Stingy Kids

Sillage

The following links have stayed open in my browser for a week.  Their persistence must be noted:

One Thing They Aren't: Maternal

"Some mother hawks and owls are practical optimists, not only halving their brood when necessary but also eating them."

Animalic

Dog nightingale woodpecker forty!

Le Sillage de La Reine

M.A. Sillage de La Reine perhaps like no other fragrances seems to contain and exhibit the perfumery paradox of life contained in death, that of the flowers used to make a perfume. I have never felt so genuinely this impresssion of wearing on my skin the last breath of a flower, its very soul. There is also an inkling of putridity or carnal decomposition in the beautiful aromas that slowly leave their cage and slowly expire on your skin. M.A. Sillage de La Reine can be borderline foul at times evoking the bears' pit at a zoo but from this sublime foulness are also born splendid flowers and complexity.

The Scented Salamander had the opportunity to try M.A. Sillage de La Reine (The Queen's Wake), a very limited recreation of a perfume worn by Marie-Antoinette.  The recipe was uncovered by historian Elisabeth de Freydeau, in her research for a biography of Jean Louis Fargeon, one of the queen's perfumers.  Created by Francis Kurkdjian, and unveiled in 2005, the fragrance contains notes of rose, jasmine, tuberose, iris, lavender, musk, cedar, vanilla, ambergris and sandalwood. For a time, visitors to Versailles could get a whiff of it in one of the queen's rooms.  

Before Marie-Antoinette moved in, life at Versailles was apparently malodorous:

Versailles, still more than the streets of Paris, was notorious for its stench, born of unwashed bodies, rotting food and festering human and animal excrement. An inveterate bather when the custom continued to arouse mistrust, Marie Antoinette maintained the Austrian standards of hygiene she had been brought up with; her entourage was known by the epithet “the perfumed court”. Years later, ailing, imprisoned, and awaiting judgment, a simple posy would cause her to recall her “real passion” for flowers (a luxury that was immediately withdrawn). At her prime, not least in the gardens of her pastoral retreat, the Petit Trianon, the queen indulged her love of fragrant blooms. “Flowers reigned everywhere,” as de Feydeau remarks. ("Secrets of the Boudoir")

On July 21, 1791, as the Revolution closed around them, the royal family left Paris undercover but was promptly captured in Varennes.  One story, which Feydeau considers, claims that the queen's sillage gave them away.  

It was always meant to be a poem

As the poet G. C. Waldrep rightly noted at a reading I attended, "There are two poems. The one on paper and the one you read out loud." This distinction motivates William Shatner's 1968 spoken word album The Transformed Man. If you haven't heard Shatner's rendition of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," I urge you to do so (see below). Over the years, this album has undergone its own "transformation" from "worst album" to "so bad it's good" relevance thanks to the ongoing generosity of parody (most notably in Family Guy). Recently, Shatner appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, where he performed an excerpt of Sarah Palin's farewell speech as a poem.  I had to laugh when O'Brien introduced him as a "master thespian," but I think it's fair to say that Shatner has a gift for self-parody.  A jazz duo accompanied him, giving the performance a "beat" quality that worked well with Shatner's deadpan delivery and, again, gave the performance a risible air of authenticity. I must quibble, however, with O'Brien's insinuation that poetry is what is nonsensical.  Arguably, Palin's speech makes far more sense when it is crafted into a poem.  To demonstrate I've included the "poem" below but added line breaks where I saw fit, and because I can't help but cram another crazy juxtaposition into this post, the font is inspired by Lawrence Ferlinghetti's A Coney Island of the Mind.

   

This Last Frontier by Sarah Palin et al Soaring through nature's finest show. Denali, The Great One, soaring under the midnight sun. And then the extremes. 

In the winter time it's the frozen road that is competing with all of its ice fogged frigid beauty,

the cold though, doesn't it split the Cheechakos from the Sourdoughs? And then in the summertime such extremes summertime about a hundred and fifty degrees hotter than just some months ago, than just some months from now, with fireweed blooming along the frost heaves and merciless rivers that are rushing and carving and reminding us   that here, Mother Nature wins.

And it is as throughout all Alaska that big wild good life teeming along the road that is north to the future

 

Baseball: Blog All Open Tabs

Lately, my musings on baseball have turned to the connection between religious reliquary and baseball memorabilia. Here are some links that touch on this subject and others that don't: 

****

With baseball cards somewhat passe nowadays, these connoisseurs came to the auction to buy genuine, "game-used" equipment and paraphernalia straight from the clubhouse, complete with "letters of authenticity" from experts, family members and previous owners. "The closer you get to the player, the better," explained Leland's chairman, Joshua Evans. "Lots of use is desirable." 

(Dispatches and a Fan Gets a Souvenir) 

****

Earliest Baseball Relic Found 

****

The catcher hits for .318 and catches every day 

The pitcher puts religion first and rests on holidays 

He goes into cathedrals and lies prostrate on the floor 

He knows the drink affects his speed he’s praying for a doorway 

Back into the life he wants and the confession of the bench 

Life outside the diamond is a wrench 

("Piazza, New York Catcher," Belle and Sebastian)

****

NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture

"NINE studies all historical aspects of baseball, centering on the societal and cultural implications of the game wherever in the world it is played. The journal features articles, essays, book reviews, biographies, oral history, and short fiction pieces."

****

Dale Thayer Debuts, Becomes a Cult Figure:

"The score presented the opportunity for Thayer to get some work in, and holy heavens did he ever. When the camera flashed to Thayer, the first and only thing anyone noticed was the miraculous mustache, one with roots all the way to Mecca and back. This my friends, should be on scouting reports."

****

And this gem by Stephen Jay Gould:

Baseball (as the codified form of a large variety of basically similar stick-and-ball games) has, like the poor, always been with us. Teams, leagues, and various lists of "official" rules had coalesced by the mid-nineteenth century, but Jane Austen refers to something called "base ball" in her 1797 novel Northanger Abbey, and various contests based on hitting a ball with a stick and scoring by running around bases came to America in the early days of European colonization and then grew and diversified as the nation expanded and knit together.

(Baseball's reliquary: the oddly possible hybrid of shrine and university)

****

Online discussion spaces about baseball skew heavily male, some of them exclusively so. It is a routine tactic to express one’s hatred of one’s rivals in effeminacy terms, impugning their manhood, implying that they are like those lesser creatures: women. T-shirts abound: A-Rod Sucks Randy’s Johnson, Derek Jeter Drinks Wine Coolers. Success is masculinity; a pitcher’s ability to intimidate correlates positively with the size of his testicles. Sometimes, as a female fan, it is hard to express one’s opinion about a player without being accused of romantic feelings.

It does get tiresome after a while, looking into the mirror of the fandom and not seeing my own reflection. 

(Veejane Acheson, "The Abomination of the Pink Baseball Cap")

Sonnet 99

The forward violet thus did I chide:
Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,
If not from my love’s breath? The purple pride,
Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells,
In my love’s veins thou has too grossly dyed.
The lily I condemned for thy hand,
And buds of marjoram had stol’n thy hair;
The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
One blushing shame, another white despair;
A third, nor red nor white, had stol’n of both,
And to his robb’ry had annexed thy breath;
But for his theft, in pride of all his growth,
A vengeful canker ate him up to death.
More flow’rs I noted, yet I none could see,
But sweet or color it had stol’n from thee.

This is the only fifteen line sonnet by Shakespeare.  Regarding line 5: In Elizabethan times, those of noble birth would trace the veins in their hands and arms with blue pencil.  This was also a common practice in the court of Louis XVI.  The expression 'blue blood" derives in part from the visibility of blue veins on pale skin.  Tan skin was considered plebian and associated with outdoor labor. 

The Performing Arts and the Economy

I'd like to share with readers the following essay by my friend Naama Zahavi Ely. This essay appeared in the program for a benefit on behalf of the International Vocal Arts Institute. For the past couple of years, Naama's daughter Kinneret has attended their summer opera workshop, Sadnat Ha-opera, where she has had the chance to study with a stellar international faculty. Last summer in Israel, I attended the workshop's free, end-of-summer concert in Yaffo's Gan Ha-Pisgah.  Joan Dorneman of the Metropolitan Opera, who is also the program's Artistic Director, introduced the performance with the observation that "Sadna ["workshop"] means 'music in Tel Aviv.'  It's not a Hebrew word anymore--it has become international."  The students, backed by the Israeli Cameri Orchestra, performed pieces from Carmen, Die Zauberflöte, Tosca, and Lucia di Lammermoor, as well as other operas.  The standout was Mari Moriya, who already has an impressive professional resume.  Her rendition of "Il dolce suono" from Lucia brought people to their feet.

In this economy, local art cultures around the globe are struggling to operate with fewer resources.  Naama's piece persuasively reminds us that when we attend a show or exhibit, whether at home or away, we're supporting all sides of the stage.   

THE PERFORMING ARTS AND THE ECONOMY

by Naama Zahavi Ely (nxzaha@wm.edu)

Written for Kinneret Ely's recital in Williamsburg, Virginia, May 10, 2009, to benefit the International Vocal Arts Institute (IVAI) In times like these, when millions are out of a job or losing their homes, how can one ask fellow-citizens to donate to luxuries like art, rather than help people make a living? One could argue that the arts are not a luxury but a necessity. My point is far less lofty. I would argue that by supporting the performing arts, we are in fact creating and sustaining jobs – worthy and deserving jobs. Performing artists, by and large, don’t work for the sake of money. The hard labor and the long and costly training required by their professions rarely win adequate compensation in purely monetary terms. Artists choose their professions for love: they love music and ballet and theater, and they want to share that love with you. They want to share with you their music, their acting, their dancing, their vision of a great masterpiece that cannot come fully to life without being performed. In order to do so, they need to make a living. And some of them manage to make their living by performing art. Without an audience, there can be no performing arts. One can’t put a production in a drawer, like a poem or a painting waiting to be discovered in better times, and one can’t perform in a vacuum. So, if you love music – if you love theater – if you love opera – if you love ballet: please do your part. Please come: if you can’t afford expensive tickets, buy the less expensive ones. Please support your local companies, and the national companies we all benefit from. Please enable the musicians to transport you with their music, the actors to perform their magic, the ballerinas to soar, the directors to create their alternate reality, one evening at a time. Please give an opportunity to those who work behind the stage -- the organizers, the builders of sets, the lighting directors, the costume-makers – to do their part. They are skilled in making wonders out of almost nothing; but they do need to be given the opportunity to work their wonders. If you support the performing arts – by attending and buying tickets, and by offering donations – you are sustaining jobs that cannot be exported overseas. There are few profiteering middlemen in the performing arts, either on the stage or behind it: the gleanings are too slim for those not moved by love of the arts. By supporting local companies, you enable dedicated artists to continue sharing the excitement of live arts with you and with your loved ones. By supporting the large, national companies such as the Metropolitan Opera or the Martha Graham Dance Company, you help make the arts available at the highest level to yourself and to millions of others. Every symphony orchestra or local opera company that folds is a major loss. Beginning performers must start somewhere, and so must choreographers, directors, and set designers. If there are no smaller companies for them to begin and develop in, we may find ourselves years from now starved at the top. Even with up-to-date broadcasting like the Metropolitan Opera in HD, which I love and urge you to attend, there is no substitute for a live performance. But for that to happen, one needs to have performing companies within reach. Each such institution holds intangibles that can be lost irretrievably: a hands-on tradition of the craft passed from veterans to newcomers, a spirit of collaboration, an artistic vision, a place in the lives of families. So – please do your part. Go to museums and arts exhibits. Come to concerts. Applaud your favorite opera diva or divo. Support young artists’ programs. Donate if you can. Let Shakespeare go on living, and Euripides, and Sophocles. Let Don Giovanni keep up his catalog of ladies, and Musetta charm her admirers. Let them transport you to a world where there is no recession, and help them preserve the ephemeral thread of the performing arts, one evening at a time. Thank you.

Memorial Day

We reached Citi Field in time for the Mets batting practice, my first time witnessing this spectacle. The players were on right field, rolling on the grass, their arms and legs akimbo. Two stylish trainers would occasionally call out a drill and the guys would go into a different stretch, entirely out of synch. A flock of young women stood along the railing swooning as David Wright and Daniel Murphy twisted their hips. "I'm standing like twenty feet away," one woman said, talking into her cellphone. "Oh my god, he's looking at me!" another cried. Murphy and Wright looked back and laughed. Most of these players are younger than me, some quite a bit, a detail that really isn't relevant on the field. But in this particular crowd, the thought that any one of these players, with few exceptions, could be my younger brother was sobering. David and I moved quickly to get a better view of the pitchers, an area fraught with far less tension but where chances of coming way with a relic increase substantially. Our friend Tien had taken advantage of no line at the Shake Shack, so we ate burgers and watched Stokes, Takahashi, Green and Parnell warm up. I was prepared to let go of our original idea: to ask Brian Stokes to sign my jersey, the one David, my husband, had custom ordered for my birthday last year, before Stokes was on the official roster.  I asked the person next to me if batting practice etiquette discouraged asking for a signature. "They sometimes toss up balls but they don't usually sign stuff," he said. "See, they don't sign stuff," I told David, admittedly with some relief.  David kept reading his Mets program. "Just wait," he said.

Eventually, the guys started to wind down. Stokes sat down for a moment and looked around. "Do something!" I begged David, completely losing my nerve. He called out to Stokes, who turned in our direction and saw my jersey--Stokes 43--hanging over the railing.  He gave me a thumbs up. I gave him a thumbs up too. That seemed like a good story. 

A few moments later, Stokes got up and started signing some balls for fans further down the row. Most of the players walk past the balls scattered over the field, ignoring the entreaties of the fans. It's like feeding pigeons, David said. But Stokes was gracious and generous. I gathered my wits and waved my jersey in his direction. I insist that I called out to him but David is certain that I was mostly mute throughout this entire transaction. He came over and reached up for the jersey and our pen. "Where should I sign it?" he asked. "Anywhere!" I croaked. He signed his name in purple. "Over the heart!" I later exclaimed. "Or the boob," Tien noted. He tossed up the shirt and then reached down, grabbed a ball, and sent that up as well. I heard murmurs all around me. The purple Sharpie followed. A better story. 

The ball Stokes gave me is slightly worn, with grass stains along its red seams. It still has the scent of a new ball. I was prepared to turn my jersey into a relic, but the ball caught me by surprise.  I tossed it around yesterday as I contemplated new turns in my work. It has life in it yet.

The Yips

This past Sunday,  Mike Pelfrey, a starting pitcher for the New York Mets, balked at the mound three times in a game against the San Francisco Giants.  Baseball rules spell out clearly what constitutes a balk.  It's not uncommon but it is costly, as runners on base instantly advance to the next base.  Three times in one game is, unfortunately, uncommon.  Pelfrey blamed it on a temporary case of the yips, a sudden and inexplicable loss of ability. 

First baseman Jeremy Reed later told reporters that he tried to say something to Pelfrey to get his mind back in the game but had little experience in that role.  Sometime jams in baseball can be resolved by one perfect pitch, but what if the pitch is lodged somewhere, out of reach.  What line can you cast to get it out?  

In fall 1995, I attended a Galway Kinnell-Gary Snyder reading at the University of Richmond.  I was with a friend who was an avid Kinnell fan, and on the drive to the campus, she tried to describe the experience of hearing him read his poetry live.  "You'll have to hear it for yourself," she told me, giving up.  The theme of the reading was the environment.  Snyder read new poems and a few from Turtle Island, which won the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.  Then he turned the podium to Kinnell.  My friend was right.  Kinnell had a wonderful, deep voice and read his poems in measured and steady cadences.  It was an example for me of how to be a good reader of poetry without engaging in theatrics.  After reading some of his poems, he shared "One Ordinary Evening" by Virginia Hamilton Adair, who published her first collection at the age of 83.  (Ants on the Melon was published the following year.)  As far as poetry readings go, this was excellent.

Then Kinnell announced that the last poem he would read would be "The Bear," his signature poem.  It's a long poem, and what made Kinnell's readings of The Bear so famous is that he could do it entirely from memory.  So he began--

In late winter
I sometimes glimpse bits of steam
coming up from
some fault in the old snow
and bend close and see it is lung-colored
and put down my nose
and know
the chilly, enduring odor of bear.

A few stanzas into the poem, Kinnell stopped.  He started from the beginning and, again, stopped in the same place.  He paused and said that something was breaking his concentration.   Like others, I looked around trying to find anything out of place, out of the ordinary.  But the door was closed, no one was going in and out, and we were quiet.  Did he see something we couldn't see?  It quickly became clear that Kinnell would not get out of that jam and, then, from one of the front rows, a man whispered the line that had been misplaced in Kinnell's memory.  Without glancing up Kinnell repeated the line and kept going.  He read this entire, brutal and gorgeous poem out loud.  When he finished, he reached into the cheering audience and grabbed the man by the hand, grateful that he had got him through the inning.

El beisbolista, el poeta

Miguel Batista is a published poet and novelist--he's also a relief pitcher for the Seattle Mariners.  He started his MLB career in 1992 with the Pittsburgh Pirates but hasn't spent that long with any team, nine in total.  Overall, he's had a solid career but his performance this season has been uneven.  This is what the Red Sox commentators were observing when one of them mentioned that he also wrote poetry.  "You don't hear that often.  A baseball player who is also a poet.  And he's published too."  Upon hearing this, my head exploded.

Batista's official website represents all sides of the man: poet, writer, musician, baseball player and (touchingly) human being.  In his own words:

Dominicano por destino, pelotero por profesión, poet por pasión" es una frase  que resume la vida de Miguel Batista. Porque para hablar de él hay que viajar un poco más allá de su prestigio como jugador de  béisbol y ahondar en sus valores humanos, así como en las miles de páginas en que se revela su vocación por la palabra.

Dominican by birth, pitcher by profession, poet by vocation" sums up Miguel Batista's life in an nutshell.  To really understand who he is, you have to dig deeper than his fame as a Major League Baseball player, and get to know his human values.  You have to immerse yourself in the thousands of pages he has penned as a poet and novelist, revealing his heartfelt passion for the written word.

Baseball season affords players very little down time.  Apparently, Dustin Pedroia and Terry Francona play cribbage before games.  A lot of players tune out with video games.  Batista writes.  His first book--Sentimientos en blanco y negro--slowly came together, in fits and starts: 

...pese a su agitada agenda deportiva y aprovechando su escaso tiempo libre, en aviones, en el "clubhouse" o donde fuera, Miguel iba escribiendo en papeles sueltos o libretas, sus sueños, sus dudas, temores y amores.

In spite of his hectic schedule and little free time, Miguel wrote on scraps of paper and notebooks, in the dugout, on airplanes, wherever he happened to be.  He wrote about his dreams, his doubts, his fears, his loves.  It was 1999, and he never imagined that any of his writings might be published one day.

Something about this process--it's fragmentary quality--reminds me of Marina Tsvetaeva, an early twentieth century Russian poet.  I read once how Tsvetaeva would quickly pen a line poetry while making dinner or tending to her daughters.  Granted she worked under particularly straitened circumstances, but a number of great poets have juggled writing with full-time careers in other professions--for example, Wallace Stevens (lawyer) and William Carlos Williams (physician).

There are a few poems in Spanish and English on his website.  Read them and make your own assessment of his work.  What interests me, and what I admire, is that Batista makes time for a creative life.  And he doesn't compartmentalize it.  It isn't relegated, as it was for Robert Mitchum, to a secret, private practice.  It's all there in the open--the good, bad and uneven--"...we kindly/ surrender to the most beautiful feeling/ we have always known" ("Perfect Stranger").

PEN World Voices: Poetry Reading

Blurry photo of Wayne Koestenbaum and Nicole Brossard reading "Transcreation." 5/1/09

poem to understand
how people bend
before an idea
their hair barely brushing the depth of silence

Poem(é), Nicole Brossard

5/1: After "Discovering Unbearable Truths," I headed to the Bowery Poetry Club for two events: Poetry Reading  and The Translation Slam.  This post will address the reading.  The slam requires it's own space (you'll soon understand).

What drew me to the reading, honestly, was the opportunity to hear Nicole Brossard, one of my favorite writers, read her work in person.  I've heard that she's a charismatic and dynamic reader of her own work and she did not disappoint.

My notes are very fragmentary.  I would jot down, quickly, a few observations or lines after each author finished reading.  Looking back on my notes, I find myself scratching my head.  Why did I write "nice belly"  with regard to Brossard?  I realize that most of my notes have more to do with the performance of the poems than what the poets actually read.  And what they wore.  Here you go:

PEN World Voices: Discovering Unbearable Truths

Uwe Kolbe and Uljana Wolf in conversation with Susan Bernofsky

I arrived late, after Uljana Wolf had read her poems, but in time to hear Uwe Kolbe read "Fathers and Sons."  The panel description tells us that "These two writers from Germany woke up one day to realize that their lives were built on some terrible lies. Uwe Kolbe discovered that his own father had been spying on him for the Stasi, and Uljana Wolf had a similar awakening. Find out how they put the truth of their lives back together, came to reinterpret their pasts, and how these understandings influenced their writing."  From this description, one can draw a connection to Kolbe's poem, even though it doesn't read explicitly autobiographical.  

Wolf and Kolbe offered reflections on their status as post-war writers, though they represent different  generations.  Kolbe was already an adult in 1989; Wolf, a ten-year old child.  Their perspectives and experiences may differ but they acknowledge that so much remains to be uncovered and understood with regard to East Germany, and their works respectively emerge from this desire to make sense of the past.  They continue to breathe the "air of suspicion," as Kolbe calls it.  At the same time, their work has also moved in other directions, to other times and places.

Q&A: An audience member was not pleased by what she perceived to be an evasion of the original topic.  "Can we address the topic of the panel?" meaning, I suppose, the personal 'unbearable truths' hinted at in the description.  I understand that hearing these personal narratives may have motivated attendance but the question also missed the point, which is how these true stories find expression in or shape their poems.  Someone at the festival said "poetry concerns itself with the truth."  This isn't a point I care to argue, but the panel highlighted a familiar tension between talkshow truth and partial truths.  How does poetry concern itself with what is unbearably or unbelievably true?  Maybe like this:

FATHER AND SON

Keeping the distance 
and staying close together 
with dangling arms. 
The father the uniform, 
the son with Rasta hair. 
The Father's got Prussia in his rucksack, 
the son on the surfboard 
towards the mouth of the river. 
The Father travelling, 
the son the internal emigration. 
The Father the letters, 
the son doesn‘t speak. 
Father, who takes it easy, 
son to his heart. 
Fighting each other without rules, 
more seriously than anytime at the playground, 
longer than lifelong. 
The Fathers never die, 
one hears since ears have existed, 
and seldom do the sons live.

© Translation: 2001, Sapphire/Ramona Lofton

What is the true story:  In 1989, after the Wall came down, some artists were "invited" to see their Stasi files.  It was discovered that the poet Sacha Anderson, a friend of many East German artists, had been a Stasi informant.  "Like a spider sitting in a net."

In 1992, Kolbe was able to read his file.  "[It was] like someone wrote you a biography, and autobiography, yet you had no idea."  He flipped through the pages, and came upon a few written in familiar type.  He recognized it as his father's typewriter print.  Kolbe was estranged from his father, and when he confronted him, his father defended his actions, claiming that the information he provided kept the Stasi from engaging in more extensive investigations.  "I defended you," his father said.  Another informer was a good, older friend.  According to Kolbe, that betrayal carried more of a sting.

Citing Gabriel García Márquez as an example, Kolbe remarked that "most of what 'real' literature is is telling your own story."  Post-war writers "are just telling their own story, coming from different places...east or west, or whatever." 

From where I was sitting, I had trouble hearing Wolf and didn't take as many notes when she spoke.  Her poems are wonderful, mesmerizing.  Here's a link to a few from DICHTionary, translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky.