This Day in History: November 30, 1869--The Folies Bergere

Once a hall for operettas, pantomime, political meetings, and vaudeville, the Folies Bergère in Paris introduces an elaborate revue featuring women in sensational costumes. The highly popular "Place aux Jeunes" established the Folies as the premier nightspot in Paris. In the 1890s, the Folies followed the Parisian taste for striptease and quickly gained a reputation for its spectacular nude shows. The theater spared no expense, staging revues that featured as many as 40 sets, 1,000 costumes, and an off-stage crew of some 200 people.

The Folies Bergère dates back to 1869, when it opened as one of the first major music halls in Paris. It produced light opera and pantomimes with unknown singers and proved a resounding failure. Greater success came in the 1870s, when the Folies Bergère staged vaudeville. Among other performers, the early vaudeville shows featured acrobats, a snake charmer, a boxing kangaroo, trained elephants, the world's tallest man, and a Greek prince who was covered in tattoos allegedly as punishment for trying to seduce the Shah of Persia's daughter. The public was allowed to drink and socialize in the theater's indoor garden and promenade area, and the Folies Bergère became synonymous with the carnal temptations of the French capital. Famous paintings by Édouard Manet and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec were set in the Folies.

In 1886, the Folies Bergère went under new management, which, on November 30, staged the first revue-style music hall show. The "Place aux Jeunes," featuring scantily clad chorus girls, was a tremendous success. The Folies women gradually wore less and less as the 20th century approached, and the show's costumes and sets became more and more outrageous. Among the performers who got their start at the Folies Bergère were Yvette Guilbert, Maurice Chevalier, and Mistinguett. The African American dancer and singer Josephine Baker made her Folies debut in 1926, lowered from the ceiling in a flower-covered sphere that opened onstage to reveal her wearing a G-string ornamented with bananas.

The Folies Bergère remained a success throughout the 20th century and still can be seen in Paris today, although the theater now features many mainstream concerts and performances. Among other traditions that date back more than a century, the show's title always contains 13 letters and includes the word "Folie."

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Acrobats. Bananas. Cakewalks. Drink. Elephants. Folies. G-strings. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Indoor gardens. Josephine Baker. Kangaroos. Lounge Lizards. Manet. Night owls. Outrage. Politics. Quelque-chose. Revues. Skin. Tattoos. Unsuccessful seduction. Vaudeville. Women at work. Xoxo. Yvette Guilbert. Zebras.

A whole alphabet of wonders. Folies pour moi. See, I even kept the 13!

I write this as a journal is attempting to publish my "Born Toulouse" poem. (I can't believe that with its weird formatting, anyone ever will publish it. The opening stanzas are in the shape of a Lautrec poster's caption).

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From Harvey's Journal--More Whitman

from TO A STRANGER

Your body has become not yours only nor left my body mine only,
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass, you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,
I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone,
I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.

(These lines were copied in your 1986 sketchbook, right after we met the first time, and you inked in a sketch of my face next to it. The sketch looks just like the 28-year-old version of me, the unhappy version.

What did you see in my face that wasn't yet there? How did you know I could learn to be happy? How did you know you could teach me?)

I want so badly to believe that those final lines will be true again. I try so hard to see you, to make you palpable in poems. I'm doing my best, sweetheart. I am. I am. I am.

I know you'd be excited about this, which will be out in 2012. It's available for preorder from Amazon. (My poem is the weirdest one, which would make you inordinately proud. I put in Alice, Oz, thrift stores, family Bibles, canaries, everything I could).

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Hope Chest or Pandora's Box?

"Well, when I had reached this period of silence, I was forced into a measure that no one ever adopts voluntarily: I was impelled to think. God, was it difficult! The moving about of great secret trunks. In the first exhausted halt, I wondered whether I had ever thought." F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up

I have an attic full of suitcases, leather ones that I love; I have my grandmother's hope chest. Should I pack up? Pack it in? Open it and see what waits among the sachets and pomanders?

This new poem simmers.

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Edwyn Collins - Make Me Feel Again

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(God help me).

Intermission Between Dressing and Undressing: Thanksgiving

I am thankful for Harvey, every day, and in every way. I hope he knows how very much I still love him. I've only fallen in love once, and it was with my husband. We had such beautiful conversations, made such beautiful love and babies, and just delighted in each other.

Without him, there's no delight, but there's still light. It's dark but not pitch black. Maybe crepuscular is the word.

Sometimes, though, I'll see something he'd have loved, and I have to buy it (an old atlas), or read it (A Child's Book of Clowns), or share it with you all. Here's the latest find:

Harvey and I differed over what sounds animals make, and he and I sparred often over the exact transcription of their cries and scurries. Here's a great picture that would have added hours to the debate, courtesy of 50 Watts.

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Happy Thanksgiving

Of all the things for which I'm thankful, love is first. I wish you much love and a little dancing.

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"It's a Poor Sort of Memory That Only Works Backward."

Gratitude Journal: Looking forward to January

1. Lariat of rhinestones (Haskell) that graces my art deco statue in the living room and will soon rope my neck. A thrift shop find, $3.

2. Black velvet dress that fits me not quite so tightly as a glove, but within horseshoe distance of clingy. A thrift shop find, brand new, at $7.

3. My trusty Manolos, which look as good now as they did 7 years ago. I have no idea what they cost but am sure that it was under three digits.

4. Diamond earrings. Sparkly as #1, and genuine. A gift from Harvey.

5. Day at the spa to proceed the donning of numbers 1 through 4. I can already imagine my muscles al dente, my face unworried, and my toenails pomegranate. A win from a local radio station. Cost: 12 years of piano lessons and 30 years of transcription, which together equal the fastest fingers on the phone dial.

(Looking forward to looking backward: Priceless.

For those of you who think that I'm crazy to plan to look this good without a date: If I would contrive to be glamorous for Harvey--and we did, once a year, look as elegant as possible--I should be willing to still look this good for him, because somewhere, somehow, he sees me.

Also, I have a date: January 10, 1987. Twenty five years ago, our first date. The one I don't remember accepting. The one where I kissed H. good night, and he wrecked his car on the way home. The one where I began to get a glimmer of what Harvey already knew: This is the one. Or, as the gulls echo in Finding Nemo: Mine, mine, mine).

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I have a little shadow who goes in and out with me....

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I am exhausted (stress) and tired (lupus), but most of the time today I feel good, because of a beautiful personal rejection letter from Plume over some of the Harvey poems. I agree with the editors of this and several other journals that these poems really aren't a good fit for a journal; I do think they fit together in the manuscript, which is finished but not polished with beeswax. I await Phil's comments. Not yet.

Gratitude Journal/Fear Journal (Me/My Shadow Self)

1. That I have enough money. That I have to pay my taxes which are late, and the IRS will hound me. I forgot them, who forgot how to fly. (Sorry, Nancy Willard, for the mimicry).
2. That I have lost weight. That I cannot afford anything with price tags. I have lost 7 or 8 sizes and hope I'm done. I would like to have one beautiful red dress to celebrate this accomplishment.
3. That I am comfortable alone. That I will be alone all my life and I will forget how to love.
4. That I found an awesome lariat of rhinestones. That I will never have a sparkly place to wear it.
5. That I love my HUM class. That I will never again be the workshop teacher I once was. I am out of love with cheerleading for poesy.
6. That I have two jobs. That I will always have two jobs.
7. That my children are great. That my children are great and can get along without me just fine.
8. That my parents are healthy. That I still care more about what they think of me than what I think of myself, which is unhealthy in the extreme.
9. That Harvey loved me. That one day I am going to have my nervous breakdown. Grieving gets worse, not better.
10. That I have faith. That "I Cannot Rise with You/Because Your Face Would put out Jesus' " makes perfect sense.

Maria Callas - Lady Macbeth's Letter Scene (Studio Recording, Score Anim...

I have always thought the way to play many of Shakespeare's women is to bring to the fore their sex appeal. For some reason, I have never seen an actress approach the role of Desdemona as though she were a sexual being--and wouldn't she have to be?

Lady Macbeth is, and Callas captures this.

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Camille Saint-Saëns - Danse Macabre

I mailed out my manuscript today, and it's haunting me. What more could I do? What didn't I do?

This music haunts me, too. It was one of my four senior piano recital pieces, and it's one of the few I still play. All of the slow pieces left me, but all of the fast ones still reside in my fingers. I am more E flat and A these days.

Danse Macabre

12 strikes of the clock and it begins; the cock of the crow and then it ends.

I really want a piano again. I'd take better care of my scales now.

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Andrea Bocelli- Con te Partiro

It's time. A quarter of a century ago, my life was started. I can always say it was beautiful. I can finally say it was.

Once: A Cappella

(I was there, insists the self).

Surprising, so sufficient
In the silence, just enough
Luster for them

To be seen, street light
Falling in bars across the bed,
In wavering

Curving clefs across their
Bodies, right now they are so
Lovely: lovers,

Light—lying face to
Face, working the long seam
Between them, blurring

Becoming faceless,
Facelessly beautiful,
A music of lilting

Ribs, torsos all thrust
And ache. (I really was there,
Insists the self.

Insists, insists).

This poem was originally published in Soundzine. Go to the link above and scroll down to hear the amazing Nic Sebastian read "Once."

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The Uncertainty of the Poet, De Chirico

I finished my book. It's good. That's the Genesis part.

I have had a long period of silence. That's the Malachi part.

I have looked back and remembered as much as I can about Harvey. That's the Matthew part.

I don't know what to do now. That's the part where I ask for Revelation.

What I do know: Bananas are radioactive. Aphrodite's torso is torqued--and it also lasts. Basho named himself after bananas. Aphrodite married a sculptor, who, nettled by her, netted her. Bananas are the largest flowering herb. Aphrodite's cult flowered and withered. Bananas are sweetest when they're old. Perhaps the most beautiful of Aphrodites is Redon's. Bananas emerge from their skins, which are easily bruised and broken. Aphrodite emerges from white foam, from marble, from the earth that covers her broken temple. She is broken.

I have a half-life.

I am not fruitful.

I will return to the sea.

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