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.
