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Thursday 26 May 2016

Think About It 013: MARLON BRANDO


A movie that I was in, called On the Waterfront; there was a scene in a taxicab, where I turn to my brother, who’s come to turn me over to the gangsters, and I lament to him that he never looked after me, he never gave me a chance, that I could have been a contender, I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum… ‘You should of looked out after me, Charley.’  It was very moving.  And people often spoke about that, ‘Oh, my God, what a wonderful scene, Marlon, blah blah blah blah blah.’  It wasn’t wonderful at all.  The situation was wonderful.  Everybody feels like he could have been a contender, he could have been somebody, everybody feels as though he’s partly bum, some part of him.  He is not fulfilled and he could have done better, he could have been better.  Everybody feels a sense of loss about something.  So that was what touched people.  It wasn’t the scene itself.  There are other scenes where you’ll find actors being expert, but since the audience can’t clearly identify with them, they just pass unnoticed.  Wonderful scenes never get mentioned.  Only those that affect people.

Interview (Playboy, January 1979)



Use the link below to read an article that describes how MARLON BRANDO learned to gain confidence in himself while struggling to establish his career in New York City in the late 1940s:

 

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/vivienne-mayer/the-best-confidence-advic_b_9187354.html

 

 

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Think About It 012: RUMER GODDEN

 
Think About It 010: ROLLO MAY

 
Think About It 002: C WRIGHT MILLS

Thursday 19 May 2016

Poet of the Month 036: YEHUDA AMICHAI

 



YEHUDA AMICHAI
c 1970




 
 
 
 
A MAN IN HIS LIFE


 
 
 
A man doesn't have time in his life
to have time for everything.

He doesn't have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose.

Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.

 

A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
to laugh and cry with the same eyes,
with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.
 

And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,
to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest
what history
takes years and years to do.
 

A man doesn't have time.
 

When he loses he seeks, when he finds
he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves
he begins to forget.
 

And his soul is seasoned, his soul
is very professional.
 

Only his body remains forever
an amateur.
It tries and it misses,
gets muddled, doesn't learn a thing,
drunk and blind in its pleasures
and its pains.
 

He will die as figs die in autumn,
Shriveled and full of himself and sweet,
the leaves growing dry on the ground,
the bare branches pointing to the place
where there's time for everything.
 
 
 


 
 
Translator uncredited

? 1970




 
 
 
 
The following biographical statement appears on the Poetry Soup website.  [It is re-posted here for information purposes only and, like the poem re-posted above, remains its author's exclusive copyright-protected intellectual property.]
 

Yehuda Amichai (1924 2000) was an Israeli poet.  Amichai is considered by many to be the greatest modern Israeli poet, and was one of the first to write in colloquial Hebrew.  His writings often dealt with the issues of day-to-day life, and were less overtly literary than many nineteenth century Hebrew poets such as Hayyim Nahman Bialik.  His writings are characterized by gentle irony and the pain of damaged love.  It was a love for people, for a religion and for a land, most of all it was a love for the city of Jerusalem.

 

Amichai was born in Würzburg, Germany, as Ludwig Pfeuffer, then immigrated with his family to Palestine in 1936.  He fought in  World War II (British Army Jewish Brigade) and the Israeli War of Independence as a young man.  He became an advocate of peace and reconciliation in the region, working with Palestinian writers.

 

He was 'discovered' in 1965 by Ted Hughes, who later translated several of Amichai's books.

 

'He should have won the Nobel Prize in any of the last 20 years,' wrote Jonathan Wilson in The New York Times (December 10, 2000), 'but he knew that as far as the Scandinavian judges were concerned, and whatever his personal politics, which were indubitably on the dove-ish side, he came from the wrong side of the stockade.'


Amichai once stated that all poetry is political.  'This,' he said, 'is because real poems deal with a human response to reality, and politics is part of reality, history in the making… Even if a poet writes about sitting in a glass house drinking tea, it reflects politics.'  Despite this, he is regarded as one of the most 'accessible' of all twentieth century poets, one whose work has been translated into English, French, German, Spanish and Catalan and widely published in North America, the UK and Europe.
 
 
 
 
Use the link below to read more poems by Israeli poet YEHUDA AMICHAI:
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Last updated 13 April 2021  
 
 

Thursday 12 May 2016

The Write Advice 081: CLAIRE VAYE WATKINS


Let us embrace a do-it-yourself canon, wherein we each make our own canon filled with what we love to read, what speaks to us and challenges us and opens us up, wherein we can each determine our artistic lineages for ourselves, with curiosity and vigor, rather than trying to shoehorn ourselves into a canon ready made and gifted us by some white fucks at Oxford... Let us use our words and our gazes to make the invisible visible. Let us tell the truth.
      Let us, each of us, write things that are uncategorizable, rather than something that panders to and condones and codifies those categories.
      Let us burn this motherfucking system to the ground and build something better.

'On Pandering' [Tin House, 23 November 2015]


 

Use the link below to read the full 2015 essay by North American author and academic CLAIRE VAYE WATKINS:

 

http://www.tinhouse.com/blog/41314/on-pandering.html

 

 

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The Write Advice 071: TONI MORRISON

  
The Write Advice 059: KRISTINA HAYNES

  
The Write Advice 039: DEBORAH EISENBERG

Thursday 5 May 2016

Rockers & Mods 003: JOHNNY BURNETTE & HIS ROCK 'N ROLL TRIO






ROCKBILLY BOOGIE
JOHNNY BURNETTE & HIS ROCK 'N ROLL TRIO
Coral Records USA, 1957





The exceptional guitar work of Paul Burlison would be enough to elevate Rockbilly Boogie to the status of a rock 'n roll classic all on its own.  The sound Burlison makes would not be out of place on an early record by The Clash and nor would Burnette's blistering lead vocal –– further proof, should anyone still need it, that Memphis had a lot more to offer the world besides the culture-changing phenomenon better known as Elvis Presley.
 
 
Use the links below to listen to more great music by JOHNNY BURNETTE with his ROCK 'N ROLL TRIO (and as a solo artist) and the 1980 song Tired Of Toein' The Line which was a #1 hit in Australia for his son ROCKY BURNETTE:
 
 
Special thanks to those who take the time to upload music to YouTube.  Your efforts are appreciated by music lovers everywhere.
 

 
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Last updated 5 April 2021