Scene4 Magazine | letters to the editor http://www.scene4.com/readersblog/ LETTERS TO THE EDITOR and COMMENTS. To post letter or a comment to an existing article, click on the "Post A Letter" link in the right sidebar. en Copyright 2012 Sun, 05 Feb 2012 22:29:22 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Comments on Gertrude Stein Continued 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

]]> http://www.scene4.com/readersblog/2012/02/comments_on_gertrude_stein_con.html http://www.scene4.com/readersblog/2012/02/comments_on_gertrude_stein_con.html Alenier Politics and Issues Reading and Writing Stendhal Sun, 05 Feb 2012 22:29:22 -0500 What Poets Can Learn From Songwriters 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

]]> http://www.scene4.com/readersblog/2012/02/_poets_and_songwriters_article.html http://www.scene4.com/readersblog/2012/02/_poets_and_songwriters_article.html Alpaugh Poetry Wed, 01 Feb 2012 02:05:00 -0500 The Will to Find Steinian Truth 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

]]> http://www.scene4.com/readersblog/2012/01/the_will_to_find_steinian_trut.html http://www.scene4.com/readersblog/2012/01/the_will_to_find_steinian_trut.html Alenier Media Politics and Issues Reading and Writing Stendhal Sat, 28 Jan 2012 09:55:42 -0500 The Obscene Critic 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).

]]> http://www.scene4.com/readersblog/2012/01/the_obscene_critic.html http://www.scene4.com/readersblog/2012/01/the_obscene_critic.html Alenier Politics and Issues Reading and Writing Stendhal Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:53:38 -0500 Why don't you speak better? 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

]]> http://www.scene4.com/readersblog/2011/12/why_dont_you_speak_better.html http://www.scene4.com/readersblog/2011/12/why_dont_you_speak_better.html Theatre Thomas Sun, 11 Dec 2011 00:11:24 -0500 Dickie Cory 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

]]> http://www.scene4.com/readersblog/2011/12/dickie_cory.html http://www.scene4.com/readersblog/2011/12/dickie_cory.html Alpaugh Poetry Reading and Writing Mon, 05 Dec 2011 23:53:18 -0500 Another Layer to Richard Cory 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

]]> http://www.scene4.com/readersblog/2011/12/another_layer_to_richard_cory.html http://www.scene4.com/readersblog/2011/12/another_layer_to_richard_cory.html Alpaugh Poetry Reading and Writing Mon, 05 Dec 2011 23:36:21 -0500 Q Factor 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

]]> http://www.scene4.com/readersblog/2011/11/q_factor.html http://www.scene4.com/readersblog/2011/11/q_factor.html Media Meiselman Politics and Issues Tue, 08 Nov 2011 13:27:14 -0500 Red Wheelbarrow 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

]]> http://www.scene4.com/readersblog/2011/11/red_wheelbarrow_1.html http://www.scene4.com/readersblog/2011/11/red_wheelbarrow_1.html Alpaugh Poetry Tue, 08 Nov 2011 13:24:20 -0500 What's in the red wheelbarrow today? 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

]]> http://www.scene4.com/readersblog/2011/11/whats_in_the_red_wheelbarrow_t.html http://www.scene4.com/readersblog/2011/11/whats_in_the_red_wheelbarrow_t.html Alpaugh Poetry Tue, 08 Nov 2011 05:04:25 -0500 Red Wheelbarrow 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

]]> http://www.scene4.com/readersblog/2011/11/red_wheelbarrow.html http://www.scene4.com/readersblog/2011/11/red_wheelbarrow.html Alpaugh Poetry Tue, 08 Nov 2011 04:57:12 -0500 David Alpaugh's Wheelbarrow 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

]]> http://www.scene4.com/readersblog/2011/11/david_alpaughs_wheelbarrow.html http://www.scene4.com/readersblog/2011/11/david_alpaughs_wheelbarrow.html Alpaugh Poetry Tue, 08 Nov 2011 04:54:23 -0500 Stein's Tea Party 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

]]> http://www.scene4.com/readersblog/2011/11/steins_tea_party.html http://www.scene4.com/readersblog/2011/11/steins_tea_party.html Alenier Media Politics and Issues Reading and Writing Wed, 02 Nov 2011 01:11:19 -0500 Don't Pick Fights with Poets Redux 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

]]> http://www.scene4.com/readersblog/2011/10/dont_pick_fights_with_poets_re.html http://www.scene4.com/readersblog/2011/10/dont_pick_fights_with_poets_re.html Alenier Alpaugh Music Poetry Thu, 20 Oct 2011 12:36:45 -0500 David Alpaugh 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

]]> http://www.scene4.com/readersblog/2011/10/david_alpaugh_1.html http://www.scene4.com/readersblog/2011/10/david_alpaugh_1.html Alpaugh Moore Poetry Politics and Issues Reading and Writing Thu, 20 Oct 2011 07:30:52 -0500