W.C. Handy's "Beale Street Blues"

W.C. Handy's "Beale Street Blues"

I recently traveled to New York City for my end of the year vacation. For me, usually the most fun things are those that take me by surprise. Well, “Beale Street Blues.” While walking the streets after dinner one night I came across loud music playing in a bar. I walked in and, to my surprise a blues and jazz band were playing away. Never before have I heard so much energy in music other than Beethoven. W.C. Handy’s band was so good that night I had to go find out what these songs they were playing were. Thankfully, Handy was a personable, light-hearted guy who had an unforgettable loud laugh. He told me they started with his recent hit “St. Louis Blues” a song he told me was actually written with tango music in mind. But this song was definitely my favorite of the night and left not one person at the bar in their seats. Lucky for me, there were many a fine young woman and, frankly, I didn’t complain with the racy style of dancing Handy’s song evoked. Another song that was playing in my head as I walked out into the chill New York City air was Handy’s newest song, “Beale Street Blues.” Handy told me that, like many of his songs, “Beale Street Blues” “is a hybrid of the blues style with the popular ballad style of the day.” After telling me that, with the song, he tried to capture the festive musical air always imbued in Beale Street in his hometown in Tennessee, thinking that the song was probably inspired by negro life in the south and, noticing there were mostly black people at the bar we were at, I asked him why the band he played with was all white, he responded with, "I was under the impression that these Negro musicians would jump at the chance to patronize one of their own publishers. They didn't... The Negro musicians simply played the hits of the day...They followed the parade. Many white bands and orchestra leaders, on the other hand, were on the alert for novelties. They were therefore the ones most ready to introduce our numbers." But, "Negro vaudeville artists...wanted songs that would not conflict with white acts on the bill. The result was that these performers became our most effective pluggers." 

Once my interview was through I thanked Handy and went out into the night. As I was skipping home, tapping my foot to the jazz songs stuck in my head, casually thinking about how strange it was the African American musicians in New York aren’t following Handy like disciples to play this great music, a pretty girl with a group of her friends swooped by me. I stopped thinking about it and followed.

Here's a recording from 1916 of "Beale Street Blues"

The Death of Jack London

The Death of Jack London

Naturalist/Realist writer Jack London died this year. Famous for his book about a dog The Call of the Wild, London, along with Mark Twain, was one of the most famous writers in America. The renowned journalist H.L Mencken said of Call of the Wild, "No other popular writer of his time did any better writing than you will find in The Call of the Wild.” When The Call of the Wild was published the first printing of 10,000 copies sold out immediately and it is still one the best known stories written by an American author. After his success as a novelist, London bought a ranch in Sonoma County, California where he lived with his wife. He loved his ranch apparently, and was quoted saying, "I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate." Unfortunately, most of London’s work after 1910 was of the quality of dime-novels, and was mainly written out of the need to finance his ranch. According to reports, London died November 22, 1916, in his bed in a cottage on his ranch. He was in extreme pain and taking , morphine, and it is possible that a morphine overdose, accidental or deliberate, may have contributed to his death.

Easter, 1916 by William Butler Yeats

Easter, 1916 by William Butler Yeats

In response to his deep emotions in regard to the Easter Uprising in Dublin, Ireland, famous Irish poet William Butler Yeats wrote the poem “Easter 1916.” Though an outspoken nationalist, Yeat’s rigidly opposed violence as a means to secure Irish independence. In the poem, many of Yeat’s conflicting emotions towards the violent event that helped further the fight for Irish independence.

I have met them at close of day   

Coming with vivid faces

From counter or desk among grey   

Eighteenth-century houses.

I have passed with a nod of the head   

Or polite meaningless words,   

Or have lingered awhile and said   

Polite meaningless words,

And thought before I had done   

Of a mocking tale or a gibe   

To please a companion

Around the fire at the club,   

Being certain that they and I   

But lived where motley is worn:   

All changed, changed utterly:   

A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent   

In ignorant good-will,

Her nights in argument

Until her voice grew shrill.

What voice more sweet than hers   

When, young and beautiful,   

She rode to harriers?

This man had kept a school   

And rode our wingèd horse;   

This other his helper and friend   

Was coming into his force;

He might have won fame in the end,   

So sensitive his nature seemed,   

So daring and sweet his thought.

This other man I had dreamed

A drunken, vainglorious lout.

He had done most bitter wrong

To some who are near my heart,   

Yet I number him in the song;

He, too, has resigned his part

In the casual comedy;

He, too, has been changed in his turn,   

Transformed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone   

Through summer and winter seem   

Enchanted to a stone

To trouble the living stream.

The horse that comes from the road,   

The rider, the birds that range   

From cloud to tumbling cloud,   

Minute by minute they change;   

A shadow of cloud on the stream   

Changes minute by minute;   

A horse-hoof slides on the brim,   

And a horse plashes within it;   

The long-legged moor-hens dive,   

And hens to moor-cocks call;   

Minute by minute they live:   

The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice

Can make a stone of the heart.   

O when may it suffice?

That is Heaven's part, our part   

To murmur name upon name,   

As a mother names her child   

When sleep at last has come   

On limbs that had run wild.   

What is it but nightfall?

No, no, not night but death;   

Was it needless death after all?

For England may keep faith   

For all that is done and said.   

We know their dream; enough

To know they dreamed and are dead;   

And what if excess of love   

Bewildered them till they died?   

I write it out in a verse—

MacDonagh and MacBride   

And Connolly and Pearse

Now and in time to be,

Wherever green is worn,

Are changed, changed utterly:   

A terrible beauty is born.

Easter Uprising in Ireland

Easter Uprising in Ireland

What is being hailed as “The Easter Rebellion” caught the British off guard while they were preoccupied fighting in World War 1. Organized by seven members of the Military Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood the Rising began on Easter Monday, 24 April 1916, and lasted for six days. About 100 Irishmen were killed in the Easter Rebellion and the Irish rebel forces were subdued by the British Army. It was the most significant uprising in Ireland since the Irish Rebellion of 1798 where almost 50,000 people Irishmen were killed. Most of the leaders of this uprising were executed by the British.

Emma Goldman's Arrest for Speaking in Favor of Birth Control

Emma Goldman

Outspoken anarchist, American Emma Goldman was arrested recently for her speech on birth control. According to the Comstock Act (enacted 1873), it is “illegal to send any "obscene" materials through the mail, including contraceptive devices and information.” Well, the law-enforcers used this act to arrest Emma for speaking in favor of birth-control and distributing pamphlets condoning it. Apparently, Goldman’s speech was spoken from a car-window in Union Square in New York City and drew a crowd of thousands. I admire Emma’s boldness and her uncompromising vision that led her to become such a powerful force in the women’s rights movement.

Pancho Villa's Raid on Columbus, New Mexico

Pancho Villa's Raid on Columbus, New Mexico

The Mexican Revolution’s battleground, previously in Mexico, has finally moved to the United States. Mexican general Pancho Villa led a group of Mexican soldiers into the small town of Columbus, New Mexico that escalated into an intense battle with the U.S. Army. Despite Pancho Villa’s audacity, his army got slaughtered and the U.S. only lost 8 troops. Villa’s raid was a tactical disaster and led to the U.S. army to respond by entering Mexico to search for Villa. 

Amores by D.H. Lawrence

Amores by D.H. Lawrence

Though mostly known for his great novel Sons and Lovers in the literary world, DH Lawrence published a collection of poems this year called Amores. The poems are romantic and more in the tradition of the Romantic poets of the previous Gregorian era. Still, Lawrence’s free verse works at portraying what he thinks are “the unconscious” passions of humans through imagery and symbolism. Although Lawrence remains well-known mainly for his prose, his poetry, as essayist Sam Alexander says in his essay on Lawrence’s poetry “uses a rich and complex symbolic matrix to explore issues that would remain at the center of Lawrence’s work for the rest of his career.” Here's a poem from the collection Amores called Epilogue that I enjoyed.

Epilogue

PATIENCE, little Heart.

One day a heavy, June-hot woman

Will enter and shut the door to stay.

 And when your stifling heart would summon

Cool, lonely night, her roused breasts will keep the night at bay,

Sitting in your room like two tiger-lilies

Flaming on after sunset,

Destroying the cool, lonely night with the glow of their hot twilight;

There in the morning, still, while the fierce strange scent comes yet

Stronger, hot and red; till you thirst for the daffodillies

With an anguished, husky thirst that you cannot assuage,

When the daffodillies are dead, and a woman of the dog-days holds you in gage.

Patience, little Heart.

Symphony No. 4 by Carl Nielsen

Symphony No. 4 by Carl Nielsen

The symphony that best evokes my feelings on WW1 is Carl Nielsen’s Symphony No. 4. It premiered this year in Copenhagen and was composed in the midst of WW1. The symphony is one of the loudest I’ve heard and even has a battle between two Timpani, which all evoke the devastating power and chaos of war. But Nielsen also intercedes these loud dissonant sections with soft, almost consonant (but not quite) sections. Overall, a feeling of sadness and longing pervade the piece throughout. But in the end, after a section of complete dissonance and loudness where the Timpani are incessantly beating, the strings start playing quickly but quietly, and, after a while of that, the Timpani’s gradually pick back up and the piece ends with a bang of the drums. Nielsen named it “The Inexhaustible,” saying about the title, “that which is inexhaustible is the elemental will to live.” He also goes on to say about the symphony,

“I have an idea for a new composition, which has no programme but will express what we understand by the spirit of life or manifestations of life, that is: everything that moves, that wants to live ... just life and motion, though varied—very varied—yet connected, and as if constantly on the move, in one big movement or stream. I must have a word or a short title to express this; that will be enough. I cannot quite explain what I want, but what I want is good.”

Charles Chaplin in 1916

Charles Chaplin in 1916

There’s a little vaudevillian who’s written, directed, and acted in about 60 films already and has released 9 films this year. His name is Charles Spencer Chaplin. Apparently, Chaplin grew up in a dismally poor home and was eventually abandoned by both his parents. Well, he started performing skits in a dancing troupe at the age of 12 and eventually made his way into the theatre as a performer by the age of 14. At the age of 17 he left the theatre to start up a comic vaudeville act with his brother. Being a great success in the vaudeville act, Chaplin drew the attention of American film studio, Keystone. He went on to make 36 films for them before he left  to work for the Essanay production company. For Essanay, in 1915, he made The Tramp and Police, which were different from his previous more brutish slapstick routines, and were more romantic and had more developed stories. This led to his signing with LA-based studio Mutual for a contract of $670,000 a year in 1916, making him one of the highest paid people in the world. By now Chaplin is world famous. At Mutual, Chaplin has made the films I’ve been avidly watching this year and that give me more entertainment than anything on the theatrical stage in the last 5 years. Particularly, One A.M., where Chaplin’s the only performer in the picture and the entire film consists of him playing a rich man coming home drunk and being impeded from going to bed by all the inanimate objects in the house, and The Cure, where he plays a drunkard who goes to a spa to dry out but brings a suitcase of alcohol, are two of the funniest performances I’ve ever seen. Chaplin’s films—at times biting satire and parody—are always clear and understandable, but I think the reason the films are so successful are because, no matter the story, they always have the highly original main character, Chaplin as The Little Tramp. 

Windy McPherson's Son by Sherwood Anderson

Windy McPherson's Son by Sherwood Anderson

Although in the realm of coming-of-age stories I think Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is the best work this year, Sherwood Anderson’s Windy McPherson’s Son is another formidable coming of age story published this year. Anderson is a fascinating character. He grew up in Ohio, moved to Chicago and worked a series of blue-collar jobs of manual labor, and ended up married and back in Ohio only to eventually suffer a mental breakdown, divorce his wife, and move back to Chicago to write Windy McPherson’s Son. This novel reminds me of de Balzac’s Lost Illusions from his work The Human Comedy. It’s about a newspaper boy, Sam McPherson, from a small-town in Ohio who moves to Chicago to become a successful business man. Well, Sam’s escapades in Chicago result in financial success and popularity. But, as Sam gets richer and more popular, he becomes more and more dissatisfied with life. Just like Lucien in de Balzac’s Lost Illusions. Eventually, after growing dreadfully unhappy, Sam finds solace in his family, again, just like Lucien. But what makes Anderson’s novel unique is his voice. Throughout the novel, Anderson maintains his distinct colloquial voice of narration, and, as a result, has produced one of the most engaging books chronicling an individual American experience. Because of this, Anderson could potentially become an important American voice chronicling a human struggling in the modern world full of materialism, capitalism, war, formality, anonymity, and other maladies of the industrial society many people find themselves in.

WW1: Battle of Verdun

WW1: Battle of Verdun

Another million French troops died in The Battle of Verdun. This was the longest battle in WW1 and was fought between the French and German troops in Verdun in eastern France. This battle, though one of the longest and most bloody in the history of warfare, really had no positive result for either side. Although the battle consisted mainly of trench warfare, most of the casualties resulted from artillery fire. Part of this is due to the German’s employing their Zeppelins to bomb the French troops. Also, the battle was in such a small area of land that artillery fire ravaged the land, making the fighting conditions horrible. A deceased French lieutenant’s journal was found after the battle, and the last words he wrote were “Humanity is mad. It must be mad to do what it is doing. What a massacre! What scenes of horror and carnage! I cannot find words to translate my impressions. Hell cannot be so terrible. Men are mad!"

WW1: Battle of the Somme

WW1: Battle of the Somme

Well, what do you know. The British and French troops mounted an offensive against the Germans around the Somme River in France. In just the first hour, 60,000 British troops were killed, and, overall, there were over 1 million British and French causalities in the battle. And in the newspaper, it said, “that most of the British Army was made up of British citizens who volunteered.” If Kitchener’s death didn’t do it, this goes to show you the absurdity of nationalism. Britain even engineered a new machine of war to the battle—the tank—and still got miserably slaughtered. Also, another reporter aptly summed up the strategy of this battle, 

“The conduct of the battle has been a source of controversy: senior officers such as General Sir Douglas Haig, the commander of the British Expeditionary Force and Henry Rawlinson, the commander of Fourth Army have been criticised for the human cost while failing to achieve their territorial objectives.”

I know there are no easy answers to this war but when 1 million people die in a single battle I think it merits the question—Is what the German’s want worth this many lives? Also, although I think the novel sort of vulgar, maybe it would do all these cretins giving up their lives for a country’s ideals some good if they gave The Mysterious Stanger a read. I guess I am just at a loss of words in the face of such horrid cruelty in a modern world full of so many great inventions and thinkers. I’ll stop preaching. War is...

WW1: Kitchener Dies

WW1: Kitchener Dies

World War One is plaguing Europe. And don’t think for a second I will take the time to study the causes and effects that are prolonging this absurd bloodshed. I did read in the paper though that General Kitchener of the British army has been killed at sea recently. Yeah, I have never heard of the guy either. But, interestingly enough, I flipped the page of my paper, and, though sad as this Kitchener’s death is, I discovered that that Kitchener is the Lord Kitchener whose face is on those “Briton Wants You” posters infecting the city. Well, I find it ironic that the man on the poster who wants you to do what he does (fight in the army) died doing what he does. Who still wants to go to war?

The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain

The Mysterious Stanger by Mark Twain

The publishers will never stop if they can make a dollar. Twain’s newly posthumously published novel The Mysterious Stranger came out this year. It revealed to me Twain’s hatred for organized religion but I could hardly discern the subtle touch of an artist’s hand amidst the incessant religious platitudes and allegories. The novel is a first person narration of a young boy, Theodore. Satan is one of the main characters and tells a group of young boys living in an Austrian hamlet that many bad things will happen to people dear to them. Well, using the platitude of impulsive young person trusting an ominous magical being, which has been used in many a fairytale, Twain critiques the concept of believing in something more powerful out of fear or practicality. After Satan wreaks havoc on the town, before he suddenly vanishes, he pontificates “the meaning” of the novel Twain heavy-handedly put in his mouth,

"In a little while you will be alone in shoreless space, to wander its limitless solitudes without friend or comrade forever—for you will remain a thought, the only existent thought, and by your nature inextinguishable, indestructible. But I, your poor servant, have revealed you to yourself and set you free. Dream other dreams, and better!"

And this is just a sliver of Satan’s speech. He goes on to talk about how no God exists and the only thing that exists is “you”, the self, and one must dream because thoughts and dreams is all one has. Thanks Twain. Another novel to give the melancholic youth some fake insight. But, with all that, the novel does still possess some glimmers of Twain’s wit — like when Satan uses the Christian virtue of Mercy in the most literal sense and puts to death the narrator’s friend who’s sick, showing the hypocrisy of subjective virtue being imposed on another.

Mountain Interval by Robert Frost

American poet Robert Frost published his collection Mountain Interval this year. This collection of poems, in my opinion, is the best collection to come out of America this year. It follows-up Frost’s debut work A Boy’s Will and, unlike his first collection, this one gives a much more vivid portrayal of rural America and American English speech. In an interview I found, Frost says he believes that "the self-imposed restrictions of meter in form is more helpful than harmful because I can focus on the content of my poems instead of concerning myself with creating "innovative" new verse forms.” Well, Frost definitely sticks to old forms of verse. His poem “The Road Not Taken” is a good example of Frost’s style. It describes a simple man thinking back on his life and choices and is written in more an iambic tetrameter than any free verse or Imagist or Vorticist form. But, nonetheless, the poem has a narrative-like quality and so beautifully yet sadly portrays a man’s relation to the world and all the opportunities and missed opportunities that that relation entails. Bask in the elegance and ambiguity of Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken.”

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim

Because it was grassy and wanted wear,

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I marked the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

The Egoist

The Egoist

Another highly entertaining literary magazine this year is Harriet Weaver Shaw’s The Egoist. It was founded by Dora Marsden in response to the discontinuing of her last feminist magazine, The New Freewoman. This magazine is definitely the biggest publisher of new, so-called “Imagist” poetry and has published poets such as Pound, HD, Eliot, Wyndham Lewis, Williams Carlos Williams, and other avant-garde poets. Also, I applaud vehemently the magazines publication of Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which made me rush to get the magazine the morning it was released for a couple months. In addition to publishing avant-garde works of art, the magazine also gave its own views and comments on the current state of art and how they think they should go about publishing. Here’s there manifesto, published in the second edition of the magazine, describing some of these views.

“Given time, and the catholicity of these pages, we shall in the opinion of one or other of our readers rehearse the entire procession of isms and schisms, whether ancient, mediæval or modern. The compliment paid to the wealth of our erudition would no doubt be pleasant–and wholly undeserved–did it not clash with our egoistic temper, which compels us to protest to our status. Our modesty notwithstanding, we protest that we brew our own malt: we are not bottlers and retailers: we are in the wholesale and producing line of business. If our beer bears a resemblance in flavour to other brands, it is due to the similarity of taste in the makers….” - The Egoist Manifesto

The Little Review Magazine

The Little Review

The Little Review is another wonderful literary magazine publishing some of the most important works of our time. It was founded by Margaret Anderson in March 1914 and is still going strong. To me, the magazine is publishing much more avant-garde works than any other literary magazine of the time and I think a lot of the works they’re publishing will be, as Pound says, “permanent.” From what I hear, Ezra Pound is highly interested in editing the magazine and has publicly claimed, “The Little Review is perhaps temperamentally closer to what I want done”. Well, its September 1916 issue, which protested the lack of acceptable material it received and what they thought was being published in other magazines, left most of its pages blank and put the motto "Making No Compromise with the Public Taste" as its title that month. The magazine even had many articles promoting anarchy in one of the early issues this year. Needless to say, this magazine pushes the boundaries of literary publication and is not only paving the way for new art forms to arise rather than publishers continuing to publish the same type of writers who just copy off the old writers who did better what the writers today are copying, but also, most importantly, has been the most entertaining (probably because it’s audacity in publishing) to me this year.

Poetry Magazine

Poetry Magazine in 1916

A fairly recent (started in 1912) literary magazine has been publishing many great poets this year. Apparently it is all thanks to current Poetry editor and founder Harriet Monroe who, in 1911, persuaded one hundred Chicagoans to donate 50$ a year for five years to support a poetry magazine. From the Walt Whitman quote, “To have great poets there must be great audiences too”, printed on the back of every issue to Harriet Monroe’s statement, “The Open Door will be the policy of this magazine—may the great poet we are looking for never find it shut, or half-shut, against his ample genius!”, this magazine not only shows how it urges audiences to be open to new forms of the expression of genius in poetry but also actually has the verve and audacity to risk publishing these new forms of expression in poetry. Thankfully, because of Monroe’s magazine, just this year, innovative poets like T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Yeats, Sandburg, Williams Carlos Williams, and others have been published.

Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound

I hear Ezra Pound’s name everywhere. In all the literary journals he’s been at least mentioned. And, from what I hear, he has been instrumental in helping get Joyce’s Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man published. I’d like to take this sentence to thank Pound for getting, in my opinion, one of the best young writers work to the public rather than having such genius sit unpublished at a time where I think we need new good writing more than ever (I think Pound would agree). But I’ve come across some Ezra Pound poems and can’t say I’m overly impressed. I think Pound’s poetry is, generally, filled with platitudes and not as original (despite claiming to be part of the new literary movement Imagism) as some other poets of the time like Eliot and HD or Sandburg and Jeffers, but Pound’s essays for some reason usually strike some chord in me and his criticism causes an electric tingle in my spine when I hear him so eloquently yet audaciously tear apart some squeamish contemporary writer. Here’s an example of a poem I actually semi-enjoyed by Pound that possesses a lighter tone and gives a humorous portrait of a struggling writer (it doesn't surprise me Pound would choose this topic for a poem), but I don’t think it could be considered great or contend with some of the work of Yeats or Eliot. I also found an excerpt from a critical essay Pound wrote on Joyce's play Exlies called "Mr. James Joyce and the Modern Stage"(1916) where he describes Joyce just the way I would describe him that gives me pleasure every time I read it.

"The Lake Isle" by Ezra Pound

O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves, 

Give me in due time, I beseech you, a little tobacco-shop, 

With the little bright boxes

piled up neatly upon the shelves

And the loose fragment cavendish

and the shag, 

And the bright Virginia

loose under the bright glass cases, 

And a pair of scales

not too greasy, 

And the votailles dropping in for a word or two in passing, 

For a flip word, and to tidy their hair a bit. 

O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves, 

Lend me a little tobacco-shop, 

or install me in any profession

Save this damn'd profession of writing, 

where one needs one's brains all the time.

Excerpt from "Mr. Joyce and the Modern Stage"

"Mr. Joyce is undoubtedly one of our best contemporary authors. He has written a novel, and I am quite ready to stake anything I have in this world that that novel is permanent. It is permanent as are the works of Stendhal and Flaubert. Two silly publishers have just refused it in favor of froth, another declines to look at it because “he will not deal through an agent” —yet Mr. Joyce lives on the continent and can scarcely be expected to look after his affairs in England save through deputy. And Mr. Joyce is the best prose writer of my generation, in English. So far as I know, there is no one better in either Paris or Russia. In English we have Hardy and Henry James and, chronologically, we have Mr. James Joyce. The intervening novelists print books, it is true, but for me or for any man of my erudition, for any man living at my intensity, these books are things of no substance."

Carl Sandburg's Chicago Poems

Chicago Poems by Carl Sandburg

Carl Sandburg’s Chicago Poems is another great collection of poems. Sandburg grew up in Chicago and these poems are a gritty portrayal of the alienation and superficiality of urban life. Still, he also captures the fleeting moments of beauty amidst the harsh city setting of Chicago. In the poems, he mainly finds beauty in people. Although Sandburg doesn’t overlook the beauty of nature, he mainly observes how the city structures overshadow nature and finds beauty, instead, in the people living in the overwhelming city-scape. Sandburg, like Jeffers, seems to be aloof to the whole avant-garde poetry of the time and just writes how he wants to write rather than desperately trying too hard to be “new.” Anyway, I think you’ll enjoy this gritty poem by Sandburg of a struggling Chicagoan.

JACK was a swarthy, swaggering son-of-a-gun.

He worked thirty years on the railroad, ten hours a day, and his hands were tougher than sole leather.

He married a tough woman and they had eight children and the woman died and the children grew up and went away and wrote the old man every two years.

He died in the poorhouse sitting on a bench in the sun telling reminiscences to other old men whose women were dead and children scattered.

There was joy on his face when he died as there was joy on his face when he lived—he was a swarthy, swaggering son-of-a-gun.

Suite, Op 13. Bela Bartok

Suite, Op 14. Bela Bartok

Suite, Op 14. marked a change in Bartok’s music from compositions in more conventional form and based on Eastern European folk tunes to more atonal music that breaks away from previous classical styles of composition. In an interview about the piece Bartok says, 

The Suite op. 14 has no folk tunes. It is based entirely on original themes of my own invention. When this work was composed I had in mind the refining of piano technique, the changing of piano technique, into a more transparent style. A style more of bone and muscle opposing the heavy chordal style of the late, latter romantic period, that is, unessential ornaments like broken chords and other figures are omitted and it is more a simpler style.

Bartok definitely, like many of our contemporary artists, gets down and portrays his deep emotion without any unnecessary elements, which even fits Ezra Pound’s view of Imagism where he calls for “a direct treatment of the thing.” Here’s how it sounds.

Bartok Suite, Op. 14 Recording

Hugo Ball's Dadaist Manifesto

Dada Manifesto (1916, Hugo Ball)

Although I think this new buzz around Hugo Ball’s ravings a couple months ago on what he defines as “Dadaism” is somewhat absurd, I admire the boldness. From what I hear, he seems angry at life in society — war, machines, bombs, capitalism, communism, all the isms he thinks are bad — and he realizes that it is ridiculous that all this killing and suffering are happening because of the charade of individuals using politics and manipulation to get what they want. So he now wants to create an art form that helps people realize everything is subjective and their is no, as he says, “ultimate truth,” and oppressing others because of what your subjectivity desires is just an absurd delusion. Now we have “Dadaism.” In short, they basically just spew gibberish and want people to focus on “the beauty of the sound” rather than the beauty of the meaning. But, again, though I admire the way Dadists contribute in protecting artistic freedom and freedom in general, I think it’s too loose and unenjoyable to the senses for me and will essentially be a very ephemeral artistic movement. Here’s the manifesto if you want to look at it. It’s kind of funny.

Dada is a new tendency in art. One can tell this from the fact that until now nobody knew anything about it, and tomorrow everyone in Zurich will be talking about it. Dada comes from the dictionary. It is terribly simple. In French it means "hobby horse". In German it means "good-bye", "Get off my back", "Be seeing you sometime". In Romanian: "Yes, indeed, you are right, that's it. But of course, yes, definitely, right". And so forth.

An International word. Just a word, and the word a movement. Very easy to understand. Quite terribly simple. To make of it an artistic tendency must mean that one is anticipating complications. Dada psychology, dada Germany cum indigestion and fog paroxysm, dada literature, dada bourgeoisie, and yourselves, honoured poets, who are always writing with words but never writing the word itself, who are always writing around the actual point. Dada world war without end, dada revolution without beginning, dada, you friends and also-poets, esteemed sirs, manufacturers, and evangelists. Dada Tzara, dada Huelsenbeck, dada m'dada, dada m'dada dada mhm, dada dera dada, dada Hue, dada Tza.

How does one achieve eternal bliss? By saying dada. How does one become famous? By saying dada. With a noble gesture and delicate propriety. Till one goes crazy. Till one loses consciousness. How can one get rid of everything that smacks of journalism, worms, everything nice and right, blinkered, moralistic, europeanised, enervated? By saying dada. Dada is the world soul, dada is the pawnshop. Dada is the world's best lily-milk soap. Dada Mr Rubiner, dada Mr Korrodi. Dada Mr Anastasius Lilienstein. In plain language: the hospitality of the Swiss is something to be profoundly appreciated. And in questions of aesthetics the key is quality.

I shall be reading poems that are meant to dispense with conventional language, no less, and to have done with it. Dada Johann Fuchsgang Goethe. Dada Stendhal. Dada Dalai Lama, Buddha, Bible, and Nietzsche. Dada m'dada. Dada mhm dada da. It's a question of connections, and of loosening them up a bit to start with. I don't want words that other people have invented. All the words are other people's inventions. I want my own stuff, my own rhythm, and vowels and consonants too, matching the rhythm and all my own. If this pulsation is seven yards long, I want words for it that are seven yards long. Mr Schulz's words are only two and a half centimetres long.

It will serve to show how articulated language comes into being. I let the vowels fool around. I let the vowels quite simply occur, as a cat meows . . . Words emerge, shoulders of words, legs, arms, hands of words. Au, oi, uh. One shouldn't let too many words out. A line of poetry is a chance to get rid of all the filth that clings to this accursed language, as if put there by stockbrokers' hands, hands worn smooth by coins. I want the word where it ends and begins. Dada is the heart of words.

Each thing has its word, but the word has become a thing by itself. Why shouldn't I find it? Why can't a tree be called Pluplusch, and Pluplubasch when it has been raining? The word, the word, the word outside your domain, your stuffiness, this laughable impotence, your stupendous smugness, outside all the parrotry of your self-evident limitedness. The word, gentlemen, is a public concern of the first importance.

Californians by Robert Jeffers

Californians by Robinson Jeffers

I found a fine collection of poems today by a poet who, from what I hear, is a farmer. Californians by American outdoorsman, Robinson Jeffers, is a work more in the Whitmanian tradition rather than a work in the more avant-garde category of poets like Ezra Pound and the Imagists and all the other new strange art forms ( I’m thinking of Dadaism here) arising nowadays. But I am particularly fond of Jeffers and I think Pound would be too. His poems are clear and concise and though they’re highly romantic, they are direct and give lasting impressions of man’s emotion and its relation to the physical world. And what’s amazing is Jeffers does this so seamlessly that, instead of seeming like he’s trying to desperately be new and original like some of the other poets today, his poems read like nothing I’ve read before while still conveying deep emotion. This poem by Jeffers is a great example of what I’m trying to describe. The speaker’s notion in the poem of the beauty in the image he’s describing being attached to so many things in the physical world is a good an example of the relation of man’s emotion to the world I was talking about earlier that Jeffers elucidates so clearly.

TO AN OLD SQUARE PIANO 

(Purchased from the caretaker of an estate in Monterey.) 

WHOSE fingers wore your ivory keys 

So thin as tempest and tide-flow 

Some pearly shell, the castaway 

Of indefatigable seas 

On a low shingle far away 

You will not tell, we cannot know. 

Only, we know that you are come, 

Full of strange ghosts melodious 

The old years forget the echoes of, 

From the ancient house into our home; 

And you will sing of old-world love, 

And of ours too, and live with us. 

Sweet sounds will feed you here : our woods 

Are vocal with the seawind’s breath; 

Nor want they wing-borne choristers, 

Nor the ocean’s organ-interludes. 

Be true beneath her hands, even hers 

Who is more to me than life or death. 

Piano Teacher by Henri Matisse

Piano Teacher by Henri Matisse

This composition shows the open living-room window of Matisse’s house, outside Paris, with his son Pierre practicing the piano. A candle sits on the instrument, illuminating a triangle of lawn. In the bottom left corner is a representation of one of Matisse’s sculptures, Decorative Figure (1908), while the severe “teacher” in the opposite corner is actually a representation of the painting Woman on a High Stool (1914). Together they afford a contrast of sensuality and hard work and, reinforced by the metronome on the piano and the candle, suggest the passage of time.

Petersberg by Andrei Bely

Petersberg by Andrey Bely

The structure of this novels gets me excited for potential possibilities of the novel. Although this novel was published right before the Russian Revolution when political turmoil was reaching a breaking point, the political concerns are presented so subtly and usually with humor, which to me is a great way to deal with them in an individual work of art. Also, starting with the prologue, which is just two pages describing Petersberg and how it looks on a map (a black dot), the setting of the novel almost acts as a character throughout the novel (there are pages describing Petersberg throughout). Also, the tone of the novel is more effortlessly humorous than any work I’ve read, and a lot of that humorous tone comes from the stream of consciousness when we’re in a character’s head. Also, the novel takes place in a span of 24 hours. All these seem like innovative literary techniques that really make the novel much more lucid and engaging. I hope someone else develops these themes and aesthetics even further. After reading A Portrait, I’m rooting for Joyce to be the one to do that.

Intolerance by D.W. Griffith

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWbRuhmsHPM 

Intolerance by D.W. Griffith

I found some footage of DW Griffith’s Intolerance so just sit back and enjoy genius. I think after Birth of a Nation and Intolerance DW Griffith made me have more hope for the cinema than any other art form. Although I think prose and poetry will always be there, I think film seems a more engaging experience for a general audience. Griffith, like many of the writers of his era, not only uses myths to shed light on contemporary problems but presents his story in such a fragmented yet effective way that a story that could have been a sleep-inducer is engaging the whole time. But then again, Intolerance has been a huge flop at the box office; and from what I hear DW Griffith has lost everything, all his money, from the film. All I have to say to Ives and Griffith is “It’s a strange world.”

Symphony No. 4 by Charles Ives

Symphony No. 4 by Charles Ives

I received a copy of Ives’s newly published 4th symphony and when I read it I instantly lost all hope for not only contemporary music but the future of music producing the pieces of power we’ve seen from composers like Mahler, Beethoven and Brahms. This piece has more power and emotion than any other contemporary piece I’ve seen; it’s structure and style are genius; but just because it uses more instrumentation (it even requires 2 conductors) than any other piece of music in its time and breaks away from all the other classical styles, all the symphonies refuse to play it. Even Ives said the piece is "a searching question of 'What' and 'Why' which the spirit of man asks of life". Yet it won’t get played.

Water Lilies by Claude Monet

Water Lilies by Claude Monet

Claude Monet, a famous founder of French Impressionism, is starting to move to the forefront of contemporary art again for his late work Water Lilies. I believe these paintings of Water Lilies he painted in early 1916 will eventually be known as some of his most famous works. Also, I learned Monet is suffering from cataracts while painting them so I like how subjective and “impressionistic they are while still being beautiful.

Sea Garden by HD

 Sea Garden by HD

For some reason I haven’t come across any good new women poets so I’ve been casually on the lookout for any women poets I like and I think I’ve found one and her name is HD. Look at this poem (“Evening” pg 16 in Sea Garden).

Evening

THE light passes

from ridge to ridge, 

from flower to flower;—

the hypaticas, wide-spread
under the light

grow faint—

the petals reach inward,

the blue tips bend

toward the bluer heart

and the flowers are lost.

The cornel—buds are still white,

but shadows dart

from the cornel-roots—

black creeps from root to root,

each leaf

cuts another leaf on the grass,

shadow seeks shadow,

then both leaf

and leaf-shadow are lost.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

Here’s a book that immediately grabbed my attention. Although somewhat garrulous in the middle when the main character Stephen is trying to cope with his inner conflict dealing with his rebellion of the catholic church, this book has many moments of brilliance and genius. This picture of Joyce I found is important to me because, in the first part of the book, when Stephen is a young boy in school, the voice of the novel is so unique and the stream of consciousness of young Stephen is one of my favorite parts of the book. I also appreciate how Joyce changes his style in the middle and makes it more romantic, like young men tend to be in their teens, and in the end, his style becomes much more dramatic to suit Stephen’s development as a person. In my opinion, this young novelist, James Joyce, definitely has a promising literary career ahead of him. I’ll leave you with the opening sentence of the novel, which is an example of Stephen’s consciousness as a child and has been pleasant to hear ever since I got a copy of the novel.