Stingy Kids

Mad Men and Death Poems

WARNING:  This post contains a major Mad Men spoiler, so if you if you have not seen Episode 2 of Season 2, visit this site after you have.

The most recent episode of Mad Men, a show about advertising executives set in 1960s NYC, opens with the news that American Airlines Flight 1 crashed on its way to Los Angeles.  After cracking some tasteless jokes, the character Pete Campbell learns that his father was on that flight.  His family's loss turns into a professional advantage for Campbell when the new Director of Account Services Herman "Duck" Phillips brings him in to land a deal with American Airlines, now desperate to salvage its public image.  Don Draper, a partner at the advertising firm, resists this move, knowing that it means that they will have to break a contract with Mohawk Airlines, a small but loyal client.  He meets Mohawk's president in a Japanese-style bar and gives the news.  After the meeting, Draper sits alone for some minutes with his drink.  Kyu Sakamoto's "Ue o muite arukō" (Looking up while walking) plays in the background.  The choice of this song is hardly a coincidence: in 1985 Sakamoto died in the crash of Japan Airlines Flight 123, one of the worst single aircraft disasters in history.  Of 524 passengers and crew members, only four survived to give a partial account of what the passengers went through before and after the crash.  It was the eve of Obon, a three-day festival during which many Japanese return to their hometowns to commemorate their dead.

Admittedly, I was quite pleased with myself for identifying both the song and its relevance to this scene.  It's a minor vindication of a life long affection for oldies music.  Although some posters on the AMC boards disagree, the use of this song in this scene is not anachronistic.  The song was recorded in 1961 and released by Toshiba-EMI.  A disc jockey in DC had gotten a hold of the Toshiba LP and played the song on the air.  It proved to be a hit and was released as "Sukiyaki" in 1963 by Capitol in the US, even though "sukiyaki" refers to a Japanese dish and has nothing to do with the song.  But those responsible for releasing Sakamoto's album in the US/UK decided that the title "sukiyaki" sounded "more" Japanese and would be easier for English speakers to pronounce.  Here's a video of the song featuring Sakamoto:

Some years ago I picked up a copy of Japanese Death Poems edited by the Israeli writer Yoel Hoffman, who lived in Japan for many years.  The book offers a historical introduction to the Japanese tradition of writing jisei ("death poem").  Although, Hoffman concerns himself with death poems composed by monks and poets, anyone can choose to write jisei.  He writes:

Where did the ancient Japanese, a largely maritime people, send their dead?  The "birds of death" sailed sometimes from the eastern shore, sometimes from the western one, out toward the horizon where sea and sky meet.  Did the prehistoric Japanese, who were sun-worshipers, believe that the huge fiery ball which rose from the sea every morning or sank beneath it at night (depending on the position of the region, either on the Pacific Ocean or on the Sea of Japan) was the destination of their dead?  Traces of a belief that the land of the dead lies over the sea can still be found in the ceremonies of the Bon [Obon] festival, during which...the dead who have come to visit their relatives return in small paper boats that the living set sail upon bodies of water.

Japan Airlines Flight 123 began to experience problems with its vertical stabilizer and hydraulic systems 12 minutes after take off.  The pilots were unable to stabilize the aircraft and problems with the controls meant that for most of the short flight, they had no idea where they were.  The plane weaved and circled over Osutaka Ridge for about half an hour before crashing.  In that time, many passengers, including Kyu Sakamoto, wrote farewell letters and poems to their family and friends.  Many of these documents were recovered at the crash site and some are featured in an exhibit at the Safety Promotion Center in Tokyo's Haneda Airport.

Poetry Foundation

Cleaning up my office, getting it ready for a new academic year, I came across a CD compilation of the Poetry Foundation's podcasts.  It must have been something I picked up at the AWP this year.  I generally don't listen to poetry or poetry-related podcasts while I'm working because of the concentration they require but stacking and filing papers didn't demand a lot of my attention.  The podcasts often complement the latest issue of Poetry magazine--for instance, a Kay Ryan interview on Robert Frost followed her essay in the September 2007 issue ("I Demand to Speak with God"). 

Readings by Marie Ponsot and Terrance Hayes were the highlights (for me) of the CD.  The March 2008 issue marked Hayes's first appearance in Poetry.  Go listen to his poem "The Blue Terrance."  The poet G. C. Waldrep observed at a reading that when he reads a poem out loud, he feels that he has created another, a second, poem.  I was thinking about that while listening to Hayes.  On the page, you notice the careful prosody, the word arrangement, the space the poem occupies on the page.  But listen to how Hayes reads "The Blue Terrance," how he lingers over certain words, how his breath spaces the poem in a different way.  To hear more of Hayes's work, visit his profile on the PBS website.

The Poetry Foundation has a lot of good material on their website.  I especially enjoy their "Poem of the Day" feature.  They run for a few minutes at the most, an amuse bouche of poetry.  But if you have more time to spare, browse their essay archive.  Ange Mlinko's essay on Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov, "Craft Vs. Conscience," is excellent and only appears online.

Mix

Putting Your Poetry in Order: The Mix-Tape Strategy by Katrina Vandenberg

"Record" by Katerina Vandenberg (via Touched by a Monkey)

An Interview With Poet and Fiction Writer Grace Paley by Ilya Kaminsky and Katherine Towler:

I’ll tell you an interesting thing, at least interesting to me. The poetry before I began to write stories, some of it, was very literary. I was a big reader. I was a big imitator, too. I sounded like I was a little bit British in my poetry. The fact that I came from the Bronx was irrelevant. When I began to write stories, I had the luck of having written poetry so that I had the language in my mouth. On the other hand, it was much looser since it was prose. That had a great effect on me when I continued to write poetry. The poetry improved my prose, but the prose was equally good for my poetry. It loosened it up and made me more relevant to myself.

Featured Poet: Laura Sims @ Seven Corners

Parting Words: The Poetry of Mahmoud Darwish:

I have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them a

   single word: Home.  (from "I Belong There")