April 2019
Featuring...
Ferlinghetti Turns 100… Baseball 150
There are many poets who do love, and delve into baseball. I was fortunate to appear in an anthology with 74 of them of varying stature (Line Drives: 100 Contemporary Baseball Poems). And I can distinctly remember being at Yankee Stadium in 1968 on opening day when, as incongruous sight as you could image in a ballpark, an 81-year old eccentric woman poet Marianne Moore, threw out the first ball. An honor, as far as I know, never accorded to Ferlinghetti.
Given that organized baseball has just begun its 150th year—the first openly all-professional team being founded in Cincinnati in 1869— I thought it might be apropos to make a connection between the legendary game by way of Baseball Canto which Ferlinghetti wrote in
anniversaries of a legendary poet and a
1973
This is no Mudville. No “Casey.” No letdown. No corn. Though the first line seems prosaic and pastoral enough. And it could even pass as a haiku.
Watching baseball, sitting in the sun, eating popcorn,
But almost immediately, following a sarcastic reference to Ezra Pound (a pretentious poet who wrote The Cantos and was a flagrant anti-Semite), here comes the curve ball. Here comes something that you won’t find posted on a scoreboard.
In his eyes, the American narrative is rooted in white male ground rules. Though as evidenced by the names of players of color that he cites in this poem, that might be changing. Which he passionately welcomes. Still, here we are 45 years later, with “white male privilege,” being a topical discussion. Most in evidence recently, with the lenient sentencing Paul Manafort received given the severity of the crimes he committed. (And if that could be erased by a future pardon).
In closing, I offer the poem in its entirety and let it speak for itself.
Baseball Canto
Watching baseball, sitting in the sun, eating popcorn,
reading Ezra Pound,
and wishing that Juan Marichal would hit a hole right through the
Anglo-Saxon tradition in the first Canto
and demolish the barbarian invaders.
When the San Francisco Giants take the field
and everybody stands up for the National Anthem,
with some Irish tenor's voice piped over the loudspeakers,
with all the players struck dead in their places
and the white umpires like Irish cops in their black suits and little
black caps pressed over their hearts,
Standing straight and still like at some funeral of a blarney bartender,
and all facing east,
as if expecting some Great White Hope or the Founding Fathers to
appear on the horizon like 1066 or 1776.
But Willie Mays appears instead,
in the bottom of the first,
and a roar goes up as he clouts the first one into the sun and takes
off, like a footrunner from Thebes.
The ball is lost in the sun and maidens wail after him
as he keeps running through the Anglo-Saxon epic.
And Tito Fuentes comes up looking like a bullfighter
in his tight pants and small pointy shoes.
And the right field bleechers go made with Chicanos and blacks
and Brooklyn beer-drinkers,
"Tito! Sock it to him, sweet Tito!"
And sweet Tito puts his foot in the bucket
and smacks one that don't come back at all,
and flees around the bases
like he's escaping from the United Fruit Company.
As the gringo dollar beats out the pound.
And sweet Tito beats it out like he's beating out usury,
not to mention fascism and anti-semitism.
And Juan Marichal comes up,
and the Chicano bleechers go loco again,
as Juan belts the first ball out of sight,
and rounds first and keeps going
and rounds second and rounds third,
and keeps going and hits paydirt
to the roars of the grungy populace.
As some nut presses the backstage panic button
for the tape-recorded National Anthem again,
to save the situation.
But it don't stop nobody this time,
in their revolution round the loaded white bases,
in this last of the great Anglo-Saxon epics,
in the territorio libre of Baseball.
Word of the Month
Doggo
In reading an op-ed piece a couple of months back, the opinant opined that…”The Senate majority leader has been trying to lie doggo…”
This original meaning, goes back to as far as to the late 19th-century. It is said to have appeared in the works of Rudyard Kipling. (And where it didn’t, maybe it should have?)
“If you can keep your head in doggo when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, “
The same word used in online meme-speak today, connotes a different meaning.
“ 'Doggo Lingo’ is a language trend that's been gaining steam on the Internet in the past few years. Words like doggo, pupper and blep most often accompany a picture or video of a dog and have spread on social media.” (Chelsea Beck/NPR)
I guess every doggo has its day. (Rim shot!)
I'm a paragraph. Click here to add your own text and edit me. It's easy.
Going Down a Rabbit Hole on Easter
I mean, come on!
To put this in a modern day context, would we sell chocolate assault rifles, which are the contemporary weapons of choice for brutal and mass killings? A counterpart to ancient crucifixions in public places? As illustrated again last month in New Zealand? A chocolate AR-15? Of course not. Who would do that? That would be rather crude, no? Er...yet...um...
there it is. But a click away. Jesus. (“Here Johnnie. Share this with your brother and sister. But don’t eat it all at once. You’ll get a tommy (gun) ache. Ha ha.”). I know, I know, chocolate doesn’t kill people, people kill people.
But back to that rabbit hole, before the blood pressure gets too high. When exactly did it become synonymous with Easter? (“Be the bunny!”) Lacking detail and dates, it’s hardly hardcore history. Which renders it in the category of “some say…”
It should be noted at the outset though, that rabbits or bunnies, are not hares. And I don’t mean to split hairs, but I don’t want to pigeonhole these animals either. The differences between them are clearly delineated. And it looks like, in the main, American kids have been eating chocolate hares for the most part, and not bunny rabbits. And since about 1925? (Records are unclear on that). But let’s not tell them. For it’s been said that “what the eye does not see, the heart does not rue.”
Born hairless and blind Born with fur and sight
Totally dependent on the mother Move on their own within an hour of birth
Larger, longer hind legs, longer ears
Fur stays the same color year-round Fur changes color summer vs. winter
Eat carrots and other veggie’s Eat harder bark and twigs
Make homes in burrows underground Make nests above ground
Hide from danger Run from danger
Can be domesticated Stay wild
Social, live in groups Stay alone, pairing up occasionally to mate
What these species do have in common, is that both are highly prolific. Though you never hear the phrase, “they were multiplying like hares.”
As to how a rabbit came to be associated with Easter in America…
That’s about as close as you can get to an answer.
In time, and outside of the realm of chocolate, tales of other rabbits such as Peter Rabbit, Lewis Carroll’s white rabbit, and The Velveteen Rabbit would become part of classic children’s literature. Rabbit cartoon characters would arrive sometime later, starting with Disney’s Oswald Rabbit (a forerunner to Mickey Mouse). Then the likes of Thumper, the ball-breaking Bugs Bunny and the enigmatic Roger Rabbit (who with that voluptuous wife, had adult-crossover appeal). And probably others that escape memory at the moment.
In the story lines, rabbits are figures who overcome obstacles. In that sense, they emerge as winners. While the hare finds himself, in his arrogance, a loser in a race with a tortoise in the classic Aesop fable. Rabbits are cuddly, hares are ornery. And you would be too if you lost to a tortoise.
There’s a lot more. There always is. And often with conflicting accounts. Though there is a consensus that the Cadbury Crème egg as we know it, which reappears in full force during Eastertide, was introduced in 1963. It’s a trip to a dentist waiting to happen. But, the sweet tooth wants what it wants.
“According to some sources, the Easter bunny arrived in America in the 1700’s with German immigrants who settled in Pennsylvania and transported their tradition of an egg-laying hare called ‘Osterhase’ or ‘Oschter Haws.’ Their children made nest in which this creature could lay its colored eggs.”
Easter will be a little late this year, not arriving until April 21st. Almost as late as it can possibly be,
would be April 25th. (And will next happen in 2038). And it got me to thinking about this holiday an its quint-
tial symbols: the secular rabbit …the Christian cross. And if they intertwine in any way.
which would
d its quintessen-
Look What They've Done to My Song Ma
(with apologies to Melanie)
If someone were to say you in the sweet spot of your coming of age, ages ago, here is a list of songs that matter, you might disagree with that list. But you would have heard of them. You would have known who wrote and sung what. And maybe even why. Because, you “got it.” Or were “woke,” in the current nomenclature. How could you not? The culture was once defined by music, aye awash in music, in the way that social media and heads buried in tech devices define it now. Albeit, rap seems to strike a chord, or rather a discord, and with a mind-bludgeoning repetitiveness, regarding all the bad shit going down.
For me and my “Gen,” the songs that held sway were of the late 60’s. Specifically, in the aftermath of The Beatles arrival, and their mega-influential Sgt. Pepper album in 1967. But it is now 2019. So, when The New York Times Magazine has a cover story last month entitled— in Ariel Bold font in caps— THE 25 SONGS THAT MATTER RIGHT NOW, I am at a total loss. No longer “coming of age”… I’m “coming down with age.” A deadly virus that seems to be going around.
Though wait, topping this list is Bruce Springsteen with his Born in the U.S.A. You would have had to have been in a coma for over 35 years not to have heard of Bruce and his gritty anthem which was released in 1984. But how does it matter right now? Reborn in the U.S.A.?
According to someone named Hanif Abdurraqib (a poet, essayist and cultural critic), what with Springsteen performing “Born…” and his long monologue introducing it (which all culminated in a soundtrack and Netflix special; I saw him do it somewhere on a late-night TV show), Mr. Abs goes on to make the case as to how “aging—and the age—can change a song’s meaning.” On the face of it, I would agree.
6ix9ine (who at age 22 already has a felony under his belt for using a child in a sexual performance. )… Parquet Courts (reminding me that my parquet floors could use a re-sanding)… Juice Wrld (can I buy a vowel?)… Tierra Whack (her debut album consisted of 15 tracks that are each exactly 60 seconds long. “OCD” might have been a more appropriate title)… Sons of Kemet (the frog? No, a jazz group from London with their hit, My Queen is Harriet Tubman)...and a viral phenomenon Pinkfong (don't they mean Pink Floyd? No, it's a South Korean edu-
By the way, isn’t Tony Bennett still the cat’s pajamas?! Wonder if he’ll do a duet with 6ix9ine?
None of this is to disparage these artists and their music. Though it sure looks that way grandpa.
It’s just another way of noting how the face of a generation can change, bearing no resemblance to one,
once so familiar. Your own (and Bruce's). Looking into this funhouse mirror of music, I realize that I have long since left the fair. But let’s keep in touch.
I'm a paragraph. Click here to add your own text and edit me. It's easy.
finito
cational entertainment company, and hark! They've jumped the shark.
"
Growing up, I was unaware of the pagan traditions that pre-date Christianity, including the spring festival of Ostara, named for an obscure Germanic goddess with a complicated mythology. It's a celebration of rebirth, and the day of arrival of the vernal equinox each year. And that the symbols surrounding it, include eggs and rabbits which speak to fertility.
For a Catholic, as I am, might not excessive adoration of eggs and rabbits pose theological or catechismal questions pertaining to Easter? In retrospect, was it a sacrilegious to be coloring eggs? Is there a papal encyclical in Latin somewhere forbidding it? And isn’t there something just little bit too promiscuous about rabbits? Why else would Huge Hefner have used one as a logo for his racy magazine?
Simplified, I’ve always thought of Easter as the “Christmas of Spring.” The secular and the religious comfortably existing. Neither infringing upon the other. The lion and lamb lying down together sort of thing (at least when the lion is not hungry).
So yes, we colored eggs. And never ate them. Which was probably a sin too, in the wasting of food and that “kids are starving in China.” But the sulphuric odor of hardboiled eggs days beyond their coloring, still lingers in the mind’s nostrils several decades after.
I was schooled to put my faith not in eggs or the rabbits that didn't hatch them, but the cross. Along with its redemption and life-everlasting implications. Though beyond any ethereal symbolism, the cross was after all, literally an apparatus of brutal execution. And as a Catholic, they never let you forget that. Nary a bare cross in sight. Though while eating a chocolate cross, I never gave it a second thought. Except for how good it tasted.
As an adult, I give a lot of things a second thought. Like, do they still make and sell chocolate crosses? (You tend to be oblivious to things that you’re not in the market to buy). And even ones with Christ upon it? Which would be in bad taste. In checking it out, of course they do. And sometimes, even on a stick. And in three variations including bittersweet.
The Church of England’s Archbishop of York, was furious last year with the Cadbury company for removing the word Easter from its annual hunt for chocolate eggs throughout the U.K. Even Prime Minister Theresa May, a vicar’s daughter, weighed in and took a strong stand calling their action “absolutely ridiculous.” (Breggsit?) I wonder what the Archbishop of Cadbury, I mean Canterbury, thought about all this?
Curiouser and curiouser.
Having gone down this rabbit hole with its warren of myth, mirth and memories, and their attendant free associations and dissociations, I emerge to say, have a Happy Easter… or Ostara. And may the farce be with you.
Quote of the Month
Drawing further from that Broadway show which concluded last December, he gives us a Springsteen who at one point, softly and hesitatingly, shares with his audience, that he avoided the draft and Viet Nam. “I do sometimes wonder who went in my place. Because somebody did.” Which I guess is a sentiment that’s a far cry from the cry about self…
Got in a little hometown jam
So they put a rifle in my hand
Sent me off to a foreign land
To go off and kill the yellow man
Born in the U.S.A.,I was born in the U.S.A.
For baby-boomers, all roads always seem to lead back to Nam, don’t they. And the irony of this President finally arriving there fifty years after the fact, and finding himself in a situation that was unwinnable, was not lost on many.
Beyond that, I’m done. I couldn’t identify or hum songs 2-25, even at gun point. And with prompting. Though of course there are artists represented on this list who even I’ve heard of: Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande, Mariah Carey, Cardi B, Kacy Musgraves. Then I chortle at the obscurities I encounter. Like, The 1975. Whom a critic extolling their impact, offers this convolution:
“A shameless polymath pop act delivers the cascading-contemporary-references track
we didn’t know we needed.”
I'm working on a translation.
Then, there’s these gems (say that fast three times):
muse-letter \’myüz-‘le-tər noun
1: a personal message, inspired by a muse of one's own creation, addressed to a person or organization, in the course of which, the sender becomes absorbed in thought; especially turning something over in the mind meditatively and often inconclusively.
2: a letter from a poet, or one who envisions oneself as such, in which he or she “muses” on that which is perceived to be news, or newsworthy in some ironic or absurd way.
"
April 2019
When he turned 100 this past March 24th, San Francisco’s Madam Mayor London Breed (just love that name), declared it Lawrence Ferlinghetti Day. A day of celebration amidst the many that took place throughout the month by various organizations. Born in Yonkers, he has lived in this adopted city for almost 70 years, and is revered as a local treasure.
None of these homages took on the tone of a requim. Ferlinghetti is still very much alive, having even just published a new autobiographical novel “Little Boy,” five days before his 100th birthday. And though a century of living may have taken a toll on his body, he’s nearly blind, vibrant still remains his mind.
A thumbnail bio on him might read: First and foremost, he is an American poet, and co-founder of the City Lights Bookstore & Publishers which opened in 1951, and was the first paperback bookstore in the United States. He is also a social activist, novelist and painter.
As a poet, he is best known for his first collection of poems A Coney Island of the Mind (1958), which has been translated into nine languages and has sold over a million copies. It was the best selling book by any living American poet in the second half of the 20th century.
As a bookstore owner/publisher, his signature moment came with the publishing of Allen Ginsburg’s Howl in 1956. Followed by having this beat poet read it in City Lights. This resulting in Ferlinghetti's arrest for "disseminating obscene literature." Supported by the ACLU, he won the case. Howl is now considered a literary classic. The bookstore itself, which had immediately become a gathering place for the avant garde, became an official historical landmark in 2001.
Ferlinghetti’s approach to poetry is best described as populist. He believes that “art should be accessible to all people, not just a handful of highly educated intellectuals.” And this is reflected in the style and substance of his poems. You might say, he is the Bernie Sanders of poetry. With a similar political bent, newly described as Democratic Socialism. And then there’s the ranting. One vocal…one in print. Though unlike Sanders, Ferlinghetti came by his pacifism through experience, not philosophy. He served a four year stint in the Navy during World War II where he saw combat firsthand. (“I was in the Normandy invasion that first morning”).
Another tenet that he holds dear, is “Truth is not for the sacred few.” To which Frances Ford Coppola has added, “Lawrence gets you laughing then hits you with the truth.” For as with all good poets, he attempts to get at something below the surface. And in so doing, often making connections where none at first glance would seem to exist. Invariably, his poems are polemic; overtly or in inference. His Baseball Canto is an example. He is an ardent San Francisco Giants fan, and knows and enjoys the game of baseball, with all its quirks and nuances. Yet, sees that it has an unlevel playing field. Though poets who see baseball as metaphor is not unique to Ferlinghetti.
