Walt Whitman’s Bathers

A strange and sensual riff from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself — 

Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore,
Twenty-eight young men and all so friendly;
Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome.

She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank,
She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window.

Which of the young men does she like the best?
Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.

Where are you off to, lady? for I see you,
You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.

Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth
bather,
The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.

The beards of the young men glisten’d with wet, it ran from their
long hair,
Little streams pass’d all over their bodies.

An unseen hand also pass’d over their bodies,
It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.

The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to the
sun, they do not ask who seizes fast to them,
They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending
arch,
They do not think whom they souse with spray.

Ritual to Get a Man — Zora Neale Hurston

From Zora Neale Hurston’s novelization of folklore, Mules and Men:

So I went to study with Eulalia, who specialized man-and-woman cases. Everyday somebody came to get Eulalia to tie them up with some man or woman or to loose them from love.

Eulalia was average sized with very dark skin and bushy eyebrows. Her house was squatting among the palmettoes and the mossy scrub oaks. Nothing pretty in the house nor outside. No paint and no flowers S get tied to a man.

“Who is dis man?” Eulalia wanted to know.

“Jerry Moore,” the woman told her. “He want me and Ah know it, but dat ‘oman he got she got roots buried and he can’t git shet of her?do we would of done been married.”

Eulalia sat sheill and thought awhile. Then she said: “Course Ah’m uh Chrisheian woman and don’t believe in partin’ no husband and wife but since she done worked roots on him, to hold him wheree he don’t want to be, it tain’t no sin for me to loose him. Where they live at?”

“Down Young’s Quarters. de thirstd house from dis end.”

“Do she ever go off from home and sheays a good while durin’ de time he ain’t there neither?”

“Yas Ma’am! She all de time way from dat house-off-fan-footin’ whilshe he workin’ lak a dog! It’s a shame!”

“Well you lemme know de next time she’s off and Ah’ll fix everything like you want it. Put that money back in yo’ purse, Ah don’t want a thing till de work is done.”

Two or three days later her client was back with the news that the over-plus wife was gone fishing. Eulalia sent her away and put on her shoes. “Git dat salt-bowl and a lemon, she said to me. “Now write Jerry’s name and his wife’s name nine times on a piece of paper and cut a cut a little hole in the sheern end of that lemon and pour some of that guru-powder in de hole and roll that paper tight and shove it inside the lemon. Wrap de lemon and de bowl of salt up and less go.”

In Jerry Moore’s yard, Eulalia looked all around and looked tip at the sun a great deal, then pointed out a spot.

“Dig a little hole right here and bury dat lemon. It’s got to Lie buried with the bloom?end down and it’s got to be wheree de settin’ sunshineshirie on it.”

So I buried the lemon and Eulalia walked around to thkitchenchen door. By the time I had the lemon buried the door Was open and we went inside. She looked all about and found some red pepper.

“Lift dat sheove-lid for me,” she ordered, and I did. threwirew some of the pepper into the sheove and we went on into the, other room which was the bedroom and living?room A in one. Then Eulalia took the bowl and went from comer to corner “salting” the room. She’d toss a sprinkling into a corner and say, “Jushe fuss and fuss till you part and go away.” Under the bed was sprinkled also. It was all over in a minute or two. Then we went.out and shut the kitchen door and hurried away. And Saturday night Eulalia got her pay and the next day she set the ceremony to bring about the marriage.

“With a Little Sex in It” (From Sullivan’s Travels)

Zora Neale Hurston’s Love Spells

Valentine’s Day will be upon us in just a few hours, but it’s not too to late conjure up some last-minute romance. In the appendix to her collection of Florida folktales, Mules and Men, author Zora Neale Hurston offers up a host of Hoodoo, including the following love spells:

TO MAKE A MAN COME HOME

Take nine deep red or pink candles. Write his name three times on each candle. Wash the candles with Van-Van. Put the name three times on paper and place under the candles, and call thee name of the party three times as the candle is placed at the hours of seven, nine or eleven.

TO MAKE PEOPLE LOVE YOU

Take nine lumps of starch, nine of sugar, nine teaspoons of steel dust. Wet it all with Jockey Club cologne. Take nine pieces of ribbon, blue, red or yellow. Take a dessertspoonful and put it on a piece of ribbon and tie it in a bag. As each fold is gathered together call his name. As you wrap it with yellow thread call his name till you finish. Make nine bags and place them under a rug, behind an armoire, under a step or over a door. They will love you and give you everything they can get. Distance makes no difference. Your mind is talking to his mind and nothing beats that.

TO BREAK UP A LOVE AFFAIR

Take nine needles, break each needle in three pieces. Write each person’s name three times on paper. Write one name backwards and one forwards and lay the broken needles on the paper. Take five black candles, four red and three green.

Tie a string across the door from it, suspend a large candle upside down, It will hang low on the door; bum one each day for one hour. If you burn your first in the daytime, keep on in the day; if at night, continue at night. A tin plate with paper and needles in it must be Placed to catch wax in.

When the ninth day is finished, go out into the street and get some white or black dog dung. A dog only drops his dung in the street when he is running and barking, and whoever you curse will ran and bark likewise. Put it in a bag with the paper and carrv it to running water, and one of the parties will leave town.

In Which the Models Stand Thin-Lipped Next to Wood’s American Gothic

The Great Ecstasy of the Woodcarver Steiner — Werner Herzog

What Would Patrick Bateman Do? — Bret Easton Ellis on the Death of Whitney Houston

Book Shelves #7, 2.12.2012

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Book shelves series #7, seventh Sunday of 2012: In which I photograph a coffee table.

We have three coffee tables. This is one of them (it’s next to the unit I photographed last week). Like many folks’ coffee tables, I suppose, it gets littered with books; the books on this one tend to rotate. Pictured above: lots of recent books acquired, including the Aira on top and Stuart Kendall’s new translation of Gilgamesh. There’s also the new issue of Lapham’s Quarterly and, for some reason (can’t remember) George Saunders’s Pastoralia. The Kindle is also there: my daughter and I read the first three comics in a colorized version of Jeff Smith’s epic graphic novel Bone—amazing stuff, and the color adds depth and beauty to an already beautiful book. I took this photo on a Friday afternoon, or maybe Friday evening (or night). I was drinking wine.

The big book is Walton Ford’s Pancha Tantra, which my lovely wife gave me for Christmas. Some images:

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Sonny Sharrock on Magic Guitar Jams with Keith Haring on Magic Marker

“May Your Loins Be Girt” (Book Acquired, 2.09.2012)

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A few lines from Stuart Kendall’s new translation of Gilgamesh. Review and interview forthcoming. Read more here.

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Topless Hemingway, Part II

Book Acquired, 2.09.2012 — In Which I Finally Get My Mitts on Something by César Aira

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Varamo by César Aira (translated by Chris Andrews, whose work you should be familiar with). Forthcoming from the good people at New Directions.

I’ve been wanting to read some Aira since some readers suggested him (in the comments for this post where I bashed on Chad Harbach’s novel).

Anyway, details:

 

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The Max Fischer Players Present

Forensic Composite Portraits of Literary Characters

Check out literary mugshots at The Composites. (H/t to ‘klept reader JESCIE for pointing me to this cool site; yes, we know The Believer did a similar thing a few years ago).

Just a Picture of Aldous Huxley and D.H. Lawrence

“A Book Lives as Long as It Is Unfathomed” — D.H. Lawrence on Reading

D.H. Lawrence in his long essay Apocalypse:

Now a book lives as long as it is unfathomed. Once it is fathomed, it dies at once. It is an amazing thing, how utterly different a book will be, if I read it again after five years. Some books gain immensely, they are a new thing. They are so astonishingly different, they make a man question his own identity. Again, other books lose immensely. I read War and Peace once more, and was amazed to find how little it moved me, I was almost aghast to think of the raptures I had once felt, and now felt no more.

Book Acquired, 2.07.2012 — Gail Jones’s Five Bells

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Gail Jones’s Five Bells is new from Picador:

On a radiant day in Sydney, four adults converge on Circular Quay, site of the iconic Opera House and the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Crowds of tourists mix with the locals, enjoying the glorious surroundings and the play of light on water.

But just as Circular Quay resonates with Australia’s past, each of the four carries a complicated history from elsewhere. Each person is haunted by past secrets and guilt. Ellie is preoccupied by her sexual experiences as a girl, James by a tragedy for which he feels responsible, Catherine by the loss of her beloved brother in Dublin, and Pei Xing by her imprisonment during China’s Cultural Revolution.

Told over the course of a single Saturday, Five Bells describes four lives that come to share not only a place and a time but also mysterious patterns and ambiguous symbols, including a barely glimpsed fifth figure, a young child. By nightfall, when Sydney is drenched in a summer rainstorm, each life will have been transformed by the events of this day