Taggart's Is Music

John Taggard [1942] is a rough contemporary of mine. Though he was born five years earlier, his first book, To Construct a Clock [Elizabeth Press], wasn't published until 1971, at about the point that I was finishing up at the Iowa Writer's Workshop. I never met Taggart face to face, but followed his work from those early days.

But Taggart's work had already, by that point, achieved a finish and clarity that I felt I could only dream of. It was apparent that we shared an interest in the American Gothic Modernist poem, centered around the Objectivists, Williams, and the nodes of Black Mountain (Creeley, Blackburn) and Corman's Origin (Snyder, Bronk, Enslin) circle--an interest as an application to further inquiry. It seemed optimistic to believe that Zukofsky and Creeley had not exhausted the possibilities of the clinically spare lyric, and that more might be done.

Of the poets interested in the "difficult" lyricism of Zukofsky or Oppen, Taggart had by far the best shot at making something of the attempt, having a fine philosophical turn of mind (rather perhaps like Michael Palmer's), and a wide reading in literature and allied arts.

Now, almost 40 years later, the full narrative of the development of Taggart's oeuvre can be measured and appraised, as his new Is Music: Selected Poems has just been published by Copper Canyon [2010]. Taggart's early preoccupation with the Objectivist's primary tenets of clarity, objectivity, sincerity, and intelligence was reverent, though occasionally ironic as well.

The "rediscovery" of the Objectivists during the 1960's caused a reappraisal of the value and purpose of the poetry of the 1920's and 1930's, arcing over the period beginning with the Second World War and the appearance of Allen's New American Poetry anthology in 1960, signaling a renewal of interest in abandoned inheritances: Sheeler, Stein, Weston, Satie, the Group Theatre, etc.

Amongst the rhetorical extravagances of 1950's American poetic styles, a bold departure was suggested by Oppen's three books of the 1960's: The Materials [1962], This in Which [1965], and Of Being Numerous [1968]. It may have seemed that, almost overnight, the possibility of an Objectivists' renaissance was at hand. No one, in my view, has any better claim to being the avatar of such a revitalization than John Taggart.

However, seen within the context of his whole life's work (to date), this "objectivist" period does not constitute anything like the main theme of his work. Each of his first four books--

To Construct a Clock [1971]

The Pyramid is a Pure Crystal [1974]

Prism and the Pine Twig [1977]

Dodeka [1979]

--clearly orbits within the objectivist system of values and interest. Beginning with Peace on Earth [1981], there is a distinct change, a reorientation of address. Against the subtly crafted early objectivist style, with its logical leaps and coded linguistic wit--

Position

The parade deposits

no bodies.

I walk in praise of all metals, the

aluminum cube in the desert.

Not "for no good reason, the fact only"

but the hum

the shifting absence.

--there was now a musicality, manifested as a kind of accretive phraseology, sequences of uniform stanzas built out of "soft wave" repetitions, an incrementally nested style which had a lulling affect--as in these two opening pages from the first section from Peace on Earth--

To love to love those to love those who

are in to love those who are in a condition

in a condition

of hiding to love those who are in

a condition of hiding to

love those as children as the

valiant children who have gone into hiding

children who hide in a house from the roaring.

Care touches the face, untwists the face.

To love those as children who hide to

lay down to lay down with

the children to lay down with the children

in a flame to lay down in a flame of fire.

*

To love to love those to love those who

are in a condition a condition of hiding

to love those who are in

hiding to love those as children

valiant children who have gone into

hiding who hide in a house from the roaring

of bones in confusion

roaring of bones marching in confusion

Care touches the face, untwists the face.

To love those who hide from the confusion

to lay down with the children

in a flame in a flame of fire to

be in to be at home with the children.

From its earliest manifestations, Taggart's work has been preoccupied by seriality, both in music and in logical thought. The Pyramid is a Pure Crystal* is a sequence of small boxed poems, interlocking puzzles of grammar and syntax, which are like a metaphysician's deck. When I published a section of this in the literary rag I edited back in the 1970's, L Magazine, I surmised that the eight sections of the poem were like the translucent sides of a clear octahedron--inscribed within the cube of the larger structural containment, recapitulated as a single stringed stanza at the end--

Seriality may be imagined as a metaphor for the building of a poem, a piece of music, or the inherent shape of a material object, its crystalline elemental interlocking structure. The Metaphysicals (Donne, Herbert, Marvell &c.) were preoccupied with congruent or dissonant cognition (discordia concours--the combination of dissimilar images, or of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike), with elaborate conceits and poised dilemmas. Taggart's earlier application of the principle of metaphysical conundra to the clear physical delivery of the Objectivists, was bound up with the confinements and logical dead-ends of language as philosophical inquiry. The later style privileges music as the queue for the apprehension of meaning. As in Zukofsky, speech and song define the limits of pitch and tempo through the demarcation of staff, bar and tonal notation. In Renaissance musical composition, construction of familiar tropes, of phrase and combination, enunciation and rhetorical dialectic, produces repetitions and balanced renditions. In jazz--a major interest of Taggart's--free variation in real time allows the aleatorical indeterminate, of alternate selection and accidentals. The poem's outcome then may be undetermined at its start--

Pastourelle 7

Mud along the edge of the creek

creek or small river

and how during the summer

low water and increased edge of mud rank smell

in the heat

many rocks exposed slick to touch

the problem is not finding a rock there are

many

the problem is not turning

into a rock

the problem is a problem of how

far how far can I throw myself and how far can I

throw myself again.

If the problem in Taggart's earlier verse was how to contain thought, in language, to restrain its slippery, wayward tendency to smear sense, to wander off point, the later style embraces indulgence. The problem isn't in finding a rock, or in not turning into a rock, but of how to throw oneself forward. This forwardness is the central driving motive in much of the verse published since 1980. Combined, again, with his interest in seriality, in poetic sequences in which intertwining thematic threads are woven out of musical strands of nested phrases, this produces a poetry of diverting pleasure--

As color considered as a car a pink Cadillac

customized

the whole thing taken apart/stripped down to the essential torse/torso

where the car came from the luxe calme and volupté junkyard

where the job gets down where else it can only be

Rothko's body shop

a long job it takes a careful kind of character you have to know what you're doing

careful and serious

twenty-three coats of pink is serious

one after or on another one coat which is lightly sanded/hand-rubbed another

coat lightly sanded/hand-rubbed

twenty-three coats

a long job it takes time for a coat to dry

you have to take a break take your time step back sit down have a smoke

you have to think about it

Along the staff of percolating vowels, a process of inquiry and gestural play is carried out, through phrases whose constantly shifting syntactic relationships are teased into new arrangements, resistant positions, surprising antinomies. Again, this later example, from There Are Birds [2008] suggests to me the work of Michael Palmer--but I think these two writers probably came from different places to arrive at a similar destination.

Taggart's music is music.

__________

* For a fascinating discussion of The Pyramid is a Pure Crystal, see Caitlin Murray's Losing Count and Not Caring with John Taggart's "Pyramid Canon" at Impossible Objects blogsite (http://impossibleobjects.wordpress.com/2010/03/14/losing-count-and-not-caring-with-john-taggartss-pyramid-canon/).

Performance & Failure - The Sports Beat

 

 

I find myself writing again about professional sports teams. 

 

As a boy, in the household where I grew up, listening to and watching pro sports, on radio and television, was important. My Stepfather, Harry W. Faville, born in 1901, had played varsity basketball in high school in or near Madison, Wisconsin. There was a team portrait made (in 1915 or 1916?) showing him as the center (he was 6'3" which would have made him among the tallest men of his generation). Harry had an athlete's body, and if it hadn't been for his heavy smoking, probably would have remained healthy into his 80's, if he hadn't died in an automobile accident at age 72 in 1972. As early as the 1920's, he had followed professional sports with a keen interest. You Know Me Al [Ring Lardner] was a favorite book, and he liked to talk about the big stars of the 1930's and 1940's. One of my earliest memories was of listening to a baseball game on the radio, hearing the name Pee Wee Reese and thinking it funny. This would have been in 1953 or '54. 

 

When the Giants moved West in 1958, they immediately became the focus of his attention. The 49ers had been formed only a few years earlier, and in 1957 they narrowly missed going to the championship game, losing to the Detroit Lions, who beat the Cleveland Browns 59-14 in a game which I watched on our neighbor's television set. 

 

With both the 49ers and the Giants as home franchises, there always seemed to be another game to listen to, or to watch.

 

Since moving from New York to San Francisco in 1958, the Giants have never won it all. They narrowly missed in 1962, when a screaming liner by Willie McCovery in the last of the ninth inning of the 7th game, was stabbed by Bobby Richardson. A game of inches! Then there was 1989, the so-called "Bay Bridge Series" with the Athletics, which they lost in four straight. Finally, they seemingly had brought it off against the Angels, leading 5 to 0 in the top of the 7th inning of game six, when the Angels suddenly produced six runs in their last two innings to win it, then went on to take the 7th game handily. The 1962 team was by far the best the franchise has been able to put together in those 64 years, so the drought goes on.

 

This year, the team brings one of the most impressive pitching staffs in the history of the game, with three top-flight starters (Lincecum, Cain and Sanchez) backed up with a superior bull-pen, anchored by All-Star closer Brian Wilson (48 Saves in 2010). 

 

The NL West wasn't decided until the second-to-last game of the regular season, in a head-to-head series against the Padres. The first round of the playoffs, pitting the Giants against the Wild Card Atlanta Braves, currently finds the Giants leading 2 games to 1, following an improbable late ninth inning rally culminating in an unearned run on an error by second baseman Brooks Conrad. 

 

The Braves franchise has been moved twice in its history, leaving Boston for Milwaukee in 1953, then moving to Atlanta in 1965. In 1976, the Braves organization was purchased by ambitious media mogul Ted Turner, who made the team a centerpiece of his fledgling network station WTBS. For the first time in history, a single team (Braves) became a regular on the national air-waves. Turner's broadcast booth team, shamelessly partisan, pretended that the Braves were "America's Team" (as the Dallas Cowboys eventually were promoted). The team achieved success in the 1990's on the strength of excellent starting pitching (Glavine, Maddox, Avery, Smoltz). The last 20 years have seen the team regularly in contention in nearly every year. 

 

One very tiresome aspect of Braves baseball is the so-called "Tomahawk Chop"--in which the fans in the stands wave dark red foam indian hatchets back and forth, to a fake indian chant played on the public address system. It's an annoying piece of moronic, racist schlock and makes my teeth ache every time I hear it. I always think the Braves fans must be real rednecks to practice this nonsense. 

 

As I speak, the Braves are up 1 to nothing in game 4, but it's only the 5th inning. Nevertheless, the Giants haven't managed a single hit against Derek Lowe. 

 

  

  

Readers of this blog know well my harangue against Alex Smith, the 49ers 1st round draft pick who has become the Quarterback that never was. Yesterday, against an only average Eagles team, after a key interception and a needless fumble by Smith, the home team fans were booing loudly and demanding he be replaced by second string back up David Carr. Singletary confronted Smith publicly on the sidelines, berating him and demanding to know (according to report) why he shouldn't bench the bumbling QB. Smith stammered his embarrassed determination, and was allowed to finish the game. Despite taking the team on two impressive touchdown drives, he still managed to throw another game-ending interception under a heavy rush, and the team lost its 5th straight to start the year. Everyone keeps reminding us that Smith is very intelligent, has a great arm, and is not a quitter. 

 

However, NFL quarterbacking isn't about talent, it's about performance. Success at the college level is usually a prerequisite to a great pro career, but it isn't a guarantee. Far fewer college All-American QB's become stars in the NFL than wash out, their names fading quickly from memory. It's even rarer for a promising young quarterback to mature slowly into stardom. If a young draft choice hasn't shown some flair by his third or fourth season, he's usually relegated to permanent back-up duties, or shown the door. In Smith's case, the unfortunate shoulder injury in 2008 has been used as a pretext for giving him a bit more slack than would usually be accorded to a journeyman. But Smith's performance this year bears an unfortunate resemblance to his earlier campaigns. Despite four years previous experience (including 2 full years), he's still making rookie mistakes, throwing into coverage or timidly dumping off to a half back in the flat. His passes still routinely sail over or wide of target, and he has bad "eyes"--the quality of seeing patterns and open receivers downfield. 

 

Singletary's success as a head coach will depend upon his ability to solve this quarterback problem. If I were he, I would go to management and lay my cards on the table: Smith is a wash-out, and the organization has no choice but to acknowledge this fact, sooner rather than later. They can play Smith, with lowered expectations, and expect to bottom out in the standings, and then use a first draft pick to choose a new star from the college ranks. The other option...well, there isn't any other option. They can't go out and hire a free agent at this point. I wish we hadn't let Hill get away!            

           

HC Singletary seems like a warm, committed personality, who genuinely wants to do the right thing. He wants to inspire, the help his talented players be "the best they can be"--and there is a good deal of talent on this team. But without a dependable quarterback, it's an uphill struggle. It's a recipe for tragedy. 

The Lyrics of Ed Dorn [Part III]

Ed Dorn [1929-1999] had a lean, rugged visage, the kind that Hollywood has always loved, sort of the Clint Eastwood look. The "rugged, lean" hero, the tall, silent type, a loner, wary of compromise, with private codes of honor and simplicity, independence and toughness, secretly romantic, successful in love, a failure in society. 

 

In some fairly obvious ways, the real Ed Dorn, the poet, was a little like this. He was difficult in may ways, sarcastic, severe, cranky, with several personal demons. An uncompromising recalcitrance is often expressed as a gestural flair in his early poems, work in which he appears to have been trying to define himself, while exercising his facility, showing off his talent.          

 

 

This precocious lyrical virtuosity underwent transformations during his middle age, as he became increasingly preoccupied with radical ideation and somewhat disillusioned. As his view of the world became more cynical, the content of his work began to reflect a frustration with the effects of traditional nativist symbols and modes. He had always written and thought about the settlement of the American West, but his sense of its usefulness as subject-matter changed over time. The first phase of his work shows in a poem like--

 

 

Vaquero

 

The cowboy stands beneath

a brick-orange moon. The top

of his oblong head is blue, the sheath

of his hips

is too.

 

In the dark brown night

your delicate cowboy stands quite still.

His plain hands are crossed.

His wrists are embossed white.  

  

In the background night is a house,

has a blue chimney top,

Yi Yi, the cowboy's eyes

are blue. The top of the sky

is too. 

  

  

--from the late 1950's. This diverting, cliché'd, cartoonish portrait might be of a motorcycle dude standing outside a bar in Laramie--all effect and no substance. Which is often how Dorn thought of the American West, a tawdry habitation, scrub and scrabble, cheap and phony, a forlorn aspect. This vision would in due course be converted into the graphic surrealism of his pop Western meta-epic Gunslinger. "Vaquero" in fact seems like a kind of early profile of Gunslinger, a character in search of a story. The dry pan of the plains--Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Nebraska, Montana, Washington, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Kansas, Texas--informs many of Dorn's sweetest lyrics, made out of the arid clarity of desert air, the lost expanse of space, the flat bottom basin. 

 

 

Daffodil Song

 

The horns of yellow

        on this plain resound

    and the twist on the air

of their brilliance

                            Say where

say where I will find find

a love

             or an arabesque

of such rash fortune.  

 

 

Love Song

 

        for Lucia

Captured, her beauty

would not leave her

thus inclined by the railing

she never lifted her head

from the waters

a blue gull drifts

         she moves from the rapture

of the ascending fog.

Lost in the moving passengers

she left the ship

and entered the city. 

 

 

Song

 

Oh Gods of my disembarked soul this is sad

a merriment of unteachable waywordness

I tell you the gleaming eye

is a mirror of

                         the green hills

where love struggles

                                      against the drought

in the desert

in the spring

in the quickness

of the fresh bush

                  over the cove.

 

 

As with Cummings, Dorn's twin concerns--romantic lyricism (or lyric romance)--and biting sarcasm (or burlesque, or diatribe)--usually seem mutually exclusive, repelling any resolution, like the opposite ends of a magnet. As here, in

 

 

Parlor Car Beer

 

They look coach, in the morning

pants wrinkled.

And I am coach, CHICAGO spelled out

across my front teeth.

Don't want to be sleeper.

 

     They 

look sleeper

coming in from the other end, the

dirty & tired

have a beer

with the rested & clean.

 

     Get this:

we talked of the all England

ice skating championships, 1959

     How

some skills pass the understanding

of the uninitiated

right in the middle of Nebraska.

 

 

--where the satiric voice dominates an otherwise High American Gothic train poem, complete with sleeper cars and a parlor car scene. The parlor car beer trope, one might say, the symbol of a whole way of life passed inexorably into history, which the hip poet--his prickly hyper-sensitive feelers set to the dud frequency of decadent mid-century dilapidation--summarizes as a Wild Wild West in true television consciousness.

 

The great thing about Dorn, what sets his work apart from 99% of the rest of the poets of his time--especially those domiciled west of Chicago--is his refusal to cash in on, to invest in the romance of, the American Dream of the "West." Even as he abandons the straightforward lyric voice for the camp satire of Gunslinger in the 1960's, his view of America, even when bizarrely exaggerated and weird, is so much truer to its spirit, than, say, the work of William Stafford, or Rexroth, or Snyder. For those other poets, the West was what one might make of it--their effort was not unlike the exploiters and frontiersmen of the 19th and early 20th Centures, for whom the wide-open spaces represented opportunity, raw material, and several kinds of ethical potential which might do service as aesthetic properties. But for Dorn, the West wasn't a mystical notion, or dreamscape of future fulfillment. He saw its ugliness as our ugliness, its ambition and selfishness as expressions of intent, not as the accidental or unfortunate accompaniments of a greater vision, cooked up in New England or Virginia and packaged for immediate delivery to a waiting audience. The pollution and waste were us, we had made them, there was no place to hide, no one to blame, no ethic of "wilderness" and "stewardship" to salve our complacent consciences. 

 

If Dorn became bitter and thorny in later age, it may be observed that he had been driven by these realizations into emotional or artistic dead-ends. But these were certainly truer places to have come to, than the easy condolence and tired resolutions of the mildly coerced. If Dorn came in the end to see villains and devils under rocks, that paranoia may be understood in the context of the total annexation of half a continent, by a people selfish and pompous beyond imagining.     

You can see in the man's early lyrics a loveliness and sternness, an innocence and loneliness that are purer than anything.       

Culture Clash - France Outlaws the Burka

Yesterday, the last obstacle to the outlawing of the wearing of veils (or burkas) by women in France was removed by the Conseil Constitutionnel, that country's highest legal authority. In its ruling, it stated  the law "respected the balance between public order and the guarantee of liberties and constitutional rights" and "is not manifestly disproportionate to its aims... given the mild penalties imposed." 

 

After six months, when the law takes effect, anyone wearing a full-face veil – or any face mask, with a few stated exceptions – could be fined 150 euros (or about $208) or sent on a "citizenship" course. Anyone "forcing" a woman to wear a full-face veil could be fined 30,000 euros (or $41,766) or given a one-year jail sentence. Those who are exempt from the ban include motorcyclists, carnival revellers and sportspeople, such as fencers and skiers. 

 

There has been growing tension in Europe over the last decade regarding the cultural conflicts arising from growing Islamic populations, both immigrant and religious converts. The wearing of the burka, under Islamic religious law, is effectively a cultural requirement within Middle Eastern nations, so the imposition of the wearing of the garment goes beyond a mere religious requirement, since religious, political and social spheres are effectively synonymous in cultures or nations dominated by Islamic tradition and Sharia Law. There is some dispute among scholars and historians and contemporary leaders in the Islamic community about whether the wearing of a burka is really a requirement of Sharia Law, or is the residue to a folk custom deriving from age-old practice and habit. But according to sources I've read, the conservative, more strict interpretation is generally dominant in Islamic circles today. In other words, devout, practicing Muslims are expected to follow the custom of wearing the burka in public, and may expect to be disciplined or persecuted if they stray from this law.   

 

 

In the West, stricter degrees of modesty have been much less formally regarded. With the growth of media in the 20th Century, there's been a general breakdown in the standards of "decency" and "modesty" among both men and women, particularly in Western Europe and the United States. In primitive cultures--such as in Africa, parts of Southeast Asia, and Oceania--weather and circumstance have mitigated against the wearing of elaborate garments, though in the Near East and Middle East, the wearing of certain garments has been intended to protect the body from the extreme effects of sun, wind, sand, and so forth. 

 

Western notions of equality of the sexes, freedom of the individual, emancipation of women from domination (by male culture) and exclusionary regulation and custom, have proceeded historically over the last century, while in Central and Southern Asia, and Northern Africa, no such pattern was allowed to develop. The position of women in Islamic countries has been strictly interpreted under Sharia law, and women are expected to heed the dress codes.

 

As the influence of Western culture has tended to increase through media and the freedom of movement among Western and non-Western nations, Islamic authority has begun to develop increasingly reactionary attitudes towards challenges to traditional custom and authority. This has caused conflict both within Islamic societies--where women feel the tension between what they're expected to do, and what they may feel, given the example of liberated women elsewhere in the world, and how they might wish to behave--as well as within Western nations experiencing influxes of Arab or Eastern ethnic groups, where direct conflicts develop between immigrant communities and the host national culture(s).

 

The conservative Right in France has been advocating the suppression of strict Sharia law for several years. France's growing Islamic community is regarded by some as a threat to the French cultural and political life, which is based on democratic principles which fly in the face of what some feel is an outdated, unnecessarily restrictive view of the relationship between men and women, and the familiar structures of the family, education, governance, worship, and so on. They felt that a prohibition of the wearing of the burka was a necessary step in the preservation of the rights and freedom of French citizens, a reasonable move to prevent the growth of Islamic control of the lives of its members.   

 

There have been reports that certain elements within the Islamic community are threatening reprisals, even violence, in protest over the new regulation. There are those in the liberal French community, as well, who argue that this prohibition infringes on the rights of individuals and groups to live how they wish, and to practice their religion, as long as it doesn't harm others. 

 

How does one separate the religions from the customary, the individual from the group? Is a devout woman who chooses to wear a burka, in observance of her religion, free to express her freedom in this way? Or is the garment a symbol of the subjugation of women, of the loss of power and choice in their lives? Catholic school children still adhere to rigid dress codes in some places. Certain kinds of religious costumes are common in many cultures. Do traditions in which variance of dress, and the freedom to pursue that variety, constitute a real "right" under democratic conditions, or is that an illusion of capitalist economies, in which the market dictates what people may choose to wear?

 

I was not raised in a strict religious household, but I can well imagine how powerful Islamic customs and laws might feel, growing up inside such a rigidly controlled culture. Doctrinal costume may only be a symbol of what that rigidity means, but symbols are meaning; they define what we are, and signal to the world what we believe. Uniforms, like those for soldiers, doctors, policemen, firemen, are intended to separate the wearers from the rest, both for convenience and to make a statement. 

 

And it's the uniformity of the Sharia law, which may be the most troubling aspect of its meaning. The veil symbolizes adherence to duty, to an organization of society based on a severe interpretation of the roles of men and women in society. 

 

You cannot subscribe to notions of freedom and equality embodied in our Western laws and customs, at the same time that you believe in strict Islamic practice. Anyone who attempts to suggest that there is no crisis of morality here, or that it is a trivial, private issue, is really being deliberately naive. 

Xanadu: Karpilow - A Study in Descent

The evolution of creative ideas is a fit subject for students of history. We cannot consciously not know what came before; or, if we consciously refuse to know about the past, we risk repeating previous "discoveries" or the mistakes others made before us. 

After returning from Japan in 1986, I undertook a project, to photograph parts of the American West, with my large format view cameras--a project which took about 10 years, but was still incomplete when I abandoned it in 1996, after the death of my son Randall that year. 

 

One of the areas I explored was the California coast. I would drive up and down Hiway One looking for "subject matter"--views or aspects that might repay the time and effort of setting up the heavy tripod, camera, lenses and film holders preparatory to making even a single exposure. One afternoon as I was driving south of Big Sur, I noticed this tree growing in a narrow ravine just off the road. Looking east toward the foothills, I noticed that the property might be part of the Hearst Castle estate skirting the edge of San Simeon Bay (though it may have technically been part of San Simeon State Park). The road-side fence was four-foot high barbed wire, but barbed wire never stopped an intrepid landscape photographer, and trying to get permission to trespass in rural areas is like trying to get an audience with the Pope. "4x5," I said to myself, and lugged the equipment under the top course of wire. The tree was an oak, and the way it stretched waaaaaaaay out over the cropped pasture seemed very artistic to my eye. Only the continuous action of westerly winds over the life of the tree, could produce this windswept profile. The scene spoke to me. I probably was using Tri-X rated at 320 iso, unfiltered with a normal length lens.       

 

        

Some years later, in 1991, when we were building our house, we were referred by our architects (Silverstein-Jacobson) to a local woodworker named Miles Karpilow (pictured below). Miles, as I later learned, had been a book scout back in the day, who had rummaged the West Coast used book network, along with companions Larry McMurtry (the novelist) and David Meltzer (the poet), when they were each struggling and relatively unknown. I wasn't a bookseller in those days, and Miles wasn't scouting books, having (instead) become one of the world's most admired and respected contract custom wood workers, turning out signature furniture and architectural component designs inspired by the craftsman tradition. His doors and chairs were, and are familiar features around the Bay Area. We decided to have Miles make the front door for the new house, an oak behemoth as wide as two men, with carving and leaded glass decoration. The inspiration for the carving was the photograph you see above, taken in 1987 at San Simeon.

 

  

The tree design was right in keeping with Miles's craftstman specialty, and he set about making it while the house was just in the foundation stage of construction. People who've seen it in the two decades since, inevitably say it reminds them of Greene and Greene, and I wouldn't argue with that impression. Miles let his inspiration be guided by the traditions of woodwork design which had come down through the examples executed by masters. Greene & Greene, Maybeck, Julia Morgan. In fact, Morgan had been the guiding architect for William Randolph Hearst's Castle at San Simeon [1922-1939], a project that was as open-ended as any such commission is likely to be, almost a kind of Medieval process.  

   

 

When Orson Welles set about satirizing Hearst and his many triumphant boondoggles, in the fictional cinematic biography Citizen Kane [RKO, 19041], he renamed Heart's Castle "Xanadu" while incorporating many of the characteristics of Hearst's La Cuesta Encantada ["The Enchanted Hill"]). Hearst was so embittered by Welles's damning portrayal of him, that he was able to get Welles blacklisted out of Hollywood for the rest of his career. 

 

Did Welles suspect that Hearst would be powerful enough to abbreviate his career to this degree? Would he have undertaken the ambitious movie, had he understood that it would mar the rest of his creative life, forcing him to work through his prime in Europe, on secondary projects, and expedient acting parts, scratching out a meagre living?    

 

 

Perhaps the most supreme irony is that the movie is considered by many to be the greatest cinematic masterpiece in history, the very height of movie technique, editing, and powerful portrayal--both of character, and of history--a kind of idealized newsreel of the 20th Century. A sad commentary upon America, and the sort of men who've dominated our culture for nearly 200 years. It's likely to remain as the preferred version of Hearst the man for many decades to come. Often times, the embellished portrait is the one history remembers. In this case, one could hardly ask for a more poetic outcome.  

  

In any case, every time I come through the door, I think "Xanadu" and Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Orson Welles and Miles Karpilow and William Morris and Greene & Greene and William Randolph Hearst and Citizen Kane. Long after I'm gone, when the meaning of the door has faded into obscurity, someone will see that carving and wonder what inspired it. The meaning will undergo transformation and find new life in another time.