1993 | Arlene Corwin Poetry

Open-Ended Autobiography

15 Dec 2009 Leave a comment

Arlene Corwin’s Poetry

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Arlene Corwin’s Open-Ended Biography

(10.3.2007 updated 10.24.2007 updated 1.3.2008; updated December 15, 2009, October 2010 )

Arlene Corwin (born Arlene Faith Nover) is an American jazz singer and pianist, poet, teacher and practitioner of Yoga. Born November 8, 1934 in the Williamsburg Maternity Hospital, Brooklyn, New York. She has two children. Jonathan Eric Corwin (born July 24. 1956 and) Jennifer Nover Council (born February 2, 1964). Mother Margy Lillian (born Brown). Father Albert S. Nover. Both were hairdressers, owning a beauty salon together. Everyone was musical on both sides of the family.Mother sang, could play some piano. Father was a gifted sculptor and wood carver, played a little harmonica and mandolin. The family is Jewish.

Early Life

Started studying piano age 8. Studied voice at the famous 1650 Broadway with ‘coach’ Matty Levine. Did a little recording at aged 10 in Nola Studios. (The record has since disappeared) At 12 she started studying harp with Meyer Rosen (Julliard and NBC Orchestra) and the occasional piano lesson with an NBC pianist who taught her how to read chord changes, seeing at once that she was not interested in learning classical piano.

As a child she had already sung at weddings, bar mitzvahs and for the USO, raising bonds for the war effort. At 13, having a boyfriend who played the saxophone and who listened to Symphony Sid, jazz disc jockey whose late night show originated from Birdland, she awakened to jazz, listening to the late night show “under my blanket”. “A turning point”, she says. (Well before “Lullaby of Birdland” was put to words Arlene had written a lyric of her own – a lyric she still sings today) At 14,she was playing for a dancing school once a week. Then she got an accidental job (“slipping in on a banana peel when the singer got sick”) in a Brooklyn nightclub singing with a group. “Mom and dad chaperoned, of course”.1950s

She began to sing regularly when again, out of the blue, an agent rang offering a job for a hundred dollars a week to play at the Mayflower Hotel in Manhattan. It was a restaurant owned by Bob Olin, a former light heavyweight world champion. “I was so naïve I played the whole evening without ever taking a break. Who knew about breaks? Why they kept me I’ve no idea.” But they did and the steady salary of $100.00 a week (which she gave directly to her mother, any other choice never occurring to her) and the experience of having to make a varied program led to her singing to the piano, and eventually to playing to the singing. At this time she was still in high school as attending the prestigious High School of Music & Art as a harpist.She graduated from Music & Art getting a scholarship to Hofstra College as a music major.

Then in 1952, while still at Hofstra College (now university), she was playing on the weekends in a Hempstead, Long Island nightclub-restaurant when Slim Gaillard, who’d come to see Jack Teagarden (also working there) began to take notice of her. He started showing up regularly. There he met Arlene’s mother Margy, and the two eventually opened a jazz nightclub, the first to cater to blacks and whites. It was called The Turf and it, like Birdland had its own radio show, for which Arlene wrote the theme song “The Slim Gaillard Show”. Now she was standing as well as sitting, getting a chance to sit in and sing as often as she chose. The die was cast. It was jazz, cool jazz.

Early Influences

In 1954, on the day she ought to have been attending her college graduation, she married Bob Corwin, a 21-year-old jazz pianist with the Don Elliot Quartet. Because Bob toured, Arlene began her new stage of education: listening to Don’s group while they played on the same bill as the jazz greats of the 50’s. There was Helen Merrill at George Wein’s Storyville in Boston, Terry Gibbs and Illinois Jacquet in Detroit, Bill Evans, Cy Coleman, Bernard Peiffer, Tal Farlowe,Johnny Smith John Mehagan and Billy Taylor (who had also performed at the Turf) at the sophisticated Composer owned by jazz lover and connoiseur Willie Short in Manhattan. ” It was also a chance to see and listen to other singers of the day. New York was marvelous in those days. I saw Peggy Lee at Basin Street, became friends with Blossom Dearie at Trudy’s in the village, Oscar Peterson, Marian McPartland at the Hickory House, Sheila Jordan, Morgana King. It was THE university for me. I was introduced to and mentored by Tony Fruscella, the tragic, unsung genius of the trumpet, ‘who I took on my gigs, but to whom I was actually the apprentice’ – and through Tony to Morgana King and Beverly Getz, the talented [and equally tragic] wife of Stan Getz. I feel blessed to have experienced jazz at that time. The guys would gossip about who played ‘behind’ or ‘ahead’ of the beat, bass lines, good changes, bad changes. No Music & Art or Hofstra did that. I learned almost the whole of what is now called The American Songbook. And I, I was sounding like Sarah Vaughn with a little voice.”

Hanging Around Manhattan; Not This, Not That…

Living in New York, and looking for a niche she spent time, as other musicians did, at the Musicians Union Local 802 or Charlie’s Tavern where jobs could show up. In this way, there were weeks and weekends away with big bands: Tommy Dorsey’s Orchestra under the leadership of Warren Covington, Claude Thornhill and Larry Sonn.

“When you hang around New York all kinds of opportunities show up”. And so, she got a leading role in a B film called “Jukebox Racket’, wrote the score for another B film called, at the time “She Should Have Stayed In Bed”, later to be called ‘1,000 Shapes Of A Female: see IDMB (the company, called Exploit Films was owned by Errol Flynn “tall, big in every way, veins on his face, but exuding old world charm” He was quite, quite overwhelming.”

Then there was a bit part in John Cassavetes “Shadows”, followed by the lead in what has become a cult ‘beat’ musical called “The Nervous Set” by Fran and Jay Landesman where she introduced the now-standards “Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most and “Ballad Of The Sad Young Men”, both subsequently recorded by Ella Fitzgerald, Shirley Bassey and numberless major artists. She studied acting with Joshua Shelley. “It was a time to find out who and what I was. “I was definitely not an actress. I was too introverted and none of those clothes fit” she says.

More Influences and more Not This, Not That…

In 1959 she met Johnny Burke (Burke & Van Heusen) who took her under his wing, taking her to Hollywood to demonstrate his show “Donnybrook” for Rosalind Russell and husband, producer Frederick Brisson “It was a glitzy time. I stayed at Bob Hope’s house in Palm Springs, met Frank Sinatra and his then fiancee Juliet Prowse, Jerry Lewis, Marlene Deitrich, had my own suite in Las Vegas , traveled first class, but was so introverted I always kept to myself, never saying much, definitely not participating in any of these scenes. Those clothes didn’t fit either.”

All the while she returned to the intimacy of New York supper clubs. They were the bottom line, singing and playing.

It was during the supper club period, she met Al Weissman who became her manager. She was signed to the Joe Glazer Agency and began to tour with her own trio. “Wherever I went they’d say, “You know, there’s just been a girl here who sounds like you. Her name was Barbra something. I suppose we had Brooklyn Jewishness in common. ” (She too was signed with Glazer.)

Although published by Frank Publishing (owned by composer Frank Loesser) years later she asked for the songs back because “nothing happened.” “It was a period of promise, a period I was not equipped to fulfill”.

1960s-1970s

In 1962 it was back to Hollywood with Al Weissman and high hopes. “I had some jobs, but never in my genre.” Back to New York. A little jaunt of songwriting with singer Dick Haymes. A short marriage of four months to Richard Robin Palmer.

Greece, Lebanon, Greece, Oxford – Yoga & Jazz

In 1966, by way of Paris, Greece (where she and husband Jim Council were neighbors with Leonard Cohen and Marianne) and Lebanon, “where I actually managed to do some television, singing jazz”, she settled in Oxford, England for the next 18 years, teaching yoga,(“lectured and demonstrated in what must have been a hundred Women’s Insitutes, posed for one of the very first health magazines called Health & Fitness, wrote articles on nutrition, had a weekly radio spot on a little radio show for BBB Oxford actually doing Yoga on radio while describing each pose with a microphone up my nose, did a tape on meditation – it was a lot of Yoga”) and singing and playing, being voted Best Jazz Singer in the Midlands 1972, appearing at Ronnie Scott’s three times. She did 3 television shows; a late night BBC jazz show called “In The Cool Of The Evening”, radio for BBC overseas, was invited over to Amsterdam to do Dutch radio, sang at universities around England, (“one night opposite Pink Floyd, “who were just starting out, I suppose”), the American air bases.

She appeared several times at The Stables in Wavendon (run by John Dankworth – now Sir John Dankworth – and Cleo Laine -now Dame Cleo Laine – while at the same time giving weekly yoga lessons to a group there, (which included Dame Cleo – “a wonderful yogin”). The Wavendon All-Music Plan, later known simply as WAP “was the most stimulating and original enterprise I’ve ever encountered, pairing all kinds of musical genre. I even played on the same bill as Vladimir Ashkenazy.”

Starting in 1969 and all during the 70’s fate gave a push to the yoga side of things and Arlene was teaching yoga classes in doctor’s offices for hyper-tense, cardiac and overweight men. teaching regularly at conferences for IBM. She gave demonstrations, lectured all over for the Women’s Institute, posed and wrote for Health and Fitness Magazine (summer issue 1982) a book called The New Manual Of Yoga by Karen Ross (1973) wrote articles on nutrition, made a cassette called This Is Meditation. It was a full double life with Yoga taking half the time and singing the other half.

1980s to now.

In 1983 she once again ran into Slim Gaillard – this time in London. He asked her to appear on a television show he was producing that was to star himself, Kai Winding and Wayne Shorter. It was the last appearance she ever made in England.In 1984, finding Sweden fertile ground for singer/pianists, and meeting and falling in love with Kent Anderson, she moved to Sweden where she lives until today, performing, and writing regularly for “Live With Good Intentions” an online magazine.

Still growing, still changing

The latest news – 2009 and 25 years later, aged 75: a cd of her own songs for Imogen Records produced by George Reece, a concert of Johnny Mercer to commemorate his 100th birthday, poetry grown to 2000 poems (see Arlene Corwin Poetry).

2009 finds her favorite project on Google called Arlene Corwin’s Poetry, a project that started in 1949 or about 2,000 poems ago.

2010 landmark: First published book of poetry, “Circling Round Time” comes out in September “To The Child Mystic” the second due to come out in December.

2010-11 Circling Round Time and To The Child Mystic. “The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative . Regular contributor to online magazines ElderwomanSpace; Jerry Jazz Musician; Elderwomanstorytellingplace;

2012 More books! Circling Round Woman; Circling Round Our Times, Our Culture; Circling Round Vanity: Vaguely About Music and Circling Round Eros + 2. Publised by Xlibris.

2013-2014 More & more! Circling Round Yoga, Science, War & Cats; Circling Round Nature; God Book; in the works A Sense Of The Ridiculous.

Music career took an upswing with performances and concerts – an intimate series of composer-of-the-month programs based on the best of American popular composers.

And, of all things, at age 77, the start of yoga teaching in Härryda, Sweden.

Arlene Corwin is, as at this writing, 80 years of age. Over 3,000 poems.

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Arlene Corwin’s Open-Ended Biography

14 Jan 2009 6 Comments

Arlene Corwin’s Open-Ended Biography

(10.3.2007 updated 10.24.2007 updated 1.3.2008 updated April 2012 updated August 2017)

Arlene Corwin (born Arlene Faith Nover) is an American jazz singer and pianist, poet, teacher and practitioner of Yoga. Born November 8, 1934 in the Williamsburg Maternity Hospital, Brooklyn, New York. She has two children. Jonathan Eric Corwin (born July 24. 1956 and) Jennifer Nover Council (born February 2, 1964). Mother Margy Lillian (born Brown). Father Albert S. Nover. Both were hairdressers, owning a beauty salon together. Everyone was musical on both sides of the family. Mother sang, could play some piano. Father was a gifted sculptor and wood carver.

Early Life

Started studying piano age 8. Studied voice at the famous 1650 Broadway with ‘coach’ Matty Levine. Did a little recording at aged 10 in Nola studios. (The record has since disappeared) At 12 she started studying harp with Meyer Rosen (Julliard and NBC Orchestra) and the occasional piano lesson with an NBC pianist who taught her how to read chord changes, seeing at once that she was not interested in learning classical piano.

As a child she had already sung at weddings, bar mitzvahs and for the USO, raising bonds for the wareffort. At 13, having a boyfriend who played the saxophone and who listened to Symphony Sid, jazz disc jockey whose late night show originated from Birdland, she awakened to jazz, listening to the late night show “under my blanket”. “A turning point”, she says. (Well before “Lullaby of Birdland” was put to words Arlene had written a lyric of her own – a lyric she still sings today) At 14,she was playing for a dancing school once a week. Then she got an accidental job (“slipping in on a banana peel when the singer got sick”) in a Brooklyn nightclub singing with a group. “Mom and dad chaperoned, of course”.

1950s She began to sing regularly when again, out of the blue, an agent rang offering a job for a hundred dollars a week to play at the Mayflower Hotel in Manhattan. It was a restaurant owned by Bob Olin, a former light heavyweight world champion. “I was so naïve I played the whole evening without ever taking a break. Who knew about breaks? Why they kept me I’ve no idea.” But they did and the steady salary of $100.00 a week (which she gave directly to her mother, any other choice never occurring to her) and the experience of having to make a varied program led to her singing to the piano, and eventually to playing to the singing. At this time she was still in high school as attending the prestigious High School of Music & Art as a harpist.She graduated from Music & Art getting a scholarship to Hofstra College as a music major.Then in 1952, while still at Hofstra College (now university), she was playing on the weekends in a Hempstead, Long Island nightclub-restaurant when Slim Gaillard, who’d come to see Jack Teagarden (also working there) began to take notice of her. He started showing up regularly. There he met Arlene’s mother Margy, and the two eventually opened a jazz nightclub, the first to cater to blacks and whites. It was called The Turf and it, like Birdland had its own radio show, for which Arlene wrote the theme song “The Slim Gaillard Show“. Now she was standing as well as sitting, getting a chance to sit in and sing as often as she chose. The die was cast. It was jazz, cool jazz.

Early Influences

In 1954, on the day she ought to have been attending her college graduation, she married Bob Corwin, a 21-year-old jazz pianist with the Don Elliot Quartet. Because Bob toured, Arlene began her new stage of education: listening to Don’s group while they played on the same bill as the jazz greats of the 50’s. There was Helen Merrill at George Wein’s Storyville in Boston, Terry Gibbs and Illinois Jacquet in Detroit, Bill Evans, Cy Coleman, Bernard Peiffer, Tal Farlowe,Johnny Smith John Mehagan and Billy Taylor (who had also performed at the Turf) at the sophisticated Composer in Manhattan. ” It was also a chance to see and listen to other singers of the day. New York was marvelous in those days. I saw Peggy Lee at Basin Street, Blossom Dearie at Trudy’s in the village, Oscar Peterson, Marian McPartland at the Hickory House, Sheila Jordan, Morgana King. It was THE university for me. I was introduced to Tony Fruscella, the tragic, unsung genius of the trumpet, ‘who I took on my gigs, but to whom I was actually the apprentice’ – and through Tony to Morgana King and Beverly Getz, the talented [and equally tragic] wife of Stan Getz. I feel blessed to have experienced jazz at that time. The guys would gossip about who played ‘behind’ or ‘ahead’ of the beat, bass lines, good changes, bad changes. No Music & Art or Hofstra did that. I learned almost the whole of what is now called The American Songbook. And I, I was sounding like Sarah Vaughn with a little voice.”

Hanging Around Manhattan; Not This, Not That…

1959-60 a member of the original John La Salle Quartet/opened the Dick Kollmar/Left Bank New York nightclub. (In and of themselves they were important and those in the know or, who are interested will look them up).

Then there was a bit part in John Cassavetes “Shadows“, followed by the lead in what has become a cult ‘beat’ musical called “The Nervous Set” by Fran and Jay Landesman where she introduced the now-standards “Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most and “Ballad Of The Sad Young Men“, both subsequently recorded by Ella Fitzgerald, Shirley Bassey and numberless major artists. She studied acting with Joshua Shelley. “It was a time to find out who and what I was. “I was definitely not an actress. I was too introverted and none of those clothes fit” she says.

More Influences and more Not This, Not That…

All the while she returned to the intimacy of New York supper clubs. They were the bottom line, singing and playing.

1960s-1970s

Greece, Lebanon, Greece, Oxford – Yoga & Jazz

In 1966, by way of Paris, Greece (where she and husband Jim Council were neighbors with Leonard Cohen and Marianne) and Lebanon, “where I actually managed to do some television, singing jazz”, she settled in Oxford, England for the next 18 years, teaching yoga,(“lectured and demonstrated in what must have been a hundred Women’s Insitutes, posed for one of the very first health magazines called Health & Fitness, wrote articles on nutrition, had a weekly radio spot on a little radio show for BBB Oxford actually doing Yoga on radio while describing each pose with a microphone up my nose, did a tape on meditation – it was a lot of Yoga”) and singing and playing, being voted Best Jazz Singer in the Midlands 1972, appearing at Ronnie Scott’s three times. She did 3 television shows; a late night BBC jazz show called “In The Cool Of The Evening“, radio for BBC overseas, was invited over to Amsterdam to do Dutch radio, sang at universities around England, (“one night opposite Pink Floyd, “who were just starting out, I suppose”), the American air bases.

She appeared several times at The Stables in Wavendon (run by John Dankworth – now Sir John Dankworth – and Cleo Laine –now Dame Cleo Laine – while at the same time giving weekly yoga lessons to a group there, (which included Dame Cleo – “a wonderful yogin”.The Wavendon All-Music Plan,later known simply as WAP “was the most stimulating and original enterprise I’ve ever encountered, pairing all kinds of musical genre. I even played on the same bill as Vladimir Ashkenazy.” Starting in 1969 and all during the 70’s fate gave a push to the yoga side of things and Arlene was teaching yoga classes in doctor’s offices for hyper-tense, cardiac and overweight men. teaching regularly at conferences for IBM. She gave demonstrations, lectured all over for the Women’s Institute, posed and wrote for Health and Fitness Magazine (summer issue 1982) a book called The New Manual Of Yoga by Karen Ross (1973) wrote articles on nutrition, made a cassette called This Is Meditation. It was a full double life with Yoga taking half the time and singing the other half.

1980s to now

Still growing, still changing

2009 and 25 years later, aged 75: a cd of her own songs for Imogen Records produced by George Reece, a concert of Johnny Mercer to commemorate his 100th birthday, poetry grown to 2000 poems (see Arlene Corwin Poetry).

August 2017 poetry numbers update: 4400 poems!!! ((t can’t be!)

2009 finds her favorite project on Google called Arlene Corwin’s Poetry, a project that started in 1949 or about 2,000 poems ago.

2010 Published: Circling Round Time (Xlibris) available Amazon.com/Barnes&Noble

2010 Published: To The Child Mystic (Authorhouse) available Amazon/Barnes&Noble

2011 Published: The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative (Xlibris)available Amazon/Barnes&Noble

2011 Published: Circling Round Woman (Xlibris)available Amazon/Barnes&Noble

2011 Published Circling Round Vanities (Xlibris)available Amazon/Barnes&Noble

2012 Published: Circling Round Our Times, Our Culture (Xlibris)available Amazon/Barnes&Noble

2012 Published: Vaguely About Music (Xlibris) available Amazon/Barnes&Noble

2013 Published: Love Relationships (Xlibris) available Amazon/Barnes&Noble

2013 Published Circling Round Eros + 2 (Xlibris) available Amazon/Barnes&Noble

2014 Published Circling Round Yoga, Science, War & Cats (Xlibris) available Amazon/Barnes&Noble

2017 Published Circling Round Everything 2015-2016 (Xlibris) available Amazon/Barnes&Noble

As of 2017: 4400 poems! (Can it be?)

Where’s My Free Will Got To?

08 Jan 2009 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 1993, coffee book, nature of & in reality

Where’s My Free Will Got To?

Just a chemical being,

Down one second, up the next?

A cup of coffee all it takes

To take me from the world of snakes

To full production. Energy

That lies somewhere –

Suddenly awake and there.

I hate it!

I, a thing manipulated.

Am I just a world-bound being?

Is there something I’m not seeing?

Some first law that binds it all,

Some gluing law that says we’re soul

That must abide by natural law

Of bio-this and bio-that,

Bound up in drives like some tomcat;

Slowed down by glands that make you fat

And cells that die and lie and claw?

Where’s my free will got to?

©Where’s My Free Will Got To? 93.6.2

Nature Of & In Reality; Coffee Book;

Arlene Corwin

What’s Left 1993

08 Jan 2009 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 1993, the processes creative thinking meditative, vaguely about music Tags: 1993, processes creative thinking meditative

What’s Left

You work for years, build up technique,

Become a member of the clique;

Bel canto sound,

You want to sound good,

Learn to sound good.

Then as time goes by

The sound sounds boring, dry

And folks you’d hoped would like you die.

The styles change, the public too.

They seem like children now to you.

And what is left? A vacant cleft;

A sound that isn’t really true.

You do the honest thing.

You start to strip and uglify the voice.

You sell the Rolls, you sell the Royce.

The song itself becomes the choice –

The intellect, the heart a part.

You take the easy way, you say.

You’re much more simple when you play.

It starts to sound much more as you

Had always hoped to: like you do!

At least you’re singing with less stress.

The stress, instead, is in the art

And vanity’s a small, small part.

The pre-performance nerve’s caress:

It isn’t there. You’ve ceased to care.

What’s left is that you dare to dare.Where do you head? You’ve no idea.

Continuing to sing sans fear,

You simply sing, correcting all

The while.

You feel it’s false to smile.

That’s not to say there’s no smile there.

You’re lighter than you ever were.

You’re happy simply knowing where

You stand. The breach that once deterred

The song is healed. The once estranged

Is reaching for a newer range.

The only thing that’s left is change.

©What’s Left 93.5.5

The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; Vaguely About Music;

Arlene Corwin

Waiting On Stinson Beach 1993

08 Jan 2009 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 1993, the processes creative thinking meditative Tags: 1993, processes creative thinking meditative

Waiting On Stinson Beach

No ideas:

An empty vehicle used up,

Waiting-to-be-filled

Receptacle

To endless, varying resources:

Im-agery/magination/creativity.

I wait,

An arbitrary choice-

Less means;

Whose Arlene voiceless state

Is slate for God’s good rhyme

To write upon

In God’s good time.

©Waiting On Stinson Beach 93.4.15

The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative;

Arlene Corwin

There Is A Talent 1993

08 Jan 2009 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 1993, the processes creative thinking meditative Tags: 1993, processes creative thinking meditative, talent

There Is A Talent, They Said”

There is a talent”, they said.

But nobody chose to continue the thread:

Nobody knew what to do with such mead.

All that the talented nature could do

Was to lead itself slowly from form unto form;

Throw itself wholly from norm into norm,

Un-tormented by form, taking form by storm –

Subtle, gathering tact in the rhythm

That picks up a speed growing out of itself.

It pleads with the readable world for a shelf.

Talented person sits up in the bed,

Expressing the talent that sits in the head:

The dormant, fomented, the fearless and brave,

With rhythms insistent the gifted ones have,

He savors, he flavors. Carefully both.

There is the talent.

Which of us knows

The flowering from which

All talent grows?

Vines intertwined of meaning and form,

Life on the line,

Refining, defining

The scope of that chain of invention.

The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative;

Arlene Corwin

The Sadly Futile Pretence 1993

08 Jan 2009 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 1993, small stories book, special people special occasions, vaguely about music Tags: 1993, small stories, special occasions, special people, vaguely about music

The Sadly Futile Pretence

“This is the last song that you’ll ever hear me play,” he roared.

He sat down at his organ, striking one great chord.

“…the last song that I’ll ever play in this damned pub!”

And he walked up to the organ while the boss looked bored.

He played a song he’d often played, but with a great emotion.

He played his heart out, as they say. He played with great devotion

To the theme, and as he finished with a grand dramatic pause,

He took his beer, he wiped a tear and looked for some applause.

But folk continued talking; clinking glass was all you heard.

For the saddest cut of all was that, in fact, nobody cared.

“They’ll see they cannot do without me. They’ll be sorry yet…!”

He was thinking this with every pounded note he played that set.

Just a drunken little fellow who showed up each night at six,

And who stayed till two each morning showing off his tattered tricks.

Who’d begun to think he owned the club – played host and bossed around

Other players who showed up to play. He had to share the stand.

And if someone had a birthday or a graduation day,

Or if someone wanted Strauss, or asked to sing, then he would play.

Good old Charlie-at-the-ready, with unsteady hand could

Play light opera or a folk song. In his genre good.

Not professional, but in his amateurish way he played quite well,

Playing harmonies – not incorrect – just, what shall we say, – stale.

Dearest Charlie, dear loud Charlie, he could turn a tune.

And he sometimes changed the light bulbs in his home in the saloon.

I’d have sworn he’d gone forever, if you’d asked me on that night.

But on showing up myself next week, he’d far from taken flight.

Walking round the club as always, telling all who gave an ear,

How he’d fixed the mike, had cleaned the keys, wouldn’t say no to beer:

“A strong one, please!”

Vaguely About Music; Special People Special Occasions;Small Stories Book;

Arlene Corwin

The Psyche Of The Culture 1993

08 Jan 2009 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 1993, defiant doggerel, definitely didactic, our times our culture Tags: 1993, definitely didactic, lessons to be learned, life, our times our culture

The Psyche Of The Culture

The psyche of the culture is a sickness unto death.

It’s seen in all the symbols bought and sold in every breath.

I’ve been around the gorgeous homes in Frisco and LA.

I’m not even sure what awful truth I’m trying hard to say:

I see caring homes and careful homes,

Careless homes, no car-less homes;

But car-filled phones and phone-filled cars,

And all that’s written in the stars

‘Bout phony wares and phony stares

And wary phonies

Tearing breakneck speed toward monies,

Wearing out their hearts and tummies

On commodities so crummy…

What one hopes is that one’s wrong.

If the psyche is a symbol of its deep and real wealth,

And my dinner conversation an extension of its health,

Buried deep within the system is illusion by collusion –

The throng that’s carried right along.

How I fear for those that lay their actions on that shelf.

Definitely Didactic; Our Times, Our Culture; Defiantly Doggerel;

Arlene Corwin

The Process Pre-mental 1993

08 Jan 2009 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 1993, definitely didactic, lessons to be learned, life, nature of & in reality Tags: 1993, definitely didactic, lessons to be learned, life, nature of & in reality

The Process Pre-mental

Yesterday’s triumph was only activity,

Yesterday’s failure only black-tivity.

Pay no attention to either. They’re empty.

Ladder-like, bladder-like,

Empty, just empty.

Yang-ish and Yin-ish,

There’s never a finish,

One holding the other;

Contiguous brothers,

Like dust on a mirror,

Smoke from a fire.

You’ll pardon my Gita, but each one conspires

To fill out the day.

They’re really just clay,

And never do stay.

What is it I wanted to say?

Oh yes, playing –

And that is the point:

In sorrow or harrowed, encapsuled entire

In this wired spire

Is: each never stays,

But changes and alternates.

Always the nebulae forming from dusts

And the gases of nebulae crusts;

Total explosions that send out the seeds

Of equal potential to fill out the needs

Of new forming clusters

Grasped in their grandeur.

Its essence elusive, which rules out a seeking,

The peeking behind each intuitive find.

Speechless with awe,

Ecstasy permeates pencil and paw.

They grind to a halt,

This entire procedure salt for the day.

Definitely Didactic; Nature In & Of Reality;

Arlene Corwin

The Finger Moves 1993

08 Jan 2009 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 1993, circling round eros, love relationships, love relationships; circling round eros Tags: 1993, circling round eros, erotic poem, love relationships

The Finger Moves (a little erotic poem)

The finger moves from side to side.

The finger knows it wants to hide.

The finger knows itself the bride.

The finger moves from side to side.

The finger moves inside the thigh.

The finger moves from low to high.

The mouth it makes a little cry.

The finger moves from side to side

It uses instinct as its guide.

The finger knows it has no pride.

The finger moves from side to side.

It doesn’t think. It isn’t wise.

It’s just a link and never lies.

It keeps away from prying eyes.

It holds itself to its own sighs.

With just a hint of slide and glide,

The finger moves from side to side.

The finger is without pretence.

It shies away from opulence.

It doesn’t tense,

It has no sense.

Its essence

Is the very soul of innocence.

Love Relationships; Circling Round Eros;

Arlene Corwin

Arlene Corwin Poetry

Open-Ended Autobiography

Arlene Corwin’s Open-Ended Biography

Where’s My Free Will Got To?

What’s Left 1993

Waiting On Stinson Beach 1993

There Is A Talent 1993

The Sadly Futile Pretence 1993

The Psyche Of The Culture 1993

The Process Pre-mental 1993

The Finger Moves 1993

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