It is not easy reading a poem about Sarah Bernhardt at the Frederick Coffee Company in Frederick, Maryland.
Obstacles include chatty Hood College students, frantic AA Meeting drop ins, and hissing espresso machines blaring in the background at Daniel Armstrong's Dreamer's Poetry Series at he Frederick Coffee Company. ..but I tried.
With No Apologies, the poem I read, follows.
With No Apologies
"Legend remains victorious in spite of history." Sarah Bernhardt
After Paris , London and New York
In a life lived on stage with real drama,
Here I am among the Hollywood philistines
With their youth and money and brashness
And lines that can be said and re-said
To a forgiving camera; the theatre does not forgive.
I knew my lines and made them mine,
There was no one holding a cue card for me,
I stood before the audience and saw their faces,
All of them, and how they reacted to what I said
In plain sight, not like these Hollywood charlatans,
With their retakes and magical camera tricks
To hide every verbal and physical blemish.
That wily Marcel Proust created the actress La Berma
In his novel In Search of Time inspired by me.
Puccini’s Tosca was written for me.
I sat for famous painters and painted and sculpted myself.
During the Great War I performed for the troops
At the front lines and they gave me the Legion of Honor.
Illegitimate child of a courtesan…what did they know?
I owe Hollywood
That allowed Adolph Zukor to eventually found Paramount
Here’s one for all the Hollywood hopefuls:
I have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
They seek fame; I sought the life-force behind words,
Words that create history...I was not acting…I was creation.
