The pianoforte

[AdamSmith]

On 7/4/2020 at 12:45 PM, MsAnn said:

 

Returning to the topic (as if there were any such thing here  ), this is worth watching again and again.

And then going to (re-)read all Baldwin’s works.

[MsAnn]

22 hours ago, AdamSmith said:

 

Always the butter...

 

Edited July 7, 2020 by MsAnn

[MsAnn]

18 minutes ago, AdamSmith said:

Returning to the topic (as if there were any such thing here  ), this is worth watching again and again.

And then going to (re-)read all Baldwin’s works.

 Agreed...This requires multiple pauses to catch the brilliance.

 

[AdamSmith]

On 7/4/2020 at 12:45 PM, MsAnn said:

 

And I think possibly he and Zora Neale Hurston were on the level of Faulkner, who also saw through all that evil.

 

 

 

[AdamSmith]

 

[AdamSmith]

 

[AdamSmith]

 

[AdamSmith]

I never get tired of this... 

 

[Buddy2]

Broadway in summer 1960:

 

With my parents, we saw the original casts of "Take in Along" Jackie Gleason):

"Gypsy" (Ethel Merman)

"The Sound of Music" (Mary Martin)  I thought Mary Martin was going to fly, so very disappointed 

[AdamSmith]

Worth yet another repost in these distanced times.

 

 

[AdamSmith]

Spent a semester in a poetry-writing seminar with this wonderful man, James Applewhite...

Quartet for Three Voices
By James Applewhite '58, A.M. '60, Ph.D. '69.
Louisiana State University Press, 2002.
64 pages. $22.95. 

When Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul came from England in the late 1980s to tour the American South, he selected a certain quiet, unassuming man to take him around North Carolina. Naipaul wanted someone who could show him the farms, churches, graveyards, and universities, and explain the history of the land. The man Naipaul chose had grown up on a Carolina tobacco farm, like his father and grandfather and great-grandfather before him; he had become a poet, and had gone on to become a celebrated professor of English at Duke University.

Naipaul documented his wanderings with James Applewhite in his book A Turn in the South. He describes Applewhite with great affection: "He was a slender man, narrow-waisted, concerned about exercise. He took all my inquiries seriously, and spoke from the heart, without affectation, with a farmer's matter-of-factness, offering me at once, as soon as he saw that I was receptive, thoughts he would have spent some time arriving at."

Naipaul repeatedly marvels at how much he and Applewhite have in common, though they come from such different worlds. Each feels alienated from his homeland--the far-off island of Trinidad and the leafy, hot Carolina farm--and each uses his writing to examine the beauty and evils of the past and the drastic changes this century has witnessed. Toward the end of A Turn in the South, Naipaul calls his conversations with Applewhite "extraordinary."

What was it about this narrow-waisted Jim Applewhite that so deeply moved V.S. Naipaul? One only need turn to Applewhite's latest volume of poems, Quartet for Three Voices. His lucid and haunting poetry reflects upon the history of North Carolina and the history of his own family, which once owned slaves: "Accepting its sweetness and bitter illusions/I've lived four-fifths of my life in this South/that believed in a lie we all still suffer for." Applewhite's poems vividly recollect the delights of the South and the joys of his childhood, but often with a dark edge: "we suck on/apples of fallen orchards."

The fallen orchards represent a favorite theme of Quartet for Three Voices--people and places aging and decaying over time. In the standout poem "A Fictive World," Applewhite grapples with the memory of his grandparents who "disbelieved change" and didn't want to admit they were growing old. He recalls his grandfather singing "Sunrise Tomorrow" even as he was close to death, and how nothing ever changed inside their house: "the celery, deviled eggs,/pickles and olives in narrower and wider dishes, iced/tea in cut-glass goblets on stems, the turkey sliced on/the sideboard by old Aunt Eliza." The deviled eggs, the goblets, the hymns: it was all comforting, but it also meant hiding from the real world, telling "lies/against time."

Applewhite believes in telling the truth--acknowledging change and learning from the past: "The history I breathe is alive, exists to save." No poem addresses this hope more directly than "The Deed," the best poem of the collection, with its fresh imagery and an honest reckoning of the past. In it, Applewhite has decided to sell his family's farm, which leads him to remember its long history. Rich musical language describes the farm's boundaries--"Beginning at Toisnot Swamp then/southwest for eighty-six chains," as well as the surface of the land--"scrub oak and blackberry tangle" and "loblolly pine." In a dark and brilliant image, he recalls "the swamp-stream switching its channels/like a snake when you chop its head off, twisting in dirt."

Applewhite confronts his farm's mixed history by intoning a litany of names. On paper, the farm has been transmitted to "John, Martha, Elisha,/and Isaac," but he remembers another string of names, "Beedy, Lewis, Offy;/Wealthy, Feruba, Bright; Tabitha/Mereca, Jinnna, and Litha," the slaves who lived and worked on this land. He writes their names in his poem hoping their "story will last," even though, over the years, fires burned through the farm's cemetery and "erased whatever chalked letters/once named you on the blackened/boards of heart pine." He sells the farm, lays aside his guilt over its history, and ends the poem with an image of hope, the fields feathered with broomsedge and "preparing/for the new generations of pines."

Applewhite's rich and lyrical poetry does the same work as the fertile broomsedge, preparing a new generation of readers for growth. The poems in Quartet for Three Voices brim with wisdom and insight as he reflects on the past century, both recording history in his poems and bringing a new understanding of the past. "Now/I know only backwardly," he declares, but these years of experience in the hands of a masterful poet make for extraordinary and powerful writing.

Martin, a freelance book reviewer, works for Random House.

https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/james-applewhite 

[Buddy2]

More freaking space exploration!!

 

 

[AdamSmith]

 

[AdamSmith]

 

[AdamSmith]

On 7/7/2020 at 10:08 PM, AdamSmith said:

 

Back when things worked...

 

[AdamSmith]

Again, vhen Wernher von Braun did somezing...

...it werked!

Compare mit today. 

[Suckrates]

 

[Buddy2]

The Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia is opening up next week in practicing social distancing and mandatory masks. Reservations are required.

The Barnes features paintings by Cezanne, Renoir, Picasso, Miro, Manet,   van Gogh and Seurat

Edited July 18, 2020 by Buddy2

[Buddy2]

On 7/5/2020 at 7:24 PM, Buddy2 said:

How does Liam survive on the other site.

 

Even started a thread on the organ. Could be he enjoys attention and getting caught 

 

What a fraud.

 

Last night Liam started a thread on the other site making exaggerated claims about Barbara Streisand's "One Voice" concert at her former home in the canyons of Malibu. Liam claims the concert completely changed the world.

Folks who attended the concert disagreed as did people who had visited her home in Malibu. It was open to the public briefly in the early 2000s after she moved across the street to the beach and ocean.

Liam became nasty and overly angry

 

Daddy issued a warning, as he should have.

Please stop defending him.

[AdamSmith]

2 hours ago, Buddy2 said:

 

Last night Liam started a thread on the other site making exaggerated claims about Barbara Streisand's "One Voice" concert at her former home in the canyons of Malibu. Liam claims the concert completely changed the world.

Folks who attended the concert disagreed as did people who had visited her home in Malibu. It was open to the public briefly in the early 2000s after she moved across the street to the beach and ocean.

Liam became nasty and overly angry

 

Daddy issued a warning, as he should have.

Please stop defending him.

Fairly effective way to deal with things that annoy you, if they don’t directly affect you:

Ignore them.

Life is short.

[Buddy2]

11 minutes ago, AdamSmith said:

Fairly effective way to deal with things that annoy you, if they don’t directly affect you:

Ignore them.

Life is short.

I visited Barbra Steisand's "ranch" in Malibu and described the property in detail, including the main house shared with Jon Peters and the right or nine much smaller houses. You buddy, Liam, called me a liar.

[AdamSmith]

12 minutes ago, Buddy2 said:

I visited Barbra Steisand's "ranch" in Malibu and described the property in detail, including the main house shared with Jon Peters and the right or nine much smaller houses. You buddy, Liam, called me a liar.

I was not aware he was my buddy.

P.S. Whom are you accusing of ‘defending’ him?

[Buddy2]

28 minutes ago, AdamSmith said:

I was not aware he was my buddy.

P.S. Whom are you accusing of ‘defending’ him?

You, @AdamSmith

He posted with you often in the organ thread. How many diverse user names did he use?

 

 

[AdamSmith]

14 minutes ago, Buddy2 said:

You, @AdamSmith

He posted with you often in the organ thread. How many diverse user names did he use?

I have no idea. How would I?

P.S. If you can identify where I ‘defended’ him, I will readily concede. I have no memory of doing such.

[AdamSmith]

It might be useful to add that I don’t have ‘buddies’ here, or there. except the handful I have met & gotten to know in person.