Sign of the times.

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Nobel goes to a poet–sense of proprietary pride every time this happens. Tomas Transtömer. His wife: “She said that, most of all, Tranströmer was happy that the prize went to poetry for the first time since Wislawa Szymborska of Poland won in 1996.” A what-to-read-of-his roundup on Slate.

I’m going to quote the entirety of his poem “Outskirts” here, from poets.org.

OUTSKIRTS

Men in overalls the same color as earth rise from a ditch.
It’s a transitional place, in stalemate, neither country nor city.
Construction cranes on the horizon want to take the big leap,
but the clocks are against it.
Concrete piping scattered around laps at the light with cold tongues.
Auto-body shops occupy old barns.
Stones throw shadows as sharp as objects on the moon surface.
And these sites keep on getting bigger
like the land bought with Judas’ silver: “a potter’s field for
burying strangers.”

by Tomas Tranströmer
translated by Robert Bly

More from the NYT:

The Bly sound of the translation–that school of somewhat driftily mopey death-loving nature-oriented short sad lyric “Deep Image” writing, so influential, that one of my professors used to call “bones, stones, darkness”–in poems like “After a Death” sets my teeth on edge a bit. For example: “One can still go slowly on skis in the winter sun / through brush where a few leaves hang on. / They resemble pages torn from old telephone directories.” I’ve been trained to eschew Bly wherever I find him, such as that Larry Levis poem where he feels like a bunch of empty cattle yards. He (Bly) was simply too influential and had too many people imitating him. I would like to read some of the other translations of Transtromer to see what they’re like.

In other news:

Nobel peace prize: 3 women.

Mike Daisey altering his monologue show, “The Agony and the Ecstacy of Steve Jobs,” in response to Jobs’s death (NYT, via ArtsJournal):

“In a telephone interview, Mr. Daisey said that the death of Mr. Jobs “is of such importance that it absolutely has to be addressed because it heightens the importance of talking about his legacy.” Mr. Daisey, an acclaimed monologist who performs his works extemporaneously, rather than with a prepared script, said that he did not plan to add a new scene or epilogue but rather infuse the entire work with perspectives about the capacity of Mr. Jobs’s influence to continue, even in death, through Apple products.”

Thursday was the day of sci-fi and fantasy on the Warsaw metro; there was a man reading one of the George R. R. Martin novels on a Kindle (in English) and a woman reading the Lord of the Rings (in Polish) in book form. I had to resist the temptation to say “Winter is coming” to the Martin guy as I stepped off the train at Dworzec Gdański.

The trees around here look like bunches of old parsley, turning yellow. People are determinedly raking the leaves off the pathways. (I’m now feeling a bit paranoid about Robert Bly everywhere–perhaps I should avoid saying anything about nature for a few days.)

It’s quiet this weekend in Praga, where I live, in the sleepy residential neighborhood across the Vistula river in Warsaw. The farmer’s market persists outside my apartment building, despite the weather having turned to fall. The trees here, tall ones, are changing to yellow and red at the edges, but the bulk of their leaves are still green.

Someone in the market with a megaphone or microphone calls out something in Polish, every hour or so, with an intonation and rhythm that sounds like a circus barker or a racetrack announcer. I think he’s telling us to get it while we can–I can’t imagine these outdoor vegetable stands are going to make it all the way through a Warsaw winter.

My next-door neighbor is using the weekend to do some renovations. A hammer, a drill.

Today I ran across the news, dated August 22, 2011, that TJT-SF is closing its doors after this season. This is a theater I had a great deal of interaction with in 2007-2008. I am very sorry to hear this news. I had always hoped that I might collaborate with them again some day.

“In these challenging economic times, we simply cannot raise enough money to continue to produce work at the artistic level that is central to our mission of creating and presenting new Jewish plays.”

– from the announcement of the final season

It’s a difficult time to be making theater in the United States, and a strange time to be an expat in Poland, enjoying the richesse of a culture that so wholeheartedly supports its theater artists.

The skies are gray in Warsaw. The trees are starting to turn yellow at the edges.

My roommate is staying with a friend for a few days. She was here two nights ago, however, and we shared dinner and talked about art and dating. She made a kind of raspberry tea with lemons sliced into it, and she gave me more DVDs of Polish theater. Her institute, among other things, documents national artistic production.

The idea of there being a similar institute in the United States that documented national artistic activity–especially theater–is humorous. Between our restrictions on videotaping and our lack of national funding (or national support) for broad-based unprofitable cultural activity, I can’t imagine how we would ever agree that such a thing ought to exist.

There is, of course, the Smithsonian–I’m not saying we don’t have institutions that perform similar functions for the most significant artworks. Of course we document some of our theater. But the Smithsonian certainly doesn’t release a yearly DVD of the best original American theater productions, or a book documenting them. It’s sort of like the “Best American Poetry” series, but for theater, I guess.

I wonder what it would take to make such a thing possible in the US.

One of the things that makes Polish theater so good is the support it receives from its audiences and its national culture. This goes almost without saying, but it surprises me every time I see it. I can’t imagine that I will ever not be surprised by how much people in Poland love theater.

When I asked my Legnica student guide friend if she thought this could be attributed more to religion or to the history of Poland, she voted firmly for the history of Poland. (She was born just late enough to have lived her whole life post-Solidarity.) In her opinion, Polish audiences care about culture because they remember a time when that culture was suppressed, even forbidden.

Beyond this commitment at the level of the culture and the audience, I’ve been trying to think about making a list of the features that often occur in Polish theater, broadly speaking. This is sort of like a DSM-IV for “It might be Polish theater.” Not every production has all these elements, but many of them have more than a few.

I am still trying to unravel where they all come from. Some relate to Grotowski, others to Kantor, others to a strong allegiance to the Catholic church–and others, I think, are harder to trace.

1) A very broad and “theatrical” style of acting (one that LB said had its origins in the Yiddish theater, when he was here in 2009)

2) Candles / matches / onstage fire

3) Singing. Often, live music, too.

4) The presence of something like a Greek chorus

5) The presence of some form of dance or physical theater / movement-based theater

6) A certain lack of attention to elements of technical design (particularly lighting) that would receive more attention in the US. I see this as being parallel to the way in which a printmaking professor we visited a week ago told us that in Poland there was less choice as to artistic materials (in the US, he could buy whatever materials he wanted) but better art being made with fewer resources. Obviously this is changing now, but still, I get the impression that things like lighting are not as significant to these theater artists as things like acting.

7) An adapted text; a text that was not originally designed for theater; a text heavily intervened in or altered by the directors. Sometimes, no text whatsoever. (I am indebted to the writings of K. Cioffi here.)

8 ) The presence of stylized / aggressive / presentational heterosexuality, including a couple of iconic poses that I have seen in numerous productions–most notably, one where two people are on the floor and one character hovers above the other in a kind of push-up pre-sexual position, with their bodies exactly aligned. Feet to feet, heads to heads. It’s odd. It strikes me as being very un-sexual, in some ways, by standards of filmic realism. It’s like an emblem of “There is something sexual here.” The characters almost never seem to go from this to making out or doing anything like that. On the contrary. They often leap out of the position into something else. It’s interesting. It makes me think that, despite the overwhelming influence of American movies all over the world, that contemporary Polish visual depictions of sexuality in theater are primarily derived from some other visual source. One I have not yet identified.

9) An opening gesture of making direct eye contact with the audience, out of character or semi-out of character, before the play begins.

10) An interest in surrealism. I wouldn’t have listed this so prominently before I saw the Festiwal Teatru Nie-Zlego, but now I can see that there are quite a few Polish artists working with this trope. This often seems to be related to a sub-tradition of artists creating theater who are not trained as theater artists–who have a background in visual arts, dance, music, etc.–and conflicts with #13.

11) The “poor object” (Kantor) or “poor theater” (Grotowski) tradition–minimal sets, repurposing junk/trash as part of the production, an aesthetic of an almost empty stage.

12) A lot of control by the directors. On some occasions, the director onstage as a kind of conductor or mastermind–or, when this isn’t possible, the director intervening in the audience interpretation post-show.

13) A very strong influence by the official drama schools of directing and acting. Many of the performers and directors have studied at one of these schools; students (like some of those I met in Legnica) audition again and again until they can get in. A sense that you have to have attended one of these schools to be a proper theater artist. (Conflicts with #10.)

14) An increased interest in using cultural anthropology for theater, or borrowing music, texts, or dance from other cultures (this dates, as far as I can tell, to Grotowski’s “Theatre of Sources” period, but may also have earlier origins). Very little concern (I would almost say no concern) about the ethics of embodying / personifying / representing a culture2 that is not that of the actors or director. On the contrary–the performers seem to feel that they are popularizing and saving material that might be lost.

15) Violence.

16) In some cases, less interest in embodying or becoming a character, and more interest in the actor as individual artist. In some cases.

I think I’m going to leave it here for the moment, but it’s been helpful to make a list. Perhaps this, improved, could be a sort of opening argument for the collection of interviews with Polish theater directors I’m trying to make this year.

in the middle of the Fulbright orientation in Wroclaw–hours of lectures each day plus events in the evening. A better update soon, I promise.

Ahoy Milo–

A day in the kitchen. I made risotto with broccoli yesterday, and today I am eating a small delicious kind of green lettuce thing from Italy. I don’t know what it is. With parmesan, and pierogi. My hair is tied in a braid with the little rectangular wire stripe of metal-in-plastic that they use to seal bread in Poland, which is superior to our twist ties and our weird green and yellow plastic discs.

A day of writing. There are always more documents to be written–I wrote another one today. You know you’re stalling on getting someone an important document when you decide to watch a DS9 episode and the very first thing that happens is Sisko says to Kira, "Where’s the duty roster?" and she says "I’ll have it for you first thing tomorrow" and Sisko says "You said that yesterday." Oops.

I’m in the midst of a couple days of catch-up phone calls; my parents, my brother, my partner in crime, R., from my MFA. I have been so out of touch with people for so long. It’s good to be back.

When you live in your home country, you don’t feel that every single day has to be an adventure of cultural tourism. You feel justified in spending a day indoors writing, or catching up with friends. It’s hard not to feel guilty doing the same thing in Poland. Being here, how can you not be out there? *All the time?* Excavating, photographing, experiencing?

But writing is what I do; it’s what I’m doing here, too; and I write better at home than at important cultural sites, libraries, even coffeehouses. I’ve learned this. So I think one of the things I will have to learn, in balancing my time here, is to have space for both. Going out and experiencing things, and then writing. Back and forth.

Another moment of guilt; catching up on nonessential books in English, like Annie Proulx’s house-building memoir "Bird Cloud." These few days off have been so necessary. I need another rubber stamp that says "I really needed this."

The FB orientation begins next week. We received the official schedule today. It’s really happening. It really is.

-D

here are the opening few minutes of Andrzej Wajda’s film “Ashes and Diamonds.” There’s some violence, but then most of the movie after that (until the end) is a lyrical exploration of emotions and relationships in post-war Poland. If you haven’t seen it, it really is the greatest movie I’ve ever seen. Ever.

The blog has been silent for a few days because I’ve been busy trying to get some new paperwork finished. These obligations are crucial. But I’ve been watching lots of great SOTG archival footage of old, wonderful productions–on which more later–and I am thrilled beyond words that Philip Levine is the poet laureate.

“Like most great triumphs, Levine’s achievement has a simple beginning.

It was the early 1940s and 13-year-old Levine was living by the outskirts of Detroit, about a mile from 8 Mile Road. That was back when the city really ended at its borders; Levine remembers there were five or so houses in an area of six city blocks and, beyond that, emptiness.

After dinner, he went out into the groves of trees. He would stand in the dirt, in the dusk, in the dark, and compose poetry in his head. He’d always had a fantastic memory, so it was no trouble to recite and revise his words on the spot. It became a weekly ritual.

“What I found was a voice within myself that I didn’t know was there,” said Levine, now 83.”

– Jessica Goldstein’s “Profile of Philip Levine, poet laureate” in the Washington Post this morning

And here are the beginning stanzas of one of my favorites of Levine’s poems, “You Can Have It.” The rest is online here at the Poetry Foundation site.

My brother comes home from work
and climbs the stairs to our room.
I can hear the bed groan and his shoes drop
one by one. You can have it, he says.

The moonlight streams in the window
and his unshaven face is whitened
like the face of the moon. He will sleep
long after noon and waken to find me gone.

Thirty years will pass before I remember
that moment when suddenly I knew each man
has one brother who dies when he sleeps
and sleeps when he rises to face this life,

and that together they are only one man
sharing a heart that always labors, hands
yellowed and cracked, a mouth that gasps
for breath and asks, Am I gonna make it?

[…]

– Opening stanzas of “You Can Have It,” by Philip Levine. Read the rest of the poem here.