13. John Singer Sargent, artist

There is a show on now at the Met of John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) in Paris. American by nationality, he spent virtually his whole life in Europe—born in Florence, trained in Paris, died in London. He painted hundreds (many hundreds) of works, in both oils and watercolor. He is no doubt best known for his portraits, which were commissioned in droves in the late 1800s, but in 1906 he closed up his studio, turning to landscapes, watercolor, and more personal work. His biography is very interesting, for being quite unusual. I won't go into it—you can read all about him on Wikipedia. I'll just post a few images that I like, starting with the one he's perhaps best know for, and ending with some architectural studies from early in his career that I find pleasing. (Well, I actually end with a poem, about a nude.)

Portrait of Madame X, 1884

The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, 1882

Claude Monet Painting by the Edge of a Wood, 1885

Madame Ramón Subercaseaux, 1880–81

Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, 1885–86

A few of his watercolors:

Gourds, 1906–10

The Chess Game, c. 1907

Sir Neville Wilkinson on the Steps of the
Palladian Bridge at Wilton House, 1904–5

And those architectural studies:

Fumée d'Ambre Gris, 1880

Staircase in Capri, 1878

The Steps of the Church of SS. Domenico e Siste in Rome, 1906

Staircase, 1878

And finally, from 1917–20, a nude study of an African American elevator operator and WWI vet named Thomas McKeller, whom he featured in various works toward the end of his life.

And wouldn't you know it, Yusuf Komunyakaa wrote a poem about it:

Nude Study

Someone lightly brushed the penis

  alive. Belief is almost

      flesh. Wings beat,

dust trying to breathe, as if the figure

  might rise from the oils

      & flee the dead

artist’s studio. For years

  this piece of work was there

      like a golden struggle

shadowing Thomas McKeller, a black

  elevator operator at the Boston

      Copley Plaza Hotel, a friend

of John Singer Sargent—hidden

  among sketches & drawings, a model

      for Apollo & a bas-relief

of Arion. So much taken

  for granted & denied, only

      grace & mutability

can complete this face belonging

  to Greek bodies castrated

      with a veil of dust.

A 21st-century Black man's interpretation of a hundred-year-old painting by a 19th-century star. One has to wonder what was going on in John Singer Sargent's head when he painted this study. Or more to the point, in Thomas McKeller's.

12. Frank O'Hara, poet

Oh well, I had no time to research anything today (but I do have a nonpoetic idea for tomorrow, fingers crossed), so here's a poem, one of several that we read today in my generative group. The theme: music. I wrote a narrative poem about a pub in County Clare, Ireland, recommended to David and me, who were bicycling around the island, as being an excellent place to hear session music. The poem isn't especially good, but I sure did enjoy revisiting the memory. This poem by Frank O'Hara is narrative as well, and it's good.

The Day Lady Died

by Frank O’Hara

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday
three days after Bastille day, yes
it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine
because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton   
at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner
and I don’t know the people who will feed me

I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun   
and have a hamburger and a malted and buy
an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets   
in Ghana are doing these days
                                                        I go on to the bank
and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)   
doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life   
and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine   
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do   
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or   
Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres
of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness

and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE
Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and   
then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue   
and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and   
casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton
of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing
 

11. 6

I'm done in from working today (an anthropology book about tubers—it's exactly as fascinating as it sounds), so I hereby treat you to some number 6's I have known. Starting with one I took just today (which may actually be XLS upside down, but I'm sticking with 6):

Because one of the things I like to do with my camera is collect numbers. Though I've gotten really bad at curating the resulting shots, so these go way back and I have no idea whatsoever if I have newer renditions. And probably never will... My constant self-exhortation to go through my photos doesn't seem to work! Anyway, here are a few more 6's. Maybe tomorrow I'll have energy for something more illuminating.

Book Report: James

9. Percival Everett, James (2024) (5/6/25)

Mark Twain begins his novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with a warning: "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot." Unlike that book (perhaps), Everett's novel is replete with plot, motives, and morals. It also includes anger, despair, determination, ingenuity, and intelligence to spare. It's a remarkable book, and definitely deserved the Pulitzer Prize. 

I did not actually read this book, save for the final twenty or so pages. Rather, I listened to it, in an audio version that features the narration of Dominic Hoffman. I'm glad I did, though it is hard for me to focus as well by listening as by reading print. But in this case, the spoken version is perfect for really appreciating the code-switching Jim is required to do, running his highly literate speech through a "slave filter" whenever he has to interact with white folk. Even with Huck Finn himself. Here's a passage, from early on, where their owner, Miss Watson, has baked some cornbread and given it to Jim and his wife and daughters, Sadie and Lizzie.

     Sadie had the corn bread on the block—a stump, really—that served as our table. She sliced into it. She handed portions to Lizzie and me. I took a bite and so did Lizzie. We looked at each other.
     "But it smells so good," the child said.
     Sadie shaved off a sliver and put it in her mouth. "I swear that woman has a talent for not cooking"
     "Do I have to eat it?" Lizzie asked.
     "No, you don't," Sadie said.
     "But what are you going to say when she asks you about it?" I asked.
     Lizzie cleared her throat. "Miss Watson, dat sum conebread lak I neva before et."
     "Try 'dat be,'" I said. "That would be the correct incorrect grammar."

Throughout the book, Jim finds himself in many dangerous and demeaning, or simply lonely and desparate, situations. Always, he is self-confident, solidly in his body and mind, full of integrity. He occasionally has conversations (in his dreams) with the likes of Voltaire and John Locke, about slavery, hypocrisy, logical fallacy, and suchlike. Mostly, he knows what he wants—freedom for himself and his family—and he will stop at nothing to achieve that. 

I began this book on my drive from Ashland, Oregon, home, at the end of March. And then, I stopped. I did have the print version, but I wanted to finish with Jim's voice (via Hoffman). After Everett's win of the Pulitzer yesterday, I figured now was as good a time as any, so I took myself for a long walk—and, listening, got to within the last two dozen pages. So I finished by reading, the print book. I might just have to listen to the one-page final chapter again, though—for closure. To hear Jim (via Hoffman) say, in answer to the question "And who are you?": 

     "I am James."
     "James what?"
     "Just James."

I may also have to reread Huckleberry Finn. It's been fifty-plus years. And if I do, I will look on Jim with a whole new appreciation. 

Here is a conversation between Miwa Messer and Percival Everett about this book and others of his:

10. Pulitzer Prizes

The Pulitzers were announced today, and I thought I'd feature just a few of the winners. (There will be a poem. Deservedly!)

First, for Illustrated Reporting and Commentary, someone who floats into my email box every so often—including just today: Ann Telnaes of the Washington Post, "for delivering piercing commentary on powerful people and institutions with deftness, creativity—and a fearlessness that led to her departure from the news organization after 17 years." Here's today's cartoon: 

For Commentary, Mosab Abu Toha, "for essays on the physical and emotional carnage in Gaza that combine deep reporting with the intimacy of memoir to convey the Palestinian experience of more than a year and a half of war with Israel." Toha is a poet from Gaza, author of Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear and Forest of Noise. Here is one of those New Yorker stories, from last October.

For Fiction, Percival Everett's James (which also won the National Book Award), "an accomplished reconsideration of Huckleberry Finn that gives agency to Jim to illustrate the absurdity of racial supremacy and provide a new take on the search for family and freedom." Here is a New York Times Book Review podcast about it (with a couple of spoilers). I am currently "reading" James—or rather, listening (via Audible) . . . and yes, I need to finish it. Maybe this prize can be my incentive. 

For Biography, "Awarded to Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life by Jason Roberts (Random House), a beautifully written double biography of Carl Linnaeus and Georges-Louis deBuffon, 18th century contemporaries who devoted their lives to identifying and describing nature's secrets, and who continue to influence how we understand the world." I had not heard of this book, but I am very interested in Linnaeus (a favorite stop of mine some years ago in Sweden was his house and garden). 

For Music, "Awarded to 'Sky Islands,' by Susie Ibarra, a work about ecosystems and biodiversity that challenges the notion of the compositional voice by interweaving the profound musicianship and improvisatory skills of a soloist as a creative tool." Here is a work-in-progress excerpt:

For Memoir/Autobiography: Tessa Hulls for Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir, "an affecting work of literary art and discovery whose illustrations bring to life three generations of Chinese women—the author, her mother and grandmother, and the experience of trauma handed down with family histories."

And finally, for Poetry: Marie Howe for her New and Selected Poems and "work that mines the quotidian modern experience for evidence of our shared loneliness, mortality and holiness." Here's a short poem of hers:

The Copper Beech

Immense, entirely itself,

it wore that yard like a dress,

with limbs low enough for me to enter it

and climb the crooked ladder to where

I could lean against the trunk and practice being alone.

One day, I heard the sound before I saw it, rain fell

darkening the sidewalk.

Sitting close to the center, not very high in the branches,

I heard it hitting the high leaves, and I was happy,

watching it happen without it happening to me.

9. Flowers

Specifically, flowers on my deck—and lovely surprises they've been, too. The first one, a Cymbidium orchid (the name meaning "boat-shape"), is a plant I brought home after my mother died in 2008. As far as I can recall, this is the first time it's ever bloomed. I may be wrong—but if it did bloom in the past, I've forgotten. What a pleasure it's been, watching the flowers pop open, which they started to do just the other day after several weeks of thinking about it. There are 52 species in this genus. I can't identify which one this is, but that's okay. I'm happy just to gaze at it and to know my mother also gazed at it—and who knows, maybe even my father as well, since he was the Cymbidium grower to begin with. If that's the case, this plant (or some version of it) has been around for decades. Is that even possible?

The second one is a Pachypodium (meaning "thick foot"), a genus I encountered—and fell in love with—in Madagascar. Pachypodia are succulents, further defined by being "pachycaul," or having enlarged trunks designed to store water during times of drought or when their roots become exposed, and by having spines. There are 25 species, 20 of which are found in Madagascar. I have tried to grow Pachypodia, but they're tricky: my climate is on the edge for them, or maybe my soil mix isn't right, and although I've managed to coax leaves out of the three species I've experimented with, two ultimately declined to thrive. But one of them—I believe it's a P. baronii—has hung in there, and a few weeks ago it rewarded me with little red flowers! I was so delighted! Yesterday, I ordered two more plants (different species), and I'm going to try, try again. I hope they will be encouraged by their happy neighbor.

Here are a few other pachypodia. Perhaps you can see why I'm enamored with them. They're so unique.

P. horombense

P. densiflorum

P. lamerii

P. rosulatum gracilius, in situ in Madagascar

8. Three poems, by Li-Young Lee, George Bilgere, Sharon Olds

I considered posting the first of the poems here yesterday, but then thought, nah, enough poetry already. In the meantime, this morning I was reminded of the second poem as I walked on the beach with a friend and our dogs and we talked about the beauty (and necessity) of being in the moment as a way to tune out the awfulness that swirls about us now—a skill that dogs and children demonstrate so well. As for the third poem, it showed up on FB, also this morning, in a post by Rebecca Solnit, who called it "one of the most memorable poems I've ever read."

What binds these three poems together is that they were all read, and discussed, in the Poetry Space podcast I wrote about yesterday, about what makes a poem interesting. I couldn't resist the coincidences. (And in terms of accessibility? I might go with #2, #3, then #1. But I'm not going to rearrange them. You can do the work.)

I will try to stay away from poetry next week. But forgive me if I fail. I am finding poetry awfully comforting and/or invigorating just now.

Big Clock

by Li-Young Lee

When the big clock at the train station stopped,
the leaves kept falling,
the trains kept running,
my mother’s hair kept growing longer and blacker,
and my father’s body kept filling up with time.

I can’t see the year on the station’s calendar.
We slept under the stopped hands of the clock
until morning, when a man entered carrying a ladder.
He climbed up to the clock’s face and opened it with a key.
No one but he knew what he saw.

Below him, the mortal faces went on passing
toward all compass points.
People went on crossing borders,
buying tickets in one time zone and setting foot in another.
Crossing thresholds: sleep to waking and back,
waiting room to moving train and back,
war zone to safe zone and back.

Crossing between gain and loss:
learning new words for the world and the things in it.
Forgetting old words for the heart and the things in it.
And collecting words in a different language
for those three primary colors:
staying, leaving, and returning.

And only the man at the top of the ladder
understood what he saw behind the face
which was neither smiling nor frowning.

And my father’s body went on filling up with death
until it reached the highest etched mark
of his eyes and spilled into mine.
And my mother’s hair goes on
never reaching the earth. 

Palimpsest

by George Bilgere

We’re bicycling through the Tiergarten
on a summer morning in Berlin,
my wife and I, our son in his bike seat,
and it really is a lovely day, except
someone has spray painted in red,
dripping cursive on the marble pedestals
of the statues of the great poets
and composers scattered around the park,
Juden Raus, Jews Out, and my first thought
is, hey, my German is getting better,
I figured that out right away,
even though the handwriting is poor,
but of course the author was working
in the dark, and under a certain pressure,
so really, you can’t blame him, and besides,
the quality of the handwriting isn’t
the point here, nor is my progress
in German, which in most respects
has been disappointing. The point
is that we have a bottle of wine
and some ham and cheese sandwiches
and we’re going to make the best of it,
we’re going to spread the blanket
and have a picnic here in the not entirely
new Germany, that bad last century
still bleeding into this one, blood
still soaking the feet of the poets,
while our little boy, new to history,
runs laughing under a blazing sun
through the green illiterate meadows.

 

I Go Back to May 1937

by Sharon Olds

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the   
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks,
the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips aglow in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,   
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are   
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.   
I want to go up to them and say Stop,   
don’t do it—she’s the wrong woman,   
he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,   
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you have not heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty face turning to me,   
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome face turning to me,   
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,   
but I don’t do it. I want to live. I   
take them up like the male and female   
paper dolls and bang them together   
at the hips, like chips of flint, as if to   
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.