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Forgive the late entry today. I was busy with the day job.

I had the pleasure of meeting Betsy Brown last week. She’s a real poet, and I tried to get her to stay for another glass of wine and recite a bit for me, but she had to go. She graciously sent this along to me though, and so I thought I’d graciously pass it along to you.

She told me she’d written it about her sister, who’d been found to have breast cancer. We have some of that in our family, too, and it was a sad but sweet pleasure to read Betsy’s poem.

Rage by Betsy Brown

In 1764, a herding dog lunged out
of her fields to ravage the French village
of Thiers, attacking twenty people

and infecting them fiercely with
pre-Pasteurian rabies, called rage
by the French. You traveled to Paris

to study the original printings
of these stories: the victims doomed,
the pages onion-skin parchment

too frail to copy, sometimes too precious
to open, the bitten first numbed
with knowing what’s coming, then

as they say, enraged, terrified of water,
convulsant, apologetic about how much
they wanted to bite their Parisian

doctor, who bled them and burned
the fanged gouges with steel and mercury.
In the Fifth Arrondissement, your

fine tall library, your walk daily through
Luxembourg gardens and all the slim
streets past high black iron gates,

shuttered window panes; they put
the victims in a huge vacant hospice
and separated those who became

hydrophobic: Eh Monsieur, I see clearly
that I am lost, they place me in this
unfortunate room, from which no one returns.

In 18th century France, rage patients
sought miracle cures at the shrine
of St.-Hubert, the priests worked

to keep that pilgrimage active,
and all the scholars fought about
the passions and the morals of the dead.

I’m sorry I had to take you home
from Paris. It was snowing and you
were crying. All the mad strangled

rabid patients carried us, remember,
back to Baltimore; you wanted
to save them, we brought our offerings

to radiologists, we applied to oncologists —
we were all ghosts and stories
about walks to the health food store

and the ways people so deeply numbed
find to talk about a future. In Thiers,
the 12-year old boy just simply

could not drink the water. He shattered
the cup and convulsed so violently
they tied him to the bed. Tonight

in a tiny lamplit apartment in Paris,
a reader sits riveted by the newspaper —
all these stories ending with life.

It is certainly true that music magazines remain committed to music criticism without a lot of strong evidence that anyone is all that interested anymore. But I couldn’t let Pete Carbonara’s dismissive comments about our mutual former employer go unanswered. Someone needs to defend Spin’s honor, I think.

First, no one expects Spin to be The Nation or the New Yorker, and yet they still make an effort to publish a certain amount of “real journalism” in every issue. (And, with some honor, try to enter the Ellies every year, where sister pub VIBE regularly hogs the glory.) While I was an editor there, the magazine published the first major article on a little-known drug called Oxycontin, for example. Spin published the first national article on satellite radio, and it was the first periodical to exhaustively explore the legal, social, and cultural ramifications of digitized music. If memory serves, it was even one of the earliest-maybe the ONLY-national (non-gay) magazines to have a monthly column on the HIV-AIDS epidemic. And yes, there were always a few CD reviews thrown into the mix. Things may have changed after Carbonara left, but no one who has worked at Spin in recent years would argue that there is a lack of editorial rigor under the able and even legendary hands of Alan Light, Sia Michel, Will Hermes, and many others. (A young man named James Truman got his start there.)

One of my personal frustrations with the music mag business was the albatross of newstand sales, almost always tied to the alchemy of predicting which current release will be a massive hit with the kids, in order to maximize newstand sell-through. In other words, a large part of the feature well, and much of the rest of the magazine, was dictated by which albums (films, games, gear) were in current release. True, that is an insidious way to run an edit meeting… unless your passion, your beat, is popular music. Unlike other media, music magazines had the space, time, and interest to cover a lot of material that would otherwise get no press whatsoever — so for the true music enthusiast, it was a presumably a salve.

I too left Spin under unhappy circumstances, but I don’t blame Spin — I blame myself, for inexorably growing up, having kids, not listening to enough music or seeing enough shows, and not continuing to be very good at my job as a result. But it’s not fair to suggest that journalism and music journalism are mutually exclusive. Hopefully, my departure — and Pete Carbonara’s — made a little room at the bottom for someone like Krystal Grow. (In my experience at Spin, Spin’s interns were some of the finest young journalists of their generation, many feeding directly from Medill and Columbia and all the other canonical j-schools. I think Grow’s main problem is not recognizing just how difficult it is to make the cut — and if you’re not both a serious journalist and pop-culture enthusiast, you really HAVE dodged a bullet by not gaining one of the prestigious vacancies. There is a funny story from a few years ago about several enterprising young people just showing up at Spin claiming to be “the new interns.” I don’t know how far they got with the managing editor — I heard they’d claimed a couple of empty desks — but it’s good evidence that Grow is niether the first nor the last desperate applicant.)

I notice that good old James Poniewozick—one of the great unsung heroes of populist criticism, and an old friend—has weighed in on this matter as well. As ever, putting me to shame with his lean and powerful prose.

It would be a bit silly to come near the end of this month of poems without hearing a bit from the Bard. Here is Sonnet 116; a little bit from Antony and Cleopatra that once struck me hard; and the famous speech from Henry V that lent title to a damn good book about World War II.

Note the common theme of death, entwined, like the asp, with that of love. Great stuff.

Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Cleopatra’s death speech from Antony and Cleopatra, Act V

Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have
Immortal longings in me: now no more
The juice of Egypt’s grape shall moist this lip:
Yare, yare, good Iras; quick. Methinks I hear
Antony call; I see him rouse himself
To praise my noble act; I hear him mock
The luck of Caesar, which the gods give men
To excuse their after wrath: husband, I come:
Now to that name my courage prove my title!
I am fire and air; my other elements
I give to baser life. So; have you done?
Come then, and take the last warmth of my lips.
Farewell, kind Charmian; Iras, long farewell.

Kisses them. IRAS falls and dies

Have I the aspic in my lips? Dost fall?
If thou and nature can so gently part,
The stroke of death is as a lover’s pinch,
Which hurts, and is desired. Dost thou lie still?
If thus thou vanishest, thou tell’st the world
It is not worth leave-taking.

Finally, the more masculine warrior, Henry V

If we are mark’d to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires:
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England:
God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more, methinks, would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian:’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

You know it’s a slow week in news when the journalists are arguing amongst themselves about the cheekiness of interns. But that should not distract us from slightly less yawn-inducing progress of the Ship of State in its inexorable approach to the iceberg of international irrelevance.

The good senator and Viagra spokesman Bob Dole writes in today’s New York Times op-ed pages that Democrats are violating a longstanding tradition by filibustering—or threatening to filibuster—judicial nominations. The much-talked about Republican “nuclear option” would entail the majority party simply eliminating the filibuster. (For an interesting angle on why this would, in the long run, actually play into Democratic interests, read Rik Hertzberg of a few months ago.) Dole’s appreciation for the sacred precedent of history and the rights of the minority are admirable, but it’s interesting that he doesn’t really explain why Democrats would be so desperate to obstruct Republican progress.

The standard line, of course, is that Democrats just can’t deal with being the minority dissenting party, and they have not stopped trying to sabotage the Will of the People. Of course, a whiny elitist Democrat would tell you that this is the price of a majority’s tyranny. If you’re going to change the rules to ensure that you win without compromise, then we’re simply not going to play the game anymore. More to the point, the downside of Republican hubris and triumphalism is the inevitable backlash that is the normal death rattle of the ideologue in power.

On the face of it, Speaker Dennis Hastert’s offer to reconsider house ethics committee rule changes that favored the GOP looks like an olive branch offered to Democrats—who have been letting Tom DeLay rot on the vine (and to test Republican wagon-circling arrogance—yup, still there) as they refuse to hear any ethics cases. The high road is surely the road of self-interest, and Hastert probably recognizes that the GOP can’t win without first losing. (Does he really believe the compromise will help “clear” DeLay’s name? Well, we guess we may yet see new heights of hubris.) All now seem to be lining up for the clash over DeLay’s dalliances and transgressions. The only remaining question is whether the party lines will hold as everyone seems to believe they will—with no clear indication of why DeLay’s skin is worth saving.

This one was suggested by a friend of mine who happens to be a Catholic priest. It seems at first a bit voluptuous for a priest’s taste, but as a friend once said, “They can think about it, they just can’t do it.”

But, come down to the last stanzas and see the reconciliation of the body with the philosophy and it makes sense why my friend would like this. He is a man, after all, and a prodigious intellect, to boot. All the better to enjoy all that good poetry has to offer.

Peter Quince at the Clavier, by Wallace Stevens

I

Just as my fingers on these keys
Make music, so the self-same sounds
On my spirit make a music, too.
Music is feeling, then, not sound;
And thus it is that what I feel,
Here in this room, desiring you,

Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk,
Is music. It is like the strain
Waked in the elders by Susanna;

Of a green evening, clear and warm,
She bathed in her still garden, while
The red-eyed elders, watching, felt

The basses of their beings throb
In witching chords, and their thin blood
Pulse pizzicati of Hosanna.

II

In the green water, clear and warm,
Susanna lay.
She searched
The touch of springs,
And found
Concealed imaginings.
She sighed,
For so much melody.

Upon the bank, she stood
In the cool
Of spent emotions.
She felt, among the leaves,
The dew
Of old devotions.

She walked upon the grass,
Still quavering.
The winds were like her maids,
On timid feet,
Fetching her woven scarves,
Yet wavering.

A breath upon her hand
Muted the night.
She turned —
A cymbal crashed,
Amid roaring horns.

III

Soon, with a noise like tambourines,
Came her attendant Byzantines.

They wondered why Susanna cried
Against the elders by her side;

And as they whispered, the refrain
Was like a willow swept by rain.

Anon, their lamps’ uplifted flame
Revealed Susanna and her shame.

And then, the simpering Byzantines
Fled, with a noise like tambourines.

IV

Beauty is momentary in the mind —
The fitful tracing of a portal;
But in the flesh it is immortal.

The body dies; the body’s beauty lives.
So evenings die, in their green going,
A wave, interminably flowing.
So gardens die, their meek breath scenting
The cowl of winter, done repenting.
So maidens die, to the auroral
Celebration of a maiden’s choral.

Susanna’s music touched the bawdy strings
Of those white elders; but, escaping,
Left only Death’s ironic scraping.
Now, in its immortality, it plays
On the clear viol of her memory,
And makes a constant sacrament of praise.

One of our favorite media writers is Stephanie Zecharek over at Salon. Years ago, she impressed us by seeing the future. In 1999, she griped about the sorry state of American music magazines—particularly Rolling Stone and Spin and similar titles—and predicted a successful English colonization of same. In the years since then, that is precisely what happened. Felix Dennis launched Blender with Q magazine’s Andy Pemberton at the helm (and Spin’s Craig Marks as his flunkie), Rolling Stone hired its own British editor and a Q art director—and suddenly American magazines looked awfully British, which was all to the good, as far as we were concerned. (Folks like Jan Wenner needed more obvious proof—and the, er, rise of Maxim provided it in spades.)

Today, Stephanie writes a thoughtful piece on the new and numbing trend of magalogs—the “shopoholic” titles like Lucky, Cargo, and the new shelter-shopper, Domino. All three of these magazines are Conde Nast titles. Sy Newhouse and his modish army are not worried about competing with themselves. This is because each title is niche-defined, but still trying to reach what is considered general-interest circulation numbers—somewhere approaching a half-million or better is what is considered a comfortable, profitable national circulation. (The real unacknowledged crime here is how Lucky has influenced city magazines across the country. “Lucky” is the new watchword in city-mag offices across the land, and constantly held up as the golden calf of magazine publishing. Publish what your advertisers tell you to publish, they’re the ones paying the bills, duh!)

Being snobs ourselves, but with a streak of prankish irreverence, we like Zecharek for her lighthanded snobishness. She liked British music magazines better back in ’99 because British magazines were a lot better than American magazines. They were funnier, better written, better looking, and much less averse to risk-taking. (They still are, as far as we know.) If we had to guess, we’d say she probably has mixed feelings about what Rolling Stone has become; it is significantly less committed to troglodyte rock, and more willing than ever to tout the latest pneumatic teenage lip-syncer. On the other hand, art rock and alt-rock get more serious coverage, and the venerable old Stone still has some fight left in it when it comes to taking advocacy positions on things like drugs, guns, and Hunter Thompson. It appears to have survived its makeover, and avoided the unfortunate fate of dying with its original readership, cool but irrelevant.

The thing is, it is a rare trick to be both an elitist and a populist and to succeed while you’re doing it. In describing the evolution of Lucky—the progenitor of all these shopping mags—Zecharek laments the slow disappearance of cooler early features that drew her in. Short pieces, for example, about collecting LP covers and vintage scarves. The writer takes this as a sign that Lucky very intentionally shifted toward covering goods and services that were more mass-market than upscale—that is, more mall than boutique. This would be a natural shift, if you wanted to build circulation from the low 100s to the mid 100s, which is precisely what Lucky has done. It does not surprise us much that Zecharek would prefer a magazine in the lower circulation category, which stayed committed to servicing snobs and intellectuals. (We freely admit to being snobs and intellectuals ourselves, and we too would prefer the earlier incarnation of Lucky, if we had to choose.) We would bet dollars to a glossy, two-page spread of all available donuts that Zecharek has a strong distaste for commerical radio for roughly the same reasons. (Carp all you want, say the big boys at Clear Channel: Science—or Arbitron’s version of it—proves that most people are not snobs, and they really do want to hear “That Smell” thirty times per day into perpetuity.)

Then, too, we think maybe the populist approach is a purer form of pornography—sort of a Penthouse or Playboy to the snobbish erotica of Nerve or Libido. Better yet, shopping magazines operate like porn-browsing windows on the web. You’re waiting for something to catch your eye; so many tastes, so many fetishes—your “thinking eye” lands on something, and from there, your latent consumerism comes over you. Depending on how virulent is your need to have what you covet, and how much money you have access to, you might pursue further. Otherwise, you have the little talisman of the magazine photo—which you’ve bookmarked with the clever little sticker tabs.

Zecharek’s main argument is an interesting one: These magazines use a peer-to-peer voice (as widely attributed to Jane Pratt and Sassy magazine, though we have a pretty good idea the True Crime mags and comic books of the thirties and forties managed to do it pretty well, too) that pretends to be advocating for its readers. But what it actually offers in the way of wallpaper choices, chartreuse vases, kercheifs—is strictly declasse.

There are lots of reasons to hate this kind of pornographic reduction of the reading experience to base appetites—but none that won’t inevitably sound elitist and defeatist and baldly unamerican. A wise man we know says, “Serve the rich, live with the masses; serve the masses, live with the rich.”