THE SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY MAY BE A SIMPLE ACT OF SHARING
– Charles Brady
What do we owe artists? I think we could agree that we owe them, as a minimum, full ownership of their creations, always and forever. We need to remind ourselves and others that a particular song or quotation, novel or poem is the creation of THAT person.
Never should we claim, even casually, one comma or question mark of another.
I agree of course, but that does not mean one cannot express admiration…. or criticize, or comment formally and at length.
In television programming, for example, producers return again and again to certain formulas – they place a bumbling husband, a sweet and much smarter wife, a couple of smart-aleck kids…throw in a funny maid or cook, and let the family repeat the same old situations first explored on radio in the 1940s.
Close to home is this recent example of what I mean.
Back in December, Lee (My Wife) had a very successful run here in San Francisco with her Country Western musical, “Southern Lights.” Her Musical Director/Band Leader went to great lengths to contact the writers of the songs Lee had chosen for this production. He had done this for songs for a smaller production several years ago, but this time he and Lee went back to the artists for new verbal and written approval. Mostly, these were not nationally known songwriters, but they had solid reputations and everyone in the production liked their songs, which worked in Lee’s play.
These songwriters knew Lee and her work and were happy to re-establish contacts with her. She was in regular contact with the songwriters, and they could be sure that In all ads and in the program, all artists were fully credited. As a reward for up-front requests and recognition, none of these artists requested payment – just credit!
Lee made certain that rights were protected.
Something happens to me at certain times when I am about to write, when I have been particularly influenced by an artist or by a particular piece of prose or poetry. When that happens, I attempt to connect mentally with the thoughts of the artist and his work. Everything I do in this is with full attribution and with great care.
I will discuss a couple of such occasions when I chose to write about people or their work as a result of a special feeling arising from my contact
I feel an affinity for the group of 8th Century Chinese poets who wandered the country, drank a lot of cheap wine, were friendly to each other, and created poetry which seems contemporary when translated. I am especially fond of simple old Li Po (also called Li Bai) and his friend Tu Fu.
In one of his longer poems, Li Po wrote of an older river merchant and his very young wife, and about how the wife would dearly miss her husband while awaiting his return from his long business journeys.
A sincere admirer, famed poet Ezra Pound, who had lots of troubles of his own, wrote a much-admired and wildly liberal translation, called “The River Merchant’s Wife”.
From my admiration of both poets, I later reflected on both and decided to give an opinion of Pound’s approach to the poem and this effort. I decided to have fun with it.
Here are the two works:
The River Merchant’s Wife
– Ezra Pound **
While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.
At fourteen I married My Lord you. I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall. Called to, a thousand times,
I never looked back. At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the look out? At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-yen, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months. The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.
You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away! The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden; They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand, And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fu-Sa.
(** Ezra Pound, great poet and an influential figure, lived in Paris, Moved to Italy and was a dyed in the wool anti-Semite! HE LOVED HITLER AND MUSSOLINI AND DURING WWII MADE REGULAR ANTI-AMERICAN BROADCASTS. AFTER THE WAR HE WAS CHARGED WITH TREASON, BUT LATER WAS CONSIDERED INSANE. Confined for a while, he was released and returned to Italy to live. He remains that figure – brilliant poet and traitor. His “Cantos” are his major works.)
THE RIVER MERCHANT
– Charles Brady
That portrait of Li Po’s poem
was painted askew
by Ezra Pound
when he translated
by estimating the distance between
the 8th and twentieth centuries,
selected a few vowels
and swirled tea bags in tepid water,
saying to himself
What the hell, nobody knows
what the old fart was thinking
anyhow when he wrote about a child bride
pining by a river for her man
while he remembered her
soft little body
and how her freckles were like smudge marks
on her pudgy face.
The couple had several things in common
because they both were Chinese,
as hinted by the swirling eddies
in this nature poem by Li Po.
Dropping Pound’s name makes it seem
somebody’s trying to cozy up,
but I already knew him through his
Greek-slick poems
and through his haughty words to Eliot
when he cut the entire first page of that guy’s poem
about April and cruelty.
Poor Ezra made up so much
in this Chinese
(which he knew something about)
poem that I can’t tell if
the lovebirds walked on stilts
when they were young
and she cut her hair in that
Jane Wyman bob when she was twelve,
or what else it is that
Pound was eager for us to know.
Perhaps he should have stuck to
Chinese lovers who meet below waterfalls,
hold hands and amble back to their simple
houses of bamboo
between swirling eddies
Ted Kooser of Nebraska is one of my favorite contemporary poets. He has been honored with every possible award for his truly American Poetry. A few years ago, I ran across his short poem, “Splitting An Order”– an observation of an elderly couple in a diner at an intimate moment when the husband was carefully dividing their sandwich to share.
Having driven through Nebraska many times in winter, my imagination took over, and in my picture I saw a heavy mid-winter snow piled outside that overheated diner. I decided to Share Kooser’s POEM, to place myself in that diner, a copy of Ted Kooser’s book on the counter with his back page photo displayed.
With me present, and the Poet there in his photo, I would be able to “share” the expression of love and devotion demonstrated by the act of sharing of the sandwich.
Here is the original poem, followed by my attempt to share. In later correspondence, Mr Kooser was gracious and seemed to get a kick out of our experience.
.
Splitting An Order
– Ted Kooser
I like to watch an old man cutting a sandwich in half, maybe an ordinary cold roast beef on whole wheat bread, no pickles or onion, keeping his shaky hands steady by placing his forearms firm on the edge of the table and using both hands, the left to hold the sandwich in place, and the right to cut it surely, corner to corner, observing his progress through glasses that moments before he wiped with his napkin, and then to see him lift half onto the extra plate that he asked the server to bring, and then to wait, offering the plate to his wife while she slowly unrolls her napkin and places her spoon,
her knife, and her fork in their proper places, then smoothes the starched white napkin over her knees and meets his eyes and holds out both old hands to him.
–
SPLITTING A POEM
– Charles Brady
Ted Kooser and I look goofy
in differing ways, but
I’m more inelegantly so
as I read his poem, “Splitting An Order,”
and he is a photograph
on the back of his book.
We are both brought to a scene,
perhaps in Nebraska
but I’m not sure of that –
It’s a state on my mind lately –
where a husband of some age
maybe seventy-five
divides his order in half –
maybe a corned-beef sandwich on white –
carefully, corner to corner,
to share with his wife.
They are dressed for church
but it may not be Sunday.
It’s a diner anyhow
because I have to be at the counter
looking into the mirror
with Ted Kooser’s book open beside my plate
where eggs and hash browns are untouched –
therefore, his photo!
I think it is winter
and snow outside is up to hubcaps,
so steam is inside this small town diner
to soften the faces
except mine and Ted Kooser’s.
The few Nebraskans out early look up
when the door opens
and wind whips around to chill the room.
Maybe I glance down and speak to Ted Kooser
and we say to each other
don’t we look goofy
in a diner in Nebraska
in the middle of winter
watching a couple of nice people
while our eggs and hash browns get cold.
I believe that any attempt to comment on another’s material should be done openly and with no attempt to suggest you are laying claim to even a tiny part the original. If you have doubts, contact the author and say what you are doing. From my sharing efforts, I have always found my attempts to honor a particular work to be well-received by the author and always positive. I have made several good friends by my efforts
