Friday 25 September 2009

VictoryAhh! Victoria Woodhull at the Kosmos, Vienna

At Vienna's Kosmos Theater in the Siebensterngasse (tramline 49: two stops out of town from MQ/Volkstheater) the long forgotten, strange but true story of the USA's first would-be-Presidentess Victoria Woodhull (1838-1927) is waiting to be discovered and enjoyed.

Writer, journalist, political observer and author of Victoria Woodhull (Ulrike Helmer Verlag, pub: 2002) Antje Schrupp has unearthed the forgotten story of Woodhull; from her upbringing in the American school of hard knocks to her death in England. And was on hand to sign copies of her 250 pp biographical book.

Who was Victoria Woodhull? Capitalist or socialist? Feminist or prostitute? Intellectual or free spirit? she asks. The all-American Power-Frau and visionary, the arch-enemy of Harriet Beecher-Stowe (author of Uncle Tom's Cabin) fits into no convenient drawer, she concludes. And so it is.

In one memorable scene America's richest man, Cornelius Vanderbilt, in his mobile bath tub bathing in fake $10,000 bills asks Victoria: "young lady I've got 5 minutes for you - what have you got for me?" when the gold price crashes as the band plays on ...

Tanja Witzmann has gathered together a trio of young and exciting acting talent in the shape of Suse Lichtenberger, Sissi Noe´ and Valentin Schreyer. One feels that the spritualist side of the multi-faceted Woodhull, "you might be the ghost of someone else" , might well have had her invisible hand in the selection process. The chemistry is at times electric.

Under Woodhull's illuminated motto "Free Love" the story, after the glasses of the Woodhull Elixir of Life have been distributed and sampled, begins with a therapy session. The audience must now close its eyes and for the first two or three minutes take part in a Victoria Woodhull breathing exercise and meditation session. It all cranks up the wonderful tongue-in-cheek sense of the bizarre.

A large screen provides documentary footage of the American Civil War and other key moments. President Obama and Hilary Clinton dance on and off the stage at one point. As the financial crisis deepens Woodhull entertains us with a display of her bubble blowing prowess, and so it goes on, from one madcap liberating moment to the next.

The story of Victoria Woodhull, a woman forever challenging the so-called American way of Life and her relationship with her strange sister Tennessee Claflin is presented in an entertaining and star-spangled show. It's a production well worth supporting. Invest in the cost of a theatre ticket, and give it a whirl!

VictoryAhh! at Kosmos, Siebensterngasse 42, 1070 Wien
01 523 12 26
karten@kosmostheater.at
www.kosmostheater.at

30/9/2009 to 3/10/2009
07/10/2009 to 10/10/2009

Wednesday 23 September 2009

Sunday Visit

Sunday Visit

Sunday and
I visit him
in the place filled with disinfectant smells
to which he will abandon himself
after he dredges the depths of his memory,
trenches
shells
the pain
the stretcher-party
the stink of gangrene
shellshock,
in a hospital ward full of promises ~
often not kept.

______
gw2009

Sunday 20 September 2009

Britten's Death in Venice at Theater an der Wien

Yesterday evening Benjamin Britten's wonderful Death in Venice music, at times featuring four xylophones, piano and harp overlaying the dark tones with the steadily increasing and almost hypnotic quality required to do justice to Thomas Mann's story was performed superbly by the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra of Vienna conducted by Donald Runnicles. Much more than a series of sepia postcards.

Myfanwy Piper's libretto, Kandis Cook's costumes, Adam Silverman's lighting, Thom Stuart's choreography, and most of all Kurt Streit, perfect in every nuance and detail even to the seemingly unending shocked and frozen to the spot stance, in the character role of Thomas Mann's troubled writer Gustav von Aschenbach, supported by Russell Braun playing no less than seven roles, produced almost three hours of unforgettable opera at Vienna's Theater an der Wien. If Kurt Streit were ever to give up opera one felt he could quickly turn his hand to being a leading actor. So convincing was he.

The story begins with Aschenbach walking through Munich. He is suffering from writer's block: My mind beats on and no words come! Looking for inspiration he contemplates an open grave. The way to the house of the Lord is via the black rectangle in the ground. Suddenly a strange and mysterious traveller from the Alps appears and persuades Ashenbach to head south, to Italy, like the many poets and writers who have been there before him. There he will surely find the inspiration he desperately seeks.

He arrives in Venice by ship. In a black coffin dark gondola he is taken to the Venice Lido across the indolent lapping waves. He finds himself in an hotel with a view of the beach. On this beach, from behind his newspaper, he will spy on the elegant boy, the little Polish god, the proud Tadzio (Raffaele Zarrella) and he will fall in love with him; for in this Venice the wind from the land, the Sirocco, plays with sunlight and shadow and all is odd, unreal and out of normal focus.

But, of course, every beauty and perfection has its dark and ugly side and in Venice it's the outbreak of cholera, the beggars under the bridges, the horrible, evil nauseous something in the air. Aschenbach is torn between staying and leaving. He orders his bags packed and taken to the train. But then he decides not to follow. The lure of the sunbronzed Tadzio holds him to Venice.

As the visitors discover the cholera epidemic they begin to leave the hotel, first in ones and twos and then in larger numbers. Aschenbach, for selfish motives, is unable to warn Tadzio and his family the nature of the peril in which they stand. They continue enjoying their beach holiday in blissful ignorance. The hotel management covers up the real reason for their other guests sudden departures...

When the lights went out and the curtain fell there were spontaneous standing ovations and bravos. And well deserved they were too, but none more so than those for the undoubted star, Kurt Streit. The role might have been tailor made for him. In fact it was written by Benjamin Britten for his life-partner Peter Pears. But nevertheless it fitted the talented Kurt Streit better than the crumpled white suit he wore at the tragic bitter end; almost to perfection!


From the text:

CHORUS:
Phaedrus learned what beauty is
From Socrates beneath the tree
Beauty is the only form
Of spirit that our eyes can see
So brings to the outcast soul
Reflections of Divinity.

. . .

ASCHENBACH:
. . .
Does beauty lead to wisdom, Phaedrus?
Yes, but through the senses.
Can poets take this way then
For senses lead to passion, Phaedrus.
Passion leads to knowledge
Knowledge to forgiveness
To compassion with the abyss.
Should we then reject it, Phaedrus,
The wisdom poets crave,
Seeking only form and pure detachment
Simplicity and discipline?
But this is beauty, Phaedrus,
Discovered through the senses
And senses lead to passion, Phaedrus,
And passion to the abyss.

. . .

Friday 18 September 2009

Filming the big cats

Filming the big cats

the fat cats
in the Land Rovers
ride the Serengeti

Hemingway knew it
the difference
between the big cats

and the fat cats
facing extinction

the big cats
look to the fat cats

_______
gw 2009

Thursday 17 September 2009

POETS

Poets
I have reared a monument more enduring than bronze - Horace

Awaiting an editio princeps
one assumed an air of indifference
and a way of speaking; lounged
in the square
in the heat of the day;
feverish after the furor scribendi
the scribbled poem
by which others may judge the rest.

Another gave himself up to the sea
and a monument
more lasting than bronze.

Abroad the others
were men with sparkling eyes;
Arcadians;
reclining fellows of rustic stamp
giving weight to smoke
and distinction to ancestral honour.

We, in our turn, opened bottles
at breakneck speed
greedy for the company
of unfaithful friendships.

Others crossed the seas
and changed their skies
became an irritable pack
of doubtful travellers
eyed to the walls
by sleep-stirred dogs.

They lived mouth to hand
with dirge and lament
in cities of white-robed fortune.

-------
gw 2009

No Man's Land

NO MAN'S LAND

lies patient
beyond revetments

and we wait
in the dark
in the sandbagged trench

footsoles on firestep
somewhere between parados
and the parapet.

The others
wait too

some crouch like rats
trembling in funk holes.

In silence
we all wait.

Some people dream
of the cupped flame,
of the last letter,
some scratch their lice,
others observe the scurry of rats.

Wait for the order.
The signal to go
over the top

ATTACK! in the accepted manner.

Come on, lads! up and over!
onward to the poppy fields!

The bullets
whistle
the old familiar song.

Nothing new in the west.

------
gw2009
*Nothing New in the West is the correct English translation of the title of Remarque's war story commonly known as All Quiet on the Western Front

Tuesday 15 September 2009

ONE MORE WINDMILL

One More Windmill*

Don Quixote and Pancho
men of iron
in winter's iron grip

stationary
and stopped

before the Windmill
of Retz
the tale to tell

pickaxe footed
with an old gate shield
on a mountain of pipework
and milk churns
angled iron
screws
nuts and bolts
boiler wheels
chains
a shovel
and a spade

a smooth brass doorknob
and a worn out shoe
the latter
from a worn out carthorse
out of Moravia
where the travellers now gaze on the plain
in the whistling wind from the Steppes

two horsemen
blankly looking
into the lore and lie of language

close by the river
that is merely a convenience
and a border
for the insecure
secure in the knowledge that knowing where they are in time
and space
like moths on their flights to the stars
is the be
and
end of all

witness the Plough
that signpost
circling the faint North Star
or the Big Dipper's directors
aside the dim Polaris
(in another way of saying it)

ten miles above the frozen landmark
of Retz
the sky was more than once too wide
and the space beneath
was always going to be too small
for man


_______
gw 2009

*the Retz Windmill, these days a prominent landmark, stopped work in 1924

Monday 14 September 2009

IOTA

With Iota 83/84, the new team at Matlock, Derbyshire (UK) took over the publication of the much respected poetry journal.

Iota's Niccolo Luparello, in a covering letter to Iota 85, asks that the Iota International Poetry Competition be publicised. As one who cut his second set of bardic teeth on quarterly mags such as Iota and Pulsar (see Pulsar 52 post below) Poet-in-Residence is more than eager to oblige!

Entry fees: various - but 4 poems for 10 pounds is the best on offer
Closing date: 30th November 2009
Style: any
Length: maximum 80 lines
Judge: Tim Turnbull

Prizes: 1st 2,000 GBP, 2nd 1,000 GBP, 3rd 500 GBP, (plus 10 x 50 GBP supplementary prizes). All winning poems to be published in Iota.

The new Iota website where much more information concerning the poetry competition, subscription offers, and other bardic matters is at www.iotamagzine.co.uk - simply click on IOTA in the P-i-R Links sidebar --->>>

ps - interesting interview with George Szirtes in Iota 85 plus a trio of quality poems from his new collection Burning the Books (Bloodaxe).

Saturday 5 September 2009

PULSAR 52

The latest edition (no.52/September 2009) of the Ligden Poetry Society's poetry journal Pulsar is the last printed edition, at least for a while, says editor David Pike.
From now on Pulsar will appear as a quarterly web-zine. The printed edition of Pulsar ran for 15 years and found its way into many corners of the globe: copies went to Mr P Chaudhuri at Poetry Today in Calcutta; to Marion Stocking, Beloit Poetry Journal, Lamoine, USA; to Peter Finch, The Academi Agency, Cardiff; and yet another to Neil Astley at Bloodaxe Books; a copy to Joe Woods at Poetry Ireland and so on. It must have cost a pretty penny in postage, not to mention the hours of work involved for editor David Pike and assistant Jill Pike.
And so 'from now on' I shall click on PULSAR in the Poet in Residence sidebar --->>> and enjoy the poetry I find there!

Thursday 3 September 2009

70 years on from World War II (Georg Trakl)


Molotov, Dulles and the poet at the end of the war


Bloggers like Weaver of Grass are remembering that it's exactly 70 years today since Neville Chamberlain announced that Britain was at war with Germany.
The poem chosen to mark this date is one from the so-called Great War and is by the Austrian poet Georg Trakl who died following a complete nervous breakdown on witnessing the terrible scenes on the eastern front as a medical orderly.

In the following translation I've taken a few liberties to make the English version of the poem stronger than it would otherwise be. Trakl held back. A sensitive man, I feel he knew the breakdown was imminent.

In the East

Wild organs in the winter storm,
the dark pains of the people,
the purple surge of battle,
the fallen leaves and stars.

Broken browed and silver armed
night hauls the dying soldiers.
In the shadow of the autumn ash
the deafeated spirit sighs.

Thorny wildness grips the town.
On bleeding steps the moon
pursues the frightened woman.
Wild wolves break down the doors.

Georg Trakl (1887-1914)
______
(translation / gw 3 Sept 2009)
______



Im Osten

Den wilden Orgeln des Wintersturms
Gleicht des Volkes finstrer Zorn,
Die purpurne Woge der Schlacht,
Entlaubter Sterne.

Mit zerbrochnen Brauen, silbernen Armen
Winkt sterbenden Soldaten die Nacht.
Im Schatten der herbstlichen Esche
Seufzen die Geister der Erschlagenen.

Dornige Wildnis umgürtet die Stadt.
Von blutenden Stufen jagt der Mond
Die erschrockenen Frauen.
Wilde Wölfe brachen durchs Tor.