Sad news. Karl Malden has died. As Mitch in the stage and film versions of A Streetcar Named Desire, and the priest in On The Waterfront, he was a key 50s character actor closely aligned to the method acting system, and its greatest figure, Marlon Brando. I love Streetcar, and consider it the best American play of the last century, after Long Day's Journey Into Night. He also starred in Fear Strikes Out, that weird 50s baseball film with Tony Perkins that remains one of my guilty pleasures. Malden was also great, in the 70s, in The Streets of San Francisco.
A poem for my mother, July 15 When she was dying And I was in a different country I dreamt I was there with her Flying over the ocean very quickly, And arriving in the room like a dream And I was a dream, but the meaning was more Than a dream has – it was a moving over time And land, over water, to get love across Fast enough, to be there, before she died, To lean over the small, huddled figure, In the dark, and without bothering her Even with apologies, and be a kiss in the air, A dream of a kiss, or even less, the thought of one, And when I woke, none of this had happened, She was still far distant, and we had not spoken.
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