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Snap: A Poem Comes Together

For years every spring, I have pulled out a poem that I’ve been working at, writing over and over, searching for something even satisfactory. I probably have 50-60 pages of drafts (it has been mostly a two-page poem for a long time). The poem deals with spring in many ways, so whenever the redbuds come out, the leaves on the maples in my backyard just begin to unfurl, and the magnolias have dropped their flowers to be replaced by leaves, I feel the time is appropriate. Of its many lines, several I found particularly strong, but the poem never seemed like a complete whole, an “object” as W.S. Graham might suggest.

So I would tinker, I would let it sit and approach it refreshed and try something different, something to shake it up and find the poem that would work. I do not know why I did not give up on this thing, for it has probably been 10 years I have played around with this. I’m guessing that several of the lines I liked too much and never found another suitable place for.

So this year, I wrote it and cut almost all of the lines. I ended up with what suggests a sonnet, though it really isn’t — not yet at least. Some poems just don’t let you give up on them. They insist on being released from the marble into the shape they’ve always been but which took this long to see.

John Adams’s “The Death of Klinghoffer”

What’s the old adage: If you’ve ticked off both sides of an argument, then you’ve probably spoken the truth? I’ve read two contradictory comments about Penny Woolcock’s version of John Adams’s The Death of Klinghoffer: “anti-Semitic trash” and “anti-Arab racist propaganda.” Hmm…

Though, as readers of my blog may know, I am a fan of John Adams’ music, this was my first encounter with this composition. The film is an adaptation of the opera, so some differences exist (some choruses were cut), which should be expected. Woolcock also uses film to add to the opera by adding scenes related to this history of Palestinians and Jews from World War II through to the future as well as adding character development difficult to do in a stage performance. The 45-minute documentary on the DVD features a prolonged discussion with Adams and Woolcock about adapting the opera to a screenplay, which is very illuminating.

First and foremost, I found the film excellent. The music bears all the strengths of Adams’s music: rhythmic drive that uses Minimalist techniques without the monotony I sometimes find in Minimalist works, some beautiful melodies (if I use this term incorrectly, apologies) – particularly in the “Aria of the Falling Body” – , and exact tone and pace for the context of the scene (Adams addresses his attempts to adapt the text to the music. The libretto/screenplay is taut and contains some wrenchingly beautiful poetry (the final aria sung by Marilyn Klinghoffer, “You Embraced Them”). Alice Goodman wrote the libretto (she also wrote the libretto for Adams’s Nixon in China). The singing, nearly all of it as recorded during filming and not in isolation booths, is vibrant and strong. Sanford Sylvan (Leon Klinghoffer), Christopher Maltman (the captain), and Tom Randle (Molqui) are particularly striking and full of force and range.

Second, the opera has been controversial since its premiere in 1991. In December of 2001, Richard Taruskin in The New York Times was particularly critical, claiming that the opera romanticizes terrorists and that the Boston Symphony’s postponing of the performances of choruses from the opera in September of 2001 was appropriate. This critique sounds reminiscent of some comments I heard about Trainspotting as glorifying heroin use. After seeing both Trainspotting and The Death of Klinghoffer, I do not see how either critique can be supported. Particularly regarding Klinghoffer, the terrorist actions are in no way romanticized. If romanticizing means providing context for a person’s life and circumstances and offering some motives for his or her actions no matter valid or not, then, yes, this opera romanticizes everyone, including terrorists. But I do not see how context and a knowledge of history, especially as one as complex and long as the conflicts that rip apart Palestine/Israel/etc., is ultimately a bad thing. The actions of the terrorists come off as completely disgusting and morally empty as they rightfully are. The cruel and vindicative taunting and degradation and the murder of Klinghoffer are depicted as exactly that: actions without justification and morally reprehensible.

Yet…yet…to depict the rage and anger of people, to see how they just might think such atrocious acts, self-justified though they may be, will result in a freedom from oppression, degradation, and hopelessness seems to me a worthy effort. Why is that? Probably because understanding, even partially, the human condition, which includes the beautiful and the depraved, is worthwhile. And this opera strives to understand the whole context of the thousands of years of hate and misunderstandings that is represented in those few awful days aboard the Achillo Lauro. As Mark Athitakis at AMC Filmcritic says: “Every shot of destroyed refugee camps is paired with shots of concentration camps. Woolcock renders the conflict in terms of dead Palestinian and Jewish bodies, brutal accounting in a ghastly ledger.”

Yet…because maybe an attempt to understand others’ contexts might have resulted in a saner and more thoughtful matter might have gained more long term positive consequences in Iraq and elsewhere. To cast others as so clearly evil makes it too easy to dismiss them, it allows us to remove the human from them. No one is all evil and all good, and we blind ourselves if we think otherwise. And thus blinded, would one have conceived of the more successful attempts to “convert” terrorists to good citizens, to do what the PLO did with some of the Black September terrorists: They married them off?

Adams, Goodman, Peter Sellars, and Woolcock could have offered easy viewing, but they chose instead the more difficult route of trying to bring some understanding to a vastly over-rhetoricized conflict, where one seems condemned to remain with a specific position or risk ostracizing. One’s sympathies necessarily in this opera and film end with the victims, particularly Leon and Marilyn. But to have left it at that would have been a disservice to art.

Memorization

Over the years, I’ve occasionally hoped to memorize poems, for I have always wanted to have a store of poems I could recall at pleasure. My only real attempt at memorization was in 6th grade and reciting “The Gettysburg Address.” I had problems with that short piece. Mostly, I think because I did not practice it enough and approached memorizing it all wrong.

Various attempts over the years have resulted in partial pieces and ended efforts. Again, I think because I was approaching it incorrectly. Nonetheless, I do think it is a good thing to memorize poems, if nothing else for the mental book of poetry but also I would like to be able to give readings of my and others’ poems from memory.

A couple of my friends have memorized a good number of poems and after reading a recent article in The New York Times Book Review, I’ve decided to try again, but with a different approach. I’m going to take a couple of lines or so a day for some shorter poems and recite them, particularly while driving to and from work. I had previously tried too many lines at a shot and did not recite them enough and hoped for too quick of results. I think with a bit more patience I can succeed. We shall see.

Based on the article, I chose W.H. Auden’s “This Lunar Beauty” to start with.

This lunar beauty
Has no history
Is complete and early;
If beauty later
Bear any feature
It had a lover
And is another.

This like a dream
Keeps other time,
And daytime is
The loss of this;
For time is inches
And the heart’s changes
Where ghost has haunted,
Lost and wanted.

But this was never
A ghost’s endeavour
Nor, finished this,
Was ghost at ease;
And till it pass
Love shall not near
The sweetness here
Nor sorrow take
His endless look.

Others that I’ve decided to add to the list are Gerard Manley Hopkins‘ “Pied Beauty,” William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 55, Jared Carter’s “Palimpsest,” and A.E. Housman’s “The Night Is Freezing Fast.”  I’ve left the list purposively small to avoid the overly ambitious. Still I would like to hear any suggestions for others. I will also add my poems to the list.

Perhaps someday I can add more ambitious long poems to my list of memorization. From The New York Times Book Review article: “Memorizing poetry does seem to make people a bit better at memorizing poetry.”

April Is Poetry Month and Broadsides

Here is an interesting site about restoring broadsides or as they say “putting literature and art on the streets.” More specifically, check out the broadside “Collective Origins (as) Ulysses/Uxoria” (broadsided on April 1). The particularly good and interesting poem is by Pamela Johnson Parker and the equally interesting art is by Kevin Morrow.