Tribute to David Bromige, who lived from 1933 to 2009. Born in England, Bromige was raised in Canada. He attended UC Berkeley in the 1960s and became friends with Robert Duncan and other California poets. He took a teaching position at the English Department at Sonoma State University in 1970. He retired from teaching at Sonoma State in 1993 but returned later to teaching at San Francisco State. From 2002 to 2004 he was poet laureate of Sonoma County. Wikipedia has this: “Bromige published thirty books, each one so different from the others as to seem to be the work of a different author. Bromige is often associated with the language poets, but this connection is based mainly on his close friendships with some of those poets. It is difficult to fit Bromige into a slot. He departs from language poetry in the thematic unity of many of his poems, in the uses to which he puts found materials, with the romantic aspect of his lyricism, and with the sheer variety of his approaches to the poem.”

Part Two.

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Tribute to David Bromige, who lived from 1933 to 2009. Born in England, Bromige was raised in Canada. He attended UC Berkeley in the 1960s and became friends with Robert Duncan and other California poets. He took a teaching position at the English Department at Sonoma State University in 1970. He retired from teaching at Sonoma State in 1993 but returned later to teaching at San Francisco State. From 2002 to 2004 he was poet laureate of Sonoma County. Wikipedia has this: “Bromige published thirty books, each one so different from the others as to seem to be the work of a different author. Bromige is often associated with the language poets, but this connection is based mainly on his close friendships with some of those poets. It is difficult to fit Bromige into a slot. He departs from language poetry in the thematic unity of many of his poems, in the uses to which he puts found materials, with the romantic aspect of his lyricism, and with the sheer variety of his approaches to the poem.”

Part one.

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Tribute to Brecht / Weill. Jack Foley reads his essay “Mahagonny as Zeitgeist.” This passage is from that essay:

Brecht has brought the supreme example of authority onto his stage: God. And he has shown people saying No to God. If the men of Mahagonny can say No to God, can’t we say No to a play? Can’t we respond to “Cannot help ourselves and you and no one” by saying “No! That’s not true: we can help the living”? It’s an extraordinary moment because the supposedly didactic Brecht is being anything but explicit here. (In a 1926 “Conversation” he insists that “I leave the maximum freedom of interpretation. The sense of my plays is immanent. You have to fish it out for yourself.”) In Mahagonny Brecht is taking the chance that his audience will completely misunderstand him. On the other hand, those who get the point will (like me) remember it forever, because, though the playwright has deliberately prompted the response, the response has occurred in the audience’s consciousness, not in the play itself. Brecht is not only trying to “instruct” his audience; he is trying to transform it.

Lotte Lenya will also be heard.

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Berliner Milljoh, conclusion.

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Steve Ross performs Noël Coward’s songs, including the exquisite and little-known “Most of Every Day.” Coward himself sings his song “Green Carnation” (1929), which first made an explicit connection between Oscar Wilde’s invention, the green carnation, and homosexuality. (It is possible that Wilde, who was Irish, was making an ethnic commentary.) Note that Coward insists that homosexuality is not a PROBLEM for these people (“The world our eccentricity condones”). For him, homosexuality is “womankind’s / Gift to a bulldog nation.”

A chorus from the 1890s sings:

Blasé boys are we

Exquisitely free

From the dreary and quite absurd

Moral views of the common herd

We like porphyry bowls

Chandeliers and stoles

We’re most spirited, carefully filleted souls:

Pretty boys, witty boys, too too too

Lazy to fight stagnation

Haughty boys, naughty boys, all we do

Is to pursue sensation

The portals of society are always open’d wide

The world our eccentricity condones

A lot of quaint variety we’re certain to provide

We dress in very decorative tones

Faded boys, jaded boys, womankind’s

Gift to a bulldog nation

In order to distinguish us from less enlightened minds

We all wear a green carnation

Pretty boys, witty boys, you may sneer

At our disintegration

Haughty boys, naughty boys, dear dear dear

Swooning with affectation

Our figures sleek and willowy

Our lips incarnadine

May worry the majority a bit

But matrons rich and billowy

Invite us out to dine

And revel in our phosphorescent wit

Faded boys, jaded boys, come what may

Art is our inspiration

And as we are the reason for the nineties being gay

We all wear a green carnation

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Today’s show is a tribute to Noël Coward featuring Steve Ross, “the crown prince of New York cabaret.” Ross speaks of Coward and of his own career. Hearing Ross sing Coward’s songs at the Museum of Performance and Design in San Francisco, Jack Foley wrote, “Steve Ross’s performance tonight was just wonderful. I knew just about all the songs Steve sang–melodies and lyrics—and I knew them in Noel Coward's voice because I’d heard so many of Coward's performances. What Steve managed to do was to remake every last song he sang. Not a single rolled r, no Britishisms even when he sang about "London Pride." Oddly enough, it was as if Steve were consciously avoiding the way Coward sang the songs—and yet what he sang was marvelously expressive. I found myself laughing heartily or feeling deeply touched by songs I knew very well. It had to do with Steve's inflections, the little surprises as he sang, the little looks he sometimes gave, the riffs he played. Gershwin showed up momentarily—which was certainly a surprise. Everything seemed marvelously new—yet I knew very well that all these were old songs, songs I knew inside and out. Yet Steve showed me that I didn't know them as well as all that: I didn't know they could be done so differently from the way Coward did them and still be tremendous songs. ‘Make it new,’ wrote Ezra Pound. That’s exactly what Steve did to every song he sang.”

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Poetpourri, Part Two.

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