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Autobiographical writing
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ALMOST, BUT NOT QUITE
How do they do it? Capture a likeness, on paper or canvas, of a person or place. Or three dimensional with clay or wax, let alone wood or stone. From the time I was little, I was aware of “art,” and awed by the ability of the representational artist. (In my teens, I decided that the absolute greatest were Rembrandt and Michelangelo.) There was art in my home. When times were good, my mother had bought several paintings and prints, and even a marble bust. I grew up with them, and I still have a lovely watercolor of a young farm girl, which must have been painted in the mid-to-late1800s.
As a kid, I drew stick figures like almost every kid. In junior high school, we had art classes, and there was an elective class where students learned to make linoleum prints, but I did not take it. Their work was featured in our literary magazine, the Knowlton Herald. I was impressed with them, and had a hard time trying to understand how you get a picture by “cutting away.”
In elementary and junior high, when bored, instead of doodling, I drew the back of the head of the kid in front of me. Then I would attempt to draw the entire classroom. This required a sense of perspective which I never could get, but it was fun trying. Years later, I learned about the vanishing point where all the lines meet. (This is different from the sad story I had once heard: that parallel lines never meet)
Early on, I became aware that some people have “talent” and some people don’t. No matter what the field: sports, academics, food preparation, and certainly, the arts. Study is important, you must learn the fundamentals, but if you don’t have the innate ability, you may get good but you won’t be great. When I was drawing the back of the head of the boy in front of me, a few of my classmates were drawing faces, copying comic strip characters and, a popular subject during World War II: airplanes. They had talent, I thought they were great, and it came naturally to them. I would have liked to have been as good as they were.
My first introduction to doing “art” was at camp when we were introduced to “arts and crafts.” Yes, we made lanyards out of gimp, and there were crayons and paper, but we also had access to clay and plasticine. (Clay has a water base and dries out and hardens and can be fired, but plasticine has an oil base and can be reused.) I had a great time shaping all kinds of things--people, faces, animals--and concluded that I was a better sculptor than a drawer.
And from the time I was a teen-ager, I sketched. When I looked at the finished product, I thought, “almost but not quite.” Later, on trips, I would always take a sketch pad with me. However, to really remember whatever it was that I saw, I depended on my camera. Still, it was sketching that really forced me to “look.” It was the same as my experience copying drawings, which I did for a brief time in my 20s. I began to see things that I would not have otherwise observed: the shapes, the relationships, the colors, and my old nemesis: perspective.
I have written about the wonderful union-sponsored sculpting class I joined when I worked for the ILGWU in the early ‘50s. Our teacher, Arturo Sofo, required all his new students to first copy a plaster reproduction of Venus de Milo. We worked in plasticine, and then our work was cast in plaster. When our plaster cast was returned to us, Sofo taught us how to finish it, and give it an appropriate patina. I was proud of this first effort. All my friends were impressed. I still have it, and people are still impressed. Nevertheless, I thought to myself, “almost but not quite.”
And so it went with the other pieces I made. They weren’t bad. A head, a bas relief, a copy of a sculpture by Michelangelo. Almost, but not quite. I enjoyed the act of creating. I was grateful when Sofo looked at the work, nodded, and then pointed out where more work was needed. Aha! I did what he suggested. It looked better. I thanked him. I tried to improve the way I looked at the subject, attempting to reproduce it. I concluded that the first step is mastering the technique, and once you have that down, you can start doing art. But it was clear that I was not a natural.
In my sculpting classes, I tended to measure myself against the other students. I was better than some, but there were always a few others who were really good. Twenty-five years later, I resumed sculpting at a class at the Boston Center for Adult Education. We sculpted in clay from live models. I loved the opportunity to sculpt again, and I loved the added attraction of live models.
Again, what I sculpted was pretty good, but not great. Over the next couple years, I was quite productive. As opposed to the clay figures I made at camp, we fired our work, and I was pleased with what I had produced. In fact, I sculpted so many figures, I gave them as gifts to family and friends. However, I suspect that those receiving the figures must have thought, “almost, but not quite.” Maybe even, “pretty good for someone without talent.” It takes a lot to be a Michelangelo or a Rodin. We are who we are. I did have fun doing it, though.
7-30-14
As I finished the above, I realized the same might be said about my writing, my poetry, my photography, and maybe even my life. Both, “almost, but not quite,” and “pretty good for someone without talent.” And, I might add, that for the most part, I am having fun doing it.
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Almost, But Not Quite
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Jacob Schlitt
Description
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"How do they do it? Capture a likeness, on paper or canvas, of a person or place."
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2014-07-30
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text
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en
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ALMOST
Art
Childhood
Hobbies
Poetry
Writing
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823388ff50974599ba396eda716b071c
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Title
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Autobiographical writing
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GILBERT AND SULLIVAN
I guess the first time I heard of Gilbert and Sullivan was in junior high school. Our music teacher came up with the idea of putting on HMS Pinafore. Our class didn’t have any strong feelings, one way or the other. We had been singing folk songs, and holiday songs the previous year, so learning songs from something called a comic opera seemed like fun. It would be a change from “Low bridge, everybody down…” and “We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing…”
I was designated a “listener” so I knew I would not get a solo part. I wouldn’t be Sir Joseph Porter or Dick Deadeye. But I was permitted to sing in the chorus as a sailor, and I still know all the words to “We sail the ocean blue…” I don’t remember which of my classmates had the male leads, but I distinctly remember that Normie Perlmutter played Little Buttercup, and I thought that it was real “macho” on his part to play a woman. Sol Rauch may have been the Captain because for many years afterward, Sol would sing “I am the Captain of the Pinafore…” and I would reply, “And a right good captain too…”
The class practiced, learned the edited dialogue, and all those great songs. Sir Joseph had the best songs in the play: “When I was a lad I served a term as office boy to an Attorney’s firm…” And a couple more like that. I later found out that they were called “patter songs” and since they were more spoken than sung, I tried to memorize them. Every song had fantastic rhymes. We performed Pinafore for our junior high Assembly and everybody loved it. And I developed a love for Gilbert and Sullivan.
A few years later, in a “music appreciation” class in high school, one of my classmates suggested to the teacher that we listen to recordings of some of the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, as a break from the usual fare. To my surprise and delight, the teacher agreed.
Recordings by the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company were played, and everybody had a wonderful time. I learned that there were many more operettas besides Pinafore, Pirates of Penzance and Mikado. I also learned that the operettas were broadcast every Saturday morning on WQXR. I was hooked.
I was 16, I didn’t own a phonograph, but we had a radio, and Saturday morning did not interfere with my mother’s radio listening. Week after week for the next five or six years, I would listen to the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company recordings, of ALL the G and S comic operas. When I entered CCNY and discovered “The Modern Library” editions in our college bookstore, I flipped. There was “The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan,” and for $1.95! And I still have it. Saturday mornings, I would open it to the operetta being broadcast, and follow along.
What I also learned was that there was a lot of dialogue in between the songs, which were not recorded. And when I read the dialogue, I finally understood the plots, and enjoyed the operettas even more. Gilbert was my kind of guy. He made fun of bureaucracy, the establishment, the 1%, like Charlie Chaplin, the Marx Brothers, George Carlin, and Lennie Bruce. Gilbert and Sullivan pioneered musical comedies which led to Rogers and Hammerstein, George and Ira Gershwin, and the songs of Tom Lehrer, and Alan Sherman. And of course, Sylvia Fine, who wrote all those patter songs for Danny Kaye.
In 1949, I had bought my mother a wire recorder. She wanted it for the same reason I am writing this stuff—to record her memories, her thoughts. When my mother wasn’t looking, I took her wire recorder to record G and S off WQXR. She was outraged. That was not what her wire recorder was for. A couple years later, I invested in a hi-fi set and bought my own G and S LP recordings. The first album I bought was Pirates of Penzance with my new hero, Martyn Green, as the major general. Over the years, I acquired several more. When we moved to the condo in which we are now living, I got rid of several hundred records. I kept all of my G and S albums, and I play them from time to time. Time for me to get them on CD.
Early on, I began to read about William S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, and their producer, Richard D’Oyly Carte, who created the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company, and built the Savoy Theatre for them. After Richard died, his son Rupert took over, and then Rupert’s daughter Bridget, whose name is on the cover of most of my albums. The Company must have been aware of what a fan I had become. They came to New York in the late ‘40s and a few members of the Company appeared at CCNY. I saved the clipping from our college newspaper, which I placed inside my book. They returned to Broadway a few years later, and I finally got to see a live D’Oyly Carte production. The Company stopped touring in the ‘80s, but there continue to be countless performances of all the operettas by amateur and professional groups all over the world.
In New York, a clever Yiddishist named Al Grand translated Pinafore into Yiddish, and it has been performed before very appreciative bilingual audiences. Here is a couplet sung by Buttercup (Putershisel): “A many years ago, when I was young and charming./ As some of you may know, I practiced baby-farming.” Now in Yiddish: “Amol mit yorn tsurik, Ikh bin geven a sheyne./ Tsvey kinderlakh hob ikh, gevizn zise, kleyne.” He also translated Pirates of Penzance (Yam Gazlonim) and my favorite patter song: “I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General.” “Ikh bin der groyser general un ikh bin oikh a guter Yid.” I did a take-off of that (in English) when my daughter Martha married: “I am the very model of a father of the modern bride./ I ruined a half a dozen shirts by puffing up my chest with pride.”
Here in the Boston area, the Sudbury Savoyards produce an operetta a year, as do the Harvard, MIT and Brown University G and S clubs. There are a lot of “Savoyards” around, despite the fact that G and S have been dead for over 100 years. Of course, we still play and sing music and read books written hundreds of years ago, and that may be the point: Good stuff lasts. And to me, there is nothing as good as Gilbert and Sullivan.
3-24-13
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Gilbert and Sullivan
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Jacob Schlitt
Description
An account of the resource
"I guess the first time I heard of Gilbert and Sullivan was in junior high school."
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2013-03-24
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text
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GILBERT_AND_SULLIVAN
Adolescence
Humor
Junior High School (J.H.S. 52)
Music
Poetry
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d65ffcccee65549b1930c2788230c67e
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Numbered memoirs
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# 39 POETRY
This may be a bit premature, but I am writing this as the introduction to the section of my memoirs containing the scores of poems I have written over the years. I am sure my many readers would like to know the origin of my interest in poetry. It started when I was two years old and my mother made me recite the following couplet for company:
"I AM AN AMERICAN JEW AND I AM PROUD OF IT TOO."
I suspect I performed this up to the time I entered school. At some point I must have begun to feel silly, and besides, all my mother's relatives and friends had heard it already. But it was imbedded in my memory, and as an adult I thought about its meaning within the broader context of the Jew in America.
All children are exposed to nursery rhymes, and growing up in New York, we learned some great jump-rope rhymes as well. However, not every young person gets hooked on rhymes. You need a little help, mostly from your teachers. And we had some wonderful English teachers in junior high school and high school, and they introduced us to (and made us memorize) lots of poems. A very special high school English teacher was Bernard Frechtman who was very big on Emily Dickinson.
Perhaps the most important factor in my early interest in poetry was the very precious leather-bound volume called "The Golden Treasury" which had been given to my mother. On the fly-leaf of the book is inscribed "To Mrs. Celia Schlitt From the friends of the Westchester Mothers Club. May 1926." I have always been puzzled by this inscription. Unfortunately, I never asked my mother about it. What was the Westchester Mothers Club? Was she a member, even though she was not a mother? Why did they give her the book? I may have been 10 or 11 when she first shared this book with me. I still have it, and treasure it. It was published in 1924 by Thomas Y. Crowell and the full title is "The Golden Treasury of Songs and Poems Selected by Francis T. Palgrave" It was originally compiled in 1861, and was dedicated to Alfred Tennyson. I was moved, when, reading the Preface, to see underlinings by my mother.
The big surprise for me was in the Introduction by J. Walter McSpadden, quoting Henry Adams about Francis Turner Palgrave: "Few Americans will ever ask whether anyone has described the Palgraves, but the family was one of the most describable in all England at that day. Old Sir Francis, the father, had been much the greatest of all the historians of early England, the only one who was un-English; and the reason of his superiority lay in his name, which was Cohen, and his mind, which was Cohen also, or at least not English. He changed his name to Palgrave in order to please his wife." I had never read the Introduction before. Now I can add Palgrave to my growing list of prominent people who, unbeknownst to me, were Jewish.
My mother, usually on a weekend morning, would ask me to read some of the poems from The Golden Treasury. We did this on and off, until I was a teenager. I worked my way through the different sections: Shakespeare sonnets, Shelley, Keats, Byron, Scott, Burns, Wordsworth, Tennyson. Our favorites were "Rubaiyat" by Fitzgerald and Kubla Khan by Coleridge, and the Americans, especially Edgar Allan Poe. I couldn’t get enough of "The Raven" (which I tried to memorize) and "The Bells" and "Annabel Lee." The book is falling apart, and the leather binding is flaking, but it is still my favorite collection and I pick it up from time to time.
Another influence, also sparked by my mother, was the finale of the "Forward Hour," the Yiddish radio program Sunday mornings from 11 am to 12 noon on WEVD, "1330 on your radio dial." My mother listened to this program religiously and wanted me to listen as well, but I had no interest in the "schmaltzy" melodramas and music. But when Zvee Scooler came on, my attendance was a must. No excuses. Sit down and hear the Master of Rhyme who interpreted the events of the day in poetry, long before Calvin Trillin. He called himself "The Gram-meister" and he was brilliant. And I listened and was taken with his ability to summarize the news in rhyme week after week. His sign-off has stayed with me all these years: "Ich bin Zvee, Hersh Yoseph ben Reb Yankif Mendl haLevy Scooler, der Forvitchn Gram-meister."
When we were in junior high school, a few of us wrote poems and stories for our literary magazine, "The Knowlton Herald." I suspect the primary motivation was to see our name in print. Even at the time, we knew they weren’t much. But there was someone named Phil Alexander, a year behind us, who wrote epic poems in free verse which blew us away. Sixty-five years later, I still avoid free verse. I need the support of a rhyme.
I was enchanted by the rhymes of W. S. Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan, and tried to memorize many of the "recitatives." You didn’t have to sing to do the patter songs. Soon after I discovered G and S, along came Danny Kaye and he was doing the same thing with words and music provided by his wife. And then I got hooked on Ogden Nash, and a lesser known but equally clever rhymester, Samuel Hoffenstein.
Someone said that water seeks its own level. If that means that as I poet I would rather be like W.S. Gilbert and Ogden Nash than T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, he is right.
Over the years, I continued to read poetry, and collected anthologies (usually second hand). And when I undertook to write a poem, I tended to borrow the meter from a better known work. My earliest works are lost: My poems for mother's day or for a girl friend's birthday. Most of them began with some variation of Roses are red etc.
A friend observed that, like Oliver Wendell Holmes, I was an occasional poet, writing for special occasions. What follows are my efforts for my family, friends and workplace colleagues. I suspect it would be no great tragedy if they were lost as well. But here they are.
Jacob Schlitt
January 16, 2007
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#39 Poetry
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Jacob Schlitt
Description
An account of the resource
"This may be a bit premature, but I am writing this as the introduction to the section of my memoirs containing the scores of poems I have written over the years. "
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2007-01-16
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text
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en
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POETRY
Childhood
Hobbies
Jewish Identity
Junior High School (J.H.S. 52)
Mother
Poetry
WEVD
Writing