text:
Posted by The Best American Poetry on May 01, 2015 at 02:38 PM in Movies, Music | Permalink | Comments (0)
Posted by The Best American Poetry on May 01, 2015 at 02:06 PM in Music, Television | Permalink | Comments (0)
Posted by The Best American Poetry on May 01, 2015 at 05:50 AM in Music | Permalink | Comments (0)
Posted by The Best American Poetry on May 01, 2015 at 12:01 AM in Music | Permalink | Comments (0)
Something I have been wondering: would I give up my whiteness to be Black? The answer is yes, but Walter Scott would still be dead. Would I give up my whiteness to be Black? The answer is yes, but let's not mistake it for sacrifice or pretend Walter Scott would not still be dead. I spend time in Black spaces, in Black family, amid Black love, I know Black genius and have known Black bodies and know just about nothing of what it is to be Black but I would be it, would surrender my whiteness to be it and Walter Scott would still be dead.
Something I have been wondering: what would happen if whiteness as we know it disappeared? What if whiteness carried on its broad pale back the unbearable weight of enslavement, of three-fifths, of Jim Crow and Tuskegee and the prison capitalist industry and the long and unqualified failure of Brown vs. the Board of Education? What then for my blue-eyed nephews, my pastel godson? Would Walter Scott still be dead? Would my father? My grandfathers? Theirs? In trees? Behind trucks? In fields? As experiments? On ships? In rebellion? Running away?
I can tell you I would not exist. My mother's mother met my grandfather during the Great Depression; he was driving a boat and she was swimming off the family's lake house pier. My mother met my father at a dance in the same lily-toned summer community. Remove skin privilege and the stories fall apart, my DNA a rope unraveling.
Make fate stronger than this, make them meet in bread lines or protest rallies and I exist, but who am I? Shift the locus of my birth, shift the solidity of my public schooling, shift the capacity of my parents to pay for college, shift the easy slip into employment, shift my safe white walk through everywhere – turn it all on its head, an inversion, and name me someone else. Because I am white, which is indivisible from privilege.
And what if tomorrow it all were different. If in an instant, skin became no indication of whom to kill or kidnap or fire or disdain or dismiss or enslave or arrest or detain or shrink from, clutching one's expensive handbag on the subway. Would we find another marker for target, and construct a new national horror story on that? It would need to be visible, like skin. Be inherited, generationally unshakable. Who would be Walter Scott then, be Michael Brown, be Tamir Rice, be John Crawford, Mariam Carey, Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell, Alberta Spruil? Who'd be dead?
So much conjecture, and Walter Scott is still dead for nothing. Dead for nothing but his pure skin. And my father is alive, and my nephews and my godson being raised into good men. And my grandfathers died of old age and cancer and I can't surrender or abandon or strip off this whiteness any more than I can bring back the dead.
But I can ask this question: what does it require for a human to be seen as human in any skin?
How many Coast Guard photos, how many sweet-faced senior pictures, how many Black boys leaning into their father's good shoulders, how many hands up, how many face down, how many can't breathe, how much footage of cops handcuffing newly dead humans do we need? These are bodies, living or once living. These are human, human, human bodies.
Billie Holiday on repeat, you know the song, the poplar tree, white bark, white branches, indivisible from its history, white like bones white like teeth and flags of surrender tied to branches and bayonets Walter Scott, I surrender. I am sorry. Michael Brown, I surrender. I am sorry. Ferguson, I surrender. I am sorry. Dear living dear living dear living, I can't take the white from my body but here is my white mouth, here are my white hands. I will not surrender to history. I will speak. I will try to put them where there is need.
Posted by Marty McConnell on April 08, 2015 at 08:34 PM in Current Affairs, Guest Bloggers, Hard Times, History, Music, Television | Permalink | Comments (36)
Posted by The Best American Poetry on March 07, 2015 at 11:55 AM in Movies, Music, Sinatra | Permalink | Comments (0)
Happy birthday, Harold Arlen
Born Hyman (Chaim) Arluck
Buffalo, NY
February 15, 1905
You're gonna love me, like nobody's loved me,
Come rain or come shine
Happy together, unhappy together
and won't it be fine
Days may be cloudy or sunny
We're in or we're out of the money
But I'm with you always
I'm with you rain or shine
Harold Arlen was the son of a cantor, born one hundred and ten years ago today in Buffalo, New York. He wrote the music for "Get Happy," "I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues," "Stormy Weather," "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea," "I've Got the World on a String," "Let's Fall in Love," "Ill Wind," "Paper Moon," "Last Night When We Were young," "Over the Rainbow," "If I Only Had a Brain," "Ding-Dong, the Witch is Dead," "Lydia the Tattooed Lady," "Blues in the Night," "Accentuate the Positive," "My Shining Hour," "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)," "Come Rain or Come Shine," "That Old Black Magic," "Hit the Road to Dreamland," "This Time the Dream's On Me," "I Wonder What Became of Me," "The Man That Got Away."
"I can't explain / It's the same champagne. . ."
Posted by The Best American Poetry on February 15, 2015 at 08:30 AM in Music | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Which version do you prefer?
-- sdh
Posted by The Best American Poetry on February 14, 2015 at 03:43 AM in Music, sdh, Sinatra | Permalink | Comments (4)
This post is dedicated to the great David Lehman.
In his latest album, Shadows in The Night, Bob Dylan sings ten songs to God. For Dylan, singing is the most authentic form of prayer. The songs aren't his own but come from the Great American Songbook as filtered through Frank Sinatra's inimitable voice. Why not Dylan's own songs? And, if not his songs, why Sinatra's?
To answer these questions, it is crucial to understand Dylan's aim in the album. Dylan was after an album of allegorical love songs. This tradition started for him with "Visions of Johanna." In that song Dylan is with the earthly Louise while yearning for the spiritual Johanna. The exact nature of Johanna's Godliness is not clear in the song. She could be God as represented by a female, or a metaphor as in the "Song of Songs" tradition, or one aspect of God, or a private way that Dylan experiences God. It is very likely that Robert Graves' book The White Goddess influenced Dylan. That complex book is about a muse, a White Goddess, who was a single Goddess behind the various mythological goddesses. In his book Graves argues that "pure" poetry is linked to the White Goddess. That is, however Dylan formed the idea, he sometimes appears to be singing to a woman but in reality is singing also or exclusively to God. Other examples of his allegorical love songs include "Shelter From the Storm" and "Red River Shore."
Therefore, while it's easy to hear the songs on Shadows in The Night as standard love songs, they are more resonant, closer to Dylan's intentions, if they are heard as songs to a feminine representation of God.
That in part explains the use of Frank Sinatra's songs. Sinatra provides a perfect counterpoint to the idea of woman as God because Sinatra could uniquely deliver love songs. That is, his songs were sung to woman as woman. Dylan takes these great love songs and uses them in a new way, expanding them, not just reinterpreting their sound but also their meaning.
Interpreted in this way, the Sinatra songs of romantic longing remain intact but suddenly also include a desperate plea, an intense spiritual longing. These are not the songs of Dylan on a spiritual quest or Dylan in the rapture of religious embrace. These are the songs of a lost God, of Dylan wondering why God has gone. A shadow in the night is a darker shade of what is already dark. These songs long for an absent God.
The album operates by looking at all angles of this longing. In "I'm a Fool to Want You" Dylan berates himself for even wanting God. In "Stay With Me," just the opposite is true because "every path leads to Thee." Dylan wants God to be near. "Autumn Leaves" sounds like a whole new song on the album. In "Why Try to Change Me Now," Dylan begs God to accept him as he is: "Don't you remember? I was always your clown." It almost sounds as though Dylan wrote those lyrics. In "Where Are You" Dylan longs for the absent God.
There's a crucial insight about belief in these songs. Religious belief is dynamic. It changes over time. Dylan believed, but God has abandoned him. And that's why Dylan is not singing his own songs. The otherness of the songs is a metaphor for the distance he feels from God. He can't even pray with his own words.
The real brilliance of the album's song choices stems from the notion that God's relationship with Dylan is exactly like the relationship between romantic partners. Such a relationship can change over time. Feelings can get close and then sometimes retreat. And so in singing to a gone God, it makes good sense to sing love songs of longing for reconciliation.
Dylan's is a perfect voice for these songs. As many listeners have noted, his voice sounds fresh and clear. He doesn't just sing; he begs. There is a plea in every song offered by a voice that has lived. It is a voice weighted down by the accumulated strains of life.
And then there's "That Lucky Old Sun," the final song on the album. Dylan sometimes ends an album with a hint about his future direction. If so, it is a sad direction home. In the song, Dylan is envious of the sun because it can "roll around Heaven all day." The way Dylan sings it, it is a song of someone weary of life, someone who desires death. And yet his is a voice that won't be stilled. His feet still move on to the next stop on the tour.
This is simply an incredible album.
Posted by Lawrence Epstein on February 09, 2015 at 03:41 PM in Adventures of Lehman, Dylan Watch, Guest Bloggers, Music, Sinatra | Permalink | Comments (4)
In 1955, Davood Pirniya, a music lover and a well-connected and powerful man within the Iranian government, used his political resources to fund and establish an orchestra, bringing in the best vocalists and composers for a new radio program that presented a gorgeous marriage of music and poetry. He called the program Flowers (Golha). The earliest version, Eternal Flowers (Golhayeh Javidan), featured poetry by beloved ancient poets: Saadi, Rumi, and Hafez. In each program selected poems were recited by a mellifluous voice, followed by a musical interlude and then golden-throated singing to a beautiful composition in traditional form. Later, in Multicolored Flowers (Golhayeh Rang a Rang), poems by contemporary poets were also included in the program. Although singing poems is an old Iranian tradition, these programs introduced to the public—young and old, rich and poor—work by new poets as well as by ancient masters, in a form that was pleasing to the ear and the heart, the mind and the soul. These radio programs became immensely popular in both cities and villages, among the well-educated as well the illiterate.
The programs were numbered. Here is number 570, with Homeyra, one of the divas of the time, singing poems by two contemporary poets as well as Iran's beloved Hafez. The program begins with an introduction of the artists; then Firouzeh Amirmoez recites the first section of the first poem. After a brief musical interlude, Homeyra sings that same section. Listen:
Today many of Iran's talented musicians and vocalists live in exile. Here in the United States a well-known and immensely talented Iranian vocalist and composer, Mamak Khadem, is among a handful of musicians in exile who have kept this beautiful tradition alive. In her 2011 album, A Window To Color, Mamak brings to musical life Iran's beloved 20th-century poet, Sohrab Sepehri. Here is a video renditions of one of the songs, "At the Water's Edge" (Labeh Aab):
In recent years Mamak has also begun composing traditional Persian music for poems written in English or in translation. In 2010 she performed my poem (written in English,) "I Am Neda," at the Billy Wilder Theater for an event sponsored by PEN USA and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. Two years later, in her album Widow to Color, Mamak sang Sepehri's poem "Az Sabz Be Sabz" (Green to Green) in translation. It's enchanting to hear the English words dance between Persian melodies.
Here is a portion of "Green to Green," along with its translation. I wish I could play the entire song here, but if you are interested, download it from iTunes. Better yet, get the album. It comes with an insert with all the translations.
From Green to Green
(by Sohrab Sepehri, Translated by Sholeh Wolpé)
I, in this darkness
wish for a luminous lamb
to come, to graze
on the grass of my weariness.
I, in this darkness
see my outstretched arms
wet beneath this rain
that once drenched
the first prayers of man.
I, in this darkness
opened doors
to ancient meadows,
to golden images we watched
on mythical walls.
I, in this darkness
saw the roots
and rendered
the meaning of water
to death's new sapling.
If you like Sohrab Sepehri's poetry, look for translations of his work by poet and literary translator Kazim Ali. Water's Footfall or The Oasis of Now, both of which I highly recommend.
Posted by Sholeh Wolpe on January 29, 2015 at 07:00 AM in Book Recommendations, Feature, Guest Bloggers, History, Music, Poems, Translation | Permalink | Comments (0)
Language Matters with Bob Holman is now available to stream on PBS Video.
There's a new Language Movement in town.
I remember when Charles and Bruce began publishing L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, how their writing made me think of language in a new way. Whether I'm in Australia, or on a reservation in South Dakota, when people say they are talking "in Language," what I know is that they're talking in their Mother Tongue. To these folks, English is not Language, English is the way you get along. Language is who you are, words that have been passed down through generations.
"Language Matters" is the first nationwide media recognition of the Language Crisis, which is not just about languages, but cultural diversity. It's about global homogenization, the Pringleization of society, about cultures being steamrollered under globalization. The growing call to action for language preservation is a drive to see the cultures of the world through a lens of understanding and respect, of seeing the world through a cultural lens, not just a political one. The problem is that in this era of the consciousness of literacy, in this world of hard science, endangered languages and cultures are disadvantaged; if you don't have the quantification, the metrics, you don't really have something to say. Quantifying languages is complex (I'd like to say impossible, but I can't). This is where the poets come in.
Four years ago, when we started "Language Matters," people were saying there were 7,000 languages in the world. Now there are 6,000, not because we've lost that many languages, but because now that these numbers are really starting to count for something on the political table, linguists are beginning to hedge. It's hard to know exactly how many languages there are, and harder to enumerate speakers. It's not like counting the number of pandas. In the prologue to the motion poem "Khonsay," where each line from a different endangered/minority language, we split the difference, say there are 6,500. And the reason I used the "endangered/minority" construct is because linguists also disagree on the at-risk level of many many languages.
When I was in Wales asking people if they spoke Welsh, there were people with a junior high level of vocabulary who were quite proud that they could speak Welsh. Others, who were absolutely fluent, said they couldn't really speak it. They were hanging out with people who were born into the language, who knew more slang.
The only thing everyone agrees with is that huge numbers of languages, languages that have been around, usually, for millennia, are dying out right now.
When I tell people we're losing half the languages on the planet by the end of this century, unless we do something about it, they never ask "how many languages is that, exactly?" Instead, their reactions are always "yes, let's do something about it." And again, this is why I think that participating in the Language Movement, helping to protect all languages, is part of the job of the poet in 2015. It's a movement to protect the diversity of languages in the world. A movement to give respect to all languages. A movement to appreciate that each language has its own poetry, and is an important part of an Ecology of Consciousness.
Digital Consciousness connects us all. But are we listening to each other? Are we respecting each other's traditions? It's great to have "Language Matters" find its way out into the world, four years after David Grubin and I had that lunch. When I was working on "The United States of Poetry" with Mark Pellington and Joshua Blum, Josh, who gave me a dictum about TV that I'll never forget. "The first rule of making a television program, is to get it on television." The national broadcast of "Language Matters on PBS is the end of that quest, of that story.
Which means it's the beginning of the journey. Now that people have seen the show, what about the call to activism inherent in it? So I ask all you poets out there to live like Natalie Diaz, and help your own Language find its way into the world. And if that Language happens to be English, well then you don't understand the part about what Language is. Help me get this program into places where languages are struggling to survive and a screening of the film will give cred to the work. Find languages around you and learn from them. Take seriously the role of the poet as a protector of language, not just a user.
There's nothing like writing a poem, to take words, each one with its own history, multiple meanings, and build a sculpture of meaning. It's a gift, the words that come to us. People have sparked these sounds, people have laid down their lives for their continuation—language is the essence of humanity, and poetry is the essence of language.
Working with linguists has allowed me to see language from the other side. The collaboration of science and art is good for everybody. If you never could understand the people who come up to you and say they can't understand poetry, I recommend your going to a linguistics conference and try to understand what those people are talking about!
But to me that's what the future holds. Sit through a lecture in a language you don't understand, listen to the poetry of a language you're trying to learn, place yourself in a situation where English is useless, learn what Language really is. This is the clarion call of our time. This is why Language Matters.
To learn more about endangered languages, check out the Language Matters educational resources, visit the Endangered Language Alliance, and write firstname.lastname@example.com
Posted by Bob Holman on January 23, 2015 at 10:42 AM in Art, Australia, Chicago, Collaborations, Current Affairs, England, History, Movies, Music, Poems, Television, Travel | Permalink | Comments (1)
Language Matters with Bob Holman is now available to stream on PBS Video.
Charlie Listens
Put earbud in west ear
Put other earbud in east ear
Charlie listens
Clapsticks, didj, now your voice
Recorded yesterday, Mt Borredale,
In Amardak, you're the Last Speaker
Hear? Your voice doesn't sound so good
You sang good, but the recording was no good
Could you sing now, Charlie, please?
Charlie nods. Charlie listens
Clapsticks, didj, now your voice, please - Now
Charlie listens
Now Charlie listens
OK Charlie, we need you to sing Now
Charlie nods and listens
Now Charlie listens
Cue Charlie – listens
Get Jamesy
Jamesy tells Charlie
Charlie listens
Get headphone splitter
Jamesy puts on headphones
Charlie and Jamesy listen
Clapsticks, didj. Charlie's voice
Jamesy sings a little
Jamesy looks at Charlie
Charlie looks at Jamesy
OK? Charlie listens
OK, Jamesy now speak Iwaidja with Charlie
OK, Charlie listens, Charlie nods
OK Jamesy looks at Charlie
OK clapsticks in fingers
OK Charlie listens, didj
OK now. Now Charlie sings
Ma barang!
Asking Charlie Mangulda, the Last Speaker of Amurdak, to overdub his performance from the sacred site of Mt. Borradale, was one of the most complex and unnerving directorial moves—to me, not to him—I've ever had to do. John Tranter, our local sound guy, is just a dynamite practitioner. But recording Charlie's voice, two, cracking clapstick players, and a bulbous didgeridoo on a cave's platform under an ancient painting of a Rainbow Serpent, proved to be too much for our top-of-the-line digital equipment. This poem tells the story. I won't repeat it. I won't even tell you what Ma barang! means, I'm sure you already know. And if you don't know, then you really do already know.
What I do want to talk about, briefly, is the opening lines. In Amurdak, Charlie's language, is one of the very few instances where you can actually see a difference in consciousnesses between languages. The idea that some languages are more primitive than others is simply cultural prejudice: you can say anything in any language, and every language has a full syntax and grammatology. But in Amurdak, Charlie doesn't know his left from his right. This concept, which until the 1960s was thought to be universal, actually doesn't exist in a few languages. The way Charlie designates direction is simply and solely through cardinal directions. And it's been shown that it doesn't matter where speakers of these languages are placed, they are automatically oriented to the compass points, so that they can say of the choices, "I'll take the one on the southwest."
Now, you could infer from this that Amurdak people don't see themselves, each one, as the center of the universe, where left and right is always and only consistent to the person speaking. Instead, the Amurdak people—or in this case, Charlie, the Last Speaker—is simply a point standing somewhere on Earth. But that's just an inference. Or maybe a poem.
One more thing before we close. When Charlie was translating the creation myth of Warramurrungunji, he listed the dozen or so languages that the Goddess dropped, thus bringing humans to the place she had created. Somehow, under the disturbing lights of the camera, with the intrusion of the microphone, Charlie remembered three words of a language that linguist Nick Evans, an expert on cultures of Northern Australia, didn't know he could speak. And when Charlie mentioned Wurdirrk and gave Nick some words, it was the first time that this language has ever been recorded. That's correct. I think this was The Apotheosis of the whole shoot of "Language Matters." I could see the headline in the Times: Documentary Crew Discovers Lost Language.
The words Charlie spoke translate to: "I want to listen to you," "yam-digging tool," and "give me fire." The first thing that was apparent to Nick from these three words is that they are unlike any other language, which means Wurdirrk is not a dialect—without these words, we never would have known that.
As a poet, I'd like to say one more thing about the words. If you triangulate from them, what you have is a whole culture. "I want to listen to you," the essence of the community. "Yam-digging tool," the basis of the community's relationship with the earth and it also means "digging deeply into the meaning of something." And "give me fire," the essence of light, of heat, a great song title, and the best joke in the book.
For "gimme fire," I envisioned Charlie as a little boy, these strange people coming out of the darkness late at night, shivering and cold, needing some of this precious fire for light and heat. Later, Charlie would give me the deeper meaning of this idiom. Hey buddy, you got a match?
Posted by Bob Holman on January 22, 2015 at 11:15 AM in "Tunes", Art, Australia, Collaborations, Current Affairs, Dance, England, Guest Bloggers, History, Movies, Music, New Zealand, Poems, Television, Travel | Permalink | Comments (2)
Language Matters with Bob Holman is now available to stream on PBS Video.
"Foneddigion a Boneddigesau! Fy llinell gyntaf o gynghanedd!" The Welsh is slow and halting, pried off the page, the performance knowing and with flair. If I do say so myself.
I am saying it myself.
It's me. On stage. Stomp, 2012, Vale of Glamorgan, Cymru (Welsh for "Wales").
The Stomp (Y Stomp, in Welsh), is the National Poetry Slam of Wales. It is part of the annual Eisteddfod, the national cultural festival of all things Welsh. As I say in "Language Matters," "It's a lot like the state fairs in the US, except that instead of prizes for pies or pigs, the prizes are for poetry."
The first Eisteddfod was in 1176, when Lord Rhys invited poets and musicians from all over the country to compete for a seat at his table. You could sing for your supper, and then get fed. Winning was an entree into the house of the Lords, and a golden meal ticket for the winning poet. The chair you pulled up to the table was a special Bard's Chair, and to this day, the prize for the winning poet in the Formal Category is a Chair. Hand-carved by an artisan, the winner gets to take the Chair home, sit in it, and write more poems. In Welsh.
For me, as usual, the whole thing started at the Bowery Poetry Club, when we hosted readings by Welsh poets as part of the Peoples Poetry Gatherings, 2002-03. That's where I began to feel the intensity around this ancient Celtic language. Whenever I bring up Welsh in New York, the response is invariably, "Well, what about Irish?" While the Irish fought and gained political independence, they did so in English. The Irish language is now much more endangered than Welsh. The Welsh never fought for independence, but rather cultural parity, and today Welsh is considered the only endangered language to have come off the endangered language list. It's a success story by any metric, which is why it got its place in "Language Matters."
One of the poets I met at the Club is Grahame Davies, who writes in both Welsh and English, and whose work and being was crucial in my decision to study Welsh. Grahame lives the fire and rigor needed to keep this ancient language alive. The fire is contagious, and to prepare for the film, I flew to Wales and began my own formal and informal study of the language.
Grahame picked me up at the Caerdydd (Cardiff) Airport, and we headed for breakfast with Elinor Robson of the Welsh Language Society. I confessed my dream to them, and we all laughed over a full Welsh. What? I, who didn't even know enough to fly to Manchion (Manchester) to get to Gog Gymru (North Wales), who couldn't say Blaenau Ffestiniog (the slate-mining town where I live in Wales), let alone spell it, who hadn't even met Dewi Prysor! was proposing that I participate in next year's Stomp! I, who didn't know from "hwyl" (aloha), was going to write and perform a poem in Welsh -- all for this documentary I was making for PBS.
And as you now can see on the front page of the live-stream at PBS.org, the fantasy came real, all duded up in lucky Tibetan cap and Mexican guayabera, taking on all comers at Stomp 2012. "Ladies and Gentlemen! My first line of cynghanedd!" I am saying, to translate the first words of this post. And it really was the first cynghanedd I ever wrote.
In the film, the line is followed by a raucous audience response, Stomp cards held high—unlike the U.S. Slam, at the Stomp the audience is the judge, and they judge by holding up different colored cards to indicate their favorite poet. Watch as I collect a brotherly hug from Dewi, my mentor, friend and Stomp opponent, also an award-winning novelist and Stomp-winning poet, whose current job is translating episodes of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" into Welsh.
The cynghanedd is what separates formal Welsh poetry from free verse; in fact, it is what separates Welsh poetry from any other poetry in the world. There are six different forms of cynghanedd, and to win the Chair, you must write a poem that includes sections written in each. Each form has its own rules, here's a general description the poetic device Marerid Hopwood, in her handbook Singing in Chains: Listening to Welsh Verse, describes as "consonant chime :" to create a cynghanedd , a line is divided into three sections, a double caesura. The middle section is thrown out. The two sections left, must have all their consonants (except the last) match up. In other words, the vowels, and of course in Welsh, Y and W are always vowels, are immaterial. The sounds we use to make rhymes don't count.
Now from here things get a little complex. Sometimes there is internal rhyme, sometimes rhyme line-to-line, sometimes both—but let's just leave it at that. The extraordinary thing is that a Welsh audience can hear the cynghanedd, applauding an especially good one, and be quite aware of a poet trying to slide something by. As an American poet writing in Welsh, even in the Stomp, to come up with a cynghanedd was quite a feat.
(Hopwood's title is of course a line from "Fern Hill" by Dylan Thomas. The irony is that while we think of Thomas as the Welsh poet, in Wales he's often not even considered to be in the top tier. Why? Because he didn't write in Welsh. In fact, many people think that a lot of Thomas's power comes from his having heard and digested the sounds and rhythms of Welsh poetry as a youth, and then using these Welsh cynghanedd forms in English. For your further elucidation, another poet who used Welsh forms and sounds was that old Jesuit and inventor of sprung rhythm, Gerard Manley Hopkins)
Quick cut back to breakfast—Grahame and Elinor waving goodbye, I'm training/bussing it to Nant Gwrtheyrn, the Welsh Cultural Center, where I will begin my formal study of Welsh. Flashback to Stanza Poetry Festival in St. Andrews, Scotland, six months before, where another Welsh poet, Sian Melangell Dafydd, replies to my comment that I want to learn Welsh by saying "there's this magical place in Llyn…" Flash forward to Grahame Davies' brillant Everything Must Change, a novel that is a mash-up of the Welsh language protests of the 60s with the bio of Simone Weill. Flash further forward to my two weeks' immersion at Nant where my Welsh teacher Llinos Griffin is prodding the Cymraeg (Welsh language) out of me, saying "You, know, you really should meet Dewi Prysor…"
…And what was your first line of cynghanedd, Bob? you've probably been wondering. "Yn ysgwd yn fy esgyrn." Which, as you can see in "Language Matters," I learn how to pronounce as I drive our van (my full title: host/driver) through scenic Wales, and which the show's storyteller/line producer, Sian Taifi, also tries to instill in me by having me sing the words.
Besides Sian, Dewi and Grahame, the film also shows me learning with David Crystal, Europe's most famous linguist, and Ivor ap Glyn, poet and TV host/producer. The line translates, "I am shaking my bones," and as you can tell by my rendering, I really was.
The Stomp is a variant of the US Poety Slams, and I've done enough Slams to know that grabbing attention at the top is crucial. So I asked Dewi to teach me something that would bust through in case anyone at the Stomp should heckle my mispronunciation or lack of mutations, (Mutations! The bete noir of the Welsh language. Did you notice back a-ways how cynghanedd mutated to gynghanedd? Not a typo! In English and French we often elide one word into another by dropping the last letter: singing to singin', eg. In Welsh, you "mutate" the first letter of the incoming word, so that, for example, if you are going to Bangor, you would say im Mangor, the B of Bangor mutating to an M. Which of course makes driving in Wales even more fun.) So the title I came up with for my Stomp masterpiece is: Ffwciwch Oma! Dwin Ffwcin Dysgwr Ffwcin Gymraeg! which, lovingly translates to "Fuck Off! I'm a Fuckin' Welsh Fuckin' Learner!"
Not only would I be trying to turn my lack of Welsh into an advantage by begging for the sympathy vote, but I'd also be paying homage to the colorful language the Stomp is known for, especially as used so expressively by my mate Prysor and the training camp he established in Blaenau (The Queen), with occasional side trips to Llan (Y Pengwyrn) and Tanygrisiau (Y Tap) -- three major pubs in three parts of town. It's also worth noting that there are no indigenous curse words in Welsh; like Ffwcin, they're all borrowings from bully English.
Playing between orality and literacy is one of my favorite areas of poetic exploration. In fact, it was how I got involved with Endangered Languages in the first place. Of the 6000 languages in the world (I just love saying that!), only 700 are written down. The Welsh oral traditions, from the Celitc storytellers and Druid poemmakers all he way to today's Stomp, has been crucial to the language's survival. And it was through my investigations into the roots of hiphop poetry (hiphop IS poetry!), that I first came across the Language Crisis.
Having established myself as an appropriately iconoclastic bardd Cymreig in the poem's title, I felt it was important that the first line of the poem reverse field and show my respect for Welsh culture: "Rwy'n teimlo fel y ddraig goch yng nghanol y frwydr," imparts to me a mythic status, as I identify with the deepest image of Welsh mythology: "I feel like the Red Dragon entering into battle." You may have noticed that Wales is the only country with a Red Dragon on its flag: the symbol of Wales, sleeping underground next to the White Dragon (England), waiting only for the Apocalypse to disinter, and then emerge victorious in the ensuing battle royale. Wow.
I straighten out this lie in the next line: "Bardd Americanaidd tumffat yng nghanol y Stomp." "Actually, I'm just a stupid American poet trying to hold me own in the Stomp." Another secret of Slam success: flip the script! Set up a high image, and then undercut it with your own vulnerability.
The next lines reference my aforementioned debt to hiphop. Hiphop is part of my lineage, too—for a while there in the 80s my tag was the Plain White Rapper. To write this section took painstaking work at the Blaenau llyfrgell (library) with a correlating a rhyming dictionary and a Welsh-English dictionary—why oh why is there no rhyming Welsh-English Dictionary?
Eisiau ymddiheuriad? dim posibiliad...
Eisiau nghyfeiriad? Dyna ddiffiniad o wrthddywediad
A distrywio'r diffiniad!
My address? The definition of randomness
The contradiction of definition!
Definition Demolition!
This also gives a nod to the course I've developed at Columbia, "Exploding Text: Poetry Performance," using extra-literary means to add even more meanings to a poem via collaborations with film, dance, theater, et al.
After this jangly, dirty, provocative opening, I felt it was time for some "real" poetry, and being a "real" poet myself I knew just what lines to use: steal them, from a couple of great poets.
Hen Gychwr Afon Angau, // mae o'n gwbod
Beth ydwyt ti a minnau, frawd
Ond swp o esgyrn mewn gwisg o gnawd
Old River Boatman Death (Rwilliams Parry), he knows it
What art thou and I, brother
But in a uniform batch of bones of flesh
I was truly hoping someone in the audience would out me here (I should have had a plant!), so that my next barrage, taking personal blame not only for my plagerism but also for every crime ever committed during the horrific triumph of Capitalism known as US Imperialism would have more resonance:
Dygwyd y llinellau uchod ar eich cyfer oddi ar
R Williams Parry a TH Parry Williams yn enw
Imperialaeth Americanaidd....!
The lines above stolen on your behalf from R Williams Parry & TH Parry Williams in the name of American Imperialism!
This is followed by the lines from "Language Matters."
Cynghanedd, defended from the orality of the skalds, has been an integral part of Welsh has survived. Hopwood confesses at one point that she believes you can only truly write cynghanedd in the language that evolved in tandem with the poetic form: Cymraeg (Welsh). In essence, her whole lovely how-to is actually nothing but a piece of propaganda for the perpetuation of Welsh.
Cymru, the Welsh word for Wales, means Us, The People. "Wales" is a Saxon word, what the Saxons, the first conquering invaders of Wales, called the Celts there—"The others," "Those guys over there." Isn't it time for the world's nations to be known by the name that their people call themselves?
And now, the Grand Finale:
Baby baby yr unig ffordd o atal y gerdd hon – yw cusanu cusanu
Lle mae pob cusan yn dod yn air Cymraeg
Yn fy mhen a'i lond o freuddwydion
Baby baby the only way to stop this poem is to kiss kiss
Where each kiss becomes a word in Welsh
in My Big Head of Dreams
It's true that my relationship with Welsh is a lot like having a lover—you have to give everything and there's always more and thank goodness it's never enough. But my head of dreams – in English I wanted this to be my big head, big enough to hold all these languages and the idea that somehow or other that this piece of theater, sacrificing myself on the pyre that is the Stomp, would show my love and respect for Welsh, that I would go to his extreme in order to bring my own personal touch to a documentary that is all about the essence of humanity, which I believe language is, but which can also be talked about in theories and data where it's possible human contact may be lost.
Of the 12 poets who made it to the National Poetry Slam, Dewi and I were the first two names out of the hat. We went up against each other, splitting our supporters' votes, and giving the first round to some brilliant whippersnapper poet who had somehow made cynghanedd a mode of conversation—brilliant! As if Byron were crossed with Frank O'Hara, say.
Because we were knocked out in the first round, the crew was able to shoot a wrap-up, right then and there, full of loss that meant nothing, and surrounded by a language that had taught me important truths that would infuse the whole film. And my life.
After the wrap, the crew really wanted to hit the road. I felt bad—for the poet to leave a reading early is bad form, in any language. But it was already late, and our flight back to the States was at 8:00 the next morning, and we had to drive to Llundain, and the Welsh sky was already ablaze. And my big head was full of big dreams but no way sleeping.
The poem and translation below are published in my most recent collection,Sing This One Back to Me (2013, Coffee House).
Ffwciwch Oma! Dwin Ffwcin Dysgwr Ffwcin Gymraeg!
((Dyna'r teitl)
Rwy'n teimlo fel y ddraig goch yng nghanol y frwydr
Bardd Americanaidd tumffat yng nghanol y Stomp
Eisiau ymddiheuriad? dim posibiliad...
Eisiau nghyfeiriad? Dyna ddiffiniad o wrthddywediad
A distrywio'r diffiniad!
A dach chi'n gwybod pam?
Mi dduda'i thach chi pam!
Achos -- mod i'n Ffwcin Dysgwr Ffwcin Gymraeg,
Dyna ffwcin pam!!!!!
Hen Gychwr Afon Angau, // mae o'n gwbod
Beth ydwyt ti a minnau, frawd
Ond swp o esgyrn mewn gwisg o gnawd
Dygwyd y llinellau uchod ar eich cyfer oddi ar
R Williams Parry a TH Parry Williams yn enw
Imperialaeth Americanaidd....!
Foneddigion a Boneddigesau!
Fy llinell gyntaf o gynghanedd:
"Yn ysgwyd yn fy esgyrn"
Mae'n wir wyddoch chi –
Dwi YN "ysgwyd yn fy esgyrn"!
A dach chi'n gwbod pam?
Achos fy mod i'n Ffwcin Dysgwr Ffwcin Gymraeg,
Dyna ffwcin pam!!!
Baby baby yr unig ffordd o atal y gerdd hon – yw cusanu
Lle mae pob cusan yn dod yn air Cymraeg
Yn fy mhen a'i lond o freuddwydion
Fuck Off, I'm a Fuckin Welsh Fuckin Learner!
(That's the Title)
I feel like The Red Dragon In the Middle of Battle
stupid American poet in the middle of the Stomp
Want an apology? No possibility!
My address? The definition of randomness (The contradiction of definition)
Definition Demolition
And you know why?
I'll tell you why!
Cause I'm a Fuckin Welsh Fuckin Learner, that's why
Old River Boatman Death (Rwilliams Parry), he knows it
What art thou and I, brother
But in a uniform batch of bones of flesh
(TH Parry-Williams)
The lines above stolen on your behalf from R Williams Parry & TH arry Williams in the name of American Imperialism!
My first line of cynghanedd!
"Shaking in my bones"
It's true you know
I AM "shaking in my bones"!
And do you know why?
Because I'm a fuckin Welsh fuckin learner that's fuckinwhy!
Baby baby the only way to stop this poem is to kiss kiss
Where each kiss becomes a word in Welsh
In My Big Head of Dreams
Posted by Bob Holman on January 21, 2015 at 10:37 AM in "Tunes", Animals, Art, Collaborations, Current Affairs, Dance, England, Guest Bloggers, History, Movies, Music, Poems, Portraits of Poets, Television, Travel | Permalink | Comments (7)
I remember the first time I heard it. Jo Stafford sang it in Dark Passage, a late 1940s black-and-white movie in which you don't see the face of the hero, a prison escapee who had been framed for murder, until a risk-taking surgeon reconstructs his visage and Humphrey Bogart emerges from the bandages. Lauren Bacall believes in him, and Stafford sings "Too Marvelous for Words" on the Victrola. It becomes their song. "You must like swing," Bogart says. Yes, Bacall answers, "legitimate swing."
"Too Marvelous for Words" is a legitimately great ballad whether sung wistfully by Stafford or Helen Forrest or in a more jaunty manner by Frank Sinatra or Nat King Cole. It's a valentine to the hero or heroine of almost all songs, "you." The old familiar words of praise (like "glorious, glamorous, / and that old standby, amorous") can't convey how great you are, so I'll resort to a "love song from the birds."
The tune is lovely, easy to remember, delightful to sing. There is a shrewd key change in the phrase just preceding the bridge: "I mean they just aren't swell enough," where "they" refers to "words" and "swell enough" rhymes with "tell enough." The bridge is musically and lyrically not only the song's pivot but its marvelous climax: "You're much too much / and just too very very / to ever be / in Webster's Dictionary."
-David Lehman
Posted by The Best American Poetry on December 28, 2014 at 08:34 PM in Movies, Music | Permalink | Comments (1)
The composer Lewis Saul was prompted to write to us about the current movie release "A Late Quartet" and his reaction to the trailer. Lewis had earlier written about the Beethoven String Quartet in C Minor, the subject of the film and one of his most beloved pieces of music.
December 17, 2012:
I have not yet seen the entire film. Watching this trailer, I wonder how many of you -- trained musicians or not -- can tell that the actors are "faking" it? Does it bother you?
Obviously, good directors do everything they can to "shield" the audience from seeing this sort of thing -- but as a musician, and IN PARTICULAR -- as someone who considers this marvelous piece of music to be one of the most sublime compositions ever created by human spirit, I am hoping it won't ruin any part of the film for me!
With that in mind, I thought folks who have already seen the film might enjoy reading my post on this unbelievably potent and heavenly work. Or read my post, then go see the film.
I still cannot believe they made a movie about the Great Opus 131, and I can't wait to see it. Soap opera and everything."
Here's Lewis's original post from July 12, 2010: Op. 131:
It was forty years ago today ...
No, that can't be right -- it just sounded nice! But it was like 39 or so -- and it was Paris -- a Montparnasse cafe in fact and it was raining lightly (probably) and I knew a poet (definitely) who expressed his unreserved enthusiasm for Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Op. 125 -- particularly the final movement, the "Ode To Joy," where Beethoven unleashes all the forces at his disposal, including vocal soloists and chorus.
I tried to explain to this poet how Beethoven -- using only the simplest and most basic harmonic structure (think two-chord rock 'n roll) -- spins the earth around with powerful orchestration and unbelievablly brilliant variation in color and temperment ...
... but the best part was that this particular poet taught me the meaning of the German words which I had never really taken the trouble to learn.
Muß ein lieber vater wohnen means a lot more to me now thanks to this wonderful poet friend who turned me on to James Joyce, playfully informed me that Joan Miró was not a woman -- and had the good sense to bring Frank Zappa along as the soundtrack to our local hysteria ...
Much like his musical output as a whole, Beethoven's 17 string quartets can be divided into three convenient periods: Early, Middle and Late.
Early: Opus 18, Nos. 1-6, all written between 1798-1800;
Middle: Opus 59, Nos. 1-3 (1805/6); Op. 74, the "Harp" (1809), and Op. 95 (1810);
Late: Op. 127, 130, 131, 132, 133, 135 (1823-26)
I cannot recall when I first heard a Late Beethoven quartet. It must have been my senior year of high school at the Interlochen Arts Academy, where my composition teacher had pointed me towards the microfiche machine and a few spools of microfilm which contained the Complete Works of Beethoven! How I used to pour over those beautiful scores, surfing the microfilm the way we do the net today -- carefully studying these (mostly) unfamiliar scores.
After thoroughly absorbing the Late Quartets, I began to feel a particular fondness and appreciation of Op. 131 -- not that the others are not equally brilliant and exciting, world-shaking music -- but 131 became a focal point for my idea about what it means to write for these four stringed instruments …
I have 15 or 20 different recordings of the string quartets. The Amadeus Quartet recordings from the 1960's -- recently reissued on CD -- are my favorites, by far!
I still have the original 10-LP DGG set and listen to it often, marveling at how much better analog vinyl sounds than squeezy-thin dynamic range and contrast CDs. I've never heard better performances -- particular the Late Quartets.
Unlike most quartets with a famous name, who routinely replace departing players ("Juilliard," "Tokyo," "Turtle Island"), The Amadeus Quartet had always agreed that " … if any member could no longer play, for whatever reason, the Quartet would not continue" -- and when Peter Schidlof, the violist, died in 1987, The Amadeus Quartet disbanded.
I had the good fortune to hear the Tokyo Quartet play this here in Tucson in April of 2008. My review of that performance is here.
Op. 133 ("Grosse Fuge") was originally the last movement of Op. 130. Shockingly, Beethoven listened to reason and his publisher and agreed to replace the mammoth movement with a light dance movement (one of the very last things he ever wrote!), which now stands as the Finale to Op. 130.
Op. 133 was published separately -- although more and more quartets today are playing this as the Finale of Op. 130, a strange historic reconstruction …
What makes these late quartets so special?
First of all, if you are familiar with the Ninth (Op. 125) and/or the Missa Solemnis (Op. 123) or the Diabelli Variations (Op. 120), you already know that his style and perhaps even his fundamental musical language had changed dramatically from his output of the previous decade or so.
But the string quartet being the intimate, ultimate form for any composer (true today, methinx), Beethoven seems to have deliberately set out to not only "change" music -- but to revolutionize it!
Briefly, the other Late Quartets:
Op. 127 (Eb Major). The "Eroica" (or "heroic") key! The quartet begins with massed tonics (seven or eight notes played by four) going to dominant seventh chords in -- respectively -- second and third inversions -- all leading to a quick transition to a delightful, slippery Allegro trip in ¾ time, which ends simply. The second movement is an astonishing series of variations on a simple, rising theme in Ab Major. The notes become blacker and blacker (faster rhythms) as the movement progresses, modulating to E Major a few times, before a beautiful ending; simplicity itself. The third movement ("Scherzando vivace") is the usual jocular Beethoven, but in this Late period, the joke is a bit bizarre and otherworldly -- particularly in the Trio, which sweeps by like a witch on a broomstick. The Finale is a regular rondo-type 4th movement -- but the theme has a very bizarre ("Late") element to it -- the Ab changing to an A-natural after two repetitions:
Op. 130 (Bb Major). Not only did Beethoven search out new sounds and explore novel harmonic territory, but he obviously felt constrained by the typical four-movement form (Op. 127, for example). Here he burst forth with six separate movements!
I. Adagio - Allegro. A wonderful example of beginning with a fairly typical sonata-form type of exposition and quickly changing key and mood (there are some major seventh chords in this section which are astonishingly beautiful for 1826 or anytime!)
II. Presto. A thrilling fun ride. Beethoven screws with your head as he jumps from duple to triple meter;
III. Andante. Gradually increases in intensity until it fairly busts apart at the end!
IV. Alla danza tedesca. A light joyful dance -- four voices in perfect balance;
V. Cavatina -- Adagio. This short movement is rightfully proclaimed a mini-masterpiece. The middle section (Beklemmt ["anguished"]) is positively 20th-century sounding!
VI. Finale. A bouncy happy replacement for what used to be a massive double-fugue (see below).
Op. 132 (A Minor). Beethoven makes do with only five movements in this soul-shaking masterpiece. That he opens with a low G# (the "leading tone" to A, the tonic) on the cello was in itself a revolutionary thing to do -- but Beethoven pushes the form to its limits in these quartets. Here -- as in 130 and many other late, and even early and middle works -- he moves back and forth between slow and fast. A Minor is a "dark" key -- and he ends the movement with the first violin sawing back and forth on the same E on two different strings. The second movement (A Major, ¾) also begins on a G#! The trio uses the first violin's A string to make a bagpipes-type sound. Then follows the famous "Lydian" hymn of thanksgiving, a march and a dazzling ¾ Allegro appasionato to close things out.
Op. 133 (Bb Major). This massive double-fugue which must be heard to be believed. There is a massive amount of ink, virtual and real, spilled over this masterpiece. One of my favorites is here.
Op. 135 (F Major). Famously, Beethoven "prefaced" the music with actual musical notation (which does not appear in the actual work itself) from a goofy canon he had written several months earlier. (Beethoven wrote many such canons. Some are very funny.)
Thus, we are given an unusual visual clue to what was on Beethoven's mind! The final movement literally explodes with these questions. Must it be? Yep? Etc.
OPUS 131 in C# Minor (39:17)
1. Adagio, ma non troppo e molto espressivo -- attacca: (6:58)
2. Allegro molto vivace -- attacca: (3:05)
3. Allegro moderato -- attacca: (0:56)
4. Andante, ma non troppo e molto cantabile -- Andante moderato e lusinghiero -- Adagio -- Allegretto -- Adagio, ma non troppo e semplice -- Allegretto (14:17)
5. Presto -- Molto poco adagio -- attacca: (5:27)
6. Adagio quasi un poco andante -- attacca: (2:04)
7. Allegro (6:30)
No one had ever written a string quartet in seven movements before!
The word "attacca" means that the players proceed directly to the next movement without pause. Therefore, a listener with no program might conclude that the piece is in two very long movements! (The only pause occurs after the fourth movement).
In fact, the quartet is really in five moments -- Nos. 3 and 6 are really just short introductions to Nos. 4 and 7, respectively.
1. Adagio, ma non troppo e molto espressivo -- attacca: (6:58)
A fugue of unsurpassed beauty, intensity, majesty -- and of course, inventiveness! The first violin (notation above) opens with the dominant note (G#) which lands on the leading tone (B#), followed by the tonic (C#).
The fourth note (the first beat of the second full bar) dips down to the submediant (A) and is held for three beats -- almost like a divine sigh -- before it continues on its way towards the second entry in the second violin, played a fifth lower. The texture thickens magnificently as the viola enters back in the tonic and the cello follows, again a fifth lower. With much typical fugal imitation, the music continues along, moved steadily by the quarter-note pulse, surging towards something.
Using an enharmonic (D#/Eb), he modulates to six flats; nine bars later to G# Minor (eighth-notes are introduced), and then to A Major, where we then encounter the First and Second violins in a delicious duet:
Soon, the pulse picks up again (more eighth-notes); the theme is heard in various disguises; and then the sun seems to set:
This gorgeous, peaceful ending is actually no ending at all!
Beethoven immediately repeats the octave skip, but a half-step higher, as he moves to D Major for the
2. Allegro molto vivace -- attacca: (3:05)
second movement -- a delightful romp in 6/8. Beethoven at first holds back a bit with a fermata and ritard, but eventually the quartet shouts out a slippery bit of off-beat sforzandi in unison much of the time -- until the music simply dies away …
3. Allegro moderato -- attacca: (0:56)
This quick transitional movement features a wonderful run in the first violin:
and ends on a nice loud dominant chord.
4. Andante, ma non troppo e molto cantabile -- Andante moderato e lusinghiero -- Adagio -- Allegretto -- Adagio, ma non troppo e semplice -- Allegretto (14:17)
This massive theme and variations begins with a theme which speaks to simplicity itself. There is barely anything to it.
A long passionate section follows and transforms itself with dotted rhythms and a sweeping lick (a 16th and two 32nds) until concluding with a light flurry of 32nd notes leading right into a 4/4 march variation.
Continue reading "On Beethoven's String Quartet in C# Minor, Op. 131 and seeing the trailer for the film "A Late Quartet" by Lewis Saul" »
Posted by The Best American Poetry on December 18, 2014 at 01:26 PM in Lewis Saul, Music | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Because. . .she's magnificent. . .the tremble in her throat. . .the fusion of melancholy and joy . . .
Listen to her deliver Cole Porter's "Looking At You" or the Gershwin brothers' "My One and Only" or Rodgers & Hart's "Manhattan" or Harold Arlen's "Let's Fall in Love."
Because I told Amy Gerstler that LW is my favorite female vocalist and AG (who had thought Helen Forrest was my fave) instantly sent me three lovely Lee Wiley images.
And because I do believe that she was the first to record an entire album devoted to one songwriter or one songwriting team.
Posted by The Best American Poetry on December 02, 2014 at 11:39 AM in Music | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)
What do you think of first? "Over the Rainbow," "As Time Goes By," "Singin' in the Rain"? Win, place, and show on the AFI's "Top Movie Songs of All Time" list. My pick, Judy Garland's devastating "The Man That Got Away," from A Star is Born, comes in at #11. It was another Garland song, "Get Happy," the triumphant final number in Summer Stock, that launched what became a feature in my film class this semester: "Movie Song of the Day." This innovation was inspired by some extremely music-savvy students in the class—astonishingly well versed in everything from Alternative Country to Tin Pan Alley, nearly impossible to stump, able to hum obscure covers of obscurer originals. Lately, owing to their tutelage, I find myself with a rather eclectic mix on the iPod.... It is one wild ride to work in the morning. After Garland, I brought in everything from Fred Astaire's "Puttin' on the Ritz" (Blue Skies) to The Rolling Stones' "Monkey Man," one of the many songs featured in that magnificent montage toward the end of Goodfellas. One morning I played The Doors' "Peace Frog," featured in, of all movies, The Waterboy—a fact one member of the class announced even before Morrison had time to warm up. My students also began to bring in their favorites: Bobby Bare's cover of Harry Nilsson's "Everybody's Talkin'" (Midnight Cowboy), Keith Carradine's "I'm Easy" (Nashville), Citizen Cope's "Bullet and a Target" (Alpha Dog).
Posted by Elizabeth Samet on November 22, 2014 at 09:05 AM in Elizabeth Samet, Guest Bloggers, Movies, Music | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
At his recent New York solo recital debut at The Frick Collection, English pianist Charles Owen featured the compositions of past masters—J.S. Bach, Mendelssohn, and Debussy—as well as two brief pieces by the composer Nico Muhly, who was in attendance. Owen gave Muhly's scores a skillful and energetic reading, and Muhly seemed genuinely pleased by the performance.
Muhly, now 33, has been in the public eye for quite some time. Music critic Alex Ross first wrote about him in the New Yorker ten years ago, when Muhly was a 22-year-old Juilliard student. Rebecca Mead profiled him in the pages of the magazine in 2008, and Ross has since covered the premieres of Muhly's two operas, Two Boys—which received its U.S. premiere at the Metropolitan Opera a year ago—and Dark Sisters. Andrew Solomon included Muhly in Far from the Tree, inthe chapter on prodigies.
In the following interview, conducted by email, Muhly shares his thoughts on setting verse to music, among other topics.
JS: I enjoyed Charles Owen's recent performance of your compositions—my only quibble is that he ought to have played more of your music. I wondered whether the pairing of pieces he played in the first and second halves of the recital was meant to suggest ideas about influence: Mendelssohn's Variations sérieuses are clearly in dialogue with Bach, and your Short Stuff and A Hudson Cycle seem to echo Debussy's Preludes, no?
NM: Concert programming is really the art of imagined correspondences, isn't it? I think that you hear a lot of Debussy in A Hudson Cycle, with those tight French chords, but really, you could well have played Short Stuff next to the Bach and it would have had its own resonances with Bach's clear economy. I'm touched that you'd think to ask for more contemporary music!
JS: Another influence I heard in A Hudson Cyclewas Philip Glass.
NM: Glass is always there for me. That piece takes a fundamental building block of his music—the two-against-three rhythm—and subjects it to hiccoughs and bumps. It's sort of like taking the first cycle of Mad Rush, slowing it down, putting it all in the same register, and then going through and erasing beats at random. The idea is that there is an implied regularity that actually never happens.
JS: You've composed a lot of vocal music. What qualities in a text inspire you to set it to music?
NM: I have found that the best text to set is the King James Bible. The trick becomes about finding language that is simple and that can unfold over the length that music requires without losing its meaning. This is harder than it seems; one of the tricks of great poetry is that each line, when read silently, retains its meaning from beginning to end. Set to music, it becomes more complicated, and by the time you've got to the end of the line, the beginning is forgotten. So I've found that short, simple, declamatory statements work best.
JS: You've also set poetry by Walt Whitman, C.P. Cavafy, George Herbert, Christopher Smart, and Lemony Snicket(!!). What is it about these poets' works that drew you in?
NM: I suppose it's the simplicity of line that draws me to any text. I've been really, really into Daniel Mendelsohn's Cavafy translations these days, with a mind to set more of them next year. There is such efficiency to them. For me, with poetry, you look at it and it sort of "sets itself," in a way, or it doesn't. I'm setting text by the illustrator and author Maira Kalman right now, and her words set beautifully to music because they mirror, in a sense, her speech.
JS: Your treatment of text in your vocal music is so varied, and it seems that the meaning or mood of the text doesn't necessarily determine the tone and color—or the emotional thrust—of the music. Would you agree with this? Can you shed some light on how text influences or drives your decision-making when composing?
NM: That's a complicated question and I think that perhaps looking under the hood isn't the most useful in this instance. The music—the emotional thrust, as you say—is derived from the text, of course, but sometimes setting is literally about making the material different from the text so that the text itself shines. Word painting works for some things, but other things need to be surrounded by dark felt to make the diamonds shine, if you know what I mean. I am deeply mistrustful, actually, of vocal music where the accompaniment doesn't work in counterpoint to the text, but rather in lockstep, because it feels redundant, or like having those ghastly museum audio-guides following you around while you shop for vegetables.
JS: Do you read contemporary poetry? Are there any other modern or contemporary poets whose writing you especially admire?
NM: I read very little contemporary poetry, which is actually a source of great shame. I have, however, an almost obsessive love for Ashbery. As I said, I'm deep into those Mendelsohn–Cavafy things, which feel blisteringly contemporary. I get really intimidated and sometimes binge-read all the poetry from the New Yorker. You should assign me some reading lists.
[Readers, what poetry would you assign Nico Muhly? Please place your recommendations in the comments section after this post.]
JS: You recently tweeted that you were reading pioneer women's diaries while listening to "Take Him, Earth, for Cherishing" by Herbert Howells. Interesting mix! Is this research for a composition?
NM: Isn't that Howells lovely! [Take Him, Earth, for Cherishing is also known as the Motet on the Death of President Kennedy and is a setting of lines from Helen Waddell's translation of Prudentius's Hymnus circa exseqieas defuncti (The Burial of the Dead), which can be found in her Mediaeval Latin Lyrics.]
JS: Can you recommend any indispensible books on music?
NM: I very rarely read books about music; I am deeply suspicious, actually, of the whole thing. With the exception of Alex Ross's two books [Listen to This and The Rest Is Noise], I'm not sure I've read anything about music that hasn't made me want to bash my head into my desk.
JS: What else have you been reading lately?
NM: Right now I am reading those Knausgaard books—sort of on a dare with a friend—which feels severe and virtuous.
JS: In Far from the Tree, Andrew Solomon quotes you as saying that when you were growing up, your musical interests were "early, early, modern, modern" with not much in between. Please explain.
NM: My main resistance to Romantic music (and that's really the hole—it's from kind of late Beethoven through early Stravinsky) is about the forced emotional synchronicity. It's like the composer is saying THIS is when I want you to feel this specific thing—these moments of singularity. You don't find that in Bach, and you certainly don't find it in Byrd and you don't find it in Glass or Reich. For me, as a teenager, the romantic project seemed like one of forcing emotions out of structure: you build this huge mountain with these classical proportions and then the music is a kind of relentless tour guide.
JS: Have your tastes broadened in recent years?
NM: I've softened in my old age, of course!
JS: Can you share any early music gems that our readers might like to track down? Who are your favorite contemporary interpreters of early vocal music?
NM: For me, there is always great joy to be derived from listening to the works of William Byrd; I don't go a day or two without at least a motet snuck in, sometimes with the score. There is enormous virtue in taking the time to track down Mundy, Tye, Sheppard… there are Tallis Scholars recordings of all of these, which are great, but then you'll find other gems from Westminster Abbey, or New College Choir, Oxford. The English are in a near-constant state of rediscovering these works and recording them, and now you can just get them on iTunes. When I was younger, it was such an ordeal to find recordings of this stuff; I literally wrote to choir directors in England and sent cash in the mail.
JS: Would you care to comment on the Klinghoffer opera brouhaha?
NM: Ugh, I mean, I'm not sure I can say anything that hasn't already been said, but it does distress me how angry the protestors were, all based on a fundamental reading comprehension failure—and I use reading in the more broad sense. Antisemitism is a real and tangible problem in a lot of places, but this opera is not one of them. The humanity of both Leon and Marilyn Klinghoffer in the opera is so resonant and clear that it seems absurd to claim that the piece has any other agenda than to honor LK's memory through a ritualistic series of reflections. Then when you get the likes of Richard Taruskin saying that there's a "halo" around the music that the terrorists sing, it's a reading comprehension failure of a much more serious nature, because it gives license to these poor people to think that they have something even resembling a legitimate argument derived from the text. The other thing that was kind of amazing, though, was the tone of the online arguments. It was always this specific facetious tone with bizarre syntax: "Oh, I guess next there will be a so-called 'opera' at the Metropolitan Center that 'gives voice' to the killers of MLK??!?!?!" and you think, you know, that's not a bad idea!
JS: You're involved in Black Mountain Songs, an evening-length multimedia collaboration of eight composers, a filmmaker, and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, upcoming at BAM (Nov. 20–23), and you have a new piece, Our Present Charter, being premiered next month as part of the Temple Winter Festival at the Temple Church in London.
Last fall, you achieved what one Web site called a "mind-blowing quinfecta" of premieres: Two Boys at the Metropolitan Opera, a score for Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie on Broadway, your collaboration with choreographer Benjamin Millepied, Neverwhere, at the New York City Ballet, a score for the feature film Kill Your Darlings [about the meeting of the Beats in and around Columbia University in 1944 and the murder investigation that embroiled Allen Ginsberg, Lucien Carr, Jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs], and an expanded version of your Bright Music with Canons, performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Westminster Symphonic Choir.
Seriously, your productivity is astonishing. What's your work routine—can you describe a typical workday? And do you possess any Ancient Secrets of Time Management that you'd be willing to share?
NM: Ha, this is a good question because I actually feel very inefficient and frenzied. I travel a lot, too, so that hampers any dedicated and prolonged routine. However, I do have a series of rituals. My boyfriend has a nine to five, so when I'm home, I wait for him to leave the house, and then I basically sit at our table with a huge pile of manuscript and write until my hand hurts, and then move to the computer, and then back and forth until nightfall. During this time there is a lot of emailing that happens in concentrated bursts designed to shock and awe the recipients. When I travel, it's much harder. I wish I had some brilliant secret but if you figure it out, call me on my landline.
JS: What other new works or upcoming premieres are you most excited about—and where and when will they be performed or available as recordings?
NM: There are so many things I don't even know where to begin. There is a viola concerto in February in Madrid. There is a piece for choir and twelve (!) guitars in Texas in March. There is a big new orchestra piece for the Philadelphia Orchestra, and probably eight other things I'm forgetting about because I'm in denial. Right now I have to finish this viola concerto in the next three days or the entire structure of my life will collapse. I also have to get these boots re-soled.
JS: Are you working on any film scores?
NM: I am totally not.
For more on Muhly, see his excellent Web site. Georgia Tucker's review of Charles Owen's recital is here. Concerts at The Frick Collection are recorded by WQXR (105.9 FM) for future broadcast and streaming on wqxr.org.
Jim Stubenrauch is writer and editor. He teaches narrative writing to nursing students and health care professionals at the Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing.
Posted by The Best American Poetry on November 21, 2014 at 11:00 AM in Guest Bloggers, Interviews, Music | Permalink | Comments (4)
Early morning drive near where I live up Mount Greylock, tallest mountain in Massachusetts, on a windy astounding Civilian Conservation Core road – thank you Mister Roosevelt – thinking how moments come and go and words can't capture each one. On the way up the mountain, the early light lit up the yellow-leaved autumn trees, then driving down, the unlit trees were a totally different sight. Changing light is the least of it! Words – you ingrates. Words – you measly things - put on your gloves and let's have a fair fight.
The confluence of all and each thing all at once each moment – light, sound, people, history, fact, weather - the list has no end – it's barely possible to say anything thoroughly true.
Thank god for sound – it can do better than words. Thank you, Otis Redding, you've been dead so long, but not your sound.
I keep singing them sad, sad songs, y'all
While sitting outside in my backyard a couple of months ago, I heard a sad song - more opera than song – a dramatic story, the arias sung by two birds.
First I heard scratching, inside the end of the covered gutter that runs along the roof of my house.
A grown bird, I didn't register what kind, flew into the end of the gutter, disappeared inside. More scratching -- had baby birds hatched in an ill-positioned nest? The grown bird began to fly in and out of the gutter's end. In and out, in and out. Sounds of distress began, then intensified.
A second grown bird arrived and landed on the green roof of the outbuilding. The two birds began singing, if you can call it that, to each other. One bird on the peak of the green roof and the other on top of the gutter alternated making screeching sounds to one another. Their duet turned hysterical. This went on for seemed like a long time. Then the scratching inside the gutter quieted down and stopped.
Finally both birds flew off. Silence. A bit of time elapsed. Soon one of them returned, flew close by the gutter, circled and landed on it. All quiet now. The bird flew away.
Fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa
fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa.
Posted by Karen Chase on November 17, 2014 at 11:58 PM in Animals, Guest Bloggers, Music, Religion, Science | Permalink | Comments (0)
Hi Everyone, thanks for tuning in and thanks Stacey for having me on board. For the next few days I'll be writing in one way or another about words/sounds and history/imagination.
I'll start with my personal story about the messiness between fact and fiction. As a tiny girl, my mother took me on the train from the suburbs of New York into the city where I took painting lessons in the basement of the Metropolitan Museum. I loved to paint pictures in my head.
When I was ten years old, polio struck. I was shocked to be immobilized, first by the deadening effect of polio and later by an enormous body cast. As my body was losing motion, my mind was painting. I remember lying inert in my hospital bed, focused on the dots of the hospital ceiling tiles. I pretended they were all kinds of animals on the move - bears, camels, foxes on parade.
With the help of my pal, my imagination, I joked around on the hospital ward, making life not only bearable but fun. Looking monster-like in my full-length body cast, I wrote a letter to the Barbizon School of Modeling, asking whether I could become a model. Here's their dead-serious response:
Although my illness made for a rich mental life, no amount of pretending could alleviate my actual physical confinement. Had I focused on that rather than letting my mind wander free, I can't imagine how miserable I would have been. In fact, during those strenuously hard years, I felt very alive. Better a life without such obstacles, but for me, immobility shaped my vision.
After polio, I valued my mind's flexibility like gold. Eventually, the poetry and prose I wrote relied on imagination.
Now, after many decades, I've written my true story, a memoir of all things, in which not all is true. I've made some things up, like an earthquake that hit our town. Even with clues that the incident is metaphorical, my sister called and said, "I didn't know there was an earthquake in Larchmont!"
There's a new turn on the fact/fiction front for me. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a major character in Polio Boulevard, has emerged in a new project focused solely on him. In these pages, I am driven to have every word factually correct. A first! Nothing made up as far as that's possible -- a new universe.
Three years after FDR was stricken with polio at 39, he bought a houseboat with a friend and named it the Larooco. This was after he was assistant secretary of the Navy but before he was Governor of New York and long before he was President of the United States.
From 1924-26, he spent a few months each winter in the Florida Keys on the boat. It was the most withdrawn-from- the-world period of his life. While there, Roosevelt kept a nautical log, writing longhand each day about fish caught, weather, the boat's route, engine trouble, meals, and guests.
Here's how the Larooco Log begins:
Saturday, February 2, 1924
At Jacksonville, Florida, FDR went on board and put Larooco in commission. Sailing-master Robert S. Morris and Mrs. Morris spent the day getting provisions, and the trunks, etc. were duly unpacked, fishing gear stowed and Library of World's Worst Literature placed on shelves.
And on he goes. Ship ahoy!
Posted by Karen Chase on November 16, 2014 at 11:58 PM in Art, Book Recommendations, Feature, Guest Bloggers, History, Music, Travel | Permalink | Comments (0)
I left it
on when I
left the house
for the pleasure
of coming back
ten hours later
to the greatness
of Teddy Wilson
"After You've Gone"
on the piano
in the corner
of the bedroom
as I enter
in the dark
from New and Selected Poems by David Lehman
by T.P.Winch
Ringfinger was nervous
Pinky terrified
when they learned
that Hand might succumb
to the rule of Thumb.
A creative communications, branding, and resources consultancy founded by Victoria C. Rowan


text:
"The Rice Granary of the Philippines" Province of Nueva Ecija by kylian74
Province of Nueva Ecija Travel Guide: 13 reviews and 48 photos
Philippines is one of Asia's rice producer. Main crop is rice and it's staple food....these is mostly produced in Nueva Ecija, situated in the northern part of Philippines. Nueva Ecija's rice fields has new facilities for irrigation, planting and harvesting rice to 3 times a year. Produced rice can be always sold from field owners immediately to NFA ( National Food Autority ) in Nueva Ecija itself, The NFA distributed the rice for the country although it happened that the Philippines sometimes import rice from other asian country because the produced rice is yet not enough to feed all Filipinos, means of over populated.
The photo is the rice field of my parents for a few years now, I took these after the harvest in January.
- Pros:everywhere rice fields!
- Cons:It happened to be not always a good harvest, thus bad earnings too.
- In a nutshell:known to be " the Rice Granary of the Philippines"
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subset: commoncrawl


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LaPierre: Obama casts NRA as 'absolutists'
Wayne LaPierre of the National Rife Association delivered a speech that was billed as a response to President Obama's inaugural address. LaPierre accused the president of using the word "absolutist" to cast law-abiding gun owners as extremists. AP


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Former omnivore, now vegetarian restaurant in the countryside at the border of the Alps with quite a few vegan dishes on the menu that are labeled as such. The owner is vegan. Open Mon 5:00pm-11:00pm, Tue-Sat 5:00pm-12:00am, Fri-Sun 12:00am-1:00am, Sun 4:00pm-12:00am.
Category: Vegan-friendly, Lacto, Ovo, International, Fusion
Reviews (6)First Review by VeganRandonneur
Delicious! - Edit
We were there in June after hiking, and the owner proposed us a "Gulasch" which was not on the Menu. Absolutely delicious!
cosy & yummy - Edit
A typical bavarian pub in a typical bavarian area - BUT with a great range of delicious vegan and vegetarian dishes. Quick and friendly service. Nice crowd. We will come back! Reservation recommended.
yummy - Edit
A really great vegetarian bavarian "Wirtshaus" with big burgers, burritos and schnitzel.
I really enjoy it there.
very good - Edit
In this upper Bavaria area it is not normal .... Find a vegetarian Restaurant
.... Not expensive - Good Service - very good fresh home made food- coming soon again
AMAZING ! - Edit
This is a "typical" Bavarian place EXCEPT without the murder! We ended up going 2 of our 3 nights in the area because it was exactly that delicious and enjoyable. Easily half the menu is vegan or vegan possible (vegan moglich) and super super great. We had the potatoes Annelise (great flavors, cooked the perfect amount: beans were crispy and potatoes were soft), the bruschetta, the golden salad with tofu (HUGE), and each night we had the vegan apple cake, maybe the best apple cake I've ever had anywhere. A friend got the burger and it was gigantic and flavorful, but maybe a little too many raw onions for joyful digestion. Also vegan beer, delicious shorle, and really helpful staff.
Pros: vegetarian Bavarian? Oh YEAH!, wide selection, outstanding cake
Gem in the Bavarian countryside - Edit
This is a typical Bavarian rustic restaurant with wooden benches and tables outside as well as inside. Considering the non-vegetarian surroundings it is still hard to believe for me that the Hirschbachstueberl serves vegetarian food only.
Because in Bavaria only very few vegetarian dishes exist at all (such as 'Obazda' which is not vegan) the menu provides an untypical vegetarian selection from all over the place (Mexican, Indian, Italian, German, ...). Not overwhelmingly imaginative but rather eclectic cuisine. Nevertheless tasty food and good portions. Vegan options are clearly labeled and make up about 1/3 of the menu. Smoking only allowed outside. Moderate prices.
I had a "Koh gla Lac" salad (very good), "Bruschetta" (ok, but I prefer more olive oil), and fried "China" rice with vegetables (very good). BTW, do not rely on that the staff speaks English (I haven't checked that).
Bottom line: If only I lived closer to that place I would eat there every day.
Pros: good portions, friendly staff
Cons: nearby street a little noisy
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Journey through Lent with the best devotional writing of pastor and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Click to sign up.
It was the custom of the Roman governors to erect their tribunals in open places, as the market-place, the circus, or even the highway. Pilate caused his seat of judgment to be set down in a place called "the Pavement" (John 19:13) i.e., a place paved with a mosaic of coloured stones. It was probably a place thus prepared in front of the "judgment hall." (See GABBATHA.)
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Product Description
Lower Control Arm Assembly for all 1965-1966 Mustangs.
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Difficulty: Moderate
Product ReviewsWrite a review
Product Questions
is there a left and right control arm or are they the same? thanks
what is OE style?
Are these balljoints sealed and not to be greased or are you supposed to grease them another way? There is no zerk provision.
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We have a whole bunch of variables that are used in GetValue and SetValue calls
in both old and new plugin APIs some of them correspond to each other but have
different values in the two worlds. I am filing this bug to trigger a discussion
on whether it could have a negative impact and if it is not too late to fix if
In the old API we have the following (npapi.h):
typedef enum {
NPPVpluginNameString = 1, //1
NPPVpluginDescriptionString, //2
NPPVpluginWindowBool, //3
NPPVpluginTransparentBool, //4
NPPVjavaClass, //5
NPPVpluginWindowSize, //5
NPPVpluginTimerInterval //6
} NPPVariable;
typedef enum {
NPNVxDisplay = 1, //1
NPNVxtAppContext, //2
NPNVnetscapeWindow, //3
NPNVasdEnabledBool, //5
NPNVisOfflineBool //6
} NPNVariable;
In the new API we have (nsplugindefs.h):
enum nsPluginVariable {
nsPluginVariable_NameString = 1,
nsPluginVariable_DescriptionString = 2
enum nsPluginManagerVariable {
nsPluginManagerVariable_XDisplay = 1,
nsPluginManagerVariable_XtAppContext = 2
enum nsPluginInstancePeerVariable {
nsPluginInstancePeerVariable_NetscapeWindow = 3
// nsPluginInstancePeerVariable_JavaClass = 5,
// nsPluginInstancePeerVariable_TimerInterval = 7
enum nsPluginInstanceVariable {
nsPluginInstanceVariable_WindowlessBool = 3,
nsPluginInstanceVariable_TransparentBool = 4,
nsPluginInstanceVariable_DoCacheBool = 5,
nsPluginInstanceVariable_CallSetWindowAfterDestroyBool = 6
Not only have some of them not matching values but to my understanding are
placed under wrong type. I think more correct arrangement in the new API would
// the following two types are corresponding NPPVariable
enum nsPluginVariable {
nsPluginVariable_NameString = 1,
nsPluginVariable_DescriptionString = 2
+// nsPluginVariable_JavaClass = 5,
+// nsPluginVariable_TimerInterval = 7 not sure, maybe
enum nsPluginInstanceVariable {
nsPluginInstanceVariable_WindowlessBool = 3,
nsPluginInstanceVariable_TransparentBool = 4,
- nsPluginInstanceVariable_DoCacheBool = 5,
- nsPluginInstanceVariable_CallSetWindowAfterDestroyBool = 6
+ nsPluginInstanceVariable_PluginWindowSize = 6,
+ nsPluginInstanceVariable_DoCacheBool = 8,
+ nsPluginInstanceVariable_CallSetWindowAfterDestroyBool = 9
// the following two types are corresponding NPNVariable
enum nsPluginManagerVariable {
nsPluginManagerVariable_XDisplay = 1,
nsPluginManagerVariable_XtAppContext = 2
nsPluginManagerVariable_JSBool = 4,
nsPluginManagerVariable_asdBool = 5,
nsPluginManagerVariable_OfflineBool = 6
enum nsPluginInstancePeerVariable {
nsPluginInstancePeerVariable_NetscapeWindow = 3
-// nsPluginInstancePeerVariable_JavaClass = 5,
-// nsPluginInstancePeerVariable_TimerInterval = 7
My biggest concern if we are going to fix it is DoCache and
Changing the value of nsPluginInstanceVariable_DoCacheBool or
nsPluginInstanceVariable_CallSetWindowAfterDestroyBool will definitely break
the Beatnik Player xpcom plugin. It's explicitly setting the value for those 2
when my nsIPluginInstance::GetValue() method is called.
Did we already have those two in NS6 RTM? I just cannot immediately recall...
Yes - these were added Sept 14 2000:
av: Sean's got it; the changes were the result of a meeting amongst Netscape and
plugin vendors, to discuss changes in the plugin lifecycle. One problem that I
know of is that the Sun Java Plug-In had problems with the existing lifecycle,
so we lobbied to change it. We also lobbied to have a flag that a plug-in could
set, asking whether to cache a plugin instance; the Java Plug-In wanted control
over applet caching, not having the browser control it.
Does that ring a bell? If not, lemme know, and I'll happily send you the
meeting notes written by Eric Krock.
No, no, George, I remember all this. It just came up recently that there is no
uniformity and variable values overlap partially, so some binaries may confuse
this DoCache thing with GetJavaClass which may probably not be that important
since new plugins shouldn't worry about java class anyway. Also I noticed that
some variables belong in wrong places. Which is annoying but not a big issue.
Hm...this explain a lot. If Java is reporting it's cache variable incorrectly
then that explain why may patch to crashing in ~nsPluginInstanceOwner
on release works for 4.x plugins and Real Player XPCOM but not Java. I
will take a closer loook.
peter? any update on this? Any thing I can do to help investigate this?
I don't know what can be done about this now. I suggest staying clear of these
messed up variables.
leaving in future, we will try to resolve this during general plug-in clean-up
I cleaned up npapi.h vs. nsplugindefs.h discrepancies a while ago, basically by eliminating the latter.


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Keep up to speed with the publishing world.
Have a browse of our news articles about the latest developments in the book publishing industry, handy hints on publishing your own book and updates from the CompletelyNovel team.
published on 2015-03-18
Picture yourself in Miami, Jamaica, or even Brazil, surrounded by thousands of books, influential people in the publishing industry, international writers and bibliophiles. A book-lover's dream holiday and an opportunity to market your own book, all rolled into one. What's not to love? Here are 20 unmissable book events around the world in 2015. Pack those books in your bag and get your geek on.
published on 2015-03-18
To celebrate World Poetry day on Saturday, we've invited renowned performance poet, Dean Atta, to share the story behind his Polari First Book Prize 2014 shortlisted book. Print books love poetry – they are ideal companions to slams and performance events. We've seen a real rise in the number of awesome poetry books being created and published on CompletelyNovel, and we're thrilled to host Dean's story below. May it inspire you to turn your spoken word a beautiful book, too.
published on 2015-03-17
Speaking about your book on the radio or on a podcast can be an excellent way to introduce a new audience to your writing. If you're feeling a little nervous about that microphone – and don't worry, even seasoned speaking pros get nervous – PR expert Ben Cameron has some great advice on the preparation you can do beforehand.
published on 2015-03-04
Since YouTube sensation Zoella became the UK's fastest selling author, Vlogging has become the book marketing technique everyone seems to be talking about. When done properly, a 'Vlog' (or Video Log) can be a great tool for reaching readers and building a following. To find out more, we asked YA author and YouTuber Lindsay Mead for her advice on vlogging for authors.
published on 2015-03-03
Where do you start writing business book, travel memoir or commentary? What is the best way of presenting information to your readers? To find out, we asked business book coach Alison Jones for her advice the best way to structure a non-fiction book.
published on 2015-02-27
For those of us who love books, but don't have the good fortune to work with kids, celebrating World Book Day can be difficult. So! If you have a corporate day job, here are five ways you can get your book-nerd on, on March 5th, with your co-workers being none the wiser.
published on 2015-02-19
Sometimes you just need someone to look at what you are doing with your manuscript and cover design, and tell you that you are on the right track, right? Or, if there is a skill involved in self-publishing your book that you just cant get to grips with, it's good to know that a trustworthy expert is there to lend a hand. With this in mind, we've created a couple of low-cost but high-value author services that you are free to make use of at any time. You can find details of these at any time by scrolling down on any CompletelyNovel page and clicking on Writer Services, and we explain them in a bit more detail below.
published on 2015-02-18
How can you ensure the cover of your business book looks professional? We're seeing a rise in the amount of business writers who are taking advantage of our high print quality, and so we've put together a specific list of DOs and DON'Ts for those of you designing book covers – with examples. Make sure you also check out our cover template advice page, for more information and downloads on constructing your cover.
published on 2015-02-17
We recently asked our readers and writers to send us their favourite sentences – either from books they have read on CompletelyNovel, or their own work – to celebrate the awesome power of the indie word. A big thank you to everyone who shared these beautiful sentences with us, via email, Twitter and Facebook. We loved reading your entries, and are pleased to be able to compile them all here, for your delectation and delight.
published on 2015-02-05
Those of you who have books published will most probably be looking forward to a year of events to tie into your book marketing. On 14th February this year, as well as it being Valentine's Day, it's also International Book Giving Day, where readers around the world will be giving their favourite books away to children. This is the first of a series of book-giving events this year, and potentially a great promotional tool for your own book.


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