Walking Into Schuyler's Ocean: A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler by Nathan Kernan (FSG, 2025)

 

Walking Into Schuyler's Ocean by Tosh Berman

FRANK O'HARA" POEMS FROM THE TIBOR DE NAGY EDITIONS, 1952-1966

 

Tosh on Frank O'Hara

Tosh Talks Frank O'Hara May.27, 2011

Tosh Berman talks about,
" FRANK O'HARA" POEMS FROM THE TIBOR DE NAGY EDITIONS, 1952-1966.

August 11, 2014

August 11, 2014

The only thing I like about The Dave Clark Five is Denis Payton, their tenor and baritone sax player.  It’s easy to find Dave Clark recordings on I-Tunes, but of course it is preferable to find the recordings on the original vinyl.  There is one outstanding track of the Five called “Time, ” which features Payton as a solo player.  I don’t know much about this tune, but it almost sounds like a Stan Getz song - and it has to be one of those pieces that were made in great haste as a b-side to some smasher-o a-side.  Nevertheless it’s not easy to locate the sounds of the Five, due to the control that Dave Clark has over his material or to be more precise, the music of the Dave Clark Five.  One wonders why someone would want to hoard the music to such a great degree, but perhaps it is something that is very precious to him.  Or maybe he feels he can drain more money out of the dying music business.  I always suspect that he pretty much stole his sound from the great Joe Meek recordings from the early 60s.  The sad thing is the case that the work becomes a shadow of an era, instead of what it naturally is - a piece of music.

The control of one’s image by someone else is a very natural thing to be done.  Whatever it is your work, or worst yet, a family member, it’s an uphill battle because you want to do the right thing, but sometimes you are only getting in the way of what is interesting about that person.   Peter Folger, who was part of the Folger (coffee) family spent a great deal of his time protecting his daughter, Abigail from the damning articles or books about the Tate-LaBianca murders, which resulted in very little information about her and her life.  Which is a shame, because it sounds like she was a very wonderful person.  I rather know her as a living person, than as a dead victim, who by all accounts was at the wrong place at the wrong time - or maybe at the right place that was intruded upon people who were clearly wrong being there.  Nevertheless I found it interesting that she had an interest in the arts -especially poetry and the theater.  She was a debutante from San Francisco, who wore a bright yellow Christian Dior gown that she had purchased in Paris some years before the debutante ball.  The interesting thing about her was her devotion to the issue of civil rights as well as the art world.  She took a job at the University of California Art Museum in Berkeley as a publicity director.

In 1967, Abigail moved to New York and found a job as a clerk at the Gotham Book Mart on 47th Street.  When I worked at Book Soup, I met the most amazing people, that I still remain in contact with, and some went off and became huge stars, writers, or … dead.  Nevertheless each one had a profound effect on my life, and I just try to imagine what it would have been like to work with Abigail at the Gotham.  Would we discuss Frank O’Hara, or maybe she liked French poetry.  I imagine her more of being a fan of the New York School of poetry (whatever that is).   The thing is there is very little information about her.  We don’t know what her taste in music, books were and yet we do know that she was devoted to the art form of literature and music.   All we know are the facts, such that she met the author Jerzy Kosinski at the bookstore and he introduced her to Wojciech Frykowski, a fellow Pole, and a bit of an adventurer.  The perfect boyfriend for this New Yorker, who can only communicate fully to each other in French.  Frykowski wanted to move to Southern California, hopefully to work with his good friend Roman Polanski, or at least hoping that would happen.   Abigail decided to move with him to Los Angeles, where she wanted to be a social worker.  Of course, things didn’t work out well.

I want to know more of Abigail as well as Denis Payton, but alas, due to a certain amount of controlling one’s history and the passing of time, it now becomes a world of shadows. As I have stated before, I ‘m OK in that world.  I got the Dave Clark Five’s very rare album that came out only in Canada (of all places) called “Instrumental Album.” It has the Payton sound of sax sounding like metal against metal.  It’s raw. I find it beautiful.  There are certain instrumentalists who totally dominates a sound, and the only other person who can do that is Jah Wobble, with his bass on PIL’s “Metal Box.” In memory of Abigail Folger and Denis Payton, whose  birthday, I’m celebrating today.

June 11, 2014

June 11, 2014

In the late 1970s, I was living in Manhattan, and pretty avoiding the music scene that was taking place in the East Village and the Bowery.  I craved music that would gently caress my broken soul, and that was seeing and hearing Hazel Scott at the Milford Hotel Plaza on 8th Avenue, not far from Times Square.  At the time, I only had one vinyl album, and one portable turntable, and basically that was that, if you wanted to include several stripped t-shirts and one winter coat, with a pair of blue jeans and boots.  One can say my finances were non-existent. Yet I knew the doorman at the hotel, and he always got me in to see the Scott trio.

The one album I owned was Hazel Scott’s “Relaxed Piano Moods” with the backing of Charles Mingus on bass and Max Roach on drums.  I often lay on the floor by the turntable and its small speakers, and let her music soak into my ear drums, and throughout my body.  I was likewise staying at the Milford, due to a small inheritance that I was living on.  I was fascinated with the idea of not working, and finding out what will happen once the money dried up.  At the time, I was curious to know if eventually what my behavior would be like if I die from the elements, or the lack of food.  The idea of that being the case with me in the middle of Manhattan had a great appeal for me.

I spent most of my daylight hours at the New York Central library reading New York poets.  Frank O’Hara had a huge appeal for me, because it’s a life I know I won’t ever have.   I guess I could if I agreed to get a job, and basically spent my hard earned dole on food, books, and music  - but I was struck by the idea of doing nothing, and walking to the library to read books and then come back to the hotel to listen to the album, and then seeing that artist play later that night.   Now come to think of it, life was really perfect.

At the time, I avoided all social contacts, and in fact, besides the doorman to the hotel, and a waiter or waitress here or there, I didn’t really talk to people.  The inner-dialogue I had with myself, gave me food and I really didn’t have anything to say to others.  In my hotel room, I decorated the walls with images by Julia Margaret Cameron, because I love the idea that she only focused on the world around her, and nothing else.   I stole a lot of the images from photo magazines that were placed in the collection at the library.  I did the famous loud cough as I tore a page one at a time.  The only images I had in my room were the album cover and various portraits by Cameron.

When I was living in Los Angeles, I was a fan of Shelley Manne, and I sort of had this fantasy that I could be Peter Gunn, going to “Mothers” night club to see my non-existent, but fantasy girlfriend sing a number or two.  It was at Manne’s jazz club where I first saw Hazel Scott. I don’t want to say I followed her to New York, because that sounds sort of creepy.  But truth to be told, it was her and my love for Manhattan culture, which clearly was another fantasy on my part.  Till then, the only thing I knew about Manhattan was through books and old episodes of “Naked City” TV series.   Once I came to the big apple, I was surprised that my dream location was exactly the same as reality.  Or maybe I just make fantasy into reality.

March 27, 2014

March 27, 2014

While I was wandering around my favorite used book shop, Alias East on Glendale Bouvelard, I found a copy of Francis Ponge’s “Soap, ” which is a poetic approach to that wonderful compound of natural oils mixed with sodium hydroxide.  I wanted to be exposed to the everyday object, that one normally uses, but never thinks about.  Not only is the natural world cut off from us, but also the artificial world of sorts.  It gets to a point where we don’t know the difference between the two worlds.  The only other poet that comes to mind is Frank O’Hara, with respect to his writing noting specific objects and colors in his life.  Writing is reporting, and poetry goes into the prose and makes certain objects stand out from the rest.  It is just like a surgeon opening a body and seeing all the muscles and tissues laying in front of their eyes, yet focusing on removing that bothersome tumor.  To write with a pen, or by a surgeon’s knife, both goes into the world and take out what’s essential to the poet or doctor.

One of my all-time favorite actresses is Hideko Takamine, who starred in numerous films by Mikio Naruse, which my favorite is "When a Woman Ascends the Stairs."  Made in 1960, but could have been made anytime in the 20th century.   She plays "Keiko' a young widow, who wants to be able to open up her own bar in the Ginza district of Tokyo.   The film is incredible because it analyzes the social world of Tokyo in such precise manner that it is both chilling and beautiful at the same time.   In the end of the film she fails to purchase a bar, due to family issues, social issues, and the landscape of women just trying to exist in a world that is often harsh and unfair.   After seeing the film, one recognizes that culture is meant to explore and tear apart - and only an artist can do something like that.

There is the practical side of art and medicine where you need a clear head to explore a territory, and the ability to make that exploration is both a skill and a natural talent.   The long-running Japanese comic strip Sazae-san is amazing because it is reported to show life of a typical family in post-war Japan.  I bought a couple of collections while waiting for my flight back to Los Angeles at the Narita Airport.  I read them on the plane, and even though the strip is supposed to be humorous, I found it deeply touching in that as an outsider, I can see what daily life was like back then.   It then struck me how important of a document that this comic strip is - because in an artistic manner, it tears into the culture, and brings out what is important, but done in a way that is almost Robert Bresson like, with respect to his classic film works.

It is with these thoughts, that makes me pick up my pen and notebook to expose a world within my world for my readers.

"Pierre Reverdy" by Pierre Reverdy (NYRB, Edited by Mary Ann Caws)

NYRB ISBN: 978-1-59017-769-5

Superb collection of poetry by the legendary and sort of obscure poet Pierre Reverdy.   There are poet's poets and then there is the Painter's poet, and Pierre Reverdy is famous for his relationship with Picasso and the Cubists artists of the early 20th Century. But Reverdy also had respect from his fellow poets as well, and almost every avant-poet or lyrical poet also has a great appreciation for Reverdy's poetry.  Reading the introduction, I didn't know he had a long-term relationship with Coco Chanel.   A good looking man according to the photograph on the back of the book.  He had the whole world in his hands, but the narration is quite harsh, due to the two world wars that took place in his lifetime. 

The poems are mostly mood pieces that would go well with mid '50's Miles Davis.  Romantic in despair, but never depressing due to I think his intelligence and his ability to write a perfect poem that is set like a jewel case on the top of a bedside table.  Once again the New York Review of Books (NYRB) has done a great job of publishing these collection of works by Reverdy, and translated by an all-star cast of the most interesting of the interesting.  Kenneth Rexroth, Geoffrey O'Brien, Frank O'Hara, Richard Howard, John Ashbery and edited by the great Mary Ann Caws.   Any poet that can gather the American giants of poetry and translation in one volume, you know is very much worth your time. 

USA: Poetry, Frank O'Hara (1966)

Amazing footage of the great poet Frank O'Hara.  Interview, poetry reading, etc.

"The Last Avant-Garde" by David Lehman

I think one of the great gifts that America has produced are the poets associated with the so-called New York School.   Not really an official organization with a membership card, but they were friends who were closely connected to the abstract Expressionists as well as the merging of early pop painting.  With nice touches on the artist Larry Rivers.

Frank O'Hara, James Schuyler, Kenneth Koch, and John Ashbery are the heroes here, and this book by  David Lehman is a combination of group bio and lit critique on these unique writers at the right time and place.  If this book doesn't make you pick up a volume or two on these poets ... well, nothing will.  A great snapshot of life in the late 50's to mid-60's - and beautifully thought out and written by Lehman.  Essential history on poetry and art that still rocks.

Frank O'Hara

A little pause in the day to think of Frank O'Hara the great American poet of the 20th Century.  A great website devoted to O'Hara and his world can be find here:  http://frankohara.org/index.html

Frank O'Hara reading "Having a Coke With You"


"My Heart" by Frank O'Hara
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9TRUARUvTI&feature=related


Frank O'Hara reads September 14, 1959


Frank O'Hara reads "An Airplane Whistle (After Heine)"

Tosh Talks May.27.2011 Frank O'Hara

"Tosh Talks" about the great American (New York) Poet Frank O'Hara

The Letters of James Schuyler To Frank O'Hara

I am a fan of the little book that you can put in your pocket and it takes a day to read. And this book is the perfect design. Also it strikes me as the ultimate NYC book as well. Although James Schuyler wrote some of his letters to Frank O'Hara from Italy and other locations - it still smells like Manhattan. 

Perhaps my two favorite poets (was it something in the Manhattan water?) of that time - and although in book form the conversation is one -sided a bit (no O'Hara correspondence from his side) it does give a remarkable feel of its time in the early 1950's. Really, really nice and beautifully designed edition.

Frank O´Hara reads "Having a coke with you"

Frank O'Hara is one of my favorite poets. His voice is beautiful as well.