Sherry Chandler

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Must winds that cut like blades of steel

And sunsets swimming in Volnay,

The holiest, cruelest pains I feel,

Die stillborn, because old men squeal

For something new. “Write something new….”

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No, no! My chicken, I shall scrawl

Just what I fancy as I strike it

Fairies and Fusiliers, and all

Old broken knock-kneed thought will crawl

Across my verse in the classic way

And sir, be careful what you say

There are old-fashioned folk still like it.

__Robert Graves, 1918

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Perhaps the greatest obstacle to staging a Shakespeare comedy is the awe in which we have come to hold his work. Max Reinhardt felt obliged to stage a huge spectacle for his stage productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and in the 1935 film even though he cast a batch of American Movie Stars in that. While many of the choices he made were inspired–Mickey Rooney as a manic Puck with an obstreperous cackle, Jimmy Cagney as Bottom–he miscast Dick Powell as Lysander. The massive production tended to overwhelm the comedy.

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Comic book and graphic novel adaptations have fared no better–the Classics Illustrated version ignored the verse of the play–and Shakespeare employed far more rhymed couplets in MSD than in any other play. Charles Vess tried to adapt it to graphic novel form but felt overwhelmed–probably because he was so influenced by Arthur Rackham and other Victorian illustrators–and ended up doing an MSD metafiction with Neil Gaiman in his Sandman series.

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In his webcomic Pibgorn Brooke McEldowney adapted the play using characters from his mainstream comic 9 Chickweed Place to supplement his comic fantasy saga cast. He adapted many of his female characters to traditionally male roles; one major conceit is that the play is set in a 1930s “Athens City” theatre district which is a thinly veiled New York. Art Deco skyscrapers abound so that they nearly become supporting cast members. Allusions to the Ashcan School of American Art culminate in a direct copy of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks. McEldowney manages to evoke nearly every trope of 20th C. Broadway comedies/musicals and Hollywood adaptations of same along with film noir and pre-code movies and cartoons.

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Much of this adaptation ponders the role of women in 20th C. America–the power they had gained before WWII, before the Depression, before the repression of the ethics code. This fits very well with the concerns of the play with the tension between male power and female resistance–is Pyramus a tyrant or a lover–or both? Hermia and Helena gain power in the Wood they never could have in Athens, and when Chickweed’s Gran is cast as Egea, with the power of life or death over her recalcitrant daughter, it points up just how much power 20th C. American women gained.

But the most dynamic bit of casting is the fairy Pibgorn as the pwca Robin Goodfellow. This allows for a love triangle between Puck, Titania (the succubus Drusilla with short black spitcurls–Betty Boop as Mae West?) and Oberon (Geoff, the mortal pianist as underworld boss–his acetylene-blue eyes burning under the shadow of his fedora). McEldowney also matures the changeling Indian prince into a haughty handsome youth, the perfect boytoy for Titania and fitting rival for Oberon, so there is a second interlocking love triangle in the fairy realm.

There are sly allusions throughout the adaptation to numerous 20th Century comedies, romantic, screwball, fantastic. Solange the Chickweed Siamese colorpoint accompanies Puck so often that Bell, Book and Candle’s Pyewacket rises in the magic circle. The girls who work in Titania’s nightclub The Wood form a Busby Berkely chorus line–clothed only in pink thistledown– to help the Prince sing their mistress asleep. The Prince himself, who could be a cross between the pop star Prince and Cab Calloway, with a dash of Valentino, finishes the number with a bit of slide dancing and a slow striptease. For me, this evoked all three of the Cab Calloway/Betty Boop cartoons. Then he enjoys a Code-flaunting love scene with Titania. They apparently do everything short of kicking that gong around.

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But Puck has already seduced Oberon after she delivered Cupid’s herb–a passion-flower? — and they wind up in bed for a post-coital tete-a-tete as he outlines his plans to get the changeling away from Titania. Puck’s frustration and jealousy complete the movie-oriented genre which Shakespeare’s plays helped inspire. She is a working class girl to Oberon’s criminal overlord and is fated to win his love, according to the conventions of the best screwball comedies of the 20th Century. All of the dancers, Titania’s fairies, the rude mechanicals/chorus girls and Puck are solidly working class in contrast to the aristocracy–the theater and nightclub owners.
Bottom is also female–probably the only time the ingenue plays that role–and she is another fairy, Oognat,–the musical reference is typical of McEldowney, who is also a professional musician; she may also evoke a certain G. Herriman character. McEldowney even manages to make her transformed ears exude a certain je ne sais quois so that one can understand why Titania could be so taken with her charms. The scene where the succubus’ serpent tongue twines about the delicate tip of a gracefully tapering ear is inspired.

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Pibgorn archives are available through subscription to mycomicspage.com.

In a recent post about yewberries, Geof Huth says:

Everything is poetry, everything is fruit, everything is poison.

For some reason, I was reminded of that statement when I read the Pocahantas County Fare post on knots, which in its turn links to this long Washington Post article on the same subject.

The Post article in its turn links to The Knotplot Site, where you can download a software package that will allow you to create graphic knots right on your own computer. Or, if you click to here, you can see Knot 2234 from The Ashley Book of Knots in 3-D image.

You will also find a PDF file there with instructions for crocheting a Lorenz attractor. The creator wanted to crochet something useful. But my life is chaotic enough. I think I’ll stick to afghans.

Rebecca is interested in knots, of course, because she knits. The image above is American needle lace, also a form of needlework knotting.

I know a square knot from a granny and can tie myself up in simple yogic knots. I knit a little, crochet more easily, and once upon a time I taught myself tatting from a book. I wanted to do it because I was given a handkerchief for which my great-aunt Ruth had tatted the lace border. “Tatting,” thought I, “I never heard of tatting. How exotic to learn it.” And so I set off in search of instruction.

Alas, it was not a success because, while I could teach myself the way to run the shuttle under and over to form the lace — it’s like making a buttonhole stitch around a thread — I could never figure out how to keep my thread from snarling up like a mistreated telephone cord.

Perhaps snarled thread is the “poison” of lacemaking.

My son, who loves all things Celtic, from Enya to Granuaille, loves Celtic knots.

And my husband, the wood carver, loves Welsh spoons.

Knots, of course, are associated with calligraphy and gnarled graphics were used to illuminate manuscripts such as the Book of Kells. Perhaps that’s why all this reminds me of words. Or specifically of words as Vispo. Take a look at Geof Huth’s the drunken E. Or f.r.o.g.p.o.n.d.

But I’ll tell you, this is a knotty business. No end to the associations of knots. My head is spinning through loops and braids and bends. I feel as drunk as an E. I think I’ll make this sentence the bitter end.

Every now and then I look over and see my pile of pages from Ulysses and think I should get back to my altered book project. So far, I’ve done a whopping three pages, I think. Typical of my relationship with Ulysses. I never can make any progress with that book.

Someday I’ll do another page.

Meanwhile, I’ll recommend that you take a look at the Altered Books site, if you haven’t been there lately. The project gets more elaborate as it goes on, as the participants get into it I guess. I can’t hope to compete with that, for sure. Anyway, I think my interest will always lean more toward what language I can find through these altering techniques.

Geof Huth at dbqp recently featured Invisible Notes, where you can see the work of Peter Ciccariello, whom I think I would describe as a landscape poet.

Also, if you’d like to see some fine photos, some interesting visual poems, AND practice your French, take a look at L’Oeil Ouvert.

Last Tuesday I attended the last session of a 10-week poetry class taught by Leatha Kendrick at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning here in Lexington. It was a great class with a lot of energy not only in the teacher but also in the students. Together we produced a fairly amazing body of work.

For our last class, we were asked to bring in a failed poem. I chose the one below, which I tried to write on the occasion of the last Kentucky Guild of Artists and Craftsmen fair to be held at Indian Fort Theater between Berea and Big Hill.

This is what I took:

GUILD FAIR

to the south, the bullfrog croak
of washtub bass, not quite
in tune, not quite on the beat,
a medley from Oh Brother
the sing-along children all
in constant sorrow.

to the north, the rattle, roar,
squeak and clang of kettle corn,
a soundtrack of chatter, rhythms
of English, punctuated
by slamming Port-O-San doors,
a squeak of stroller wheels.

An old man, tweed jacket and cane,
drags along a straw stuck
to his pointy-toed black shoes,
a toddler waves a trophy broken branch,
a midge crawls frantic circles
in the bowl of a wild-cherry spoon,
pignuts bombard the roof of our E-Z-Up.

I watch a leaf turn on the forest floor:
Daddy Longlegs palpates loam
with prehensile wisps,
touches the rubber edge of my sole,
jumps back.

During the class, Leatha gave us scissors, glue sticks, and paper and told us to excise only those portions of the “poem” that seemed energetic and strong. This is what I wound up with:

What I think I learned: not only was there very little really interesting language in my original (and the big delete circle means that I had some doubt about what I did save) but it looks really static and dull compared to the kind of paste-up whimsy of the edit.

I think I found the optimum form for this little piece and that’s why I put it up here. Maybe it’s because the paste-up has a crafty look that’s appropriate to its subject. I think it has turned into a visual poem of sorts.