Mystic Chord Poem by gershon hepner

Memory, whose mystic chord
suggests existence of the Lord,
draws some to Gustav's music, Mahler,
many others to Kabbalah,
and even when agnostic, mystics
responsive to Pascal’s statistics,
find Leon’s Moses, sephirotic,
believable, because erotic.
Castilian writings that they dust off
appeal to me far less than Gustav.
Who’s right we may find out in olam
haba, but surely not from Scholem.

Richard Bernstein reviews “American Culture, American Tastes: Social Tastes: Social Changes and the 20th Century, ” by Michael Kammen (Alfred A. Knopf) (“Lowbrow? Highbrow? Culture Raises an Eyebrow, ' the NYT, August 25,1999) . Kammen, the author of 'Mystic Chords of Memory, ” pointing out that since the dominant role of television around 1960 cultural stratification and the existence of distinct brow levels have become blurred where they haven't been overtly blended. He traces the decline of traditional cultural authority and its eclipse by mass culture: “The entrepreneurial power of commerce totally crushed the recommendations of such cultural authorities as John Crosby, Jack Gould and Gilbert Seldes–– prominent television critics who pleaded for diversity.”

8/25/99,1/26/07