Sunday, August 29, 2010

The Story of Isaac: Issa's Sunday Service, #67

In Memory of May 4, 1970: Kent State - Abraham & Isaac - George Segal, 1978.




One of the more controversial pieces of art over the last 50 years, George Segal's bronze sculpture in memory of the Kent State killings, utilizing the Abraham and Isaac biblical story as analogy, still remains an emotional flashpoint for those who remember the murders of Jeffrey Glenn Miller, age 20, Allison B. Krause, age 19, William Knox Schroeder, age 19, Sandra Lee Scheuer, age 20.

Leonard Cohen's song "The Story of Isaac" utilized the same story to similar purposes on his album Songs from a Room, recorded ten years earlier.  The opening verses are a simple lyrical retelling of the story.  The final two verses, however, plainly draw the analogy to the Vietnam War, which was at its worst around the time of the song's composition:


You who build these altars now
To sacrifice these children,
You must not do it anymore.
A scheme is not a vision
And you never have been tempted
By a demon or a god.
You who stand above them now,
Your hatchets blunt and bloody,
You were not there before,
When I lay upon a mountain
And my father's hand was trembling
With the beauty of the word.

And if you call me brother now,
Forgive me if I inquire,
"Just according to whose plan?"
When it all comes down to dust
I will kill you if I must,
I will help you if I can.
When it all comes down to dust
I will help you if I must,
I will kill you if I can.
And mercy on our uniform,
Man of peace or man of war,
The peacock spreads his fan


In Memory of the Kent State Massacre. Photo by John Filo.



This is Cohen's first appearance on ISS, though his song "Hallelujah" was covered early on by Popa Chubby.

Since I'm thinking about (and now watching) Popa Chubby's rendition, I couldn't in good conscious not acknowledge the finest rendition of all, sans Cohen himself: Jeff Buckley:









And, in memory:









----------------------------------------------------------------------------------


From the archive this week a poem from Lilliput Review #123 by one of my favorite unknown poets, W. T. Ranney:


Counterfeit father of an Industrial City,
mama encased in Europe,
my life sways like a kite line
thru rented rooms odd jobs,
to days I only thot had ended
before I was born
W. T. Ranney







the trainer lets
his monkey hold it...
New Year's kite
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue 




best,
Don

PS  Get two free issues           Get two more free issues

19 comments:

Ed Baker said...

HEY DON:
did you know that Kent State has an huge pile Cid Corman's "stuff" archived?

http://speccoll.library.kent.edu/literature/poetry/corman.html

that any-boddhi can visit or
re:visit

Anonymous said...

I love Buckley's rendition and also Rufus Wainright's (sp?). Enjoyed reading Cohen's poem. Thanks for sharing!

Issa's Untidy Hut said...

Ed, wow that is a huge pile!

A, you are so right about Rufus Wainwright's version ... Thanks for jogging the memory.

Don

Ed Baker said...

there is much more at
The Lilly Library
The U Conn Library
and one or 5 of the
California University
libraries

am sure bou-coup "stuff" is secreted in many many
people's home file cabinets or in white cartons

et cetera...

Issa's Untidy Hut said...

Indeed, there is stuff everywhere, I've postcards he sent me on the wall, thereby ruining any archival value but they are lovely to look at and remember ...

He had proofed and sent back the "Now/Now" chapbook and I had sent him a copy to sign and send back when he was hospitalized. I was told someone read it to him in hospital. I believe it was the last book of his published while he was alive.

He was so generous.

Don

Charles Gramlich said...

I was quite young when the Kent State shootings went down and don't remember much about them. I know more about it from the songs written about it probably.

Theresa Williams said...

The Kent State shootings really colored my view of the world. That whole time, really. I think back to myself at 12, 13 years old, spending lots of time alone because my parents were gone a lot of the time, watching images of mayhem on television, trying to process it all without any help from parents or teachers. The brutality of it all on the one hand, and shows like Laugh-in on the other. It was very confusing. Enjoyed this post a lot.

Lyle Daggett said...

I was 15, finishing up my first year of high school, when the Kent State (and Jackson State) shootings happened. Sometime later that month (May 1970) were massive anti-war demonstrations across the country -- the one here (Minneapolis and St. Paul), in which I took part, was maybe 50,000 people (that's roughly an average of the high and low estimates I've seen).

A little earlier the same spring, teachers went on strike here for a couple of weeks, which at the time was illegal (illegal for public employees to strike). I was among a small group of students who, one of the days of the strike, went to the Board of Education building and picketed for several hours with the teachers. The building was on a busy street in a mostly industrial part of town, and we held up "Honk To Support The Teachers' Strike" signs, and the horns never stopped honking all day long.

Something of the texture and atmosphere of that time.

I'm not sure if I've seen the Segal sculpture before -- I have to think I'd remember if I had. It's a stunning and profoundly moving piece.

Of the versions of "Hallelujah" that I've heard (by Jeff Buckley, K.D. Lang, Rufus Wainwright, and Leonard Cohen himself) I've liked Wainwright's the best. It was used in the soundtrack of one of the episodes of The L-Word, and as far as I know it's not on any of Wainwright's CDs, the only CD I've seen it on is the soundtrack CD of whatever year of The L-Word it was.

Issa's Untidy Hut said...

Charles:

As you can see from some of the responses, Kent State, along with the civil rights demonstrations, the assassinations of JFK, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, and the urban riots, were all formative events that shaped the culture of the 60s, 70s and beyond.

During a peaceful protest at my college, the Newark riot police were sent in, fresh from their training ground of the Newark riots in previous summers. That peaceful approach was broken up when outside organizers, who assured the student body of the peacefulness of their intentions, started throwing bottles and rocks, giving the riot police just the excuse they needed. I saw many bloodied that day, women trampled and beaten and though I'll forever know what "side" I'm on, I'll also know that corruption seeps in whenever people start believing in a greater good and the rightness of their cause. Politics went out the door for me that day 40 years ago and I have a healthy distrust for the "good intentions" of others whenever it deals with larger social issues.

Theresa:

I remember the exact same feelings watching the civil rights protests live on television, seeing live on TV the murder of Oswald (I was in 4th grade), the monks in Vietnam immolating themselves, watching the war, again live on TV. It forever formed who I am.

Lyle:

Sounds like you are a little younger but that your experiences were very much the same as mine. The Segal sculpture was a big deal because it was commissioned by Kent State to commemorate the awful tragedy and then it was refused when they realized how very powerful it was. Here is an even more powerful picture of the statue in Princeton today.

The Wainwright rendition is getting the votes for best. I need to go back and listen to Mr. Cohen again myself. I think he may have a really good live version somewhere. This one's like a very lyrical poetry reading.

Don

Issa's Untidy Hut said...

Charles:

As you can see from some of the responses, Kent State, along with the civil rights demonstrations, the assassinations of JFK, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, and the urban riots, were all formative events that shaped the culture of the 60s, 70s and beyond.

During a peaceful protest at my college, the Newark riot police were sent in, fresh from their training ground of the Newark riots in previous summers. That peaceful approach was broken up when outside organizers, who assured the student body of the peacefulness of their intentions, started throwing bottles and rocks, giving the riot police just the excuse they needed. I saw many bloodied that day, women trampled and beaten and though I'll forever know what "side" I'm on, I'll also know that corruption seeps in whenever people start believing in a greater good and the rightness of their cause. Politics went out the door for me that day 40 years ago and I have a healthy distrust for the "good intentions" of others whenever it deals with larger social issues.

Theresa:

I remember the exact same feelings watching the civil rights protests live on television, seeing live on TV the murder of Oswald (I was in 4th grade), the monks in Vietnam immolating themselves, watching the war, again live on TV. It forever formed who I am.

Lyle:

Sounds like you are a little younger but that your experiences were very much the same as mine. The Segal sculpture was a big deal because it was commissioned by Kent State to commemorate the awful tragedy and then it was refused when they realized how very powerful it was. Here is an even more powerful picture of the statue in Princeton today.

The Wainwright rendition is getting the votes for best. I need to go back and listen to Mr. Cohen again myself. I think he may have a really good live version somewhere. This one's like a very lyrical poetry reading.

Don

Issa's Untidy Hut said...

Charles:

As you can see from some of the responses, Kent State, along with the civil rights demonstrations, the assassinations of JFK, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, and the urban riots, were all formative events that shaped the culture of the 60s, 70s and beyond.

During a peaceful protest at my college, the Newark riot police were sent in, fresh from their training ground of the Newark riots in previous summers. That peaceful approach was broken up when outside organizers, who assured the student body of the peacefulness of their intentions, started throwing bottles and rocks, giving the riot police just the excuse they needed. I saw many bloodied that day, women trampled and beaten and though I'll forever know what "side" I'm on, I'll also know that corruption seeps in whenever people start believing in a greater good and the rightness of their cause. Politics went out the door for me that day 40 years ago and I have a healthy distrust for the "good intentions" of others whenever it deals with larger social issues.

Theresa:

I remember the exact same feelings watching the civil rights protests live on television, seeing live on TV the murder of Oswald (I was in 4th grade), the monks in Vietnam immolating themselves, watching the war, again live on TV. It forever formed who I am.

Lyle:

Sounds like you are a little younger but that your experiences were very much the same as mine. The Segal sculpture was a big deal because it was commissioned by Kent State to commemorate the awful tragedy and then it was refused when they realized how very powerful it was. Here is an even more powerful picture of the statue in Princeton today.

The Wainwright rendition is getting the votes for best. I need to go back and listen to Mr. Cohen again myself. I think he may have a really good live version somewhere. This one's like a very lyrical poetry reading.

Don

Issa's Untidy Hut said...

Charles:

As you can see from some of the responses, Kent State, along with the civil rights demonstrations, the assassinations of JFK, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, and the urban riots, were all formative events that shaped the culture of the 60s, 70s and beyond.

During a peaceful protest at my college, the Newark riot police were sent in, fresh from their training ground of the Newark riots in previous summers. That peaceful approach was broken up when outside organizers, who assured the student body of the peacefulness of their intentions, started throwing bottles and rocks, giving the riot police just the excuse they needed. I saw many bloodied that day, women trampled and beaten and though I'll forever know what "side" I'm on, I'll also know that corruption seeps in whenever people start believing in a greater good and the rightness of their cause. Politics went out the door for me that day 40 years ago and I have a healthy distrust for the "good intentions" of others whenever it deals with larger social issues.

Theresa:

I remember the exact same feelings watching the civil rights protests live on television, seeing live on TV the murder of Oswald (I was in 4th grade), the monks in Vietnam immolating themselves, watching the war, again live on TV. It forever formed who I am.

Don

Issa's Untidy Hut said...

Lyle:

Sounds like you are a little younger but that your experiences were very much the same as mine. The Segal sculpture was a big deal because it was commissioned by Kent State to commemorate the awful tragedy and then it was refused when they realized how very powerful it was. Here is an even more powerful picture of the statue in Princeton today.

The Wainwright rendition is getting the votes for best. I need to go back and listen to Mr. Cohen again myself. I think he may have a really good live version somewhere. This one's like very lyrical poetry reading.

Don

Anonymous said...

my very favorite protest march was the one that I was in when we marched over the Memorial Bridgeover to the Pentagon

Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, Dr. Spock
(and some other notables) were in the line just in front of me

we were going to chant a mantra and turn the Pentagon building green (or purple) and get it to ACTUALLY get it to levitate and disappear into the stratosphere...

THAT WAS the ultimate political protest...

and, as history has shown ..it worked!

I think that this was about 1966 or so...

Theresa Williams said...

It really felt like apocalypse. The end of everything. When Bobby Kennedy got shot, I thought I'd lose it. Looks like this entry really touched a live nerve, Don.

Lyle Daggett said...

Don, just as a footnote -- You mention in one of your comments that you were in fourth grade when you saw Oswald shot live on TV (which happened just a couple of days after Kennedy was shot). I was in fourth grade when that happened too, nine years old at the time.

I was born in 1954. Are we the same age?

*

The word verification oracle says "osedisms." Which somehow makes sense as an unspoken undercurrent in much of the discussion in the comments on this post.

Issa's Untidy Hut said...

Theresa, indeed, stirs some memories ...

And, Lyle, it even seem, uh, incorrect ones. I was born in 51, so I was 12 at the time. Let's see, that would put we in 6th grade, not 4th grade (possibly 5th because I think I missed the age cut by a month or so with a July birthday). I suppose the older I get, the fuzzier the memory.

A, I remember some marches on the Pentagon where they were going to levitate it (something they'd done annually with the Carnegie Mellon research facility here in Pittsburgh until recently). Didn't remember the purple and green part.

That must have been a great march!

Don

Anonymous said...

I was watching LIVE tv when Oswald came towards the camera in that crowded hall way in the basement of the jail when Jack Ruby
"popped" Oswald

I was 22 ...

what I came away with?

we are a violent culture... no matter your politics/religion

we tend first to shoot to kill and then justify/rationalize our actions

we've learned very little from what has preceded us...

ciaoo, Ed

Anonymous said...

yeah it was p u r p l e
and
as I recall some-boddhi neat wrote/sang a song 'bout
Purple Haze

then about 20 years later we ALL went brain-dead... got either Reagan's Alzheimer's OR got lobotomized!

ciaoo, Kokkie-san



later, Kokkie-san