EMILY DICKINSON b DECEMBER 10 1830

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant---
Success in Cirrcuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightening to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind---

i can't think of a major poet who was ignored & mistreated as badly as dickinson, mostly due to her gender but also due to her otherworldly vision & style. the work endured horrendous, nearly incapacitating, editing. her syntax & punctuation were cleaned up. her gathering various poems into "fasciles," fourty small bound pamphlets, was ignored too. the "books" were hand stitched & assembled & clearly revolved around different themes, indicating she had a clear vision of what she was doing. as much as she's been protrayed as a nearly "idiot savant" or "outsider" poet, the work stands there as utter refutation of such notions.

btw, scholars have put the fasciles back together. for example, fascile 16 consists of these eleven poems:
* Before I got my eye put out--
* Of nearness to her sundered Things
* Tie the Strings to my Life, My Lord,
* I like a look of Agony
* I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
* "Tis so appalling--it exhilarates--
* How noteless Men and Pleids, stand,
* When we stand on top of things--
* 'Twas just this time, last year, I died.
* Afraid! Of whom am I afraid?
* He showed me Hights I never saw--

here is a webpage that discusses this aspect of dickinson's art.
i'll also mention the poet susan howe's astonishing book, my emily dickinson, & susan cameron's groundbreaking book that first addressed the "fasciles" issue & understood just what they meant, choosing not choosing.

SIGN O' THE TIMES

FROM TOM FITZMORRIS' NEW ORLEANS MENU:
"New Owner Is Outside Family
Galatoire's Is Sold

Yesterday, after some legal wrangling and bargaining during the past year or so, the majority ownership of Galatoire's was bought by Todd Trosclair. That marks the first time someone outside the Galatoire family controlled the iconic property. Here are the details in a press release I received this morning:

Galatoire family members Leon Galatoire, Michele Galatoire, Duane Galatoire Attaway, Ashley Attaway and Craighten Attaway have partnered with local businessman Todd Trosclair, to purchase Galatoire's Restaurant in New Orleans and Galatoire's Bistro in Baton Rouge. The acquisition was completed on Dec. 8, 2009.

"This is good news for our family, our company and our patrons," said Duane Galatoire Attaway. "With this acquisition, we enter a new era that ensures the many Galatoire's traditions started over 100 years ago by Jean Galatoire will continue through my generation and my children's, Ashley and Craighten, the fifth generation of Galatoires."

"My sister, Michele, and I are very excited about this announcement," said Leon Galatoire. "This is truly a milestone in the history of our restaurant, and we welcome Todd into our family."

Galatoire family member David Gooch will remain part of the restaurant's management team. Melvin Rodrigue, chief operating officer of Galatoire's Restaurant and Galatoire's Bistro, and Executive Chef Brian Landry will continue to oversee the daily management of both Galatoire's locations. No staff or menu changes are planned at either restaurant.

"We want our patrons to know they will continue to experience Galatoire's as they always have," Trosclair said. "Our focus on tradition and quality of food and service will remain, preserving the Galatoire's that has been revered for nearly 105 years."

What the release doesn't say is that there's been a competition between two groups to buy the restaurant for the past year. The negotiations were complicated by the fact that one faction of the family--led by Leon Galatoire--had the right of first refusal if any sale of the resteaurant were made. But the offer to buy was made by David Gooch and Melvin Rodrigue. So began the process that ended yesterday.

"No staff or menu changes are planned at either restaurant." We'll see about that. New owners always say stuff like that.

The story broke yesterday afternoon on my radio show, when one of the attorneys involved called in with the news."

DELMORE SCHWARTZ b DECEMBER 8 1913

Tired And Unhappy, You Think Of Houses
Delmore Schwartz

Tired and unhappy, you think of houses
Soft-carpeted and warm in the December evening,
While snow's white pieces fall past the window,
And the orange firelight leaps.
A young girl sings
That song of Gluck where Orpheus pleads with Death;
Her elders watch, nodding their happiness
To see time fresh again in her self-conscious eyes:
The servants bring in the coffee, the children go to bed,
Elder and younger yawn and go to bed,
The coals fade and glow, rose and ashen,
It is time to shake yourself! and break this
Banal dream, and turn your head
Where the underground is charged, where the weight
Of the lean building is seen,
Where close in the subway rush, anonymous
In the audience, well-dressed or mean,
So many surround you, ringing your fate,
Caught in an anger exact as a machine!

you really can't beat the french for crazy poets but we've had our share of them too. delmore is right up there w/the best(or worst)of them. he kind of kicked off a particularly crazy generation of american poets that included lowell & jarrell & roetke & berryman. bellow wrote a big novel that revolved around his friendship w/delmore. berryman dedicated his best volume of poetry to him. he was as big a deal for a short period of time as any intellectual this side of mailer. it all came early & fast & was over just as quickly. of course, becoming insane didn't help & neither did the drinking.

there's no real way to understand the phenomena that was delmore unless you read through the poetry or check out his collection of short stories. the poetry can be a bit abstract but almost every poem will have a line or two that surprises or gives pause, like "anger as exact as a machine."

he died in a cold-water flea-bag hotel in nyc at the age of 53. he wasn't identified for two days.

A DAY OF INFAMY

bobo fought in the pacific war. he was on a battleship. you'd have never known it to be around him but i can attest to the fact that he woke up screaming till the day he died. he didn't sound like such a good time charlie on those special nightmarish nights.

this is a picture from that sunday morning way back in 1941 & those are the full armada of battleships the u.s. had in the pacific at the time. if you look closely enough, you can see they're being demolished by the japanese air attack. two of those ships never sailed again after the attack & most were damaged so heavily it took months to repair them. by then, the japanese had had their way in the pacific & the u.s. didn't regain the upper hand again until the battle of midway nearly a year later. even then, so much of the subsequent horrific combat occured because of the damage inflicted on the american fleet the morning of december 7 1941.

i think it's a good thing on days like this to remember & reflect on where we were in the world then & where we are now. still, i always come back to those frightening screams i heard through my walls so many times. the effects of war last more than one lifetime & they should also be reckoned into the equation whenever we think about pursuing it as a course of action.

TOM WAITS b DECEMBER 7 1949

i was listening to waits & playing his songs before i went off to new college. for many people, he was an acquired taste. i can remember clearing my dorm room full of people just by putting one of his albums on the stereo. i actually saw him live in sarasota just as he started doing the more elaborate stage act. even way back then, it was pretty special & some doubters were welcomed into the fold that night.

he's re-invented himself by whittling away the superfluous & foregrounding the lyrics & melody. like dylan before him & his contemporary, elvis costello, he's maintained or surpassed his best work as he's gotten older. if you think that's easy to do, just watch the commercial for neil diamond's "cherry cherry c'mas."

i don't know what radar waits has been flying under according to mike b. other than that one mike carries around inside his head. waits is bigger now than he's ever been & tickets for his concerts last year were a huge commodity. my buddy in new orleans mark p. saw him & was blown away. in fact, everything i read about the tour was superlative. even tho i've already seen him live, i agree w/ken that he's one of the few remaining acts i'd love to see perform live just one more time.

speaking of time, i saw waits do this on letterman many many years ago. the album it was on, rain dogs, hadn't come out yet & he played the song as the closing credits for the show ran & didn't finish. i started looking for the song everywhere immediately.

And they all pretend they're orphans and their memory's like a train
You can see it getting smaller as it pulls away
And the things you can't remember tell the things you can't forget
That history puts a saint in every dream
And it's time time time that you love
And it's time time time

i suspect he's as surprized & grateful as anyone that he's made it to 60. we may get one more tour out of him(since that's the only way for these guys to make money) but i'm not holding my breath.

ANNE BRIGMAN b. DECEMBER 3 1869

i thought of the eakins picture i posted here awhile back when i first saw brigman's pictures: the female version of eakin's vision. of course, that was an initial moment of recognition that gives way to differentiation & discernment. eakins was tunnel-visioned, while brigman was following some other muse. they both work for me.
here is brigman's wiki page, tho there's not much there to follow up on.

here's another site that shows more of her work.

"Anne W. Brigman, a l ate nineteenth-century pictorialist photographer, was born in Hawaii but spent most of her life in California. She used natural images combined with the female figure to create mysteriously poetic images. The Dying Cedar can be understood as a commentary on the grandeur and universality of nature—the oneness of woman and creation. More recently, the photograph has been seen as a statement of feminist principles, expressing a yearning for some sort of unattainable freedom. Brigman used cedar trees almost exclusively in her female nude images, but the reference to Daphne (the nymph pursued by Apollo who was saved by being transformed into a laurel tree) is unmistakable. Brigman was one of the first women to photograph nudes in a wilderness landscape. Her images deliberately resemble charcoal drawings, as she sought to capture the spirit of her subject rather than a faithful reproduction." - National Museum of American Art (CD-ROM) (New York and Washington D.C.: MacMillan Digital in cooperation with the National Museum of American Art, 1996).

JEAN LUC GODARD b DECEMBER 3 1930

A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end . . . but not necessarily in that order.


while i believe chris marker is the greatest filmmaker alive, godard is somewhere right behind him. godard had the great good sense to pay attention to the early generation of filmmakers & proceeded to rethink & rework their contributions. add that to the technical advancements of the craft & you're in another ballpark.

this is all about how you tell a story but it has nothing to do w/how i want the story told to me. i've never understood how MY ego fits into the story YOU want to tell me. i suspect that's why i sometimes fail to understand YOUR story.

godard has worked to make us SEE this problematic.