This seems to be the year of John Keats: in July, his house was reopened to the public in Hampstead Heath, London, and this week, “Bright Star”, the new film about Keats’ brief love affair with Fanny Brawne, opens in theatres. Directed by Jane Campion, the movie got a lovely review in the New York Times and I hope that Campion will do for Keats what she did for Henry James in her wonderful adaptation of “The Portrait of a Lady”, one of my favorite books.
Intrigued by the recent Keats renaissance of sorts, I made a trip to the library in search of his poems – thus far, poor Mr. Keats had been rather overshadowed by Percy Shelley and Lord Byron in my modest study of 19th century poets. Reading Keats over the past few weeks, though, I’ve been struck by how beautifully fresh and almost modern his verse seems, unmarred by the dusty coverlet of nearly two centuries. His words have such a delightful elegance and I’m continually amazed just how much he matured in such a short life — his poems have a depth that’s remarkable when you consider that he was only 25 when he died.
As the Times stated, no movie can ever fully capture the exquisiteness of his poetry as it appears on the page, but I hope that “Bright Star” will at the very least encourage a new generation, like me, to pick up a volume of his work and appreciate the purity of his genius. I’m certainly inspired to read, in addition to his verse, the Keats biography written by Britain’s former poet laureate, Andrew Motion. And, as I have a weakness for both Romantic poets and romantic movies, “Bright Star” is definitely my must-see film for the fall (it comes to Stamford’s Avon Theater on Friday, Sept. 25).
Here’s a taste of the poem that, I assume, inspired the film’s title. Interestingly, a line from another of Keats’ poems, “Ode to a Nightingale”, provided the title for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Tender is the Night.”
BRIGHT star! would I were steadfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature’s patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.
As Chris pointed out in his first post about “The Nine” by Jeffrey Toobin, the battle over the Supreme Court has been framed by a for the last three decades by an ideological debate between those who believe the framer’s intentions in drafting the Constitution should be strictly interpreted and those who believe the Constitution is a living document meant to adapt to changing times. In specific response to what many conservatives believed was the overreaching of the Warren and Burger courts, they have made efforts to get new justices who believe precedents set then should be overturned. Decisions in those years established the right to an attorney at trial, the right to privacy, created the Miranda warning, overturned racial segregation, and, in a controversy that still rages today, made abortion legal in Roe v. Wade.
The precedents established are not easily undone. As Toobin points out, even Chief Justice William Rehnquist did not overturn the Miranda ruling when given the opportunity because people had come to rely on it. The litany of rights read by police officers before a suspect is interrogated is so pervasive its on crime and justice television shows, and many citizens can recite it verbatim. A respect for stare decisis also explains why David Souter was so different than predicted to the president who nominated him, George H. W. Bush.
Now, though, with Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas solidly in the majority, and the moderate conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy taking the place as the court’s swing vote, the court has come full circle. Conservatives finally have the court they would wish for, a court that seems willing to overturn precedent from those years. But it comes as the conservative revolution in politics, which reached its height with the two terms of President Ronald Reagan, comes to a close. President Barack Obama often is compared to Reagan; he’s the same style of communicator and he seems to have ushered in a close to the Reagan revolution with a new kind of coalition.
It’s unlikely, though, that Obama will have a chance to change the court. Those most likely to leave are its most liberal members, and the youngest are those nominated by President George W. Bush. So its Obamaism that has to continue if Obama wants to leave a mark on jurisprudence, just as it was Nixon’s and Reagan’s predecessors who made the court more conservative.
What does this mean for the country? It may be easy to argue that the Warren and Burger courts brought change before many people were ready, particularly in Brown v. Board of Education and Roe v. Wade. Those decisions ripped parts of the country in two. Now we have a court that may be more conservative than the populace, that may be more reluctant for changes like gay marriage than the voting public. But that’s a good or bad thing depends on your view of the role of the judiciary.
In order to get started on our book club choice, Roberts’s A-Rod biography, I had to finish the mammoth 1,160-page book that I had started in April, “The Power Broker” by Robert Moses. The book had been sitting in an accusatory spot on my bookshelf since I bought in 2004. I was supposed to read it before I started grad school. I did not.
I can’t recommend the book highly enough, but that’s not why I’m writing. Sprinkled throughout the book are references to the Regional Plan Association, a nonprofit planning group that covers the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut region. Not only does the RPA still exist, but it helped Stamford organize the Master Plan adopted by the city in 2002 and has since helped the Glenbrook and Springdale community groups write new zoning rules that residents feel will improve the feel of their neighborhoods.
What the RPA was asking for from Robert Moses (or as his men called him, RM) was something that would affect my everyday life in a massive way.
Moses was a master planner, wielding power throughout New York City and the state for about 40 years to build the public works he wanted built. He started out building much needed public parks on Long Island, and acquired an overwhelming amount of WPA funds during the Depression to build highways into and out of the city. He also used proceeds from toll revenues, and bonds backed by future proceeds, to build highways. The Cross-Bronx, the West Side Highway, the Hutchinson Parkway, The Saw Mill, the B.Q.E. Highways, but never train tracks, which by the 1930s were, it was clear to most planners, necessary to take the vehicle burden off the roads. Reformers began begging for some share of the money for mass transit, arguing that a little extra money and space would help alleviate the traffic problem. Moses believed the solution for road problems was more roads. The desire to bridge toll revenues with mass transit funding is part of what undid his power under the Rockefeller administration.
In the late 1930s, Moses was building the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge to alleviate the traffic problems that started almost immediately after the Triborough — now RFK — opened. RPA asked Moses to consider building the Whitestone strong enough to carry a train as well. Even if he didn’t build the tracks right away, they asked him to build it strong enough for it to happen later. He did not. All of it’s right there on page 519.
Out of curiosity, I asked David Kooris, an RPA vice president and head of the Connecticut office, in Stamford, whether a train over the Whitestone could ever be possible.
For November, I'll be reading American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham, which won the Pulitzer Prize last year. We'll update our book club selection for December and January shortly.
Marilyn Ramos is a partner at the Stamford litigation law firm of Silver Golub & Teitell. She is a member of the Connecticut Trial Lawyers Association and the Connecticut Bar Association. She is currently on the Board of Directors of the Fairfield County Bar Association and the Fairfield County Bar Foundation. She received her law degree from Pace University School of Law in 1989 and is a member of the Connecticut and New York bars. Prior to her career in law, she was a teacher with the Greenwich Public Schools and worked for the Stamford Human Rights Commission. Her views expressed on this blog are completely her own and do not represent those of Silver Golub & Teitell.
Roy J. Nirschel is president of Roger Williams University in Bristol, R.I. He grew up in Stamford and his father was a firefighter on the West Side. He received his bachelor's degree from Southern Connecticut State University and went on to receive a master's degree in public administration and a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Miami. He has traveled around the world, visiting 35 countries, but said, "I can’t credit on the road with getting me on the road."
