Two poems - one Louise Brooks, one Lulu - second installment in memory of my feelings

With time on my hands due to the coronavirus pandemic quarantine, I was digging around the corners of the internet the other day - two different corners actually, when I came across a couple of poems which I thought might be of interest to readers of this blog which concerns itself with all things Louise Brooks and Lulu. This is the second installment.

Unlike Frank O'Hara's poem featured in the previous blog, I don't know anything about Emilio Vasquez's poem, "Kutinijata Wa, Lulu!"

All I know about it is that it was published in the July-August 1929 issue if Amauta, a significant avant-garde journal published in Peru (though read around the world). Is this Lulu poem is some way about our Lulu, Louise Brooks? It is hard to say.  It was published a few months after Pandora's Box debuted in Germany, though a few months before the film made its way to South America. (Pandora's Box was first screened in Latin America in December of 1929, though coverage of the film began appearing the previous month.)

Here is a poor translation of the poem, via the google translation function. Words in bold I could not translated. Can anyone suggest a better translation, or suggest a meaning for the words in bold?

KUTINIJATA WA, LULU

So under those past moons
as kelluncho mananero
pecked in your eyes in my waters

Today looking for you in his cabin
my suicidal loneliness gallops desperately

Song of kena soledana
my voice calls yelling at you
           kirkincho rose from your ears

Your sneak like recent wikunite
and only the wind burns me with its kiss

My eyes lacewing you in false

Why do you throw me up to kiss the earth

            But
you will return at dawn of fresh milk
like the puqu-puqu to its nest another day

We will start later in song and dance
the same waynu started a sowing day

Your green skirt turns wonder
our path will set afire again


There is little online about the author, Emilio Vasquez, who is unfamiliar to me. However I did find a passing reference to him on the web which mentioned he is considered an Andean modernist. That led me to pull my copy of Dudley Fitts' 1942 New Directions collection, Anthology of Contemporary Latin-American Poetry, and I found this brief biographical blurb.

I emailed a scholar of Latin American poetry, but have yet to hear back.

Coincidentally, the Blanton Museum of Art (at the University of Texas at Austin) along with the Museo de Arte de Lima (in Peru) just organized a new exhibit, The Avant-garde Networks of Amauta: Argentina, Mexico, and Peru in the 1920s, which relates to the very magazine in which I found this poem. The exhibit description reads: "The 1920s were a period of rapid modernization and artistic innovation across the globe; magazines played an integral role in disseminating bold new ideas and movements. The Avant-Garde Networks of Amauta: Argentina, Mexico, and Peru in the 1920s explores this history in Latin America through the magazine Amauta, published in Peru from 1926 to 1930. With an expansive network of collaborators, Amauta captured major artistic and political conversations of the decade including international discussions of the avant-garde, traditional craft as innovation, the visual identity of leftist politics, and the movement of Indigenism. The exhibition has more than 200 objects — including paintings, sculptures, poetry, ceramics, tapestries, woodcut prints, publications, and ephemera —  that richly evoke the milieu of this radical period."

The musuem webpage has a rather nifty virtual tour of the exhibit, which to my eyes, suggests the influence of German expressionism on the Amauta artists. So who knows? Perhaps Emilio Vasquez was hip to what was going on in Germany, especially the considerable amount of coverage given Brooks and her role as Lulu in Pandora's Box, and was inspired to write a poem? Who knows?

Two poems - one Louise Brooks, one Lulu - first installment in memory of my feelings

With time on my hands due to the coronavirus pandemic quarantine, I was digging around the corners of the internet the other day - two different corners actually, when I came across a couple of poems which I thought might be of interest to readers of this blog which concerns itself with all things Louise Brooks and Lulu. This is the first installment.

The first poem is one I have known about for some time; it is called "F.Y.I. (Prix de Beauté)" and it is by Frank O'Hara (1926-1966), one of the key New York School poets and one of the key American poets of the 1960s. (His 1964 book, Lunch Poems, is a classic and a favorite!) Not only does the poem's title reference a Brooks' film, namely Prix de beauté (1930), it also begins with a quotation from that film, "Et peut-être je t'aimerais encore," or "And maybe I will still love you," which is ascribed to the actress. Here, the poem is dated 7/31/61.

I found the poem while looking through a keyword searchable database of post WWII small press publication which included some lesser known poetry magazines, or what we might today call 'zines. This find was surprising, in that it references the actress rather early on in the history of the Brooks' revival - and that it comes from a poetry journal, not a film journal. The publication was called Audit-Poetry, and it was published out of Buffalo, New York. This issue, vol IV, no. 1, from 1964, featured the work of Frank O'Hara.

I was first made aware of the poem by Bill Berkson (1939-2016), a good friend of O'Hara's and a poet of renown who is also associated with the New York School of Poets. I had known Berkson back when I lived in San Francisco. We met after I had mounted a small exhibit of Louise Brooks memorabilia at a local coffee shop in my San Francisco neighborhood. Among those who visited the exhibit were the artist/filmmaker Bruce Conner (who wrote in the guestbook, see below), the artist known as Jess (who was brought by the poet Norma Cole), and Berkson himself.

Berkson, who lived in my San Francisco neighborhood, suggested we meet. He told me about his own interest and affection for Brooks and that he had written a poem related to the actress which was titled "Bubbles." He also told me about "F.Y.I. (Prix de Beauté)" and his friendship with O'Hara. Berkson said that both of their poems were inspired by a July 31, 1961 screening of Prix de Beauté at the New Yorker theater in New York City which the two young poets attended. O'Hara's poem, dated to the day of the screening, was first published three years a later in Audit-Poetry, and then again in The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara, edited by Donald Allen, a book which shared the 1972 National Book Award for Poetry. [I treasure my old hardback copy of this collection, which I had autographed by the late poet John Ashbery (who once met Brooks, which he told me about) and who wrote the introduction. I regret that I did not have Donald Allen sign it as well, as I was acquainted with him during my days as a bookseller in the late 1990s. He was a bit of a curmudgeon.]

Well anyways, Berkson and I got to know one another a bit, and we talked about Brooks, poetry, and art when we met (Berkson was also well known art critic, and I recall the Philip Guston paintings which hung in his apartment). He gave me a copy of his 1984 book Lush Life, which contained "Bubbles." I put on a poetry reading with him at the bookstore where I worked. (The store used to issue trading cards for most all of its events, and I collected a set of signed cards.)

Around that time, I also began making a series of limited edition broadsides in conjunction with some of those bookstore readings, and one that I issued in conjunction with Berkson's reading was of his Brooks-related poem. These broadsides were printed at home on my laser printer on hand-fed watercolor paper (it was a laborious project trying to feed thick textured paper through a printer not meant to accept such paper), usually in an edition of 25 or 50 copies, with each autographed by the poet. Here is the "Bubbles" broadside , which includes a portrait of Brooks in The American Venus discretely drawn like a watermark into the background, just as the actress discretely inspired Berkson's oblique poem. (BTW: Some of the language in this poem is drawn from Brooks' own writings, especially her piece on the making of Beggars of Life.)

 

Bill told me he liked what I had made, and went about signing the edition of 50. I gave him a few copies, and he told me that one would go into his archive which a university was considering purchasing. I was pleased. I also told Bill about my hopes to make a similar broadside for O'Hara's "F.Y.I. (Prix de Beauté)". In fact, I showed him a draft copy, which Bill also liked. He was enthusiastic about the project, and gave me the email of O'Hara's estate so I could write and get permission to publish a broadside. I did so, but was turned down. Alas. And that was the end of that. Here is a low res scan of one of two draft copies. [I recall I gave Berkson one, and kept one.]

post script. I printed a few more broadsides back then, though not all were related to Brooks. Among those that were include an August Kleinzahler poem, "Watching Young Couples with an Old Girlfriend on Sunday Morning," which references Louise Brooks and her "annealed" hair. Beautiful. I also made a Barry Paris broadside at the time I put on event for his reissued biography of Brooks. That was back in 2006....  

 

One of my best efforts was a triptych of broadsides (edition of 25 copies per each poem, total edition of 75) made at the time I did an event with the acclaimed poet Mary Jo Bang for her superb book, Louise in Love. Here is a picture of the three poems, "Louise in Love, - " She Loved Falling" - The Diary of a Lost Girl", along with the cover of Bang's 2001 book.

This blog is a prose poem, if you will, written in memory of my feelings, as it were. The next blog,  the second installment, concerns a Lulu poem written by an obscure Andean modernist published in 1929. Stay tuned.

New Louise Brooks DVD - Prix de beaute released in Italy

Prix de beaute, the Louise Brooks film made in France in 1930, has just been released on DVD in Italy. I haven't yet received a copy, but I assume this to be the silent version of the 1930 film as released in Italy. (Prix de beaute was released as both a silent and sound film in as many as four different languages.) Earlier this year, near the onset of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, Il Cinema Ritrovato made a streaming version of this classic film available. Read more HERE.

Here is the description of this new release as found on the Il Cinema Ritrovato website. The DVD is for sale there, and on amazon Italy; I also noticed a copy has popped up on eBay.

This new release features 2 DVDs and a booklet - curated by Mariann Lewinsky and Andrea Meneghelli.

Presented in the world premiere or in the most recent restorations, four films to rediscover the genius of Augusto Genina and the extraordinary generation of actresses, between stardom and post-stardom, who illuminated his silent cinema. Goodbye youth! (1918): from the famous comedy by Camasio and Oxilia, miraculously rediscovered, a film of palpitating naturalness, inhabited by the radiant presence of Maria Jacobini. The mask and the face (1919): a satirical and abrasive comedy of matrimonial and sexual customs, which bursts into the cinema of the time with unprecedented audacity. Goodbye youth! (1927): a remake, but it's like a century has passed. Genina and her muse Carmen Boni look to international cinema and create a stunning modern romantic comedy. Prix ​​de beauté (1930): the farewell and apotheosis of the silent Genina. Louise Brooks shines with all her innocent and sensual aura in a timeless European masterpiece.

With essays by Mariann Lewinsky, Andrea Meneghelli, Paola Cristalli, Michele Canosa and six portraits of actresses by Vittorio Martinelli.

Lately, while working on Around the World with Louise Brooks, I have been spending time with all the material I have collected on Prix de beaute. And while doing so, I came across a 1989 Italian book on director Augusto Genina which I didn't have and which I ordered. Though I don't read or speak Italian, flipping through this new-to-me volume got me even more interested in this Italian-born director. Thus, I am looking forward to seeing three more of his early films. I can't wait for my disc to arrive... I plan on blogging about this new DVD sometime soon.

Something to read about Louise Brooks, recently on the web

If you are stuck at home these days and are spending more time than ever looking for something to read or watch, might I recommend.... a couple of worthwhile articles which have popped up which I would like to recommend everyone check out.

The first is by Jan-Christopher Horak, and it is titled "The Last Days of Louise Brooks." It appeared on Jan-Christopher's blog, Archival Spaces: Memory, Images, History. Jan-Christopher is an impressive fellow. He is a film archivist, teacher, and the author or editor of a handful of books including Lovers of Cinema: The First American Film Avant-Garde, 1919-1945, and Dream Merchants: Making and Selling Films in Hollywood's Golden Age. I have met him a couple times over the years, and recently emailed him about his contribution to an Austrian book about Louise Brooks called Louise Brooks: Rebellin, Ikone, Legende. 

On August 15, Jan-Christopher posted the English-language version of the piece which appeared in the above mentioned Austrian book. (The piece was first published in German.) Besides his many accomplishments, Jan-Christopher was also once associated with the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York. And that's how he came to meet Louise Brooks. "I met Louise Brooks for the first time in 1975, long after her Hollywood career had ended, when she was living on N. Goodman Street in Rochester, N.Y., around the block from my apartment. At the time, I was a paid post-graduate intern at George Eastman House and confess that when I met her in Curator George Pratt’s office, she was to me just another silent film actress." Jan-Christopher's piece goes on to recount his observations of Brooks, and his visit to her spartan apartment. It is a special piece, which I recommend everyone take the time to read.

Another piece I think everyone might enjoy reading is "Double Lives: On Louise Brooks’s 'Thirteen Women in Films',” by Maya Cantu, which appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books on August 15. It is a consideration-meditation of Louise Brooks as a feminist icon. I think it is a thoughtful piece. Cantu, like Horak, is an academic. She teaches Drama and Literature at Bennington College, and is the author of American Cinderellas on the Broadway Musical Stage: Imagining the Working Girl from Irene to Gypsy.

While I agree with much of what Cantu says in her piece, I must disagree with her assessment (or her hinging part of her argument on) of a recently released docu-drama, Silent and Forgotten. I viewed it in pre-release, and think it is somewhat weak tea. [An earlier LBS blog on the video was posted here on September 14, 2019.] Nevertheless, I encourage everyone to watch it and to read the Cantu piece and to see for themselves.

In Silent and Forgotten, a single actress (Jacquie Donley) re-enacts the stories of 13 of the most famous actresses of the silent era, including Brooks. However, as one reviewer put it,   Donley "has a passing resemblance to Brooks and even seems to channel her pretty well, but makes an unconvincing everyone else."

Silent and Forgotten, an independent film our from Summer Hill Entertainment, is out on DVD at a reasonable $9.99, and is also available for streaming on Amazon Prime (at this time). Here is the long version of the trailer, which give the flavor of the film.

Around the World with Louise Brooks, a few LAST trimmings from the cutting room floor

A continuation of the series of previous posts.... Here are a couple more odds 'n ends which I can't make use of or don't have room for in Around the World with Louise Brooks. The first is a three page Spanish language article about Hollywood which unfortunately doesn't mention Louise Brooks. I don't remember where it is from, likely a South American publication circa 1930. That was sloppy of me.

And lastly, here is another undated, unsourced clipping from Austria which does depict Louise Brooks. This page is titled "Wie war es mit einer Volksabstimmung" or "How about a referendum".  Instead, I will title this somewhat bizarre piece "babes and battleships."

Around the World with Louise Brooks, even a FEW MORE trimmings from the cutting room floor

A continuation of the series of previous posts.... Here is another odds 'n ends which I can't make use of or don't have room for in Around the World with Louise Brooks. As with the earlier post in this series, here is an eight page French language article on Hollywood which mentions both Louise Brooks and her one-time husband, Eddie Sutherland. (Brooks and Sutherland are mentioned on the fourth page.) This article comes from a March 1929 issue of a scarce French film magazine, PhotoCine, and comes complete with pictures of various movie stars and their homes as well as some 'swonderful caricatures. Enjoy.