close encounters with the third grade

i find myself shocked by all the defense of roman polanski all focusing on his stature as an artist and some of the horrible parts of his life (the holocaust, the manson family murder of his wife, sharon tate).  but none of that negates the truth of the actual incident, that he drugged and raped a 13 year old girl.  yeah, it may have happened over 30 years ago, yeah the victim may say she doesn’t want any publicity.  doesn’t negate the facts. 

and of course, one of his defenders is woody allen, who married the daughter of his long time partner, certainly an act of moral incest.   why would whoopi goldberg say it was “not rape-rape”?  is statuatory rape any better?  if you read the below  hard-hitting article in salon dot com, below it was, it seems clearly and unequivocaly the rape of a child.  we can defend polanski’s movies without defending this act.

http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/feature/2009/09/28/polanski_arrest/

“’round, ’round, get around, i get around”

heard this on the radio and flashed back to high school days, riding around the western suburbs of portland, oregon, with my bud john woodson.  i remember songs like this on the a.m.  radio, not picking up chicks, and driving into gas stations and buying 50 cents worth of gas (which back then was about a gallon and a half)

riding the dutch mountains

the bride and i have, for several years, been great fans of the tour de france.  it’s one of three so-called ‘grand tours’, the others being the giro d’italia, and the vuelta a espana.  all are three weeks long, and all have an overall winner (the GC, or general classifications), the best sprinter (sometimes called the ‘points’ competition), the best young rider, the best climber (also called king of the mountains).   the mountain stages can be truly brutal  – sometimes 6-8,000 feet, a 7-8% grade.

here’s the point of all this.  we’re watching the vuelta, which spent its first four days in the netherlands, a bit of germany and belgium.  the other day, the days racing was so flat, that the winner of the king of the mountains points for the day only had to climb a hill 30 feet high……thirty feet. 

on the passing of ted kennedy

imagine being the youngest son of a family destined for greatness, with the eldest dying in the war, and two brothers assassinated within five years.  how hard that must have been.  for all that he might not have been as talented as john and bobby, and for all the excessives of his youth, ted kennedy became a great senator, a towering figure, and a committed friend to health care, education, and all those who needed a hand.   ‘for all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.’

deletion

looking for an address in my electronic contact list, and ran into the name of a colleague who recently passed away.  i could do nothing but delete the name, but said a little prayer first.  still, a little spooky

rachel maddow on the arts

Political commentator Rachel Maddow recently spoke on the arts at Jacobs Pillow:

Sometimes we choose to serve our country in uniform, in war,  Sometimes in elected office. And those are the ways of serving our country that I think we are trained to easily call heroic. It’s also a service to your country, I think, to teach poetry in the prisons, to be an incredibly dedicated student of dance, to fight for funding music and arts education in the schools.

 A country without an expectation of minimal artistic literacy, without a basic structure by which the artists among us can be awakened and given the choice of following their talents and a way to get to be great at what they do, is a country that is not actually as a great as it could be.  And a country without the capacity to nurture artistic greatness is not being a great country.   It is a service to our country, and sometimes it is heroic service to our country, to fight for the United States of America to have the capacity to nurture artistic greatness.

 Not just in wartime but especially in wartime, and not just in hard economic times but especially in hard economic times, the arts get dismissed as ’sissy.’ Dance gets dismissed as craft, creativity gets dismissed as inessential, to the detriment of our country.   And so when we fight for dance, when we buy art that’s made by living American artists, when we say that even when you cut education to the bone, you do not cut arts and music education, because arts and music education IS bone, it is structural, is it essential; you are, in [Jacob's Pillow founder] Ted Shawn’s words, you are preserving the way of life that we are supposedly fighting for and it’s worth being proud of.

poem of the day – penguins…..

Penguins

     
They’ve been handing out pamphlets in Leicester Square 
(for ‘Leicester’ read ‘Worcester’) 
ever since our latest victory 
(for ‘victory’ read ‘disaster’)

and all the penguins in Worcester Square 
(for ‘penguins’ read ‘pigeons’) 
have, like dodos, forgotten how to fly 
(for ‘fly’ read ‘do long division’)

and are flocking around the annoyed Admiral 
(read ‘Trafalgar’ for ‘Worcester’) 
like a mob of highly incensed cassowaries 
(for ‘cassowaries’ read ‘roosters’).

Meanwhile, in the bay, the pilot boats 
(for ‘pilot’ read ‘pirate’) 
lull, bob and circle in the lazy tide 
(for ‘circle’ read ‘gyrate.’)

And you, according to recent reports 
(for ‘Trafalgar’ read ‘Red’) 
may or may not have been recently seen 
(for ‘pamphlets’ read ‘bread’)

in the presence of a certain shadowy figure 
(for ‘figure’ read ‘redhead’) 
who’s been well known to hatch a few plots of her own 
(and for ‘presence’ read ‘bed’)

like a dame straight out of Raymond Chandler.
(But for ‘Chandler’ read ‘Carver’).
Meanwhile, those penguins are mobbing Red Square 
(but for ‘Red’ read ‘Harvard’)

and have rearranged so as to form 
(for ‘rearranged’ read ‘reappeared’) 
a message visible from the sky 
(and for ‘meanwhile,’ read ‘as we feared.’)

And don’t you think, comrade (for ‘comrade’ read ‘friend’) 
(and for ‘Harvard’ read ‘Tiananmen’) 
that all plots, all poems, all struggles must end?
(And for ‘end’—if you would—read, ‘begin again.‘)
Troy Jollimore
Pleiades

song of the month

Check out ‘Home’, a really cool song from the debut CD of a LA band called Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes. Jangly blend of folk-rock, country, indie, bits of Sergio Leone, a pocket polyphonic spree with trumgets.  A lovely, messy. joyous love song.

for the summer solstice, 2009

Every June and December, for the past 8 years, I’ve been sending out greetingson the solstice – a few thoughts, a few snippets of verse. It’s a way of Tw, and starting – or, better, continuing – conversations.   I’m blessed to have friends and colleagues all over the country and all over the world, and the size of the distribution grows every year.

 

Twice a year I prowl though poetry books (and websites) in search of poems that connect with each other, that dance lightly, are not bogged down with their own importance, and somehow speak, at least a bit, to what may be happening in the world as a whole, or at least in my part of the world.  Over the past couple of weeks, the needle kept pointing to verse about myths and stories – archetypes of our culture, part of our collective unconsciousness.  That these poems struck a chord is perhaps coincidental, but most likely not (nothing ever is).  I often describe what I do – making plays for young audiences – as the modern equivalent of the most ancient ritual of civilizations – gathering around a fire in the mountains, the forest, the desert, and telling stories to the children of the clan.

 

It’s probably not a coincidence that Susan Stewart has graduate degrees in both poetry and folklore.  Her innovative recent book, Red Rover, takes its title from both the children’s game and the name of a formless spirit and is an extended meditation on the antithetical forces in games and how similar they are to the seasons, the movement of the planets, the cycle of night and day.  From a poem called Lavinium

I met the girl who held the flower and the mirror

and the boy who sent his hoop up to the god.

put away childish things they said, and stepped

into the future

 

Born in Belgrade before the war, Charles Simic emigrated to the US in 1954.  His poems are often puzzle-boxes, filled with formality and indelible characters, with the shadow of the chaos of Europe in the 1940’s often lurking.  From The White Room

The obvious is difficult

To prove. Many prefer

The hidden. I did, too.

I listened to the trees.

 

They had a secret

Which they were about to

Make known to me–

And then didn’t.

 

Summer came. Each tree

On my street had its own

Scheherazade. My nights

Were a part of their wild

 

Storytelling.

 

The below snippet was part of a previous solstice message, but it happened in front of my eyes recently, and bears repeating.  From Instructions, by Neil Gaiman, who is scarily able to write verse, films, graphic novels, novels, short stories, children’s picture books, and children’s chapter books.

If an eagle gives you a feather, keep it safe.

Remember: that giants sleep too soundly; that

witches are often betrayed by their appetites;

dragons have one soft spot, somewhere, always;

 

Remember your name.

Do not lose hope — what you seek will be found.

Trust ghosts. Trust those that you have helped

to help you in their turn.

Trust dreams.

Trust your heart, and trust your story.

 

When you come back, return the way you came.

Favors will be returned, debts will be repaid.

Do not forget your manners.

Do not look back.

Ride the wise eagle (you shall not fall).

Ride the silver fish (you will not drown).

Ride the grey wolf (hold tightly to his fur)….

 

At the risk of betraying my peace-love-dove formative years in the late 60s/early 70s, Salvadoran poet Roque Dalton partially articulates why I send out verse twice a year – it’s from Like You (Como Tú), translated by Jack Hirschman.  I love the disconnect that this gentle poem is from someone descended from the archetypal bad guys of the Dalton Gang.

I believe the world is beautiful
and that poetry, like bread, is for everyone.

And that my veins don’t end in me
but in the unanimous blood
of those who struggle for life,
love,
little things,
landscape and bread,
that poetry is for everyone.

 

Best wishes to you and your families.  May your summer (or winter if you’re in the southern hemisphere)  be filled with magical animals, wild storytelling, and stepping into the future. 

on doing the hardest thing first

alt-country singer steve earle recently recorded an album of covers of his mentor, townes van zandt. the first song he recorded was van zandt’s most famous ‘pancho and lefty’. he said, on an interview ‘well, i had to record this first. it’s sorta like the first day in prison you pick out the biggest guy in the yard and then you knock him out and then you get to keep your radio’