Our Man in Vienna

-A Day in the Park

von Herbert Kuhner am 22. Oktober 2018 um 12:32

Veröffentlicht in: Allgemein, Text

A Day in the Park

There had been nothing, eventful in my life. Just school and then college. I had been an average student. Not bad to look at. Not that my looks were extraordinary. Of course there had been dreams. Romantic dreams. The kind that girls have. Then the day came when nightmare became reality.

I walked home from classes through the park as I always did. It was autumn and a bit chilly. Grey weather. The trees had been stripped of most of their leaves. They lay in piles on the ground like broken crust. A dismal day.

Suddenly I found myself in a grip. I couldn’t scream. My mouth was covered by a hand. I struggled but couldn’t free myself. I was in terror. I was dragged until there was nothing around me but bushes. If only I could scream, someone would come. Someone had to help me. It couldn’t happen. But 1 knew that no one and nothing could help. It would happen.

I was thrust down. I tried to defend myself with teeth, nails and knees. I was struck several times open-handed across the face. I gasped my breath in and tried to scream but something was roughly stuffed into my mouth. I felt my clothes being ripped.

I was burned open.

I saw red, then black.

When I came to, someone was leaning over me. I saw a handsome bearded face. Someone had come to help, but it was too late. I was ashamed. My clothes were torn. I tried to put them in order as best I could. My hands trembled so. He told me to lie there, that he would get help. I noticed that his clothes were disheveled. He must have fought with my assailant. But why hadn’t he come sooner? Why hadn’t he come soon enough to prevent it?

I told him not to go, not to leave me alone. He stayed and helped me up. My feet were unsteady, and it was hard for me to stand, but instead of holding me, he knelt down in front of me.

He asked me to forgive him. He started to sob. He was lower than an animal. Nothing could rectify what he had done. He said that I should spit on him. I could kick him if I wanted to.

I had been shattered inside, broken into small pieces. I was no longer afraid. What else could happen to me? I was too weak to do anything but lean on him. The creature that had raped me, I despised him. But what could I do? I didn’t have the strength to break away and run. We just remained in that ridiculous position: I with my torn dress and he groveling at my feet.

It was he who suggested that I report him to the police. But I was too weak to do so. He finally got up and put his arm around me to support me. Like, that we walked away. We left the lonely spot where it had happened. And we were among people again. The people who had mindlessly gone about doing what they were doing while it had happened. They were just as I had been
before I had been attacked.

When we saw a policeman, I expected the rapist to let go of me and run. But he remained at my side. We approached-the policeman. I didn’t know how to tell him. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. The rapist came to my aid. He told the officer what had happened. The policeman looked at us in disbelief. He removed his cap and scratched his head. We must have been a sight, the two of us, rapist and raped, standing side by side. Rapist supporting raped. I, bruised with my dress ripped, he, his shirt ripped and red streaks where I had scratched him.
The rest was agony. The police station with the staring policemen. I was a corpse they were viewing. The unmentionable had happened to me, I had been successfully attacked in broad daylight. But the corpse was alive and I had to live with my shame.

There were the questions. The rapist was charged and placed in a cell.

The ambulance came and I was taken to the hospital, Then more of the same, except my inquisitors wore white instead of police uniforms. There were intimate questions and intimate examinations. The coal clean sheets. The top sheet lifted aside. The wound displayed for all to see. The wound handled and swabbed. Why hadn’t he killed me?

It went on, The discreet lawyer. The embarrassed visits of my family. My discharge from the hospital. The trial. My appearance on the witness stand and the horrible questions. Although my assailant pleaded guilty, they had to determine whether I had enticed my assailant and whether I enjoyed it or not. And more staring. The satisfaction. It had been me and not them. Then finally he was found guilty. The sentence was passed and it was over.

But now it had only started.

I was pregnant. Naturally I wanted to have an abortion. To have the trace of the shame removed. I begged and pleaded for it. But it was denied to me. They gave me consolation, but no abortion. I was told that it wasn’t allowed. They sent a priest and he confirmed it. I was to be brave. It was my sacred duty to bring the child into the world. I was to do God’s bidding.

I cried, lashed out threw myself onto the floor. They gathered me up and again placed me in a cool clean bed. I was forced to remain in it. I hoped that my pregnancy would be interrupted or that I would bear a stillborn child. But in spite of my wishes, after causing me great pain, the child was born.

What was I to do? They told me that I could have the child adopted. But it was mine and I decided to keep it. After all, it hadn’t had anything to do with the cause of its birth. It was only a child.

That’s when I began to get the letters. The return address was the penitentiary. They came from him. He begged for forgiveness. He inquired about the child. Continued to ask about it, His letters were not what one would have expected. Not uncultivated. At first I left them unanswered. Then coldly wrote of the horror I had experienced. Finally I gave him the information he requested.

My family and friends had changed toward me. They were kind all right – too kind. I was treated
solemnly. They never joked or laughed in my presence. In truth they wanted to avoid me as it I were a cripple. But his letters kept coming.

He asked me to visit him in prison. It took much persuasion before I went. But I did go on visitor’s day. He behaved differently than one would imagine. He was a rapist, a convict in prison. Yet seeing him there, it was hard to believe, but I know that it was true. When he asked me to come with the child, his child, I refused. But at my next visit, he asked me again. I hesitated, but did as he asked. I fulfilled his wish.

He was a model prisoner and it did not take long before he was paroled. I met him after he was released from prison. Always in the afternoon. And in a public place. My fears were unfounded. He never as much reached for my hand.

I wasn’t surprised when he asked me to marry him. He wanted to atone for what he had done. He promised to be a good husband and father. He said that he was happy to be the first man in my life.

– Herbert Kuhner

-Laura

von Herbert Kuhner am 12. Oktober 2018 um 16:49

Veröffentlicht in: Polemics, Politics, Text

FOX and Morality

For some having moral values
seems to mean playing dirty
so you can impose the moral values
you don’t happen to have
on others.

Questions:

If you really believe in the Deity,
why would you play dirty?

If you have access to the truth
why do you have to lie?

If you accept the Divine message,
why do you spew hate?

FOX and the Religious Right

Evangelicals and their cohorts,
including assaulters, abusers,
rapists and pedophiles,
want to bring about
a renaissance of the back- street abortion
and a revival of the knitting needle.

Laura Ingraham (who wears the symbol)
recites a “poem” she “authored”

“First They Came”

“I am proud to stand with you,
and I am saying with great respect
First they came for the rich,
And I did not speak out because I was not rich.
Then they confiscated the property owners,
and I did not speak out because I did not own property.
Then they took away our right to bear arms,
and I did not speak out because I was not armed.
Then they came for me and denied me my medical care,
and there was no one left to speak for me,
and I couldn’t because my Medicare provider
wouldn’t’ treat my tonsillitis”[1]

Poor Laura Ingraham

Laura Ingraham, of Fox News, etc., is not rich.
Laura Ingraham does not own property.
Laura Ingraham does not bear arms
(But some of her Tea Party colleagues do)
Laura Ingraham does not have medical insurance.
She has nothing to lose, except her tonsils.

Down with the Pen!

Steve Lonegan of Americans for Property
and Former Mayor of Bogota, New Jersey,
at the same event:

“We cannot allow the pen
to be mightier than the sword!”

Yes, Steve, that’s the rub.
Let’s do away with the pen!
It certainly would prick your silly bubble!

Civilized Discourse

This is all far beyond the realm of civilized discourse.
The new breed of “conservatives” are crude demagogues,
primitive rabble-rousers and born-again jingoists.
Unfortunately there is an army of boorish clods
to lap up all the balderdash.

This is the original poem by Pastor Martin Niemöller,
who put his life on the line during the Third Reich:

First They Came

First they came for the communists,
and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews,
and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.

– Herbert Kuhner

[1] Tea Party Rally Dec. 15th Capitol Hill, CBS News (blog) and The Daily Show, Dec. 16, 2009‎.

-A Good Start

von Herbert Kuhner am 7. Oktober 2018 um 17:02

Veröffentlicht in: Poetry, Reviews, Translation

ELOQUENT COMMENTS: A GOOD START BUT NO FOLLOW-UP

Here are reviews by Edward Butscher and Aaron Kramer and a comment by Harry James Cargas of Borders/Grenzen by Peter Paul Wiplinger., my first book of poetry in translation. Regretfully there was no-follow-up.

Edward Butscher
POETS Magazine, New York
PETER PAUL WIPLINGER: BORDERS/GRENZEN. TRANSLATED BY HERBERT KUHNER. Cross Cultural Communications, Merrick, New York. 72 pages.
Paperback $4.50, ,Hardcover‘ $8.50

Our century celebrates noise, spreads information, breeds a void. Where language begins and ends is difficult to grasp, since silence is impossible without its existence, its echo. For the poet, this means a greater concentration on print and space, the extreme, unnatural relation-ship between the two. One result has been an increasing tendency towards elliptical brevities, as in the work of Orr, Simic, Tate, et.al. Behind it, of course, looms the assumption that the intensity of the material being handled demands the distancing of understatement and surrealistic strategies.

Peter Paul Wiplinger, the Austrian poet, is aware of both the silence and its menace, as the title of this collection makes clear, and his own poems are often starker than knife slashes on the page, each word rippling, at times, with a violent anguish barely held in check‘ „time/ is reality/ a stone/ carries the message.“
Lack of punctuation accentuates the scene’s bleakness a „Cemetery in Achlat“– and weds missing connections. More important, topography and poetry share the same bed, as the message on every tombstone „binds/ words/ to the sky/ to the earth.“ Adjectives and adverbs have been jettisoned during the marriage, as if qualifications of any kind suggested infidelities, wet dreams of transcendence.

In another poem, „Thirty Years Later“, the separation of words from silence has been lessened to the point where language mounts itself:

you can’t remember their names
what they were called
in Lidice and Novosibirsk
and their shrouds
bang like white flags
in the garden
you ascend in an elevator

you can’t remember
but you suddenly realize
that you’ve lost everything
and you’re standing in a corner
saying I love you
you ascend in the elevator
knowing what will happen
thinking of the white shrouds
but you can’t remember their names

Ostensibly a lament for survivor and victims, the poem cannot escape its. concern for itself as poem, the metaphor of shrouds like flags
of surrender implying the cognitive act of naming, naming in black against white space; the threat, constant, of nothingness is restrained by language alone—even memory has failed. Other strong Poems, i. e. „Relics,“ „Butterfly‘,'“ „We Do Not Die Out,“ and „Cornelia,“ confront a similar duality of purpose, art and life intermingled with an unrelieved emphasis on fierce oppositions, on the poles of human experiences „signs of love/ signs of death/ earth and snow/ sun and stone.“

Though born in 19394 Wiplinger remains obsessed with the enormous reality of the concentration camps, despite his patent refusal to accept that „Auschwitz/has made writing poetry/ impossible.“ His borders, his thin black lines of lyric, are heavy with the loss of meaning his generation has inherited. Like the generation of poets who lost their faith in civilization after the slaughters of World War I, he must depend upon fragments to shore up his ruins, as in „Relics „:

sentences
deserted houses
broken bridges
days like sunken ships
the throbbing of blood
fingerprints
your photo
and my breath
in bed
next to you

The existential despair here clings to the tokens of language and things, refusing rhetoric in the process. And yet, such a minimalist aesthetic carries its own dangers, a potential ‑ for false significance and precious self-indulgence that Wiplinger does not always avoid. Too many of his poems remind us that pain is not enough, that literature requires more. In „On the Threshold of Death“, for instance, simple idea and simple words produce little beyond a simplistic sentimentality:

on the threshold
of death awaking
to joy

on the threshold
of death awaking
to love

on the threshold
of death awaking
to yourself

finding the way in death
to joy
to love

„Extinguish the Signs,“ „For Myself,“ „Drawing Back,“ and „You and I“ are other poems suffering from the same malaise of abundant reality
and in-sufficient art—Eliot’s „objective correlative“ is missing.

But perhaps the risks are worth it. Enough of Wiplinger’s taut lyrics triumph over their sparse diets to make‘ the collection a valuable one for us and a fundamental one for their author. The final sequence, „Black Poppies“, intimates that a tropic break-through is perhaps imminent, though it will rise from its own ashes „the inventory/ was accurate/ this was made apparent/in the morning/ by the dead birds/ and the bleeding sun.“

*****

vector magazine/arts & entertainment
179 main street, hackensack, new jersey 07601/201-487-0383/0384
PETER PAUL WIPLINGER: BORDERS/GRENZEN.
TRANSLATED BY HERBERT KUHNER
Cross-Cultural Communications, Merrick,
New York. 72 pages. Paperback $4.50,
Hardcover; $8.50

Borders is both harrowing and thrilling; it strikes the reader dumb. „Auschwitz/has made writing poetry/ impossible/said Theodor Adorno Wiesengrund/and he should have known/since he survived.“ lt was a holy and excruciating task Wiplinger undertook: to utter the words neither Auschwitz ghosts nor its surviving poets could utter, humbly offering himself ‚as the lips of a tremendous theme. And what music rises from his page: Always low-keyed, always stark, it pierces and overwhelms and illumines with its vision of humanity agonized but undestroyed: „We’re no longer here/ but something is still here/besides us in which we are.“
Aaron Kramer (13 December 1921 – 7 April 1997)

*****

Harry James Cargas (June 18, 1932 – August 18, 1998) was an American scholar, author, and teacher best known for his writing and research on the Holocaust….Dr. Cargas was honored for his work on the Holocaust, human rights, and teaching excellence. “In Borders Wiplinger gives us magnificent poetry and it is magnificently translated by Herbert Kuhner…. Spare, powerful, extremely moving, Wiplinger’s short poems, each contains a lifetime of seeing and understanding.”

-The Nest Ensemble

von Herbert Kuhner am 25. September 2018 um 13:38

Veröffentlicht in: Jazz

I implore you to make a CD with your fellow talented musicians. You are the best singer I ever heard. The romantic “blue moon” and the other numbers conquered my heart. The wonderful classic/standard songs the band plays sound as if they had been composed for the band. Please go into a recording studio and record this historical legacy!
– Karsten Rühl, dramatic director, actor, literary performer, author, musician and singer

The Nest Ensemble live (click here)

The Nest Ensemble

This nest was formed by chance.
There was Alex on piano,
Manfred on bass,
and myself on drums.
Ralf added the finishing
and beginning touch
with his guitar.

When we sat down to play,
the pieces just seemed
to fall into place
of their own accord,
and when we played them
they seemed to be playing us.

It was as if we were born
to play together
and our instruments
took us along for the ride.

“No sweat”
is what it’s all about,
and “Easy does it”
seems to be our motto.

Birds of a feather play together.

The Light Touch

The light touch
may mean soft,
but it doesn’t mean
you have to perk up your ears
to hear it.

It does mean subtle,
and Ralf Starlinger is subtle.

His mentor and inspiration
is a tossup between Jim Hall
and Wes Montgomery.

Django was not soft,
but you don’t have to be soft,
and not traveling with Django
only means that there’s another route
for you to take.

You can choose subtlety,
but it’s not just a matter of choice.
There’s more to it than that.

You have to find sounds
that lead you to making your own
very individual ones,
which does not mean emulation.

You let your mentor
lead you before
you express your gratitude
and go your own way.

Sonny Greer, my drumming mentor,
said : “I always strove for delicacy.
I tried to shade and make
everything sound beautiful.”

That has been my drumming motto.
Perhaps that is why I can underline
Ralf so well.

Alex

Herbert is the guy
who brings musicians together.
I played at sessions with
Alex, the piano man,
in Herbert’s pad.

My dream
was being in a group with Alex.

He plays like coffee with cream –
smooth is the word –
Well, the dream of playing
with Alex came true.

Why is it that
playing with him
is no sweat?
My hands and feet just do
What they’re supposed to do,
with no effort
on my part –
or so it seems

The guy at the keyboard
brings out the best in me.

A marvelous musician does that
for a drummer.

Bass Man

I met Manfred at a session
at Herbert’s pad.
We hit it off.
I say that bass and drummer
Should b re one instrument
and that magic ally happened.

We got together with Alec,
a piano man who is a regular
at the pad,
and they told me about Ralf,
who’s a whiz at the guitar,
that’s how it all started.

Manfred was not satisfied
With just playing.
He put together a program
of my poems.

I told him
That it was too long,
And length is always
sleep-inducing,
but he refused to take
even one poem out.

And imagine no one
started to snooze
when we played, sang
and read.

Thank you, Manfred!

Showbiz

Showbiz
has a negative connotation.

It seems to conjure up
everything that’s garish, tawdry
and specious.
But it does have its allure,
like a pulp magazine
you pick up and thumb through
while waiting for the dentist.

When I played the drums
for the swing band
and in the pit
for musicals
as a teenager
in my prep school days,
I thought I was part of it –
Showbiz, that is.

But after that,
I was merely a spectator
with an outsider view.

Then, as a sexagenarian
serendipity had me play again,
which led to doing vocals
and writing and reciting
jazz poems.

Hot damn!
I’m in Showbiz again!

– Herbert Kuhner

-Depicting It

von Herbert Kuhner am 23. September 2018 um 21:12

Veröffentlicht in: Polemics, Politics, Text

Depicting It

There are two things that cannot be depicted – a rose and sexual organs.
A rose because it is too beautiful, and sexual organs because they are too ugly.
It is the miasma of desire that makes them appealing.

Describing the sexual act is a very tricky business. Especially if you want to remain within aesthetic boundaries. If you don’t, you can go ahead with no problems. But the result is bound to be banal, boring or revolting like out-and-out pornography, in fact it may be just that.

D. H. Lawrence assayed it. For him, sex was a religious experience if the partners were erotically made for each other, even if they didn’t match in any other way. Lady Chatterley and the gamekeeper, fit together in that way – but in no other. Thus according to Lawrence they were a perfect match.

The erotic passages acts are solemn and have the quality of prayer. Try reading them that way! And like prayer, they aren’t any fun at all.

Let me throw this in!

There’s something that always bothered me about the novel. Lord Chatterley is supposed to represent the impotent man. But Chatterley was genuinely impotent due to a war wound.

That is unfair! A man who represents that kind of shortcoming should be unable to raise the flag due to psychological reasons, not physical ones.

Henry Miller wanted to describe the act honestly, as honestly as one would describe the kitchen sink. He describes the sink in detail, and since a detailed description of a sink is absurd, absurd if you’re not a plumber, an ample dosage of slapstick enters the scene, or scenes. The encounters usually boil down to this: the women pratfell and he nosedove on them. The venues are everywhere except the bedroom. Miller is his own protagonist and his outfit invariably consists of a hat and socks.

Ulysses by James Joyce, got banned, like Miller’s books, and had the honor of being sold under the counter till the days of enlightenment. Those days turned out to be as blightful in other ways. The judges had a hard time deciphering Joyce’s passages in Ulysses, since he had partially catapulted himself out of the English language. But they managed to find a tinge of pink here and there, so they rapped down their gavels, and bam, bam, bam! – Ulysses was banned! After Ulysses, Joyce took no chances, and in Finnegan’s Wake he completely catapulted himself out of the English language.

Norman Mailer is the most explicit author – but not the most modest one. He wanted to use his novels to illustrate his prowess as a lothario in the boudoir and other locations. The Mailer character can run faster and jump higher and farther than anyone. And he can jump and run more often than anyone. Like the famed Jesse Owens, he gets all the gold medals, and on his way to receiving them, he pockets the silver and copper ones too.

Although I always thought of myself as being mad for women, I’ve always written around erotic details, but I did get close in one passage of my modern Casanova novel, The Assembly-Line Prince, which is forthcoming in Tarantel Verlag, Vienna, in German translation as Der Fliessbandprinz, which is based on the adventures of my late friend, the actor Herb Andress.

Herb Andress

Here is an excerpt:

Then life became Rosy. She was thirty years old, had two daughters and was going through a divorce. She was fantasstic with a double s. I took her to the Magic Castle, where famous magicians performed their tricks. Then I took her home and performed my tricks on her. It was hard going. I’d given up sex for the yogi thing. But she initiated me right back to where I’d left off.

When we went to her place, I’d lie on the car floor so that her divorce case wouldn’t be damaged. From the floor I’d sneak into her bed. I got back to being what I was and doing what I do best. I’d been out of the saddle for same time. It was good to get back in. It was a rosy time. It was Rosy time. She’d say, „Give it to me, Herby! Give it to me! I need it so much. I love getting it from you!“

I’d lose myself in Rosy. She was so juicy I had to take a ladle with me. As I was getting close, she squirmed out from under me and dove down.

She liked to have her back facing me: She wanted to expose herself. “Herby,” she’d ask, „do you see me?“ I ‚d guide her with my hands on her haunches, looking at her creaminess, black thatch and rosiness. After she’d been going at it for a while, she’d slurp. It sounded like cymbals clashing, and I’d give her slaps for good measure.

We were a two-man drum and bugle corps. When she climaxed it was like having a dynamo over me.

Those were rosy days. I saw the world through rosy glasses. The celibacy part of my religious conversion was over. But I kept the vegetarian diet and stayed away from smoking.

– Herbert Kuhner

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