Monday, June 18, 2007
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Gypsy Caravan
... a doc by the heroic Jasmine Dellal opens Friday. It's the "Buena Vista Social Club" of Gypsy music...
J
Green's Catullus
... sounds almost like Frank O'Hara. Prompted by TMP, Jeannie Vanasco writes us:
"His Catullus feels less like it belongs to Green, a distinguished
professor emeritus of classics, and more to some smart sexed-up
barhop, as it should. I have heard (and seen!) that classicists are
the wildest bunch. One classicist I know--an OLD classicist, who shall
remain nameless--drank absinthe on the rocks by Lake Michigan then
stripped and started quoting the most vulgar Catullus to me. I didn't
know what to do! Guy Davenport also has a fantastic intro to Anne
Carson's "Glass, Irony, and God" in which he mentions some classicist
who swam laps naked in the college pool every day before teaching (or
some such detail--poor Carson's packed in a flap-lock box in NY and
I'm in cow town)."
"His Catullus feels less like it belongs to Green, a distinguished
professor emeritus of classics, and more to some smart sexed-up
barhop, as it should. I have heard (and seen!) that classicists are
the wildest bunch. One classicist I know--an OLD classicist, who shall
remain nameless--drank absinthe on the rocks by Lake Michigan then
stripped and started quoting the most vulgar Catullus to me. I didn't
know what to do! Guy Davenport also has a fantastic intro to Anne
Carson's "Glass, Irony, and God" in which he mentions some classicist
who swam laps naked in the college pool every day before teaching (or
some such detail--poor Carson's packed in a flap-lock box in NY and
I'm in cow town)."
6 by Catullus, translated by Peter Green
Flavius, that sweetie of yours (Catullus speaking)
must be totally inelegant and unsmart-
you couldn't keep quiet otherwise, you'd tell me.
Fact is, it's just some commonplace consumptive
tart you're mad for, and you blush to say so.
Look, your nights aren't solitary: silence
won't help out when your own bedroom shouts it--
stinking Syrian perfume, all those garlands,
both your pillows, on each side of the bed, all
rumpled, and the gimcrack bedstead shaken
into sharp creaking, loud perambulation!
It's no good, no good at all, your saying
nothing. Why? You wouldn't look so fucked out
if you weren't up to some inept adventure.
So, whatever you've got there, nice or awful,
tell us! I'm after you, man, and your lovebird,
want to ensky you both in witty poems.
sent to TMP by Jeannie Vanasco, posted with permission of the translator
must be totally inelegant and unsmart-
you couldn't keep quiet otherwise, you'd tell me.
Fact is, it's just some commonplace consumptive
tart you're mad for, and you blush to say so.
Look, your nights aren't solitary: silence
won't help out when your own bedroom shouts it--
stinking Syrian perfume, all those garlands,
both your pillows, on each side of the bed, all
rumpled, and the gimcrack bedstead shaken
into sharp creaking, loud perambulation!
It's no good, no good at all, your saying
nothing. Why? You wouldn't look so fucked out
if you weren't up to some inept adventure.
So, whatever you've got there, nice or awful,
tell us! I'm after you, man, and your lovebird,
want to ensky you both in witty poems.
sent to TMP by Jeannie Vanasco, posted with permission of the translator
Liz Smith, poet, on the Sopranos finale
"There they sat in a restaurant, four not terribly bright, craven, greedy, clueless, messed-up people--one a violent killer--pondering the possibility of manicotti."
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