Friday, May 27, 2016

Violets are Blue

 

If you’re lucky you had one or two instructors between first grade and college who inspired you and greatly enhanced your education. It was clear that they loved what they did. But even the best are rarely icons within their area of expertise or key contributors to cultural movements. Such was the case with my most memorable professor, the Chicago poet Paul Carroll.

 

During my high school years in the Chicago suburbs, we were mostly ignorant of the Beat generation. A few of us had read Naked Lunch and Howl, but mostly “beatniks” and “greasers” were just words in our vocabulary. On television Bob Denver had already morphed from Maynard G Krebs in The Many Loves of Doby Gillis to the title character on Gilligan’s Island.

 

Within months of graduation in 1972, I was immersed in the angst of my generation. Protests over the War in Vietnam brought “Hanoi” Jane Fonda to our campus as a speaker. I didn’t understand why she was being booed. I knew of her only from Barbarella.

 

I spent two years taking introductory classes in almost every scholastic discipline, hoping to find something appealing and that might lead to a career. Poetry 100 was a brief stop on my journey to self-discovery. I had been dabbling at verse since my father’s death when I was sixteen. It was a retreat into a private world of hurt and words, medicinal and comforting. Purely by luck of the draw, I found myself in a class taught by Carroll. 


Paul Carroll

 

I didn’t appreciate until much later that my professor cast a long shadow on the turf and the times. Carroll was hired in 1957 as poetry editor by Irving Rosenthal of the Chicago Review at the University of Chicago, that school down the road I hadn’t been qualified to consider. Carroll was the Review's poetry editor as an undergraduate. His poems had national reach as the most published author in the Chicago Review during the 1950s. 

 

In October of 1958 Chicago Daily News columnist Jack Mabley wrote that “A magazine published by the University of Chicago is distributing one of the foulest collections of printed filth I've seen publicly circulated." 

 

The column resulted in the University of Chicago suppressing the Winter 1959 issue of the Review, the resignation of Rosenthal, Carroll and several other staff members and culminated in the founding of the new journal Big Table.

 

The “filth” that Mabley referred to consisted of excerpts of Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs that the editors had published. It was Carroll’s idea to have a San Francisco issue of The Review. He wrote to Lawrence Ferlinghetti and then Allen Ginsberg, who replied with a torrent of names and addresses of potential contributors, along with a sample of the Burroughs Naked Lunch manuscript, a title suggested by Jack Kerouac.

 

Work by Burroughs and Kerouac became content for the new publication. It was a profound editorial stance against censorship and for change in support of freedom of expression at a time when cultural mores were being redefined.

 

In hindsight, being taught by Carroll with his stories about friends in the Beat movement feels analogous to taking a Music 100 class taught by Carl Perkins and listening to tales about his friends, Elvis, Johnny and Jerry Lee.

Allen Ginsberg

Carroll mentioned that he conducted the April 1969 interview with his by then good friend Ginsberg for Playboy magazine. I visited our well-stocked university library to somewhat shyly check out the periodical and read the article in a discreet cubicle. I recall sensing a reduction in the degrees of separation between myself and the intriguing luminaries of a prior generation under the tutelage of a major player. He reminisced openly about their friendship during class. Recounting typically scandalous activities by Ginsberg that made local headlines, Carroll spoke as if chastising his friend,

 

“Oh Allen, what are you doing?”

 

The class also served as Carroll’s personal open mic. It was a treat to hear him read from his own work, in one case from a draft of the poem he had been commissioned to write for the dedication of Swedish artist Claes Oldenburg’s controversial “Bat Column” sculpture located outside the Harold Washington Social Security Administration Building. Local dignitaries including Chicago Cubs baseball legend Ernie Banks attended the dedication in April of 1977. 

 

The lengthy poem may or may not have been read, possibly falling victim to censorship. Full of vivid references to local landmarks and personalities, Carroll couldn’t resist commenting on the sculpture’s obvious phallic nature. The poem, Endless Ode to Oldenburgs Batcolumn for Chicago appears in his book New and Selected Poems published in 1978. The following excerpt wends its way from the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair to White Sox players of the 1930s, with a brief nod to Studs Terkel along the way.

The Bat Column
 

…the bat's ebullient as the pilgrimage to worship Little Egypt's

hootchy-kootchy in the Street of Cairo 
on the Midway in the heat of '93

O, the Batcolumn's as ebullient as Studs Terkel talking to the

lucky pinto pony that bore the holy hips of Sally Rand

The Batcolumn turning into a spiderweb at twilight to catch the

saffron sky spreading above the herd of heads evacuating the

banks and office building of the Loop the way all the bags

are emptied by a triple play from Piet to Beanball Jackie

Hayes to Banana Nose Bonura…

 

 

Paul disdained grades. On the first day of class, he told us that all we had to do to get an “A” for the third quarter was to write twelve poems, a pace not much greater than one per week. He struggled for several minutes to gain the trust of his class.

 

“How will we know how we’re doing?” asked one disbelieving student.

 

“I’m required to give you a grade for this class, so if you write twelve poems you will have satisfied my requirements,” he said.

 

“Are the twelve poems individually graded? Is there a final exam?” asked another.

 

“That’s far too much work. How can I assign a grade to a poem? Poetry cannot be graded. Poetry is personal. You might love a poem,” he pointed at the front row.  “But you might hate it,” he pointed elsewhere in the small group.

 

“You have the entire quarter to write twelve poems. Write them all during the first week and you’re done, you don’t even have to come to class, but I don’t recommend that. They can be any length, but should be your best effort, based on what we’ll discuss here. I don’t think that’s unreasonable. And no, there is no final exam.”

 

We took him at his word, despite nervously going through the entire traditional grading period with no evidence of our progress. It was freeing for some, a source of anxiety for others. And it was very different. He changed the paradigm we’d come to expect from every other instructor in our experience at the University, many of whom were only teaching assistants.  I can’t speak for anyone else in the class, but when my grade was posted it was indeed an “A.”

 

  We often had to read our poems to the class. His was a tough act to follow, with a presentation style that was expressive to the point of being theatrical. The following example draws deep from the lakefront imagery typical of his poems, the same places many of us enjoyed while skipping classes, drinking in the beauty of a rare Chicago spring day misplaced during the school week. His mind was an engine that absorbed images and turned them into feelings, painted with words. A few lines extracted from a piece simply called Poem are representative of the readings we enjoyed in class. 

 

Fall a scrimmage of yellow leaves today

All over Lincoln Park

Like the mask of the Yellow Mule who travels between the next

world and Tibet inside its house of glass in the Field

Museum by the lake.

These trees flanking the lagoon at Fullerton are quiet as green fish

Like the wonder in the worn thighbone of the dinosaur

We're allowed to touch

As often as we want on the Main Floor of the Field Museum.

I bike along the lake and watch

The whiplash of the waves

 

The professor loathed rhyming poetry. He introduced me to free verse, completely changing my emerging style. I unwittingly stepped into a trap with the reading of my first of twelve poems. We had been assigned the topic of “Angels.” The rest of the class responded predictably, literally. I took the poem in another direction with my “Ode to An Angel – Bridgette the Brazilian Bombshell,” recounting my lonely visit to a strip joint after my friends went back to school following spring break.

 

 Paul offered to read our poems for us if we were reluctant to do so. I was shy and grateful, but shouldn’t have subjected him to reading my self-absorbed drivel. There he stood, giving the following stanza, among half a dozen others, his best attempt at a dramatic reading:

 

The curve of her spine

Of Satanic design

With her movements, caressing my chest,

She offers her thighs

But withdraws and denies

My advance, as she does with the rest.

 

It was a sing-song piece of junk that Carroll critiqued heavily, going on a minor tirade about “moon and June and other rubbish.” I think it bothered him that the class burst into applause after the reading. Even though my poem resonated and excited in a way that other similarly inexperienced student efforts did not, I sunk into my chair and never openly rhymed again. Still, it was cool to have my work read by a “real” poet.

 

My follow-up poem attempted a stylistic change to something completely out of my comfort zone. Once again, he read for me on the assigned topic, “A Self Portrait.”

 

What outrageous chance has brought us face to face?

Beneath that slim zygoma lurks

One fragment of the Universal Mind.

One well timed thrust in ages past

and I’d be Joan of Arc.

“Telemachus, your father wore army boots!”

Sweet Vesta, let me be,

Before one hesitation leaves the glass empty.

 

Paul was much more receptive to this. If you read his work, it is loaded with mythic and modern imagery. He was a very visual, deep thinker. Much of his Chicago work evokes a visceral response, especially among readers familiar with his beloved turf. Following this brief reading he nodded, smiled a bit and said only,

 

“I think he’s having a little fun here.”

 

He shared a tribute to the minor jobs he held in his youth, dedicating the poem to Robert Lowell, Allen Ginsberg and James Dickey. It was called Ode to an All-American Boyhood. Here were other local references, the landmark Marshall Field’s among others:

 

Were you guys lucky, too, to caddy, the light

on freshly-sprinkled fairway delicate and bright as eye of an

Indiana owl

or glitter of fish flickering in the Shedd Aquarium of the

imagination,

the tough but tender touch of leather socks covering the cobra-

headed clubs, the crack

of brassie on golf ball like whip of mule skinner filling all Death Valley;

or to anoint oneself in grease and oil, sweating

beneath the belly of a car or truck in the pit in Shimskis' Garage

in Homewood;

or to find felicity at Marshall Field's as a stock boy numb and

dazed by rawboned, adolescent lust, stumbling about

beneath a pyramid of boxes past models coolly on parade

among the customers all day, filling immaculate brassieres

with flesh like fortune cookies and in silken Oriental half-slips

as I sweat like Sydney Greenstreet examining the statue of the

Maltese Falcon in his hotel suite…

 

Carroll helped found the Chicago Poetry Center in the early 70s when it served mostly to organize poetry readings. Through the years it partnered with schools, supported local poets and encouraged involvement in the arts through programs and internships. It is still going strong and has a nice online presence. 

 

In 1974, he founded the Program for Writers, a graduate level creative experience. I had moved on to other 100 level courses by that time. That program is an opportunity I regret missing by perhaps a few months. I also regret lacking a full understanding of his stature among Chicago writers. To me he was simply the somewhat eccentric teacher who had unpredictable office hours and couldn’t be reached by phone. He didn’t own a phone. For those too young to remember, that means he didn’t own a landline.

 

“If someone needs to reach me, they can write me a letter or visit me in person,” he insisted.

 

I strolled between classes with Paul one lovely spring morning toward the end of the quarter. Following my minor public drubbing he seemed to take a liking to me. His interest in young poets and belief in the transformative nature of poetry was apparent. I recall it being unusually sunny and pleasant, in contrast to the cloudiness typical of journeys within the gray granite that comprised the dreary campus infrastructure. Blackened and crystalline remnants of Chicago’s winter melted in diminishing piles along the second level walkways between buildings. 

 

During our conversation, I apologized for missing a number of classes. My mother was dying of Lupus at the time. Things at home were rather unpredictable. I mentioned that my father had died several years earlier. Carroll had lost his own father, a prominent Hyde Park banker, when he was quite young. The look on his face was one of uncharacteristic vulnerability. I had struck a nerve. That’s what poets do.

 

Paul Carroll retired as professor emeritus in 1992 and moved to North Carolina with his artist wife Maryrose. When I recently exchanged emails with Maryrose, she said, "Paul’s poetic mind could not stop. He literally wrote poetry all the time, up until the last three days of his life.” She edited, with another of Paul's students, Dan Campion, God & Other Poems.” One of her favorites from that book is Appalachian Spring:

 

It's like entering a forest in a dream

where there's never been a map        
the trees look like masks the soul has worn

The wind whispers that today the soul is green

Some among the ancients say the heart is older

than the Holy Ghost

A flock of birds flying back and forth beneath my skin

Everybody wants to walk naked on a day like this.

 

Paul died in August of 1996. His friend Allen died eight months later in April 1997. Burroughs died in August of 1997. Within a year, three principal members of the Beat generation were gone.

 

 

 

Additional resources:

 

1. Playboy’s April, 1969 Ginsberg interview can be read in its entirety at www.playboy.com.

 

2. The Chicago Poetry Center has a forty-minute reading from 1986 in their audio archives at www.poetrycenter.org.

 

 

Visit the following link for a short interview with Paul Carroll





Thursday, May 5, 2016

Never the Twain Shall Meet

Assumption: you have a time machine. You can go back in history and have lunch with one person. Who would it be?

I wager that many people would quickly respond, “Jesus. I’d meet Jesus.”

Well, that might be great if you’re prepared to find out that he looks nothing like Jeffery Hunter. I suppose just being in his presence would be enough for most. But lunch will most likely be bread and fish, and you’ll need to speak Aramaic. At least you won’t need silverware, but the crowds might be a problem.

No, I’d like to have lunch with Mark Twain. He was arguably the most famous man of his era, he speaks English and conversation would never be lacking.

Recently I came as close as I’ll get to meeting the great American writer. My wife, daughter and future son-in-law had second row seats at the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts for the legendary Hal Holbrook’s show, “Mark Twain Tonight.”

I’ll be honest. If you had asked me last summer before we bought our tickets I would have said that Holbrook was dead, or was at risk of not lasting until a show eight months later. At age 91, he may not have a lot of time remaining, so it’s truly remarkable that he can still do a one man show supported by nothing but a table, chair and podium for two hours. He carries some notes that he gingerly removes from the inside breast pocket of his white linen jacket, but it’s never clear if he’s using them as prompts or props. He returns them with great care, raises his unlit cigar in a wave of his hand that emphasizes a point in his monologue and then strolls across the stage.

One of his sketches relates the tale of an acquaintance that took forever to get to the point of a story. So long in fact, that “Twain” sits in his chair and drifts in and out of sleep over a period of several minutes. The audience becomes uncomfortably quiet during this sequence. It is a convincing portrayal. So much so that my wife whispered to me with a sense of urgency, “If he dies on stage I’ll never forgive you!”

He didn’t die, or even fall asleep. Eventually he stood and casually commented, “And that’s why we never found out about…”

A woman in our aisle struck up a conversation with us. She has seen this show about twenty times, and labeled me a fellow “Twainiac” when the depth of my interest was revealed.

The evening took me to new heights of my obsession. Upon returning home I downloaded a copy of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” to read again, and dug deeper into volume one of Twain’s huge autobiography.


Holbrook was the second oldest performer we’ve ever seen. At 93, classical guitarist Andres Segovia remains the record holder. And there is a certain sadness that accompanies leaving a show, given the unlikely odds of seeing performers of this age again. I simply recommend, if there is someone you’ve been putting off seeing, don’t delay any longer. Whether it’s Tony Bennett, Paul McCartney, The Monkees, Gordon Lightfoot, Brian Wilson or Willie Nelson, you just never know how many shows they have left to perform.