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McAlmon's Chinese opera: Poems
Paperback
Published January 1, 1980
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 22, 2024
"Ezra in St. Elizabeth's:
I had to laugh when they called him mad --
for who is sane, Hiroshima?
children of Nagasaki, who will judge . . . ." p. 74
". . . If
there are no good reasons for living,
then I believe there are none
for dying either. . . ." p. 54
" . . . I've often wondered where they come from,
the wave of sadists, cretins, pimps,
who greet each new dictatorship, and crush
delightedly beneath their heels their own
identical twins of the previous reign . . . ." p. 42
" . . . and Europe
shoved a glass into my hand
shifting over at the bar
to make room for one more
drunken Ulysses
heading for his ten years' war." p. 29
"Gertrude Stein says
you have to have flown across the Mid-West
seeing the patterns of the fields
to understand modern painting.
What I say is
you have to have walked that land
a whole Dakota afternoon
to understand modern writing." p. 11
A selection of passages from Stephen Scobie's "McAlmon's Chinese Opera", a 1977 almost-epic cycle of poems now perhaps as forgotten as its subject. Robert McAlmon left the Dakotas and entered the heart of the American/British/Canadian expat literary set of Paris in the 20s. McAlmon knew everyone -- Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, Joyce, Canadians John Glascoe and Morley Callaghan, and countless other giants now as forgotten as McAlmon himself.
In mostly short and mostly free verse conversational poems, Scobie gives voice to McAlmon reflecting on his life from obscurity in the U.S. Midwest, through fame and the shadow of fame in New York and Paris, to a final obscurity again. "McAlmon's Chinese Opera" is a not-to-be-forgotten half-century-old reflection on that century old brief and marvelous and tragic-in-so-many-ways moment in Paris between the wars.
I had to laugh when they called him mad --
for who is sane, Hiroshima?
children of Nagasaki, who will judge . . . ." p. 74
". . . If
there are no good reasons for living,
then I believe there are none
for dying either. . . ." p. 54
" . . . I've often wondered where they come from,
the wave of sadists, cretins, pimps,
who greet each new dictatorship, and crush
delightedly beneath their heels their own
identical twins of the previous reign . . . ." p. 42
" . . . and Europe
shoved a glass into my hand
shifting over at the bar
to make room for one more
drunken Ulysses
heading for his ten years' war." p. 29
"Gertrude Stein says
you have to have flown across the Mid-West
seeing the patterns of the fields
to understand modern painting.
What I say is
you have to have walked that land
a whole Dakota afternoon
to understand modern writing." p. 11
A selection of passages from Stephen Scobie's "McAlmon's Chinese Opera", a 1977 almost-epic cycle of poems now perhaps as forgotten as its subject. Robert McAlmon left the Dakotas and entered the heart of the American/British/Canadian expat literary set of Paris in the 20s. McAlmon knew everyone -- Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, Joyce, Canadians John Glascoe and Morley Callaghan, and countless other giants now as forgotten as McAlmon himself.
In mostly short and mostly free verse conversational poems, Scobie gives voice to McAlmon reflecting on his life from obscurity in the U.S. Midwest, through fame and the shadow of fame in New York and Paris, to a final obscurity again. "McAlmon's Chinese Opera" is a not-to-be-forgotten half-century-old reflection on that century old brief and marvelous and tragic-in-so-many-ways moment in Paris between the wars.
Displaying 1 of 1 review