Bob Schwartz

Category: Business

July 19, 2013

Detroit: Motown and Corvettes and Tigers, Oh My!

Stingray 1963

Sometimes the best way to tell a story is not to tell it. The news about Detroit’s municipal bankruptcy, the biggest ever in America, is like that. Others will tell it at length. Sometimes the best way is to offer a few items that are interesting and related, and let readers and listeners make the connections, draw the lines, complete the picture.

Just in case your dot-connecting doesn’t make it clear, the story of Detroit’s bankruptcy is the biggest American story of the day, and possibly one of the biggest in many years. It is bigger than the story of Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman, bigger than last fall’s story of the rich son of a former Michigan governor disastrously running for President (and loving those Michigan trees, though not Detroit), bigger than the continuing economic malaise, but related to all of them.

Fifty years ago, in July 1963, Motown Records, Hitsville U.S.A., released the single Heat Wave by Martha and the Vandellas. It reached #4 on the Billboard Top 100, but did top the R&B chart. Like so many Motown records, who cares about the numbers? Motown is some of the best pop music ever produced in America. Want proof? Just play Heat Wave, or other irresistible tracks by the Vandellas, the Temps, the Tops, or put on another Motown single from fifty years ago that did go to #1, the astonishing Fingertips (Part 2) by 11-year-old phenomenon Little Stevie Wonder. Motown founder Berry Gordy was not just a model of black entrepreneurship in a white country, at a time when black voting rights had still not been established, but was the model for some of the hugest entertainment moguls in the world, including Jay-Z. But that was fifty years ago in Detroit.

Fifty years ago, the Corvette Stingray was introduced. Edmunds not only rates it the best Corvette of all time; it says “A full half-century after its debut, the 1963 Corvette coupe remains one of the most alluring automotive designs ever conceived.” The ad above shows an airline pilot in Los Angeles (back when being a pilot was super-special manly, and LA was the city of the future) ogling the new Stingray. He was envying the Motor City vision. But that was fifty years ago.

This very day, as the second half of baseball season begins, the Detroit Tigers are one of the best teams in baseball, with maybe the best pitcher (Max Scherzer) and certainly the best hitter (Miguel Cabrera), who may be on his way to becoming the first player to win consecutive Triple Crowns. Detroit fans appreciate this, and have been showing up for home games at a solid pace, about 37,000 a game—equal to the attendance for the Los Angeles Angels and way more than the 17,000 fans per game that show up in “ultra cool” Miami.

Saying that Detroit will be back from beyond the brink isn’t just wishful thinking. The idea that Detroit can fail but that everybody else in America will be alright is all wrong. The 17th century poet John Donne said it:

No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

And if you don’t go for old poetry that you hated in high school, and would rather forget the troubles of Detroit and the world, Motown has lots to offer, especially on a sweltering July day.

Whenever I’m with him
Something inside starts to burning
And I’m filled with desire
Could it be a devil in me
Or is this the way love’s supposed to be?

It’s like a heat wave, burning in my heart
I can’t keep from crying, it’s tearing me apart

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June 20, 2013

Familiar Faces and Founders Who Flee

George Zimmer
George Zimmer, founder of Men’s Wearhouse, has been terminated from the company he grew—on the day of its annual meeting.

He moved (was kicked upstairs) from CEO to the position of executive chairman in 2011, and he still has a 3.5% stake in the company. It is thought that he may have had some trouble letting go of the reins—a not unusual circumstance—and his firing is the result of the attendant conflicts.

Everyone with a television knows the bearded Zimmer, and has heard him promise that when you wear one of their suits, “You’re going to like the way you look. I guarantee it.” And with 1,239 stores in the Men’s Wearhouse family, many have seen one of its outlets.

There are shareholders to please, a different situation than with Zimmer’s first store in Houston forty years ago. Times are changing for suits, ironically the very fact that Zimmer highlights in the latest series of ads. So if a fresh take was called for, both in the business and the marketing, he may have been seen as standing in the way.

You know George Zimmer. But do you know John Sculley?

Everybody who studies or practices big business does, but few others any more. In 1983, Steve Jobs recruited Sculley from Pepsico to run Apple. Differences almost immediately began cropping up about exactly how Apple was going to reach the next level on its way to make money (Sculley) or make money by changing the world (Jobs). It is reported that Sculley wanted to emphasize the Apple II until the Macintosh was powerful enough to fulfill its promise. No doubt where Jobs stood; just watch the historic Macintosh “1984” ad that ran during the Super Bowl that year. Jobs was demoted in 1985 and quickly left the company. Sculley would leave Apple in 1993, after a few successes but mostly under a cloud. Jobs would, of course, return to Apple—demonstrating in the long run just how potent a founder’s combination of entrepreneurship, vision and hard-nosed business can be. Today, practically everybody on the planet knows Steve Jobs.

It’s sometimes true that founders get it, but can’t take it to the next level. It’s also sometimes true that those outsiders who think they can take it to the next level can’t because they don’t get it.

George Zimmer didn’t sell the world’s most popular and powerful digital devices, actually changing the world. He sold men’s suits. Getting that isn’t so very tough, so he may be expendable. On the other hand, he has proven that over the course of four very tumultuous decades, he did know how to sell those suits.

Sometimes founders really can’t be trusted to evolve themselves or their offerings for a changing market and world. But the possibility that they can shouldn’t summarily be dismissed, and neither perhaps should they. George Zimmer may not be back. But we know who he is, to the benefit of Men’s Wearhouse.

Do founders sometimes know what they’re doing? George Zimmer? Steve Jobs? John who?

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June 13, 2013

DNA and the Supreme Court Reading Program

DNA Court
Today’s Supreme Court decision on the patentability of genetic material, Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc.  is another example of just how informative and fun these opinions can be, as opposed to just hearing the media summaries. This leads to a suggestion for a Supreme Court Reading Program.

Earlier posts have covered the value—in knowledge and entertainment—of reading current Supreme Court opinions, even if you are not a lawyer. This also includes reading the briefs in support of various positions, from a range of people and organizations. When the marriage equality cases were argued back in March, a post was devoted to The Briefs on Marriage Equality.

In this complex and significant gene case, the unanimous opinion of the Court (Justice Scalia concurred in a very short comment of his own) is that particular genetic material that isolated and identified (here, the site of mutations leading to breast and ovarian cancer) is not patentable, but that a new synthesized version of that same material, with the deletion of some parts, is.

Among the things that makes the opinion so interesting is its cogent explanation of a technical area. Genetics isn’t easy, and the opinion is really an understandable primer on a difficult topic.

Even more interesting are the array of briefs submitted in the case. Along with companies that want to be able to hold lucrative proprietary interest in genes, there are scientists and health care advocates who want nothing to stand in the way of free and open development and application. (The Humane Genome Project, for example, from the first offered all the work on the mapping the human genome to humanity.) Lawyers and intellectual property activists also chimed in, with intense interest in how patent law is a mess in these hyper-advancing times, having fallen so far behind the realities of digital and bio innovation. Also interesting is a brief from the Southern Baptist Convention, which taken from their church perspective makes a pretty good argument that, to put it bluntly, you can’t patent God.

So when you hear mention of an interesting Supreme Court case, either when it is argued or decided, step away from the media reports, even when those are reliable from experts you trust. Instead, visit the Supreme Court site to read or download the opinion (the opinion is published on the site almost immediately). Then visit the American Bar Association site that collects all the amicus briefs for each case that is argued. There will be a lot of those briefs—more than a hundred in the case of marriage equality—so you will want to pick and choose. Sometimes the name of the person or organization submitting the brief will catch your interest, just by who or what they are.

That certainly applies to the gene patent case. There among the many briefs is one identified as Brief for James D. Watson, Ph.D. in Support of Neither Party. Just in case the name isn’t familiar, James Watson, Ph.D. is the co-discoverer of the double helix structure of DNA, for which he and Frances Crick were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology in 1963. Even if he wasn’t one of the most important scientists in history, his delightful and erudite 26-page brief would be worth reading. It’s just one more example of how a Supreme Court Reading Program can be an enlightening and surprising addition to whatever else you’re currently paying attention to.

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May 2, 2013

Pepsi and the Line between Stupid and Clever

Mountain Dew
You’ve got to love the movie Spinal Tap. Below the surface of this hilarious fake “rockumentary”, beyond the wisdom of lines such as “It’s such a fine line between stupid and, uh…clever”, is a genuine commentary about what happens when popular art meets commerce.

When the band tries to revive its fading fortunes with an album called “Smell the Glove”, the record label rejects a cover photo of a woman on a leash being forced to, well, smell a glove. Instead, the album is released with a plain black cover.

Pepsi has long looked at its Mountain Dew brand as the edgiest of its beverages, with potential youth appeal. That would explain why it hired a 22-year-old hip-hop artist and music producer known as Tyler the Creator to create a series of videos for the brand. The storyline is that a goat named Felicia, voiced by Tyler, is obsessed with Dew and angry at its being in short supply. The goat brutally attacks a white waitress. In the third video, the injured waitress is at a police station, looking over a lineup of four black men and the goat. The goat threatens her, among other things reminding her that “snitches get stitches.” She is scared off and will not “dew” it.

After complaints about its being the most racist commercial ever, PepsiCo removed it from the web (you may still be able to see it here).

PepsiCo said, “We understand how this video could be perceived by some as offensive, and we apologize to those who were offended. We have removed the video from all Mountain Dew channels and have been informed that Tyler is removing it from his channels as well.”

Tyler’s manager said:

“It was never Tyler’s intention to offend, however offense is personal and valid to anyone who is offended. Out of respect to those that were offended, the ad was taken down. For those who know and respect Tyler, he is known for pushing boundaries and challenging stereotypes thr[ough] humor. This is someone who grew up on David Chappelle. This situation is layered with context and is a discussion that Tyler would love to address in the right forum as he does have a point of view. As someone who hasn’t had the experience of being discriminated against I choose to respect the opinion of those who have. What I can speak to is Tyler, who represents much more than the current narrative this story suggests.”

“Contrary to what many may discern from this, Tyler is the embodiment of not judging others, his delivery may not be for everyone (which is true for anyone who pushes boundaries) but his voice is nonetheless important to the conversation since his demographic understands what he ultimately stands for and sees the irony of it all. Context may or not help those who are offended and I wholly respect that, but for those who are interested, I can offer the following and leave the rest to Tyler.

“1. This spot was part of an overall admittedly absurd storyline about a crazy goat who becomes obsessed with Mountain Dew, 2. The lady in front of the line-up is the waitress from the first spot, 3. The line-up consists of Tyler’s friends and Odd Future members who were available that day. (L-Boy, Left Brain, Garret from Trash Talk and Errol) 4. He absolutely never intended to spark a controversy about race. It was simply an…admittedly absurd story that was never meant to be taken seriously. Again, we apologize if this was taken out of context and would never trivialize racism, especially now in America where voting and civil rights are being challenged at the highest level. I can however stand firmly by someone I have believed in since we met, only because I know him and I know all of this was never his intent.”

It’s not clear who this “David Chappelle” that the manager mentions is, but Dave Chappelle is one of the funniest, strangest, most boundary-pushing comic artists of recent times. Chappelle created one great piece after another, including a bit where a blind black man is a vicious anti-black racist, because he thinks he is white. That’s brilliant, so let’s start with the fact that Tyler has a long way to go.

Artists are supposed to do whatever their vision tells them, and we shouldn’t be stopping them. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes the art is behind or ahead of its times.

But that doesn’t mean that those who pay for the work have to go along with everything that artists conceive and produce. There is actually a bit of cleverness here, but it is plagued by so much troubling text, context and subtext that it could not possibly have passed any feasibility test that any mainstream corporate advertiser might apply.

One thing that makes this even a little more troubling is PepsiCo’s quasi-apology. We are supposed to have gotten used to cleverly crafted statements that are meant to sound like apologies but aren’t quite. That is now the norm. We are not that stupid. “We apologize to those who were offended” is a defensive or even condescending posture: if you are among those who don’t get it (or as Tyler’s manager says, not part of “his demographic [that] understands what he ultimately stands for and sees the irony of it all”), then we are sorry. Mass media have mass audiences, and if you want to put something out there that is likely to cause trouble but you believe will help you, either stand behind it or don’t. Apologize or don’t. It may turn out to be commercially smart or stupid. But at least you’re brave.

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May 1, 2013

The Most Important Document In History

CERN W3
The Magna Carta. The Declaration of Independence. The Constitution. The Emancipation Proclamation. The number of essential documentary moments goes on and on, both here and globally, each one of them a significant next step in progress.

Twenty years ago, what may turn out to be the most important document in history (above) was issued. The website of the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) explains the event:

On 30 April 1993 CERN published a statement that made World Wide Web (“W3”, or simply “the web”) technology available on a royalty-free basis. By making the software required to run a web server freely available, along with a basic browser and a library of code, the web was allowed to flourish.

British physicist Tim Berners-Lee invented the web at CERN in 1989. The project, which Berners-Lee named “World Wide Web”, was originally conceived and developed to meet the demand for information sharing between physicists in universities and institutes around the world.

Consider what the web would be like if it was a toll road and not a freeway. That was a possibility, had Berners-Lee and CERN decided to leverage and exploit the technology. But the web was born free and continues to resist chronic attempts to control and monopolize it.

One of the strangest ironies about the freedom of the web is that it was born on a NEXT computer. If you know digital history, you will recognize that NEXT was the company that Steve Jobs founded, in between his first stint at Apple, from which he was bizarrely let go, and his second stint, when he turned Apple into the richest technology company in the world.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee did not get as rich as Jobs. But he did get a knighthood, and recognition as an unsurpassed visionary, and the thanks of billions for shaping the world as few before or after did or ever will.

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April 21, 2013

Happy Record Store Day: I Like It Like That

I Like It LIke That
To celebrate International Record Store Day on April 20, Ambassador Jack White might have visited I Like It Like That Records & Tapes on Main Street in Newark, Delaware.

The problem is that the second most important record store in my life is no longer around. Hasn’t been for years. And even if it was, I’m not sure Jack White would be there, though he would have been welcome.

(The first most important record store? A hole in the wall in New Jersey, which soaked up every bit of available adolescent cash, like a dealer peddling stuff to an underage junkie. A gateway drug.)

For the record, Newark has a number of musical distinctions.

The Stone Balloon, also on Main Street, was the site of some epic performances by not-quite-yet-superstars like Bruce Springsteen. That The Balloon is now a “Winehouse” says something about civic and commercial evolution, though there’s too much loud laughter to tell that story.

The Deer Park, also on Main Street, is even more important musically than The Balloon. George Thorogood and the Destroyers began as George Thorogood and the Delaware Destroyers, and back then George could be found some Thursday nights at the Park, finishing off the destruction of masses of Newark townies with his guitar.

But this is about I Like It Like That. Main Street had a number of worthwhile places to simultaneously be enlightened and spend/kill lots of time. Two in the pantheon were the world’s greatest and most significant bookstore and I Like It Like That.

Somewhere in space, the sounds of I Like It Like That are still reverbing, though those alien rockers will be missing the feeling of walking through that door into another world (though, technically, they are in another world).

To celebrate, one thing would be a marathon playing of Frampton Comes Alive—the most overbought and traded-in album of all time, at least by ILILT standards. Wah-wah-wah-wah-wah-wah-wah-wah-wah.

Better yet, the name of the store is I Like It Like That. So let’s sing:

They got a little place
Across the track
The name of the place is
I Like It Like That
Now, you take Sally
And I’ll take Sue
And we are gonna rock away
All our blues

Now, the last time I was down there
I lost my shoes
They had some cat
Shoutin’ the blues
The people was yellin’
Out for more
And all they were sayin’
Was, ‘Go man go’

Come on, let me show you where it’s at
Come on, let me show you where it’s at
Come on, let me show you where it’s at
The name of the place is
I Like It Like That

Every record store, past, present and future, is where it’s at. BJL, JG and DC—thanks and rock on.

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February 20, 2013

When Brands Are Like Packaged Bad Mortgages

Once upon a time, a home loan was a simple but powerful thing. It allowed people who could not afford a house get one and get on the path to full ownership. And it allowed financial institutions to have a concrete obligation that could be sold, the value of which was based on the house and on the ability and duty of the borrower to pay.

If the solid simplicity of that is not completely gone, we know that over the last few decades, culminating in a mighty disaster, very creative financial craftsman were able to turn this into something supposedly bigger and better, but something not rooted in anything other than itself. Once that became obvious, as with the naked emperor, all hell broke loose, and the economy collapsed

Every maker and marketer of goods and services should be students of this phenomenon. Brands, for example, are truly things, and things of value. So much value that we attach a measure to it—brand equity—and for some companies, it is their greatest asset.

The idea that brand, or marketing, or messaging, exists independent of some more basic thing is seductive but silly. In American politics, we are witnessing this debate on a grand scale. Is reliance on creating or refurbishing a brand, ignoring the unvarnished nature of the product you’re selling, a form of denial? Or is it an implicit acknowledgement that adapting products to the times, to demographics, and to competition is just really, really hard—and sometimes impossible.

This isn’t only, or primarily, about politics. It is about business, about companies who may have come to believe that marketing is all there is, and that ever more sophisticated approaches can leave the basic realities behind for fancier and more valuable derivatives. The sophisticated and fancy can be important, but it’s not all of it, or even most of it.

The smartest people in the room (they would say in the world) forgot that a mortgage was nothing more than a house and borrower. We all, sadly, paid the price for that arrogance and, let’s say it, stupidity. Products and services of all kinds are exactly the same. Businesses, no matter how big, no matter how branded, forget those basics at their peril.

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February 6, 2013

American Experience: Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley
Tech history is our history. As enlightening and fun as it is, it is also more complex than learning about cars and trains and planes, all of which we understand, or can learn to. But transistors, integrated circuits and, ultimately, microprocessors are harder to grasp.

But this is also human history, the intertia of brilliant people at rest and in motion. That’s why the background of these digital days is fascinating, and why the new PBS American Experience documentary Silicon Valley is so enthralling.

You know where Silicon Valley is, what it is, and may have been there. How that agricultural Santa Clara Valley became the center of the world is a story. But the real story is how Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore and Andrew Grove—the godfathers of Intel—and their colleagues, predecessors and competitors changed the way the world worked technically, commercially and socially.

Silicon Valley is that story. It is inspiring, in the way that all risky ventures into the unknown are inspiring. It is also one of the rare worthy arguments for some sort of true American exceptionalism, since there is an inherent sense watching this—as politically incorrect as some may find it—that this is a quintessentially American story. This is what we did, this is what we do.

Silicon Valley is not to be missed.

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January 25, 2013

The Untouchables: No Justice On Wall Street

The Untouchables
This week, PBS Frontline aired a follow-up to its powerful documentary Money, Power & Wall Street, which covered the origins and aftermath of the 2008 financial meltdown. The Untouchables is an equally scathing and disturbing story about the failure of the Justice Department to prosecute any Wall Street executives for fraud, in the wake of their apparently knowing securitization and sale of worthless mortgages.

For those who wonder whether investigative journalism still matters, this happened yesterday:

Lanny Breuer, the head of the DOJ Criminal Division featured in the documentary, resigned. Questions about why criminal prosecutions have taken so long—and whether there will ever be any—linger like a bad odor.

Mary Jo White, a former federal prosecutor, was nominated to be the next chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Richard Cordray, another former prosecutor, was renominated to be director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The president said these nominations would help prevent a financial crash like the one he inherited four years ago.

People say that the new movie Zero Dark Thirty serves as a thought-provoking wake-up call about the role of torture and, ultimately, the effectiveness and judgment of President Obama. It has been said that those who support the president might find the film unnerving.

The Untouchables is much more unnerving, not just in looking at the president, but in looking at Attorney General Holder, at overseers,  and at all the others who seem to be strangely—or not so strangely—beholden to Wall Street.

Watch The Untouchables, then go back and watch Money, Power & Wall Street. Like all great investigative journalism, it is darkly entertaining, and like all unvarnished views of how government works, it is profoundly discouraging. But necessary.

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January 4, 2013

Walt Whitman Helps Launch Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas

Walt Whitman
First it was Abraham Lincoln in the new television campaign for the Lincoln Motor Company (the founder of that firm was a fan of the president, back when the company was started in 1917).

Lincoln Motor Company

Now Walt Whitman, the father of modern American poetry and, coincidentally, a big fan of Lincoln himself, is helping to launch this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (January 8-11).

Whitman will probably not be seen emerging from a mysterious fog as Lincoln does in the commercial, although that would be unspeakably cool.

Instead, Whitman’s most famous line of poetry is quoted (without attribution) in the official description of the very first CES SuperSession

The Digital Health Revolution: Body, Mind and Soul
January 8, 2013, 9:30-10:30 a.m.

“I sing the body electric” takes on new meaning in our brave new digital world, where devices let us monitor everything from our stress levels to our genetic sequences, and devices with 100 real-time biosensors loom on the horizon. Join moderator Arianna Huffington as she leads four digital health leaders in conversation — on the latest innovations in the field, how those innovations have the potential to change lives, and what the digital revolution means for the body, mind, and soul.

The literarily perspicacious will notice that the first line of copy includes allusions to two groundbreaking writers—not just Whitman, but also Aldous Huxley. Huxley’s Brave New World vision is actually much closer to what is going on at CES than Whitman’s. Unfortunately, Huxley will not be coming out of the mist either, though the thought of his joining up with Whitman in Las Vegas to look at the latest gadgets is mind-blowing—even without Huxley’s Soma or LSD. Add Lincoln, and it is the stuff that dream movies are made of (Steven Spielberg, are you listening?).

Back to Whitman, I Sing The Body Electric is included in his Leaves of Grass (1855). Whitman’s work was a sensation, in part because of his unabashed celebration of the splendor and wonder of the human body and sexuality. The poem is just such a celebration, a spiritual anatomy lesson that is like a painting, whose message is: be not ashamed.

It isn’t clear that is what the CES copywriter had in mind, though writers generally deserve much more credit than they get. If the point is that digital pioneers plan to touch every part of our bodies, that works too.

Meanwhile, Whitman—whose use of the term “electric” was itself quite pioneering—would probably be happy to see his poem alive and well in the context of keeping and making people healthy, head to toe, organ to organ. See you in Vegas, Walt.

For the digiterati and literati, here is the closing section of the poem:

O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women, nor the likes of the parts of you,
I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the soul, (and that they are the soul,)
I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems, and that they are my poems,
Man’s, woman’s, child’s, youth’s, wife’s, husband’s, mother’s, father’s, young man’s, young woman’s poems,
Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears,
Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eyebrows, and the waking or sleeping of the lids,
Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the jaw-hinges,
Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition,
Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck, neck-slue,
Strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula, hind-shoulders, and the ample side-round of the chest,
Upper-arm, armpit, elbow-socket, lower-arm, arm-sinews, arm-bones,
Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, forefinger, finger-joints, finger-nails,
Broad breast-front, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone, breast-side,
Ribs, belly, backbone, joints of the backbone,
Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and outward round, man-balls, man-root,
Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk above,
Leg fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under-leg,
Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel;
All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my or your body or of any one’s body, male or female,
The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the bowels sweet and clean,
The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame,
Sympathies, heart-valves, palate-valves, sexuality, maternity,
Womanhood, and all that is a woman, and the man that comes from woman,
The womb, the teats, nipples, breast-milk, tears, laughter, weeping, love-looks, love-perturbations and risings,
The voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud,
Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming,
Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving and tightening,
The continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around the eyes,
The skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles, hair,
The curious sympathy one feels when feeling with the hand the naked meat of the body,
The circling rivers the breath, and breathing it in and out,
The beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence downward toward the knees,
The thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and the marrow in the bones,
The exquisite realization of health;
O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul,
O I say now these are the soul!

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