Believe, Believe / America

            Reading the poem “Believe, Believe” by Bob Kaufman (1925-1986) I couldn’t help but wonder if the beat poet had been at the same venue where in the past decade I discovered the healing powers of jazz music. Jazz can keep your mind from overthinking with its spontaneity! Kaufman had been called the quintessential jazz poet, and it is likely that during his lifetime he attended many jazz clubs, including the Village Vanguard.

            A friend of mine used to be a manager at the Village Vanguard, and I used to get in for free on certain days, only having to pay for drinks. What I learned over port wine and dim lights is that jazz and its technique of improvising fresh and unexpected arrangements on known musical pieces lets the mind relax and wonder, without worries. It’s not so easy to explain, but the second stanza in Kaufman’s poem just nails it!

            “Believe in the swinging sounds of jazz,

            Tearing the night into intricate shreds,

            Putting it back together again,

            In cool logical patterns,

            Not in the sick controllers,

            Who created only the Bomb.”

            Sounds of jazz at the Vanguard certainly cleared up my thoughts each time I went. The spontaneity of music allowed my thoughts to be spontaneous also, and helped me see some things in a different light: what seemed bad looked not so bad, and what seemed good just mixed in with the bad into a kind of balance.

            Many of Kaufman’s poems were performed orally without being written down or published.  “Believe, Believe” is listen as published posthumously in a 1996 compilation “Cranial Guitar,” but according to some themes it seems logical to think the poem was written sometime during the Cold War.  By “sick controllers” Kaufman means a certain elite of individuals who can manage public opinion and what people believe – such practice usually leads to one-sided thinking, like good is only good, and bad is only bad, without a possible middle. Kaufman was reactionary to American politics: he took a vow of silence after JFK’s assassination, and ended it 10 years later after the end of the Vietnam War.

            Reading the poem “America” written in 1956 by Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) I couldn’t help but wonder if Kaufman and Ginsberg were on the same page about the Cold War, with the latter just being more direct.

            “I can’t stand my own mind.

            America when will we end the human war?

            Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.

            I don’t feel good don’t bother me.

            I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind.”

            Ginsberg stating that he “won’t write” the poem is almost like a reference to Kaufman’s vow of silence, and both are reactionary to very same The Bomb. But Ginsberg has not gone to a Jazz club to calm his mind yet, he seems to have been studying history and literature.

            “America why are your libraries full of tears?

            America when will you send your eggs to India?”

            What Ginsberg probably means by sending “eggs to India” is bringing ideology of democracy to India.  At the time the poem was written, India had only recently become independent from the British Rule, having left the Dominion of the Crown in 1950.

           

            What could possibly have been stopping Ginsberg from escaping his anxieties at a jazz club was the Lavender Scare, a Cold War product of McCarthyism. Ginsberg was openly gay, and the Lavender Scare was homophobic propaganda accusing gay and lesbian identified individuals of being most likely to be recruited to spy for the Communists. This idea was supported on the basis that gays and lesbians could be easily blackmailed with the threat of being outted, since at the time homosexuality was still listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Mayakovsky / A Talk With A Tax Collector

            Reading the poem “Mayakovsky” by Frank O’Hara (1926-1966) I couldn’t help but wonder about Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930) visiting New York City in 1925. He loved the city, and wrote about it, including poems about Manhattan, and the Brooklyn Bridge. O’Hara spent the last fifteen years of his life in New York, and wrote many poems mentioning his cultural contemporaries, but it’s noteworthy that he looked up to Russia’s most influential poet of the early 20^th century. Mayakovsky dabbled in numerous mediums, from cubism and avant-garde, to blatant propaganda slogans for the Communist Regime of the 1920s.

            O’Hara’s poem is a tribute, and a metapoem. A metapoem is a poem about itself, an author writing it or another poem, or the medium of poetry in general.

            I love you. I love you,

            but I’m turning to my verses

            and my heart is closing

            like a fist

            Words! be

            sick as I am sick, swoon

            roll back your eyes, a pool,

            and I’ll stare down

            at my wounded beauty

            which at best is only a talent

            for poetry.

            The emotions O'Hara communicates through these three stanzas are like some poems Mayakovsky wrote about the woman named Lily who was the love of his life. Lily loved Mayakovsky’s poetry, and he dedicated a lot of his work to her. His own “wounded beauty” was often the subject of Mayakovsky’s self-gaze in his writing, including the 1913 stage tragedy written in verse and titled after himself. O’Hara channels that self-gaze.

            Now I am quietly waiting for

            the catastrophe of my personality

            to seem beautiful again,

            and interesting, and modern.

            Themes of perfection and modernization of the self in their own writing are parallel for both writers. It’s curious that Mayakovsky is O’Hara’s idol and a father figure of sorts, because Mayakovsky’s daughter was born the exact same month of June 1926 as O’Hara. There is no supernatural or superficial connection, but it is true that O’Hara and Mayakovsky’s daughter were conceived around the same time and on the same continent of America’s East Coast. Nonetheless, knowledge of Mayakovsky’s daughter only came to light in the 1980s during the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of its Communist Regime. (Jangfeldt 2014) O’Hara probably never knew that Mayakovsky had a daughter.

            Mayakovsky wrote some metapoems, too. In his poem “A Talk With A Tax Collector,” Mayakovsky talks philosophically, and with humor, about the place of a poet and poetry in society.

            I have here

                        a business

                                    of a delicate nature:

            about the place

                        of the poet

                                    in the worker’s society

           

            Mayakovsky goes on to discuss wittingly the question of expenses and deductibles a poet should be able to claim on his taxes. He says his work is just like any other work, and has its own hardships, including the difficulty of rhyming words.

            You start putting

                        a word

                                    into the line,

            but it doesn’t fit –

                        so you press and you break it.

            Citizen tax collector,

                                    I swear,

            for a poet

                        the cost of these words runs into money.

            Mayakovsky compares language to currency, and claims to be in debt, which should excuse him from having to pay taxes.

            I dash around,

                                    tangled up in advances and loans.

            Citizen,

                        won’t you consider a pass?

            Reading the poem, I couldn’t help but wonder: how did Mayakovsky have such humor regarding finance, and where did he learn finance if the Soviet Union had a communist economy. But sure enough, there was some temporary capitalism Mayakovsky witnessed before he visited America. In the Soviet Union, the early Communist party had temporarily installed the New Economic Policy (NEP) and private for-profit businesses were allowed starting in 1923. NEP greatly improved the Soviet economy before Stalin ended the program in 1928. (Russiapedia)

Triple Feature / Bubble Wrap

Reading the poem “Triple Feature” by Denise Levertov (1923-1977) I couldn’t help but wonder if anti-immigrant sentiment in America won’t ever go away, but will keep resurfacing. Levertov’s poem was published in 1959, as the United States experienced economic growth and baby boom after World War II. The poem’s gaze is on a family of four about to go into a movie theatre, and it can be interpreted as pro-immigrant. Levertov indicates the family is of Mexican descent with descriptions of traditional Latin American clothes they wear. A serape is a shawl worn as a cloak, a rebozo is a long flat women’s garment, and sombrero is a wide-brimmed hat.

“– he in a mended serape,

she having plaited carefully

magenta ribbons into her hair,

the baby a round half-hidden shape

slung in her rebozo, and the young son steadfastly

gripping a fold of her skirt,

pale and severe under a

handed-down sombrero”

Given the poem’s title, the family is about to see a triple feature of B-movies. American film industry experienced a shift after the Hollywood Golden Age of 1930s and 1940s, and the collapse of the Studio System which enabled it. The Studio System was when all films were produced and distributed by a few major studios. In the 1950s more independent companies were able to produce and distribute due to court rulings against the monopoly of the Studio System. Film goers have various tastes, and some really enjoy B-movies, but it is generally accepted that these movies are cheaply made and have a silly plot. By the late 1950s Hollywood struck back by producing its own B-movies: for example, MGM’s 1959 film “Girls Town” was reviewed by Variety as having a screenplay “as flimsy as a G-string.”

Levertov sympathizes with the family because the parents are likely looking to escape their daily chores, relax, and maybe the father will take a nap, but they might feel dissonance afterwards. At least one of three B-movies is likely to be an exploitation film, a genre that reinforces racial stereotypes in ridiculous plotlines.

“all regarding

            the stills with full attention, preparing

            to pay and go in –

            to worlds of shadow-violence, half-

            familiar, warm with popcorn, icy

            with stranger motives, barbarous splendors!”

            Reading the poem “Bubble Wrap” by Rae Armantrout (1947-present) I couldn’t help but wonder if anti-immigrant sentiment will always have a pro-immigrant response, and maybe the two can’t exist without each other. Like Levertov’s gaze at an immigrant family, Armantrout mentions an immigrant as a part of American cultural landscape. The poem was published in 2011, and may be referring to Hurricane Irene in the opening.

            “Want to turn on CNN,

            see if there’ve been any

            disasters?”

            Armantrout is a language poet, and her writing can be viewed as abstract. “Bubble Wrap” consists of 5 parts separated by single asterisks. There are no rhymes, and no rhythm consistency. Nonetheless, single stanzas in parts 1 and 5 are somewhat of a structure, creating an even opening and closing; part 2 has three stanzas, parts 3 and 4 have four stanzas. If the number of stanzas per part were notated as music – 1, 3, 4, 4, 1 [C, E, F, F, C] – they would make a complete musical sentence. Parts 2 and 3 both feature the word “dream,” which may refer to the American Dream. Part 4 talks about an “engine’s single indrawn breath,” bringing to mind deindustrialization, which is often falsely misrepresented as a result of outsourcing, when the cause is technological advancements.

            In part 5 an immigrant is trying to earn a living by selling doohickeys in front of a pharmacy chain. There is some irony in the juxtaposition of the immigrant aiding himself, and commercial chain selling aid.

“An immigrant

sells scorpions

of twisted electrical wire

in front of the Rite Aid.”