The Unknown Citizen

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace:  when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

--W.H. Auden

NYC: "February House" arrives in May

The Public Theater is opening a world premiere musical based on the bizarre vignette of Brooklyn history where W.H. Auden, Carson McCullers and Paul Bowles all shared a house in Brooklyn Heights. Uncovered and named by Sherrill Tippins, the "February House" was kind of a glorious mess and it sounds like its inhabitants didn't get a whole lot of work done, just developed inappropriate crushes on each other (Paul Bowles' wife on Auden, who was gay, for example) and got cranky at fellow housemate Benjamin Britten for playing too much music. In other words, it's just like every roommate situation that ever was. (Anyone want to tell my upstairs neighbors that their bass playing is no good? OK then.)

"February House" was cowritten by two fellow graduates of the Best University Ever, Gabriel Kahane and Seth Bockley. I don't know them personally but I remember seeing Bockley onstage in college (most notably in Sarah Kane's "Crave") and think this is a really cool project. Also one of them, or their associates, is running a @FebHaus Twitter feed that is fairly incredible. Sample tweet: "Carson burned the soufflé, but the housewarming party last night otherwise went off without a hitch."

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

-W.H. Auden, "Musée des Beaux Arts"

The other thing I learned from "Midnight In Paris"

S/he who has read the 2-volume biography, has the last word. I think I've only read two of them in my life, but when Gil (Owen Wilson) claims to have read one of Rodin in order to shut up Michael Sheen's pedantic, mansplainy Paul, I felt a shock of vicarious vindication for him. So many Pauls are not so easily put off.

My collection of 2-volume biographies consists of Edward Mendelson's EARLY AUDEN and LATER AUDEN and Peter Guralnick's LAST TRAIN TO MEMPHIS (soon to be adapted?) and CARELESS LOVE, about Elvis Presley. Neither has allowed me to settle any scores, but I'm young still. If you'd like to fill the brag box with people you've actually read a 2-volume biography of (or more, if you're one of those waiting for Robert Caro to finish his LBJ opus), please feel free.

Are You There?

Each lover has some theory of his own
About the difference between the ache
Of being with his love, and being alone:

Why what, when dreaming, is dear flesh and bone
That really stirs the senses, when awake,
Appears a simulacrum of his own.

Narcissus disbelieves in the unknown;
He cannot join his image in the lake
So long as he assumes he is alone.

The child, the waterfall, the fire, the stone,
Are always up to mischief, though, and take
The universe for granted as their own.

The elderly, like Proust, are always prone
To think of love as a subjective fake;
The more they love, the more they feel alone.

Whatever view we hold, it must be shown
Why every lover has a wish to make
Some kind of otherness his own:
Perhaps, in fact, we never are alone.

-W.H. Auden

What they're saying about reading and writing on Twitter

"I'm pretty sure this is the 1st time I have seen the word 'masshole' appear in print. Good on you, Mr. King."

--@mcgee_gorgo reading UNDER THE DOME for the good stuff, including (if you haven't heard) derogatory slang for residents of Massachusetts.

"Totally sucked at Borges Hero tonight. Failed out of "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" on Easy, and now I'm not even sure if I'm real."

--@hotdogsladies wants you to try and beat him on Jorge Luis Borges.

"Avoid using 'gadzooks,' lest your monocle pop out and land in your jar of mustache wax."

--@FakeAPStylebook is still pure gold. I don't think I've ever said this about a Twitter account before, but someone get this guy a book deal (and a lawyer for the inevitable Associated Press lawsuit).

"in the midst of a SESTINA FAIL"

--If like me you would be completely unable to help @allysonkalea with her poetics emergency, here's an example of a sestina by W.H. Auden.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

-W.H. Auden, "September 1, 1939"