Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

Whether heading to work, or walking to my car through a grocery store lot, or taking my dog Finn out for a walk, I spend a good deal of winter’s cold days imagining my toes burrowed in sand on a beach somewhere. To generate heat, I transport myself mentally to warm spots on the earth.

After years of living in a region of the country where windchills dip temperatures to arctic levels, I habitually picture myself leaning back in a chair on the edge of an ocean, dozing as filtered light penetrates my closed eyelids and the sound of the surf’s sway guides me to the land of slumber.

What feeds that projection are my memories; that summer trip to the Côte d’Azur in 2011 returns to me most easily. How easily I see the lemon-colored light of the Mediterranean, glittering azure blue waters, summer crowds with umbrellas, blankets, flip flops, and beverage coolers! Yet lately, I’ve wondered if the nether regions of my brain are in on the action. That is, is it possible that I also tap into the wellspring of films, paintings, and literature I’ve absorbed over the years, that reside in me, to help counter the weight of shortened days?

It’s like the mind transcends the limits of the body and its physical environment. Or guides the conscious part of us to make art by accessing those areas of our subconscious, where the works of imagination and real events are stored. For example, because of my interest in The Harlem Renaissance and writers like Countee Cullen, Zora Neale Hurston, and Langston Hughes, I have read quite a bit of literature and criticism written during the 1920s; I have also seen the decade set on the big screen in many movies, and listened to the music of Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Cab Calloway. All of which feeds into the subconscious, so that I actually hear the era we know as The Jazz Age. I imagine other poets, scholars, musicians and artists can seemingly inhabit years past.

Today’s poem taps into the beauty and spirit of California seaside beaches, whose amassed mythology and symbolism feeds so much of how we imagine and hear America.

Fish Pier, Santa Monica
by Vernon Duke, translated by Boris Dralyuk

Look — Santa Monica,
so much like Italy.
Old friend, remember when
you and I lived down here?
See all those fish shops?
Here, come this way.
A huge orange lobster
squats on display,
beside two poor oysters
soldered together.
Fleet-footed seagulls
squawk in displeasure.
Plump as a cuttlefish,
a sailboat glides past.
A dripping-wet beauty
cries out for her dress.
Mischievous schoolgirls
glitter like caviar 
and put me in mind of 
how spry we once were . . . 
A new crowd is forming,
in search of a prize —
cheap phony rifles
aim at bull’s-eyes.
Waves, wild and fizzy,
tumble ashore.
A bug-eyed cod slumbers
forevermore.
Lovers lie dozing
between the pilings —
kissing, embracing,
now silent, now sighing . . .
There’s Mrs. Hammersley,
still playing cards . . .
Ah, that harmonica!
Oh, that sweet piccolo!
Sing, Santa Monica —
let music flow . . . 

“Fishing Pier, Santa Monica” by Vernon Duke, translated by Boris Dralyuk. Used by permission of the translator.