The Confetti Trees

by Barbara Guest

Guest surprises again with a new work that is both fiction and short, poetically conceived scenarios for film. In her artful fantasias Guest bequeaths a necessary life to the act of film making.

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Barbara Guest, née Barbara Ann Pinson (September 6, 1920 – February 15, 2006), was an American poet and prose stylist. Guest first gained recognition as a member of the first generation New York School of poetry.[1] Guest wrote more than 15 books of poetry spanning sixty years of writing. In 1999, she was awarded the Frost Medal for Lifetime Achievement by the Poetry Society of America. Guest also wrote art criticism, essays, and plays. Her collages appeared on the covers of several of her books of poetry. She was also well known for her biography of the poet H.D., Herself Defined: The Poet H.D. and Her World (1984).

Reviews

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

     my first Motion Picture story derives from a
  

    sequence in the classic Art of the Film
  

The Confetti Tree is a book of prose poetry, reminiscent of passages from Guest's previous collections Fair Realism and The Countess from Minneapolis (although neither strictly adhere to one form, prose poetry or otherwise). The pieces in this collection adhere to a cinematic premise: a loose narrative centred around the production of a film, the subject of which keeps changing...

The book is divided into chapters? poems? Each of the chapters/poems is given a name like "Overboard", "The Tear", or "Trousers for Extras"...

Nothing is shown except the quivering surface the woman standing up and then jumping overboard in which is seen the reflection of the boat the woman indirectly shown by her reflection in the water she is seen falling into water where reflection lies of herself standing up and jumping off the boat; at the next moment the woman herself is seen falling into water at the very spot where her reflection lies the boat is not important the boat with the woman on board "reflected in the water" is important it creates "unusualness"; the suicide reflected in the water catches the eye that with only a passing interest might have watched the woman jump into the water the eye is caught by this "artistic trick" when an adolescent is passed viewing these "artistic tricks" the woman jumping into the water could never be as significant to this person as "reflections in water" the reflection in water is "poetry of the moment."
- Overboard

With The Confetti Tree, Guest attempts to capture this "poetry of the moment", this "poetry of the moment" that hitherto has only existed in film. How better to capture this "poetry of the moment" than with Guest's collage of film scenarios, with a language that is a cross between the cinematic and the poetic.

A need to film Nostalgia crept into the studio and Fade In
Les Grand Boulevards, umbrellas and personal sky, ambition and secret desire, "stiletto" of rain. Dissolve to nostalgia shots ambition and secret desire pleasers of visual kings: knees, masks, intolerance, greed, ballrooms, Bucharest, Vienna, slums; barges, wars, candles, airplanes, deserts, California, New York, railroads; gangsters, light bulbs, aprons, swords, horses; the Riviera, Russians, madmen, births, Christ, weddings; Fade Out dissolve into an earnest documentation; Fade into "Overview: "Now"
- Nostalgia

Not surprisingly, the book is filled with cinematic references, including Ernst Lubitsch, Ingmar Bergman, Norma Shearer, and John Barrymore...

Dreamers in Lubitsch films. Gifted people, like herself, determined to exit the snare of everyday life. What did dream-laden Lubitsch know about everyday life! Then she recalled the eyes of a former Hungarian Baroness. She had played with a little fan tied to her wrist as she confided her life story tears, international tears, of loss and regret lay nested in her eyes.
- Lubitsch

This caused much speculation as to the morality of the producer, himself, until someone pointed out that lodged on the sparse soil of his mind, like an Icelandic flower, was a fondness for the films of Ingmar Bergman. This faith in Bergman, who many of the studios considered "finished," must have established itself when the producer was an adolescent, as no similar evidence of this affection exists in his harsh demands to make more "gun shows."
- "Moments Before..."

The Director, putting a pinch of snuff in each nostril, was likewise engaged: " . . . Norma Shearer . . . John Barrymore . . . Conquistadores . . . silver armour . . . Norma Shearer . . . daughter of Emperor . . . expensive hotel . . . Barrymore . . . beautiful voice . . . thick oak door . . . Norma!" ran through his head like the sips of rum he remembered from the old days in the screening room, the feel of the glass in his now shaky hands. Tacky soda . . . laced with gin . . . ugly Burbank. He floated away to his new home in New York State: " . . . Duchess County roses climbing roof . . . "
- Romance

My favourite passages...

A fully dressed man with the mobile face of an actor of the 1930s is standing on an empty beach. He is reading a letter. The sea gulls screech above him. The camera pans in. Looking directly into the camera he repeats over and over: "I refuse to get whipped up by your lonely mess."
- "Lonely Mess"

He dreams of a crowd and in his dream becomes detached from the crowd, next he becomes detached from the dream, and he struggles to return to his dream of the crowd, while in a corner of the same dream chamber a man hugs a book bound in vellum as he reads by candlelight.
- The Dream Motion Picture; A PROPOSAL FOR ANIMATION