Stingy Kids

Good Morning, USA. Time to Wake Up.

The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere,
giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
a savage servility
slides by on grease.
—from "For the Union Dead" by Robert Lowell

In 2001, Slate magazine sponsored an inaugural poem contest in response and as a challenge to "George W. Bush's decision to drop the inaugural poem." There were very few panegyrics among the entries; rather, most contestants chose to express their anger and disbelief in the form of haikus and limericks (remember when haikus were en vogue among bloggers?). Slate remarked that "haiku writers were...energized by Bush's laconic style." (That's too nice a term for Bush's drivel.) I like this one in particular:

Dubya at the helm
Unspeakable foreign names
Do I have to, Pa?
(by Scott Messenger)

And if you substitute "Dick" for "Pa" you have an apt assessment of our administration.

This year there is no contest and, again, no poem. But inaugural poetry isn't a long-standing tradition. To date, only three poets have received this honor. In 1961, Robert Frost became the first poet to prepare an inaugural poem, at the request of then president-elect John F. Kennedy ("prepare" because, in the end, the sun's glare compelled him to read another).

When Clinton invited Maya Angelou to read at his inauguration the gesture was widely interpreted as an homage to Kennedy. Angelou did not disappoint:

Each of you, a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more. (from "On the Pulse of Morning")

Unfortunately, the river still waits for us.

For his second term, Clinton brought to the inaugural stage Miller Williams, a fellow Arkansan. His poem, "Of History and Hope," is a tender but pointed chastisement of our failure as a nation to learn from our mistakes:

We know what we have done and what we have said,
and how we have grown, degree by slow degree,
believing ourselves toward all we have tried to become—
just and compassionate, equal, able, and free.
All this in the hands of children, eyes already set
on a land we never can visit—it isn't there yet—
but looking through their eyes, we can see
what our long gift to them may come to be.
If we can truly remember, they will not forget.

The poem contains echoes of nursery rhymes and a nod to Frost's own inaugural poem "The Gift Outright." It's a wonderful piece. I also recommend that you take the time to see the video clip of Williams' reading which features footage of Clinton's reaction to the poem.

The other night at dinner with friends the subject of the inauguration came up. Someone asked, who will be the poet this year? After a brief pause it suddenly became very clear. There is only one person who can adequately sing the praises of the Bush administration. And guess what? It turns out that we were right.

We Play that Now

Sifting through a pile of old New Yorkers, David found Sasha Frere-Jones's article on singer/songwriter Keren Ann ("A Clear View," 12.13.2004). Frere-Jones—or his editor—has a knack for finding great subjects, even though I often wish that he would give his profiles and reviews a bit more of an analytical edge and show us what's going on beneath the surface. That being said, his profile of Keren Ann is a nice introduction to her work and focuses, in particular, on her English-language album "Nowhere to Go," which I have had on heavy rotation this morning. Linguistic crossover seems to come naturally to Keren Ann, who was raised in Israel, Holland, and France and has lived on-and-off in NYC. One reviewer referred to her as "a veritable polyglot," an apt description of her oeuvre, which draws on a wide range of cultural and linguistic musical influences.

In the United States or South Korea, people consider me to be a French singer...And that's OK with me. After all, I’ve been living in France for twenty years now! Having said that, though, I don’t feel I need to be any particular nationality to make music. I'm someone who can never stay put and live in one place. I actually have Russian, Dutch, Israeli and Indonesian relatives, but that has nothing to do with the music I listen to. I appreciate all kinds of music, from Irish folk to Brazilian sounds. But I think it’s true to say that the fact my ancestors come from such diverse backgrounds has obviously had some bearing on who I am and what I do.

In late 2003, Keren Ann and Bardi Johannsson of the Icelandic band Bang Gang collaborated on a concept album titled "Lady and Bird," which tells the story of two lost creatures who inhabit human bodies in order experience "earthly pleasures" and find each other as "Keren Ann" and "Bardi Johannsson." This encounter of "two lost souls" precipitates the creation of a magical musical world, "dont la douceur et l'innocence font penser à celui des enfants." "Lady and Bird," like "Nowhere to Go," explores the exhilirating freedom of speaking in another voice (or language) while keeping a gentle grasp on the price one pays for this kind of displacement, "the feeling of going nowhere" ("Do What I Do"). What results is some of the most stunning vocals I have heard since Ronit Shachar's "Shalom le-tamimut." Keren Ann will be in NYC this weekend at South Paw (Brooklyn) and The Knitting Factory (Manhattan). If you miss these performances, you can catch her again in March at Joe's Pub. Happy New Year.