I recommend all of Jane Austen's books, the novels of Dawn Powell, Nabokov's "Lolita", Gelsey Kirkland's two autobiographies, and any of djb's posts. As for that film of Nijinsky's diary--a lot of silly artsy images, a couple of spray painted and feathered people dying in slow motion in the bushes, and a fussy, prissy, elderly British actor reading the words of a young man from Russia.

<small>[ 11 January 2003, 03:19 AM: Message edited by: Liscarkat ]</small>

Wow, Liscarkat, I'm flattered! Well, here's one of my literary efforts of which I'm very proud:

It's something worth committing to memory, if I do say so myself.

My reaction to reading about Dancer, the fictional account of Nureyev's life, was that writing a novel about someone so recently deceased, about whom so much is known, is a very strange idea. What would be really interesting is to write such a book about a person while he's still living, and then hear that person's comments about it.

You mean it's not already being done in Hollywood or in D.C.?

Liscarkat and Djb, perhaps you’re right and we can start some ‘light winter reading’ with some poetry personally selected just for us.

Untitled [from Students' Questions\Arranging Hair for Ballet Class...]

WendyMV,

do you also do what I used to do with hairpins?

Besides starting by pointing it away from the center of the bun,
once I turned it back toward the center

and
picked up some scalp hair,
I'd tilt the leading end up slightly,
so as to pick up some of the bun again,

and
Then angle it down again to pick up the scalp hair again.
This weaving

In
And
Out

seemed to make the hairpin extra

secure.

--2003

I hate to say it, but personally, I’m not sure that I’ve warmed up to this yet. Though ostensibly about hair pins and setting up secure ballet hair, I think there’s something more sinister at work here in the way the form of the poem picks up and plays around with its own back and forth, “In / And / Out” imagery of ballet hair security. At first, there is a sense of security in the concordance between the image of the hairpin working away then towards the “center” as the way the poem unfolds—each line describing the hairpin working towards the center of the poem. The performative action of each of the first two appearances of “and” reinforces this sense of orderliness as it adds an additional stanza “and / picked up some scalp hair” and “and / Then angle it down again…” More stanzas – more hair.

But, the shocking last 5 lines denies us any sense of harmony and order as their spatial arrangement functions discordantly with its apparent reassuring message of “extra / secure.” This questioning of the ballet hair’s secureness brings out the latent mismatch between appearances and reality—“This weaving … seemed to make the hair extra / secure” and the opening “do you do what I used to do with hairpins?” (italics mine for emphasis)

The estranged spatial configuration of the final word “secure,” the middle section’s preoccupation with spatio-thematic congruence and performativity, and the thin veil between wish fantasy and pedestrian reality of “Seemed” and “used to do,” then, only undermines our own complacency within a smug world view where secure ballet hair is a mere palliative for the angst of modern society.

*********

What was this thread about, again?

I believe it was about light winter poetry analysis.

Thanks, Jeff, for the new presentation and analyis of my "work" - I guess I really was brilliant and just didn't realize it!

Now, why couldn't I have done what you just did? I wouldn't have had to repeat my second semester freshman English class 3 times (no kidding).

<small>[ 12 January 2003, 05:31 AM: Message edited by: djb ]</small>

djb, CriticalDance.com would be proud to publish your collection of revealing poems, depicting the unconscious angst beneath the strength, composure and elegance of a professional dancer, through honest and detailed narration of the conflicting neuroses in otherwise nondescript routines of a daily regimen. We've already enlisted Jeff as the editor and analyst.

Now, can I ask what us West Coasters are doing up so late on a Sat night (or is it up so early on a Sun morning)?

Azlan, you must know that much of the creative process tends to manifest late at night as evidenced by the articulate and illuminating posts by djb and Jeff. I, for one, am looking forward to more of djb's deep, yet shallow; heavy, yet light; obvious, yet subtle works. Hopefully accompanied by Jeff's highly intellectual and insightful analyses-both showing brilliance in their respective fields.

Azlan Some of us have no lives...

but, actually there is apparently one West Coast CDer who does because I'm still waiting for that most mandatory of critical approaches to poetry, the physics analysis-- you know, hair pin friction coefficients, stray hair vector arc-tangents, ballet bun centrifugal moment arms, etc...

I hate to disappoint my fans, but writing Untitled wore me out (but not as much as reading Jeff's analysis of it did), and I will have to be a one-work phenomenon.

I think that Untitled deserves to be read in public, and the only...person who could...do...it justice is William...Shatner.

<small>[ 12 January 2003, 05:28 PM: Message edited by: djb ]</small>

Jeff, I think there's a Ph.D dissertation to be made of this. Are you a professor, a wine bottle label writer, or one of the people who composes those little wall-mounted explanations for installation art? You've sure got the gift of academic jive. (comments intended teasingly and with admiration for mock-academic writing style; not intended seriously or with the object of offending)

<small>[ 16 January 2003, 01:44 PM: Message edited by: Liscarkat ]</small>

My god you are all so talented. This is why I love this site! I am in tears!

"KHAAAAN!!!"

Brilliant work by William Shatner. Yes, I see how he would be the best person to read Untitled.

I will have to print this poem and keep it with the collection of Emily Dickinson poems I keep in my car, right next to "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain..." As I recall, three of the six stanzas also begins with "And."

She stole that idea from me, you know ("I felt a Hairpin, in my Bun").

Jeff,

I hope you weren't referring to me! I probably feel asleep before you all posted. Besides, I'm still completely mystified at how women with long hair can keep their bun together with one deftly placed chopstick, so until someone writes a book about it, I'll stick to cars .

Just to stay somewhat on-topic: the Joseph book, Stravinsky and Balanchine, Journey of Invention, is very good, and not at all as technical as I thought it would be. There are a few sections that do take a bit of music theory to get through, but it's few and far between. It's best to think of the book as a chronicle of Stravinsky's and Balanchine's lives using their collaborative works as signposts. The origins, construction, and first performances of the works are discussed, intertwined with and connected to events in their personal and professional lives. The author references an amazingly wide and eclectic, but sometimes gratuitous, range of books to make his points (Julian Jaynes' The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, anyone?).

--Andre

<small>[ 16 January 2003, 12:49 AM: Message edited by: Andre Yew ]</small>