, faces of others who have helped me and mine through the hard times that come to all.

I’m back after nine days away in Cullowhee, North Carolina, the valley of lilies. And already counting up what I’ve lost, what I miss...

Andy just came by with a bottle of wine and a chocolate rabbit—and says that it will snow on Wednesday.

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The redbud is from Laurelines,
http://laurelines.typepad.com/my_weblog/.
Creative Commons License.

The Bamboo Palace

Tolly went to sleep, but for some reason he woke very early, when it was just beginning to get light, too soon for any bird but the thrush to be awake. He looked out of the window and saw the garden dim and far below, with wisps of mist caught in the bushes. When the thrush was silent, there was not a sound in the world. The garden was waiting to be brought to life. He dressed and slipped quietly downstairs and out, feeling inclined in the half-light to keep near cover, to move carefully and look and listen like a wild animal. He didn't know if he was play-acting or not, the dawn was so hushed and hushing. The bamboo hedge and willow thickets seemed to be the places of most attraction. Bamboo is jungle-like, beautiful, light and swaying (though not swaying at all now, but still as in a trance). No one can see what is hiding in it, and any bird that is startled there makes a loud rattle of canes and stiff leaves as it breaks out. Tolly crept along, watching the ground because a fallen cane in the rough bumpy grass could easily trip him up. He heard a startling, rushing noise close behind him, and two swans passed low overhead, the sound of their flight, once they had gone by, continuing far up the river, and in the water underneath them their refelctions flew upside down. After that the world began to tick, faint tuts and chucks, and little flutters and cracklings, as the birds woke up, talked in their sleep, stretched their wings, scratched their ears, and shifted their positions. And all the insects did the same. Even the leaves had a look of waking up, lifting themselves a little toward the sky as it got bluer. The thrush was singing quietly now from the knob on the point of the gable, and a robin close to Tolly's ear was just trying under his breath to see if he was in voice, when a moor hen shot out from under the bamboo calling in a panic to her chicks to come away from danger. Several bobbin-sized babies ran after her...

--from L. M. Boston, Treasure of Green Knowe

The nesting cardinal is from Laurelines,
http://laurelines.typepad.com/my_weblog/.
Creative Commons License.