Lola van Ella and Sammich the Tramp will present “The Golden Age ... Live on Stage: A Silent Night in Black & White” at 9 p.m. Saturday, July 17 at Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave.
This unique – perhaps unprecedented – event will combine St. Louis burlesque at its sexiest with the art of the silent tramp (as perfected by Chaplin and Keaton, and revived by Sammich). It will combine live stage shows – burlesque, tramp – with silent film screened to live music by St. Louis’ own (and only) The Rats and People Motion Picture Orchestra and Kevin O'Connor.
This event springs from the stunning finale to the inaugural (2010) Show-Me Burlesque Festival. Lola van Ella and Sammich the Tramp stunned and then wowed audiences with a Lady & the Tramp stage show that opened with all the delicacy and mixed moods of Chaplin … but ended with Lola on a swing!
[See Hannah Radcliff’s artful video of their performance of Lady & The Tramp at the 2010 Show-Me Burlesque Festival: http://vimeo.com/12079789.] **
“The Golden Age ... Live on Stage” will feature an elaborated version of this piece, scored live by The Rats and People Motion Picture Orchestra. It also will feature the premiere of Kevin O'Connor’s original score to Buster Keaton's “One Week,” performed live by Kevin and The Rats and People as the film screens.
This homage to the arts of silent film and live music will be enlivened by burlesque performances from Lola van Ella, Foxy la Feelion, Gogo McGregor and Sturdy Gurlesque. Flappers! Burlesque! Comedy! Music! And more! All in the comfy confines – and pleasant acoustics – of Off Broadway.
Tickets are $15 and available at the door and at www.offbroadwaystl.com.
ST. LOUIS FILMMAKERS SHOWCASE
This special event coincides with the opening of the St. Louis Filmmaker’s Showcase, the definitive homage to local moviemakers produced by Cinema St. Louis. It runs July 17-22. For more information and schedules, please see www.cinemastlouis.org.
* Photo of Lola van Ella and Sammich the Tramp, by David McWhirter
** Please credit all photojournalists and videographers whenever posting their work, even for promotional or preview purposes.
I am trying to set up a reading series at The Firecracker Press where poets & authors read while we print a broadside of one of their poems. More details to come, but would you be interested in participating?
Uh, yeah!
I have poems I have written, as Firecracker would know; they printed my one chapbook, A heart I carved for a girl I knew. But I am much more passionate about my cotranslations, because it is far more interesting poetry than what I come up with on my own.
I have done cotranslations from the Italian of Roberto Giggliucci with my dear friend Leonard Barkan, a world-famous comparative literature scholar and art historian whose academic home is Princeton University, when he isn't parked in Rome or Berlin. The TriQuarterly published one of our translations of Roberto, "Easy poem about hotels"; the rest of our collection remains unpublished and uncollected.
I also have done cotranslations from the Turkish of Orhan Veli with my equally dear friend Defne Halman, a famous Turkish actor and the first VJ on Turkish television (the Martha Quinn of Istanbul). We have published some of our translations of the great Garip poet, here and there; but since we translated everything Orhan Veli ever wrote, there is plenty more to pick from.
So, today, I picked through it. I sent this batch of unpublished personal favorites to Firecracker. Let's see what they choose to print that broadside of. Saturday, August 21 is when I will be down at the print shop on Cherokee Street reading some of this stuff.
***
SELECTED POEMS BY ORHAN VELI
Translated from the Turkish
by Defne Halman and Chris King
**
HEADACHE
I
However beautiful the roads may be
However cool the night
The body tires
The headache never gets tired
II
Even if I go into my house now
I can go out a little later
Since these clothes and shoes belong to me
And the streets belong to no one
**
LOVELY DAYS
These lovely days destroyed me
On a day like this I quit my job
I got hooked on tobacco
On days like this
I fell in love on days like this
I forgot to take home bread and salt
On days like this
My obsession with writing poetry always recurred
Days like this destroyed me
**
I CAN’T EXPLAIN
(moro romantico)
If I cry
Will you hear
My voice
In lines of verse?
Can you touch my tears?
I never knew songs were so beautiful
And words so insufficient
Before falling into this trouble
There is a place, I know
Where it's possible to say everything
I come pretty close
I feel it
I can’t explain it
**
MY SHADOW
I'm sick and tired
Of dragging him around
For years, at the tips of my toes
Let's live in this world a little bit
Him by himself
Me by myself
**
HAVE I BEEN CAUGHT BY LOVE?
Was I also going to have thoughts like this?
Was I also going to be left sleepless?
Was I going to be silent like this?
Was I not even going to miss my favorite salad?
Is this the way I was going to be?
**
GUEST
Yesterday I was really bored
All the way into the night
Two packs of cigarettes
Didn’t do a thing
I tried to write
It didn’t grab me
I played the violin for the first time in my life
I roamed around
I watched people playing backgammon
I sang a song in a mode all my own
I caught a matchbox full of flies
Goddamn it, in the end
I picked myself up
And here I came
**
SPREAD OUT
She’s stretched out
Flopped there, all spread out
Her dress is hiked up a little
She’s lifted her arm
Her armpit appears
And with one hand she’s holding her breast
No evil in her, I know
None, none in me either, but ...
No way!
This is no way to lie down!
**
MY GOLD TOOTHED ONE
Come, my darling, come to me
Let me buy you silk stockings
Let me treat you to a cab
Let me take you to the music
Come
Come, my gold toothed one
My dark-eyed, wavy-haired one
My little slut
My one with the cork heels
My rock & roller, come
**
REMEMBRANCE
The knife gash on my forehead
Is because of you
My tobacco tin
Is a souvenir from you
Your telegram says
“Even if both of your hands are in blood, come”
How can I forget you?
My lady of the night
**
WITHIN
We have seas, full of sun
We have trees, full of leaves
Morning and night
We go
Go and come back
Between our seas and our trees
In poverty
**
SOME DAYS
Some days, I’ll just pick up and go
Amid the smell of nets fresh from the sea
I go from island to island
In the wake of the shearwaters
There are worlds, you can’t even imagine
Flowers bloom with a bang
Smoke blasts from the soil
Look, the seagulls, those seagulls
A different urgency in every one of their feathers
Some days, I'm up to my neck in the blue
Some days, I'm up to my neck in the sun
Some days, just loony
**
THE SLACKER
This is my gig
I paint the sky every morning
While all of you are asleep
You'll wake up and see that it's blue
The sea will tear sometimes
You won't know who sews it
I sew it
Sometimes I'll just goof off
That's also my job
I'll think of a head on my head
I'll think of a belly on my belly
I'll think of a foot on my foot
I don't know what the hell to do
**
FOR THIS COUNTRY
What didn’t we do for this country!
Some of us died
Some gave speeches
**
HEAR THIS OR ELSE
If you don’t hear the sound
Of nuts cracking open on branches
Just see what will become of you
If you don't hear the sound
Of the rain coming down
Just see what will happen
The ringing bell
The speaking person
If you don’t feel the smell
Of the seaweed
The lobster, the shrimp
The wind that blows from the sea ...
**
TOWARD FREEDOM
Before the day is born
You should set out
While the sea is pure white
The lust of holding the oars
The happiness of being useful
You'll set out
You'll set out with commotion of nets
Fish will welcome you
You'll be happy
As you shake the net
You'll hold the sea in your hands
Glittering scale by scale
When the souls of the seagulls
Are quiet on the graves of their rocks
Suddenly, all hell will break loose on the horizon
Mermaids? Birds? What do you think?
Maybe revels, parties, festivals, celebrations?
A bridal procession
Silver and gold thread for the bride's hair
Bridal veils, fanciful stuff?
Heeeeeey!
What are you waiting for?
Throw yourself into the sea!
Don't worry if you’ve left someone behind
Can't you see there is freedom everywhere?
Be a sail
Be a rudder
Be a fish
Be water
Go as far as you can go and keep going
**
THE MERMAID
What was it, had she just come out of the sea?
Her hair, her lips smelled like the sea until morning
The rising and subsiding
Of her chest was like the sea
She was poor, I know
But come on, you can't talk about poverty all the time
Directly into my ear, gently
Gently, she sang songs of love
What had she seen, what had she learned, who knows
Defne and I are supposed to publish our translations, Some Days Just Loony: The Collected Poems o Orhan Veli. We even have a nibble from a university press. But we are both lame at the business of publishing, and Defne is back in Istanbul and scarcely communicado. For now, you can download the text for free at that there link, so long as you don't publish it without permission.
Poetry Scores translates poetry into other media, from its home base in St. Louis, Missouri, U.S., but with friends and partners around the country and here and there all over the world. *** (Contact creative director Chris King, who maintains this blog, at brodog [@] hotmail.com.)
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