Sweetness Of Sin
“We suddenly know what heaven we’re in”
is a line first conceived by Cole Porter;
it’s based on a line that he chose to down-water,
“We suddenly know the sweetness of sin.”
Don’t know why Cole Porter decided to alter
a line antinomially apt in its neatness,
foreswearing all heaven for sin and its sweetness
as sure as my middle name warns you I’m Walter.
One more for the road, as once sang Johnnie Mercer,
is great, and you’ll find that the road is much shorter
to sin than to heaven, a meter maid’s quarter
provides enough time if you are not averse, sir.
Beginning beguines is the first step to take
for heaven on earth, not by pouring cold water
on sin as on lyrics was done by Cole Porter
while betting on heaven–a dreadful mistake.
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poem by Gershon Hepner
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Busy Work For Cupid
Computer savvy means a nerd
and book-smart may imply that you’re life-stupid;
when sex is a forbidden word
romantic makes mere busy work for Cupid.
Get kissed, get wild, and get a life,
and write a lot in college while you’re schoolish,
and if you are romantic with your wife
and sexy, when you’re published don’t look foolish.
Suzy Welch writes about Kaavya Viswanathan’s plagiarizing book “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life, ” in “How Kaavya Viswanathan” (WSJ, May 3,2006) :
Opal is book-smart but life-stupid…In the best case, fact will follow fiction again. Kaavya, who has apologized repeatedly, will grow still more, recover, and return to write a real book. Perhaps it will offer some hard-earned wisdom: that writing may be for the young and foolish, but publishing is not.
5/3/06
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Blue Eyes
Icon famous as stained glass
with bluish hue that’s found in Chartres
recalls the icon hors de classe,
Ol’ Blue Eyes, aka Sinatra.
From his eyes poured an infusion
of blueness, melting with his voice,
synesthetical illusion
causing lovers to rejoice.
“My way, ” he would love to croon,
and still today is heard on vinyl,
romantic, reaching for the moon,
his eclipse still far from final.
Revised from the original:
Stone icon famous as stained glass
with bluish hue in Chartres
recalls the icon hors de classe,
Ol’ Blue Eyes, Frank Sinatra.
From his eyes poured an infusion
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poem by Gershon Hepner
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Row, Row, Row The Boat
Row, row, row the boat,
gently down the stream
of consciousness, and take close note
of things of which you dream
when working gallingly in galleys,
Ben Hur, condemned to row
until the spirit market rallies,
or falls like Jericho.
Slave, slave, slave, keep writing:
wait not for liberation,
and don’t feel crucified while fighting
lack of inspiration.
Be resurrected when unconscious,
keep jester juices flowing,
on auto-pilot, serving Pontius,
rowing, rowing, rowing.
David West, who is printing the galleys of my forthcoming book Legal Friction: Law, Narrative and Identity Politics in Biblical Israel, sent me an e-mail today which read:
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poem by Gershon Hepner
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Light Verse
Light verse can lighten with precision,
diminishing the gravity of laws
that weigh us down with indecision
by snatching humor from depression’s claws.
Inspired by what John Updike wrote in a critical essay in The New Yorker on Max Beerbohm on March 7,1964, excerpted in the February 9 &16,2009 edition:
Our mode is realism, “realistic is synonymous with “prosaic, ” and the prose writer’s duty is to suppress not only rhyme but any verbal accident that would mar the textual correspondence to the massive, overflowing impersonality that has supplanted the chiming heavens of the saints. In this situation, light verse, an isolated acolyte, tends the thin flame of formal magic and tempers the inhuman darkness of reality with the comedy of human artifice. Light verse precisely lightens; it lessens the gravity of the subject.
2/9/09
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Being Tall
Those men who are considered tall,
defined as more than five foot nine,
are smarter than the ones who’re small.
that’s less than five foot nine. That’s fine
by me, for I was, in my prime,
a little more than five foot ten,
and though I’ve shrunk, it’s not yet time
for me to join the little men
who’re under five foot nine, becoming
less smart than I was when I stood
as tall as smart men, not down dumbing
myself so I’d be understood
by those who are so tiny that
they cannot follow mighty minds
of those who’re tall. Nobility
of soul I claim so long as I
retain with my virility
the size that girls like in a guy,
not small but smart. I’ll deal with fat
in my next poem. Big behinds
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poem by Gershon Hepner
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Memory Of Absences
Memory of absences can sear
the unforgetting mind far more
than presences of power we revere,
and images we can ignore.
Inspired by the phrase “memory of absences” which Robert Alter used in a talk to the Association of Jewish Studies in which he spoke about the collective memory of the Israelites that the Deuteronomist inspired. Alter used the phrase “memory of absences” and highlighted the importance of the Deuteronomist’s rhetoric used to advance his program to purge Israel of all images.
Robert Alter’s response to the poem was as follows:
Dear Gershon,
Your poem is the highest compliment that could be paid to a lecture. One question: is 'that' at the beginning of the third line a typo for 'than'?
Cordially,
Bob Alter
He had picked up a typo that I had missed, signs of a great textual scholar!
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poem by Gershon Hepner
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Two Flavors
Two women flavors, cherry and vanilla,
describe two types of women, one trangressive,
the other bland, and for a ladykiller,
too boring if call yourself progressive.
Though ice cream flourishes with both these flavors,
in the case of women it is rare
for men to ask from the vanilla favors
associated just with cherries. Ordinaire,
wine can’t compete with wine whose pedigree
is noble, and what is bland cannot compete
with what excites the palate. You can’t flee
these flavors if you happen to love heat.
In an episode of the AMC drama Madmen, the advertising firm whose protagonists form the core of the drama are asked by Playtex to provide a new way of promoting bras. They suggest that the bras should appeal to the two sides of women, epitomized by Jacqueline Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, representing respectively vanilla and cherry flavors.
8/31/08
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Between Grief And Nothing
Between grief and nothing some will take grief,
but those who take nothing will surely regret
that they can’t be robbed in good time, that’s a thief,
of memories grief cannot make them forget.
In Jean-Paul Godard’s “Breathless” Patricia Clarke, whose short hair is like that of Marion Amsellem whom someone once accused of being a lesbian although, as someone said at her funeral today, “She hasn’t got a gay bone in her body, ” asks Jean-Paul Belmondo, who is lying in her hotel bedroom smoking a cigarette, of course, and trying to screw her for the third time in his life: “Do you know William Faulkner? ” “No, ” he replies. “Have you slept with him? ” “No, ” she replies, and adds, “He is a writer, and I want to read you something from “The Wild Palms.” And she reads aloud: “Between grief and nothing I will take grief.”
5/20/08
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Growl
While Allen Ginsberg told us “Howl! ”
I do prefer Clint Eastwood’s growl,
while cherishing his Gran Torino,
spaghetti westernized the fino
he dramatizes in Detroit.
This expiatory exploit
performed by the old man who killed
Koreans in the killing field,
and sought atonement for this wrong,
grumpily befriending Hmong
whom up to then he had despised,
is hardly overdramatized
by Clint, who’s far more in accord
with life than Ginzberg, as his Ford––
the Gran Torino ’72––
proves him to be with derring-do.
That’s why I far prefer Clint’s growl
to Ginsberg’s grating hapless howl.
Inspired by Clint Eastwood’s movie “Gran Torino, ” which concludes with a song, “Gran Torino, ” composed and sung by Eastwood at the end of the movie, where we see the Gran Torino that he bequeathes Thao, his young Hmong friend, driving along the shores of the Lake Huron.
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