Category: Film
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Winter Love by Han Suyin
The past few months have been difficult for our family. We lost one of our pillars, my father-in-law, Jerry Croft, who was as close to a superhero as real-life affords. You can learn more about Jerry, whose joyous fighting spirit will continue to inspire me for as long as I live, here and here. He […]
“Come on Down to Arizona”: Vernon Duke Hits Phoenix
I am not here following the caretaker Prime Minister who has resigned but not. He appears to live in some sort of borderland theatre which has become boring beyond belief; I am referring to Boris Drayluk’s collection of poems My Holywood published by Paul Dry Books. I have just finished Jonathan Coe’s Mr Wilder and Me and am currently reading Nicholson Baker’s The Anthologist which seem to form a suitable background on which to project Drayluk’s moving collection.
His collection begins with a mixture of recollection and nostalgia-
This much is clear :the good old days have passed
Some giant fig trees, a few pygmy palms
deep broken shade on disenfranchised grass;
This magnificent collection by the Editor-in-Chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books has many lovely poems. Dralyuk has a stirring feeling for the dilapidated landscape of Los Angeles and a wide understanding of the hinterland of European Culture. He is a skilled translator and his poems have a deep moving quality appropriately relieved by wit and humour. Here is one short example-
OLD FLAME
Above the tongue-tip is an air so blue
I can compare it only to how you
who once consumed me in a yellow heat,
now scarcely singe me when we meet.
Dralyuk writes of loss and passing time and of memory under the condition of exile. I particularly enjoyed Stravinsky at the Farmer’s Market; here are two stanzas.
Christopher Isherwood is a disciple, slipping
off to the Viertals on the weekends far from Swami,
swimming naked. In Brentwood, Schoenburg lobs grapefruits
and insults at Feuchtwanger’s wife.
Herr Doktor Faustus, exile is no bargin.
You move von heute auf morgen.
Stravinsky lunches at the Farmer’s Market.
The Firebird is plucked, Petrushka’s henpecked.
Here there are layers of sorrow portrayed in a dream-like landscape. Here is a photograph of the poet and a YouTube interview on this collection.
It is always interesting to surmise what was happening in the world when you were a very small child. This intriguing black and white film from 1947, Hue and Cry has some of the answers. It is set in the feral landscapes of bombed out London. However, the spirit and humour of the kids captures some of the trauma of the recent blitz but much more the youngsters resilience. The following clip shows a little of what I mean.
I found this DvD in one of my local charity shops and was intrigued by the fact that the plot revolves around a children’s comic called The Trump. The blurb on the reverse also mentioned that it was the first of the famous Ealing Comedies and there were fascinating shots of post-war London’s exterior locations. In fact as I watched the film it in some parts reminded me of seeing the recent gang wars of Sondheim’s West Side Story as filmed by Spielberg. Indeed some of the visual tropes or tricks were similar too. This second clip gives details about the locations of the film and how they look today.
Passing beyond the psychogeography of “Hue and Cry” I also thought there was a sort of undertext. The working class children with their naïve and energetic enthusiasm overcome the sharks and spivs in their criminal activities. Very much the product of those heroic times when the Atlee government brought so much to recovery. There was something democratic if somewhat frenetic here which vividly contrasts with life here today. The hectic has become frenetic in a Governent of the Posh Boys and what used to be known in Lambeth as Wide Boys.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_boy#Fictional_portrayals
To finish on a more upbeat note; this film has amusing glimpses of life in the old Covent Garden Market. It is worth watching for that alone. However, the acting of Lambeth born Harry Fowler, Jack Warner and especially Alastair Sim is superb. Talking of markets let me conclude with these lines from Charlotte Mew’s Saturday Market.
penwithlit 