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And they won't thank you, they don't make awards for that
As the title indicates, "Threnody for Five Actors" is a ghost poem for its subjects and its inclusion in On Actors and Acting: Essays by Alexander Knox (ed. Anthony Slide, 1998) is maddening because it is accompanied only by the note, "This poem is from an unpublished manuscript titled Screams and Speeches. The five actors named here were all victims of the Blacklist." First of all, you can't drop the existence of an entire manuscript at the very end of a slim selected works and expect the interested reader not to scream, especially when the only copy the internet feels like telling me about seems to be held in a collection in the Library and Archives of Canada, which feels currently even less accessible than the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Secondly, and speaking as a person who has been called out for the density of allusion in their stories and poetry, this poem could have done with some notes. The editor was obviously concerned enough about name recognition to parenthesize Julie Garfield as John and Bud Bohnen as Roman, but then why not list their dates so that the reader can see for themselves that all five actors died between 1949 and 1952, mostly of heart ailments, stressed by the hounding of the FBI and HUAC, at the grandly superannuated ages between 39 and 59? If you don't know that Mady Christians originated the title role of John Van Druten's I Remember Mama (1944), then her verse will make much less sense, but catching that one makes me wonder what other references I may be missing, such as in the stage work of Canada Lee or J. Edward Bromberg. Lastly, since it's the only poem I have ever read by Alexander Knox—instantaneously in October, but it's been a rough fall—if he wrote any others I'd like to be able to read them, even if just for comparison. Slide mentions his wicked limericks in the introduction, but unforgivably includes none.
Threnody for Five Actors
by Alexander Knox
My words are dull.
Their names are an incantation
With pastoral overtones
And the glow of Arcadian virtues,
A glory preceding pollution.
(I do my best
But, compared with the five alive,
My best is dull
As a muddle of mud
Or the sludge at the bottom of scandal.
Please take my word—
Compared with the five alive
The following hints
Are castles built of sand
And washed by the wave of time
Compared with the wall of China.
Still, I'm doing my best,
Which is what they did.)
J. Edward Bromberg
It was only when he was on he was Bromberg.
Jo, thinking to hide himself, crept
Into various costumes and so became
Much more Bromberg than ever before.
He was creator and fixer of images.
Play was the mold. He was the metal.
The two made many a monument.
Most actors like to be liked, but he
Liked to be right and definitive.
He set up a work for examination.
Brechtish, before he had heard of Brecht.
A month ago I overheard
In a pub in Hampstead a salesman's wife
Delineate with detail and sweep
A performance of Volpone seen
Twenty-five years before.
She might have seen it yesterday.
A monumental memory?
A memorable monument?
Or both?
Julie Garfield
Somewhere on a social-mobility hill
Julie Garfield toted a pack
Of gaiety up to the poetry level.
There he was killed, lest others should follow.
Nobody has. Many have tried.
He worked in ambiguities:
The vulnerable man became,
An instant later, deadly as doom.
The wide-boy confidence could cloak
But could not hide bewilderment.
Morose and glum as a bomb,
He'd suddenly rocket
A glittering web of stars,
And you'd wonder which were the brighter
His teeth or his laughter.
Within a grove of wooden faces
He kept lively, he kept young—
He always had more art to sell
Than films were bright enough to buy.
Canada Lee
Canada Lee, Canada Lee,
Named like a Southern belle, but he
Could punch a hole in eternity.
(You judge them by the best they do.)
With him a squabble and jangle of lessons
Learned in a dozen lively schools
Might meld in the heat of a Saturday night
And pump volcanic magma up,
Life-blood of all the firmaments,
Pump the deep gene-borne urges up to light.
He'd neither theatre nor time
To find out how he did the things
He could suddenly, greatly, do.
But now and then, and here and there,
He did them, I saw them, and I and others
Remember.
Memories are seeds that germinate
Sometimes
In far and future soil.
Bud Bohnen
Bud Bohnen had a gritty voice
That sanded waste away and left
The bone and muscle-structure clear.
He pasted on no curlicues,
No decorations his the man—
He didn't need to decorate.
His truth was far more beautiful
Than most attention-catching ploys
That lesser artists have to use.
The traffic in the air was quick
With lively thought and fact so clear
It proved itself by being there.
Mady Christians
I remember Mady mamma.
She too fed a multitude
With loaves of love and fishes of fun.
The meals were served in the theatre
But the scraps that fell outside could fill
Easily fifty baskets. An actress
Who played many parts, and one part,
And hinted at part
Of the essence
Of a great virtue—
A mystery.
A trinity.
And was greater, I think,
Than the sum of the parts.
With uncooled anger I remember
One blistering bitter joke she made—
"They're considerate, here in America!
Thoughtful of them to organize
The Thomas Committee. Exiles from Hitler
Can feel again completely at home."
I remember, maybe,
The joke, Mady,
Because it was out of character.
* * *
The sadness of past trials
And of friends who endured them
Is not relieved by knowing
Their trials are over.
Rather, the knowledge grows
That we learn slow and little,
And the letter of fact
Is meaningless minus a spirit,
And victim justifies victim
Like fleas, ad infinitum.
How long? How long?
Often, often, I see parts played
They would have been good in.
And with some pride
I think I know
How they'd have played them.
Sometimes I think I remember them
In parts they never played
Because the plays haven't been written
And possibly can't be written
Till we make a life
Not unworthy of the gifts they gave.
An actor's death is the death of many.
Deaths like these are surely
The cries of a wounded country.
With this one example to go by, he was a better playwright than poet, but except for the self-deprecation which should definitely have hit the cutting room floor, it's hard to want to edit much out of a poem with so much anger at the injustice of a country that wastes its artists in scapegoating xenophobia, besides which there's at least one good line per actor and sometimes more. He wouldn't even have been living in the United States by the time of its writing, having burned off the last of his contract with Columbia by the end of 1951. He hadn't burned off his anger. No reason he should have. I may be confused by the existence of his Hollywood career, but I'm still pissed about the politics that snapped it short. The twentieth century could stop coming around on the guitar any measure now. On Sunday, I'll be at the HFA.
Threnody for Five Actors
by Alexander Knox
My words are dull.
Their names are an incantation
With pastoral overtones
And the glow of Arcadian virtues,
A glory preceding pollution.
(I do my best
But, compared with the five alive,
My best is dull
As a muddle of mud
Or the sludge at the bottom of scandal.
Please take my word—
Compared with the five alive
The following hints
Are castles built of sand
And washed by the wave of time
Compared with the wall of China.
Still, I'm doing my best,
Which is what they did.)
J. Edward Bromberg
It was only when he was on he was Bromberg.
Jo, thinking to hide himself, crept
Into various costumes and so became
Much more Bromberg than ever before.
He was creator and fixer of images.
Play was the mold. He was the metal.
The two made many a monument.
Most actors like to be liked, but he
Liked to be right and definitive.
He set up a work for examination.
Brechtish, before he had heard of Brecht.
A month ago I overheard
In a pub in Hampstead a salesman's wife
Delineate with detail and sweep
A performance of Volpone seen
Twenty-five years before.
She might have seen it yesterday.
A monumental memory?
A memorable monument?
Or both?
Julie Garfield
Somewhere on a social-mobility hill
Julie Garfield toted a pack
Of gaiety up to the poetry level.
There he was killed, lest others should follow.
Nobody has. Many have tried.
He worked in ambiguities:
The vulnerable man became,
An instant later, deadly as doom.
The wide-boy confidence could cloak
But could not hide bewilderment.
Morose and glum as a bomb,
He'd suddenly rocket
A glittering web of stars,
And you'd wonder which were the brighter
His teeth or his laughter.
Within a grove of wooden faces
He kept lively, he kept young—
He always had more art to sell
Than films were bright enough to buy.
Canada Lee
Canada Lee, Canada Lee,
Named like a Southern belle, but he
Could punch a hole in eternity.
(You judge them by the best they do.)
With him a squabble and jangle of lessons
Learned in a dozen lively schools
Might meld in the heat of a Saturday night
And pump volcanic magma up,
Life-blood of all the firmaments,
Pump the deep gene-borne urges up to light.
He'd neither theatre nor time
To find out how he did the things
He could suddenly, greatly, do.
But now and then, and here and there,
He did them, I saw them, and I and others
Remember.
Memories are seeds that germinate
Sometimes
In far and future soil.
Bud Bohnen
Bud Bohnen had a gritty voice
That sanded waste away and left
The bone and muscle-structure clear.
He pasted on no curlicues,
No decorations his the man—
He didn't need to decorate.
His truth was far more beautiful
Than most attention-catching ploys
That lesser artists have to use.
The traffic in the air was quick
With lively thought and fact so clear
It proved itself by being there.
Mady Christians
I remember Mady mamma.
She too fed a multitude
With loaves of love and fishes of fun.
The meals were served in the theatre
But the scraps that fell outside could fill
Easily fifty baskets. An actress
Who played many parts, and one part,
And hinted at part
Of the essence
Of a great virtue—
A mystery.
A trinity.
And was greater, I think,
Than the sum of the parts.
With uncooled anger I remember
One blistering bitter joke she made—
"They're considerate, here in America!
Thoughtful of them to organize
The Thomas Committee. Exiles from Hitler
Can feel again completely at home."
I remember, maybe,
The joke, Mady,
Because it was out of character.
* * *
The sadness of past trials
And of friends who endured them
Is not relieved by knowing
Their trials are over.
Rather, the knowledge grows
That we learn slow and little,
And the letter of fact
Is meaningless minus a spirit,
And victim justifies victim
Like fleas, ad infinitum.
How long? How long?
Often, often, I see parts played
They would have been good in.
And with some pride
I think I know
How they'd have played them.
Sometimes I think I remember them
In parts they never played
Because the plays haven't been written
And possibly can't be written
Till we make a life
Not unworthy of the gifts they gave.
An actor's death is the death of many.
Deaths like these are surely
The cries of a wounded country.
With this one example to go by, he was a better playwright than poet, but except for the self-deprecation which should definitely have hit the cutting room floor, it's hard to want to edit much out of a poem with so much anger at the injustice of a country that wastes its artists in scapegoating xenophobia, besides which there's at least one good line per actor and sometimes more. He wouldn't even have been living in the United States by the time of its writing, having burned off the last of his contract with Columbia by the end of 1951. He hadn't burned off his anger. No reason he should have. I may be confused by the existence of his Hollywood career, but I'm still pissed about the politics that snapped it short. The twentieth century could stop coming around on the guitar any measure now. On Sunday, I'll be at the HFA.
no subject
No poems have turned up in what my sister's told me about. If anything comes up, you'll be the first to know. Enjoy the film tonight.
no subject
Yes. Stylistically, most of it is well-turned prose with line breaks, but "He always had more art to sell / Than films were bright enough to buy" is a mic-drop.
No poems have turned up in what my sister's told me about. If anything comes up, you'll be the first to know.
I appreciate it and your sister's patience.
Enjoy the film tonight.
It's still Wednesday! It had better still be Wednesday! I have deadlines by Friday!
no subject
no subject
I already don't know where most of this year went!
*hugs*
no subject
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You understand.
no subject
On Sunday, I'll be at the HFA.
Oh, how nice! (for a change) *hugs*
no subject
He's just lucky I haven't written a ghost poem about him.
*hugs*
Oh, how nice! (for a change)
Thank you! I have managed not to see almost all the movies in theaters I planned on this fall and I am resolved not to miss this one!
no subject
Indeed.
Enjoy the HFA!
no subject
Or at least we could have more of the cool parts, like civil rights and the WPA?
Enjoy the HFA!
Thank you! I wanted to see so many of their Columbia rarities which my health precluded, so I am feeling stubborn as well as thematic about this one.
no subject
no subject
Oh, that is very cool. Have a wonderful time!
no subject
no subject
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Feh!! Feel better! Definitely someday.
*hugs and throat lozenges*