Song of a Reformed Headhunter

PN Review 202 is filled with interesting translations, of Jean-Paul de Dadelsen by Marilyn Hacker, Hester Knibbe by Jacquelyn Pope, Pier Paolo Pasolini by N.S. Thompson. I like most the poetry of Raymond Queneau, translated by Rachel Galvin. The fourteen short lyrics from his book Hitting the Streets describe his walks about Paris with a keen eye and a sharp ear, and an imagination that is lively and sympathetic. "The Concierges" observes an "old verdigrisy grey-beard/ sobbing in his doorway." "Rue Paul Verlaine," with its amulet of a street name, begins with a vision of a street that the street hardly understands: Sometimes I have a strange, penetrating vision Of a street made of off-white and maternal tin on either side the walkway beats like a wing while the road bears all the weight of its being The ghosts of Baudelaire and Rimbaud, besides that of Verlaine, haunt these poems as well as these streets. "Rue Paul Verlaine" is written i...

This was a while ago: GH and I heard the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center on December 11 Sunday, at Alice Tully. The program was Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach's Romantic Sinfonia in C major for Strings and Continuo (1773); Heinrich von Biber's Mystery Sonata No. 10 in G minor for Violin and Continuo, "The Crucifixion" (c. 1674); Georg Philipp Telemann's unusual Concerto in D major for Four Violins (c.1720) and his Suite in G major for Strings and Continuo, "Don Quixote" (c. 1726-30), very picturesque; Antonio Vivaldi's Concerto in G major for Cello, Strings, and Continuo (after 1720) and Johann Sebastian Bach's Concerto in E major for Violin, Strings, and Continuo (before 1730), played the least satisfying of all the pieces in the program. I particularly enjoyed the playing of Amy Lee, who seemed to secure a rich tone from her violin consistently. Ida Kavafian, who played in most of the pieces, took a mercurial delight in fiendish technique...

Savage Beaut y does not dispel the impression that Edna St. Vincent Millay was a major life but a minor poet. This well-written biography quotes many poems in full, including "Renascence," which early won Millay warm admiration from poets and editors, and financial support for an education at Vassar. The biography occasionally grades the poems it quotes, saying of one "extraordinarily lovely" and of another "masterful." It is, however, more interested in identifying the addressee of the poems, and other details from Millay's life. A discussion of the style of "The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver" begins insightfully but ends too quickly by linking the harp with a woman's head to the lap loom on which Clara Millay, Vincent's mother, wove hair for a living. Interesting identification, but it is surely not the last word on the poem. Matters are not helped when emphasis is placed on the astonishing attraction of Millay's low reading voice...

I found this documentary film while flicking through Netflix. The film is directed by Amir Bar-Lev and narrated by Josh Brolin. The story, when it broke in 2007, passed me by completely. One more bullet into the corpse of belief in the integrity of governments. Pat Tillman, an American football player, enlisted in the army after the September 11 attacks. When he was killed in Afghanistan, the military lied to his family that he died from a firefight with the Taliban. Apparently they did not want to make an unpopular war even more unpopular by reporting the death by friendly fire of an All-American athletic icon. The family, in particular, the mother Mary 'Dannie' Tillman, pursued the truth of what had happened, and found the cover-up extending all the way up into the Bush White House. It was infuriating to watch in the film Donald Rumsfeld and military top brass claim forgetfulness regarding a confidential memo sent to them about the friendly fire. Led by Democrats, the Cong...

Do You Think I’d Let You Go? In the winter he had the reddest cheeks of the Lincoln College crowd who included me and you. He was not popular like Darren, looked puny beside Anthony, but in the winter he had the reddest cheeks. He walked out on you and the kids, you wrote, in the New Year. The older boy is difficult, the younger came down with swine flu in the winter. He had the reddest cheeks of the Lincoln College crowd who included me and you. for Sara

I Do, I Do In me (the worm) clearly is no righteousness, but this— persistence             H.D., “The Walls Do Not Fall” I’m eating my way through the books of dead women poets— Aemilia Lanyer’s garden where Eve is blameless the robin-eye in Elizabeth Bishop Phillis Wheatley’s bird- of-paradise the swart swan song by Marianne Moore Anna Wickham’s strangled cry the tunes of Li Qingzhao Annie Finch, not the American anthologist, the Countess of Winchilsea the living are eaten too Elisabeth Bletsoe’s Sherborne Woodcock, Pied Wagtail, Starling Molly Peacock Rita Dove And one born in Ghana whose name is a birdcall Ata Ama Aidoo

Gingko Leaves I go to the things I love with no thought of duty or pity             H.D., “The Flowering of the Rod” When I put down my book and step out of the dream into the poky kitchen, the counter stained with sauce, to chop celery, bell peppers, mushrooms into cubes and stir them into sliced chicken for Monday’s dinner, I am not going to love, my love, I am going to duty. When you rage against the computer for being slow or not doing today what it did so quietly yesterday or eating up your files or not saying what is wrong, and I come to you to put my hands on your shoulders, I am not going to love, my love, I am going to pity. I go to a river, its waters secretly continuous, out of love, to wet gingko leaves that renders the earth their ground, to a glass of wine, loud dance music and men in trance. These things I go to with no thought of duty or pity, as when you turn in bed ...