STRATFORD, ONTARIO, THEATER, DYLAN THOMAS

The Force That through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower by Dylan Thomas : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets.

Stratford, Ontario is a city of 30,000 in hilly, prosperous farmland two hours west of Toronto. It feels almost English as England does; otherwise, it’s an unlikely place for first-rate professional theater to thrive, but it does, and about half of it is Shakespearean.

Stratford has four theaters, a thriving downtown, all kinds of eateries, a few bookstores (used and new), a mile-long lake with rich greenery and walkways, just down a hill from the main drag (Ontario Street). There are scores of walkers in both places. In the couple of hours before matinees and evening performances, the place gets pleasantly busy. Families, seniors, middle-aged couples, young couples, along with singles gathering at pubs, it’s a mixed crowd, and everyone seems glad to be there.

I’m back from seeing two plays at Stratford. The first was Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night, a one-man performance with Wyn Davies as Dylan Thomas. I learned a few things about the Welsh poet, and the acting was thoroughly professional, but I’m afraid I was not bowled over the way I expected to be.

I'm not sure what else Wyn Davies and playwright Leo Pownall could realistically have accomplished, but I don’t know or care much more about Dylan Thomas now than I did before the play, and that seems a less than optimal response. The lubricated Welshman struck me as one more sad, self-destructive poet, often gorgeous in his imagery and cadences, but also windy and full of himself, as Wordsworth the philosopher and Keats the sensualist converge in Thomas’ psyche.

Despite some great lines in the script, the play needed more information on just how it was America that lionized, mythologized, and thus killed the poet at the age of 39. We are asked to believe that he alone didn’t drink himself into a fatal “insult to the brain.” American groupies were equally to blame.

That’s the take on his work, life, and death that I’ve heard since college, but I don’t see why we should infer that he would have been a moderate drinker, better poet and healthier man if he’d stayed in Wales. For all its merits, the play does not address that question, or Thomas’ stature in the canon, or how he lived and wrote aside from whiskey, philandering and envy of Shakespeare. Wyn Davies' professionalism as an actor could not breathe life into those vacancies.

Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night makes for a moderately interesting, informative (re)introduction to Dylan Thomas’ work and life, but it merits are tepid and spotty, and might well leave viewers wanting more, especially if they already had some knowledge of the poet’s life and work.

Here is the most famous villanelle of all and Dylan Thomas' most famous poem, the source for the play's title:

Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.Discover Poetry.

In case this has someone all fired up about Welsh power, Dylan Thomas poems were also discussed here on May 15 an 18, 2010. These poems and the Stratford play do make clear that childhood, nature, time, and death were major concerns in Thomas' poems.

Next time: Stratford’s Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris.



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Yeats, "The Lake Isle of Innisfree"

The Lake Isle of Innisfree by William Butler Yeats : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

SHADY GROVE, DOC WATSON, MARY OLIVER, MAURICE MANNING

YouTube - David Holt and Doc Watson: Shady Grove







For just a bit longer, let's continue with the American Primitive--hey, that's the title of Mary Oliver's 1983 collection, my introduction to her work. Here she is. See any connection to Maurice Manning's poem from Bucolics?
washingtonpost.com: Style Live: Books & Reading

Now Maurice Manning:

Bucolics [LIX] - Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More

I still think Manning's "Boss" is God, a shadow stone, a weight that won't move. But if memory serves, I didn't convince anyone last November 15.



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Movie Review: Winter's Bone

Winter's Bone: A+


Is there anything lofty or even fundamentally human about a primitive mountain code? A clan’s code? Where are the boundaries between the individual and any group, from family to neighbor to law enforcement? Where do loyalty, love, and submission intersect? Where does the changing role of women fit into all of that? In the mountains? Well, mebbe.

Set in the Missouri Ozarks, Winter’s Bone is a must see. Ree Dolly, a 17-year-old girl, is the heroine (not merely a protagonist, but a bona fide heroine). She’s the caretaker for her 11- and 6-year-old siblings and lives in a rundown mountain home with her demented mother.

Despite her courage, Ree asks for nothing more, but the law will not leave her alone with the little she has. Her father, Jesup, busted again for creating “crank,” something like crystal meth, has put up the property as security against his court appearance a few days hence. Will he show, or will he leave his family to fend for themselves while he lights out for the territory? Yes, this might be the darker flip side of a Huck Finn journey.

The adult males in these hills have names like Teardrop, Jesup, and Thump. The country-fi-cation could be too much, but I fell for it big time, and I predict most viewers will. If the characters don’t get you, the landscape will—or the music. Listen for very nice renderings of “Farther Along” and “Come All Ye Fair and Tender Maidens,” by Meredith Sisco. There’s other music, but I really heard those two.

Rewriting Faulkner or Flannery O’Connor (especially "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" or “Good Country People”?) is risky business. We owe so much to those giants of the past, and it’s so easy to cross one line into cynicism about country folk as mere critters, or that other line, into romanticizing them, that one wonders why any artist takes the chance.

There must be something big, maybe some fundamentally human thing, in the rural American South to make it worth revisiting so often. Winter’s Bone is one more reason to hope superb writers and film makers keep trying.

Apparently it’s hard to find Winter’s Bone in theaters, and I have no idea whether phone calls to your local Roxy will help. But it’s worth a try. There will be talk about this as best movie of the year or the decade.

On another note, beyond Altadenahiker and Ken Mac's recent interest in rodents, is there a reason for today’s second photo? Oh, I ‘xpect. See the movie.

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Winter's Bone, Mac Wiseman, Mythology

Set in the Missouri Ozarks, the movie Winter’s Bone is a must see. But it raises a question for folks like me: “Roots music and other mythologizing of mountain life—how far are they from the reality?” And more broadly, is it possible to know a way of life without living it? Is it possible and honest to romanticize a way of life if you have lived it?

I reserve the right to say more about Winter’s Bone, but for now: see it. It will win awards, and you don’t want to be standing in the cloak room with your nose against the wall while everyone else is cool and knows what’s going on.

In the meantime, meet or get re-acquainted with Mac Wiseman, maybe the richest, most fluid voice in Bluegrass. If you like it at all, I hope you'll wander around at YouTube, which has some of his other best stuff.


YouTube - Mac Wiseman-Did She Mention My Name (70's)

YouTube - Mac Wiseman Jimmie Brown The Newsboy

YouTube - Mac Wiseman - Wabash Cannonball & Old Folks at Home



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African Eyes, Hardsleeper43

Barbaro is back to posting, this time from Senegal and Gambia in West Africa. His first entry makes for compelling reading at http://hardsleeper43.blogspot.com/.

In a couple of weeks, my daughter heads to Mali for a week of work there.

As a long-time believer in something vaguely like Karma, or just coincidence with a capital C, I happened to be at the Detroit Institute of Arts a couple of days ago, where the featured exhibit was African art that presented the Western . . . uh . . . visitors?? . . . as perceived by African artists over the last three centuries or so. It was a stirring show.

Then this morning I got an email from Barbaro, saying he had arrived in Dakar, was posting, would I please spread the word.

I take some good-natured crap from certain breakfast guys for proclaiming, with Hamlet, the possibility of "a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will" in the form of Coincidence. But Karma is more interesting as a word. Accuracy is overrated.

Had I known I was going to post this, I'd have taken more shots of the exterior and hallways at the D.I.A. It would be a handsome building in any city.

And the cafeteria serves very good food.

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Education: Some Modest Proposals

John Frederick Peto, “After Night’s Study,” Detroit Institute of Arts







I’ve been debating whether to bother you with this. Well, thanks to Ohio River Life last Monday, July 12, here it is — concerning schools, some Banjo-Think.

For education to occur, whatever else there might be, there must be the following, in this order of importance (also, notice the adjectives—not “brilliant” or “perfect,” but “willing” and “well-intentioned” people):

A. a willing student.
B. a laboratory—which may be a book, a computer, a forest, a frog, or test tubes and the like.
C. a well-intentioned teacher as guide.

Everything else is optional.

I don’t go around preaching that, but when I do offer it, I get looks that say, “Isn’t he quaint? He hasn’t even mentioned my Special Interest Group.”

Here’s the junk, the hullaballoo, everyone else seems to find essential to education:

Interfering parents.

Governmental exams written by politicians (who may or may not have been educators at some point in their lives).

Political action groups, often as bodyguards for students or teachers.

Educational supervisors (bosses) who look more at lesson plans than lessons — actual classroom experiences or other teacher-student interactions, which include the personal baggage of teacher and student.

A schoolhouse culture that endorses instructional logorrhea, a teacher’s talking at students at the expense of open discussion and other kinds of lab work.

Fear of discipline, lest you anger a parent or political group who themselves lack discipline.

Packets of rules, volumes rumored to cover every eventuality.

The Surrender of thought to local or regional sensibilities, including the
Left-ness, Right-ness, or trendiness in syllabi and curricula.

External experts (“consultants”) who seem important in a field but may or may not have useful, practical information.

Teachers’ attendance at conferences. Teachers' talk about how many conferences they've attended.

Theories about education or subject matter.

Faculty meetings in which bosses or colleagues drone on about the obvious or the irrelevant when all involved could be preparing, grading, resting or having fun with family and friends.

Which conference, meeting, or packet demonstrates to teachers The How of mixing compassion for and expectations of students? Or The How of QueenBees and Bullies? Or The How of comfort with your different drummer? Who's got the instruction manual?

Teacher publications, lectures at conferences and other trophies that bring glory to the school are mistaken for merit in the classroom.

Trophies for students. No trophy = no self-esteem. Hence a trophy epidemic, trophy-inflation and students with holes in their middles. Trophies as charity? Listening to students, respecting students, encouraging and sympathizing with students are vapor that cannot be measured or advertised. Students need objects, tangible currency, not love.

Teachers who think “academic freedom” has no limits.

Teachers who see the classroom as a soap box.

Students who have surrendered.

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What riled up a Sleeping Banjo? At the July 12 Ohio River Life
( http://ohioriverlife.blogspot.com ), the blogger presents a troubling situation at the University of Illinois. For details, you’ll need to go there or elsewhere, but in a nutshell, a student has taken a professor to task for his views on Catholicism, homosexuality, and the broader issue of academic freedom. For now, it’s the Illinois professor who is on the hot seat—what a surprise. But my sympathies are not as predictable as you might expect.

It's an outrage that comparative religion cannot be taught in some (all?) public schools. Aren’t religions right up there with wars as one important way of understanding a culture? But apparently neither teachers nor the citizenry are up to the task of scholarly inquiry or the spirit of curiosity. Everybody's got a pamphlet to sell and alleged sensitivities to protect.

No, I was never personally victimized by the factors above, but I resent the defensiveness I found myself developing after a few years of teaching.

Paranoia? Maybe. But if you can't bring joy to teaching, there's little point in entering the building. In addition to your subject matter, you're teaching (and modeling) a passion for ideas, intellectual curiosity, the proverbial life of the mind. Yes, even in high school, even in the sticks or the inner city. You are the alternative to what is.

But there are thousands out there who want to make this a Left or Right propaganda affair, rather than a Why and How journey. They listen only to each other, they cluster like trendy teams of germs, and insert themselves into the classroom (phallic imagery intended) with little regard for what they are replacing, such as other people actually listening to their child, young people listening to each other, creeping forward . . . "Society creeps ever forward on the backs of its neurotics" (source unknown) -- and on the backs of youth who have been jarred out of their prior indoctrinations.

An interest group behind every pillar means that well-intentioned students and teachers—the majority—are screwed. Am I talking to that Illinois prof or the students who are after him? I don't know. Probably both. But somebody needs to shut up and look in the mirror.



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