Word: lyrical
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Warden Smith and Deputy Meikrantz were proud of Prisoner Yun's lament.They themselves had inspired Yun to his effort, for they set great store by the lyric abilities of the Chinese. A few years back, a hatchetman inmate had composed an unforgettable Christmas carol entitled: I'd Rather Be in Pekin, Than in Here Peekin...
They sing plenty: lyric bits from such Herbert operettas as Naughty Marietta, Mile Modiste, Princess Pat; Herbertian fragments on streets, in a carriage, at dinner table, in a Fifth Avenue mansion shaded by a big eucalyptus tree. They run through eight songs in a brief bicycle ride among the mountains of Central Park. Since Paramount owns the rights to individual songs only, producers had to create phony scenes to give the effect of Herbert operettas. Victor Herbert devotees may be surprised, too, to hear words sung to such instrumental pieces as Al Fresco, Punchinello, Yesterthoughts...
...total effect. Sandburg's prose is mostly direct, savored, terse, with scarcely a perfunctory or a pretentious sentence. If it had a smell it would be leaf smoke on an Illinois dirt road in November. Closely-knit to the material, it has almost none of the lyric blurring of The Prairie Years (where he wrote of Nancy Hanks as "sad with sorrow like dark stars in blue mist"). Because Sandburg has been compared often to Walt Whitman, his mature portrait of Walt is instructive: "Undersized, with graying whiskers, Quaker-blooded, softhearted, sentimental, a little crazy, this Walt Whitman sang...
...moment to state, nailed to my own geology. . . . My brain and my eyes have always been attracted by mountains. And of all mountains, it was Wagner who produced the greatest effect upon me. . . . If Wagner is the most difficult mountain to be observed distinctly, not only due to the lyric vapour in which he so often drowns, but also because of his non prehensible morphology, the contours of the Venusberg, one of the last mountains ascended by Wagner, . . . are much more difficult to delimit. . . . You will see Louis II, Venus, Leda, the Swan, Sacher Masoch and his wife, Lola Montez...
...West End could stay open until 10 p. m. Instantly members of the leftwing, nose-thumbing Unity Theatre Club-whose Babes in the Wood last winter razzed "Wicked Uncle" Chamberlain-laid down a tape measure, found that their playhouse lay just outside the proscribed area. Next instant song & lyric writers rolled up their shirt sleeves, sweated for 36 hours on end, turned out a Sandbag Follies in 20 scenes, which opened last week...