In Memoriam

[Tzara]

David Cassidy (1950-2017), 70s teen idol and television star who suffered from dementia in his later years. Here's a sample of his work as part of the Partridge Family (a television knock-off of the real-world group the Cowsills).

The odd thing about the clip is how some supposed big time pop band manages to only assemble maybe 15 people as an audience. All of whom seem to be protesting the band, surely among America's most bland musical groups ever.

That's Susan Dey (later Grace Van Owen in LA Law) pretending to play keyboards, by the way.

The exquisite Shirley Jones, a/k/a "Mom," is perhaps 40 in this clip.

 

[Angeline]

David Cassidy (1950-2017), 70s teen idol and television star who suffered from dementia in his later years. Here's a sample of his work as part of the Partridge Family (a television knock-off of the real-world group the Cowsills).

The odd thing about the clip is how some supposed big time pop band manages to only assemble maybe 15 people as an audience. All of whom seem to be protesting the band, surely among America's most bland musical groups ever.

That's Susan Dey (later Grace Van Owen in LA Law) pretending to play keyboards, by the way.

The exquisite Shirley Jones, a/k/a "Mom," is perhaps 40 in this clip.

A friend of mine interviewed him for one of our local newspapers at the height of his popularity and I still recall her saying what a kind and genuine person he seemed to be. It seems he struggled with his demons for many years. His father, the great stage actor Jack Cassidy, struggled with alcoholism, too. So sad. May he rest in peace.

 

[erectus123]

death of David

I never venture out of the poetry or story section but living in the Hollywood area I know how often the stars fall from the sky. Success is sometimes more difficult than failure. I noticed also way back when you were kind enough to mention some of my silly attempts at writing. Very kind of you. Yes we love jazz- is there any other music? Erectus

 

[Angeline]

I never venture out of the poetry or story section but living in the Hollywood area I know how often the stars fall from the sky. Success is sometimes more difficult than failure. I noticed also way back when you were kind enough to mention some of my silly attempts at writing. Very kind of you. Yes we love jazz- is there any other music? Erectus

Hi Erectus. It's good to see you posting here!

I love other music besides jazz, lots of it. But jazz is certainly wonderful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12XNj_JXOAo

 

[bigmane]

Malcolm young.

Yes, I saw a vid, I think it was on a metal programme.

He seemed to be really doing the biz, sounded very powerful.

It seems the way to do it, it not to use too much distortion,
you just turn the stack up and let rip.

The speakers pumping the right noise behind you, I find it
works.

 

[Tzara]

William H. Gass (1924-2017), postmodernist fiction writer, critic, and philosophy professor.

Though he was probably best known in literary circles for his fiction, I especially valued his critical writing. Reading Rilke: Reflections on the Problems of Translation is a particularly interesting assessment of the difficulties of translating poetry, and his essay "Pulitzer: the People's Prize" collected in Finding a Form makes a devastating case for the irrelevance and/or incompetence of writing awards.

Still, he is probably best remembered for his fiction. One of his best-known stories is "In the Heart of the Heart of the Country."

R.I.P., professor.

 

[Tzara]

Zombie
Dolores O'Riordan (1971-2018)

It's the only song of hers I know.
When singing it, she breaks her voice
like a ruler

old nuns might have used
to rap her knuckles
when she was inattentive

in Religion class. I am not
of the generation
she reached with her music,

but neither am I of Yeats's,
and Ireland still suffers
as she says—

It's the same old theme
Since nineteen-sixteen
In your head, in your head, they're still fighting

I really hope the cross
you tattooed on your shoulder
guided you to some place

at least more civil
than the world the rest of us
still live in.

 

[Piscator]

Hawking Dreams

The tethers of this
all too fickle body
fall away
before the immensity
of space and time
leaving the mind
free.

 

[butters]

The tethers of this
all too fickle body
fall away
before the immensity
of space and time
leaving the mind
free.

wonderful

 

[Tzara]

J. D. McClatchy (1945-2018)

Poet, critic, editor.

Here is one of his poems:

Found Parable
J. D. McClatchy

In the men’s room at the office today
some wag has labelled the two stalls
......the Erotic and the Political.
The second seems suitable for the results
of my business, not for what thinking
......ordinarily accompanies it.
So I’ve locked myself into the first because,
though farther from the lightbulb overhead,
......it remains the more conventional
and thereby illuminating choice.
The wit on its walls is more desperate.
......As if I had written them
there myself, but only because by now
I have seen them day after day,
......I know each boast, each plea,
the runty widower’s resentments,
the phone number for good head.
......Today’s fresh drawing:
a woman’s torso, neck to outflung knees,
with breasts like targets and at her crotch
......red felt-tip “hair” to guard
a treasure half wound, half wisecrack.
The first critic of the flesh is always
......the self-possessed sensualist.
With all that wall as his margin,
he had sniffed in smug ballpoint
......OBVIOUSLY DONE BY SOMEONE
WHO HAS NEVER SEEN THE REAL THING.
Under that, in a later hand,
......the local pinstripe aesthete
had dismissed the daydreamer’s crudity
and its critic’s edgy literalism.
......His block letters had squared,
not sloping shoulders: NO,
BY SOMEONE WHO JUST CAN’T DRAW.
......the two opinions
converging on the same moral point?
That a good drawing is the real thing?
......Or that the real thing
can be truly seen only through another’s
eyes? But now that I trace it through
......other jokes and members,
the bottom line leads to a higher inch
of free space on the partition—
......a perch above the loose
remarks, like the pimp’s doorway
or the Zen master’s cliff-face ledge.
......THERE ARE NO REAL THINGS
writes the philosopher. But he too
has been misled by everything
......the mind makes of a body.
When the torso is fleshed out
and turns over in the artist’s bed,
......when the sensualist sobs over her,
when the critic buttons his pants,
when the philosopher’s scorn sinks back
......from a gratified ecstasy,
then it will be clear to each
in his own way. There is nothing
......we cannot possibly not know.

Source: Ten Commandments​

 

[Angeline]

Thank you for sharing that poem. I'm not familiar with the poet but will read more. Those line breaks are really good; they propel the rather long lines forward without breaking the narrative, I thought.

 

[Tzara]

Sam Hamill (1943-2018)

Poet, translator, editor, antiwar activist. Co-founder of Copper Canyon Press.

The Orchid Flower
Sam Hamill

Just as I wonder
whether it’s going to die,
the orchid blossoms

and I can’t explain why it
moves my heart, why such pleasure

comes from one small bud
on a long spindly stem, one
blood red gold flower

opening at mid-summer,
tiny, perfect in its hour.

Even to a white-
haired craggy poet, it’s
purely erotic,

pistil and stamen, pollen,
dew of the world, a spoonful

of earth, and water.
Erotic because there’s death
at the heart of birth,

drama in those old sunrise
prisms in wet cedar boughs,

deepest mystery
in washing evening dishes
or teasing my wife,

who grows, yes, more beautiful
because one of us will die.


Source: Dumb Luck (2002)​

 

[Angeline]

RIP Anthony Bourdain

I am very much saddened by the death of Anthony Bourdain, who took his life at only 61. He was a fine journalist, a wonderful storyteller who took me (and probably you) all over the world with his great foodcentric shows. When I heard about him I thought of Kate Spade and Robin Williams, people who appear to have it all. It put me in mind of this poem, which I learned in school.

Richard Cory

The National Suicide Prevention Hotline number in the USA is 1-800-273-8255.

 

[Tzara]

Donald Hall (1928-2018)

Former Poet Laureate of the United States, former wunderkind professor, husband to the late, great poet Jane Kenyon, a man who retired early to a farm in New Hampshire to devote his life to poetry. Editor of Claims for Poetry, one of the seminal works of poetry criticism/commentary.

I have always had very mixed feelings about Mr. Hall's poetry, but never about his dedication to the craft (both his own poems and the poems of others).

My favorite of his books is Without, which chronicles his own cancer scare, and the ultimate death by cancer of his much younger wife, Kenyon. If you are in a loving relationship, the book should carry a trigger warning--reading it, you will cry and cry and cry.

In a good way, one hopes.

Here is one of his poems:

Gold

Pale gold of the walls, gold
of the centers of daisies, yellow roses
pressing from a clear bowl. All day
we lay on the bed, my hand
stroking the deep
gold of your thighs and your back.
We slept and woke
entering the golden room together,
lay down in it breathing
quickly, then
slowly again,
caressing and dozing, your hand sleepily
touching my hair now.

We made in those days
tiny identical rooms inside our bodies
which the men who uncover our graves
will find in a thousand years,
shining and whole.


Source: Old and New Poems (1990)​

 

[Angeline]

Former Poet Laureate of the United States, former wunderkind professor, husband to the late, great poet Jane Kenyon, a man who retired early to a farm in New Hampshire to devote his life to poetry. Editor of Claims for Poetry, one of the seminal works of poetry criticism/commentary.

I have always had very mixed feelings about Mr. Hall's poetry, but never about his dedication to the craft (both his own poems and the poems of others).

My favorite of his books is Without, which chronicles his own cancer scare, and the ultimate death by cancer of his much younger wife, Kenyon. If you are in a loving relationship, the book should carry a trigger warning--reading it, you will cry and cry and cry.

In a good way, one hopes.

Here is one of his poems:

Gold

Pale gold of the walls, gold
of the centers of daisies, yellow roses
pressing from a clear bowl. All day
we lay on the bed, my hand
stroking the deep
gold of your thighs and your back.
We slept and woke
entering the golden room together,
lay down in it breathing
quickly, then
slowly again,
caressing and dozing, your hand sleepily
touching my hair now.

We made in those days
tiny identical rooms inside our bodies
which the men who uncover our graves
will find in a thousand years,
shining and whole.


Source: Old and New Poems (1990)​

Thank you T-Zed for posting this. I was not really familiar with Hall's poetry (I am, much more so, with Jane Kenyon's), so when I saw an article on his passing I went reading yesterday. I have mixed feelings too because some of what I read sounded pretty uninspiring and/or trivial. I saw Hall compared to James Wright, but Wright sounds more authentic or honest to my ear. But then I read a few things that felt pretty modern and almost surreal and I felt more of a sense of Hall in that first group of the New York School.

 

[Angeline]

I just read that the poet Tom Clark has died at the age of 77 after being struck by a car in Berkeley, California. I first read him in the late 70s, along with Ted Berrigan, Ron Padgett, Ann Waldman, Lewis Warsh and other members of the New York School of Poets' second generation. I'm sad. RIP.

Here are a few of his poems:
http://jacketmagazine.com/09/clark-tom.html

 

[UnderYourSpell]

I just read that the poet Tom Clark has died at the age of 77 after being struck by a car in Berkeley, California. I first read him in the late 70s, along with Ted Berrigan, Ron Padgett, Ann Waldman, Lewis Warsh and other members of the New York School of Poets' second generation. I'm sad. RIP.

Here are a few of his poems:
http://jacketmagazine.com/09/clark-tom.html

I'm sorry but I barely 'get' any of his poetry. I went to a site the other day to read what sort of poems were being accepted in their competitions and it was like that, and I left thinking I've no chance then. I didn't understand a thing!

 

[Tzara]

Marty Balin (1942-2018)

One of the founders of San Francisco Sound pioneers the Jefferson Airplane. Look up Summer of Love, juniors. It will explain a lot.

Some of my favorite Marty songs:

• She Has Funny Cars, from Surrealistic Pillow.
• Today, from the same album. I always really liked both of these songs.
• Volunteers, from the album of the same name. (OK. Imagine that background image displayed on a huge screen in a darkened room filled with marijuana smoke and you might begin to understand the experience. Note that Jorma is rocking the man bun something like fifty years early. Now that's trend setting.)
  [*]Here's the Woodstock version of "Volunteers," with a thirty-year-old Grace Slick and obnoxious ads.
  [*]This version is from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony, interesting because Grace seems to be missing and because the Airplane mostly looks like a Vegas lounge band. Ah, humanity!

Anyway, rest in peace, Marty. You did good.

 

[Tzara]

Tony Hoagland (1953-2018)

At the Galleria Shopping Mall
Tony Hoagland

Just past the bin of pastel baby socks and underwear,
there are some 49-dollar Chinese-made TVs;

one of them singing news about a far-off war,
one comparing the breast size of an actress from Hollywood

to the breast size of an actress from Bollywood.
And here is my niece Lucinda,

who is nine and a true daughter of Texas,
who has developed the flounce of a pedigreed blonde

and declares that her favorite sport is shopping.
Today is the day she embarks upon her journey,

swinging a credit card like a scythe
through the meadows of golden merchandise.

Today is the day she stops looking at faces,
and starts assessing the labels of purses;

So let it begin. Let her be dipped in the dazzling bounty
and raised and wrung out again and again.

And let us watch.
As the gods in olden stories

turned mortals into laurel trees and crows
............to teach them some kind of lesson,

so we were turned into Americans
to learn something about loneliness.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2009)

 

[Piscator]

@ Tzara As an ignorant Canuck, I'd never heard of Tony Hoagland and your fine memoriam peiceopend a new window. Thank you.

 

[Tzara]

@ Tzara As an ignorant Canuck, I'd never heard of Tony Hoagland and your fine memoriam peiceopend a new window. Thank you.

You're very welcome, Piscator. As someone who lives fairly close to Canada (Seattle) and who sometimes ventures above the border, I'd point out that we southerners are basically unaware of Canadian poets as well. When I get up to Victoria or Vancouver, I usually take the opportunity to pick out some Canuckian poetry books to bring back to the States.

I really liked Hoagland's poetry. He's often funny, or ironic, and there is never, or at least rarely, the obfuscation of image that makes poetry so difficult for the general public. He taught at the University of Houston and in the low-residency MFA program at Warren Wilson College (generally considered the premier low-residency program in our country). That program memorializes him here.

I wish I could write that well.

 

[Tzara]

Mary Oliver (1935-2019)

A poet whose work appealed both to a more popular audience as well as those readers looking for an "artistic" voice, Mary Oliver won both the Pulitzer Prize in poetry and a National Book Award. Here is perhaps her best known poem:

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
......love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Source: Dream Work (1986)​

R.I.P., Ms. Oliver.

 

[Angeline]

A poet whose work appealed both to a more popular audience as well as those readers looking for an "artistic" voice, Mary Oliver won both the Pulitzer Prize in poetry and a National Book Award. Here is perhaps her best known poem:

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
......love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Source: Dream Work (1986)​

R.I.P., Ms. Oliver.

The Kingfisher

 

[Tzara]

W. S. Merwin (1927-2019)

Poet, translator, and environmentalist who twice won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Here are two of his poems:

For the Anniversary of My Death

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveler
Like the beam of a lightless star

Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what


Source: The Second Four Books of Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 1993)



Berryman

I will tell you what he told me
in the years just after the war
as we then called
the second world war

don't lose your arrogance yet he said
you can do that when you're older
lose it too soon and you may
merely replace it with vanity

just one time he suggested
changing the usual order
of the same words in a line of verse
why point out a thing twice

he suggested I pray to the Muse
get down on my knees and pray
right there in the corner and he
said he meant it literally

it was in the days before the beard
and the drink but he was deep
in tides of his own through which he sailed
chin sideways and head tilted like a tacking sloop

he was far older than the dates allowed for
much older than I was he was in his thirties
he snapped down his nose with an accent
I think he had affected in England

as for publishing he advised me
to paper my wall with rejection slips
his lips and the bones of his long fingers trembled
with the vehemence of his views about poetry

he said the great presence
that permitted everything and transmuted it
in poetry was passion
passion was genius and he praised movement and invention

I had hardly begun to read
I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can't

you can't you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don't write


Source: Migration: New & Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2005)​

 

[Angeline]

The Source
W.S. Merwin

There in the fringe of trees between
the upper field and the edge of the one
below it that runs above the valley
one time I heard in the early
days of summer the clear ringing
six notes that I knew were the opening
of the Fingal's Cave Overture
I heard them again and again that year
and the next summer and the year
afterward those six descending
notes the same for all the changing
in my own life since the last time
I had heard them fall past me from
the bright air in the morning of a bird
and I believed that what I had heard
would always be there if I came again
to be overtaken by that season
in that place after the winter
and I would wonder again whether
Mendelssohn really had heard them somewhere
far to the north that many years ago
looking up from his youth to listen to
those six notes of an ancestor
spilling over from a presence neither
water nor human that led to the cave
in his mind the fluted cliffs and the wave
going out and the falling water
he thought those notes could be the music for
Mendelssohn is gone and Fingal is gone
all but his name for a cave and for one
piece of music and the black-capped warbler
as we called that bird that I remember
singing there those notes descending
from the age of the ice dripping
I have not heard again this year can it
be gone then will I not hear it
from now on will the overture begin
for a time and all those who listen
feel that falling in them but as always
without knowing what they recognize