poetry, quotes

sweet nothings

I’m writing a poem with some variations on the word “nothing.” Yes, this has been done before. Before, before, and before.

Romeo is banished; and all the world to nothing that he dares ne’er come back to challenge you; or if he do, it needs must be by stealth. Then, since the case so stands as now it doth, I think it best you marry with the county.
– Nurse, ROMEO AND JULIET
(By the way, there’s an old movie called All The World To Nothing, from 1918 – I was hoping to steal that title myself.)

Nothing will come of nothing: speak again.
– Lear, KING LEAR

Is whispering nothing?
Is leaning cheek to cheek? is meeting noses?
Kissing with inside lip? stopping the career
of laughing with a sigh? – a note infallible
Of breaking honesty? – horsing foot on foot?
Skulking in corners? wishing clocks more swift?
Hours, minutes? noon, midnight and all eyes
Blind with the pin and web but theirs, theirs only,
That would unseen be wicked? is this nothing?
Why, then the world and all that’s in’t is nothing;
The covering sky is nothing; Bohemia nothing;
My wife is nothing; nor nothing have these nothings,
If this be nothing.
– Leontes, THE WINTER’S TALE

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books, chicago

what I don’t understand

It’s a very literary set of readers on the 70 bus. I was reading over the shoulder of my busmate and I saw the name Gabriel Betteredge. Couldn’t remember why it sounded so familiar for awhile, and then I realized he was reading THE MOONSTONE. I love Chicago. Last week there was someone reading Walter Benjamin.

It is one of my rules in life, never to notice what I don’t understand.
– Gabriel Betteredge, THE MOONSTONE (Wilkie Collins)

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animation, art

making fiends, making fiends

I haven’t followed the fortunes of animator Amy Winfrey for a long time. It’s always nice when you are distracted from an artist’s work for awhile and return to find them flourishing.

Her simple and adorable MuffinFilms series got me through many a dark night of the undergrad (particularly the abstract and enigmatic “I Dream Of Muffins”) I must be the only person in the world to not know that she has two seasons in the can of a now-not-so-new animated series on Nickelodeon, based on her webisodes of Making Fiends. I’m so happy for her.

Amy Winfrey’s influence on me reached its highest point when I briefly considered going to animation school at UCLA, because she did. I thought, at the time, having alienated many of the actors I knew by choosing to direct choruses exclusively, that creating animated work was the only way I would ever realize my theatrical ideas. I sincerely believed that I had to give up what I insultingly called “live-action.” I even made a derivative homage film, vaguely in her style, called “The Misfortunes Of An Arrogant Child.”

Unlike Amy, I had no sense of humor.

Luckily for both the world of animation and for my own artistic ego, some years after that, Theatre of NOTE allowed me to realize some of those weird visions, in the flesh – with actors far better than anything I could have ever hoped to draw. The moment I was able to work with real people, I forgot entirely about cutting little characters out of cardboard.

I still have been thinking of making animated films, though – lately I’ve wanted to create a series of rocks reading poetry. It’d just be a rock moving slightly with stop-motion, almost no movement, with a human actor’s voice reading the poem. I don’t quite know why.

Anyway, thank you, Amy, for bringing me hope.

Making fiends, making fiends,
Vendetta’s always making fiends
While Charlotte’s
Making
Friends…

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friday poem, poetry

friday, you know what that means.

THEOLOGY

No, the serpent did not
seduce Eve to the apple.
All that’s simply
Corruption of the facts.

Adam ate the apple.
Eve ate Adam.
The serpent ate Eve.
This is the dark intestine.

The serpent, meanwhile,
Sleeps his meal off in Paradise-
Smiling to hear
God’s querulous calling.

-Ted Hughes

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poetry, theater

spoken of the soul

This Saturday, Poetry magazine is presenting a theatrical staging of some Dana Levin poems at Links Hall. If this isn’t what I came here for, I don’t know what is. Life is real! Life is earnest!

“What use had I for hands,” a theatrical interpretation of five poems by Dana Levin. Conceived and directed by Valerie Jean Johnson. Devised and performed by the ensemble: Jennifer Crissey, Aaron DeYoung, Katie Eberhardy, Jennifer Guglielmi, and Kate Olsen. THREE PERFORMANCES: Friday, December 12, 8 PM, Saturday, December 13, 8 PM (followed by a discussion with poet Dana Levin), and Sunday, December 14, 7 PM. Admission is free; call 773.281.0824 or visit linkshall.org for reservations.

Oh, to be able to tag every post with both “poetry” and “theater.” To have the twin sisters always be able to have play dates in the same park. But maybe I wouldn’t appreciate it so much if it happened all the time. Maybe they are like twins, and what they really need – despite my desire to have them dressed in the same matching pinafores (pinafores?) – is time apart.

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theater

But what did “Dividing The Estate” get in homeroom class?

Rob Kendt and Isaac Butler have a new site, CRITIC-O-METER – it’s like Rotten Tomatoes for New York theater – it compiles all critics’ reviews to award plays a letter grade.

If you look at their listing for HAIRSPRAY, for example, you can see that the site also excerpts portions of all the reviews from which they determined the grade. It’s a good way to get a sense of what lots of different writers think of a show.

From their explanation of the whys and wherefores:
Critic-O-Meter is an idea borne of the blogosphere. Critic and editor Rob Weinert-Kendt and myself (director and writer Isaac Butler) were having matzoh ball soup at the Polish Tea Room when Rob mentioned that he had read on a blog that someone said “You know, they really should have a Rotten Tomatoes for theatre reviews”. In true slowest-moving-art-form fashion, we then puttered about talking about it for a few months before finally building the site you see before you today.

We approve!

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quotes, writing

one long escape from myself

There was no cure for the human condition, he thought, not least his own. He [Samuel Johnson] was a prisoner of compulsions. A monster of a man, with a huge and powerful frame, and a blunt bulldog head set above it, he could pick up warring street dogs and toss them aside like kittens, and once beat an insolent publisher senseless with a folio volume. Yet since his youth he had suffered from a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder, or even Tourette’s syndrome, which became aggravated with the years. Walking down a London alley, he had to touch every post with his cane, and, if he missed one, would go back and start over; he constantly spoke to himself, repeating half-audible incantations under his breath, and would sit in a reverie for hours, muttering and whistling; when he peeled an orange, he always had to keep the peel in his pocket.

Still, the pill of life could be sweetened – above all, with friendship. Johnson made a religion of social life: he ate with friends every night, adored his small circle of intimates […] “My life is one long escape from myself,” he said, and he ran to the table to get away.

– Critic Adam Gopnik, from “Man of Fetters: Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Thrale,” an article on Samuel Johnson and the new biographies of him, in the 12/8/08 New Yorker.

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