Henry Beard

by Peter Cates

Henry Beard

Poetry for Cats
Villard Books, 1994, 87 pages.

Poetry for Cats is a clever volume in which Henry Beard (1945-) took 39 well-known poems by as many poets, ranging from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Poe, Whitman and Emily Dickinson, and re-wrote them from the point of view of their cats. I now offer Sitting by the Fire on a Snowy Evening, by Robert Frost’s cat, the original Stopping by the Woods is easily accessible via Google:

Sitting by the Fire on a Snowy Evening

Whose chair this is by now I know.
He’s somewhere in the forest though;
He will not see me sitting here
A place I’m not supposed to go.

He really is a little queer
To leave his fire’s cozy cheer
And ride out by the frozen lake
The coldest evening of the year.

To love the snow it takes a flake:
The chill that makes your footpads ache,
The drifts too high to lurk or creep,
The icicles that drip and break.

His chair is comfy, soft and deep.
But I have got an urge to leap,
And mice to catch before I sleep.
And mice to catch before I sleep.

Douglas Kenney

Beard started working for the Harvard Lampoon while attending the university during the 1960s, where he first met the late Douglas Kenney (1946-1980); they were two of the founders of the National Lampoon and collaborated on the book, Bored of the Rings. Kenney described Beard as “the oldest guy who was ever a teenager.” In 1975, they each got $2.8 million for a buyout of their magazine.

A closing statement from Gertrude Stein’s cat – “A furball is a furball is a furball.”

Beard’s great-grandfather was John C. Breckenridge (1821-1875) who served as the youngest vice-president of the United States in the nation’s history from 1857 to 1861 under Democratic president James Buchanan.

Constance Hunting

by Peter Cates

Poet Constance Hunting

Poet Constance Hunting (1925-2006) taught English literature and creative writing at the University of Maine’s Orono campus from 1968 until her death. She originally trained to be a classical pianist but left that to focus on her writing. She also established Puckerbrush Press, edited the Puckerbrush Review, which published and promoted good work by many writers from Maine and elsewhere, and wrote over a dozen volumes of her own poems.

She commented on why Maine was important to her in a quote drawn from the 1989 anthology of Maine literature, Maine Speaks, which was edited by herself and several other members of the Maine Literature Project:

“Maine is important to me as a writer; its atmosphere seems to allow the freedom to try things, to explore possibilities. If one thing doesn’t succeed, try another!….I also like to go to our woodlot and help get ready for that long Maine winter. Maine makes us believe in weather. And that in turn makes us believe in Maine.”

Her poem New England nailed a maximum of substance with a minimum of words:

Stones
are the sheep of these
hillsides
and fog
is the wool of these
stones

For what it’s worth, the poet herself left out a period at the end of the poem.

Out of print recordings available on YouTube

Richard Strauss

Youtube has been beneficial in making available long out of print recordings for free listening on the computer speakers. I wish to mention two very good classical 78 sets.

A. The brilliant German composer Richard Strauss (1864-1949) conducted a very good 1927 set of Mozart’s 40th Symphony, a work that I consider the toughest of his 41 symphonies to conduct well and, until hearing Strauss’s performance, I felt that Sir Thomas Beecham’s 1937 Columbia recording was the only one that truly breathed. I have heard other recordings that are good, just not great. Strauss’s achieved that level of brilliance and beauty ten years before Beecham did.

Another English conductor Sir Adrian Boult told of Strauss coming to London in 1914 to guest conduct a program featuring three of his own works and the Mozart 40th. He had four hours of rehearsal time with the orchestra, devoted one hour to his own works, and rehearsed the 25-minute Mozart for the other three hours.

B. I have written previously here on other recordings of Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique Symphony. One very notable 1936 Columbia 78 set was conducted by Philippe Gaubert (1879-1941) and distinguished for its balance of gripping power, delectably understated poetry and dance-like elegance. The Paris Conser­vatory Orchestra was very responsive to his leadership.

Henry Burr

by Peter Cates

Henry Burr

Over Yonder Where the Lilies Grow/Hugh Donovan – The Rose of No Man’s Land; Columbia A2670; ten inch acoustic 78, recorded October, 1918.

I have written before about Harry McClaskey (1882-1941), alias Henry Burr, who recorded prolifically 100 and more years ago, while another singer Charles Harrison (1878-1965) alias Hugh Donovan is featured on side 2 of the above, very old record. The two songs were written out of different aspects of World War I from 1914-1918, also known erroneously as The War to End All Wars, and make this record a document of some historical interest.

Over Yonder Where the Lilies Grow is akin to the more famous war poem, In Flander’s Fields, a region of Belgium where two different Battles of Ypres were fought and much loss of life occurred on both sides. The song’s lyrics evoke sadness in the first three lines – ‘Last night I lay a-sleeping a vision came to me/I saw a baby in Flander’s maybe/It’s eyes were wet with tears’, etc. The song mentions the lily of France/Fleur de-Lis and ‘the land of long ago’.

The Rose of No Man’s Land pays tribute to the Red Cross nurses who risked their lives helping the wounded in often makeshift, dangerous settings. ‘It’s the one red rose the soldier knows/It’s the work of the master’s hand/It’s the sweet word from the Red Cross nurse/She’s the rose of no-man’s land.’

Both tenors did very good work here; the tunes were sticky sweet pleasant.

Charles Harrison studied with a New York City voice teacher Frederick Bristol (1839-1932) who operated a summer music camp in Harrison, Maine.

Alice Nielsen

By the Waters of Minnetonka/From the Land of Sky Blue Water; Columbia A1732; ten inch acoustic disc, recorded February, 1915.

Alice Nielsen

Soprano Alice Nielsen (1872-1943) scored huge success on the opera and vaudeville stage with her appearances in Boston, New York City, London and Italy. She recorded opera arias, oper­ettas, popular tunes and hymns. One megahit was a shellac of Home Sweet Home.

The above two selections were popularized by many other singers in concert, on the radio and via records. And, like Charles Harrison, she too studied with Frederick Bristol. By another coincidence, she had a summer home in Harrison, Maine, which later became a dancing school.

Marcella

The Netflix suspense series, Marcella, has Anna Friel portraying a London detective and giving one of the most powerfully sustained performances over the series 24 episodes that I have seen from anybody. Highly recommended.

Wallace Stevens

by Peter Cates

Brahms
2nd Piano Concerto

Artur Schnabel, pianist, with Sir Adrian Boult conducting the BBC Symphony; Victor, M 305, six 78 discs, recorded 1935.

Artur Schnabel

The leaflet for this set of fragile records contains a most intriguing opening paragraph:

“Johannes Brahms came by his love for music naturally, for his father ran away from home several times in order to pursue the study of music. Quite naturally when Johannes, born May 7, 1833, showed talent, his father was willing to give him instruction. Soon the boy was turned over to other teachers, one of whom lamented the fact that the youth would be a fine performer, ‘if only he would give up this everlasting composition.’ ”

Pianist Artur Schnabel (1882-1951) met Brahms once through his teacher in Vienna, Theodor Leschetizky (1830-1915), who numbered Polish pianist and patriotic freedom fighter, Ignace Paderewski (1860-1941), among his many later famous pupils; Schnabel’s encounter with Brahms was on a nature walk.

Schnabel left recordings of both Brahms Piano Concertos and a few solo pieces. What was always for me most uniquely captivating about Schnabel’s playing was its playfulness combined with very convincing and communicative musicianship, whether of Brahms or of this pianist’s large number of recordings of Beethoven Piano Concertos and Sonatas. Other pianists , for all of their wonderful qualities, rarely conveyed this playfulness, and spontaneity. Schnabel made the piano seem a very easy instrument to play well. A few missed or bad notes, let alone memory lapses, rarely phased him in concerts.

Schnabel moved to Berlin as a young man after several years in Vienna, feeling rightfully that opportunities for teaching and performing were greater there. He was a free spirit, he fathered an illegitimate daughter whom he didn’t know about for several years, he played pool until the middle of the night and slept until noon, and, due to limited finances, he would buy a beer at city bars in order to eat the free bread rolls with mustard for frequent meals.

The above recording has been reissued on CD and can be heard on YouTube.

Killing Eve

I highly recommend the very suspenseful and funny first two seasons of the BBC show, Killing Eve, starring Sandra Oh as the MI6 investigator, Eve Polastri, and Jodie Comer as a skilled assassin, Villanelle. These two characters develop a love/hate attraction that proves very distracting to their chosen profession.

Two other superlative performances in the series are Fiona Shaw as Eve’s supervisor, Carolyn Martens, and Henry Lloyd-Hughes as the devious billionaire, Aaron Peel. The series can be seen on the Hulu channel.

Wallace Stevens

American poet, successful Hartford Connecticut insurance executive and very conservative Republican Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) wrote poems that I found consistently tough to read and teach yet still fascinating. During a vacation in Key West, Florida, Stevens got into a fistfight with novelist Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) at a cocktail party and, being paunchy and portly, he was easily punched to the floor.

One worthwhile quote is from his poem, The Emperor of Ice Cream, one most apt for this time of year – “The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.”

H. E. Bates

by Peter Cates

English writer H. E. Bates

The prolific English writer, H.E. Bates (1905-1974), published his novel The Purple Plain in 1947 and it was made into a 1954 film starring Gregory Peck, of which I have only the vaguest memories when it was shown on one of the Sunday-Afternoon-at-the-Movies programs of Maine’s channel 8 during my youth of the very early ‘60s. The author spent some time in World War II Burma and was inspired to write this novel.

The main character Forrester is a very skilled pilot flying medical personnel and supplies around the country amidst dangerous conditions. He is also battling with his own personal demons and taking on very dangerous missions more out of a death wish.

The reasons lie mainly in losing his wife during a honeymoon dance at a London nightclub when a bomb lands on it from German warplanes. He miraculously survives but is tormented by the gamut of depression and survivor guilt since then.

He is already stationed in blisteringly hot Burma at a desert medical station, where he and a colleague Blore share a tent as their living accommodations, when the novel opens. He then meets a Burmese nurse Anna and their professional relationship starts to blossom into something special. Meanwhile a Japanese bombing raid has all hands on deck and Forrester is doing doctoring, too. But he and Anna are having joyful moments too and his will to live increases.

Halfway through the book, Forrester is flying himself, Blore and his navigator Carrington elsewhere when the plane crashes in the middle of the desert. All three men survive miraculously, but Carrington’s legs are badly burned; Blore and Forrester sustain some burns but are forced to carry the navigator while trying to walk 30 miles to safety with a thermos of water and little else for nourishment; and several chapters of survival in the desert ensue. The book concludes with triumph.

What makes the novel special was Bates’s gift with words ­– those details that kept me reading, that created sympathy for, and identification with, the characters. Examples abound but I only have room for a few:

“He felt himself to be lost in the center of a vast and dusty arena blistered by relentless sun.”

“Before he could say anything more, she turned away and began to walk back along the track. She turned and smiled for a moment and he lifted his hand, standing for a moment or two longer to watch her go.”

Now the last sentence of this 308 page novel.

“Outside, the plain was purple in the falling dusk, and the long day was over.”