A something in a summer's day

I used to be a person who would not go willingly to amateur theater performances.  Yes, I'm the parent in the audience who's sitting there thinking very much along the lines of Thaddeus Bristol (a character in David Sedaris' story about an elementary school Christmas pageant, "Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol").

Perhaps this is due to the trauma induced by a field trip I once took, during which I was forced to sit through four stunningly awful hours of an attempt at performing Annie Get Your Gun.  When we left, they still hadn't gotten through the whole show. I've never seen the end...and never wanted to.

Throughout my childhood, I went to at least four performances a year at the university theater where my father directed plays, and on vacations we saw plays and musicals in New York, London, and Chicago.  It takes more than a desire to see a friend or kid on stage to get me into a theater.  If I'm going to spend the time and money, I want to see something well written and directed.

So it should amaze you to hear that on Sunday, Eleanor and Walker and I drove to Johnstown, Ohio to see their high school students perform Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera.  We don't even know anybody in Johnstown; we were just impressed with their audacity and figured it would either have good moments or it would be fun to laugh at. What amazed us is that the entire show was fun to watch.  The main problem with a high school show is usually the time it takes for everyone to move the scenery, but the Johnstown students had it down to a science, and all their parents and friends were back there helping crank the chandelier up and down, and turn the boat and the life-size elephant around.  The sopranos were up to the job, and the big Masquerade number was a joy, with stilt-walkers and singers surrounding the audience. It turned out to be worth going out in the cold.

There's a line in one of the romantic duets--"turn my head with talk of summertime"--that's been running through my head almost continuously since I heard it on Sunday night.  People who don't mind the cold, who say "you can always put on a sweater," don't get how winter, for people like me, is a season of being always clenched, always having your shoulders hunched up against the cold.  Spring is a kind of gradual unknotting for my shoulder muscles, with summer the culmination.

Summer is a culmination of wonder in this poem by Emily Dickinson:

A something in a summer's day
As slow her flambeaux burn away
Which solemnizes me.

A something in a summer's noon--
A depth--an azure--a perfume--
Transcending ecstasy

And still within a summer's night
A something so transporting bright
I clap my hands to see--

Then veil my too inspecting face
Lest such a subtle, shimmering grace
Flutter too far for me--

The wizard fingers never rest--
The purple brook within the breast
Still chafes its narrow bed--

Still rears the east her amber flag--
Guides still the sun along the crag
His caravan of red--

So looking on--the night--the morn--
Conclude the wonder gay--
And I meet, coming through the dews
Another summer's day!

I have had my head turned, both by thoughts of summertime, and by the magic of theater done well, in the most unlikely of places.

When's the last time you experienced something so full of wonder that you would "clap [your] hands to see"?

Chat Line

I've been looking for a poem to read out loud. I thought about one from Christian Bok's new volume Eunoia, introduced to me by Kiirstin at A Book a Week, because it's so much fun to say "If Klimpt limns it/If Liszt lilts it," but I think I'll keep looking. It's one of the pleasures of this snowy week; I have another few days to come up with something good.

In the meantime, here's a kind of poem that is not fun out loud. This one, by John Menaghan, is meant to be seen:

Chat Line
(in a bus shelter)

I.
"Are you living
with Autism?
Do you want to
talk to someone?
Call Autism
Link now.
You don't have to
go it alone!"

II.
Are you living?
With Autism?
Do you want to?

Talk to someone.
Call Autism.
Link now.

You don't have to!
Go it alone!

Do you have a favorite poem for reading out loud? Children's poems, parodies, and nonsense rhymes are always good. Any Robert Service poem is good, as my friend Laura has repeatedly demonstrated. I love to sing an Emily Dickinson poem to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas" or Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" to the tune of "Hernando's Hideaway." Sharon Olds hardly ever fails to seize an audience's attention; one of my favorites of hers for reading out loud is "The American Way," a prose poem. But I'm looking for something new. Where should I look?

Twelve Impossible Things Before Breakfast

I love it when one story gets tangled up with another. When our children were small, Ron liked to ask them what would happen when Dumbo met Colonel Hathi, or point out that the voice of Winnie the Pooh is the same as the voice of Kaa. (Actually, he did make some non-Jungle Book comparisons, but those are the ones we all remember best.)

So when I went to the library and found Jane Yolen's short story collection entitled Twelve Impossible Things Before Breakfast, I had to check it out. I mean, really! Twelve? Of course, that's the number of stories. But it does seem like a challenge to the Red Queen's boast:
"Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
(Update: perusing Yolen's journal led me to discover a book blog called Seven Impossible Things.)

I have to agree with Walker, who also read this one, that the best story is "Wilding." It's about the new Central Park sport of the future, in which people can turn into animals for a little fun because "wilding is a pure New York sport." Evidently, some things never change, because there is still danger in Central Park, even though Wilding is legal and there are safeguards. The most fun one is the existence of "Maxes" who are there to "control the Wild Things....It's an old story."

Our second favorite is "Lost Girls," in which a girl goes to Neverland and fosters a rebellion among the Wendys, who are stuck cleaning up the table and dishes after every food-fighting feast in which the Lost Boys indulge. That one reminds me of the Emily Dickinson poem:
Tell all the truth, but tell it slant--
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind--

The whole idea of retelling the story from a new "Wendy's" point of view makes me think of "telling it slant," of course, but the idea of the dazzling truth is in the story too, especially the part Walker and I both remembered best and commented on to each other, when Peter looks at the new Wendy, who is insisting that her name is Darla, and "there was nothing nice or laughing or young about his eyes. They were dark and cold and very very old." Yes, and the pirates turn out to be more authentically egalitarian in this version of the story, too.

My other favorite is a vampire story, but unlike any other I've ever read, entitled Mama Gone. It's a brief story, but emotionally effective, and before reading it I would have said that was impossible.

It wasn't one of my favorites, but there's also a version of The Three Billy Goats Gruff in this collection too, told by the bridge. Do you like it when stories are related to each other?

Emblems of Perfect Happiness

Well, here it is the last day of June, and the kids and I are feeling that summer has just begun. Eleanor is finished with her summer school class. Walker and I are finished with Peter Pan, which played to sellout crowds every night and got Walker a mention in the local paper for being a "memorably chipper" Tootles. I just turned in my annual report for the Writing Center, due every year by the end of June. So we're ready for days without deadlines. Summer days. For me, emblems of perfect happiness.

Trouble is, the newspaper confirmed this morning that this has been a record-breaking June for rainfall, and today it's raining again. So we can't really do happy summer things, despite our new feeling of freedom. It makes me think of a poem I have a love/hate relationship with. I memorized the first stanza of this poem long ago, because I love it so much. But I hate the second stanza. I'd like to do like Emily Dickinson's sister, who blacked out an entire stanza of the poem "wedded" that talked about how Emily didn't want to be wedded.

It may seem premature to think of August thunderstorms right now, but we feel thunderstorm-scarred already this summer, having just replaced all of the electronics that fell prey to our own personal lightning strike. Anyway, this is Philip Larkin's Mother, Summer, I:

My mother, who hates thunderstorms,
Holds up each summer day and shakes
It out suspiciously, let swarms
Of grape-dark clouds are lurking there;
But when the August weather breaks
And rains begin, and brittle frost
Sharpens the bird-abandoned air,
Her worried summer look is lost.

And I her son, though summer-born
And summer-loving, none the less
Am easier when the leaves are gone;
Too often summer days appear
Emblems of perfect happiness
I can't confront: I must await
A time less bold, less rich, less clear:
An autumn more appropriate.

Maybe it's because Larkin was a Brit that he felt he couldn't confront those emblems of perfect happiness. The British have a peculiar attitude about things being too much--it's like the line in Peter Pan about the cake being "much too damp and rich for you." I always feel quite ready to enjoy the perfect happiness of summer days. July 4-8 is my absolute favorite time of the year, between parades and fireworks and picnics and my birthday (the 8th), when I almost always persuade someone to spend the day swimming with me. And the weather almost always cooperates.