Though a Little Out of Fashion, poem by Deborah Herman (Half New Year Poetry Series)

THOUGH A LITTLE OUT OF FASHION
by Deborah Herman

Though a little out of fashion,
There is much care and valor in the morning

I think we have no great cause to desire
the approach of day.

We see the beginning of the day, but I think we shall
never see the end of it.

A friend
Under you

A good and kind gentleman.
I pray, think of our estate
as men wracked upon a sand,
that look to be washed off the next tide.

I speak to you, but a man,
as I am.

The violet smells; the element shows;
all his senses have human conditions.

Laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man;
his affections are higher mounted,
when they stoop, they stoop with the wing.

Therefore, his fears relish in reason.

He, by showing it, should dishearten.

He may show outward courage;
but I believe, as cold a night as he could wish.

AUTHOR’S NOTE:. I have chosen for my Half New Year Poetry submission page 72 [for July 2nd, Half New Year] of Henry V. I have taken the dialogue between men out of context — they are speaking of rumours they have heard about what kind of man the king may be, without knowing he is present. I have instead turned the prose into a love poem, rather than a dialogue that takes place on the eve of war. The play as a whole is about sexual conquest — Henry must “woo” Catherine of France before forcefully taking over the country to make his leadership (and his offspring) legitimate. The play is also rife with “homosocial” male companionship: the “band of brothers” speech, and even the Harfleur speech, when Henry threatens that his army will kill all the babies and rape all of the girls of the city. So I have taken liberties with page 72 of the play and have tried to make it into something beautiful (and sexually ambiguous).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Deborah Herman is an emerging poet with previous publications in Existere, Rhythm, Transverse, and Vallum. Her poem, “Endurance,” will be published in the upcoming water-themed issue of the Motif Anthology (Vol. 4).

Cul-de-Sac, new play by Rachel Carey, Beth Jastroch, and Bob Kolsby

Congratulations to Rachel Carey — author of the novel Debt (Silver Birch Press, 2013) — and her fellow playwrights Beth Jastroch and Bob Kolsby on the premiere of their collaborative play Cul-de-Sac at The Shelter in New York City. Directed by Michael Kingsbaker, the play runs from Thursday, June 5 through Sunday, June 8th and features Kelley Gates, Meghan E. Jones, Jordan Kenneth Kamp, C.J. Lindsey, Morgan McGuire, and Aaron Novak.

BACKGROUND:  In the summer of 2013, The Shelter tasked three writers with a unique, collaborative challenge: using a palette of assigned characters, meld individually written stories into a single, seamless play. Six characters, three writers, one narrative. Nine months later, Cul-de-Sac was born. Examining the lives of three couples living as neighbors on a suburban cul-de-sac, writers Rachel Carey, Beth Jastroch, and Bob Kolsby use marriage as a forum to examine the shifting gender norms, cultural expectations, and everyday realities faced by today’s young couples. They show us that what happens behind closed doors can often surprise us, challenging our beliefs about love, passion, and the fidelity of marriage.

WHEN: Thursday, June 5 – Sunday, June 8, 2014

WHERE: Cherry Lane Theatre, 38 Commerce Street, New York City 10014 (just below Bleecker in the West Village)

RUNNING TIME: 130 minutes with a 10-minute intermission

TICKETS: ovationtix.com

Cast recording of Bukowsical!

BUKOWSICAL!


Book and Lyrics by Spencer Gren and Gary Stockdale 


Music by Gary Stockdale

A completely irreverent, wacko, hilarious, tuneful, and, above all, raunchy musical. 

BUKOWSICAL started life as a 50-minute one-act in Los Angeles, was revised and expanded, and went on to the New York Fringe Festival, where it won the award for Outstanding Musical, and was later produced by New Line in St. Louis. The musical traces Bukowski‘s life from obscurity to international fame.

LA Weekly called Bukowsical! “riotously funny.” The Los Angeles Times called it “an uproarious romp.” Backstage said, “The production skims along, each number wrapping appalling bad taste in a perky, upbeat melody that makes dipsomania a lighthearted romp. . . It’s terrific fun and so wrong in all the right ways.”

Original cast recording of Bukowsical! available for $17.98 at kritzerland.com.

Script doctor, New Yorker cartoon by Michael Maslin

CAPTION: Is there a doctor of literature in the house?

CREDIT: New Yorker cartoon by Michael Maslin, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Prints available at condenaststore.com.

The Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, MN

Built in 1910, and originally named the Sam S. Shubert Theater, the Fitzgerald Theater in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota, is home to The Prairie Home Companion, the weekly National Public Radio variety series hosted by Garrison Keillor. Currently owned by Minnesota Public Radio, the theater serves as venue for a range dramatic and musical works. In 1994, the theater was renamed in honor of St. Paul’s native son, F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose birthday we celebrate today — September 24th.

Photo: QuoinMonkey, All Rights Reserved

William Faulkner Idolizes William Shakespeare

“I have a one-volume Shakespeare that I have just about worn out carrying around with me.” WILLIAM FAULKNER

William Faulkner stated many times that William Shakespeare served as his single greatest influence. An article entitled “A Casebook on Mankind: Faulkner’s Use of Shakespeare” by Robert W. Hamblin explores the connection between the two authors. An excerpt is included below.

Throughout his career William Faulkner acknowledged the influence of many writers upon his work — Twain, Dreiser, Anderson, Keats, Dickens, Conrad, Balzac, Bergson, and Cervantes, to name only a few — but the one writer that he consistently mentioned as a constant and continuing influence was William Shakespeare...In one of his last interviews shortly before his death in 1962, Faulkner said of all writers, ‘We yearn to be as good as Shakespeare.’ 

The parallels in the lives and careers of the two writers are remarkably striking.  Both were born in provincial small towns but found their eventual success in metropolitan cities, Shakespeare in London and Faulkner in New York and Hollywood…Neither received a great deal of formal education.  Both started out as poets but shortly turned to other narrative forms, Faulkner to fiction and Shakespeare to drama…

Each wrote both tragedies and comedies..A number of dominant themes and emphases are common to both writers, including the imaginative use of historical materials, the incorporation of both tragic and comic views of life, and the paradoxical tension between fate (in Faulkner’s case, determinism) and free will.”

Moreover, both writers exhibit a fascination for experimental form and language, flouting conventional rules to create new narrative structures and delighting in neologisms, puns, and other forms of word play.  Finally, both writers were acutely interested in the paradoxical relationship of life and art.”

Read the entire article at this link.

The Garrick Year, novel by Margaret Drabble, Read by Paul Newman

In the photo at right, Paul Newman reads THE GARRICK YEAR, a 1964 novel by British author Margaret Drabble. Written when she was 24, a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and married to an actor, THE GARRICK YEAR is an insider’s account of a young woman’s life in the theater.

I don’t know if Newman’s face expresses an “Oh, those Brits” reaction to the book or if he’s just squinting in the sun. (Where are your sunglasses, Paul?) Also don’t know if this shot was taken on a movie set or while Newman was racing one of his cars. (It was probably snapped on the set of the 1967 movie COOL HAND LUKE, since Newman looks as if he’s dressed for a chain gang.)

In 2009, Roger Angell wrote a “Summer Reading” piece in the New Yorker where he discussed his love for THE GARRICK YEAR (he rereads the book each summer) — and why he thinks it’s the prolific Drabble’s most “alive” novel. Read Angell’s article here.

Find THE GARRICK YEAR by Margaret Drabble at Amazon.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Margaret Drabble is the author of 17 novels, including The Sea Lady, The Seven Sisters, The Peppered Moth, and The Needle’s Eye. She has written biographies of Arnold Bennett and Angus Wilson, and is the editor of the fifth and sixth editions of The Oxford Companion to English Literature. For her contributions to contemporary English literature, she was made a Dame of the British Empire in 2008.

Happy Birthday to Playwright August Wilson

“I know some things when I start. I know, let’s say, that the play is going to be a 1970s or a 1930s play, and it’s going to be about a piano, but that’s it. I slowly discover who the characters are as I go along.” AUGUST WILSON (1945-2005)

For writers who make it up as they go along (and I plead guilty), August Wilson‘s comment about his working method makes us feel…well, okay about not knowing where we’re going when we start.

Born on April 27, 1945, Wilson grew up poor in Pittsburgh, dropped out of high school at 16, and educated himself at the Carnegie Library while working a series of menial jobs. In 1965, at age 20, he purchased a used typewriter for 10 dollars and started to compose poetry. A few years later, in 1968, he cofounded the Black Horizon Theatre and began to write and produce plays — starting with Recycling. Wilson went on to author many plays — including the Pulitzer Prize winning Fences (1987) and The Piano Lesson (1990). One of the all-time great American playwrights — with a career that spanned nearly 40 years — Wilson’s work continues to inspire and promote discussion. He passed away at age 60 in 2005, and has been the recipient of many posthumous tributes — including a theater in the New York City Broadway Theater District named in his honor.

Script Doctor, New Yorker Cartoon by Michael Maslin

Phases, a New Play by Rachel Carey Premieres in New York City

Congratulations to Rachel Carey — whose debut novel DEBT will be available from Silver Birch Press later this month — on the premiere of Phases, a play she wrote and directed that’s featured in the 2012 Thespis Theater Festival in New York City.

The play’s final performance will take place on Saturday, October 13, 2012, at 9 p.m. For more information, visit the Thespis Theater Festival website.

Phases is a comedy about the ways that the memory of past relationships can haunt present relationships — and follows John, a young man who becomes obsessed with running away to Alaska but can’t decide which girl he wants to take with him.

Congratulations to Rachel Carey for an outstanding coast-to-coast October 2012 — premiere of her play Phases in New York and publication of her novel Debt in Los Angeles.