Scene4 Magazine | letters to the editor

Karren Alenier is a much cherished part of the Steinista tribe, indeed, and we agree quite happily to disagree. We all have a blind eye somewhere and Stein herself was the first to admit her political stupidity and inexperience: "Writers are not really interested in politics..." etc. To be on the record, this was the point of my detailed article in the Los Angles Review of Books, Was Gertrude Stein A Collaborator? (In a shorter version - Exclusive: Was Gertrude Stein A Hitler Fan?

An academic like Catharine R. Stimpson has begun to see Will's book with different eyes, as I was privileged to hear from herself. Others, like the great Stein expert Marjorie Perloff, have never been taken in. If you want a non-sensationalist account of Stein's war years, I refer you to the book by Dominique Saint Pierre, "Gertrude Stein, le Bugey, la guerre" -- an impeccable study by an historian, devoid of the inflated speculations in Barbara Will's book.

Renate Stendhal

Great article. Poetry is not a dying art, but it does feel as though it's been pushed way off to the side. Audience sustains creation. The answer is not to just throw out a bunch of trivial repetitions or to totally reject them. Style is not the only issue, and bad poems in any style need to be called out. My idea is that the poem should give the reader an experience that is not available anywhere else, not even from another poem. That's like the great Dickinson saying that she knew it was poetry if it felt like the top of her head had been taken off. We practice an essential art, but our own weight condemns us to obscurity. Poets are not better people than non-poets. Our art is what it is. It'd be damn nice if people saw more of the heights and less of the flat plains of the "work". We, I, need/needs a true audience. Especially loved the idea of a good poem needing to be heard over and over. Hell yeah! It being in my blood/now yours.

Richard Benton

read David Alpaugh's article

With all due respect to Renate Stendhal, who I cherish as a person Steinian, I find the work that Barbara Will published in Unlikely Collaboration: Gertrude Stein, Bernard Faÿ, and the Vichy Dilemma refreshing for its non sensationalization of a tough Stein scenario. 

I am on the record and urge you to read what I said in my recent Scene4 article An Invitation to Gertrude Stein's Tea Party.

As noted Stein scholar Catharine Stimpson said recently at a conference held partially at the National Portrait Gallery where the exhibition "Seeing Gertrude Stein" just closed, "Gertrude Stein was stupid about politics."

I consider Gertrude Stein, Renate Stendhal, and Barbara Will part of my Steinian family. I won't stop loving any of them.

Karren Alenier

Karren Alenier's article on the Washington Post's obscene review of Gertrude Stein and the exhibition Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories at the National Portrait Gallery in D.C. brilliantly analyzes one particular case of openly declared "hatred" for Stein. This sort of hatred has followed Stein from the moment she began to publish, in the early twentieth century, but it is worth noting the context that gave rise to this "indecent exposure" in a serious newspaper like the Washington Post. Stein's present renaissance with two epochal traveling exhibitions has brought out people like critic Phil Kennicott who, as Alenier reminds us, assigns himself, a "seat in the corner with the Stein haters that include 'the worst sort of critics--anti-Semites, misogynists, homophobes and philistines.'" It is worth noticing that Stein's old enemies found new fodder and an academic seal of approval for their attacks in Barbara Will's book, Unlikely Collaboration: Gertrude Stein, Bernard Faÿ and the Vichy Dilemma (2011). The inflammatory book fed into the Stein controversy that was triggered by the exhibition Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, linked to the question how Stein and Toklas had managed to survive in Nazi-occupied France. Will's speculations about the "true Stein" and her alleged "collaboration" with a fascist friend and fascist regime unleashed a cultural hysteria, a sort of license to kill that took over the media and blogosphere. I have no doubt that this cultural atmosphere provided the justification for the Washington Post to publish the infamous article. Will camouflages the fact that her book is in fact about Bernard Faÿ, an intellectual friend of Steins's from the twenties, a once respected historian and author who during the war became a Gestapo informer and persecutor of the Freemasons in France. Hardly anybody today would care about Bernard Faÿ and his twisted fate as a condemned collaborator who was ultimately pardoned by French President Mitterand. Gertrude Stein is being used to create a story that pretends to be sensationalist news when the facts and allegations have already been published and rehashed numerous times, most recently by Janet Malcolm in Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice (2007).

Continue reading "The Obscene Critic" »

Thank you for this interesting article. I don't disagree with you at all, but surely there is also an issue about simply making our speech clear and understandable to an audience on stage. When characters in a play speak with a particular regional dialect, perhaps we need to "cheat" that dialect slightly in the direction of a "standard" speech ("generalized Iowan": is that how you put it?) in order to ensure that the whole audience can understand the speech; while hopefully retaining the quality and character of the dialect.

Michael Elliott

read Nathan Thomas' column

Once again, Alpaugh fires his comedic genius across our bow to awaken creative insight into the cannon balls of his poetry and essays.  A brave new look a poor Richard's legacy.  (Although, it always seemed to me that Cory was a "wannabe" defensive coordinator for the Penn State football team.)

C. O. Mccauley

read David Alpaugh's article

Thank you for giving a whole new meaning to this poem and to writing the story behind the
story. Fascinating!

Liz Koehler-Pentacoff

read David Alpaugh's article

You're optimistic, Arthur, way too optimistic. You strike a chord with the media and it plays a song that no one hears.

Laird

read Arthur Meiselman's column

More fine words from David Alpaugh that make me think...and the ebay rip at the end, outstanding!...(jeez, and all along I thought WCW described how much a kid depends on his wheelbarrow just to get by this youth thing).

C.O. Mccauley

read David Alpaugh's article

Excellent explication, David. So much depends on setting and time. Perhaps if the object was glazed with the image of Michael Jackson or Steve Jobs, it might be worth more today.

Kay Renz

read David Alpaugh's article

David, I love William Carlos William's "Red Wheelbarrow". It doesn't need more than those few lines. What you did with your interpretation is brilliant. No more need be said.
Thanks,

Selma Soss

read David Alpaugh's article

A brightly glazed conceit! (And I don't mean hubris). Congratulations to David Alpaugh for having something new to say about this old chestnut of English classes. I myself have published a wheelbarrow poem in partial response to Williams':
THE LAZY MAN'S HAIKU
Out in the night
a wheelbarrowful
of moonlight.
(The Lazy Man was too lazy to find the full complement of syllables--5,7,5--for his haiku.

John Ridland

read David Alpaugh's article

No matter what convoluted political and cultural leanings and swayings, this is important information which is crucial to know. All sides. All angles.

Grace Cavalieri

read Karren Alenier's article

As a poet attuned to the musical line, I want to say before the November issue of Scene4 hides the incredibly well thought out essay What Poets Can Learn from Songwriters by David Alpaugh that there are new ways to hear some of the poetic songwriters whose lyrics are surprising and get into your head when you least expect them to. For example, the Pandora app that brings tailored radio according to your favorite singer. I personally have tapped into Madeleine Peyroux radio which delivers to my ear Nellie McKay and other new songwriters as well as those from the past like Billie Holiday.

If you don't know the lyrics of Peyroux & McKay, see my review at
The Dressing titled Don't Pick Fights with Poets

Karren Alenier

Many thanks to Scene4 for bringing us the eminently sensible, wise and salutary poetry columns of David Alpaugh. I find myself in almost total agreement with everything he says about poetry and the current poetry scene. Above all I agree with what he says in his current column: that poetry is an art, not identical but closely allied to song, that is meant to enchant and enlighten us. It is not supposed to be a credit on a resume, or a sacred mystery to be guarded zealously by the few hundred keepers of the flame.

Alpaugh's latest column reminded me of an argument I had a few years ago with two poet friends. I argued that a poem should reveal something of itself, but not all, on first reading; they insisted that a poem must be absolutely opaque the first five or six times you read it, and that anything less was a sacrilege.

Needless to say, these same friends regard the name "Billy Collins" as being in the same class as "Paris Hilton." The real tragedy is that my friends--whatever our differences in esthetics--are no more of the academy than I am. How deeply the poets have drunk of the Kool-Aid!

Miles David Moore

read David Alpaugh's column

Arthur's story of the great Paul Muni reminded me of an important omission -- the Marx Brothers. They honed their skills out on the vaudeville circuit and then wowed audiences in "I'll Say She Is," The Cocoanuts," and "Animal Crackers." Evidently to see them live was far funnier than seeing them on the screen. And more than that, they took ethnic humor out of the tenement and into the mainstream that led to, among other folks, Woody Allen's films.

Nathan Thomas

read Nathan Thomas' column

Alan Bates in the title role of Simon Gray's BUTLEY turns in one of the greatest performances I've ever had the pleasure to view. I did not see Bates onstage in London or New York (where Clive Barnes called his 1972 performance "perhaps the single greatest he had ever seen on stage"). Fortunately, Ely Landau's American Film Theatre adapted it to film in 1974 (with Harold Pinter directing) and though unavailable for many years, it was released on DVD in 2003 and is now available on Netflix. I've watched it with awe a half dozen times. Bates, who said Ben Butley was a more demanding role than Hamlet, manages to play this charismatic English Professor, whose career, marriage, friendships are all crumbling, with wit, anger, pathos, and vindictiveness that one would think more appropriate to larger than life figures like Hamlet, Antony, or King Lear. I'm not sure how Gray's play would fare with any other actor; Bates brings it as close to tragedy as any 20th century drama I've seen.

David Alpaugh

read Nathan Thomas' column

Add to your list, Paul Muni in Inherit the Wind. Muni was a prime example of a major acting talent who was nurtured and developed by what is historically the oldest, most productive acting training "method" -- working in rehearsal and on stage with successful actors and directors. He had no formal training, never took a class nor set foot in a studio. He learned from anyone who would talk to him, show him, work with him. Beginning as a child-actor in New York's Yiddish Theatre, Muni went on to become a "star" on Broadway and in Hollywood. He earned many awards including an Oscar. He was admired for his self-developed discipline and detailed character preparation and a strong influence on many other actors including Marlon Brando, who had one of his earliest stage experiences with Muni. For a "star", Muni was incredibly introverted and shy. He rarely gave an interview and was reputed to have never seen his performances on the screen for fear that he would lose his internal acting p.o.v. Inherit the Wind was a culminating performance in Muni's theatrical career. After the play's successful launch in 1955, Muni was forced out because of a cancerous tumor in his eye. Melvyn Douglas replaced him. Muni's eye was removed and the cancer stopped, and later in 1955, he returned to the Broadway hit. That night, when he first appeared on stage, the audience rose in unison as if rehearsed in a chorus of applause and cheering. Muni stopped at his entrance, looked at the audience, turned away, and delivered his first line. It was a stunning moment. Never to be forgotten, since I had the good fortune to be in the audience on that night.

Arthur Meiselman

read Nathan Thomas' column

As usual, Kathi draws from her own experiences to illuminate the world we live in. It is not always ideal, but, through Kathi's eyes, it is clear, warm, filled with good humor and seen for what it is. A great gift given us.

Grace Cavalieri

read Kathi Wolfe's column

Thank you, Kathi, for putting words around a common experience I and many other women have. I don't know why we think it's so important for girls to look like girls and boys to look like boys -- it's an unrealistic and constraining standard. And who gets to set the rules, anyway? 

Josie Byzek

read Kathi Wolfe's column

Please lock every practicing poet in Solitary Confinement with a copy of What Poets Can Learn from Songwriters and a bottle of champagne. Alpaugh's resplendent perception shines again!

Marvin R. Hiemstra

read David Alpaugh's article

This is something I can chime in on wholeheartedly. I've written on the topic and try, as a teacher, to bring the tools of metrics, parallelism, repetition, enjambment, musicality in language itself to poetry learners. Most people are never taught these skills. To write music, one must learn the symbolic system of notes, rests, rhythm. Many poets neglect the analogous training for writing verse that "sings" and bears reading time and again. Free verse includes many musical attributes but so much of what I hear is musically numb. Thank you to Mr. Alpaugh for raising this topic. I like a lot of the points made.

Jannie Dresser

read David Alpaugh's article

The actual weirdness of the demented Alzheimer disease makes the truth so bizarre that it is a brainy play field of mind games. Nice clip!

Fran Wolok

read Elliot Feldman's comic

Right on, David! Well put. I heartily agree. However, Frost in introducing a book of New England ballads noted this difference between poems and songs: "The voice and ear are left at a loss what to do with the ballad till supplied with the tune it was written to go with. That might be the definition of a true ballad [or song?] to distinguish it from a true poem. A ballad does not or should not supply its own way of being uttered. For tune it depends on the music of music--a good set score. Unsung it stays half lacking..."

John Ridland

read David Alpaugh's article

Wonderful article! I like how Mr. Alpaugh directs us to learn from lyrics as well. Although melodies can add to the meaning of songs, I love song-writers' lyrics that beg to be repeated in my memory. Likewise, poetry that calls for the same.

Jan Olszewski

read David Alpaugh's article

Congratulations and good luck. You can't even get actors to respect other actors by showing up on time, so I don't know how you can expect audiences to be any better. Being late isn't just being rude, it's the sign of a small mind running backwards.

Laird

read Arthur Meiselman's column

I'm not so sure of even this: And music is something poets do not have in their arsenal. Or do they? To be sure, poets cannot rely on actual musical tones. It may seem like musical tones are out of bounds, but this, I think, often has to do with the fact that many poets reading voices modulate between about four tones. Developing a wider away of notes, inflections, intonations can make a reading sound every bit as musical as the musical phrase in a song.

Tim Kahl

read David Alpaugh's article

Kudos to you for publishing another commentary by David Alpaugh. I admire his insightful assessment of the situation of contemporary poetry, and his examples. His essay addresses young, current writers (even writing program survivors) as well as those unschooled who ply their art from a long love of the pleasure of sound put to meaning. His comments are not meant just for "old" writers. The point he makes is all inclusive: age-free, gender-free, race-free, class-free. Timeless. This morning I heard a bright & funny young woman on "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" (NPR) explain what it means to speak in "abreves", ie: abbreviations. Her phrase sounded close to code - a code dictated by the character LIMITATIONS of Twitter messaging and texting. (Ah corporate domination...!) I'm sure it gets the job done, like being able to decipher the dits and dahs of Morse code. It's functional, in a weirdly atavistic way. But does it sing? Inspire? Soothe. Teach? No. It abbreviates...sucks blood out of language, music out of winds, birds out of trees. How's that for corny... will there be a place for "corny" in "abreves"?

Kathleen Lynch

read David Alpaugh's article

Szabo is an inspiration. Hope his dream of an artistic community in Hillsboro, NC is realized soon.

Skip Holmgren

read Les Marcott's column

Kudos and bravos to Ms Renaud on a wonderful review of this wonderful event. I was so happy that she took me along with her. Her writing is so expressive and the details are so rich that I felt as if I were carrying her luggage. There doesn't seem to be anything quite like that festival anywhere else in the world and if there is I'm sure she will be there and ought to be there. She has the perception and the words and the good humour to capture the width and breadth of this colossal kind of arts event. I hope to "travel" with her again.
Once more bravo and thank you.

Peter B. Wenzel

read Lissa Tyler Renaud's article