Jean Cocteau, Harlan Ellison, & Cid Corman

This past weekend , I fell in love with Jean Cocteau.

I've always been infatuated with him, frankly. His film Orpheus (1949) is one of my all-time favorites; Beauty and the Beast, too, is a wondrous achievement. I had the opportunity to go back and take a look see at the other two films in the Orphic Trilogy (The Blood of a Poet (1930) and The Testament of Orpheus (1959)) and they are truly amazing and should be of great interest to poets as well as film buffs. The dvd versions I took out of the library had some first-class extras; in the case of The Blood of a Poet, the biographical documentary Autobiography of an Unknown, directed by Edgardo Cozarinsky, accompanying the main feature was every bit as entertaining, putting Cocteau's life and career in perspective with heavy doses of the lyric surrealism that infuses all his work. I actually enjoyed it more, it has a polished feel as a documentary that somehow Blood does not have as a film. In many ways, The Blood of a Poet is an early rehearsal for Orpheus; I would actually recommend watching the later first, though it comes "second" in the trilogy. This is not to detract from Blood: it is excellent.

Similarly, The Testament of Orpheus is something of an anomaly as a film. It might stand alone without Orpheus yet it is greatly enhanced by it. It is Cocteau's farewell to film and he gathers together his previous motifs, characters and even actors who played various roles to make his final artistic statement in the medium. There is much humor here; Cocteau himself becomes the main character in the film, a sort of time traveling Orpheus, stuck in modern times. It is nearly as good as Orpheus and a beautiful chronicle of the poet's journey. Another interesting extra is Villa Santo Sospir, which is a 16mm color film shot by Cocteau at the summer home of a friend. It has the feel of a combination home movie and travelogue and focuses almost entirely on the house, which Cocteau painted inside and out with his unique artistic creations, making it a work of art in and of itself. It must be seen to be believed. Here's a brief glimpse to get the flavor:






Sticking with the theme of the artist, a clip of the always provocative, incredibly original Harlan Ellison is making the rounds about the need for a writer to be paid for her/his work. Check it out:






There is, of course, no small irony that the circulation of this clip, an excerpt of the film Dreams With Sharp Teeth, is, perhaps, violating the very principle he so passionately (& profanely, bless him) espouses. So, that being said, the above is being passed along in the interest of the greater good, if there be such a thing.

And, yes, Lilliput being the micropress mag that it is, can only pay in the bane of the poet's existence, contributor copies. Sigh. The layers are thick.

Let the beatings begin.

Before getting to the Lilliput samples, one final bit of news. Longhouse Publishers of Vermont has issued a number of Cid Corman related items, including a new selected poems, The Next One Thousand Years, which I can't wait to see. Bob Arnold of Longhouse has sent along two of his delightful slip card productions of works by Cid: a Rumi translation ("What can I do - friends?) and a work entitled New Proverbs. Here are two from the master, resonating as his work always does:

Any moment
yields as much.


Don't ask more of yourself
than the mirror does.

Cover by Wayne Hogan

Continuing with the theme of the artist's plight and segueing from Wayne Hogan's beautiful cover above, here is the man himself, this time wielding the written word to speak, as always, directly to the point. From #97:



How To Be An Artist

Save all your
string. Save all your
empty paper cups.
Save all your missing socks.
Save all your wasted
words. Save all your Indianhead
nickels. Yes, especially
your Indianhead nickels.

Wayne Hogan

Regarding This Poem

The idea was to put
together as one compelling
composite all those parts you
said you particularly liked from
poems of mine you rejected over
the years but on second thought
would the conglomeration work as a
whole and besides you have a ten
line limit but don't think
that I haven't noticed
the exceptions.

Kenneth Leonhardt

Returning home

after long work
two corbies
and a dove
cut a pale sky.

A second dove
nowhere in sight,
the world is still
too dark. We must

begin again.

Jim Tolan

Obituary

cigar box
(shaken like a rattle):
shoehorn, stubby pencil,
cuff-link.

James Magorian

Till next Thursday,

Don

PS Don't miss Alicia Ostriker's devastating poetic observation of the American psyche, Fix, on today's The Writer's Almanac.

Dandy in the Underworld: Issa's Sunday Service, #84

What better way to start the New Year than with a trip to the Underworld?  If ever there was a patron saint of poetry (as well as music), Orpheus is certainly a leading candidate.  Though the reference to Orpheus in T. Rex's glam tune "Dandy of the Underworld" isn't overt - there are some who believe that it is after the Tennessee Williams play, Orpheus Descending - the reference to the Oz books of L. Frank Baum is, so it makes it onto the ongoing Litrock list.

As to the above portrait, well there's lots that could be said.  It is a portrait of Cosimo de'Medici as Orpheus by the Italian artist Agnolo Bronzino.  It resides in the Philadelphia Museum of Art and here's what they have to say.  Orpheus taming Cereberus on his way to rescue Eurydice, eh?  In celebration of a new ongoing era of peace and in the romantic spirit of a new marriage, you say?  Is that the bow of your lyre in your right hand, or are you just happy to see me, darling Orphée?  No, wait, do lyres even have bows? Not a liar, er, lyre, you say - a viola, perhaps, because, oops, it's too large for a violin and, oops, too small for a cello.  Somebody, help me out I'm lost in the underworld of my crass ignorance.

Glam rock, indeed.

In any case, there are innumerable references to Orpheus in poetry, way too many to recount.  There's a list someone ought to compile.  Of course, Rainer Maria Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus is one of finest and most famous.

My favorite treatment is in film rather than verse because I am a stoned child of the 60s: Jean Cocteau's Orphée.  Here is the scene when Orphée is led into the underworld through a mirror.  Pre-digital, no doubt, but ingenious, lyrical, and mythic all at once, which is about as good a summary of the work of Cocteau as one might get.

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This week's feature poem comes from Lilliput Review #129, March 2003, and has a touch of myth to it; more precisely, it provides instructions on how to make myth real.     Go ahead, give it a try.

It's more than worth the effort.

Eureka
When you sense you are close
climb to a high place and look down
at eucalyptus groves and
Japanese maples of fire red.
Say the word eucalyptus out loud,
but say it in the Greek way:
Make it your mantra on the descent,
the red leaves your compass,
eucalyptus your song.

Lonnie Hull Dupont

No eucalyptus or Japanese maple, you say?  Lilac and ailanthus will do.





so is haiku hell
over that-a-way...
mountain cuckoo?

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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Hear all 84 (or so) at once on the the LitRock Jukebox

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Gignormous archive of poems from past issues 

Vollmann, Miles, Godard, & Kerouac's Big Sur

Browse Inside this book

Lately, I've been dipping into the new William Vollmann book, Kissing the Mask: Beauty, Understatement and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater, with some thoughts on Muses (especially Helga Testorf), Transgender Women, Kabuki Goddesses, Porn Queens, Poets, Housewives, Makeup Artists, Geishas, Valkyries and Venus Figurines. The subtitle is so long, amazon cuts it off at "Hou," which is all you really need to know about amazon as a "bookseller." The following is from the first chapter and concerns kimonos used in contemporary Noh Theater:

The weaving of the old kimonos is finer than today's, not only visually but also structurally; in them Mr. Umewaka [today's leading Noh actor] can move more freely, or I should say less constrictedly, thanks to some peculiar fashioning of the sleeves which would now cost millions of yen to reproduce. Moreover, he tells me, the artificial fertilizer ingested by the plants on which twenty-first century silkworms feed weakens the silk."

Something that, on many different levels, should give us all pause.


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Two of my favorite things: the music of Miles Davis and Jean Luc Godard's film Alphaville. Who can resist a mash up on this level; certainly not me. One of the blogs on my Quick List on the sidebar, Five Branch Tree, posted this the other day and I told Brian I'd love to pass it on. So here it is. I first saw Alphaville almost 40 years ago as a teen and even than it seemed to be simultaneously set in the distant future and the not so distant past. Haunting, poetic, absurd, and illuminating, this is on a par with Cocteau's Orpheus Trilogy: a film not to be missed, all these years later.







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It's hard to imagine anyone, Godard, Miles, anyone, making a better trailer for the Kerouac film, One Fast Move or I'm Gone, than this one, which I believe my buddy Mr. Baker tipped my way. Sam Shepherd reading, Tom Wait's with a devastatingly brief observation - just wonderful. In addition, these equally brief, equally spot-on thoughts:

"I would say it [Kerouac's work] was based on observation, it was
based on imagination, it was based on benzedrine, also."

And

"Oh, Jack ..... Jack, Jack , Jack.

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And, finally, for this lazy blissful hot height of summer Friday, when maybe the heat wave breaks and maybe it doesn't, here's one of Pittsburgh's finest purveyors of the short form, Bart Solarczyk, from Lilliput Review #146, October 2005, reminding us that we've forgotten what Father Walt really had to say:

Walt Whitman's Watching

We sweat & we wipe
work the world's rhythm
sway with the grass & leaves

we drink the day's end
ignore the astronomer
gazing at the stars in our cups

we speak what we will
across cyberspace
bold water, flesh & air

so snuggle up
take off your clothes
let me write a poem on you.

Bart Solarczyk

stinging bug
you too someday, some time...
dewy grass

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

Tomorrow: Issa's Sunday Service, #100 (100 LitRock Songs)

From the musical Annie, the song "Tomorrow" is given rock star treatment by Patti Smith, the rock poetess chosen for #100 on the Sunday Service because of her class, style, and respect for the fans that love her.

This has been a great year plus for Patti Smith and I can think of no one who deserves it more.  Though I wasn't as knocked out as the rest of the world by her autobiographical volume, Just Kids, I liked it fine and it certainly brought her much deserved attention.

Now, her rendition of "Tomorrow" I'm knocked out by; for me, a song from a musical qualifies as Litrock, though this is the first one on the list.  It is probably the least likely song I could have chosen for #100, or even from Smith's catalog, but there you go.  It gives me a chill every time I listen to it, chokes me up, grabbing me and not letting go.

When she urges on the late great Richard Sohl to a mildly bombastic crescendo, which she matches note for note, I am washed out on a tide of love, ennui, and beauty.

I dare you to listen twice.  You'll never stop.

As a bonus for the followers of this blog feature, here is an incendiary rendition of her song "Privilege (Set Me Free)" from the legendary boot "Exodus."







If that's not enough, a video performance of the same tune, that hits similar ecstatic heights.  There are many groups that have merged rock and literature, rock and poetry; this song may, however, be the consummate example.



One final note.  There are have been many interviews with  her over the past 18 months, both print and television.  At the commencement address she gave at Pratt University last year, her advice for artists was as basic as it gets (and, as such, as good as it gets):

“My generation had a rough go, dentally….You have a better chance at dental health, and I say this because you want at night to be pacing the floor because your muse is burning inside of you, because you want to do your work, because you want to finish that canvas, because you want to make that design, because you want to help your fellow man. You don’t want to be pacing because you need a damn root canal. Floss, you know, use salt, baking soda, get them professionally cleaned, you know, for a bit, take care of your damn teeth.”

--------------------------------


Going into deep catalog territory for this poem from Lilliput Review #97, from July 1997, I think you'll find it  pushes more than one edge for sure.  For four other sample poems, plus a lovely Wayne Hogan cover (& some Jean Cocteau, Harlan Ellison, and Cid Corman, to boot), click the numeral way back there in the sentence before last.  Enjoy.





Before A Beginning (A Prototype)

The shape of each letter shapes the shape
      of the word.  The letters are thin

(think "I").  The word could be wide,
   fat enough to stretch from side

      to side of this page.  This page
is boundary, setting an edge at the shape

   of the poem (think "quadrilateral")
And quick upon this earth that is itself

both page and poem passes the word the source
   of our madness, the shape of our madness.

                            C. D. Chase

by tomorrow
one mountain left...
cherry blossoms

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 100 songs
Hear 'em all at once on the the LitRock Jukebox

Subscribe to Lilliput Review