Just now, introduced to this group by Jessica. Thank You, Jess! Cellos. And they led me, through the iTunes feature that automatically decides for you what you are likely to enjoy, to Psychgograss, and to "Midnight in Mali' by Djelmady Tounkara and Habib Koite (with whom I already was familiar). Wonderful music.
And a long way from listening to KAKC by the hour, hoping they would play "Johnny B Good." Did they invent iTunes, and YouTube, and all the rest (check out this! from Char Baho) just for the convenience of us old farts who want what we want, and now? Don't know; but, if so, Thanks! We richly deserve it. After all, haven't we fucked up the world as much as we could, during our turn? Bring on the Music!
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Thursday, June 16, 2011
The Lute in the Attic
Department of One Thing Leads to Another:
Reading the poem Yannis Keats by Angelos Sikelianos (tr by A.E. Stallings), a poem that left me feeling both refreshed and nostalgic (refreshed by the simplicity, the delicacy of touch and the cogency of image; nostalgic for the poetry of my youth, somehow) brought to mind instantly, and for no apparent reason, Kenneth Patchen's wonderful recording with the Chamber Jazz Sextet from, I believe, 1959 --certainly that was the year I listened to it incessantly.
Patchen's art --almost unique, to my mind-- was in taking an often dark and sort of laconic mode such as was common to the Beats (at least the ones I read), and giving it an oddly compelling beauty. Nowhere, for me, was this more true than in "The Lute in the Attic," with the music, I now learn, derived from Thomas Campion. A sample (from memory):
"Your father's gone daft, Willy.
And Iselena's flaxen hair
Is the color of the mud at the bottom of Rathbeggin Creek."
Ugly, in one way; but beautifully stark all the same, with the purposeful "Willy" (the poem had introduced the character as "William," if I recall correctly) forcing one to confront an unadorned truth. Hugely suggestive, and at the same time a kick in the teeth. Certainly to a boy of fourteen.
And with the facile, almost effortless internet at hand, I found not only the essay referenced above, but lots more on Patchen, Kenneth Rexroth, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso, and on and on. And eventually, a New Republic essay by Rexroth in 1960, about (of all things) the Nixon-Kennedy debates, from which these gems:
"As time goes on, television may well purge American politics of gross ill manners."
"I don't think there is any question but that it would be impossible today to run, much less elect, a gross buffoon, a ruffian, or even a boozy, good-natured rascal."
Mercifully, perhaps, Rexroth died in 1982, a decade after Patchen, and less than a year before the much younger poet who introduced his work to me, Ted Berrigan.
So, I'll find a copy of Patchen's Selected Poems; maybe, if I'm lucky, find the recording, too. Relive my youth, and dig out of the cold earth of Foreign Affairs and The Economist, into some thick enveloping loam. Funny: never worried about Fop, then.
Reading the poem Yannis Keats by Angelos Sikelianos (tr by A.E. Stallings), a poem that left me feeling both refreshed and nostalgic (refreshed by the simplicity, the delicacy of touch and the cogency of image; nostalgic for the poetry of my youth, somehow) brought to mind instantly, and for no apparent reason, Kenneth Patchen's wonderful recording with the Chamber Jazz Sextet from, I believe, 1959 --certainly that was the year I listened to it incessantly.
Patchen's art --almost unique, to my mind-- was in taking an often dark and sort of laconic mode such as was common to the Beats (at least the ones I read), and giving it an oddly compelling beauty. Nowhere, for me, was this more true than in "The Lute in the Attic," with the music, I now learn, derived from Thomas Campion. A sample (from memory):
"Your father's gone daft, Willy.
And Iselena's flaxen hair
Is the color of the mud at the bottom of Rathbeggin Creek."
Ugly, in one way; but beautifully stark all the same, with the purposeful "Willy" (the poem had introduced the character as "William," if I recall correctly) forcing one to confront an unadorned truth. Hugely suggestive, and at the same time a kick in the teeth. Certainly to a boy of fourteen.
And with the facile, almost effortless internet at hand, I found not only the essay referenced above, but lots more on Patchen, Kenneth Rexroth, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso, and on and on. And eventually, a New Republic essay by Rexroth in 1960, about (of all things) the Nixon-Kennedy debates, from which these gems:
"As time goes on, television may well purge American politics of gross ill manners."
"I don't think there is any question but that it would be impossible today to run, much less elect, a gross buffoon, a ruffian, or even a boozy, good-natured rascal."
Mercifully, perhaps, Rexroth died in 1982, a decade after Patchen, and less than a year before the much younger poet who introduced his work to me, Ted Berrigan.
So, I'll find a copy of Patchen's Selected Poems; maybe, if I'm lucky, find the recording, too. Relive my youth, and dig out of the cold earth of Foreign Affairs and The Economist, into some thick enveloping loam. Funny: never worried about Fop, then.
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