Statue of Charles Chaplin. Waterville, Ireland. Photo by Alan Hall

Just finished watching "The Circus," Chaplin's wonderful film from 1928. Silence and black and white. Laughter without laugh tracks, but with Chaplin's own score carrying us from scene to scene. Pathos comes from The Tramp. He makes us laugh and it's deep, and meaningful, and sad. The movie made me think of my trip to Ireland in 2003, where I saw the statue above, and it seemed so incongruous there, near the strand, not in Alaska, or in some darkened woods with the hobo's song in the air.  But then I remembered the Irish have always mixed deep sorrow and belly laughs, and everything in between. Perhaps everyone does at times. Sadness is too sad alone.

Felino Soriano doesn't necessarily write humorous poems, and the poems below don't strike me as being particular sad.…

1. The Apprentice Mage
2. Appaloosa: Time Constraints and Film
3. A Poet’s Dilemma

—after Trygve Seim’s Between

Between stare                          stare

            blank

opacity

            resembles

much

of the broken

                        semblances

culture contains, intangible mores

                                                                        focused

finite and inexplicably distant

from consistent virtues of

italicized

                        beau monde.

Approbations 566

—after Marc Johnson’s Since you Asked

My silence recalls bland-tongue

            architecture,

                                    achromatic

logic containing

prayerful condiments, mutilated connection.  Your asking

contains metaphoric trails, my standing still

of an oaks’ neighborhood of size, style—

reanalyzes your truth of committed understanding.

            The ideal

would be conversation occurrence

                                    countering the silence

my sound releases

                        broken

confused meaning of my mind’s innate sepulture.

Approbations 567

—after Bobo Stenson’s Olivia

Wears interwoven light like shadows

climbing contextual walls of needed

isolation.  Her

                        alone

retrieves an image of pale, bleached stone

engrained into sand’s warmed appreciation, resting,

the curved…

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson.

Just watched the Swedish film adaptation of the first novel in Larsson's Millennium Trilogy, and it's quite good, though very dark, and not for the faint of heart. There is a rumor of an American version coming out in 2012, which seems to be a pattern these days. Another very good Swedish film, "Let the Right One In," is soon to be a Hollywood production as well, and "Brothers" was recently remade from the Swedish original. A reversal of creative juices is in the air. Bollywood once had a habit of churning out Hollywood movies in new form, but with the success of "Slumdog Millionaire," I'm guessing the former British colony might do some colonizing on its own. Changes are all around us.

"The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" is a thriller and a murder mystery,…

1. The Visitor
2. All the World’s a Stage
3. Gone Baby Gone

When You’re Strange, a film by Tom DiCillo. 2010

I love the music of The Doors, the times and the legend. Watching archival footage in Tom DiCillo’s Rockdoc, I was taken back to a moment in our history filled with so much hope and promise, yet riven with an overwhelming sense of confusion and loss. Americans were deeply confused about a host of things in the 60s, and just like today, sought long and hard for someone to break on through to the other side.

Morrison was born to be a shaman/showman and blaze new trails.

The film reminded me of a few important details. It’s one of the first biopics to deal at all with the musicianship of the other Doors — Robby Krieger, Ray Manzarek and John Densmore. Morrison got all of the attention and notoriety, but they set…

1. Break on Through!
2. Joyous Ode to Rock N Roll
3. Symbol Balance the Night

Ukulele. Photo by Massimo Barbieri

Found this by perusing Crooked Timber. Had never heard of them and now wonder why. They are funny, talented, don’t take themselves seriously at all, and their eccentricity seems well earned. Simply put, they make us smile …

So, without further ado, I present The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain!!!

A cover of Teenage Dirtbag by Wheatus

The following is their finale, and it includes a remarkable composition based upon a piece by Handel, resulting in a surprising synchronicity of modern tunes following a classical frame.

For more information about this strange and funny band, visit their homepage:

Related posts:

1. Happy Birthday, Samuel Barber
2. Brandi Carlile’s The Story
3. Corinne Bailey Rae of Sunlight

1. Happy Birthday, Samuel Barber
2. Brandi Carlile’s The Story
3. Corinne Bailey Rae of Sunlight

Leo Tolstoy, by Ilya Repin. 1887

Back to back films, biopics of great writers. Thinking about the trade offs. First, Sylvia Plath and then Leo Tolstoy. Marked contrast between the two on so many levels. Most obviously, Tolstoy lived a long life, dying at the ripe old age of 82, while Sylvia Plath took her own life at the age of 30:

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

 

Both movies portray the struggle, the conflict of life against art and art against life, of sacrificing loved ones for that craft and for genius. But in “Sylvia,” the betrayal runs too deep. There is no reconciliation, no final, moving, powerful reunion, as there is with “The Last Station.”

It may well be that to know a poet’s biography intrudes…

1. Submissions
2. New Poetry and a Short Film
3. A Poet’s Dilemma

Sunflowers. By Vincent Van Gogh. 1888

Nothing was as it seemed, when Van Gogh painted it. Roiling underneath the subject, flying above it, surrounding it, were his passions, his intensity, his flights into realms most of us could only guess at, if we can match him for moral imagination, or imagination period. With Van Gogh, a rose was not a rose was not a rose.

Ray Succre writes poetry along these same lines, or conjunctions, or coincidences, with a mask or two thrown in for good measure. Surreal, meant to be heard, meant to be spoken, they sing the uncanny.

Spinozablue presents two of his poems below.

*     *     *     *     *

In honor of Bloomsday, I wanted to point you in the direction of a fine little essay about the people,…

1. Happy Bloomsday!!
2. Bloomsday 2009
3. The Ginger Man

Flower Poetry

When the flowers first escaped the row,
having scattered their generatives in time with a good wind,
I used poison to contain them. 
All gardeners know you can only own beautiful things
if you keep them in a square.

These were hearty poison-eating flowers, I discovered.
Soon, they made the grounds, even rooting in the concrete walk.
Hurrah for wildness, hurray for its life, I thought,
leaving them be.

I remember too clearly the morning I witnessed
the first flower to get inside the house.
It was growing from the kitchen floor.
I contained this pretty creature by setting a large soup-pot over it.
By next afternoon, the flower had called a compatriot,
and the pot had been overturned.

There was little time before their assault occurred.
Past the ramparts of my porch and…

Tito Lessi’s Galileo and Viviani. 1892

One of Those Days

The Atlas of the World
Inside
Outside the mind

But more than that
More than just maps and histories

The Atlas of the World as if
It were made for you
And you remake it every third or fourth hour

With time off for good behavior

An explosion of mirth overtakes the symphony
Then ideal pain
And ideal questions
An onslaught of daring never imagined

Before or since

A judgment day
A carnival
A tent for their tropes
Their troops of artists and saints

Your sinister rodeo

The eleventh dimensional map unfurled
Like a catastrophe on the boulevard
Before the barricades go up
Before Paris is ripe

Or Prague sees a new Spring

by Douglas Pinson

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1. Rebirth Comes Soon Enough
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3. Vortex at Midnight

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2. The Absence of a Writing Table and Other Bogus Complaints
3. Vortex at Midnight

Avatar, 2009. Directed by James Cameron

“Avatar” is a fine movie with an excellent message, or two, or three. Watching it months after all of the hype, I was able to drop my guard, suspend my disbelief, and see its high points without resorting to easy cynicism. Though that may come later. The high points, aside from the wonderful images of Pandora, are its antiwar, anti-imperialist themes, along with an underlying critique of capitalism that no doubt has sparked many a conversation around the nation’s water coolers. We need much more of that. But there are other aspects which drew my attention as well, especially the idea of living in harmony with Nature, the interconnectedness of all living things, being physically in each moment, and the high contrast between the native peoples of Pandora and the imperialist forces from Earth trying to exploit or annihilate them.…

1. The Wall
2. Everywhere the Center (Beauty)
3. A Poet’s Dilemma