tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-85514124645325786412024-03-27T00:10:42.157-07:00Topics and EventsDiscussions of topics related to literature and the arts. A travel and autobiographical journal, mentioning people and places the author encounters.Alfred Cornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08736273490999559749noreply@blogger.comBlogger25125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8551412464532578641.post-85111620829235568702013-12-06T03:57:00.001-08:002013-12-06T03:57:49.776-08:00Spitalfields, Yesterday and Today<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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London is a second home to me, engraved in consciousness as much as New York and Paris are. I’ve been moving between the three points of that triangle a good part of my adult life. So here I am again, a projected stay of nearly four months, and happy with the prospect. At present I’m staying with my friend the poet Mimi Khalvati, which makes being here especially homelike. She has a pretty dwelling in Stoke Newington, Hackney, the rooms filled with mementos from Iran, which she left at age six when she came to England. Her first professional career was as an actor in theatre, but in mid-life she charted a different course and eventually became one of Britain’s leading poets. We first met in 2005 and is now one of my closest friends here.<br /><br />I had errands to do around Liverpool Street Station yesterday and once they were done decided to walk over to Spitalfields, quite close by. I first got to know the district in 1986, when I was staying in London on a Guggenheim fellowship. What led me to seek it out was the Peter Ackroyd novel <i>Hawksmoor!</i>, a fictional treatment of the life of the 18th-century neoclassical architect Nicholas Hawksmoor. Christ Church, Spitalfields, one of his best designs, is a dominant neighborhood landmark, along with the old Spitalfields Market. Spitalfields also made a quantum leap in notoriety when Jack the Ripper (with the help of a knife) claimed it as his turf during the shadowy era of “the other Victorians.” <br /><br />Back in 1986, a mutual friend effected an introduction to an American named Dennis Severs, who had lived in London for nearly two decades, one of the pioneers celebrated for reclaiming the Spitalfields environ from the dereliction it had fallen into. Dennis loved London as few people have ever done and had a fantastically detailed knowledge of the city, since he had begun working as a tour guide shortly after he first arrived. Eventually, he bought a house at 18 Folgate Street and filled it with old furniture and décor gathered from hither and yon. A year or so before I met him, he’d developed a sort of theatrical presentation, using the four floors of the house as his set. He invented a narrative about an émigré Huguenot family come to London after Louis XIV’s Edict of Nantes expelled all Protestants from France. The Huguenots who settled in Spitalfields were silk weavers and, in time, became prosperous Londoners. Dennis’s narrative took the family through several generations, each floor embodying the evolution in their fortunes, while incidentally summarizing concurrent changes in British society and politics. Recorded texts, changes in lighting and even a few kinetic effects helped move the narrative along. (I didn’t forbear back then to mention to Dennis that there were a few mistakes in his recounting of history, but he shrugged that off and reminded me that theatre is fiction.) Somewhat incongruously, the top floor was a sort of résumé of Dickens <i>A Christmas Carol</i>. But that popular codicil assured the success of Dennis’s nightly show, and certainly it was in accord with the atmosphere of old Spitalfields. Less than ten years after I met him, Dennis died of causes related to HIV infection. I assumed that his house would be dismantled and sold, but, during my walk around Spitalfields, I came to 18 Folgate, and saw twin Christmas trees outside the door and a notice in the window, giving times when the house could be visited. So in one form or another, his work remains with us. I’ll try to come back and see what is currently being shown there. The old door-knocker in the shape of a sphinx's head still exerts a pull. Let me also mention that Dennis appears in a long poem of mine titled “Eleven Londons,” which was recently published in <i>The Battersea Review</i>. Here’s the online link if anyone is curious.<br /><br />http://thebatterseareview.com/poems/146-alfred-corn<br /><br />There are also a couple of Spitalfields scenes in my 1997 novel <i>Part of His Story</i>, which is also set in London and has a past/present structure that might remind some readers of Dennis’s theatrical piece. To state the obvious, writers draw on hundreds of sources when composing any new work. <br /><br />Continuing the Spitalfields stroll, I peeped in at Verde & Company, a tea-shop on the ground floor at the corner of Brushfield and Gun Streets. The building is one of the “period” structures that still remain, and at some point it was bought by Jeanette Winterson, who founded the shop. It has a green awning from which depend a dozen baskets in different shapes. Small tables inside accommodate a few clients who can enjoy an hour of conversation over tea and pastry. The effect of quaintness is strong--a quality that used to be common in London but has now become pretty scarce. Needless to say, Spitalfields has been invaded by large modern structures in steel and glass. The old iron market is surrounded by designer boutiques, but at least the central part, open to the air, is the site of a daily Marché aux Puces, London-style, with all sorts of tat, vintage finery, collectibles, and crockery on offer. <br /><br />Close by, the imposing edifice of Christ Church, which hasn’t changed. In Spitalfields you find the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present. Looking at all the recent Modernist architecture and smart shops that have sprung up, you also see the Future. Up to you to choose which you prefer. For me the Present will do, even if it isn’t yet a Christmas Present. </div>
Alfred Cornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08736273490999559749noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8551412464532578641.post-54389003303177456672013-12-01T15:50:00.000-08:002013-12-01T16:30:29.355-08:00Death of a Naturalist<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Like so many others, I was saddened to hear of Heaney’s death this past summer. I knew that Heaney had recovered from a serious stroke a couple of years earlier, and indeed he looked thinner and rather more fragile than the young man I first met back in, I believe, early spring of 1978. The occasion was a reading he gave at Yale. He wasn’t well known in the States then. Probably less than forty people made up the audience. Heaney read several sonnets from the “Glanmore” sequence, one of his loveliest. Then, in view of the fact that no one had arranged a post-reading reception, it seemed natural and cordial for the Resident Fellow to invite him and some of the audience to have a drink at Silliman College. I recall shaking the hand of this vigorous, hesitant man with prematurely gray hair nearly down to his shoulders, wearing jeans and a plaid cotton shirt. He had trouble meeting my eyes, and I don’t think he was fully comfortable in those surroundings—but then who could blame him at that stage of the game? <br />
The next meeting came perhaps five or six years later, when I was living in New York. He had given a reading at the 92nd Street YMHA, at the invitation of Grace Schulman, who was the director of the Poetry Center. Grace had people to her place down in Greenwich Village after the event. By now Heaney was a famous poet, confident, relaxed, wearing a suit, and surrounded by admirers. With him was his wife Marie, who I think was glad to have someone to talk to while fans monopolized her husband. I found Marie unaffectedly down to earth, patriotic about her origins in the North of Ireland, with a sharp eye and wit, not to mention being lovely to look at. I forget the stimulus for it, but at some point Heaney was led to recite one of Wyatt’s best known poems, “Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind.” It was in that era that the current revival of interest in Wyatt began—and may that revival endure. I knew by then that it was a near certainty Heaney would one day be tapped for the Nobel. There was no mistaking his ability and the aptness of awarding the prize to a poet from Northern Ireland. And perhaps it was just such a certainty that convinced me to make no attempt to stay in touch in the years after. Besides, sincere admiration isn’t by itself a basis for a long-lasting association. I could always meet him on the page, and that was the main thing. News of his personal life came to me from people we knew in common, and (strange thing among poets) I never heard any reports of nastiness or arrogance where Heaney was concerned. He was admired as poet and as human being. <br />
In my book <i>Atlas: Selected Essays, 1989-2007</i>, his work is discussed at some length. After the piece was commissioned and published, he went on to publish several more books, so needless to say my essay doesn’t cover his career; but I think it remains a useful starting point. There is always much to say about Heaney's poems. A sequence titled “Clearances” (from <i>The Haw Lantern</i>) gives a moving portrayal of his mother and recounts her death; and “Squarings,” from the next book, which does much the same for his father. Of course an elegy eulogizes the deceased, but it is also a dry run for the elegist’s own eventual departing this life. Both sequences have that aspect. In <i>The</i> <i>Human Chain</i>, his most recent book, Heaney moved a step closer to confrontation with mortality in a brief sequence titled “Chanson d’Aventure”, which describes being driven in an ambulance to a distant hospital. Directly after this, the book’s title poem describes the manual labor of heaving sacks of meal onto a trailer, an action Heaney turns into a metaphor for the final unloading of our mortal coil. He realizes he would no longer have the strength to do such heavy work, labor characterized in the poem as, “A letting go which will not come again./Or it will, once. And for all.” <br />
To state the obvious, Heaney was preparing himself. And it may be that in advance of this final admission to hospital, he already knew what his last words were going to be. Isolated from Marie in an emergency bay, he text-messaged to her the Latin phrase “Noli timere”, that is, “Fear not”. He was sending a variant on Jesus’ words to Mary Magdalene, spoken in the garden on the Sunday of the Resurrection: “Noli me tangere”. This is usually translated as, “Do not touch me”, but a rather more accurate translation would be, “Do not hold on to me”. What’s being recommended in the gospel account is a letting go. Heaney would agree with the instruction, I think, (the phrase is included in the Wyatt sonnet mentioned above), and he added his own reassurance that there is no need to be fearful. The death of a naturalist is indeed natural, part of the human cycle and also part of the “human chain.” The “natural man” has been put off and is now replaced by his writings, which continue to excite, instruct, and reassure his readers. The letting go has now taken place. It is once, and it is “for all”. All of us. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Attending the funeral, Bono and Alison Hewison</td></tr>
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Alfred Cornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08736273490999559749noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8551412464532578641.post-19162196436198855702012-04-27T06:52:00.001-07:002012-05-03T10:40:16.760-07:00London, Trieste, Duino<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Arch of Riccardo, Trieste</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Duino Castle, seen from the east</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Entrance to Duino Castle</td></tr>
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The second week of April, I left Cambridge and made a journey down to Trieste, in the extreme northeastern corner of Italy. It’s in the region known as Friuli-Venezia Giulia, just south of Slovenia and northwest of Croatia. Trieste was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the end of the First World War, a history that makes it noticeably different from other Italian cities, but also one that establishes a link with several large Hapsburg capitals elsewhere. There is a family resemblance between Vienna, Prague, Budapest and Trieste, seen primarily in the large scale of the public buildings, especially those flanking Piazza dell’Unitá, the main square. In more residential areas, houses and large common dwellings are often stuccoed and painted light colors—ochre, terracotta, tan, and what I call Maria Theresa yellow, the color used for Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna and many other parts of Maria Theresa’s empire. <br />
My hotel was in the old medieval quarter not far from Piazza Unitá, a place of narrow twisting streets that gradually climb up to the Cattedrale di San Giusto, which overlooks Trieste. This neighborhood was until recently a slum but has been renovated, at least partly. My first walk took me up toward the Cathedral, past a Roman arch known as the “Arco di Riccardo,” to which a later building was attached as if by super-glue. (The Roman name for the ancient city was Tergestum.) Farther on, I reached the excavated Roman theatre, which sits there unperturbed a few yards from one of the city’s modern thoroughfares. You’d have no trouble imagining plays by Terence or Plautus being staged there. More like reverie than experience (and still more in retrospect) to stand there in the sprinkling rain and gaze at those wet stones.<br />
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Next morning cleared, and I took a bus out to the little town of Duino, roughly ten miles southwest of Trieste. This was a local, not express bus, one that went up into the hills above the city, in the region known as the Karst (Italian, <i>Il Carso</i>), a vast stretch of limestone wilderness, where trees never grow tall, and farming is as hardscrabble as it gets. But little hamlets appear along the way, with semi-rural Italian life going on as one might expect. Eventually, the road moves back toward the coast and you arrive at the town of Duino. The Castle sits on a promontory, a little limestone spur of the Karst that thrusts out into the Bay of Duino in the Adriatic, about three hundred feet above the water.This is one of the castles belonging to the Czech branch of the Thurn und Taxis family. A little more than a hundred years ago, Rilke became acquainted with Marie von Thurn und Taxis-Hohenlohe (her birth name is usually appended to the title). She was his hostess at the Castle and elsewhere, for which reason his <i>Duino Elegies</i> mention her as his patroness. At some point I will have to write an introduction to my translation of the <i>Elegies</i>, and I was certain that seeing Duino Castle would give me some useful details for that. <br />
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The picture above shows the entrance. I decided to wander a bit in the park before going inside. To the right of the castle, there’s a small rectangular pool with central statuary—cherubs at play around a single spout of water. Down from this, stone steps take you to a less formal part, and I could see winding paths under shade trees that probably go all the way down to the water. But the public isn’t admitted there. Box hedges, an early lilac, birds clattering in the trees. On the stone balustrade, at each landing, sculpted urns held limestone fruit in the familiar way. Back up to the path to the “Belvedere,” my feet crunching on little pebbles. You’re soon on the side of the Castle that fronts the sea, where you find a small terrace with stone balustrade. Absolutely rapturous vistas out onto the Bay of Duino; and to the west, the Rocca, where ruins of the older castle stand—a few walls and arches, nothing more. Cypresses and other trees thickly planted. Water a color somewhere between jade and bottle glass. Greyish-white cliffs, the last outpost of the Karst. A stone table is protected from visitors by a chain and four steel poles, with a sign saying that the <i>Duino</i> <i>Elegies</i> were written here. But if I’m not mistaken the first inspiration came when RMR was walking down below, close to the water, on a day in late January 1912. The <i>bora</i> (north wind) was blowing fiercely in his ears and the opening question of the sequence suddenly came to him. I went over the opening in my mind, in German and in English, trying to change the noonday of April 12, 2012, into a lasting personal memory. Above the terrace was the newer part of the Castle, finished in stucco and painted, again, in Maria Theresa yellow. <br />
I came into the Castle courtyard, paved in irregularly shaped stones, and then went up a few steps to enter the public rooms. First, the dining room, which had a table set up as though dinner would in a few moments be served there. The Torre e Tasso (Italian form of the family name) armorial china, Venetian glasses, two bulky silver candelabras, the table backed by a painted screen, with pictures of the obligatory parrot on it. The ceiling and walls had ornamental plaster, white against lemon yellow, the familiar rococo scagliola patterns. Savonnerie carpet, seventeenth-c. Dutch still lifes at the center of the wall panels, their black backgrounds somewhat at odds with this light and airy room. On from there to the <i>Salotto Verde</i>, furnished much as you’d expect, with ancestral portraits on the walls, little glass-fronted cabinets holding fans and <i>objets de virtú</i>. And then the <i>Salotto Impero</i>, where it’s believed Emperor Leopold of Austria signed over the Castle to the Thurn und Taxis family. Walls painted a red-clay color, with more portraits and vitrines containing family memorabilia. On to the bedroom of the Principessa, modest enough with its single bed sans canopy. But lovely views out to to the sea and sunlight. This connected to an enfilade, the first side room being a handsome library, not to be entered, but allowing you to see the shelves and their morocco-bound contents, plus a few volumes out for display. These included Marie von T. and T.’s children’s book, <i>The Tea Party of Mrs. Moon</i>, for which RMR provided, at her request, a tepid comment. (He had his integrity: In one instance he refused a prestigious prize, attached to money, offered by the Austrian government.) Several other rooms along the way, all containing rare old instruments the family collected. Further memorabilia, for example, a telegram from Eleonora Duse, with only the words “Duino! Duino! Duino!” The envelope of a letter addressed by RMR to the Principessa Marie. A photocopy of the first page of the First Elegy in RMR’s handwriting. Several photographs of the poet that Princess Marie called “Il Serafico,” referring obviously to RMR’s angels. You climb up to the next levels in the dwelling by means of an elliptical spiral staircase, the stone steps jutting out without any support except the cantilver of their attachment in the wall. A wrought iron balustrade protected mounters from falling, and as they climbed their hand would rest on a rail covered in red velvet, with intermittent brass finials at each turning. Looking up or down, you get the chambered-nautilus effect of the winding stair as it moves through several levels. Not bad for the country seat of provincial nobles who weren’t all that rich. To complete my tour I climbed the family’s eponymous tower, an old square structure entered through the courtyard. The view of the Adriatic, the town, and the Karst hills northward is indescribable so I won’t make an attempt.<br />
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Seeing Duino was the main purpose of the visit, but there was also Trieste itself that deserved exploration. In the following days, I found notable sites for James Joyce, for Italo Svevo, and for Umberto Saba, all writers associated with the city. Joyce’s brief prose work <i>Giacomo Joyce</i> is set in Trieste, the only work of his to use a non-Dublin setting. But the city is essential and pervasive in the work of Saba and Svevo, and the latter was Joyce’s closest friend during his Trieste years. I’m sure there’s a PhD. thesis there if it hasn’t already been done. <br />
As a coda, I will mention visiting the tomb of J.J. Winckelmann, erected in the lapidary garden adjoining the city’s antiquities museum. A German by birth, Winckelmann became one of the most prominent classical scholars of his era, a pioneer in the study of Greek sculpture. His classical education was furthered by long residence in Italy, where he could study original manuscripts and works of art. Not coincidentally he took a classical view of homosexuality, based on Greek and Roman texts and his own orientation. That was one factor that must have prompted the essay Pater wrote about him in <i>The Renaissance</i>. He died in Trieste in 1833, and his monument has been a local attraction since that time. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD9cQgpz0MTm-7w2n95_mFfjkfR2Ywdvbg0VEUVtZ0KFV8nAJl_w-0u1T_7COFSFmSD7HRKjkCGa3Y0OAQmxpif6sko_GyrwDVcd47t2mjZe8iSKa7iX8j2IExmw3wF10aT0z52y9raGMr/s1600/220px-Rainer_Maria_Rilke,_1900.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD9cQgpz0MTm-7w2n95_mFfjkfR2Ywdvbg0VEUVtZ0KFV8nAJl_w-0u1T_7COFSFmSD7HRKjkCGa3Y0OAQmxpif6sko_GyrwDVcd47t2mjZe8iSKa7iX8j2IExmw3wF10aT0z52y9raGMr/s200/220px-Rainer_Maria_Rilke,_1900.jpg" width="125" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rainer Maria Rilke</td></tr>
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<br /></div>Alfred Cornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08736273490999559749noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8551412464532578641.post-25524656499185354792012-04-10T15:23:00.000-07:002012-04-10T15:23:16.209-07:00Cambridge, London, Grantchester<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM0_IWuveyoaTIAfZl4YUk5zM67J4CjmC4WSpXawh0bFj_O6JNV1OvY0yylAvY2A5o6kQFrJATGlurZO2JRhctUHPaU1je4RTryZ_Qql38eIPFAHUcPRJDj-8F8NvDwgSw6mwbRGLWydTT/s1600/IMG_1292.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM0_IWuveyoaTIAfZl4YUk5zM67J4CjmC4WSpXawh0bFj_O6JNV1OvY0yylAvY2A5o6kQFrJATGlurZO2JRhctUHPaU1je4RTryZ_Qql38eIPFAHUcPRJDj-8F8NvDwgSw6mwbRGLWydTT/s200/IMG_1292.JPG" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Clock tower, Trinity College</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Since last writing I’ve continued with the Rilke translation project and have drafts of four of the elegies now. Of course the final version will have to wait until I’ve done the whole series, after which I’ll go through all of the Elegies again, to make adjustments. Translation is not easy. However, don’t assume I never leave my study. I do, either for events in Cambridge or to go to London. Most recently I went down to participate in the launch of issue 26 of <i>The Wolf</i> magazine, which has a poem of mine in it. I went into town early and caught the matinee of the National Theatre’s new production of Goldsmith’s <i>She Stoops to Conquer</i>, which I’d never seen staged. Some of the acting was too broad or sit-comish, but there was plenty to like in the piece. <br />
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The launch was held at The Poetry Place in Covent Garden, with James Byrne hosting the evening. The readers were, in order, Sophie Meyer, Michael McKim, Helen Moore, Ruth Padel, Giles Goodland, and myself. Lots of people came and there were some excellent readings. I always enjoy performing for The Wolf because the audience is so expert, you don’t have to do a lot of explaining. It happened that Marilyn Hacker was in town that day to judge a prize, so she came to the event and then joined us after for dinner. It had been a while since we’d seen each other, so there was a good bit of catching up to do. She is prospering, making plans to go to Turkey with a group of American poets and then to Tripoli for the first Libyan international literature festival, organized by Khaled Mattawa. <br />
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To continue the international theme, I will mention that I’ve become acquainted with a poet from China named Iok Foung Lin. She is a Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall this year and in fact is my next-door neighbor. Iok Foung is from Macau, a city with an interesting history and, like Hong Kong, was recently placed under the Chinese sovereignty. She has published three books of poems, and is working on a history project while at Clare Hall. We’ve had some good conversations about our respective nationalities, and I was reminded again how much easier it is for poets from different countries to be friendly than for the countries themselves.<br />
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Another Visiting Fellow I’ve spent time with is Thomas Glave, a fiction-writer and essayist who teaches at SUNY Binghamton. After having several conversations in the dining hall over the past month, we made a plan to walk to Grantchester, a village about five miles south of Cambridge. Cambridge has had glorious spring weather here this year, with daffodils, cherry blossom, and all sorts of flowering shrubs. So the walk across Grantchester Meadows, with the slow-moving Granta flowing through them, was lovely. Once arrived at Grantchester, we found the Old Vicarage, where Rupert Brooke was a lodger for a couple of years. A commemorative bronze statue of him stands in front of the house, currently owned by the novelist Jeffrey Archer. Not far away is The Orchard, a place where you can have tea and, if the weather is fine as it was that day, have it outside. Exactly what we did, with a view of flowering trees and a stretch of countryside. The Orchard distributes a little brochure recounting the history of how the place came to be what it is and informs you that earlier customers have included most of the Bloomsbury set, not to mention Brooke’s “Neo-Pagan” friends. Through half-closed eyes you could look around and half imagine you’d been transported back to those days. To feed the illusion, I’ll add a few lines from Brooke’s “The Old Vicarage, Grantchester,” which was written during a fit of homesickness in a Berlin café where RB was at the time, almost exactly one hundred years ago: <br />
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<i>I only know that you may lie<br />
Day long and watch the Cambridge sky,<br />
And, flower-lulled in sleepy grass,<br />
Hear the cool lapse of hours pass,<br />
Until the centuries blend and blur<br />
In Grantchester, in Grantchester. . . </i><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0zTfvvgl6PIywuNpQhK43k9E9kqx50VC3kD2H1ytgMnEg_kVvQ-Zl2zMuRVxhz4-uQZQwhN-hpjU767Ndt8GYaw0W4WGyI7Z3axAT-en3e1DO98axTgGeuaVIgdby2dT5h0rq_00r5MlD/s1600/grantchester.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0zTfvvgl6PIywuNpQhK43k9E9kqx50VC3kD2H1ytgMnEg_kVvQ-Zl2zMuRVxhz4-uQZQwhN-hpjU767Ndt8GYaw0W4WGyI7Z3axAT-en3e1DO98axTgGeuaVIgdby2dT5h0rq_00r5MlD/s1600/grantchester.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">On the grass at the Orchard, Grantchester</td></tr>
</tbody></table><i> </i></div>Alfred Cornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08736273490999559749noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8551412464532578641.post-34255569006117214152012-03-12T18:03:00.002-07:002012-03-17T08:50:40.931-07:00Cambridge, Poetry, Translation, Transatlantic Bridge<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqQyczxg1xK9wGNXsyhGfgEsv6gYDMFGVBlthz5oZWrXs3CW1CWhWzBU3QP3B1HwvLb6jISHaSTM7FiW4_vxHVkGxsjQOArL4NmWT1qDBsXLvtuV1CPvLO6SVmJCZyJ2pF8JIv1yRcv7Oh/s1600/TB+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqQyczxg1xK9wGNXsyhGfgEsv6gYDMFGVBlthz5oZWrXs3CW1CWhWzBU3QP3B1HwvLb6jISHaSTM7FiW4_vxHVkGxsjQOArL4NmWT1qDBsXLvtuV1CPvLO6SVmJCZyJ2pF8JIv1yRcv7Oh/s200/TB+cover.jpg" width="154" /></a></div><br />
Writing here I have to overcome the feeling that I could be elsewhere, involved in something more instructive or fun. Because Cambridge offers a world of things to do—lectures open to the public, concerts, book fairs, evensong with highly trained choirs at the various college chapels, not to mention conversations with Clare Hall fellows or Faculty members of other colleges. There is also the distraction of London, less than an hour away by train. I’ve been down several times, attending events such as the Sebald Lecture on translation, given this year by Sean O’Brien. The event, held at London’s King’s Place, also featured the awarding of several translation prizes, including one that <i>Banipal</i> magazine offers for the best Arabic-to-English book of the year. The 2012 prize went to Khaled Matawa for a volume of selected poems by the Syrian-Lebanese poet Adonis, who now lives in Paris. At the reception afterwards, I spoke to Khaled briefly, both of us remarking that we hadn’t seen each other since a first meeting at the U. of Indiana Bloomington, nearly two decades ago. Since that time he has become an internationally known poet and translator. He is also the organizer of a literary festival to be held in Tripoli this spring, to which my friends James Byrne and Marilyn Hacker have been invited. (Marilyn, not incidentally, was tapped for the international Argana poetry award, granted by Morocco’s Bayt Achir, i.e., the House of Poetry, earlier this year.)<br />
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Here in Cambridge I attended last month a poetry evening organized at Corpus Christi by poet Richard Berengarten, who used to be known as Richard Burns, back in the years when he organized the Cambridge International Poetry Festival. After ten years as its director, he stood down and concentrated on his own work and has since published several distinguished volumes, my own favorite titled <i>The Blue Butterfly</i>, which is based on facts surrounding the mass murder of Serbian citizens in the Second World War. Guest poets at the Corpus evening were Anne Stevenson, Angela Leighton, and Clive Wilmer. Anne I met twenty-five years ago and then didn’t see again until last year’s TS Eliot Prize ceremony, when she chaired the judges’ panel (see the March 21, 2011 entry for this blog). Dr. Leighton is a member of the English Faculty here and is counted as one of Cambridge’s leading literary figures. Clive Wilmer has just published a collected poems with Carcanet and is currently preparing an edition of Thom Gunn’s poetry. All three poets read effectively and answered our questions afterward. <br />
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I’ve explored most of the older colleges now, seeing many impressive buildings, for example, the chapel at Pembroke, which was Wren’s first design as well his masterly library at Trinity. I also spent some time in the Pepys Library at Magdalene College, where all his books are kept, including the celebrated diaries. And visited Kettle’s Yard, the former private house of Jim and Helen Ede. Ede, for many years director of the Tate, donated his house and the artworks it contains to the town of Cambridge, and it is on every visitor’s list of things to see here. The artworks include drawings and sculptures by Gaudier-Brzeska, David Jones, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, and Ben Nicholson. The arrangement of the house itself and its furnishings also have an appeal. I’ll just sum up and say I feel perfectly settled in at Cambridge now, and consider it one of my favorite places in England. Yes, it is daunting to list the stellar names of former graduates and scholars who have passed through these gates—Erasmus, Marlowe, Milton, Newton, George Herbert, Gray, Smart, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Darwin, AE Housman, Bertand Russell, Lytton Strachey, J.M. Keynes, Wittgenstein, E.M. Forster, Jane Harrison, Crick and Watson, Thom Gunn, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, and others I haven’t mentioned. But many of those figures also reported themselves equally daunted, so one should simply accept the feeling as an integral part of the spirit of the place.<br />
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This entry began by mentioning a translation event, and this is a good point to bring in a related effort of my own. I’m not speaking of the Duino Elegies now, but instead a little ebook that I recently published as the first in a series that Thethe Poetry blog is launching. My book isn’t a poetry collection but instead an introductory study of the differences between British and American English, meant to be useful to both nationalities. Most of the pages are devoted to listing vocabulary differences and also idioms, but there are extensive sections on pronunciation, grammar, spelling, and punctuation—plus a fairly sizable offering of slang. The audience for the book? Travelers to both countries, teachers and readers of poetry and fiction from both, students of English as a Foreign Language, linguists, and actors preparing roles in the other idiom. You can read the book’s introduction on Amazon if you follow this link: (http://www.amazon.com/Transatlantic-Bridge-Concise-American-ebook/dp/B007ATF716/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331599382&sr=1-6 or, for British Amazon, http://www.amazon.co.uk/Transatlantic-Bridge-Concise-American-ebook/dp/B007ATF716/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331599537&sr=1-7) both of them marketing it as a Kindle book. But it is also available in Nook format at B&N (http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/transatlantic-bridge-alfred-corn/1108947675?ean=2940013979888&itm=1&usri=alfred+corn). Happy trails.</div>Alfred Cornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08736273490999559749noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8551412464532578641.post-53330767898589740752012-02-05T08:51:00.000-08:002012-02-05T08:51:43.220-08:00Cambridge and Clare Hall<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">King's College Chapel, from across the Cam. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>Since last writing, I've come to Britain and to Cambridge--specifically, to Cambridge's Clare Hall, where I will be a Resident Fellow until June. Clare Hall, founded in the 1960s, has a program of accepting fellows from the world over, scholars or artists who work on a special project during their residency. In my case, I'll be completing a new translation of Rilke's <i>Duineser Elegien</i>. It's a project I've contemplated a long time, never up to now finding the circumstances or occasion to begin it. The reason I didn't simply propose writing new poems or fiction is that I'm not able to guarantee in advance that I will produce new writing of my own. Sometimes a period of three or four months can pass during which I don't feel compelled to write. And I never force myself to do it if I don't feel that drive to get something down. A sufficient number of dutiful, uninspired works already exist, and there's no point in adding others.<br />
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I was met at Heathrow by James Byrne and Sandeep Parmar, who drove me directly to Cambridge. Sandeep is also a Resident Fellow at Clare Hall, doing research at the Newnham College archive for a biography of the British Modernist poet Hope Mirrlees. Last year an edition of Mirrlees's poetry that Sandeep edited was published by Carcanet, so the biography is the next logical step. Also, her first book of poems will appear in March with Shearsman publishers. James has been named the Poet in Residence at Clare Hall and meanwhile is teaching poetry workshops in London, while continuing to edit <i>The Wolf</i> and write his own poetry. Not knowing anyone else in Cambridge, I was glad that they would both be here during my residency, and in fact we see each other every week. I had been in correspondence with Professor D K Midgely of the German Faculty before arriving, and had lunch with him last month at St Johns College, where he is a Fellow. A bonus of being here is that you have the opportunity of seeing the various colleges at considerably less than the usual tourist speed. Cambridge amounts to a trove of brilliant architecture from several centuries, a sort of library of architectural styles from the 14th right up to the 21st century. Above, I've added a picture of King's College Chapel, which is the signature structure representing the University. Several of the older colleges have "backs" that go down to the River Cam, crossed by bridges also of architectural interest. <br />
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I've been down to London once, attending the TS Eliot Prize festivities. The reading for it was held at Royal Festival Hall on January 16, with the eight shortlisted candidates each appearing for ten minutes. Sean O'Brien was the only poet I knew personally, though I knew the work of most of the others. They read to an audience of 2000, a figure that will have to be swept under the carpet by commentators who continue to insist that "no one cares about poetry." We can assume that for every person attending there are fifteen or twenty who wish they could have attended. Many poets were among the audience. I sat with Mimi Khalvati, who has appeared in this blog before now. There was also time for brief greetings to Ruth Padel and Fiona Sampson. <br />
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The actual award ceremony was held the following night at the Haberdashers Union headquarters in the City, not far from Smithfield Market. A luxurious modern building with handsome paneling and large rooms, reminding us how profitable the clothing industry is. There were about two hundred guests at the party, I would estimate. One reason I attended is that I knew it would be a convenient way to re-establish contact with poet friends. Apart from Kathryn Maris (who was putting me up in London), I had lively conversations with Don Paterson, Sean O'Brien, Elaine Feinstein, Maurice Riordan, Ruth Fainlight, Katy Evans-Bush, and Dennis O'Driscoll. Dennis and I got acquainted through correspondence as long ago as the 1980s but had never met face to face. He was one of the panel of judges for the prize and when I mentioned I didn't know John Burnside (the favorite for the prize, according to bookmakers), Dennis took me up to him. I found him a thoroughly likable person, a bit on the shy side, but then he was waiting to hear the prize outcome. Other people I met included Bernard O'Donoghue, Imtiaz Dharker, Gillian Clarke (also one of the prize judges), Neil Astley, Carol Ann Duffy, Daljit Nagra, Esther Morgan, Michael Symmons Roberts, John Dugdale, and Kathleen Jamie. Quite a field of fair folk, including a good portion of the most-discussed poets in Britain today. Eventually the prize was announced: and the favorite won. I haven't read Burnside's book yet (I will), but there didn't seem to be any carping afterwards, so apparently the prize was deserved. <br />
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Returning to Cambridge, I can say that my stay is well launched. I've begun making the acquaintance of other Clare Hall Fellows, meeting as we do for lunch in the College dining room every week day. One of these is the gifted American prose writer Thomas Glave, who will be here for an entire year. Everything looks promising, and in fact I now have in hand a translation of the First Elegy. On to the Second.<br />
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</div>Alfred Cornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08736273490999559749noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8551412464532578641.post-22209531222249197562011-11-22T08:47:00.000-08:002011-11-22T08:47:29.466-08:00Peaceful Assembly and the Poets' Corner<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">James Baldwin</td></tr>
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I went to New York again early in the month to participate in the ceremony whereby James Baldwin was inducted into the Poets’ Corner at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Morningside Heights. <br />
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This was my first New York neighborhood (I enrolled in graduate school at Columbia in 1965), and the Cathedral, like all the environs thereabouts, is a familiar reference point to me. Sunday mornings in those years, I used to take walks in Harlem, at a time when things were quiet. There’s a poem about those walks in my book <i>A Call in the Midst of the Crowd</i>. Harlem in 1965 was quite different from what it is now. It’s easy for me to imagine James Baldwin as a boy venturing into Morningside Park, looking up at the vast unfinished cathedral overlooking it, and wondering what went on there. Knowing what I do about him, I’m certain that he came to have a look inside, though I can’t quite imagine what he must have thought about it.<br />
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On the other hand I take it for granted that he sympathized with the students at Columbia University who in May of 1968 went on strike and occupied Columbia’s Low Library to protest university plans to annex part of Morningside Park and build a gym there. It was an egregious, imperial move to take away part of a park that residents in west Harlem used every day. CU said it would open the gym to non-university residents, but we will never know if the plan would have been put into effect because the project was abandoned in the face of student and community opposition. Unfortunately, this came only after Grayson Kirk, CU’s president, had ordered the buildings cleared of occupying students, a raid performed by the NYPD with no restraint at all. During clearance, large numbers of students were hit repeatedly with nightsticks or truncheons, including my friend the poet David Shapiro. It happened that I was on my Fulbright year in Paris when this occurred, so I wasn’t part of it, except as an appalled observer from across the Atlantic. Instead, I had the May uprisings in Paris in that same spring to live through. Details about both events can be found in the long narrative poem <i>Notes from a Child of Paradise</i> (1984), which retells my life in the years 1965 to 1969. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">David Shapiro in Kirk's Office, May 1968</td></tr>
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To return to Baldwin and the Cathedral: he was as an adult awarded the Cathedral’s Centennial Medal in 1974, and in December of 1987, his funeral was held there. Induction into the Poets’ Corner would seem to be the next logical step. Marilyn Nelson was appointed the Cathedral’s Poet in Residence in 2011 and earlier this year asked me to serve a five-year term as one of the electors for the Poets’ Corner, which I was glad to do. Baldwin was chosen as this year’s new “poet,” though poetry is only a minor part of his oeuvre as a writer. The Corner includes novelists (indeed, our most famous) as well as poets. A brief inscription from the inducted writer is always placed under the name, and the electors settled on this for Baldwin: “Artists are here to disturb the peace.” Then plans were made for an induction and a celebration on November 6th and 7th.<br />
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The event on Sunday the 6th was a liturgical service, with the Cathedral choir singing arrangements of the spiritual songs, “A Balm in Gilead,” “Deep River,” and “Steal Away to Jesus.” There were prayers, a psalm, and congregational hymns. The poet Jericho Brown read, I read (the conclusion of his essay “Notes of a Native Son), and David Leeming, Baldwin’s biographer, spoke about the author, whom he knew personally, in general terms. The inductee’s great-nephew Trevor Baldwin spoke feelingly about his famous relative, then we had a brief homily-eulogy from the Dean of the Cathedral, James Kowalski, as well as words of greeting from Marilyn. At the end we processed to the rear of the church to the side chapel where the Corner is, and Marilyn unveiled the inscribed stone. Flashbulbs went off, and then the choir sang “His Eye Is on the Sparrow,” and it was over. Elizabeth Macklin, whom I’d invited to the ceremony, came up, and I introduced her to Marilyn. Quincy Troupe was there and introduced himself, but I reminded him we’d met at the Writing Division at Columbia many years ago. I spoke briefly to Cynthia Zarin and then to Jaime Manrique, but each had to rush off to other events. Then someone introduced me to Patricia Spears Jones, whom I’d only known through Facebook before. Ceremony completed, we walked over to the Cathedral House where there was a buffet dinner for all participants.<br />
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The celebration the following night was smaller, unassisted by the choir and unliturgical. Dean Kowalksi participated but only briefly. Readers/speakers were Sharan Strange, Patricia Smith, Thomas Sayers Ellis, myself, Quincy Troupe, and Dr. James Cone, a professor of religion. Also, Marilyn, who read Baldwin texts to the accompaniment of a vibraphone. We weren’t seated in the choir and everything was conducted with less formality than on the previous evening. At rthe conclusion, an amplified recording of Baldwin singing the hymn “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” was played in the transept and a professional singer chimed in with her responsive asides as his voice resonated through the building. A haunting moment. Afterwards, I spoke to Patricia Smith, whom I hadn’t met face to face before, only online, but we had a good-humored “live” conversation. My friend and host in New York Walter Brown came with me for the buffet meal at Cathedral House afterward. <br />
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I went to the Metropolitan Museum to see the new rooms for the Met’s collection of Islamic art and found amazingly beautiful examples of art in ceramic, metal, weaving, painting, wood and stone sculpture, glass, and calligraphy. Though I can’t read Arabic, the wonderful varieties of Arabic script fascinate me, and I have a special liking for Kufic. It’s worth noting that the proscription against representation was often ignored in the history of Islamic art, so that we have the beautiful renderings of people and animals in the small Mughal paintings. Someof the rugs, too, go beyond abstract geometry and give us stylized animal figures. Islam is a flexible tradition, historically incorporating a wide spectrum of beliefs and practices, and that remains true today.<br />
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While I was in town I visited Zuccotti Square again, glad to see that Occupy Wall Street was in good shape. This was only a few days before participants were banned from staying there overnight, and since then I’ve been distressed that police efforts to restrict or disperse demonstrations in New York and elsewhere have become violent. Teargas, pepper spray, and unwarranted use of what they now call “batons.” All of this has become epidemic, and it must stop. I wonder if authorities realize that any person who is gassed or beaten by police becomes radicalized for life. Also, any demonstrator who witnesses brutality like this. During the past couple of weeks, riot police have themselves in effect rioted, particularly in Oakland at on the campus of UC Davis. A smear campaign sponsored by conservative interests has tried to depict the demonstrators as lazy, spoiled youth, espousing unsanitary conditions, drugs, and free love. The reality is very different, but when mud is slung, some of it always sticks, influencing he conduct of law enforcement officers. Many policemen have working class backgrounds, and class anger can be stirred up among them if the hot-button libels have been previously planted in their minds. (But how can any police officer, no matter how angry, feel justified pepper-spraying the face of an 84-year old woman, as happened ten days ago?) I saw these same developments back in the 1960s. It’s all depressingly familiar. Dr. King’s civil rights movement was libeled and suffered repressive action from misguided law enforcement, as well as vigilante attacks. He persisted and eventually lost his life. There is also the horrifying instance of the Kent State killings, carried out, incredibly enough, by the National Guardsmen. To engage in peaceful assembly is a risky undertaking, not to be undertaken lightly in a country where violence is taken for granted. But as Baldwin reminded us, “Artists are here to disturb the peace.” And not artists alone, but all people concerned with social justice in a climate where it has been forced to take a back seat to the national addiction to wealth, no matter the cost of that pursuit to social cohesiveness, fair dealing, and responsible freedom.</div>Alfred Cornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08736273490999559749noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8551412464532578641.post-66978475152989181102011-11-02T09:27:00.000-07:002011-11-02T09:45:56.441-07:00Visits from Friends, Wall Street Occupied<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">A friend called from London this weekend and seemed disappointed that I hadn’t been posting anything on this blog. I’ll be self-indulgent and blame the time-consuming process of buying and then furnishing a condo in Rhode Island, near Westerly. Moving, unpacking, and arranging are taxing enterprises: where to put the sofa, and which shelf for which books, all of that. Meanwhile, I’ve had visits from several poets—Wendy Battin from Mystic, Benjamin Grossberg from Hartford, Chard de Niord down from Providence, Jason Roush from Boston, Peter Covino from Kingstown, where he has just been tenured at URI, and Doretta Wildes from Middletown. (Actually Doretta is doing more fiction nowadays, her first novel <i>Rinse Cycle</i> out this past summer.) Then Leslie McGrath, coming up from North Stonington for a daytrip we made to Providence—but there’s more about that further on.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6wV7aKMn2i3g5qQPUeSYYmU6zNXEeLo70eynq_6dEpzltQq2YeghQggDyIU4HFMOIvcq8VxuN7p-U0o3ibfiXliNOgjqSGY6KrEbflolCsad_c-sLRI_6jW-HrnGzQQnqf7fBqXq7FKkb/s1600/ap_occupy_wall_street_ll_111003_wg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6wV7aKMn2i3g5qQPUeSYYmU6zNXEeLo70eynq_6dEpzltQq2YeghQggDyIU4HFMOIvcq8VxuN7p-U0o3ibfiXliNOgjqSGY6KrEbflolCsad_c-sLRI_6jW-HrnGzQQnqf7fBqXq7FKkb/s320/ap_occupy_wall_street_ll_111003_wg.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
I went down to New York in early October, and after I’d greeted my host Walter Brown, I went down to Liberty Plaza (or Zuccotti Square) to join in the Occupy Wall Street demonstration. An energizing experience, to understate. During the week following, the Occupy movement went global, with significant demonstrations in London, Paris, Hong Kong, and other cities across the USA. Critics of the movement say it has no defined goals. But what it has done is to alert the distressed majority to facts they may not have known before, for example, that 1% of the US population controls 40% of the nation’s wealth, or that a typical CEO’s salary is 900 times that of a typical worker in his company. The electorate has begun to see that Congress is in the hands of the donors to election campaigns, a situation made worse by the Supreme Court decision to allow unlimited and anonymous donations to campaigns. The donors need not even be US citizens. Electoral reform is urgent, otherwise Big Money will continue to make laws for us by remote control. A brief description I wrote of Occupy Wall Street is found on the Occupy Writers site here:<br />
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<a href="http://www.occupywriters.com/">http://www.occupywriters.com/</a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRCSyWIGAjrFoBYNaXTS38ZslTdNrnLOXbDQ2Z2eMfcOqYhyphenhyphenNc8QhmjHR8Vmw11MVPVu5_LPBhAvN8H76trjTTwHqreEm960v_hq1CSOz30o_jBB9x2cs18Q4fcg559gSW9utoQxYEyFaW/s1600/South+Memorial+Pool+Vista_Squared+Design+Lab_9+11+memorial+org.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="259" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRCSyWIGAjrFoBYNaXTS38ZslTdNrnLOXbDQ2Z2eMfcOqYhyphenhyphenNc8QhmjHR8Vmw11MVPVu5_LPBhAvN8H76trjTTwHqreEm960v_hq1CSOz30o_jBB9x2cs18Q4fcg559gSW9utoQxYEyFaW/s320/South+Memorial+Pool+Vista_Squared+Design+Lab_9+11+memorial+org.jpg" width="320" /></a>I’d reserved a couple of tickets for the 9/11 Memorial on October 11, exactly one month after the inaugural ceremony. Walter and I picked them up around 4:00, then walked some distance down to the intake site on Thames Street. The path leading inside runs between walls of blue-painted plywood, with lots of twists and turns, your ticket inspected at several checkpoints, until you reach the security portal, identical to an air terminal security check. Off come your belt and shoes, etc. Once you’re reassembled, there’s a bit more walking, and finally you are in the park, among young oak trees and low, granite benches. We walked to the edge of the south pool, which duplicates the “footprint” of the destroyed building, a deep reservoir outlined by a smooth bronze rim inscribed with the names of those who died. Inside that rim is a shelf filled with water that flows down all four sides in a considerable drop to the lower level. The scale is enormous. If the pool qualifies as a fountain, it must be the world’s largest. A much smaller square cistern is sunk in the center, and water proceeds to flow into it also. Sinister detail: you can’t, from the outer rim, see the bottom of this cistern. There’s no upward jet here, the governing direction is down, flowing water vanishing earthward as into the underworld. Did I say that the walls of the entire pool are black? They are. You can’t see the ensemble without encroaching feelings of gloom. Add to that the damp, overcast, misty day we had, and a somber experience it was, all told. <br />
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We walked to the north pool, which was exactly like the south. As I was reading the names I came across the name of a friend’s sister, whom I knew had died on the fateful day. A strange moment, when everything seemed to go very quiet. I wondered how inevitable it was to find that name, among so many—Anglo, Irish, Italian, Polish, Jewish, Arab, Latino. Some of the names had little flags stuck in the inscribed letters, others had roses. It’s a wrenching experience to see those because it’s clear that family and friends had left them as some sort of apotropaic gesture made against finality.<br />
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The museum is still under construction as well as two high-rise office buildings, the first of which will, once again, be taller than the Empire State. You might question the wisdom of that Babelian plan, though extraordinary construction precautions have been taken to countervail any attack and demolition. I agreed with Walter that the new buildings looked undistinguished, as architecture. Of course I’ll return when construction is complete for another look. If it seems I have an unusual interest in the 9/11 site, maybe this poem written several months after the calamity will make that interest understandable:<br />
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<a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/poem/2003/09/window_on_the_world.single.html">http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/poem/2003/09/window_on_the_world.single.html</a><br />
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From there Walter (the person named as “W” in the poem) walked to the Occupy Wall Street demonstration and mingled in the crowd for a while. One group of Jewish demonstrators held up a sign saying that the Sukkot holiday required the faithful to live in temporary shelters for several days, and that in their estimation staying in Zuccotto Square was a way to enact the ritual of the holiday. This was not the only pleasing sign held up. Creative slogans were to be everywhere, and the human composition was varied as to age and ethnicity. History in the making.<br />
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In the days after, I had lunch with Grace Schulman and saw with her the exhibition of Indian paintings from the Mugal period at the Metropolitan. I also spent an hour at the offices of <i>The Hudson Review</i> with Paula Deitz, who regrettably couldn’t come with me to see the exhibition of Stieglitz’s art collection (also at the Met.) Add to these events several long walks through various neighborhoods of the city, and the visit can only be called full and stimulating, with plenty of matter for reflection. <br />
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I mentioned that poet Leslie McGrath had driven up the following week to see my new place and then to continue on to Providence. Not for shopping or entertainment, but to take part in Occupy Providence and to join the poet Doug Anderson, whom I knew through Facebook but had never met in person. We had an enlivening couple of hours together, but suppose I refer you to the description Leslie wrote about our day for the Best American Poetry blog. She also asked Doug and me to add a few words, which we did. Here is the link:<br />
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<a href="http://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2011/10/occupying-providence-with-alfred-corn-and-doug-anderson-by-leslie-mcgrath.html">http://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2011/10/occupying-providence-with-alfred-corn-and-doug-anderson-by-leslie-mcgrath.html</a><br />
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There is more that could be said, but for a blog post this one is moving toward epic length, so I will just conclude with a “To Be Continued.” </div>Alfred Cornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08736273490999559749noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8551412464532578641.post-90228025878191943342011-06-08T21:01:00.000-07:002011-06-08T21:01:26.087-07:00Rhode Island, Boston, and Robert Pinsky<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="rtl" style="text-align: right;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;">Since returning from six months in London to the US in early April, I’ve had an outpatient operation to free a pinched nerve in the spine that was causing back and leg pain. There needed to be some down time for recovery, and so, apart from physical therapy to regain strength, I haven’t done much here in southern Rhode Island except rest and make excursions to the seashore, never far away in the Ocean State. People sometimes express curiosity as to why I live in the smallest of the fifty when I’m in the US and "smallest" is in itself part of the answer. It seems I’ve come to adopt a contrarian approach to a lot of things. Why? Because the standard m.o. for our supposed American dreams, goals and deeds, active for a century, has led us to the brink of failure as a nation. The American Way is to do everything on the biggest and most expensive scale possible. </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: left;">The representative American believes in cutthroat competition, getting rich (especially by bonuses), driving as fast and as rudely and dangerously as you can to shave ten seconds off a twenty-minute trip, the accumulation of as many toys as possible before one's expiration date. The fundamental attitude is, “Get out of the way, because I am the best.” So for me small is good, just as non-competitive is good. I own practically nothing, neither house nor car, just a few books, CDs, clothes, and a computer. I rent, I use public transport, and the public library. I don’t suffer from stress, and I don’t expect a lot of attention to be paid to me. Competition is the micro version of the macro wars that have become so popular lately as powerful individuals and nations of the world try to beat each other out of available goods and services instead of cooperating in a reciprocally interested way. The result hasn’t been good either for the modern West or for the exploited planet. So why not take the opposite tack from what has been considered proper conduct and suitable aspiration up to now? Why not care less about conventional measures of success? If we’re male, why not share power with women, and if white, with people of color? Possibly we’d see some real improvement in the way things are going. To return to the micro level, it’s nice if I can write something that is topnotch, but it’s equally nice if someone else does. <br />
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The one public event of the past month was an appearance at the New England Institute of Art in Brrookline. To arrange the reading, my Cambridge/Boston friend Jason Roush had put me in touch with David Blair, who teaches creati<span></span>ve writing there and we agreed on a May 24th date. I got to Boston shortly after eleven on that day and walked outside South Station to where Robert Pinsky, a friend for more than three decades now, was expecting me in his black car. He looked well, and off we drove to for lunch in Cambridge at a Taiwanese place Robert said the novelist Ha Jin had recommended to him. I always enjoy seeing Robert, partly because of his quick, warm intelligence and partly because it’s a pleasure to know someone generally recognized as among the very small number of world-class American poets of our era. If his name doesn’t appear on the roster of Pultizer, NBA, or NBBC prizewinners, that’s not the fault of his work. He has just published a magisterial <i>Selected Poems</i>, which, even so, I told him I found too severely pruned. I’d have preferred a more inclusive volume, but he reminded me that the earlier books are all in print, and said he wanted to put out an affordable book that would serve as an introduction to new readers. Fair enough. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3ExuQc9R5INy34BAr7tEcmpI_GXcf0-fuRR38jkVbkjZ8pt7jhWoKqV6fzAB8BouGC3p0Xc5qkmygvJ_qkZBUNT_HGJIULqmiTzA7kRxu9bHPZ4U5DnPsOjQ292RktfMVX4TogN22r9RJ/s1600/pinsky.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3ExuQc9R5INy34BAr7tEcmpI_GXcf0-fuRR38jkVbkjZ8pt7jhWoKqV6fzAB8BouGC3p0Xc5qkmygvJ_qkZBUNT_HGJIULqmiTzA7kRxu9bHPZ4U5DnPsOjQ292RktfMVX4TogN22r9RJ/s200/pinsky.jpeg" width="163" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Robert Pinsky</td></tr>
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To reread his startlingly original work for me is to relive my experience as a poet going back nearly four decades. Robert’s first book, <i>Sadness and Hapiness</i> appeared in 1976, the same year as mine (titled <i>All Roads at Once</i>). The YMHA in New York had in those years a program called “Introduction,” whereby four books were chosen by senior poets as the best first books of the year. The 1976 poets were Tess Gallagher, Maura Stanton, Robert, and myself. We were all invited to read at the Y, and that was the occasion when Robert and I first met. I immediately recognized him as an important new talent, and wanted to be his friend. Actually, I wrote a detailed review of his second book, <i>An Explanation of America </i>(collected later in a book of essays titled <i>The Metamorphoses of</i> <i>Metaphor</i>). And then in the 90s, I wrote a review of <i>The Figured Wheel</i>, which was Robert’s first collected poems. Over the years, we’ve kept in touch and I remember many glowing reunions, beginning with an evening dedicated to American poetry at the White House during the Carter Administration. That’s when I met Ellen, to whom Robert is married. I also recall seeing him in Berkley, when he taught there, and in Oklahoma, when I was teaching at the U. of Tulsa, and he was the featured poet in the <i>Cimarron Review</i> literary festival. Another time I called on him at his summer place in Truro. I’ve also attended many readings of his, and we’ve met in Boston a couple of times. I don’t know how Robert keeps on the go as much as he does. Apart from his writing, he gives several readings every month, keeps in touch with the Favorite Poem Project (which he launched when he was Poet Laureate), and teaches writing at B.U. For a couple of years now, he has been giving poetry readings accompanied by a jazz combo, a format that was popular among the Beat poets back in the 1950s, but then became rare: the Rebirth of the Cool in the 21st century, we might say. Robert is also poetry editor at <i>Slate</i> magazine, where he emcees online forums about classic poems. As one of the few contemporary poets who has a regular doctoral degree in English lit (his grad school mentor was Yvor Winters), Robert knows the tradition very well and has a special affinity for Renaissance figures like Fulke Greville and the 19th century poet Landor, about whom he write an engaging critical book. <br />
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He seemed glad for me that the spinal operation was a success. We talked about mutual friends, discussed new books, exchanged a few jokes. And that was our meeting. He dropped me off near Harvard Square, as I had some free time before the next appointment. I strolled around the Square, noting familiar landmarks, and dropped in at Grolier Books on Plympton Street to introduce myself to the new proprietor, a friendly woman named Carol Menkiti. Then it was time to go to Brookline Village, where Jason Roush was waiting for me. I hadn’t seen Jason since March when he came to lunch in London (he makes an annual trip there during spring break). Jason was introduced to this blog back in April of 2009, for those who want to look him up, and his books are available online at Amazon. Teaching courses now at the NIE, he had planned for me to speak to one of them that afternoon, and so I did, a little surprised at how interested the students seemed to be. <br />
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Next on the schedule was dinner with David Blair (author of a first book of poems titled <i>Ascension</i> <i>Days</i>), and Paul Rivenberg, who was putting me up that night. After a good Venezuelan meal, it was time to go to the room at the NIE where I was to read. Many students from the afternoon class showed up, and one or two faculty members, and Kevin Cutrer, whom I know from Facebook but had never met face to face. After the reading and a few books signed, I spoke to Tom Yuill, author of a first book titled <i>Medicine Show</i>. He studied with Robert Pinsky and Rosanna Warren and now teaches creative writing himself. <br />
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Next morning Paul and I had breakfast, and we talked until it was time for him to go off to work. Not long after, Jason arrived to spend the first part of the day together. We walked to the Museum of Fine Arts, which I’ve visited many times of course, but I wanted to see the new wing, recently built to house the MFA's “Art of the Americas.” A soberly handsome addition, faced with white marble interrupted by glazing in a faintly greenish tint. Jason and I hit the high spots of the collection, familiar works like Sargent’s <i>The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit</i>, which seems to encapsulate the subject matter and tone of the Brown Decades, as recorded by Henry James, not to mention Howells, Wharton, and, elsewhere, Sargent himself. I’ll also mention Copley’s iconic portrait of Paul Revere, a patriot suddenly in the news again because of Sarah Palin’s mixup about which side his lantern was giving a warning to during the famous midnight ride. (One if by land and ignorant, two if by sea and scatterbrained.) Judging from Revere’s shrewd and steady gaze, I could well imagine what he might have felt before “refudicating” Palin’s various bloopers over the past few years. Still, as portrayed by Copley, the craftsman’s hands clasped the silver teapot he had made, his strong fingers (with the sort of attention to detail we associate with Vermeer) perfectly reflected in its polished surface. </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div dir="rtl" style="text-align: right;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Paul Revere, by John Singleton Copley</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div dir="rtl" style="text-align: right;"><span style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></span></div></div>Alfred Cornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08736273490999559749noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8551412464532578641.post-27456464685997280722011-03-21T06:21:00.000-07:002011-03-26T10:43:57.385-07:00A Season Summarized<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: right;"></div><br />
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Once again I’ve neglected for a long time to post anything here, part of the explanation being that I was caught up in so many activities I didn’t stop to think about writing about them. Highlights would have included attending, with Marina Warner, a play titled <i>Tiger Country</i>, by the new playwright Nina Raine, whose father Craig Raine, the poet and critic, also a professor at Oxford, I met many years ago at Amy Clampitt's apartment in New York. The play is set in a large London hospital and presents some of the difficulties of any such institution working under current rules established by the National Health Service. <br />
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Other plays seen: a revival of Noël Coward’s playlet <i>Red Peppers</i>, followed by his short play <i>Still Life</i>, at Pentameters Theatre, which will produce my play <i>Lowell’s Bedlam</i> this April. Also, Lillian Hellman’s <i>The Children’s Hour</i>, at the Comedy Theatre, whose cast included stars Ellen Burstyn ad Keira Knightley. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL31CM3cW2DRoOzzmUugDSQnj_pPO3cThja7eMAY0V1Cth87hRUM1SQuZztvPkk8z4woEALVrkjkLYUHk7NRp8iPPk7Gu63D4iyO6mQVQOln8MjNeF5aKAOjxmY6Hvh508qezu4up1NLid/s1600/obrien.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL31CM3cW2DRoOzzmUugDSQnj_pPO3cThja7eMAY0V1Cth87hRUM1SQuZztvPkk8z4woEALVrkjkLYUHk7NRp8iPPk7Gu63D4iyO6mQVQOln8MjNeF5aKAOjxmY6Hvh508qezu4up1NLid/s1600/obrien.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sean O'Brien</td></tr>
</tbody></table>As for seeing poet friends, I attended a <i>Poetry Review</i> launch at the Free Word Centre, which featured Sean O’Brien, reading, along with a young poet named Karen McCarthy Woolf. I hadn’t seen Sean since last summer in Newcastle, and, regrettably, Gerry Wardle didn’t come down this time. Many poets were in the audience, including <i>Poetry Review </i>editor Fiona Sampson, of course, Elaine Feinstein, and Ruth Fainlight. After his extraordinary reading, Sean and I went out to dinner at an Italian place in Exmouth Market, joined by poets Alan Brownjohn, Leah Fritz, Tamar Yoseloff, and her husband Andrew Lindesey. I hadn’t met Brownjohn before, but we got onto the topic of Robert Lowell, whom he met during the years Lowell was married to Caroline Blackwood and indeed visited them at Maidstone, Kent. Sean was in a convivial mood during dinner, leaving us all in compulsive laughter with his ironic asides. The publication of his next book <i>November</i> (paradoxically published in April) should be one of the main literary events of the coming months.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx5XidiRh9GdoniCpi4CVn6u20-16NV5a_GXZ9u4VwNC2aZX-pDnq8MMD6uD6Rt50OaY2NY_XadiDh4oTEzcRhsIETOKYs5nDFXNsU9y7IybAIaEqahN78fiXuwoA9HLD0RgA84Z0U7w1X/s1600/adam.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx5XidiRh9GdoniCpi4CVn6u20-16NV5a_GXZ9u4VwNC2aZX-pDnq8MMD6uD6Rt50OaY2NY_XadiDh4oTEzcRhsIETOKYs5nDFXNsU9y7IybAIaEqahN78fiXuwoA9HLD0RgA84Z0U7w1X/s200/adam.jpg" width="176" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Adam Mars-Jones</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Adam Mars-Jones and I saw the Thomas Lawrence exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, an occasion to speculate again why portraiture is the special excellence of British painting. Maybe something to do with theatre, which has a preëminent place in British literature: the study of character, also carried out in fiction using techniques borrowed from drama. Consider, too, the dramatic monologue, brought to perfection in Browning's poetry. After having tea, Adam and I walked to Foyle’s and there was a copy of his new novel, titled <i>Cedilla</i>, a sequel to the first volume <i>Pilcrow</i>, published a couple of years ago. It continues the narrative of a disabled gay man, the story based on the life of a friend of Adam’s. An original subject, told, surprisingly, with a lot of wit, verbal acuteness, and mischief. <br />
<br />
Invited by Kathryn Maris, I attended the award ceremony for the T.S. Eliot Prize, held this year at the Wallace Collection (not in the galleries themselves, but in the covered courtyard). You can never say much at these gatherings, but at least it was a chance to greet poet friends like Don Paterson, Elaine Feinstein, Colette Bryce, and Ruth Fainlight, and to meet for the first time Robin Robertson and Lavinia Greenlaw. Anne Stevenson, the head of the prize committee, announced that the winner was Derek Walcott (not present), and discussed the virtues of his magisterial collection <i>White Egrets</i>. I spoke to Anne afterwards, and we calculated that we hadn’t seen each other since 1986, at a time when she was still living in here London, in Belsize Park. That’s how, insensibly, a quarter century can pass. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbV0c21Pbxwup-AeBGbN636WeX6gosz8AarOFPVuoVR7EoJGND1egOFAz53k4FfX4ULRPJIArL5r4Jk3KoHGJI0YOHfykkpEOh3xvKdrnaLrz99doj3TmFv5XfStzzQWJEgxspqeYGMaOi/s1600/Queens+College.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbV0c21Pbxwup-AeBGbN636WeX6gosz8AarOFPVuoVR7EoJGND1egOFAz53k4FfX4ULRPJIArL5r4Jk3KoHGJI0YOHfykkpEOh3xvKdrnaLrz99doj3TmFv5XfStzzQWJEgxspqeYGMaOi/s320/Queens+College.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Queens College, Oxford</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>I made a day trip to Oxford, planning to see David Constantine and Craig Raine. A telephone mixup meant that I missed Carig, but David and I had a pleasant hour around teatime, and the trip was also a chance to revisit what is no doubt the most beautiful assemblage of academic buildings in the world. That would include David’s Queens College, one of Hawksmoor’s most resplendent designs. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX8wl9WRQIk8cd3fBRrvSY2Z78RPd4k0E-eTdFjDagmZS3g_tlNiNHlcITuzoC79yD2sEaaNV9GQCaBrhdHVtRKtriwSVZP26csNo-qIUY9vwV985SvL4kRxQ1rpzqjtaukLMPnkhVa4IH/s1600/PATERSON.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX8wl9WRQIk8cd3fBRrvSY2Z78RPd4k0E-eTdFjDagmZS3g_tlNiNHlcITuzoC79yD2sEaaNV9GQCaBrhdHVtRKtriwSVZP26csNo-qIUY9vwV985SvL4kRxQ1rpzqjtaukLMPnkhVa4IH/s1600/PATERSON.jpeg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Don Paterson</td></tr>
</tbody></table>A week or so later, I attended a reading at the London Review Bookshop, featuring Don Paterson, Jo Shapcott, and David Harsent. By chance I ended up sitting with Fiona Sampson, with whom it’s always a pleasure to discuss things. Don gave a topnotch reading, and next day he and I had lunch at a Spanish place near King’s Cross and had a chance to catch up. These days he is writing critical prose as well as poems, in fact, a couple of months back I reviewed his recent commentary on the Shakespeare sonnets (see the online journal <i>Thethe</i>): <br />
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http://www.thethepoetry.com/2011/02/marriage-counseling-for-true-minds/<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzo81aYoh9_E5DVqHoHTqr3fjpX1Swu18HAgngJ8E3SS33YfgPv8i60Xrn-03QWF6lKyyD6LOMGxywO9Nh_QXt2WbbkuZ99cJnzPfOR6XWFfxcEkfrKmKo672KFuOT0xDXswYHjLv_jZWp/s1600/marilyn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzo81aYoh9_E5DVqHoHTqr3fjpX1Swu18HAgngJ8E3SS33YfgPv8i60Xrn-03QWF6lKyyD6LOMGxywO9Nh_QXt2WbbkuZ99cJnzPfOR6XWFfxcEkfrKmKo672KFuOT0xDXswYHjLv_jZWp/s200/marilyn.jpg" width="140" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Marilyn Hacker</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Mimi Khalvati has come to dinner a couple of times, and I had Marilyn Hacker here to lunch when she came here from Paris, where she now lives. Marilyn was one of the readers for the spring <i>Poetry London</i> launch, on her way the following morning to the Stanza Festival up at St. Andrews, Scotland. Marilyn has the distinction of being one of the very few American poets published abroad in France as well as the U.K.<br />
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I mentioned the upcoming production of my play <i>Lowell’s Bedlam</i> and am happy to announce that rehearsals for it have now begun. The cast is as follows:<br />
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Theresa Brockway Celeste Haydon<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9bB8iGAQmX-IoZbDkk_Lv8LUvdVGZwgxwXhfJcj18xR6SfIIS1Std9mFRl-y7R9o_q4IUoBkpOgmTjHvSi1tXe4dJZY-1wAnWibFj297CohlWHEFxRv8zKDBeGWXEhjHU1SPT3O_UdtvN/s1600/lowell.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9bB8iGAQmX-IoZbDkk_Lv8LUvdVGZwgxwXhfJcj18xR6SfIIS1Std9mFRl-y7R9o_q4IUoBkpOgmTjHvSi1tXe4dJZY-1wAnWibFj297CohlWHEFxRv8zKDBeGWXEhjHU1SPT3O_UdtvN/s1600/lowell.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lowell</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Lowri Lewis Elizabeth Hardwick <br />
David Manson Robert Lowell <br />
Hannah Mercer Elizabeth Bishop <br />
Roger Sansom Dick Jaffee <br />
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The director is Daniel Ricken, and the producer is Leonie Scott- Matthews.<br />
<br />
Bookings can be made at http://www.pentameters.co.uk/index.html </div>Alfred Cornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08736273490999559749noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8551412464532578641.post-86448562995204679922010-12-30T10:06:00.000-08:002010-12-30T10:06:41.447-08:00London Continued<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdWlyoubAAn7iQIyCacMBIrqEzlOiBLbL5sqC6c2QD847IPNWoDgDnxrQKB75SDaKd-px-h80EyzvtgPvOWtTTWrFfE8SOn1pewlosSk4kZnwOcUaZEMXc98aQPjso9xGU-optXh19HoNP/s1600/pasolini.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdWlyoubAAn7iQIyCacMBIrqEzlOiBLbL5sqC6c2QD847IPNWoDgDnxrQKB75SDaKd-px-h80EyzvtgPvOWtTTWrFfE8SOn1pewlosSk4kZnwOcUaZEMXc98aQPjso9xGU-optXh19HoNP/s1600/pasolini.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pasolini</td></tr>
</tbody></table>To wind up the year, a brief summary of whereabouts and events. I got to London in mid-November and have spent the last month and a half settling in. I’ve seen friends, beginning with Kathryn Maris and her husband Herman Dietman, who put me up for a couple of nights when I first arrived. At Kathryn’s suggestion I attended a performance of a Pasolini play, translated by the poet Jamie McKendrick as <i>Fabrication</i>, and performed at a fringe theatre in Notting Hill called The Print Room. Afterward, Jamie gave a reading and answered questions. We spoke briefly at the end, a chance to renew acquaintance after a hiatus of a couple of years. From there Kathryn and I went to a launch party for Anne-Marie Fyfe’s new book, titled <i>Understudies</i>, and recently published by Seren. A big party, so there was no chance to do more than greet and congratulate Anne-Marie, and to listen to her read from the book. <br />
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I’d seen Ruth Fainlight at the launch party and a week later went to have tea with her at her place in Notting Hill. We tried to recall the circumstances of our first meeting and dated it back to 1987, during my second long-term stay in London. It was a dinner party with the novelist Madison Smartt Bell and his wife the poet Elizabeth Spires. Ruth came with her husband Alan Sillitoe, whose novels I’d read, though I didn’t in those days know about Ruth’s poetry. She has just now published her <i>New and Collected Poems</i> with Bloodaxe. Because of that event and Alan’s death this past spring, it’s likely that 2010 will have proved a pivotal year for Ruth.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXB_YGq6Jkw5nEpjSfa4Tur52FCeDkoyNN11o0QB7hLrEGoOUay-lLucCXXtnvM38L_PQaPaf654F8gj_ak7qBnZKsUVJ2l-FAJ17L5bFyixpjEUIVUO3EQ9ieaoNdThKnjwRY06c318zF/s1600/mimi_khalvati_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXB_YGq6Jkw5nEpjSfa4Tur52FCeDkoyNN11o0QB7hLrEGoOUay-lLucCXXtnvM38L_PQaPaf654F8gj_ak7qBnZKsUVJ2l-FAJ17L5bFyixpjEUIVUO3EQ9ieaoNdThKnjwRY06c318zF/s200/mimi_khalvati_.jpg" width="172" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mimi Khalvati</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7fkNcr_pzFBu4st7mpslmBkgSO65nydFwL4At3MyUzxSGip2BL5Lce0AHVBZFGQc_toFsO9IdziHcvSYzN_VVHTy843Hkbqzj3qLNrY7Vqt4Ya19PKxGzF8HgXp45Nc3TM0c-WBY3-TDp/s1600/reformclubdetsm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7fkNcr_pzFBu4st7mpslmBkgSO65nydFwL4At3MyUzxSGip2BL5Lce0AHVBZFGQc_toFsO9IdziHcvSYzN_VVHTy843Hkbqzj3qLNrY7Vqt4Ya19PKxGzF8HgXp45Nc3TM0c-WBY3-TDp/s1600/reformclubdetsm.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Reform Club, Pall Mall</td></tr>
</tbody></table>I saw Mimi Khalvati, in fact, attended a reading she gave at the Reform Club on Pall Mall. Mimi looked wonderful, and I gather that she is receiving a lot of favorable attention these days. The Reform Club is an immense building, constructed just at the beginning of Victoria’s reign by affluent Whig political figures. We walked up the stone steps and into a vestibule, where we were met by Mimi’s contact person Mary Louise (sorry, didn’t hear the last name). Another stone flight up to the central atrium, some three storeys high, with dark, gold-fluted columns topped by Corinthian capitals placed at decoratively strategic points around the hall. Under a central mirror at the rear, a marble bust of Victoria, gazing towards her left. Portraits of notable Liberals are placed in convenient niches around the atrium, for example, Palmerston, Gladstone, and others with names less recognizable. Mimi and I went upstairs under Mary Louise’s guidance and had a quick survey of several rooms off the central atrium—a dining room, a library, a reading room. The evening’s event was to be held in a large reading room on the second level. We drifted in and settled near the fire, the chimneypiece boasting a bronze head of Lloyd George. People began to trickle in, taking the little gilt ballroom chairs that had been set up. Mimi was introduced and then read, very winningly, might I add. After the final poem, applause, then people gathering round to congratulate her and buy a book. And that was it. We reclaimed our coats and put them on in the vestibule, where I noticed a strange, highly polished brass object. I asked the doorman what it was and was told it was a cigar-lighter, no longer used but still in operation as late as the Second World War, when figures like Churchill made use of it. Apparently there had been a gas flame in it accessible through an aperture where you inserted the cigar. The only such object in the world? Very possibly.<br />
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From there we walked to a nearby Lebanese restaurant and had a pleasant dinner, a chance to catch up on each other’s news. A few days later, we both participated in a marathon reading as a benefit for <i>The Long Poem</i> magazine at a café near King’s Cross. Our bit done, we walked to a nearby restaurant and had dinner. Many topics touched on, including the fact that Mimi’s new and selected poems are now in production and will be out next year with Carcanet. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcReau5OFQBeHGxMIdm0g1dVSqrqKJXuixIok2wlk1Yf45a3C-ySBrG9Qqfsp9bVeNH8sIg0pPS97xMzQcvlEVcpf3tYwxTxlRd5kR-TkCZ9lqtdmTbv65zdqCs060HZK99pYXWVAtG95m/s1600/david.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcReau5OFQBeHGxMIdm0g1dVSqrqKJXuixIok2wlk1Yf45a3C-ySBrG9Qqfsp9bVeNH8sIg0pPS97xMzQcvlEVcpf3tYwxTxlRd5kR-TkCZ9lqtdmTbv65zdqCs060HZK99pYXWVAtG95m/s1600/david.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">David Plante</td></tr>
</tbody></table>I had dinner with the novelist and memoirist David Plante at his place in Marylebone, where I’ve often been a guest over the years. But this may be the last time I’ll have seen it, as he plans to move house very soon. I met David here in London back in 1986, and we’ve been intermittently in touch ever since. His partner Nikos Stangos, for many years an editor at Thames & Hudson, was also a dear friend, so there is, ever since Nikos’s death a few years ago, a touch of sadness when David and I reunite. He last year published a moving memoir about their relationship, Nikos’s illness and death, and its aftermath, titled <i>The Pure Lover</i>. David was preparing to go to Lucca, where he has an apartment, for the Christmas holiday, but I expect to see him in 2011. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSeXOnaNcPLbvT1bw4Y6a2Sp6zCgH2Y2xR_gJ5W_29haK_dPaYUFf82buGYIL1UJBIEZCI3uHjFzhVwL5EdbjIy6YPPPJnOJVSdop88suD39RiG_55xz3iYPLlmOjgteKBp__bIX1KChNr/s1600/goldsmith.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSeXOnaNcPLbvT1bw4Y6a2Sp6zCgH2Y2xR_gJ5W_29haK_dPaYUFf82buGYIL1UJBIEZCI3uHjFzhVwL5EdbjIy6YPPPJnOJVSdop88suD39RiG_55xz3iYPLlmOjgteKBp__bIX1KChNr/s200/goldsmith.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Goldsmith</td></tr>
</tbody></table>I’ve seen three plays, first, <i>Goldy</i>, based on the life and work of Oliver Goldsmith, staged by Pentameters Theatre in Hampstead (which will also produce my play about Robert Lowell this coming spring). It’s an affectionate portrait of an underrated writer, from whose long poem <i>The Deserted Village</i> Tony Judt borrowed the title of his powerful last book <i>Ill Fares the Land</i>. To prolong the Augustan mood, I saw Sheridan’s <i>The Rivals</i> in the Peter Hall production at the Theatre Royal, a work seldom revived and performed this time with a lot of brio. Not too many plays result in the coinage of a new word, but this one does. A “malapropism” is the term used to describe the verbal habit of the character Mrs. Malaprop, who confuses polysyllabic words, applying them in contexts where they don’t fit—as when she speaks of “allegories on the banks of the Nile.” That tic and other comic elements produced a <i>nefarious</i> evening filled with knowing chuckles. Finally, with my friend Miguel Mansur I also saw the Young Vic production of <i>The</i> <i>Glass Menagerie</i>, which seemed only partly successful, yet had its moments. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiBeDb7uiFkFlPBr2rBxpTlpmDPQKn1aK9y4JVwewz1hzmY-1IsEYcKlTZHQ4TQBWFc6bhtdQCvegLpDsJ7gPHI857KF5w54TQ2JfNSuhAz8an0oNPYRITXsMqqsFGMkGeVlsI0rezxBVY/s1600/george-szirtes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiBeDb7uiFkFlPBr2rBxpTlpmDPQKn1aK9y4JVwewz1hzmY-1IsEYcKlTZHQ4TQBWFc6bhtdQCvegLpDsJ7gPHI857KF5w54TQ2JfNSuhAz8an0oNPYRITXsMqqsFGMkGeVlsI0rezxBVY/s1600/george-szirtes.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">George Szirtes</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Shortly after I settled in my sublet flat in Tufnell Park, George Szirtes, whom I hadn’t seen for over a year, came to lunch; and from there we went to Smith Square in Westminster for a cultural event George was scheduled to appear in. This was to be held in the recently established Europe House, the London headquarters of the European Commission, whose mission is, I believe, purely cultural. At the door we were greeted by Jeremy Sullivan, who arranged the event and commissioned George’s poem. We were guided into a small auditorium and there found Elaine Feinstein, dressed all in red and black. She and I spoke as preparations for the evening were underway. Eventually people began coming in and one or two introductions were made, in particular, to Lázló Magócsi, the Science and Technology attaché to the Hungarian Embassy. Naturally he wanted to speak with George, a British poet born in Hungary, yet the topics centered mainly on the scientific achievements of Hungarians in the 20th century, which are more considerable than I’d realized.<br />
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Europe House’s chief officer, a man named Scheele, launched the evening’s program. Then George read his commissioned poem, titled “The Door is Open,” concluding with this quatrain:<br />
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Here histories, manners, speech, vision, dance,<br />
Commerce and custom, constitution, chance,<br />
And strategy, seek concord and a voice.<br />
Open the door. The house is yours. Rejoice.<br />
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After this, several ambassadors read poems in their language. We had Austria, Poland, Denmark, Romania, Spain, Estonia, Belgium and, as mentioned, Hungary. A translation was read after each poem, and then at the end Elaine read a few poems of her own (non-commissioned). Applause, closing remarks, then drinks and snacks. Finally, there was a dinner party for participants and their guests, an occasion for interesting conversations with others present. George had a train to catch so we left a little early, I saw him to his cab and then walked to the tube, returning the same way I came.<br />
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James Byrne and Sandeep Parmar, back in London after several months in New York, came to call and have a look at my sublet for this year. We had lunch here and engaged in an unbroken flow of talk about what we’ve been doing and writing. Sandeep is teaching at Wagner College now and finishing her book on the Modernist British poet Hope Mirrlees. James has one more term at NYU before he gets his MFA and is putting the finishing touches on the next issue of <i>The Wolf</i>, expected in January. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Marina Warner</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Christmas roared in and out and on Boxing Day I walked to Kentish Town to attend a party given by my friend Marina Warner and her partner Graeme Segal. I hadn’t seen Marina for quite a long time, so it was a pleasure to meet again. I have very clear memories of her house because I once, back in 1987, rented it for four months. Lots of changes have been made, so that seeing it now is like looking at a double exposure. Marina introduced me to several people, all new to me. Then I had a brief conversation with her son, Conrad Shawcross, a rising young sculptor whom I hadn’t seen since he was a boy. Conrad was on the eve of a month-long journey to India and Tasmania, which promises to be extraordinary. Marina herself is completing a study of <i>The Arabian Nights</i>, a book I look forward to reading when it appears, as I do being her neighbor this winter and spring. <br />
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For those interested in looking up publications, I have a review of UA Fanthorpe’s complete poems in the current <i>Poetry Review</i>. Also, under Sudeep Sen’s editorship, a long poem published in an online journal called <i>Molossus</i>. The poem’s titled “Eleven Londons” and describes my stays in this great city from 1967 to 2007. Here’s the link: <br />
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<strong><span></span></strong><strong><a href="http://molossus.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/world-poetry-portfolio-7-alfred-corn/#more-1906" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><span>http://molossus.wordpress.com/</span><wbr></wbr><span class="word_break"></span><span>2010/12/13/world-poetry-portfo</span><wbr></wbr><span class="word_break"></span>lio-7-alfred-corn/#more-1906</a></strong><strong></strong><br />
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A happy New Year to all.Alfred Cornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08736273490999559749noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8551412464532578641.post-33267748240355649442010-11-18T16:06:00.000-08:002010-11-18T16:06:09.511-08:00Multiple genresThis blog seems to have become intermittent only, and I can guess the reason. Since I went on Facebook, it’s come to seem easier to post updates and thoughts there than here. So I invite people to join me on Facebook if they’d like to keep in touch.<br />
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The preceding blog records my visit to Scotland, but not the two weeks in London following it. It seems a little late now to report on that, even though I so much enjoyed seeing my friends there. I left London in mid-September and stayed in southern Rhode Island for the past two months. There was a knee operation that needed attending to—nothing grave, just a meniscus tear. Recovery went smoothly and in October I went down to New York to see friends, staying with Walter Brown, who has appeared here in earlier posts. Among the friends I saw was Edmund White, the novelist, and his partner Michael Carroll, also a fiction-writer. I’ve known Edmund since late 1966. In those days he worked for Time-Life Books as a staff researcher and writer, and I was then a grad student at Columbia in French. He had had a play produced Off-Broadway but hadn’t published a novel yet. For some reason he found both myself and Ann Jones, with whom I was then living, worth befriending. I had no publication credits to my name, but eventually confessed to him that I wanted to be a writer. I found him brilliant and funny, and he was one of the few people out as a gay person. Of my friends, only Ann knew about my own sexuality, which she had accepted without shock or embarrassment. <br />
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Edmund had written an autobiographical novel, which I read and liked. Still I was busybody enough to urge him to look into the French <em>nouveau roman</em>, in other words, to be more experimental. Like all beginners, I thought the avant-garde was the only worthwhile approach to the making of art. It isn’t a nouveau roman, but his first novel <em>Forgetting Elena</em> is certainly not a realist-naturalist work, and it remains among his most intricate and brilliant. During the composition of it, he read individual chapters to Ann and me, and we cheered him on. Possibly for that reason, the dedication page has our name on it. <br />
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There have been periods when we didn’t see each other; also, he lived for many years in Paris, where I nevertheless did visit him at his Ile St. Louis apartment. After that he also taught for a couple of years at Brown and I visited him in Providence once. Eventually we do always re-establish contact, and so it was this visit. I went to his place on Twenty-Second Street, a reunion laughter-filled as so many others have been. We spent a couple of hours catching up, and I have to say that Ed is a fascinating source of news and insight about mutual friends as well as people whose names I know even if I haven’t met them. He has just completed a new novel titled <em>Jack Holmes and His Friend</em>, and I’ve begun reading it in manuscript. It resembles the novel I read back in the 1960s, which means Ed has come full circle. Whether it qualifies as avant-garde I doubt, but I no longer care. It hardly makes sense to insist, in the name of artistic freedom, that only one approach is permissible in the production of new works.<br />
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In 1970, Edmund introduced me to Richard Howard, whom I’ve kept in touch with intermittently ever since. In the first years of my friendship with Ed, I was entirely absorbed in writing fiction. It was really my friendship with Richard that led me back to writing poetry. He was helpful with my early, unreadable efforts, giving me books to read and responding tactfully to what I showed him. I never signed up for an MFA program (quite a rare career path in those days), but Richard, along with the critic David Kalstone, to whom he introduced me, became something even better than a substitute for that. They offered informal instruction and encouragement. Richard in his capacity as poetry editor published some of my earliest poems. Not long after, Ed was named editor of The Saturday Review and published poems and almost my first critical essay. Without these friends, I doubt I would ever have made my way as a writer. <br />
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I saw Richard during the New York trip, smiling, unruffled by and fully recovered from some recent age-appropriate health problems. I recall dozens and dozens of visits to his book-lined rooms on Waverley Place in the Village. From there we walked to a nearby restaurant for lunch. Richard has reached something like philosophical acceptance about the death earlier this year of his close friends Sanford Friedman and Ben Sonnenberg. As for himself, he is busily engaged in teaching in the graduate writing program at Columbia, where I taught off and on in the years 1983-2001. He was working on a review and a translation, something to add to a staggering bibliography of poetry, critical writing and translated work. I wouldn’t call him a man of letters so much as a Hercules of letters. His conversation is like no one else’s, filled with references to literature and art (he seems to have read and seen everything), including all writers of note in the present century. Because we have so many friends in common, we were able to bring each other up to date on them and comment on the changes the time inevitably brings. It was difficult to stand and go; I felt we easily could have talked another several hours. But there was work to do. My plan is to schedule another meeting on first opportunity.<br />
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I write poetry. I write fiction. I write criticism. I see all three as related projects. But less attention has been paid to what I’ve done in the prose. There seems to be an almost invincible prejudice against poets who publish novels, perhaps a little less when they publish stories. A review of a poet’s novel never fails to say, “This is a poet’s novel,” whereby the reader is relieved of any expectation that s/he might enjoy it. And there is the feeling among imaginative writers that when you write criticism, you have somehow gone over to the enemy. I don’t think so. Rather than argue, let me list a few names: Coleridge, Hardy, Lawrence, Eliot, Randall Jarrell, Elizabeth Bishop. And of course many, many more.Alfred Cornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08736273490999559749noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8551412464532578641.post-85462096887665973252010-08-31T11:28:00.000-07:002010-09-01T04:18:11.378-07:00Edinburgh and the Highlands<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">I'm trying to make up for my scarce writing here this summer, now that the summer break has ended. This entry has to do with Edinburgh, one of my favourite cities, partly because of its unusual beauty and partly because my great-grandfather was born there.</div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ5TDnCJQOFo1LTVlDoXR3PABSMwe_Kxb6iABhKLV3aebzyroIWCW44hegA13EB4bDgie0bxOYFMtfw7gvDGX6QunyMgNH_dbNGaO6Z2hUKClJPbcX1rAFuthMabpwHt3xgk0mp3hsaN-G/s1600/edinburgh" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" ox="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ5TDnCJQOFo1LTVlDoXR3PABSMwe_Kxb6iABhKLV3aebzyroIWCW44hegA13EB4bDgie0bxOYFMtfw7gvDGX6QunyMgNH_dbNGaO6Z2hUKClJPbcX1rAFuthMabpwHt3xgk0mp3hsaN-G/s320/edinburgh" /></a></div>Paul Attinello and I took a train from Newcastle on Saturday with the plan of attending the Meredith Monk performance in the annual Festival. On arrival, we had a few hours and strolled up to Calton Hill, which gives a view of Arthur’s Seat (highest of the crags next to Holyrood Palace), the lower city and the crag where Edinburgh Castle sits. The familiar sensations of my day trips into Edinburgh last May (see earlier blog posts) came rushing back, but of course the streets were now much more crowded with Festival goers. Once we got to the center, we decided there was time to see one of the Fringe shows before the evening’s performance and settled on the Do Theatre, a troupe of Russians who now live in Berlin, in a work titled <em>The Anatomy of Fantasy</em>. This was being held at the Assemby on George Street, where we continued on foot. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcTe2SVlN_5UlrB2BHEI7FezamYXwqNU6uqNmE_e2QmBYKpTvEPtUcglKZFKovbvYz0_rCPCZUYsoS-PQZuEfxltPM9fY8YBoVH86QA33oICGD2nGkqvrYShloOXyd1QFX-1n8_UiPPfr4/s1600/anatomy-of-fantasy_20276.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" ox="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcTe2SVlN_5UlrB2BHEI7FezamYXwqNU6uqNmE_e2QmBYKpTvEPtUcglKZFKovbvYz0_rCPCZUYsoS-PQZuEfxltPM9fY8YBoVH86QA33oICGD2nGkqvrYShloOXyd1QFX-1n8_UiPPfr4/s200/anatomy-of-fantasy_20276.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>The title suggests the mode of the work—dreamlike evocations of an underworld of obscure events, danced to a varied collage of musical accompaniment. Thematic visual elements included lengths of red string deployed in various ways, four scythes, ashes, three movable windows with venetian blinds, and a steel-frame cube. Two principals, male and female, three female secondary dancers, and the musician made up the troupe. Recorded music was used along with additions from the musician who from time to time used his boot heels to provide percussion. Smoke billowed more than once, and the rhythms twice became very loud and insistent. Meaning? Let’s say that many interpretations could be tried, probably none of them accounting for every detail. The interpretation of dreams asks for high levels of Keatsian negative capability. The “erotics” of criticism, not the hermeneutics, as Sontag once urged. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCWnJpIRP8PXxZLwh8UFC3JiX_ieXyf7TgCOqDPITIjiut_uDliwCgmuqgwi1pXztyMWTZtAXZm3BIdsG2a6n5WxhjJiHLWQcX_fe705U6Z6GVibL-qsyjaQDQmTbLKEI-m6bEJOSHo0Qs/s1600/Meredith-Monk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" ox="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCWnJpIRP8PXxZLwh8UFC3JiX_ieXyf7TgCOqDPITIjiut_uDliwCgmuqgwi1pXztyMWTZtAXZm3BIdsG2a6n5WxhjJiHLWQcX_fe705U6Z6GVibL-qsyjaQDQmTbLKEI-m6bEJOSHo0Qs/s200/Meredith-Monk.jpg" width="142" /></a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">The Monk performance began at eight, and to what looked like a full house. Title: <em>Songs of Ascension</em>. A bare stage with a single suspended glass lamp making wide circles while a woman in a white dress moved about and informally danced. Slowly the lamp rose in proportion as its circles shrank, finally vanishing up into the flies. Then the performers, including Meredith Monk came out. That included her co-perfomer Ching Gonzalez, who has apeared in many Monk works. Two violins, a viola, and a cello, which the cellist several times played while standing and holding it. A chorus joined in many times, concluding in the angelic location of two boxes on opposite sides of the hall. The music used mostly pandiatonic harmony, with an occasional chromatic touch. It owes something to the “Minimalist” style of Glass and Reich and perhaps a little to Virgil Thompson, but mostly it is Monk’s own language, especially for the vocal lines, which use little calls reminiscent of Native American singing. To which she adds serrated melodic motifs, little tonal peaks and valleys something like medieval hocketing. Though of course there was also some conventional vocal leading. The overall effect was ecstatic, with occasional somber or humorous asides. A rising climax at the end earned the piece’s title. Is there a word better than “inspiring” or “uplifting” that I could use to describe it?</div><br />
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Paul and I went to the stage door and eventually the artist of the evening emerged and smiled delightedly to see Paul (they’ve known each other for many years), who embraced and congratulated her. I was duly introduced and had a friendly greeting from both Meredith and Ching Gonzalez. She said they were going to a party and invited us to come if we liked. There was even a van to drive us there. So in we rode through the Grass Market up to Princes Street and around to the High Street, the final destination the large Victorian building of the City Chambers. Up a flight of stairs and past vitrines with historical memorabilia, including a small silver replica of the Walter Scott Monument on Princes Street. I’d assumed it would be a party given by some private person, but, no, it was a City of Edinburgh event. Artists performing several different shows that evening gathered in the Council Chamber, a large, high-ceilinged hall with coffers in its ceiling, brass chandeliers, and a series of mural paintings by William Hole based on Scottish history. “Mary Queen of Scots Enters Edinburgh,” “News of the Battle of Flodden,” “Robert the Bruce Presents a Charter to the Burgesses of the Town,” and so on. Wine was immediately available and taken. The Lord Provost and his wife were there, and soon enough he shifted into action and welcomed everyone. He wore an ornamental chain of office around his neck (in fact, so did the Lady Provost), even more elaborate than what you see depicted in the Holbein painting of Thomas More, the one now hanging in the Frick Museum. A touch of the ceremonial past. Then Jonathan Mills, Director of the Festival, spoke with an informality that matched his clothes, and after that food was served. <br />
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We had our meal, mingling with all the performers and groups that had gathered for the party, and then said goodnight. <br />
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Next morning I got up early and took a cab over to the High Street, where a bus waited for my tour of the Scottish Highlands. Although bus tours are in most ways awful, I’ve waited too long to see that part of the world, somehow never quite managing to get there using more comfortable modes of transport. Anyway, I think of it as a reconnaissance mission, during which I would learn what parts of the country I’d like to return to.<br />
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A guide (in obligatory tartan kilt) kept up a running monologue about the places we were passing, beginning with Georgian Edinburgh and some of its famous figures. Before long we’d left the city behind and began to see sights. The Forth Bridge, for instance, an early engineering feat still in use today. Loch Lieven with a castle on its little island. Perth, formerly St. Johns Town, which coined its name from Roman Apertha as soon as Presbyterianism made popishness like saints unacceptable to the new sect. A mention of Scott’s <em>The Fair Maid of Perth</em>, based on the life of Catheirne Glover whose house is still there to be visited. A quick passage through Birnam Wood, no less, although Dunsinane was too far away to be visible. And so on until the first big ridge of the Highlands appeared. Nine hundred million years old, according to our guide, but then other parts of farther north were 4000 million years old. Age seems to make for beauty because the landscape began to take on a majestic allure. Empty except for a few sheep, with whin and purple heather covering the stony, uncultivated land. (Whin being a heather-like spiky shrub that grows near whinstone or basaltic rock.) We passed several whiskey distilleries, looking not very industrial but presumably producing huge quantities of the famous local product. Then came a hallucinatory series of rainbows, complete, transport-worthy bridge arches, some of them double. They backed away as we moved toward them, constantly replacing themselves, as in a slide show. Before long Ben Nevis was in view, its top lost in cloud. Britain’s tallest mountain, but today looking like something in a Chinese painting. Tall as it is, the guide said, there is a path that allows you to reach the summit in about two hours without a lot of difficulty. I’d like to do that some day. <br />
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Pitlochry, for a, shall we say, “pit stop.” Long queues at the cafés for coffee and buns. A surrounding amphitheater of surrounding mountains. Sunlight gleaming off the pavement and rain droplets, cold winds. Back on the bus. Onward through more rainbows. Evergreens, reforestation of land that long ago was cut and burned. Higher mountains. Loch Lochie, part of the North Scotland canal. Leading to Loch Oich and a series of intermediate locks. Finally Fort Augustus, at the western end of Loch Ness, where we stopped for lunch. Some took a boat out onto the lake. I didn’t, despite the realization that one doesn’t see much of Loch Ness from its western extremity. I had my packed lunch on a bench facing the Loch, watching the tourist boat retreat and retreat towards distant waters and mountains. Canoe trippers coming from Loch Oich, not wanting to pay for the locks, had to make a portage through town. Lunch consumed, I rinsed my hands in the stingingly cold water. After which, a stroll back to the locks and up the stair at each level to the top one, for a glance westward where boats were beginning to gather for the next trip down the water stairs provided.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl41eAaCeww_W-GnUCtYTVTfL7GHJu1tuLsi6qLB0CVSyP4OsOG-HgA2MFFDUIkxgwS-7YN93Tpid2RwYk7xLQMCY_OzZLS4XgGF31UEVCDK8WbaGSunaSlMZbbQQXvac1Y2M_zfApG_hb/s1600/glencoe.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" ox="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl41eAaCeww_W-GnUCtYTVTfL7GHJu1tuLsi6qLB0CVSyP4OsOG-HgA2MFFDUIkxgwS-7YN93Tpid2RwYk7xLQMCY_OzZLS4XgGF31UEVCDK8WbaGSunaSlMZbbQQXvac1Y2M_zfApG_hb/s200/glencoe.bmp" width="200" /></a></div>The return took a more westerly route so that after seeing Ben Nevis from another angle, we would see a different part of the Highlands. The most staggering was the country around Glencoe, in the west, where you get lochs that are actually fjords connecting to the Atlantic. The mountains thrust vertically up and yet are rounded by erosion, with green slopes most of the way to the summits. It is Ossian country and his cave was pointed out to us as we sped past, dazed by all the sublimity. It is the ideal place for the Romantic movement to have been born. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUxxI7ip9gW141fNwIdn7aqJk99jaSMkYBOHZQoJ7J3YHd4fPG9MEmIvTMTEYdVhyphenhyphenEorPg-LtRGSzMadxiHGA2FPUW-5mzCAWU9d6vl9nsOPyhZzSeAdLtJf9yfVxkurzmGd9fQ1Bwy1db/s1600/charlotte_square_edinburgh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" ox="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUxxI7ip9gW141fNwIdn7aqJk99jaSMkYBOHZQoJ7J3YHd4fPG9MEmIvTMTEYdVhyphenhyphenEorPg-LtRGSzMadxiHGA2FPUW-5mzCAWU9d6vl9nsOPyhZzSeAdLtJf9yfVxkurzmGd9fQ1Bwy1db/s200/charlotte_square_edinburgh.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Next morning I checked out of the hotel and made my way over to Charlotte Square, where the Edinburgh Book Festival is being held this year. Literally in the Square: tents and wooden walkways have been set up in the middle of the central green, and that’s where events take place. I’d told Don Paterson I’d come to his reading at 11:30 and so I did. The venue was a large space with probably three hundred seats and there must have been about 250 people in the audience. (I guess they weren’t aware of the commonplace notion that “No one is interested in poetry.”) The Festival Director, Nick Barley, gave a rather odd intro, then Don came to the lectern wearing a black suit jacket and white shirt, his white beard neatly trimmed. He had a glass of wine with him to help him deal with a slight cough, he said. Sips of this throughout the reading gradually warmed him up, so that the tentative modesty of the beginning was gradually replaced by something a little bolder and more spirited. He has an appealing Dundonian voice and is able to make use of Scottish intonations you might not have guessed at if access to the poems came only through the page. There’s also a habit of placing one foot in front of the other and rocking back and forth in response to the verses, occasionally lifting the back foot. Possibly a remnant from his days as a rock music performer? He read mostly from the recent collection <em>Rain</em> but a few new poems as well. The in-between comments were pointed and amusing, touching on many different topics. That includes his atheism, a skeptical stance that seems to be countered by a strong awareness of mystery—the mystery of being itself, just for a start. He also read a few aphorisms, which (should I be surprised?) were well received. I sensed he held the audience’s attention throughout; loud applause at the end suggested as much. </div><br />
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I strolled over to the <em>London Review of Books</em> tent café afterward to speak to him, where he was set up at a table on a low platform for book signing. Over a hundred fans were queued up for his signature. When the last had gone, I went up and gave his hand a congratulatory shake. Even though the aftershock of giving a large-scale reading hadn’t quite dispelled, we enjoyed a few minutes of gently ironic banter. He had other appointments, and I had a train to catch, so there was no question of lunch or even a coffee. Don plans to read at the 92nd St. Y in New York in October (yes, this is an ad for it), so possibly I’ll see him there when I get back.<br />
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So, a temporary farewell to Caledonia. And two days from now I leave Newcastle for London. But the images are still with me.<br />
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</div>Alfred Cornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08736273490999559749noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8551412464532578641.post-84604354843764076832010-08-27T07:19:00.000-07:002010-08-27T07:32:13.299-07:00North-South Shuttle<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgP25uvSKbD_UOj6JCUQnu0iuhF5c0G_Nu69O4t7sGEJGClxKMA1Ru84bw-RO6-ho9fSGcGW1gwtnCOSIDJ4FdtdpK7cCUH_OuVyuohDIFjZxMS4MFnEd68BoAYZvKgQJ7Qao-38R8u3ZkH/s1600/fado" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" ox="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgP25uvSKbD_UOj6JCUQnu0iuhF5c0G_Nu69O4t7sGEJGClxKMA1Ru84bw-RO6-ho9fSGcGW1gwtnCOSIDJ4FdtdpK7cCUH_OuVyuohDIFjZxMS4MFnEd68BoAYZvKgQJ7Qao-38R8u3ZkH/s320/fado" /></a>Summer is the season to slack off from work, and that’s been true for me as to this blog; and not true for poems, fiction, and critical prose. I was down to London again in July to read with several other contributors to Mimi Khalvati’s anthology of <em>fado</em> songs mentioned in an earlier entry. This time I stayed in a hotel in Bloomsbury, making plans the first afternoon to spend some time with Margo Berdeshevsky, who’d come over from Paris for a couple of nights. Margo and I got to know each other through mutual friends Marie Ponsot and Marilyn Hacker. She has published one book of poems with Sheep Meadow and a second is now in production. Earlier this year she published a well-received collection of short fiction with the Fiction Collective, and she also makes fascinating photographic art, superimposing images from different contexts to make a new whole. Margo is a native New Yorker who had a successful stage career for many years, which she eventually relinquished in order to go and live in Hawaii, shifting her interest then to poetry. Our first meeting was a workshop I taught in the early 90s at an Arts Center in Maui, but we only became friends during the past five years. She now lives in Paris, in what I’d call an ideal apartment in the Marais, just opposite the Hôtel Carnavalet, once the Paris residence of Mme de Sévigné. </div><br />
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She and I attended the first part of the launch of the Summer issue of <em>Poetry Review</em>, partly because I had a poem in it and partly because I wanted to hear Ruth Padel, the evening’s featured reader. I first met Ruth when we were both participants in the San Miguel Poetry festival in Mexico, in late 90s. I hadn’t known about her work at that time, but, since then, she has become of the leading poets in Britain. She gave a brilliant reading at the launch, so it was too bad I couldn’t stay to congratulate her; I had the launch of Mimi’s anthology to do the same evening.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>That was held at the Free Word Centre in Clerkenwell. When Margot and I got there, the first person I saw was Mimi, looking particularly attractive, and modestly aglow about the festivities soon to begin. The Free Word Centre had been set up like a cabaret, with low lighting and three separate stages, one of them high up on a balcony overlooking the space. During the general mingling beforehand, I saw several friends, including Michael Schmidt, the poet and editor, and one of the contributors scheduled to read. We first met in the 80s, and there have been several meetings since then, to the extent that a man who runs a large publishing house, edits a magazine, teaches writing, assembles anthologies and writes poetry and poetry criticism, can spare time for meetings. Then Marilyn Hacker arrived and we had a quick conversation in the last few minutes before proceedings began. Other participants were Eric Ormsby, to whom I spoke briefly and Pascale Petit, whom I hadn’t seen for several months. I was also pleased that Sophie Mayer, fellow resident at Hawthornden, last May had come. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>The readings were done in three sets, concluding with Mimi giving a beautiful rendition from the balcony. After that, actual Portuguese <em>fado</em> performers came to the main stage and performed several songs for us. Good as the translations in the anthology are, there is still no substitute for the original Portuguese, accompanied by music. I went up afterwards to congratulate Mimi on the evening and was introduced to Grey Gowrie, one of the contributors and in fact the originator of the idea for this anthology. Knowing that he had been a good friend of Lowell’s, I asked him what his impressions were. He spoke warmly of a poet he clearly regarded as his mentor and mentioned that it was through his intermediary that Lowell and Caroline Blackwood met for the first time, an encounter that eventually led to Lowell’s divorce from Elizabeth Hardwick and remarriage to Caroline Blackwood (aspects of this narrative are found in Lowell's <em>The Dolphin).</em> Acknowledging its negative aspects, Gowrie pointed out that the marriage had produced a fine son and that Elizabeth Hardwick’s work had gained fresh strength once she was on her own. Obviously these comments very much interested someone who has written a play about Lowell to be produced next year in London. (We still haven’t set a date, but I think it will probably be in March of 2011.)<br />
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Next morning I met James Byrne for coffee near his summer rental on Queen Square, a quiet enclave in Bloomsbury where the offices of Faber & Faber are located (though currently under renovation). James brought me up to date about his plans. He’ll be returning as a second year student at NYU’s writing school, as an International Fellow, editing The Wolf from over there as he did this past year. Meanwhile, he has been working on an anthology of Burmese dissident poets, scheduled for next year. We had a good hour’s stroll around the neighborhood and then said goodbye when I went off to my lunch appointment. The night before a plan had been made for Mimi, Marilyn, her friend the poet and critic Mary Bain Campbell, and myself to meet for lunch. Which we did, a pleasant couple of hours at a good Indian restaurant near Euston Station. Conversation was equal parts serious and hilarious, but I won’t attempt to summarize it. After lunch, Marilyn and I went down to the Blakean neighborhood of Lambeth, specifically, to Lambeth Palace, where there was an exhibition of medieval illuminated mss. Taken from the Lambeth Library, some of them of extraordinary quality and historical interest.<br />
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I came down to London once more in July, staying with my friend David Matthews, the vicar of Holy Innocents parish out in Hammersmith. David and I met through our mutual friend Edmund White, whose work he greatly admires. David is originally from Nova Scotia but is now pretty well at home in London, where he has many, many friends and seems to be adored by his parishioners. I’d wanted to attend an evening in honor of poets from the U.A.E. sponsored by <em>Banipal</em> magazine and held at the Purcell Room on the South Bank. David had other plans, but James Byrne met me there and we had a congenial reunion as we always do. There were Margaret Obank and Samuel Shimon, who edit <em>Banipal</em>, and London poets Stephen Watts and Yiang-Lin, a Chinese dissident now living and working in the U.K. The Emirates poets were Nujoom Al-Ghanem, Khalid Albudoor, and Khulood Al-Mu’alla, none of them known to me, but all highly accomplished, to the extent that it’s possible to judge from translation.<br />
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Next day evening, David and I joined Adam Mars-Jones and Keith King for dinner, and then they went off to a see a play. The plan was to rejoin them after at the launch of the new issue of <em>Granta</em>, where Adam often appears. We followed through, but apparently we arrived too late, after the festivities had ended. Still, it was a chance to exchange news with them, and I can see that they both are prospering. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFSIk0kgurKeng5k0WGDobSGD6I-wlDSpkyZ27JvEIyz_SaWGpjbV3GyzAWkKPjmDfG9AGgDlo3cm-Hz1doquLCYF6k-APBK9nJgusFB8R967GFyL4xPy28ifqGq2K520r-01gWEwM-frl/s1600/Lit+and+Phil.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" ox="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFSIk0kgurKeng5k0WGDobSGD6I-wlDSpkyZ27JvEIyz_SaWGpjbV3GyzAWkKPjmDfG9AGgDlo3cm-Hz1doquLCYF6k-APBK9nJgusFB8R967GFyL4xPy28ifqGq2K520r-01gWEwM-frl/s200/Lit+and+Phil.jpg" width="150" /></a></div>I mentioned in the previous blog that I was to read at the Lit and Phil Society here in Newcastle (see picture at right), and that indeed took place late in July. An extra for me was that James Byrne came up to visit for a couple of nights and so was able to attend. Also attending were Sean and Gerry, Paul Attinello, and the fiction writer Chaz Brenchley. We all went out for a meal after, a good way to cap off the evening.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFwx4kDNFn0He2aEqZC1VlGvqK9eiFeAnMPmS-Ax1x5dePyR_ew3T2SZPuC3fJFKRE3BWy9tWZwZ-_XxeivmP77KaZgXd_DvBm14alqzCP7IO7s6koN6RrUNBHThh_gc1cxMyAECv9fSbr/s1600/Belsay" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" ox="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFwx4kDNFn0He2aEqZC1VlGvqK9eiFeAnMPmS-Ax1x5dePyR_ew3T2SZPuC3fJFKRE3BWy9tWZwZ-_XxeivmP77KaZgXd_DvBm14alqzCP7IO7s6koN6RrUNBHThh_gc1cxMyAECv9fSbr/s320/Belsay" /></a></div>As for the outdoor aspect of the summer, I made an excursion with Alistair Elliot to two stately homes within driving distance of Newcastle, the first called Belsay. It’s a Doric Greek design built about 200 years ago (see above), severely elegant, and comprising a garden that was made in the quarry from which its building stone was taken. The result is a marvelous grotto filled with ferns and tall trees, not like anything I’ve seen before. Wallington was more familiarly Palladian neoclassical, though the interior was eventually made Victorian. Frequent visitors there were Macaulay and Ruskin, and its paintings include a Turner. All of this surrounded by a huge park with impressive views. Alistair has a sense of humor similar to mine, so I joked that, in the way English names are often pronounced differently from what the spelling would lead you to assume (for example, “Featherstone” is pronounced “Fanshaw”), the names of these two great houses were most likely pronounced “Besy” and “Wanton.” The surmise, however, awaits confirmation.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4Jy501rjeyoKzHBymEVULY6qC-piStQPclFF4I95VSvscG8hN1OxvUpISKaBsYr896r6LLLmFoOJhjm85_f7sy3sUmxjicpdSp748rJFkcyYgI2GQdJWHQq2mgTHdpaeJzyL58wKphi7B/s1600/Lindisgospel" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" ox="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4Jy501rjeyoKzHBymEVULY6qC-piStQPclFF4I95VSvscG8hN1OxvUpISKaBsYr896r6LLLmFoOJhjm85_f7sy3sUmxjicpdSp748rJFkcyYgI2GQdJWHQq2mgTHdpaeJzyL58wKphi7B/s320/Lindisgospel" /></a></div>The other excursion I made was to Lindisfarne (called “the Holy Island” because it was the point of dispersion for Christianity in Northern England more than a thousand years ago). Sean and Gerry and I went there on a cloudy Sunday, the trip timed so that we would be sure to arrive at low tide, otherwise the causeway out to the island is under water. (It’s a feature I recall from a visit many years ago to Mont St. Michel, off the French coast.) The same is true of Mount St. Michael in Cornwall, but not true of Skellig Michael off the coast of Ireland: there you always must take a boat. Why St. Michael the Archangel should in the medieval period be associated with offshore islands I don’t know; but he doesn’t figure on Lindisfarne, instead, St. Cuthbert enjoys special reverence there, even though his remains were long after his death exhumed and removed to Durham Cathedral. It is also where the wonderfully illuminated Lindisfarne Gospels were produced. (See picture above left.) <br />
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<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">This past week several friends came to me in North Shields, and we read our poems. The convives gathered were Sean, Alistair, Bill Herbert, and Joan Hewitt, a poet from Tynemouth whom I’ve only recently become acquainted with. Very lively indeed, and, as the last social occasion of my stay here, a good finale. I go to Scotland for the end-of-summer weekend, and then return in time to pack up. Even though this brief recap can’t do it justice, it’s one of the best summers I remember.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Alfred Cornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08736273490999559749noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8551412464532578641.post-25394104326651777992010-07-05T03:14:00.000-07:002010-07-06T07:46:22.575-07:00Northumbria and London<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeLZGrvcxTCIIzsQM-xGle0_VF9whqwj7zaekD34eXXprdDmB1NWQhOxX4t7ZAMsex5GcY_jQUh-QTF1-0wWPPiVfj5dRJoReZceMNJjzfignNzmk3fdGVriXFvFpVAoyRwiVkdzR3EuSN/s1600/North+Shields.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" rw="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeLZGrvcxTCIIzsQM-xGle0_VF9whqwj7zaekD34eXXprdDmB1NWQhOxX4t7ZAMsex5GcY_jQUh-QTF1-0wWPPiVfj5dRJoReZceMNJjzfignNzmk3fdGVriXFvFpVAoyRwiVkdzR3EuSN/s320/North+Shields.bmp" /></a></div>I’m spending the summer in North Shields, Northumbria, about twenty minutes from the town center of Newcastle upon Tyne. North Shields sits about sixty feet above the river, and from Tyne Street (two minutes from my door) you can see about a mile to where it empties into the North Sea. I’ve made the walk along the promenade to Tynemouth, a seacoast town noted for the ruins of an abbey on the edge of a promontory above the waves. (Stevens once wrote a poem titled “Cathedrals Are Not Built By the Sea,” but certainly this abbey was, as well as the one in Whitby.) Camera enthusiasts will find more than enough targets to aim at—the lighthouse at the end of the jetty, weathered Gothic arches overlooking old graves, and the North Sea itself, usually calm with clouds massed at the horizon. <br />
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Back in North Shields there are two main lighthouses no longer used for the original purpose, one on Tyne Street and a second lower down on Fish Quay, where boats come in to unload the catch of the day. Restaurants there take advantage of this fact, and there are a couple of fishmongers where you can find a wide range of seafood to buy. Off Tyne Street there is a little park on Dockwray Square with a commemorative statue at its center. Instead of the obligatory civic leader or admiral, you find a slightly cartoonish rendering of Stan Laurel, a choice that puzzled me until I was told that Laurel had lived in the square when he was a boy, from 1897 to 1902. <br />
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I go into Newcastle at least twice a week, taking the Metro train, which lets you out at Monument Square, at the foot of a column on top of which stands the statue of the 19th century statesman Earl Grey. The vista down Grey and Grainger Streets is breathtaking, a handsome neoclassical architectural ensemble in tan limestone (which includes the Theatre Royal, shown above right), not like any other cityscape I know. Novocastrians (people who live in Newcastle) may, however, be too used to it, not quite realizing how unusual and beautiful it is. If I were on the City Council, I would urge passage of an ordinance strictly limiting the kind of signage permitted on Grey Street, especially the dissonant TO LET signs that project out from façades overhead. <br />
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Not far from the railway station is the venerable Literary and Philosophical Society, founded in the 18th century as a private "conversation club," eventually a library and lecture hall. The Lit and Phil, too, is a handsome structure, completed in 1822,with a large interior atrium and library stacks on two levels. The public can use it as a reading room and members are allowed to borrow books. There are lectures and literary events year round, in fact, I will be giving a poetry reading there later this month. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Since arriving I’ve seen friends I got to know last summer, in particular, Paul Attinello who is in the Musicology Department at Newcastle University, the poet Sean O’Brien and his wife Gerry Wardle, and the poet Toby Martinez de las Rivas, who lives in Gateshead across the river. During my first week here, Sean gave a magisterial reading at the Newcastle Library, the first time I've heard him, and an experience not to be forgotten. He has a wonderful reading voice, and there were touches of humor, without the usual pandering to the audience for laughs that mars so many readings. Then, a week later, Toby and I attended a reading that the Irish poet Paul Durcan gave at Newcastle University. As we filed into the hall, Sean introduced me to the Scottish poet W.H. Herbert, who actually is my neighbor in North Shields. In the past weeks I’ve also met the poet Alistair Elliot, a Newcastle resident for many years. Alistair has had a widely varied life, beginning with the fact that he was one of the British children sent for safekeeping to America during the Second World War. By coincidence, Alistair’s American host was Charles Merrill, father of James Merrill, whom I knew well in the 1970s and 1980s. Alistair has published many books of poetry and is also known as a distinguished translator, his version of <em>Medea</em> enjoying successful productions here and in New York several years ago. Finally, I met the poet Peter Bennet, who lives out in the country to the west of Newcastle. By another coincidence his publisher is Newcastle’s Flambard Press, whose managing editor Will Mackie rents me the house where I’m staying here in North Shields. <br />
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I had planned several trips back to London over the summer and have already made one of them. Two weeks ago I went down and stayed a couple of nights with my friend Kathryn Maris and her husband Herman Dietman, who live near the Regent’s Canal in one of London’s prettiest neighborhoods. Kathryn published her first book with Four Ways Press, but her second is scheduled with Seren Books over here. I had come down to take part in a launch of the Summer issue of <em>The Wolf</em>, which has an interview with me, accompanied by two poems. Kathryn came with me to the event, which was held at the Poetry Studio, upstairs from the Poetry Café on Betterton Street. It was good to see James Byrne and Sandeep Parmar again, also, James’s mother Mary and her husband David Shuttle. My co-readers were Anne-Marie Fyfe, who has a strange and haunting poem in the issue, and a young poet named Richard Parks. Poets who were there included the Canadian Todd Swift, whom I hadn’t seen for more than year, and the American poet Dante Micheaux, whose first book is scheduled with Sheep Meadow later this year. After the launch we all went to an Indian restaurant on The Strand, there since the 1940s I was told, its former clientele purportedly including Gandhi and Nehru. We were probably twenty at table, and it’s accurate to say that a spirit of celebration was in the air, dispelling any idea of poetry as a pursuit only for the massively serious and over-earnest. <br />
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Next day I went up to Hampstead to meet Leonie Scott-Matthews, who is in charge of the Pentameters Theatre in Hampstead. We wanted to get down to cases about the future production of my play. It’s titled <em>Lowell’s Bedlam</em>, the subject, that Robert Lowell’s stay in a mental hospital in the autumn of 1949. It’s my first play, written, in part, just to see if I could manage one. I’d published in all the other genres, poetry, novel, short story, essay, literary and art criticism, and travel writing. So there was only drama left. Now that I’ve begun to get the hang of it, I expect there to be other plays. Meanwhile, Leonie and I had a pleasant discussion about the history of Pentameters Theatre (the oldest in Hampstead) and about my play. I also saw one of her productions, a stage adaptation of Jerome K. Jerome’s <em>Three Men in a Boat</em>, very lively and well acted. We haven’t set a date for the first night, but I’m guessing it will be late this year or early next, depending on how long it takes to find a director and a cast. Something to look forward to. If theatre isn’t a brave new world to other poets I know, at least it is to me.<br />
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I’m back in North Shields, and the summer stretches ahead. Sean and Gerry came to lunch this past Saturday, after which Gerry and I had a nice walk around town, hitting some high spots like the local used book shop. While the Herberts are away in Crete, Sean and Gerry are staying at their place, which is a converted former lighthouse with views out over the river. Gerry and I finished up with a cup of tea in the little front garden, among fuchsia, geraniums, and poppies. We’ve been having wonderful weather, most days cool and sunny. It’s good to be here, and there’s more to come.Alfred Cornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08736273490999559749noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8551412464532578641.post-509714164982516542010-06-11T11:09:00.000-07:002010-06-11T11:09:31.637-07:00Scotland, Buckinghamshire, and SerbiaThe stay at Hawthornden went by very quickly, so it felt. When I write I go into a semi-conscious state where I stop noticing how many hours pass, and days chugged along like Thomas the Tank Engine, full of energy and the will to productivity. On the other hand, daily breakfast-lunch-dinner rhythms interrupted the flow, as did trips into Edinburgh to get supplies or see the sights. I spent a lot of time at the Scottish National Gallery, a small but choice collection, with world-class Titians and Poussins, plus an early Velazquez, and a beautiful Van der Goes altarpiece. But I also enjoyed just wandering the city, especially along the Royal Mile, up to Edinburgh Castle for the views over the city or down through Canongate to Holyrood Palace, more beautiful, I think, than Buckingham Palace, if only because of its greater age and historical associations. <br />
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During one of the trips into town I met Don Paterson for lunch, we having before only spoken briefly at literary gatherings. He was on his way from Dundee, where he lives, or else from St. Andrews University, where he teaches, to Manchester, scheduled to give a poetry reading there that evening. We spent nearly two hours talking, and very openly, as though we’d been friends for a long time. In particular, about his late friend Michael Donaghy (this blog spoke of Donaghy two years ago); his elegy appears in Don’s most recent book, titled <em>Rain</em>. We also got onto aphorisms, given that Don and I are among the few who currently write them. He hadn’t seen those I published in a little pamphlet I titled <em>The Pith Helmet</em>, so a few days later I sent them on in a digital file. It’s a small club, The Unholy Apothegmists, and we welcome new members. <br />
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Writer-residents at Hawthornden got along really well, and the habit of meeting in the drawing room after dinner to talk or else read was quickly established. We gave out parts for <em>Macbeth</em> and read an act per night for five days running, great fun, needless to say. Part of the getting acquainted process involved each of us also presenting our own work, and who would deny that what we write says a whale of a lot about who we are. That must be why we got to be friendly so quickly as we did. Besides, there were excursions: to North Berwick, a little seacoast town where golfers like to stay, very appealing in the parts not trying to cater to tourists. The offshore bird islands added scale and interest to the seascape. I could easily imagine coming to stay for longer than the day we allotted it. Anorther outing we made was to Rosslyn Chapel, quite close to Hawthornden as the crow flies, but reachable only by a series of turns and long winding roads (through pretty country, at least). Rosslyn is currently being restored, so views of the exterior were hampered by scaffolding and even a tin roof (which , however, came off the day after our visit). But the interior is mostly unaffected and well worth the detour. I still don’t know why Dan Brown chose it as the place to conclude his <em>The</em> <em>Da</em> <em>Vinci Code</em>, unless it was the association between the St. Clair (or Sinclair) family who built Rosslyn and Crusades their scions made to the Holy Land. In any case, the beauty and strangeness of the chapel is in no way diminished by the fact of its being co-opted by the world’s biggest best-seller. It is highly ornamented inside, with fascinating sculptures on walls and pillar capitals, some of the representations thoroughly enigmatic. A brochure said there were no fewer than one hundred representations of the quasi-pagan Green Man, and at different stages of his life, concluding with a death’s-head version carved on the exterior of the church—a none too reassuring detail, you might feel. <br />
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Eventually came the day when our seven residents scattered to our separate existences. Two of us postponed “real life” by going on further journeys, Beena Kamlani off to see friends in Strasbourg and I on my way to Serbia. But I stopped along the way, spending a night in London with Mimi again and then a night in Buckinghamshire at James Byrne’s mother’s house. James and Sandeep had returned to London from New York, so this was a chance for a little reunion. After a cup of tea, he and I took a walk through the woods, this part of Bucks. known as the Chilterns, though still some distance from the Chiltern Valley. We rejoined his mother, whose name is Mary, and his stepfather David Shuttle, at an old country pub called "The Hit or Miss," where a cool drink was just the thing on this broiling afternoon in late May. An enthusiastic game was underway in a cricket pitch across the road, and part of the fun was to keep an eye on the white-clad figures as they hit, missed, or dodged about in the heat. A walk back to the house, a nap, a good dinner, and a good night’s sleep concluded the visit, a brief idyll before further travel rigors. <br />
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Because I had my flight to Belgrade next day: It went smoothly, though there was some haggling with cabbies at Nikola Tesla airport in order to avoid paying three times the normal rate for the drive into town. But soon enough I was at an apartment block on Cara Dushana Street in the Old City of Belgrade, greeted in the courtyard by my friend Dragan Radovancevic, almost certainly Serbia’s best young poet. It was actually James Byrne who effected an introduction between us, as James has made several trips to Serbia, to read his poems and receive a prize for them. But Dragan and I had only exchanged letters, never met face to face, so there was an initial awkwardness to get past. We soon did. Dragan speaks good English, but we would also occasionally lapse into German, which he learned while he was in Vienna and Berlin on various fellowships. And I began to learn a few words of Serbian, overlapping as it occasionally does with Polish or Russian. I also met his brother Pedja, with whom he shares his apartment. Pedja is in the theatre, not as an actor, but as musician/composer and stage designer. The company he works with sometimes tours other countries, so he has done a good bit of travel and also speaks English very well. <br />
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We spent a fascinating week, strolling around the old city and stopping to look at the main sights. Probably the handsomest street is Knessa Mikhailova, now a pedestrain mall, with the expected fashionable shops and some nice examples of Sezession or Jugendstil or Art Deco architecture. Elsewhere Dragan made sure I saw the one mosque that has survived in Serbia, a 16th-century structure with one minaret. Belgrade has a very small surviving Muslim community and a slightly larger Jewish community. I wouldn’t say the atmosphere of the capital, the product partly of the national temper in general, is fully reassuring. While I agree that Nato’s bombs weren’t the right solution for the Balkan conflict of the 1990s, it was disturbing to see graffiti that put NATO before an equal sign that was followed by the Star of David. Of course there are always random fanatics ready to deface walls with any sort of nonsense, but graffiti can also be removed or painted over, and I wish it had been done. Of course the intellectual and artistic minority in any country I’ve ever visited always stands opposed to militarism, racism, religious bigotry, anti-Semitism, sexism, and homophobia. It’s the others that are frightening. Especially where sexuality is concerned. Although there are no laws in Serbia against consensual same-sex relations between adults, the prevailing attitudes are rampantly anti-gay. Gay-bashing is common, and it seems the police turn a blind eye to it. So I never felt fully relaxed during my stay. Discussions with people there revealed that the current government is more than a little intransigent in its nationalism—partly out of wounded pride, I’m certain. Still if its petition to join the European Union is to be accepted, the reigning ideology will have to change, and safety and respect be guaranteed for Serbia’s minorities. That won’t be easy to accomplish. There is even a linguistic or rather a typographical issue to deal with. The Serbian language can be written either in the Cyrillic alphabet or else the Roman. The Cyrillic alphabet is associated with ancient tradition, Orthodox religion, and an insistent nationalism. Progressives in Serbia prefer the Roman alphabet. I can piece out words written in Cyrillic, but it did strike me that if Belgrade wanted to become more tourist-friendly they should spell the street signs in the Roman alphabet. But I doubt this will be done.<br />
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And there are good reasons for tourists to come and spend the money that the Serbian economy desperately needs. For me, the most beautiful part of Belgrade is the old Kalemegdan Fortress, built on an ancient Celtic foundation, the bulk of it constructed during Ottoman rule. It is the highest part of the city, with views onto the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, a grand prospect indeed. Huge and sprawling, the fortifications incorporate several levels, with brick and stone walls, ornamented portals, grassy stretches, trees, a couple of museums, the ice-cream stands idiomatic for public parks, and the tomb of a former Turkish governor. Also, a pair of churches, one of them dedicated to the military. Dragan and I sat in this one for a while, as a fly buzzed in and out of the one ray of light that penetrated the prevailing gloom. I thought of all the widows and mothers of soldiers blown to bits who must during the past half century come to weep and pray there. The one thing the world never seems to tire of is war. Meanwhile, I’m so tired of it I could pull my hair out by the roots, no matter that the gesture wouldn’t do any good. Eliot said we must be grateful for the spectacle of human ignorance and folly, as our only inkling into the nature of infinity. Right.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6z6H5K4iKEJZJUFqMwcITBcjukAQfppkgr6_LVZvFA-Ar-C8aRmp0qbSCzC0zsNipZg3l0A6xVmITnO28VFv3wrbii6PhEnnAA3Wm6v5SzgCk8u9NrkRGoKjFJM4bxCs-2QXHoIqrG_lm/s1600/DSCN7523.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" qu="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6z6H5K4iKEJZJUFqMwcITBcjukAQfppkgr6_LVZvFA-Ar-C8aRmp0qbSCzC0zsNipZg3l0A6xVmITnO28VFv3wrbii6PhEnnAA3Wm6v5SzgCk8u9NrkRGoKjFJM4bxCs-2QXHoIqrG_lm/s320/DSCN7523.JPG" /></a></div>Dragan (pictured at the left with me) would admit that he still bears psychological scars dating from the years when his country was at war. Let’s acknowledge that the sound of bombs exploding doesn’t do much to make a child feel safe and happy. Nor did Dragan live in Belgrade at that time, but in a small town an hour away less affected by the bombing. He and I stayed a night with his parents in that small town, Sremska Mitrovica, which is about an hour from Belgrade. Meri and Draska Radovancevic are charming people and generous hosts. A huge feast was put on the dining table of their apartment in a modern group of buildings on the outskirts of town. Poor Dragan had to do all the interpreting, though Meri would occasionally volunteer an English word or Draska, a German. And I would timidly put forth a Serbian phrase in turn, such as “dobra hrana,” i.e., “good food.” We got along wonderfully well, language barrier or no.<br />
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Next day Dragan drove us toward Novi Sad, Serbia’s second city, with a stop in the Frushka Hills to see Hopovo Monastery, an impressive architectural ensemble in a lovely rustic setting, painted the color I call Maria Teresa yellow, so common is it in the countries of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. Dragan has special regard for the place not only because of its intrinsic beauty but also because it sheltered (for a while) a 19th-century monk named Dositej Obradovic, who became disillusioned with Orthodoxy and wrote about that disillusionment in a well-argued book. Te main attraction is the church, which has austerely attractive frescoes in Byzantine style, a central dome, and the standard Orthodox brass candelabrum suspended overhead.<br />
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We spent only about three hours in Novi Sad, but saw the main sights, including the large, domed synagogue and the central pedestrian mall, named Jovan Jovanovic Zmaj, which, like Belgrade, has many eye-catching 19th century buildings. Dragan pointed out “Newlywed Square,” where it seems just-marrieds often get their picture taken under an ornamented wooden gate, free-standing like a Japanese <em>tori</em>. He said that he had given a poetry reading there a year or so ago, as part of the Novi Sad literary festival. The heat being what it was we stopped for a frappé at an outdoor café next to the Roman Catholic cathedral, glad of the shade and the chance to let aching feet recover. <br />
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It was time to retrace our steps, so we set out again for Sremska Mitrovica, once more stopping at the monastery in the Frushka Hills, this one called Khrushedol. The monastic ensemble and its sturdy gatehouse outside were painted a lively Roman red, with both grounds and buildings very well kept up. Feeling a little guilty at how much touring (and driving) Dragan was having to do, I was relieved to hear he’d never visited this particular monastery before. When we inspected the church, similar to the Hopodov’s, he was interested to discover that the tomb of King Milan was there, Milan being the first monarch to encourage the adoption of Western modernity in Serbia. Another tomb nearby had apparently been donated by Catherine the Great of Russia, but he wasn’t able to decipher who the deceased person thus honored was. When he thanked the nun who attended us there, she answered (rather dauntingly) “No: Thank God.” <br />
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During my last days in Belgrade I met several friends of Dragan’s, all of them friendly and intelligent, several of them writers eager to discuss topics relating to literature and culture at large. I could see that New York was a magical name to them. Of course I felt the unfairness of our comparative situations. Yes, I’ve worked hard and made sacrifices to live the life that I live. But there is no reason that Serbia’s gifted writers and artists shouldn’t figure on the international scene. No reason except for history, that strange combination of accident and human will, the latter too, too often shortsighted if not downright malevolent. Dragan has had the luck to win fellowships to live and work outside his country. But something more than that is needed, and, myself, I don’t know how that desirable something is to be attained. Here (as so often elsewhere), we take our petitions to Time and wait for them to be granted.<br />
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My thanks to Dragan, to Pedja, and to Meri and Draska.Alfred Cornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08736273490999559749noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8551412464532578641.post-63879706699031768252010-05-17T06:55:00.000-07:002010-05-19T07:03:06.828-07:00London and Hawthornden<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWV8arVTH3iwriSuHOTRs0y-UrMdQds8Qodyt5hI9RIeGwjYyX9mLLtLkLLSvInq8J1ROz4f_yzJlLQTuDytCfqH9qTHsmVCTu74FFluE87tCu74YGH41b2v8PR3MWfexWyWK8B9jBbTws/s1600/382069631_5a360219e5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWV8arVTH3iwriSuHOTRs0y-UrMdQds8Qodyt5hI9RIeGwjYyX9mLLtLkLLSvInq8J1ROz4f_yzJlLQTuDytCfqH9qTHsmVCTu74FFluE87tCu74YGH41b2v8PR3MWfexWyWK8B9jBbTws/s320/382069631_5a360219e5.jpg" wt="true" /></a></div>I spent most of April in London, staying with Mimi Khalvati at her maisonette in Stoke Newington. We had time to wander the neighborhood, stopping at cafés for lunch or coffee, making excursions to the Lea Valley marshes and Canal, and attending events such as the launch of the spring <em>Poetry</em> <em>Review</em>. After which, the plan was to go to dinner with Fiona Sampson and this year’s winner of the annual poetry competition, a Buddhist monk who was once a student of Mimi’s. The judge of this year’s prize was Glyn Maxwell, whom I remember meeting after a Walcott reading in New York a few years ago. We spoke briefly at the end of the evening, and then our group went on to a nearby restaurant. By chance Alan Brownjohn and the American expatriate poet Leah Fritz were having dinner there, so they joined us at our table. Fiona was filled with anticipation about her planned trip next morning to Belgrade, which she has visited many times and written about. <br />
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My friends Adam Mars-Jones and Keith King came to lunch one day, and the small world cliché was again confirmed when it emerged that the poet Daljit Nagra, who was one of Mimi’s students is on faculty at the same school where Keith teaches. Another event I’d been looking forward to was lunch at the National Portrait Gallery with George Szirtes, with whom I’d exchanged email letters but never met face to face. A pleasant meeting altogether, during which George told me about coming to the U.K. after the 1956 events in Hungary. Going further back, several of his family members were killed in the concentration camps. He still speaks Hungarian but not as well as English. <br />
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George knows a lot about both literature and visual art, as he was a painter before he was a poet. After our meal and wide-ranging discussions on various topics we went upstairs to see the “Indian Portrait” exhibition, a survey of portraiture in India from the Mughal period up through the 19th century. There seems ti be renewed interest in Indian civilization these days. I think it’s fair to say that the “boom” in Latin American culture has now been overtaken by the Indian, British- Indian, and Indian-American counterpart, the last flare of Latin American brilliance being Bolaño’s fiction. One difference is that those novelists all wrote in Spanish, whereas many of the current Indian books were originally written in English: That tradition begins with Narayan and Ved Mehta and continues with Naipaul, Rushdie, Bharati Mukherjee, Anita Desai, Arundhati Roy, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Pankaj Mishra. As for contemporary poetry written in English by poets of Indian ancestry, there is Vikram Seth, Sudeep Sen, Sujatta Bhatt, Imtiaz Dharker, Daljit Nagra, Ravi Shankar, Sandeep Parmar, and the late Reetika Vazirani. (I know that people will tell me I’ve left out important names, but a blog isn’t a formal literary study.) <br />
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Mimi was commissioned by the Gulbenkian Foundation to edit an anthology of <em>fado </em>songs, with translations done by a dozen or so British and American poets. I participated in a mini-launch of the anthology at the London Book Fair, under the auspices of the Translation Centre. The participants were David Constantine, Sarah Maguire and myself. Fun to do and now I've read the anhtology, which offers many approaches to the task of translation. Recommended.<br />
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Mimi has been commissioned to write a text to accompany an art installation at Somerset House by the American Bill Fontana. The installation incorporates recorded riverrine or maritime sounds and video projections, all of it installed on the below-ground level of Somerset House, which used to be subject to floods from the Thames. Mimi and several other writers will read their commissioned texts at some point over the summer. Of course the Courtauld Gallery is there in Somerset House, and I also saw the current exhibition of Michelangelo drawings, something I will perhaps write about in detail later on. The month of April seemed to present an embarrassment of choice as to art exhibitions. I saw both the Arshile Gorky career survey at the Tate Modern and “The Kingdom of Ife” at the British Museum, sculptures in bronze and terracotta from 15th century Ife, in what is now Nigeria. Works of serene realism, reminiscent in some ways of the better known Benin ivories and bronzes. <br />
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At the end of the month I boarded a train for Edinburgh and came to the Hawthornden Writers’ Retreat about a half hour out of town. Details about the Retreat, founded by the American philanthropist Drue Heinz, can be found on the Internet, but the essential facts are these: a medieval castle set on a promontory overlooking a wooded gorge through which the North Esk flows. The castle has many times been renovated and expanded. It was the country seat of the Scottish Renaissance poet William Drummond, who invited Ben Jonson to stay here in the early 16th century and recorded their conversations. Unlike other artists’ colonies, Hawthornden hosts writers only, and never more than seven simultaneously. Since it was going to be a month's stay, I was worried that luck might not be on my side and that a month with the same company would be monotonous. But I had nothing to fear. The other residents are Fiona Shaw (not the actress), a novelist from York; Chew-Siah Tei, a novelist from Malaysia, now living in Glasgow; Sophie Mayer, a poet, film critic and translator; Beena Kamlani, an editor at Penguin in New York who has published short stories; John Greening, poet and critic from Cambridgeshire; Ian Colford, a novelist and critic from Halifax, Nova Scotia. And of course the author of this blog. More about the stay in the next installment.Alfred Cornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08736273490999559749noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8551412464532578641.post-47240385291054321862010-03-23T17:09:00.000-07:002010-03-23T17:09:42.955-07:00All OpposedI grew up among in a part of the country where racism and religious fundamentalism were considered normal, and this experience taught me that there are temperaments that do not care about facts, scientific research, logical argument, fair play, and toleration for difference of opinion. It's the nature of this temperament to believe what it believes because it believes it, and the rest of us be damned. I see the same kind of implacability evidenced among right-wing opponents to National Health Care. They are impervious to reason and logical argument. The following comments, even if brought up to them, wouldn’t make the least difference in their views. If I express them, I do so for myself, to discharge the anger and gloom stirred up by what I hear on national media, Limbaugh, Beck, man-in-street interviews, as well as legal initiatives being launched against National Health in several red states. Here goes.<br />
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<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">“National Health is Socialism.” If you believe that social programs instituted and administered by Federal and local governments are wrong, you should also devote your energy to repealing Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment benefits. You should also lobby to dismantle free public education. Educating children, in your ideology, should be the financial and personal responsibility of each parent, who should let various privately run schools compete in a free enterprise system, so as to get the best possible deal for you. Come to think of it, law should not compel you to educate your children if you don’t want them to be educated. Big government should not interfere in private life. Furthermore, free school-buses is socialistic, raises taxes, and ought to be abolished. Each family should have the responsibility for transporting its own children to school. Some of us, quite a few of us, do not have children. We are supporting yours by paying tax that goes for education and buses. And pay up quite cheerfully, because we believe the electorate in a democratic country should be well educated. But it has become clear to us, confronted with so much ignorance, that the schools we support aren't managing to educate the populace--just to judge by the level of discourse we hear, and incidents such as health-care opponents' spitting on African-American legislators.</div><br />
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Furthermore, shouldn’t you also oppose the Pure Food and Drug Administration? Instead of letting Big Government regulate those issues, let free enterprise decide which purveyors of food and drugs are the best, as will soon become apparent as soon as clients either thrive or fall sick and die. Meanwhile, I guess you want to dismantle the Police and Fire departments of your community. Like, let individuals hire bodyguards for their personal protection and arrange for volunteers to put out fires, that is, when the volunteers aren’t out of town or incapacitated by the last fire they were unable to put out.<br />
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“I’m in very good health, and I don’t want to be forced by Big Government to buy insurance that I don’t need.” Do you have a car? Then you were forced by government to insure it for liability. Why didn’t you protest when that law went into effect? OK, you don’t have health insurance because you're not sick, I understand that. But, uninsured as you are, is your savings account big enough to pay medical costs that will result when you are injured by (1) hurricane (2) tornado (3) earthquake (4) tsunami (5) a flood (6) a lightning storm (7) a fall downstairs, off a bicycle, or off a mountain trail (8) a hit-and-run accident (9) a sports-related injury (10) when you suddenly without warning develop leukemia and are turned down for insurance as having a pre-existing condition (11) when you are bitten by a poisonous snake or spider or scorpion or infected tick (12) when you get trapped in a snowstorm and suffer severe frostbite (13) when a gas leak in your house results in an explosion and you suffer third-degree burns (14) when you sever a limb with your chainsaw? It might be useful for you to consult statistics about unforeseen accidents in this country, and the people affected by them.<br />
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“This bill allows for the murder of babies.” No, it supports termination of pregnancies resulting from incest, rape, or those that threaten the life of the mother. Furthermore, a small piece of tissue with no central nervous system is not a baby, no more than an acorn is an oak tree. Meanwhile, if it is wrong to murder, why must those who don't have the funds for medical insurance or medical treatment be forced to die, when they could be saved? They have fully developed brains and they know what is happening to them, as do their family members and friends. Too bad? Is that what you’re saying? I hope my fate never rests in your hands. You’re aware that the Constitution guarantees separation of church and state. So you are free to follow your religious beliefs, but <em>not</em> to impose them on others who believe differently. And any sect that engages in political lobbying should lose its tax-exempt status, and thereby lower my tax burden. I’m forced to pay more tax because an institution I don’t believe in doesn’t pay up, and, moreover, is promoting policies I abhor.<br />
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“This bill is going to raise my taxes. It’s just more Welfare, and I don’t even believe in the Welfare we already have.” But I suppose you are proud to be a United States citizen, right? What exactly is the U.S.A.? Is it the real estate? Is it the GNP? Is it the money in our banks? No, surely the U.S.A. is the collectivity of its people. Proud as you are to be a citizen, you feel no obligation at all to any citizen outside the circle of family and friends, is that it? As far as you’re concerned, if people are ill or dying and don’t have the money to get medical assistance, that’s their little red wagon. You’re just going to take care of number one. You couldn’t care less about saving other lives (except for fetuses’). Your U.S.A. is yourself and the people you know. As far as you’re concerned, the others can just go ahead and croak; because you don't want your taxes raised by so much as one percent. Your U.S.A. is a cruel and heartless country, concerned above all else with self-interest, I see that. Well, it’s not my U.S.A. And by the way some of those people who can’t afford medical care are your coreligionists. I guess your sect doesn’t teach you all to take care of each other. What is it then, just a means of getting a good seat in the afterlife? <br />
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“Look at the bill, it’s 2500 pages long!” Yes. In an effort to be bipartisan and accommodate free-enterprise ideologues, the current Administration dropped any hope of having a National Health system in which the Federal government is the insurer, as in advanced European nations. Congress allowed private insurance corporations to continue on in that role. It also had to allot part of the insuring burden to business, even small businesses, because legislators ranted about deficit spending. Inevitably, these extra provisions involve a complex regulatory apparatus, so that burden-sharing is fair. Hence the 2500 pages. As soon as private insurers are removed from the picture, and health care is nationalized, regulation will be vastly simplified. But I know you and your fellow right-wingers will never let that happen. The 2500 pages are likely to grow. As for small businesses, you don't seem to know they are now allowed to opt out of insuring employees and pay a fine, which will cost them much less than insuring does. Their employees hope they won’t do this, naturally. And research suggests in any case that insurance costs for small businesses in most cases will decrease.<br />
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“My insurance premiums are going to rise.” You know that for a fact? Where is your proof? Even supposing they did, is it not worth a small rise to have the security of knowing that, in the event you lose the insurance you currently have, no new insurer could deny coverage to you because you already suffer from diabetes, high blood pressure, asthma, cancer, or heart disease. <br />
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“Democrats expand government and spend us into huge deficits, and this health care thing is the latest example of that.” Actually, during the Clinton Administration, we had a budget surplus, have you already forgotten? When the Bush Administration appropriated $750 billion to bail out collapsing financial institutions, it was Big Government interfering with free enterprise. Don’t you believe that the market, not the Bush Administration, should have decided which banks were viable and which not? Are you being inconsistent? Meanwhile, the unprovoked invasion of Iraq insisted on by President Bush has drained our reserves of staggering amounts of capital, more than was spent by any Democratic war president during the last century. Iraq, since 2001 has cost about $713 billion, and there’s no end in sight. I will not mention the cost for Iraq because I know you don’t care what happens to other countries. Nor, out of respect for the dead, will I quote (in this sordid context) the figures for military and civilian casualties on both sides. All this for a threat that never existed. True, it did make corporations like Haliburton and Bechtel (to which the GOP had financial ties) prosper; but it plunged our country into enormous debt and is still doing so. Why didn’t you protest deficit spending during the Bush Administration? In any case, I suppose you’ve decided to ignore the provisions outlined in this new bill for deficit reduction, provisions developed and passed by a Democratic Congress in a Democratic Administration. Though you have no proof, you’re absolutely certain they won’t work because you know they won’t. You are an expert, you don't need to hear the facts and figures. Good bye. I don’t want to know anything more about you, and I certainly don't want to listen to your mean-spirited and mindless ravings any longer.<br />
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Wasted breath. Well, not really. I know they’re not listening, but at least <em>I</em> feel better. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSrS0AClYJccuFULIn8eUyLdQW9PGbeTKRn9a3kVTtMygXFPts_3FksJev3RFrc6V8A4FqWJeWGMa_QVX-EsCSafo8mTyXS3BwR84aepWcw7vrRTbELuEm94fn-0qKgirYubj4UYunVWf6/s1600-h/225px-Official_portrait_of_Barack_Obama.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSrS0AClYJccuFULIn8eUyLdQW9PGbeTKRn9a3kVTtMygXFPts_3FksJev3RFrc6V8A4FqWJeWGMa_QVX-EsCSafo8mTyXS3BwR84aepWcw7vrRTbELuEm94fn-0qKgirYubj4UYunVWf6/s320/225px-Official_portrait_of_Barack_Obama.jpeg" vt="true" /></a></div>Alfred Cornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08736273490999559749noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8551412464532578641.post-18317764607013254332010-03-22T19:20:00.000-07:002010-03-22T19:23:43.703-07:00The Poet Ai, 1947-2010<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtjcWnimcGz7P6YDMLPzUSPGEZrYXYm0QiCz1N84ZGimQ25Wa67ZxK9comLy6H99CD6bAFb0prcepY4pfgUVUc4-M3HgoE4TfvqHujKLXmwI6agzM1YzgBKPoQcUl1YWHv47hioxczRb8i/s1600-h/P1010289.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtjcWnimcGz7P6YDMLPzUSPGEZrYXYm0QiCz1N84ZGimQ25Wa67ZxK9comLy6H99CD6bAFb0prcepY4pfgUVUc4-M3HgoE4TfvqHujKLXmwI6agzM1YzgBKPoQcUl1YWHv47hioxczRb8i/s320/P1010289.jpg" vt="true" /></a></div><br />
Two days ago, my friend the poet Ai died in Stillwater, Oklahoma, of breast cancer. I hadn’t seen Ai since 2002, during the year I taught at Oklahoma State, but we spoke by telephone and exchanged email posts since then, and I would also sometimes get news of her from mutual friends. The last time we exchanged messages was in early January, when she made no mention at all of poor health. She was a very private person, lived alone, didn’t see many people, just taught her classes, gave occasional readings, and wrote her poems. I’m saddened to hear this news and again reminded that breast cancer is a national health problem that seems to be getting more and more serious. I’m not sure enough is being done to promote awareness of it and to fund research. It’s something that has affected the lives of many people close to me, beginning with my mother (legally, my stepmother), whose illness I wrote about in a poem titled “Stepson Elegy” (in <em>Present</em>). But much more to the point are the courageous poems by Marilyn Hacker and Mary Cappello, written from a first-hand perspective. <br />
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I met Ai in Tulsa in 2001, when she attended a reading Robert Pinsky gave there at a literary festival sponsored by the English Department at Oklahoma State. Robert introduced us and we exchanged contact information. I was teaching that year at the University of Tulsa and decided not to go back East for the Christmas holiday. Hearing that, Ai invited me to Christmas dinner at her place in Stillwater. I remember an apartment absolutely filled with things, especially wicker furniture, which Ai had a special liking for. As I was to learn the following year, going out to comb the thrift stores was one of her favorite occupations. Ai always had stylish clothes, designer dresses and jackets combined with thrift-store items she had a flair for discovering. I remember once she was contemplating spending a lot of money on a beautiful turquoise and silver necklace, either Zuni or Hopi, I’m not sure. I egged her on because she looked gorgeous in it and because I knew she was proud of her Indian ancestry. Buy it she did, and even now I can see it ornamenting one of her great ensembles. I think she was also pleased to have African ancestry and, besides that, a Japanese father, whose name (Ogawa) she used on official documents, but not when she signed her poems and books. Still, because she grew up in a Native American community, that heritage seemed to be foremost in her consciousness.<br />
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I was invited to come teach at Oklahoma State for the following year during Ai’s sabbatical and was pleased to accept. I got to know English Department faculty there very well, in fact, it was one of the friendliest I’d ever worked with. Because we were both single, Ai and I saw each other many times, going out to dinner or making raids on the thrifts, where I found stuff to spruce up my temporary apartment in Stillwater. Like many poets, she didn’t know how to drive, and I was perfectly willing to be the chauffeur. It’s said that some people found her personally difficult, but I never did. We seemed to have the same kind of humor, and she knew I valued her and her work. To her poetry she brought keen novelistic skills and a dramatic instinct that didn’t flinch when faced with the inhuman behavior that characterizes so much of human existence. I read her and think of the great Japanese filmmaker Kurosawa’s statement to the effect that, “The artist does not avert his eyes.” <br />
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And yet. For some reason Ai averted her eyes from her own illness and didn’t have a check-up when symptoms appeared. I don’t understand this, and, in my confusion, am posting these reflections in the hope that someone who knew her better than I did can explain what happened. When there is a loss, we try to extract from it something besides sadness. Perhaps that may happen in this case, too. Meanwhile, I will reread Ai’s poems, inevitably from an altered perspective. I asked Ai if she’d adopted her name from the classical Greek, the word that is usually translated as “alas!” or “woe!” She said, “No. In Japanese, “ai” means ‘love.’”Alfred Cornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08736273490999559749noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8551412464532578641.post-54096286068924256752010-03-04T13:51:00.000-08:002010-03-04T14:00:04.450-08:00After Argentina<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLb_ArE3hxK-mvIEhXuipmWyeZE8IPFdNIVDPuZpSPfIgYbaoilZWfetiE8XtLno4b4umEPwdT8SAl_0x8lQd5OHd1C7roV47SKvmWXdLTQpmq5YwNzYSgr1FLfGJ9jmB-MeqhWj2CAvJR/s1600-h/alfred_sam_pic_ML.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" kt="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLb_ArE3hxK-mvIEhXuipmWyeZE8IPFdNIVDPuZpSPfIgYbaoilZWfetiE8XtLno4b4umEPwdT8SAl_0x8lQd5OHd1C7roV47SKvmWXdLTQpmq5YwNzYSgr1FLfGJ9jmB-MeqhWj2CAvJR/s320/alfred_sam_pic_ML.jpg" /></a></div><br />
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Maybe now that I’ve left Argentina, I’ll have time to say a little more about my stay. <br />
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There were many high spots during my six weeks in Buenos Aires, but a good place to begin is a joint reading with Sam Hamill, a poetry evening arranged by his Argentinian translator Esteban Moore. Esteban is a poet of Irish descent who has published several volumes and is well known in Latin America. The second week in February he invited friends and fellow poets to a bar called La Poesia in San Telmo, the oldest part of the city. We arrived early, so I had time to walk two streets over to the former Biblioteca Nacional, which from 1955 to 1972 had as its director Jorge Luis Borges. It’s now the National Center for Music and Dance, a fact fully evident when you noticed students congregating on the steps outside. A guard allowed me to have a look at the former Reading Room, quite similar to its counterpart in the British Museum in the era when the British Library was housed there: a very high, octagonal room capped by a dome and lined with bookshelves. Remember the opening of Borges’s “The Library of Babel”? “The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite, perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries.” Borges said he conceived of Heaven as a library and cited his father’s library in the family home on calle Serrano as the central, determining fact about his childhood. Borges was an heroic reader, in the same way we say Achilles was an heroic fighter, and he had an Achilles heel as well: the eye defect he inherited from his father, which eventually left them both blind. The convergence of those two facts, directorship of the National Library and his blindness, led to the writing of one of his best-known poems, the “Poem of the Gifts,” pervaded with a calmly tragic sense of humor. Borges fame arose around his fiction writing, but as time has passed I’ve come to prefer his poetry to his short stories, brilliant and original as those are.<br />
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Meanwhile, this was to be an evening of the, so to speak, “talking book,” and I made my way back to Bar La Poesia to see if it was time to go on. It was a bilingual evening, given that most of the audience was hispanophone. I read my poems in both languages (using translations made by others or myself, plus two poems that I actually wrote in Spanish first, and later translated into English). Sam read his poems in English, pausing between each so that Esteban could read his very accurate and graceful versions. The picture shown above was taken during the evening, myself on the left and Sam on the right. It was the first time we’d ever read together, and the significance of the occasion wasn’t lost on me.<br />
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The person who took the photograph is my friend Mong-Lan, whom I met about ten years ago in Switzerland, during a month’s residency at the Château de Lavigny, in a small village near Lausanne. Even in those days Lan was passionate about tango; in the past decade she has become sufficiently expert to give tango lessons herself. And she recently published a book of poems dealing with the topic, the verses accompanied by her ink-brush drawings. She sees tango as a kind of pain-killer for the underclass of Buenos Aires, a way to forget for a few hours that their lives have strict economic limits and few attractive prospects. Not for most of its dancers a prelude to real physical intimacy, tango is a kind of abstraction of sexuality, allowing equal expression for both genders, though it seems to me that women dancers have a wider repertory of gestures, particularly with the <em>voleos</em>, or whip-lashings of the leg. <br />
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One evening Lan and I went to a <em>milonga</em>, a dance hall where people meet to tango. Participants don’t usually arrive as a couple. Instead, men invite women they catch sight of there to dance a number or two, always interspersed with an interval of conversation. That means a dance can be a fleeting encounter or develop into something longer term, depending on circumstances and mutual attraction. The <em>milonga</em> Lan and I went to for some reason is called “Canning” and opens its doors near Palermo Soho around eleven every evening. I have to report I don’t know how to tango and was a fairly resigned wallflower (wallvine?) for the whole evening. But it was impressive to see how well Lan performed, the best dancer on the floor that evening, unmistakably. It was also touching to see older couples dancing, not athletically but slowly and sensitively, some of them upwards of seventy. Granted, the smart youth of Buenos Aires much prefer rock and disco to tango; but it is an old <em>porteño</em> (the adjective used to describe citizens of Buenos Aires) tradition that also draws adepts from all over the world, the poet and painter Mong-Lan included.<br />
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During my stay I strolled through the neighborhoods that are most often visited in Buenos Aires—the Palermos (Soho, Chico, and Hollwood), the Centro, La Boca, San Telmo, Recoleta, Retiro, and Belgrano. I visted most of the museums, had good meals in the restaurants, saw my Australian friends Lee Tulloch and Tony Amos at their hotel (the Alvear Palace) and in Palermo, before they went on their cruise to the Malvinas/Falklands, Patagonia, and Chile. Yet it would have been unadventurous to stay in the city for the full six weeks and never visit the other nearby national capital when it is in so easily reached. To get to Montevideo, you either take a ferry there directly or else to Colonia del Sacramento (a shorter ride) and go by bus for the remainder of the trip. I chose the latter route, thinking it would incidentally give me an overland view of the countryside in Argentina’s smaller neighbor to the north. Fairly flat terrain greets you as you leave Colonia, dotted with small houses on a single level, grazing cattle, eucalyptus groves and the occasional palm tree. You see less harvesting machinery than you would in comparable farmlands in the U.S.A., but also a certain appealing simplicity and modesty of aims. Uruguay is the twenty-fourth sovereign nation I’ve visited (twenty-seventh, if you count San Marino, Andorra, and Vatican City). I’ll go on record, too, as having seen all fifty states of the Union, and all but one of its large cities, lest anyone suppose I’m insufficiently interested in my home country. <br />
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Montevideo has its own special ambiance, as all national capitals do. Smaller and slower-moving than Buenos Aires, it has only one high-rise building, the Palacio Salvo, but on the other hand that was Latin America’s first such building when it was completed in 1928. It overlooks the Plaza Independencia, which is dominated by the equestrian statue of José Artigas, Uruguay’s liberator and a man with very forward-looking social ideas for his day, ideas that included universal suffrage, not excluding the indigenous peoples and women. The square is at the edge of the Old City, which, though dilapidated in some streets, is now having many of its old buildings renovated and may well end up being an equivalent to Buenos Aires’s Palermo Soho in a few years. I was impressed by the variety of architectural styles (from the 18th,, 19th, and 20th centuries) gathered in this old quarter, as well as by the unhurried and companionable life of the people I saw in the streets. <br />
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I also had dinner with a writer friend whom I hadn’t seen since the 1970s. This is Roberto Echavarren, one of the leading poets, novelists, and critics in Uruguay, often a guest at literary festivals throughout Latin America. We met in New York through mutual friends John Ashbery and David Kalstone and then unaccountably fell out of touch, though Roberto taught Comp Lit and Latin American literature for many years at NYU. Anyway, it was a pleasant reunion at his house in Pocitos, where I met his Indonesian-born partner Yudi Yudoyoko, who is a visual artist. We three had a pleasant meal together and caught up a bit. Roberto is often classed with the <em>Neo-barocco</em> poets of Latin America, a description that may or may not apply. He has published a volume of translations of Ashbery’s poetry and could be said to be influenced by that oeuvre, too; though perhaps it makes more sense to say that Ashbery nowadays is a kind of climate of opinion or aesthetics, with an impact on nearly every contemporary poet, as was true with Eliot in the 1920s and Auden in the 1930s. Roberto gave me several of his books, including a theoretical work on the androgyne in literature, which is a timely topic, certainly. I was glad to see Roberto again, and, besides, it always changes the face of an unknown city when you interact with someone who actually lives there.<br />
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Next morning I had a meeting with the poet Chip Livingston, whom I know from New York, and his Argentinian partner Gabriel Padilha. They had been living in the attractive Pocitos neighborhood of Montevideo since December but will be returning to the States shortly. We decided to find the monument to Gay Liberation that was set up in Montevideo five years ago—the first in Latin America, but a counterpart to others in New York, Amsterdam, and Germany. It was right at the edge of the Old City, in a little traveled byway called the Pasaje de la Vieja Policia. An upbeat way to conclude my stay in Montevideo.<br />
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This blog entry should also conclude, so I will sign off with the observation that my spoken Spanish improved while I was in Argentina, that being one of my reasons for going. Considering that the U.S.A. has a vast Spanish-speaking population, and the role that Spanish-speaking peoples have had in U.S. history, it seems only right that citizens should know Spanish, just as Canadians are expected to speak French even when their mother tongue is English. Besides, knowledge of the language opens the door to a culture and literature of extraordinary richness, as well as to one European country and some two dozen in the Western Hemisphere, where it is the official language.Alfred Cornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08736273490999559749noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8551412464532578641.post-78724221264495626742010-02-06T20:31:00.000-08:002010-02-06T20:31:37.880-08:00Borges, Citizen of Buenos AiresThough I didn’t make a special effort to find a rental there, I am now living in a stretch of calle Serrano (Serrano Street) that was, a number of years ago, renamed calle Jorge Luis Borges, in the old Buenos Aires barrio of Palermo. Borges was born on calle Serrano in 1899, but his childhood home was evenutally demolished (a disappearance that wouldn’t, I think, have surprised him). This part of Palermo, again, was renamed at some point Palermo Soho, either in honor of London or New York or both. Another part is called Palermo Chico, another, Palermo Viejo, and still another Palermo Hollywood. Actually, New Yorkers might conclude that P. Soho resembled Greenwich Village, an inexpensive neighborhood that became fashionable over time partly because it contained some interesting old architecture and partly because low rents enabled artists and bohemians to live there. (This feature of Palermor Soho has now been brushed aside.) The busy center of it all is Plazoleta Cortàzar (formerly Plaza Serrano), renamed in honor of the experimental Argentine novelist, who, along with Borges, ushered in the “boom” for Latin American fiction that began in the 1960s.<br />
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One of the main reasons I wanted to come to Buenos Aires was to see the environment that fostered one of the 20th century’s greatest writers. Because of his many travels and the multinational references in his writing, we think of Borges as a supremely cosmopolitan author. He is, yes, but it must be remembered that JLB over and again affirmed his nationality and, even more, his home city. His first book of poems was titled <em>Fervor de Buenos Aires</em> (Passion/Fervor of/for Buenos Aires), which, besides several poems with Palermo settings, contains the lines “siempre estaba (y estaré) a Buenos Aires.” (“I always was and always will be in Buenos Aires.”) The poem opening the volume is titled “La Recoleta” and describes the city’s most famous necropolis, situated in Recoleta, where rich <em>porteños</em> (citizens of Buenos Aires) have lived since the 19th century. The poem’s final line describes it as “el luego de mi ceniza,” “the site of my ashes.” In the event, it didn’t turn out to be that because Borges is buried in a cemetery in Geneva, where he lived the last two years of his life. <br />
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I went to see the cemetery, which is enclosed by a wall, with an entrance bearing the motto REQUIESCANT IN PACE. The sentiment can’t be entirely true, considering how many visitors flock here, the great majority anxious, I suppose, to see the tomb of Eva Perón. What they don’t bargain for is the labyrinthine acreage of marble, granite and onyx they must pass through before finding her in the Duarte family vault--mausoleum after elaborate mausoleum, dating from the early 19th century up until the mid-20th. This must be the most resolute necropolis in the world, with no exposed earth and no grass, just a few arbor vitae trees planted in one or two places along the central avenue. In addition to the main grid of fairly wide streets, there are other diagonals cutting through the right angles, and it's easy to get lost, even with a map in hand. I was struck by the duplication of names on the mausoleums and the street names of Buenos Aires: Rivadavia, Saenz Peña, Sarmiento, Figueroa, Saavedra, etc. But I also wondered whether many visitors had the remotest idea who those figures were. As for the others, not eminent enough to have streets named after them, the bid for immortality was hopeless. Stone funereal monuments, designed to serve as a reminder to the living of the dead, all too soon become essentially anonymous once the descendants of the commemorated person themselves die.<br />
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<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">I found the Casares family vault, where I believe Adolfo Bioy Casares is buried. He was of course Borges’s closest writer friend and indeed collaborator in several works published under the pseudonym H. Bustos Domecq. As for Borges’s poem “La Recoleta,” it must finally be read figuratively; first poem in his first volume, it implies that the book itself is a kind of necropolis, each poem a tomb inscription, recording some important moment of feeling that has now ceased to live and breathe. In fact, the topic of two of the poems is a tomb inscription, and there is an elegy for his grandfather, plus a poem titled “Remordimiento por cualquier muerto” (“Remorse for an unknown dead man.”) Wordsworth stated a similar view of the, should we call it, mortuary relationship between poems and the occasions that inspired them in his “Essay on Epitaphs.” “Emotion recollected in tranquillity” is, truth to tell, emotion only in a secondary sense. Written with the lofty despair characteristic of twenty-somethings, Borges’s first book is filled with late afternoons and sunsets, with elegies, goodbyes, and terminations. There are a few wrenching poems about the end of a love affair about which we’re given no details. I sense the mystery of Borges’s personality but don’t know where to begin in trying to understand it. There are doors that close with complete finality, some of these being mausoleum doors. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
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<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">As a footnote, I’ll mention coming upon—an event that doesn’t strike me as in any way inevitable—the granite final hermitage of someone named Alfred Cornu. I’d been noticing that the local custom here was for friends or institutions to attach bronze plaques to the tombs of the deceased person. Cornu’s had one saying: <em>Querido Alfredito, vives en los corazones de tus amigos.</em> ("Dear Alf, You live in the hearts of your friends.") Let’s hope the equivalent will be said when time comes (perhaps twenty years from now?) to say goodbye to "fervor for Planet Earth," even if the sentiments don’t get recorded in bronze. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHCx1MU67oTGRL5qFHksPcT_qW0PDVI4cEdFtm999RmgKduBDR5Y7K4wv2qtwEYxi1PNP2f6i2TdrP4R80GDJikAOexCqhnrojW1NNu8Wi-YTK_t0re1i4OqzFn65hK4K3e8pjtHJ55Ehz/s1600-h/borges" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" kt="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHCx1MU67oTGRL5qFHksPcT_qW0PDVI4cEdFtm999RmgKduBDR5Y7K4wv2qtwEYxi1PNP2f6i2TdrP4R80GDJikAOexCqhnrojW1NNu8Wi-YTK_t0re1i4OqzFn65hK4K3e8pjtHJ55Ehz/s320/borges" /></a></div>Alfred Cornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08736273490999559749noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8551412464532578641.post-21163165849618913892010-02-05T16:58:00.000-08:002010-02-05T16:58:56.886-08:00The View from Down HereA paradox about setting down experience in a diary or a blog is that during periods filled with events worth noting, you don’t have a lot of leisure to record what you are doing and seeing. Instead of constructing a carefully worked-out argument, here are just a few thoughts I’ve had during my first month in Buenos Aires. <br />
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Weather: I expected warm temperatures but nothing prepared me for the hottest January the city has experienced in the past half century. I made up my mind not to be bothered by it and have mostly managed. The light is strong and white, a danger to anyone not using sunblock. Since arriving I’ve seen that the concentration of skin melanin has intensified enough to make it possible for me to go out in relative safety. Buenos Aires is situated on the 34th Parallel South, equivalents in the Northern Hemisphere including Rabat, Morocco, and Los Angeles, U.S.A. I arrived less than a month after the Southern Hemisphere’s summer solstice. But of course other factors besides distance from the Equator and the seasons shape climate. Other spots on this parallel are hotter and still others colder. I was curious to have proved or disproved the old claim that water spinning down a drain in the Southern Hemisphere makes a counter-clockwise vortex as opposed to the Northern Hemisphere’s clockwise counterpart. More than half the time it seems to do so, though sometimes changing direction during the process. Again, other factors can affect what happens. <br />
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I also wanted to see the constellations down here, the most famous of these, the Southern Cross. That one, I definitely have seen, but others have been harder to locate because of competing urban nighttime illumination, as well as my unfamiliarity with the connect-the-dot patterns. Staring upward at the rearranged light sources, I imagined I could intuit sensations the early European explorers must have felt once they left behind the familiar zodiac and the fixed beacon of the North Star. What had always in the Northern Hemisphere seemed permanent simply dipped out of sight below the horizon, an event that can only have been deeply unsettling. I speculate, too, that our brains have some low-level grasp of the magnetic fields circling the planet. Anyway, on arriving here, I found that my usually infallible sense of direction deserted me. I have had to memorize where north is; I no longer sense the direction unconsciously. (A situation not helped by the reversal of north-south representation on some of the maps I’ve seen here.) North, when I locate it, no longer feels “up” to me; it feels “down.” Make of that what you will. <br />
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When I’ve visited Latin countries in the past, I’ve always been struck by the great social weight of Catholicism, a palpable force in the unfolding of each day and each year. In Mexico, bells ringing at the moment of consecration in the mass begin early in the day and conclude late. In Buenos Aires I haven’t, during the past month, heard a single bell. In the neighborhood where I am staying, I’ve come across only one church. The Church here doesn’t seem to have the overwhelming influence experienced elsewhere. It is taken more lightly. Just possibly there is (aside from historical forces particular to Argentina) a geographical/seasonal explanation for the prevailing secularism. The Catholic church calendar was devised in the Northern Hemisphere. In the depths of winter darkness a Holy Child appears, bringing light, his Epiphany revealed at the moment when the sun begins to climb on the horizon and days begin to lengthen again. There follows a long series of months (accompanied in earlier centuries by a shortage of food) that just somehow have to be slogged through, a time when discipline is urged on all the congregants. And then the dramatic finale in which the god is slain and green returns to the earth, along with spring flowers. After several months of heavenly weather and a bright sun ascending to its zenith in the sky, the season turns again and autumnal thoughts of darkness and eventual death return, as the cycle begins anew. All right: but down here, the cycle is reversed. Christmas falls in high summer, when you don’t need the birth of new light in order to continue to hope. Then Lent stretches through a couple of warm, abundant months until Eastertide, which arrives with autumn cold and the withering of foliage. Psychologically, these seasonal changes clash with the archetypal patterns established in the traditional calendar, the inevitable result being that its impact is much weakened. This strikes me as so apparent I’m surprised no one ever seems to have discussed it. I experienced the whole question in epitomized form one day shortly after arrival. In a public square they still hadn’t taken down a big artificial Christmas tree. A fake evergreen with golden tinsel decoration, it was absolutely broiling in the bright sunlight and looked as out of place as a Lapland reindeer in the Mojave desert. <br />
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I’ve begun with general geographic and climate considerations and will go one from here to talk about Argentinian history and culture, with a special focus on the “Ciudad Autónoma,” the capital of Buenos Aires. Stay tuned.Alfred Cornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08736273490999559749noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8551412464532578641.post-82073690402140202492010-01-14T05:49:00.000-08:002010-01-14T11:11:50.554-08:00Haiti Then and Now<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRYcidrBrDx0POpAreWZSddn0v0SQd3r15Tf5Sw9SoUKK08kUlXC6lla418i-nId_B0Osgyz-JtjIh3pDw__Z6giaolXasr9nCl5D0d6D5tgUmSy0GVy5zvtKpbd1gBgi0Vvht9CN_cCjg/s1600-h/Atlas" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" ps="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRYcidrBrDx0POpAreWZSddn0v0SQd3r15Tf5Sw9SoUKK08kUlXC6lla418i-nId_B0Osgyz-JtjIh3pDw__Z6giaolXasr9nCl5D0d6D5tgUmSy0GVy5zvtKpbd1gBgi0Vvht9CN_cCjg/s640/Atlas" /></a><br />
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Like most of us, I've been saddened by the aftermath of Haiti's earthquake, as recorded in pictures on TV and the online <em>New York Times</em>, yet still trying to avoid the pitfalls Susan Sontag<em> </em>analyzes in <em>Regarding the Pain of Others.</em> Casting around for consoling perspectives (none of which quite work), I thought of Hurricane Katrina. Terrible as it was, the disaster at least served as a wake-up call to that part of the U.S. public ignorant of the difficulties faced by citizens living below the poverty line. Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Not, as Bible-thumping Pat Robertson believes, because it has a "pact with the devil." The legacy of colonialism, including a crippling indemnity imposed by France after Toussaint L'Ouverture won independence for this population of former slaves; U.S. military occupation from around 1914 to the mid-30s; and a succession of dictators concerned with lining their pockets at the expense of the people. These, impoverished, resorted to cutting down trees to make charcoal, the only source of fuel available; and so the country became deforested, its soil eroded, and the acreage of arable land reduced. Which only deepened the problem.<br />
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When international aid came to Haiti, corrupt officials raked off the better part of it to enrich themselves. Efforts weren't coordinated between competing organizations, and the potential benefit seriously hindered. Just possibly the disaster will be the stimulus that unites Haiti and the international community in a really effective array of programs to put this extraordinary country back on its feet.<br />
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I spent January of 1970 in Port-au-Prince and Cap Haitien. Forty years ago Haiti was in a little better shape than it is now. It had for some time been a destination for world travelers. One of Graham Greene's novels, <em>The Comedians</em>, was set there. Though not his best, it was even so made into a film of some interest. During our time in Port-au-Prince, Ann and I stayed in the Hotel Oloffson, mainly because Greene's novel had made it famous, an attractive old place with lacy Caribbean Gothic ornament that reminded me of New Orleans. We instantly became enthusiasts of the city and its inhabitants. The Haitian people, intelligent and energetic as few nations are, combine cultural influences from Africa, France, and Latin America. Haitian visual art, as made by untrained painters, is world famous, vibrant, brilliant in color, arresting in design, and a potent depiction of the life of the Kreol populace. The religion, which incorporates elements of West African polytheism and Roman Catholicism, is probably the main sustaining force in a land where purely material comforts are scarce. Anywhere you go in the African diaspora the music is amazing, and Haiti is no exception. Also, it had at that time the best cooking to be found in the Caribbean, a combination of French and African taste and inventiveness. <br />
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While we were there, a regime change occurred. "Papa Doc" Duvalier had died, and so his son, often called "Baby Doc" assumed the dynastic title of "President for Life." (Do I need to say that the Duvalier regime enjoyed the protection and support of the U.S.? Anything to prevent intervention from Moscow.) To mark the event, there was a celebratory parade, passing near the National Palace, which looked like a big white wedding cake. One element of the parade was a flatbed truck bearing the privileged youth of the capital, who appeared to have only a small part of Haiti's African genetic heritage; in fact, most of the kids had curly blond hair and green eyes. Following international youth fashions of the day, they were dressed in torn jeans and berets, played rock music, and held up posters bearing the image of Che Guevara. This in a celebration of Haiti's incoming dictator/exploiter. The mind reels. (I was also stunned yesterday when I saw the National Palace a crumpled ruin in the aftermath of the quake.) <br />
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I had read Haitian history, so I wanted to go north to Cap Haitien and see the fort that was Toussaint L'Ouverture's stronghold--La Ferroniere, they called it, because it was shaped like an antique flatiron. Northern Haiti has a pleasanter climate than Port-au-Prince's, but Cap Haitien is quite isolated. There were no usable roads, so we flew north seated on metal benches in a commercial prop plane. Once there, getting to the top of the mountain where the fort stands was no easy task, involving several hours on the back of a donkey, which quickly became unbearable. I walked more than half the distance beside my pleasantly surprised beast of burden. And then it began to rain, so the fort was only partly visible, lost in clouds and mist. It was an eerie experience, standing in the lush tropical vegetation, gazing up at the old stone structure where an unrecorded number of Haitian freedom-fighters died. In fact, it made so strong an impression that I later on worked out a Haitian setting for several chapters of a novel I wrote in the early 70s. It was never published, but I think there is a copy of it somewhere, I'll have to look.<br />
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Port-au-Prince must be rebuilt. And the whole country must be put on a sound footing, a concerted relief effort that eradicates the poverty that has for two centuries made life difficult for Haitians, and yet meanwhile never destroyed them or undermined their creative energy. Vive l'Haiti et le peuple haitien.Alfred Cornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08736273490999559749noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8551412464532578641.post-34842021879088375802010-01-13T07:02:00.000-08:002010-01-13T07:21:22.337-08:00New York to Buenos Aires<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3NDqbk-rRTgFc6MQVrwVdSNcWB8qhxRgEl23vz7IKmrQGjPUj8q4w-eiCbOlS_x3aJNoxoQvx65jtVd8n26OgnyAip3bB_-qrZ8nJzYsRd6VnH1LhpYkH17DeIRvKokhAbR_5Bq9iZREl/s1600-h/Atlas" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" ps="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3NDqbk-rRTgFc6MQVrwVdSNcWB8qhxRgEl23vz7IKmrQGjPUj8q4w-eiCbOlS_x3aJNoxoQvx65jtVd8n26OgnyAip3bB_-qrZ8nJzYsRd6VnH1LhpYkH17DeIRvKokhAbR_5Bq9iZREl/s400/Atlas" /></a>I spent the last week of 2009 in New York, mainly seeing friends--Paula Deitz, to begin with, who suggested meeting at the Met Museum on a late Saturday afternoon. I got to know Paula in the late 1970s, not long after she and Fred Morgan married and began sharing editorial tasks for <em>The Hudson Review</em>, which Fred founded with Joseph Bennett in the 1940s. In the summer of 1980, during a month spent in the town of Brooklin, Maine, I remember coming to dinner with Paula and Fred at their handsomely sited house outside Blue Hill. Over the decades since, there have been many occasions to meet, often at <em>HR</em> events, including a day at Princeton a couple of years ago, when the Princeton Library acquired the <em>Hudson Review</em> archive. Fred has since died, and for some time now Paula has edited the magazine alone, which she does very well. I admire Paula, among other reasons, for her quick intelligence and readiness to engage in the demanding work of editorship, while managing to do her own writing at the same time. There's the fact, too, that she and I both did graduate work at Columbia in French literature, one of our shared passions. In fact, my current assignment for the magazine is to write a review essay about a new book surveying the history of Paris in painting. <br />
</div> Obviously our meeting-place was no accident, and it seemed natural, after our tea and cakes, to have a look at the special exhibition of Japanese works from the Packard collection. Paula told me she at one point made a study of the significance of the plum blossom in Japanese culture, which differs in several respects from the cherry blossom theme. For one thing, plum blossoms last longer, so the aspect of transience isn’t foregrounded as in so many Japanese poems about the “loveliest of trees” (Housman’s description of it). For me any hour with Japanese art is well spent, a chance to discern visual expressions of Buddhist philosophy/religion. I won’t attempt to catalogue all the tranquil and profound works we saw; but let me mention at least one large screen, depicting a bent and gnarled plum tree starred with perhaps two dozen of the emblematic blossoms, all this against a soft gold background. (Is there something to be made of the fact that early Italian Renaissance painting used a similar <em>fondo d’oro</em> for its religious icons and even the occasional cityscape?) Anyway, my view of the plum is from now on forever altered.<br />
I saw two films that week, one, <em>Up in the Air </em>(based on my friend Walter Kirn's tragicomic novel), the other, Tom Ford’s cinematic debut as director of <em>A Single Man</em>. I’ve always liked Isherwood in general and this novel in particular, despite its reliance on a standard feature for gay fiction, i.e., that the main character dies at the end or at least comes to no good. Still, the characters are credible, and we don’t get the expected panoply of bar flies, transvestites, sadists, serial killers, convicted felons, furtive married men, or bitchily affected snobs that the popular imagination seems to regard as typical of contemporary gay experience. True, there is a student seduction of his teacher (the “single man” of the title), which doesn’t appeal to the ethicist in us, no matter how warmly depicted. But the flashback scenes in which the protagonist recalls his life with his late partner were unmelodramatic and touching. (Novelists and film-makers, take note.) It’s a problem that every “minority” faces, and I well understand African-Americans’ dislike of unvarying depictions of their experience in the guise of maids, stepinfetchits, thugs, prostitutes, addicts, convicted felons, hammed-up clowns, homewreckers and what not. <br />
A blog post here back in October mentioned an evening spent with a group of young New York poets called “the Wilde Boys.” Since then I’ve begun to know several of the participants, including Alex Dimitrov and Zach Pace, both now completing their MFA’s at Sarah Lawrence, and Adam Fitzgerald doing the same at Columbia. Alex came by for coffee one afternoon during the week, I had lunch with Zach in the East Village, and then there was an invitation from Adam to attend his birthday party at the Café Loup. The party turned out to do double duty as a celebration of a new magazine Adam and two friends have launched. <em>Maggy</em>, it's called, and Adam had the inaugural issue in hand at the long table where he and friends were making birthday toasts. I met his co-editors, the poets Alison Power and Alina Gregorian, and several other friends. The history of poetry since the late 19th century is closely associated with little magazines; this one seems to be well on its way to becoming a bright light on the scene. <br />
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The change in title and URL of my blog makes for a real or only apparent coincidence with the arrival of the new year and my first trip to the Southern Hemisphere. I’m writing this in Buenos Aires, in high summer. I’ll be here for seven weeks, staying in the old neighborhood called Palermo, where Jorge Luis Borges spent part of his childhood and youth. Apart from the fact that I revere Borges, the idea of making the trip probably originated when Sam Hamill told me a while back that he’d begun coming down every year. He says that what he saves on heating costs for his house in Port Townsend, Washington, subsidizes the annual trip to relatively inexpensive Argentina. And, needless to say, avoiding cold weather is a health boost for anyone over sixty-five. He and Gray were waiting for me when I arrived, both looking well and content, Gray’s hair cut shorter now than the way she used to wear it, and attractive in her summer cottons. There have been several leisurely meals together, and it’s a stroke of luck that these friendly guides can make suggestions and issue words of caution about a city entirely new to me. In the coming days I’ll begin to talk about the sights and sounds I encounter, and thoughts about Argentine literature and art, or about “la vida de los porteños” [the life of the people of Buenos Aires].Alfred Cornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08736273490999559749noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8551412464532578641.post-52664609677181418832010-01-08T08:52:00.000-08:002010-01-08T11:08:32.641-08:00Next Blog<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDcB6TnTe2rlAjxhZeLcm_TSCZrX_GGnXIdhlrBCIm-8iL1o17EX9ecCd4Uuo3iCCpgOe8fGPT5AZ9Utvv7FhujH3VbYl6h55opoKL1Z_7UezQMS86VuwVF-jSA8RS7wSegarKPFHp4KIm/s1600-h/Italy1974-027.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" ps="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDcB6TnTe2rlAjxhZeLcm_TSCZrX_GGnXIdhlrBCIm-8iL1o17EX9ecCd4Uuo3iCCpgOe8fGPT5AZ9Utvv7FhujH3VbYl6h55opoKL1Z_7UezQMS86VuwVF-jSA8RS7wSegarKPFHp4KIm/s320/Italy1974-027.jpg" /></a><br />
</div>I won't say much now, beyond announcing a new blog with a new URL.<br />
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To see the earlier blog, go to: <a href="http://www.alfredcornsweblog.blogspot.com/">http://www.alfredcornsweblog.blogspot.com/</a>. I think traffic will be moving both ways for a while, as readers are referred from the first blog to this one.<br />
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Thanks for checking in.Alfred Cornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08736273490999559749noreply@blogger.com0