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No one can write about and wear hats like David Lehman.
Slow down, and put on your "Panama Hat": Major Jackson's Pick for March 10
I’m Major Jackson, and this is The Slowdown. After I finished my MFA at University of Oregon, I packed up my worldly possessions (some clothes, a lotta books) in my beat-up minivan and was off to New Orleans. A week prior I was called with an offer to teach at Xavier University, an HBCU there....
Squibs 486-487: Charles Simic [by Alan Ziegler]
Posted Mar 11, 2023 at The Best American Poetry
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Squib 485 [by Alan Ziegler]
Posted Jan 27, 2023 at The Best American Poetry
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Squibs 480-484 [by Alan Ziegler]
480:I strive to arrange my life like a European meal, concluding with my salad days. 481: By all means bring a knife to a gun fight in addition to your gun. 482: I see someone I used to know across the street. As I approach, I realize it is not my old friend. Undaunted, I say, “Hey, Stanley, great to see you! How’s Veronica and life on the rodeo circuit?” The stranger stares blankly, then a glint of recognition. “Christopher,” (not my name) he says, “I still feel bad about that night, and how is Gloria and life at the clinic?” We talk until we are all caught up and part ways. 483: Paul Langston was once called upon to inquire, in response to a phone message, “Who in the Sam Hill is Sam Hill?” 484: Steve Allen interrupted himself while chatting with guests on his radio show to observe that the coffee he continued to sip was now lukewarm, and he would have sent it back had it been served that way. I feel similarly about my body. Continue reading
Posted Jan 27, 2023 at The Best American Poetry
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David and Angela: Thank you for your kind comments!
Mitch: As with everything you write, there's much to mull.
"Was the issue of the 'split infinitive' in the last sentence of the fourth
paragraph of your story brought up at all?" No, it wasn't mentioned. At the time, I would have resisted, but now I kind of like the sound of "even to try."
"'Dear Alan Ziegler' is a problem. 'Mr. Ziegler' might have been acceptable but in a personal
letter like this to a writer, even if it's in a business context, 'Dear Alan' is the way to go. And signing it 'Roger' would
also be preferable, especially since he then types out his whole name underneath." Agreed, especially since we had already met! I assume it's just the way they did things. I used to get a lot of "Dear Alan (if I may)..." from people I didn't know, to which I was always tempted to reply, "No, you may not."
"...what I really don't like is referring to your work as 'a modest story.' Although you are very kind about it, I don't like that at all." After the piece was published, Roger (if I may) said that these pieces are incredibly difficult to write and he hoped I would send more. (Never the opportunist, I chose instead to embark on an immodest novel, which one former agent assured me will be "published posthumously."
"What was his self-edit? I can't make it out online." The word he crossed out is "effects."
"I would not call this a modest achievement." This means a lot to me! Thank you.
Squib 479 [by Alan Ziegler]
For Roger Angell (1921-2022), Part Two. Part One In the subway heading to The New Yorker for an editing session with Roger Angell, I fantasize hovering near the receptionist’s desk as a line of supplicants with manila envelopes are each declined entry (“I just want to make sure he gets the refer...
Squib 479 [by Alan Ziegler]
Posted Jun 12, 2022 at The Best American Poetry
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Mitch: I wonder what nerve was so struck not only to cause Roger Angell such outrage but also for him to use the words "most outrageous" to an author he didn't know. Must have been one hell of a story.
David: I actually have the manuscript with Angell's edits. I'll dig it up and send it along.
Squib 478 [by Alan Ziegler]
For Roger Angell (1921-2022) Long ago, on the off-chance I might run into the Devil at the Crossroads, Robert Johnson's Crossroads Mine I prepared a modest negotiatio...
Squib 478 [by Alan Ziegler]
Posted May 23, 2022 at The Best American Poetry
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David: I once landed upon a Canadian football game announced in French. I knew it was football when I heard: "la longue passe!"
Squibs 474-477 [by Alan Ziegler]
474: I’ve been on my last legs since the day I was born. 475: You should have at least one radio that gets tuned by fingers turning a dial so you can experience the pleasure of flying through a static storm (keep the volume up), miraculously encountering a muffled sound, and calibrating a precis...
Squibs 474-477 [by Alan Ziegler]
Posted Sep 6, 2021 at The Best American Poetry
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Squib 473, for David Lehman [by Alan Ziegler]
Posted Aug 29, 2021 at The Best American Poetry
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And there's this dialogue from Law and Order the Original:
Librarian: Verlaine was the real talent, you know. Rimbaud just latched onto his coattails and wouldn’t let go.
Briscoe: We were just saying that on the way over here.
Librarian: He shot him.
Briscoe: Who shot who?
Librarian: Verlaine popped Rimbaud. Paul loved Arthur. Paul also loved Matilda. It was a whole mess. The French—what do you expect?
Briscoe: So can you tell us if you sold any copies recently?
Librarian: If you really want decadent, I’d stick with Baudelaire.
Poets, Law and Order, and Criminal Intent
An interoffice exchange from July 2009 WTF!!?! L&OCI Hey, what does Law and Order Criminal Intent have against poets? In last night's episode, "Passion," an arrogant poet/editor pimps out his young attractive assistants to potential financial backers. During tonight's episode, "Folie a Deux," ...
My father told me it was essential that I see Asphalt Jungle in order to understand his father, a bank robber, jewel thief, and frequent convict. My grandfather always worked with a crew of specialists (he was the one who could crack the safe).
Talking Pictures: On "The Asphalt Jungle'"
Ed note: Since December 2019 I have written a regular column on classic movies for The American Scholar. Here are the opening paragraphs of my latest, which was posted yesterday (April 17) under the heading "Blind Accidents: How John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle brilliantly epitomizes the caper ...
Tom Meschery—Rerun from 2015 [by Alan Ziegler]
Posted Apr 20, 2021 at The Best American Poetry
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Squibs 464-472 [by Alan Ziegler]
Posted Apr 19, 2021 at The Best American Poetry
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Squibs 457-463 [by Alan Ziegler]
Posted Apr 13, 2021 at The Best American Poetry
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Squib 456: Tales of the Sixties; The Hippies [by Alan Ziegler]
(Excerpted from The Incomplete, an unpublished novel based on real events.) The Common College student arts organization, Wastelanders, had a budgetary crisis. We’d had a great run of poetry readings, art shows, and folk concerts, and now, with the school year coming to an end, our advisor told us we had a problem: We hadn’t spent a dime of our $4,000 budget. Actually, we didn’t know we had a budget. We just asked people to do stuff and they did stuff. “Use it or lose it,” the advisor explained. “Do you really want the school to give the money to ROTC?” A couple of weeks later, after catching the Mothers of Invention at the Fillmore East, we came across a troupe of hippies acting out anti-war scenarios on Sixth Street and First Avenue. They sang, they danced, they coaxed pedestrians to join them. I asked the leader if they ever did colleges. He introduced himself as “Maury Prankster, the Bill Graham of the streets,” and went into a sales pitch: “This is a real theater company. Three of us auditioned for Hair. We can’t do it for less than $400, man.” “Add a zero to that and we can talk some business,” I replied. And that’s how it came to be that a bus decorated with anthropomorphic trees and flowers eased through the Common College gate and released a swarm of hair, beads, flowered shirts, and overalls. Officially named the Clan-Destiny Theater Society, they came to be known around campus by their generic name, The Hippies. Maury Prankster was in his early thirties, older than the others, with a receding hairline that he made up for with long sideburns and a handlebar moustache. Maury opened the show at Common by announcing, “The counterculture means more than letting your hair grow, dressing flamboyantly, and smoking marijuana, although that’s a good start. There’s an art to culture, and art must be cultivated. Watch our garden grow.” The performance included skits extolling communal life and the joys of farming, songs from Hair (revealing why none of them got cast), and an audience participation segment during which students were invited to come on stage and have their heads massaged or the tattoo of their choice painted in the location of their choice. Meanwhile, cast members infiltrated the audience until the little theater was a whirligig of pantomime, dancing, massaging, and painting. In the final skit, a young woman named Marigold played “The Child of the Future,” flitting from one evil situation to another, making each one right via a magic wand adorned with flowers. At the end, Marigold announced, “Alice isn’t in wonderland — wonderland is in Alice. In all of us. If we let it out, we’ll turn this world into a land of wonder.” The troupe planned on sleeping in their bus but first there’d be a party at our apartment, which they offered to cater with a picnic basket of grass, hash, acid, and assorted pills. I explained to them that... Continue reading
Posted Mar 30, 2021 at The Best American Poetry
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Squib 455: Tales of the Sixties; The People’s Brigade [by Alan Ziegler]
(Excerpted from The Incomplete, an unpublished novel based on real events.) Students received academic credit for living communally at The House in the woods of northern Vermont at the end of the Sixties. Schoolwork included marathon discussions ranging from the minutiae of daily life (dishwashing responsibilities, cleaning up after the House dogs) to the great questions of the day (evolution or revolution, Stones or Beatles for dinner music). A former House member named Susan asked to be on the agenda. Susan had joined the People’s Brigade, a revolutionary collective based in Boston, and wanted to know if her comrades could stay for a couple of days on their way to an action in Buffalo. “This is going to be another Stones vs. Beatles,” I whispered to my girlfriend Debra, whom I was visiting, and sure enough the Artsy folks were opposed (“Militants take over and they don’t listen”) while the Politicos were in favor (“We’re living this cushy life while the war rages and blacks are oppressed”). The Politicos outlasted the Artsys, who considered it a victory that the discussion took less time than deciding against mandatory dishwashing shifts. Susan told us that she’d fallen in love with a guy in the Brigade named Rick, but the group decided that monogamy was counterrevolutionary. The solution was for each of them to fuck three other people in the Brigade. “You slept with three strangers because a group told you to?” Debra blurted out. “Hey, they’re not strangers. We’re a collective. We do lots of stuff together.” Debra’s roommate Cynthia lit a joint, and Susan reached over and took a drag, held it in for ten seconds with her head tilted back, then eased the smoke through her slightly opened lips. She lifted one leg to rest her head on her knee. I imagined myself as one of the revolutionary monogamy-busters. Susan and Cynthia left to camp out in the Small Room downstairs so they could talk all night. Debra said, “At last we’ll have some time alone. Until the invasion.” On Friday morning the People’s Brigade pulled up in a van and a Volkswagen: ten of them, all with short hair — including the women — wearing denim and backpacks. One of the students said, “Hey, you guys look like a little army.” “Damn-fucking-right,” replied one of the guests. Susan greeted her comrades with hugs, but I couldn’t tell from her body language which one was Rick. They moved into the Big Room, and within minutes posted a sign on the door: “If this door is closed, please do not disturb under any circumstances. If it’s open, join us! Thank you for your cooperation.” An Artsy muttered, “Already they’re taking over.” The guiding force of the Brigade was Kevin. After lunch he called a Brigade meeting in the Big Room, with the door open. “We’re here for war games, and it’s going to get uncomfortable,” Kevin proclaimed as he paced in front of the group. “But it’s gonna serve you well... Continue reading
Posted Mar 28, 2021 at The Best American Poetry
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Squibs 453-454: For Robert Hershon [by Alan Ziegler]
Posted Mar 26, 2021 at The Best American Poetry
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Pequod was Mark Rudman's magazine; as I recall, none of my poems made the voyage. Penumbra was edited by Charles Haseloff; I had a poem in the Life After Death issue.
Squibs 446-452 [by Alan Ziegler]
446: Cabondating: Determining when a movie or TV show was recorded by the fare on the taxi door. 447: Some places my poems visited in the 70s and 80s: Ironwood, Mulberry, Granite, Syncline, Stepping Stone. 448: Erin is playing Molly Bloom in Ulysses adapted for dance and music. She tells m...
Squibs 446-452 [by Alan Ziegler]
446: Cabondating: Determining when a movie or TV show was recorded by the fare on the taxi door. 447: Some places my poems visited in the 70s and 80s: Ironwood, Mulberry, Granite, Syncline, Stepping Stone. 448: Erin is playing Molly Bloom in Ulysses adapted for dance and music. She tells me there’s physicality between Molly and Blazes but nothing I’ll find upsetting. She comes home excited after the dress rehearsal: “The New York Times was there.” A picture runs with the review: Erin is on her knees in bed with Blazes, wearing a negligee riding up her thigh, as is Blazes’ hand. The critic calls her “luscious and devilish,” and adds, “The two lie so alone together in bed with Molly’s sensuous cry of readiness echoing in the audience’s ears.” I snap. “You didn't tell me it would be like this!” What really haunts me is what might have happened during, or after, all those rehearsals. I rip the page out of the newspaper and throw it limply in her direction. As I slam the door on my way out to nowhere, I hear her stricken plea, “What did I do wrong?” I steel myself to be professional when I go to the performance. I'm accompanied by our friend Helen, a dance teacher who has performed in, directed, and attended hundreds of productions. I sit tensely as, offstage, Molly emits her “sensuous cry of readiness.” I fight to keep my eyes open when Molly and Blazes slide under the covers. During the curtain call I turn to Helen for vindication. She laughs and says, “Oh, that’s nothing.” 449: Some places my poems visited in the 70s and 80s: Star Web Paper, Skywriting, Sun, Penumbra. 450: We gave it plenty of time but didn’t put enough leaves in the pot so now we are weak and bitter. 451: I dream my mother is alive, reading a romance novel in her living room chair after doing the dishes. I tell her she is dead, and she reminds me I have to learn how to relax.I dream my father is dead, and I try to convince him he is alive sitting at the kitchen table watching the tiny television because he no longer watches the big TV in the living room unless other people are with him. But he is stubborn as usual, and tells me I am wrong. Awake, I imagine they pass each other along the hallway and exchange ditto marks with their fingers, but I have not been able to dream this. 452: Some places my poems visited in the 70s and 80s: Pequod, Kayak, Small Pond, Ark River, Three Rivers. Continue reading
Posted Mar 3, 2021 at The Best American Poetry
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Sacha Baron Cohen Double-Bill Rerun [by Alan Ziegler]
Posted Oct 22, 2020 at The Best American Poetry
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Squib 445: Envisioning the Web [by Alan Ziegler]
Posted Aug 14, 2020 at The Best American Poetry
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Lally on Winch
Posted Jul 14, 2020 at The Best American Poetry
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Yes, that was the month!--each revelation makes it more seminal. I'm sending the PDF by email if you want to post. --az
Michael Lally: Pick of the Week [ed. by Terence Winch]
Michael Lally, ca. 2008 The Night John Lennon Died ___________________________________ One warm night, when I was a kid, we were all playing ringalario in the high school field at the bottom of my street when Mrs. Murphy, known mostly for the time her hair t...
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