Poets, Philosophy, Pyrrhonism, Pragmatism

Poets have a bit of a checkered history with regard to philosophy, among other things. Aristotle used dramatic poets, the playwrights of his time, or at least their work, as the basis for his Poetics--after Plato had suggested that in the perfect Kingdom, poets probably shouldn't be included, apparently because they make things up, unlike philosopher-kings, who always speak the truth, unless of course they're inventing dialogues between Socrates and opponents who always seem to fall for his tricks.

One of many problems may be that poets treat philosophy as they treat other items, as raw material for poetry. So literary critics can argue about how much German philosophers influenced Coleridge or how much Kant and Hartley influenced Wordsworth, but the by-product of such influence is always going to be idiosyncratic and quirky, especially in the poetry itself but also in the nonfiction prose the poets might write. One might also posit that the more purely philosophical a poet becomes, the less interesting his or her work may become, and one might go on to cite Alexander Pope and Matthew Arnold. Pope was a superb versifier, master of the heroic couplet and great manager of extended conceits, but oh my goodness, sometimes his poetry just wears you out with its "ideas." Ideas seemed, in a way, to paralyze or enervate Arnold, whom I don't think was a very good poet. Arguably, Yeats and Pound get downright loony in their philosophical and political turns.

A hopelessly broad generalization is that poets tend to be Aristotelian--grounded--as opposed to Platonic, tempted to look past or through what is here. "No ideas but in things," as Williams wrote--in a poem. Two schools of philosophy that might well be appealing to poets, then, are Pyrrhonism, a form of skepticism, and Pragmatism, as practiced, so to speak, by William James, bro of Henry "Hank" James, but not, apparently, a member of the James Gang, although a movie in which William and Henry rode with Jesse, or one in which Jesse lectured at Harvard and Yale, might be moderately amusing.

My understanding of Pyrrhonism is that it assumes for every good argument, a very good counter-argument can be found, and whether we can know anything for sure is not only doubtful but actively doubted. So I think you're just supposed to go with the flow, live according to the way things seem. Of course, extreme skepticism can lead to what they call "quietism," in which you accept all manner of things without squawking, including things that appear to you, in spite of your skepticism, obviously wrong. Unjust. Undoubtedly bad. I guess one appeal of Pyrrhonism is that in does focus on "appearances," on the concrete aspects of life, or at least on the sensory reports about same. Poets do seem inordinately fascinated by really specific, ordinary stuff. I mean, Hopkins wrote a great ecstatic sonnet about "dappled things," for Heaven's sake (literally for Heaven's sake).

Pragmatism, as advanced by Charles Pearce and William James, doesn't doubt everything; it just doubts philosophy, unless and until one or more persons can see how any philosophical idea will play out with Charles Pearce, William James, or whoever, literally, happens to be living at the time, breathing air, thinking, talking, trading, laughing, gardening, and blogging. Pragmatism in this sense is not anti-intellectual; the question is not, for example, "How will philosophy help put food on my table?" The question is more like "As I'm eating at the table, how will this or that philosophical idea alter my experience of eating at the table, along with everything else I'm doing at that moment, and everything else everyone else is doing?" My reading of James is that he constantly tries to remind philosophers and anyone else who will listen about how messy, voluminous, and shifting reality is. (At one point, he suggest that reality often "boils over" and overwhelms a fixed philosophy.) James isn't flatly opposed to idealism, or to a skepticism that suggests we can't really know anything, but he counters with the idea that, well, we apparently do know things, in the sense that we go around knowing and acting on knowledge all the time.

He actually pays philosophers (and scientists and anyone with bright ideas) a compliment, though, by arguing that what this or that age sees as "common sense" may be the result of a long, evolutionary process influenced by a person who had a great new idea. For instance, "common sense" now tells us that the Earth is round, but only because leap-ahead work by Copernicus and friends finally, slowly, got absorbed into everyday knowing. James thinks knowing is under constant revision, even when it may not seem to be, so he embraces the view that we simultaneously go around knowing things for sure and knowing that things for sure may not be for sure for long. This is sort of thinking is mightily bothersome to those craving absolutes, of course. At the same time, James by no means shies away from establishing an ethics.

James's work is highly poetic--full of imagery, anecdote, warm irony, and some jokes. He's far more accessible--and in a way, less abstract--than some of the prose from his brother Henry (I really mustn't call him Hank). Of course, people who "do" philosophy, will point immediately to the imagery, anecdote, and familiar rhetoric and assert "not philosophy!" People who "do" poetry, as readers or writers or both, are likely a) not to read William James's work at all and b) if they do read it, like all the arguments in favor of the contingent, ongoing, frustrating, but specific messiness of life as we, as you, live it.

In any messy case, here's a shout out to the four P's: Philosophy, Pyrrhonism, Pragmatism, and Poetry. What a mess they make.

The Lyricism of Politics

Ah, I love it when politicians wax poetic in their constant effort to keep the herd hypnotized.

Bush: "They [terrorists, presumably] hate our freedoms." But not as much as the Bush administration hates them, apparently. Warrantless wire-taps, suspended habeas corpus, executive power stretched to tragi-comic limits (the people have no right to hear what Cheney said to "energy" executives?), "signing statements" ("I laugh at your legislation, elected legislators! I am Texas's answer to Mussolini!").

Obama: "The Audacity of Hope." Has a nice ring to it. But if to hope has become audacious, then hope is probably just a lovely gesture. I think one aim of government might be to make hope commonplace. "Change you can believe in." Is that Obama's or Clinton's? I can't remember. I'll believe it when the next president completely revamps the machinery of secrecy and executive privilege started by Eisenhower and made worse since then. I'll believe it when the next president breaks up media and oil conglomerates, with the help of Congress. I'll believe it when the military tribunals (which Obama supports) go away. Etc.

McCain: As I've mentioned, if a person really favors straight talk, he or she doesn't lyrically refer to a bus as the Straight-Talk Express. McCain is also a self-styled "maverick," a poetic word that appeals to Americans' fondness for frontier independence. Oddly enough, here's the original meaning of maverick, according to the OED:

1867 in J. G. McCoy Hist. Sketches Cattle Trade (1940) 83 The term maverick which was formerly applied to unbranded yearlings is now applied to every calf which can be separated from the mother cow.

To be fair, we must acknowledge that the connotation of "maverick" has changed; nonetheless, the bar of independent thought is set pretty low when all you have to be is weaned and a year old--but still a part of that herd on the Chisum Trail. And what is McCain independent from? Not from any major policy-decision Bush has made, with the possible exception of torture. Not from lobbyists. Not from all the Anti-Trust abuses. With regard to the ever-expanding "privileges" of the Executive Branch, I suspect McCain would be like a pig in--I mean a maverick in manure.

It's a measure of a) my befuddlement and b) the blurring of campaign slogans that I don't know whether "Change you can believe in" belongs to Clinton or Obama. In any (or either) case, the phrase would have been trochaically more interesting (but far more nerdy) as "Change in which you can believe," which has roughly the same rhythm as "Tyger, Tyger, burning bright." Anyway, one can still believe in change with which one disagrees, so I'd need to hear more about what changes the person has in mind. I think "Good change you can believe in" is a more persuasive phrase, potentially.

I think that among Obama's most audacious moves is to decide to (and demonstrate the capacity to) raise a lot more money than McCain. When was the last time a Demo was that audacious? LBJ v. Goldwater? "Change (as in ka-ching) you can believe in."

Responses Appreciated

Recent comments on recent postings have informed me of the following, which I appreciate:

1. In Tacoma, not only does Alder (Street) turn into Pine which turns into Cedar, but Cedar turns into Oak. Maybe it just continues on down to California and becomes Palm Street. I think there's an idea for a movie or a short story in here somewhere. In Tacoma, people just blithely note that (for example) Pine turns into Cedar. No one seems to want to explore why this is so. I believe there's an existential and/or epistemological debate lurking in this street-name phenomenon. I don't recall Kant or Hegel writing about the streets in Tacoma. Clearly an oversight. Please note, however, that Hammett, in The Maltese Falcon, does mention the philosophy of Charles Peirce in a Tacoma-street context--in the splendid "Flitcraft" chapter, which all philosophy students, but especially those who like detective novels, should read.

2. The New Incredible Hulk may be worth seeing. I think I'll still wait for it to come to television, whereupon I can watch it in pieces. It's hard for me to digest these blockbusters at one sitting. They bust my block. I like to watch European movies on the IFC. The Europeans still make movies about people with human problems. It's very old-fashioned of them. The movies have stuff like conflict and dialogue. Actors play scenes. It's all very quaint.

3. Ants in some parts of Japan are a huge problem, so watch out. Apparently, they're a lot more trouble than humans are over there. Hmmm. Maybe there's a connection here to all those great giant-insect movies from Japan.

4. I was very glad to hear from another Chickering-piano-player (and Chickering-player-piano-piano-player).

5. At least one reader liked Browning's short poem. Those who didn't like the poem can take some consolation in the fact that the poem is short.

Force-Fed

So we went out to a restaurant to celebrate a birthday, not mine, and as a Hemingway narrator might say, "it was good."

It was, however, a Friday night, and the restaurant is a venerable one in these parts, and it wasn't close to full. I assume the economy that Bush's witchcraft has created with much toil and trouble is having its effect on restaurants, the income of which depends upon discretionary spending.

Another effect is that the wait-staff have clearly been directed to try to sell more food and beverages. Our waitress, or server, was extraordinarily competent, but, albeit sweetly, she put on the hard sell. A member of our party who had worked as a busser in a local restaurant noted, "They're hurting, so they're really trying to push the booze, where they make all their profits."

Some people like a lot of interaction with waiters. I don't. I think I'm more of a reader. I like to study the menu as if it were a poem, and I like waiters and waitresses to be laconic advisers. I like to see how the management has decided to describe the dishes. On this menu, after the list of entrees and of all the entrees had to offer to the buds of taste, there was a note mentioning that any of the fish on the menu could simply be grilled. I rather enjoyed the subtext of that message--namely, that nouveau cuisine may be okay, but nothing beats the atavistic practice of gutting a fish, flattening it, and putting it over the campfire. Of course, you'd want to serve a wine that had an after-taste of plums, gasoline, pears, and Roundup (or whatever it is those wine-critics say).

One of the waitress's techniques was to tell us what her "personal favorites" were on the menu. This rhetoric only confused me. If I chose something else, would I implicitly be casting doubt on her judgment? Does she really try all the dishes, and if so, would it be appropriate, then, to interrogate her and ask whether all the dishes were really that expensive to make? A stubborn streak in me always prevents me from ordering what is the favorite of the waiter or waitress. Terribly petty of me, I know. I did mind my manners, however, and I betrayed none of this confusion and resistance to her. After all, she's just working the job, out on the front line. The decision-makers are nowhere to be seen. It's no good giving grief to people who aren't in management, just because they happen to be visible.

--And by the way, do you think "appetizer" is really the appropriate term for a first course? Usually, the appetizer takes away one's appetite because, well, the appetizer is food, and if you eat food, you're less likely to remain hungry. Also, "appetizer" sounds a bit like science fiction. "Put him in the appetizer! Appetize him! Invasion of the appetizers!" Under "Appetizers" on a menu should be a list of things that will make you hungry: Poverty, Exercise, Working All Day, Fasting.

Antsy

On my urban hikes, which used to be called taking a walk, I have an opportunity to see things that won't make the evening news but may be more interesting than the evening news. Today I walked for an hour and was reminded of one of Tacoma's anomalies: sometimes sidewalks just disappear. There must be some kind of gray municipal legal area in which neither the city nor the landowners are primarily responsible for putting in sidewalks. So you might be traveling by foot on a sidewalk for several blocks, and although the neighborhood doesn't change architecturally or topographically, the sidewalk will stop, and in its place might be weeds, rocks, dirt, or a wee path. I have come to cherish Tacoma's anomalies, another of which is that Alder Street turns into Pine Street, which turns into Cedar street. It's as if someone deduced that after a few blocks, a street will get the urge to have its name changed.

I've also seen many ants, chiefly tiny brown ones which appear to locate the seam between sidewalk-segments, burrow down, and leave conical piles of dirt they've displaced. I don't know the proper name of these ants, and I don't know what they eat. I grew up observing red ants, which would build massive teeming hills so thick with ants that they stank: fabulous to observe. The ants seem to prefer to eat other insects--or any kind of protein, really. Also, there were black ants, which grew wings and flew during one of their phases. We also had the ants that came inside and looked for something sweet. But these tiny brown ants I hadn't seen before.

Then today I saw a small nest of black ants, smaller than the kind I saw in California. The nest was right next to the sidewalk, and hundreds of ants were traveling on a two-lane ant-highway, which ran parallel to the sidewalk. I think these ants are called "workers" or "soldiers," the former if they're getting food or debris for the queen, the latter if they're occupying foreign ant territory (and perhaps drilling for oil). However, there was also a smaller stream of commuting ants that crossed the sidewalk between the next and a patch of grass. Someone had written on the sidewalk, in chalk, "Ant Crossing." I found this notation to be charming.

Apparently, an ant's life-cycle is something like 6-10 weeks, although the entomologists seem to hedge their bets and suggest that some workers can live for years, and queens can life up to 15 years. I need to find out the species of ants I've been looking at. I also wonder how these ants decided where to place a nest or underground network before sidewalks existed. That is, before geometic patterns of concrete existed, what were the criteria for selecting a nest-site, and why are sidewalks so appealing to ant-ontology now?

All of this reminds me that when I was an undergraduate, I hung out for a while with an entomology major. Her name was Paulina, a name I quite liked, but she preferred to go by "Mouse," which was her nickname. I don't think I ever learned how she got that nickname. She smoked Marlboros, if memory serves, and she was, pardon the pun, quite antsy--amped up, fidgety. But also humorous. I do hope she was able to become a professional entomologist, if indeed that was her dream.

The Credible Hulk

Opining not so much as a poet but as a person who generally and specifically enjoys words, and as a person who is weary of Hollywood's main fare, I assert that a movie entitled The Credible Hulk would be more interesting than another remake of The Incredible Hulk. The plot might focus on a large person who is believable, perhaps an immense trustworthy politician, a robust honest person, or a body-building soothsayer. Didn't Hollywood just make a version of the angry green man a few years ago? Is this new version absolutely necessary? Would the money be better spent on necessities for impoverished persons?

Apparently there's also another Batman movie coming out. Once again, the movie seems to be about a man who dresses in dark leather outfits. That is, he's really not a batman. I'd like to see a version where the person is actually a bat/human hybrid--you know, like that movie, The Fly, which was really about Flyman.

I think maybe all Hollywood movies, but especially the remakes, should be shorter by two-thirds. Then they could show three sequels in the time it takes to view one. More value for your movie-going Euro. We already know the plots, the plot-twists, the moments when explosions will happen, and the moments when the antagonists must seem to prevail. Just speed it up!

Or they could make a very short film entitled: Sequel: A Cry for Help, followed by a plea to the general public to send Hollywood some fresh ideas for movies. The short film could be narrated by the Credible Hulk.

A Short One by Browning

I like the following short poem by Robert Browning, who's probably best known for longer narrative works and those famous dramatic monologues, such as "My Last Duchess." I always thought his sensibility and that of the 20th century American poet, Randall Jarrell, were similar. In fact I wrote a long paper once in which I attempted to characterize this sensibility, which I argued had a lot to do with empathy. Both were quite learned poets, but they understated the learning by means of relatively plain phrasing. Jarrell was undoubtedly more interested in criticism than Browning, whose contemporary Matthew Arnold was arguably the chief poet/critic of th era, in England at least.

Night Meeting

by Robert Browning

I.
The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i’ the slushy sand.

II.
Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, thro’ its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!

I especially like the way Browning works in basic colors here--grey, black, yellow, blue. I like the bookend rhymes he uses in both stanzas, too--very effective. At the core of each stanza is a couplet, and the distance between rhymes widens from there. This would bed a nice rhyme-scheme to imitate, as an exercise.

I might have left off the exclamation point. . . .The penultimate actions--someone taps on a window-pane to announce arrival, and someone inside lights a match: wonderful--basic but precise and evocative, like the colors. Well done, Bob.

The Memory's Trains

So I had to drive up near the Canadian border, in a car, and take the train back. It was like a Hitchcock movie. Right after I got on the train, I tried to think of the last name of my wife's first boss when we first moved here, 25 years ago. I knew it began with a "B," but my memory blocked the rest. One tactic my memory used was to put the name, "Shirley Bassey," in place of the boss's name. (Shirley Bassey sang "Goldfinger.") I was angry with my memory, so I worked on the problem for about an hour, off and on.

Then I gave up, and I told myself that when my wife picked me up at the train-station, I would ask her the name, surrendering to my misbehaving memory.

I was standing outside the Amtrak station, waiting to be picked up and thinking about this and that. Then I saw my wife in the car, and I remembered that I needed to ask her the last name of her former boss. At that instant, and only at that instant, the name popped into my memory.

I believe there is something like an elaborate switching-yard in the brain, where memories are lined up like trains, but they have to wait until the track-switcher lets them through. I imagine a train-yard about a million times more complicated than the ones in L.A., Paris, London, or Vienna.

The memory-switcher stalled that name until the switcher was good and ready. I saw my wife, and the train was let through. Probably about 100 years from now, the switching-yard of the brain will have been mapped carefully, and someone will be able to explain exactly what goes on with a delayed but suddenly triggered memory. All aboard!

Mandatory Minestrone

Since Congress isn't doing much anyway, I believe it should pass a federal law stipulating that all Italian restaurants in the U.S. must have minestrone soup available any time they are open. I'm very weary, and wary, of "Italian" restaurants that do not have minestrone soup on their menus. I suspect and fear that some of these restaurants worry that minestrone isn't hip enough. Imagine almost any kind of popular music without a bass-line, which isn't hip but necessary.

For minestrone purists, any time is the right time for minestrone, but for generalists, I will concede that the temperature outside should probably be below 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

The best recipe I know for minestrone is Marcella Hazan's. I've been using it for at least 20 years. When I cook guests a meal, they rarely if ever expire, but they also rarely ask for a recipe. When I serve the minestrone, they often ask for the recipe.

I'll try this from memory, but to be sure, find Hazan's book, Cooking the Italian Way. What does this have to do with poetry? Minestrone soup is a poem.

Get a big old stock pot, preferably cast iron. Chop about one half a yellow onion finely, and sautee it in olive oil and butter, quite a bit of the latter. Then chop the following vegetables finely, and add them one by one to the simmering onion, butter, and oil, stirring for a minute or so between additions: a cup of carrots, two cups of potatoes (two small potatoes, finely chopped), two cups of zucchini squash, two cups of white Italian beans (Cannelini, I think they're called--canned is fine; cook your own if you're a purist), a cup of green beans (French cut, chopped further), and three cups of finely shredded Savoy cabbage. Finally, add just 2/3 cup of Italian stewed tomatoes, with the juice. I think those are all vegetables, but double-check. By the time you stir in the last of the vegetables, you'll think you'll have a thick vegetable stew on your hands, and you will, because there's not all that much liquid yet. Don't panic, but if you get nervous, add a bit of red wine. And we're simmering, remember. Then add somewhere between 4 and 6 cups of beef broth, or vegetable broth, if you're a vegetarian. Hazan calls for six, but sometimes six seems like too much. Minestrone shouldn't be watery. Spices I like to add almost at any point are a bit of powdered garlic (or fresh and sauteed, if you like), rosemary, parsley, and pepper.

Then add the rind of Old School Parmesan or Romano cheese. Yep, right into the soup. It will not disintegrate; it will add much flavor and body. Put the lid on the pot. Leave a wee gap, if you like. Simmer.

The genius of this minestrone, in my opinion, is that it's both more rustic and more complex than what you get in most restaurants--which is usually a quick-and-dirty, tomato-dominated soup. You'll note that there's only a hint of tomato in Hazan's. Simmer it for as long as you like, hours. Keep an eye on it. Mainly, you don't want it to boil excitedly, and you don't want it to be watery.

Serve it with some bread, and with some freshly grated Parmesan on top of the soup. Red or white wine, or water, your choice. Need something more hefty (the soup holds up well as its own meal): some pasta, maybe, or some grilled Italian sausages.

Hazan's minestrone has a quasi-spiritual effect on people, even those who do not have Italian or Sicilian background of some kind. The soup comforts and nourishes. The chopping and stirring and observing take quite a while, but they're worth it--a fine food-favor to do for your family, friends, and other loved ones. A food-poem.

Traveling Piano

June 10, 2008

Our piano, a smaller kind of grand piano--parlor grand?--was finally released from the custody of storage--and then tuned.

Therefore, I can hack away at 30s and 40s ballads, Broadway songs, and very simple classical and ragtime things. I'm essentially self-taught, so I had the worst possible instructor, although my mother attempted to give me formal lessons when I was in 7th grade. It's basically chords and melodies for me. I'm good at reading the guitar chords above the melody, a short-cut for the left hand. I like the ballads in part because of their lyrics; e.g., "I got it bad, and that ain't good,' but also for the rich chords, with which one can improvise.

The piano's more interesting than the player pounding on it. It's a Chickering, made in Boston in the 1920s or 1930s. Our tuner says the Chickering craftspeople worked without a blueprint, so every piano has its own design-personality. A decal on the piano has the dealer's name--the Johnson Piano Company in Portland, Oregon. So we know the piano traveled--by train or boat, I guess--from Boston to Portland. (The photo here is of a Chickering that has a more ornate music-stand gizmo than ours.)

Then the piano's biography becomes quite fuzzy--until the piano ends up in a bar in my hometown, way up in the Sierra Nevada. They guy who owned it had bought the bar from my uncle. How the guy got the piano, nobody seems to remember. Then he got married--to a woman he later characterized as a "gold-digger," and she divorced him. So he hid or gave away lots of stuff to keep it away from her. He gave the piano to my father, probably as barter for some work. So my mother played it a bit, and I started playing it. In one octave, the notes always sounded tinny because somebody in the bar had spilled some whiskey on the hammers. After my parents died, we had the piano shipped up to the Pacific Northwest--through Portland again, as karma would have it.

It also happens to be a player-piano, and we have a huge box of the old Ampico piano rolls. Before radio got really popular, people gathered around a player piano and had a good time. But the player-part--a very complicated system that literally involves plumbing--doesn't work. We had the parts removed, and we kept them, so some day we'll restore the thing to its original state. We've already had the piano itself restored--new hammers, strings, felt, etc.

The Chickering has become like a member of the family--a member that weighs 800 pounds, even without the the player-piano equipment. I wish my two hands could get the keyboard going up to its specifications, but I do what I can. The best part is thinking about how much the piano, like a blues musician, has traveled. At the moment, it seems content in this house. It doesn't yet have those traveling blues.

Down Escalator?

So we went to Le Mall to try to outfit a guest-room. The goal was to get things to put on a new bed, not just sheets but the whole arsenal of textiles.

If I go someplace to buy something, I like go in fast and buy it, almost like a raid. The only exception is in a used bookstore, wherein a might dawdle for a few minutes. I don't mind strolling down the main avenue of a mall. I rather like that experience. There is much to observe and question. But I hate "shopping" of any kind. The person I was with likes to sort through options in a rational, linear, patient way. She and I both joke about the possibility of our different approaches' being gendered, but actually, neither of us believes they really are. Put most men in an auto-parts store or a hardware-store, and they will dawdle and graze. Send most women to an auto-parts store, and they will not "shop." They will quickly identify and buy.

To get to a textile-venue, we had to go up an escalator, which was marked "UP." I found this to be redundant. Where else would an escalator go? Of course, the problem is that when they invented and named escalators, they had to have a analogous machine that took people down, and the inventors and namers boxed themselves in by using "escalator." Thus we now have the contradictory name "Down Escalator." This is like a forward retreat. What should the "down escalator" be called? I suppose it should be called what it is called. Everybody seems used to the name. I'd prefer the descender, however. The same problem obtains in the case of elevators, of course. To go from floor 3 to floor 1, one must be elevated downward. Escher.

We did find what we sought, but I found myself immersed in another set of language I did not understand--that of beds. There are duvettes. Is that the right spelling? I don't know what they are. On my own, I would never buy such a thing. There are comforters and quilts and bed-skirts. There are mattress-pads, and in the arena of sheets, there are thread-counts. I do hope someone has written a history of beds and bedding, just as one person has written a history of salt.

At my parents' house, I slept for years on what was called "a Navy bed." It was a simple wooden frame, with wire mesh (no springs), and a mattress of sorts thrown on top. One never knew how my parents ended up with such things, but apparently this thing had once belonged to the United States Navy. My father had served in the Army Air Corps, so obviously he didn't steal it from his "employer" during WWII. However, on that bed was a genuine Army blanket, green. I think in fact that he did haul that home from Europe, but who knows? It was a pretty short blanket, but it was all wool, and it was a horrific shade of green, of which I grew quite fond.

My parents themselves slept on a double-bed, not even a queen-sized mattress, and they had attached a reading lamp to the head-board. My father never required much sleep, so they might go to bed at 10 or 11, let's say, and then he might wake up at 1:00 a.m., smoke a cigar and read a Louis L'Amour paperback "western" in bed. My mother slept through all of this activity and pollution. When I learned of this, from my brothers or my mother, I naturally thought all parents engaged in such behavior. Of course The Father would wake up, smoke a cigar, and read a book, while The Mother slept. Thus had it been so since Adam and Eve. It all made sense, just like the Down Escalator does today.

Rumpole and Keating: Brits Fit For Reading

I'm having a great time reading short stories by John Mortimer, whose protagonist is an English barrister named Rumpole. Mortimer's Rumpole novels and stories (famously adapted to the small screen by the BBC) fit into the legal-detective genre, but they're exceedingly character-driven, witty, and literate, and without being heavy-handed, Mortimer also likes to examine social issues, such as colonialism and feminism. One could say Rumpole is Britain's answer to Perry Mason, as Rumpole is a defense "attorney" and tends to win, but he's more cerebral than Mason, and Mortimer likes to raise good if basic questions about law and morality. The short stories themselves are superbly constructed, and anyone interested in short fiction generally would benefit from reading them. Rumpole also loves to quote poetry, so really, what's not to like?

I also just found H.R.F. Keating's Crime & Mystery: The 100 Best Books. Splendid. Keating (photo attached), who reviewed crime novels for the London Times (maybe he still does) and also wrote mystery fiction, lists the books chronologically, starting with Poe and ending with P.D. James's A Taste for Death in 1986, when this book of "the 100" was published.

In the preface, Keating immediately admits that his task is impossible, qualifies his selections, and acknowledges that some authors he left off the list (like Dick Francis) have earned the right to be on there. After each title, Keating writes 3-4 pages that explain what the author and the book bring to the genre that's fresh and/or especially strong, and he explains why he likes the particular book. He doesn't gloss over problems a book or author may have, and he rarely if ever spoils the plot.

I was astounded that the two Simenon books featuring Maigret that he chose were ones I hadn't read--unless, of course, I've read them under a different title--quite possible with so many editions of the translations of Maigret novels out there. So I'll need to track them down. I've probably read something by 70% of the authors and maybe 50% of the books. So in general, there's some work left to be done.

Keating has convinced me that I need to read some things by Cornell Woolrich, Celia Fremlin, and William McIvanney. He has not convinced me to try Josephine Tey, Margaret Allingham, Michael Innes, Cyril Hare, or Emma Lathen again. Books by these authors just didn't click with me.

In this gem of a reference-book, Keating has written some of the best, most insightful short essays on detective fiction available. He's a discerning but generous critic--generous, probably, not just because that may have been who he is but also because he is a novelist as well as a critic: he knew how difficult the genre was. He also has a knack for saying fresh things about old war-horses like Conan Doyle, Christie, Hammett, and Chandler.

There's no sense in quibbling with such a list of 100, but I do wonder if Keating has ever read Rudolph Fisher's The Conjure Man Dies. (Keating does include a Chester Himes novel set in Harlem.) I'd love to learn what Keating thinks of that book.

Miscellany: Hovering Sparrows, Stuff I Don't Understand, Etc.

As an amateur, I've been observing different kinds of sparrows for a long time, but I hadn't seen a sparrow hover until today. He (in this case) was perched in a very small tree, really a sapling. The wind was blowing pretty stiffly from the west. He got off the tree, seemed to fly into the wind, but beat his wings just enough to hover; meanwhile, he was looking down at the ground, on which he subsequently landed, only to take off and to hover again. It had just rained, so he might have been looking for surfaced worms in the grass, or maybe there was a hatch of bugs. But the hovering clearly had a surveillance-purpose. There are so many different kinds of sparrows that I dare not hazard a guess, or maybe I do dare: house sparrow?

Which leads me to bird-poems, which I believe I've blogged about before. So, to recap, my favorite bird-poems are Hopkins's "The Windhover," Dickinson's poem about a bird coming up her walk, and William Everson's "Canticle of the Birds." Hopkins dedicates his poem "To Christ, Our Lord," and I always suspected that he felt obligated to do that because the poem comes close to idolizing the hawk, and if you're a Jesuit priest, you're not (or so I've read) supposed to have false idols. Students tend, I think, to want to make the poem too religious. I'm not opposed to any religiosity they can demonstrate to exist in the text, not by any means. It's just that I think the poem's real strengths are its linguistic jazz and its superb observation of a hovering, flying hawk. Hopkins just nailed that poem, on every level.

I can come up only with a lame transition to the next topic, which concerns stuff I don't understand, so I'll lamely say I don't understand how Hopkins could come up with sprung rhythm, any more than I can understand how Duke Ellington came up with all those great melodies and superb chords, which mange to be lush, complex, and whimsical all at once.

By "stuff I don't understand," I mean that I don't understand how the thing came to be, or I don't understand why "we" put up with the thing, or both.

1. The two-party system. I think we need at least 5 political parties.

2. When I "end" a program on this computer, after the program is "not responding" (this is a euphemism; the program failed; it didn't work, okay?), the software asks me whether I want to "Send" or ["Do Not Send"] an "Error Report" to Microsoft. I don't believe for a minute that the report goes to Microsoft, and even if it did, what does the report contain, and who reads it, and what do they do with it? This is nonsense.

3. I don't understand why Puerto Rico isn't a state. Or a nation. I think it's time to decide, and I think the way to decide is either by a vote or a coin-flip, whichever one would lead to less violence. But hell, they get to vote in a primary but not the general election? That's right out of Kafka. Or Borges, to keep it in the hemisphere. And I don't want to hear that the issue is "complicated." I know it's complicated. It's just that it's been complicated forever, so let's flip the coin and get on with it.

4. I don't understand why journalists interview other journalists. TV journalists are always having print-journalists on their shows--meaning the print journalists become TV journalists. I'd rather they pick some citizen randomly from outside the studio and interview him or her, OR interview someone who has information (as opposed to opinions) or both. What if police-persons would arrest some criminal only if that criminal were a police person? What if a pastor or a rabbi would preach only to other faith-professionals? What if teachers would teach only other teachers? WTF?--to coin an acronym. Journalists shouldn't interview journalists, except in the rare instance in which a journalist makes news--as in biting his or her dog.

5. I have no idea how micro-wave cookers actually work.

6. Why can't we take the massive profits of oil companies, divide by two (let's say), leave the companies one half, and use the other half to buy a lot of oil all of a sudden, to drive down the price? I don't understand. Why is this so hard? Congress should just look at the numbers, say what we all know ("You guys are making way too much money"), and take some of the money back. People who have to drive to work every day, or who drive for a living, need the gas and the money more than the massive oil companies do. It's just an issue of equity. I don't understand.

7. I don't understand why English barristers still wear those wigs. It's just not a good idea anymore, and I don't want to hear about what the wigs symbolize or about tradition or wool or anything like that. You and I know it's a stupid idea that's gone on way too long. If they want to retain a nod toward tradition, they can just hang one wig from a string, or have a painting of a wig, or have a ewe in court, or whatever. Just get rid of the wigs. The Canadians still do it, too. Somehow, that's even sadder. They should wear some fur from a moose, or a hockey puck, or a piece of perma-frost tundra--something Canadian, not British.

Photosynthetic Poem

A.R. Ammons (in the selected poems from W.W. Norton) has a nice little poem entitled "Photosynthesis," which I enjoyed reading very much. No good poetic deed must go unpunished, however, so I decided to write a photosynthetic poem of my own, not to compete with A.R., mind you (to him I concede the victory), but just to see what I might do with the subject.

Photosynthesis

Wherever you enter the story,
the story's amazing: Single cell
meets ball of fire, and epics
of vegetation ensue--algae,
sequoia, peat, fig, cacti.

Human history's an offshoot
of photosynthesis, a cud
chewed by divine bovinity
in green time. Whenever we

enter the story, we cast our
shadow, insert our names for
plants and stuff, study and
disrupt processes, maybe just
grab a salad for lunch, so busy.

Let's just let the scythe, mower,
chainsaw, tiller, test-tube, and gene-
splicer sit for an hour. Let's lie
in wonder under photosynthetic
boughs, yawn our wows amidst
leaf-dappled mottling of light,
graze in amazement.

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Recount

When is a good film unwatchable? When the subject-matter is too disgusting. I made it through about 40 minutes of HBO's well crafted Recount, all about the 2000 election and the disintegration of faux democracy in Florida, not to mention the Supreme Court. But eventually I became too queasy. It all seems quite farcical until you connect the misdeeds by vacuous Katherine Harrison and amphibious James Baker to all the civilians and others dead in Iraq, the tortured in Guantanamo, the abandoned in New Orleans, Dick Cheney as Veep, Valerie Plame outed, warrantless wiretaps, a diseased Justice Department, a collapsed dollar, diplomacy adrift, incompetence as a mode of governing, and so on. Forget politics; just with regard to basic competence, Bush is so bad that James Baker probably regrets helping him get appointed to the presidency. That's pretty bad.

If your political and cinematic stomachs are stronger than mine, I hope you watch Recount. It was executively produced by the late Sydney Pollack and nicely written. Kevin Spacey, Tom Wilkinson, and Dennis Leary are wonderful, but Laura Dern steals the thing as the benumbed Harrison.

New Environs

The new neighborhood, into which we moved a couple weeks ago, has brought surprises. It's on the western slope of Tacoma, although T-Town is broken up geologically with deep gullies, so any slope, western or not, won't be a smooth one. In any event. the place is perched on a wee knoll close to the Narrows. We get to see all the weather come in from the Pacific, and a landscape-person we know claims that this part of T-Town has a micro-climate--wetter and warmer than the rest of Tacoma. The gardeners in the neighborhood--and in Tacoma, just about everyone is some kind of gardener--therefore experiment with plants of a semi-tropical nature, as well as growing the usual rhodies, azaleas, and evergreen shrubs/trees. A fellow blogger residing in Hawaii who knows something about Tacoma will find the reference to "semi-tropical" ridiculous, no doubt.

As with many American neighborhoods, this one is really neither working-class nor middle-class. Average income might put it into the latter class, but the range of occupations varies considerably. The neighborhood looks conventionally suburban--built in the 1960s, so "rambler" style houses more or less predominate, but it appears not to be a cookie-cutter tract. What you don't see are the Victorians and Craftsman houses that dominate the North End of T-Town--houses that are cheek-by-jowl and feature lots of stairs and small rooms.

The biggest surprise out here on the slope, at least for me, is the ethnic diversity. Yes, you have your basic Euro-Americans. My early working-hypothesis is that if there's an RV in the yard, the family is probably Anglo-American. I'd be happy to have the hypothesis disproved. I wonder if there are good RV ethnographies out there.

African Americans, Asian Americans (with considerable variety within this category), Hispanic Americans, and folks from the former Soviet Union dwell hereabouts as well. I know some of the latter come from Moldavia because I heard them say so. Others may come from Russia-proper or the Ukraine. I don't know. The older generation likes to walk around the neighborhood as if it were a village, and I guess in a way it is. The women wear scarves and woolen skirts. The men wear sport-coats and hats. That is, they remind me of some of the older folks from my hometown, which featured one Russian named Wanda, who'd get all dressed up and walk her two bull-dogs to "town" every day--"town" being a micro-village of 200 in the Sierra Nevada. It's not for me to say, really, but I think Wanda belonged in St. Petersburg, strolling the Nevsky Prospekt. But she married an American house-painter, and somehow they ended up in Sierra City. I still remember her long cashmere red coat.

There are two large hills between where we live and where we buy things, including groceries, so the aerobic opportunities are good, and when I'm out walking, the Moldavians are usually out, too. I wish I spoke their language. I sincerely enjoy how unamused, wary, but not unfriendly their visages appear. The older faces especially seem to report having experienced but survived much in life.

So far the western slope has been full of great surprises. I have informed our cat, a Russian blue, that Moldavians are hereabouts. So far, she has not registered a comment in response.

Nub of the Matter

Nub of the Matter

I hate to break this news to me,
but logic dictates I don't matter.
Out of not much matter, I am made,
and such matter as I do comprise
does not export significance.

Particles of matter disperse and reconvene anew,
I know. Any one state of particulate
coherence may be lovely (rhododendron
flower, son's smile) or may be me, whom
I like well enough, but in any case, what
so ensues? In relation to everything,
I'm merest particle of perpetual change.

Only matter can make me. I've already
been made up. Dissolution's penciled in
on a calendar Heraclitus keeps next
to his river of fire. Only God can make
me matter. This is the nub of the matter,
the God's honest truth.

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Nostalgia for Nothing

Nostalgia for Nothing

The things I don't remember
about childhood are the ones
I miss the most: nights I
slipped quickly into untroubled
sleep, pine-boughed days through
which I tumbled and pretended--
I'm just guessing here. How exotic

the town of Childhood seems.
To think: I once lived there, or so
I tell me. Childhood is a village
with its own sun and moon,
a silver silo full of long days,
a golden clock-tower. It is
a place filled with people
who passed on from here.

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

How to be a Cat

*
*
*
*
*
*
*How To Be A Cat

Be the noble curator of your excellence, for
fate made you perfect. In all things, be precise:
standing, sitting, staring, walking, sniffing, eating,
sleeping, killing. Never look in mirrors,
which are windows for the insecure. Sleep
in a variety of comfortable places, which
were created for you alone. Make acquaintances,
never friends. The latter tend to cling.

All phenomena are potential enemies. Therefore,
stare, listen, listen, stare, sniff, stare, listen, sniff,
hide, stare, and listen. Never perform tricks. Leave
those to dogs, who need to be wanted and want
to be liked. Talk as necessary, but never just
to chit-chat. Crack the whip of feline fury as
you wish. Keep the blades of your four feet sharp
and retracted like long-held resentments. Let
your soul's motor idle and strum the taut cord
of your body. No one owns you.

God made you and likes you best. In a world
that's dubious, you are certain. You never
make mistakes. You are entitled to what
you want; otherwise, why would you want it?
No matter what else you may be undertaking,
never be reticent to stop and groom yourself,
for you are superb, and self-maintenance
doubles as self-admiration. You are a cat,
a form of beauty that enters stealthily,
naps, and agrees to be admired. You
are a cat. Everything is as it should be.


Hans Ostrom
Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Folk Music

Folk Music

Some strumming sums up sundown,
down on the brown bank by a riverside--
be it banjo, guitar, mandolin--or
some kind of eerie zephyr overloaded
with the recently departed. "How did it
get started--this music?" Good question.
Save it for later. Now we must listen
to thump, pluck, and twang, above which
is sung a rough, melodious tale. The song
roots us to a plowed heritage, a furrowed
alluvial communal pain, a bedecked extravagance
of crops, and fatal work. Yes, we must drop
what we're thinking and listen for and under
a spell, hear harmonies swell against apron,
shack-wall, levee, and archive. The instruments
are made of wood. So are the trees. The songs
are made of air. So is the wind. The people
are made of memories. So are the songs,
the folks' songs.

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Wary Souls

Wary Souls

The soul enters
a public realm,
so soon becomes
the fool

by feeling it
must say or do
too much--dance
with Rule,

court Expectation.
Pride-inflation
balloons the soul,
who abhores

but can't elude
the puffery patrol.
Relentless baiters
of the soul,

ubiquitous louts:
shame on them.
Godspeed to those
souls who can

remain intact
and self-contained--
looking out of eyes,
sensing what is wise.

Wary souls--
seen them?
I have. They
wait and watch.

I watch and
wait for them
to exemplify for
me a better path.


Copyright Hans Ostrom 2008

This and That

Is there a large American media-outlet that can still practice worthy journalism? I doubt it. The NYT--either by choice or through incompetence--promulgated Bush's nonsense about about why we should invade and occupy Iraq. Tonight, CNN characterized Scott McClellan's "revelations" (Bush was more interested in propaganda than truth!) as a "bombshell." I can't wait for tomorrow's report concerning the fact that rain comes from clouds. . . .

. . . .Has anyone explored the possibilities of lunar power? Before I concede that I'm a lunatic, here's what I mean: the gravitational competition between Earth and Moon yanks the oceans around, creating huge forces of water that are not unlike the forces of water in dams. Why couldn't some smart engineers come up with a design for under-water turbines, strategically placed at, say, the Tacoma Narrows?

. . . .I'll need to be convinced that Obama can beat McCain. I know he beat Clinton, but McCain's campaign may be even more competent than hers--imagine that. And so far, I can't name one state that "voted" for Bush that won't vote for McCain.

. . . .I do wish someone would ask McCain and Obama who their favorite poets and novelists are. I realize there are four or five million more pressing issues out there, but I think the answers would serve as an ink-blot test.

. . . . .Tomorrow I'm going to hear a lecture by an expert in Science, Technology, and Society; by a biologist; and by an archaeologist who specializes in Holy Land digs. The topic is "Creation and Science." The Jesuits perceive no tension between humankind's science and God's creation, nor do I. For the sake of argument, let us assume that something, some force, created what is. Scientists study what is, or at least what they think is. What's the problem? I do not subscribe to the "intelligent design" "theory" because it is anthropomorphic. What we deem "intelligent" must seem moronic to any entity more intelligent than we are, including God. There's a good chance we are, at best, the rubes of the galaxy, if not of this sector of the universe. After all, we have fouled our nest. Not even birds do that.

What I'm Reading Now

Not that you asked, but here's what I'm reading (and I usually have 5-6 books going at once, a practice that drives some people with different reading habits figuratively crazy):

The Long Loneliness, Dorothy Day's autobiography--of interest to those wanting to know more not just about her but about radical politics in the early 20th century (socialism, anarchist-movements, organized labor, "distributism," anti-war movements, etc.), the Catholic Worker movement, whether politics and religion can intermingle effectively, women and religion, working-class life in Chicago and New York City, and the progressive/populist strain in Catholicism. Oddly enough, Day experienced the great S.F. earthquake, although she and her family were living in Berkeley, so their home wasn't destroyed. Apparently, the quake-proper lasted over 2 minutes. Of course, animals felt it coming as early as the evening before, she and others report.

Early Christian Rhetoric, Amos Wilder--older brother of Thornton.

The Beggar, by Naguib Mahfouz--Egyptian novelist, winner of the Nobel Prize.

The Walls of Jericho, a novel by Harlem Renaissance writer Rudolph Fisher. This partly for work, as I agreed to write an article on Fisher.

Selected Poems, A.R. Ammons. He was born in North Carolina but is associated, too, with New England. Free verse, but highly attentive to sound; rooted in everyday life, as W.C. Williams's poetry is, but Ammons strays from imagism and often writes tight little conceptual or meditative poems. I rather like this philosophical aspect of his poetry. He's also a master of very short poems. He can be whimsical, like cummings.

My books were finally paroled from storage, but they are in a half-way house situation--still sitting in boxes, awaiting the construction of shelves. More slowly than the tortoise, I'm cataloguing them on LibraryThing.

That's my bookish update. I'll leave you (or someone) with an epigram from Oscar Wilde: "A cynic knows the price of everything but the value of nothing."

More Epigrams

Epigrams are satisfying to try to write also because they are free-standing assertions, the rest of the essay having disappeared or never materialized. This situations is quite pleasing when one wearies of encumbering his or her opinions with evidence. Sententiousness Lite! I do encourage you to write epigrams, of which there cannon be an over-abundance.

Some additional epigrams:

1. No one has ever said to me, "Your Majesty, I beseech you"; what a curious oversight.

2. There are no beautiful cities.

3. It's no accident that we haven't heard much about Pavlov's Cat.

4. If regret were the same as repair, I'd feel better about the past.

5. The Earth is a function of the sun, which is an obscure star, so let's not get ahead of ourselves.

6. Destiny is a manifestly melodramatic concept.

7. Hope is one way wisdom expresses fondness for folly.

8. Reason is like a long, well mapped road. We should take it as far as it goes but know it will stop; then we must rely on something else.

9. Poverty is hell.

10. Evil is inexplicable.

11. Memo to self: You are here because some people were generous and other people were mistreated; therefore, you should be thankful and mindful.

12. A cold night is nobody's friend. A mild evening is nobody's enemy.

13. Receiving an award is a way in which one's obscure future tricks one's gullible present.

14. If, in a stressful situation, you don't know what else to do, then drink some water, eat some food, and take a nap.

15. Atheists should have enough faith in atheism not to try to convert believers.

16. If you feel compelled to smell left-over food to determine whether it's edible, it isn't.

17. Never stand in line to give someone money.

18. If in doubt about your behavior, tell the truth and then apologize.

19. Humility is the temporary suspension of the amnesis that led one to forget he or she is flawed and unimportant.

20. Whatever a cat does is done for a good reason, which is not always apparent to humans.

21. God is everything added together plus one.

22. Grace is the sum that results from adding love to absurdity.

23. Faith is getting out of bed after you have slept and going to sleep after you have been awake.

24. Of course we must seek answers, and of course we must expect that when we find them, they will have changed the questions.

25. A system which demands conformity is not sure about its rationale for being and is probably in flight from its inherent flaws. A system is more likely to adapt and to thrive when it is able to absorb creative tension and the interplay of difference.

Epigrams

I've always liked reading epigrams. Sometimes they're jokes, as in Twain's "Wagner's music is better than it sounds," sometimes they're bits of folk-wisdom ("A stitch in time saves nine"), and sometimes they're philosophical appetizers, as in "Narrative is the art of making time legible," which I think Kate Haake wrote, but I'm not sure--she may have adapted it from someone.

I've long wanted to write epigrams; perhaps very short poems qualify as such. When I have the pithy phrasing ready, the wisdom-part fails me, and when I'm able at least to fake some wisdom, the pithiness isn't there, but I decided to forge on and write some.

Epigrams

1. Most epigrams are too sententious to love but too brief to resent.

2. Epigrams are linguistic actors pretending to be wisdom; they are the bit-players of philosophical drama.

3. A good question is a great gift. A great question is a revelation.

4. Ultimately, competition is tedious, and cooperation is intriguing.

5. Prayer is the art of being still when your mind wants to be in flight.

6. Poetry is a way language plays with humans.

7. All friendships should last longer.

8. All novels could be shorter; even in almost perfect novels, there's at least one extra word.

9. One's name is an accident that feels like an inevitability.

10. If you're illiterate, you can't read this, but you will not have missed anything.

Blog-Map of Sweden

I just found a blog-map of Sweden. What's not to like about that?

http://bloggkartan.se/klick/

I wonder if there's a blog-map of the U.S.

Ecology

It's a bit disorienting for me to witness and experience the problems we--the U.S. and the rest of the world--are having with starvation, global warming, fuel, and poverty.

I don't know exactly why, but I got involved with what was known as the "ecology" movement as early as 1970. By involved I mean chiefly interested: I started doing some reading. Like The Population Bomb. Silent Spring (of course). Ray Dasmann's The Destruction of California. A book called Nixon and the Environment. Oddly enough, a philosophy professor of mine at a wee community college ended up crafting a manifesto for Deep Ecology. His name is George Sessions. He brought ecological thought into a year-long history of philosophy--in 1972. Well done, George. He used an article by Lynn White--called something like "The Judeo-Christian Roots of the Ecology Crisis." Not a terribly popular article at the time, but now, guess what: even fundamentalist Christian churches are interested in the environment.

Then I joined Friends of the Earth, which at the time was considered the more radical counterpart to the Sierra Club. I don't think Friends of the Earth exists anymore. They published a newsletter called Not Man Apart, the title of which is an echo from a poem by Robinson Jeffers. I wrote letters to Congress. I remember sending some money to a project aimed at saving eagle-habitats. The (bald) eagle is doing all right now, but I can't take any credit. The amount I sent in was minute, and who knows whether that project helped at all? One throws some cash into the abyss of time and hopes it helps.

The dire predictions about over-population, over-consumption, bad planning, and laissez-faire economics seem to be coming true. A question I had back then was whether capitalism was compatible with environmentalism. Communism, of course, was no bargain for the environment, chiefly because in the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe, it was trying to match the U.S. and the West factory for factory, bomb for bomb. So my question wasn't and isn't a loaded one. I just always wondered how a system driven by the illusion of unlimited supplies, unlimited amounts of land, and "need" where there is no need (I do not anything they want to sell me on TV for $19.95, but wait, there's more) could last in a finite system.

When we first moved to Tacoma, we had to recycle everything voluntarily. We'd load up newspaper, glass, metal, cardboard, and plastic, and take it out to a place near the dump. They paid pennies per pound, and we always had a mock celebration when we'd get a $1.50 for a whole load of stuff.

I am well aware of Jimmy Carter's faults, but I still don't know why the U.S. didn't listen to him about energy. Okay, I do know why the U.S. didn't listen to him. Because he was drowned out by the din of corporations and the advertisers' fondest dream, Ronald Reagan. And because no one likes to plan ahead more than about a week.

When it comes to things like the Civil Rights Movement and a comprehensive fuel-plan, I get very impatient with the theoretical arguments and free-market or states'-rights excuses (respectively, in reverse). In fact, the federal government does need to step in during crises and do the right thing, and people have to let corporations and states know that they, the people, are going to go along with the program. Eisenhower had to send troops to Little Rock. White citizens of Arkansas had to back off and take their lumps.

Somebody needs to set some tough-ass mileage-standards, jump-start renewable energy-sources, and tax the living daylights out of the oil giants to grab back some of that stolen cash and inject it into research, etc. I know the arguments about how "the market is working" to create new kinds of cars and reduce fuel-consumption, but the market never works fast enough, and the market doesn't plan ahead beyond the next quarterly stock-report. If the Saudis accidentally put "too much" oil on the market, the original Hummer would be back on the market, driven by soccer-moms and soccer-dads who can't resist advertising (and who can't park the damned beast). Actually, big gub-ment, as Reagan pronounced it, comes in handy sometimes, for pragmatic reasons. And Reagan himself believed in more big gub-ment than did Carter. Reagan began the gigantic deficits, and he injected billions into the military-industrial complex. He just didn't like things such as unions (workers' right), federal limits on corporations, and stuff for poor and working people.

And so ends a Friday rant.

A Glimpse in Words

One of my favorite detective novelists is Georges Simenon, who wrote many dozens of short, crisp novels featuring the Parisian police-inspector, Jules Maigret, an ursine man who's both methodical and intuitive, who smokes a pipe, drinks beer and liquor, and who often goes home for lunch, for which Madame Maigret has fixed him a chicken roasted with herbs and wine. There's always a believable psychological angle to the plot--usually nothing bizarre, usually something rooted in common human behavior, such as jealousy, envy, or insecurity.

I was reading one of the few translated Maigret novels I hadn't read before--Maigret Among the Rich--and encountered this description of Maigret, who's arrived on the scene of--you guessed it--a murder, but the victim is a well known French aristocrat:

"[Maigret] had to get used to the unfamiliar setting, to a house, to a way of life, to people who had their own peculiar habits, their own way of thinking and expressing themselves.
With certain categories of human beings, it was relatively easy, for instance with his more or less regular customers or with people like them.
With others he had to start from scratch every time, especially as he distrusted rules and ready-made ideas.
In this new case, he was laboring under an additional handicap. He had made contact, this morning, with a world which was not only very exclusive but which for him, on account of his childhood, was situated on a very special level."

I glimpsed just a wee bit of myself in this description--not that I imagine myself to be a detective or French. But I share the fictional Maigret's sense of nonconformity, which is nonetheless encased in apparently conforming behavior. What could be a more conformist job that policing? And yet Maigret has to get used to every new situation--because he doesn't trust "rules and ready-made ideas." He remains something of a foreigner in his native land. Among the rich, he feels especially strange because he's not rich but also because his father worked for the rich. My father didn't work for the rich, but I still feel strange among people who have substantial wealth. Like Maigret, I feel as if I should keep an eye on them to see how they go about things--what their rules and ready-made ideas are. Doing so doesn't make a lot of sense; it's not as if I'm going to live amongst them or be their friend. Nonetheless, a certain wariness seems to be called up by the situation, and I liked glimpsing a representation of that in this description of Maigret. (I also like the fact that Simenon has Maigret think of the people he usually investigates and arrests as his "customers.")

Simenon happens to be a fine novelist, not just a fine detective novelist. But as wildly popular as he is--he's in Agatha Christie's league--his books are an acquired taste. If you pick up one and "get" the comparatively low-key but tautly written approach, you'll want to devour the rest. If not, not. Unlike Christie's books, however, Simenon's move quickly. Simenon doesn't rush, but he doesn't dawdle, either.

Maigret's among my favorite fictional detectives--along with Miss Marple, Sherlock (of course), Kurt Wallander (Henning Mankell's Swedish policeman), Nero Wolfe, Poirot, and Sam Spade. Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone is appealing, as is Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins. Maigret might have a slight edge over them all, in the sense that I never seem to tire of following him around his fictional Paris and other locales, including his drafty office, his cafes, and his bistros. He seems to fit in, but in fact, the world doesn't fit him so well. The world takes some getting used to, in Maigret's opinion.

Ezra Pound on Gloom

Here is a relatively early poem by Ezra Pound:

Ballad on Gloom

FOR God, our God is a gallant foe
That playeth behind the veil.

I have loved my God as a child at heart
That seeketh deep bosoms for rest,
I have loved my God as a maid to man—
But lo, this thing is best.

To love your God as a gallant foe that plays behind the veil;
To meet your God as the night winds meet beyond Arcturus' pale.

I have played with God for a woman,
I have staked with my God for truth,
I have lost to my God as a man, clear-eyed—
His dice be not of ruth.

For I am made as a naked blade,
But hear ye this thing in sooth

Who loseth to God as man to man
Shall win at the turn of the game.
I have drawn my blade where the lightnings meet
But the ending is the same:

For God, our God is a gallant foe that playeth behind the veil.
Whom God deigns not to overthrow hath need of triple mail.

The diction here is pre-Modernist, especially for Pound, who would soon advocate the overthrow of almost everything Victorian and Edwardian in poetry, but the sentiments are certainly Modern. God isn't quite dead yet, in the sense Nietzsche meant that phrase, but God is certainly complicated, even inscrutable, in the poem. The speaker, however, remains distinctly heroic--and male. The last line is darned good: If God decides not to overthrow you--well, that's when you'll really need to be tough.

Is the poem really about gloom--despair and depression? Maybe. It's certainly full of roiling gray emotions. I'm not sure we've advance all that far, since the poem was written, with regard to gloom. I think many people still see depression as a choice and regard the pharmaceutical treatments of it as mere snake-oil. True, pharmaceutical companies have an interest in peddling new pills; on the other hand, one may follow the trail from a pill back to the science, in most cases, and "the mind," whatever we consider it to be, is encased in the brain, which is an organic thing, which can malfunction because of chemical problems. It is only natural for humans, especially American ones, to believe that gloom can be overcome by the will, or by talking (therapy), or by battling with God (Pound). Even if there is some truth in the value of will, therapy, and a desire to do cosmic battle, one may (ironically) be better prepared for all this activity by getting the right brain-medicine. If you get a bacterial infection, anti-biotics are just the ticket. It's not really that much of a stretch to see that if the brain isn't hitting on all chemical cylinders, some chemicals might work. But of course we cling to the old mind/body dualism, one of the most intractable of the old beliefs.

Ironically, Pound himself would end up being sent to a mental "institution" for many years, partly as a result of his having made radio broadcasts in support of Mussolini during World War II (treason). He also seemed unfortunately obsessed with Jews, and even referred to Roosevelt using an anti-Semitic slur, in the Cantos. Probably something organic went wrong with his brain, something to turn him a bit paranoid. He might have been diagnosed as "bi-polar" in this day and age. A pill might have helped. Who knows? He certainly was a scrappy fellow and a combative poet--willing to take on God in this poem. It's interesting to see him in his pre-Modern phase, using antique diction but expressing post-Darwinian sentiments. Sleep well, Ezra.

Lingo Online

Luckily, no one consulted me when computerese was being developed. I don't think I would have come up with "download," for example. I think I simply would have used "capture," "seize," or "receive." "Thanks for sending me the file. My computer seized it." Instead of "upload," I probably just would have used "load." I used to load a variety of trucks with a variety of things--lumber, stones, bags of cement, tools, topsoil. "Up"-load seems kind of redundant.

I don't know about surfing the internet. I think that's what we call, in the business, a mixed metaphor. If you tried to surf over or through a net, you'd get caught and take a terrible tumble because nets are for catching things. Surfing the electron ocean, maybe: that might work. Crawling on the web seems problematic, too. Who came up with "spam"? That seems like kind of an insult to a perfectly good artificial canned meat, which I think was invented during World War II. I think it was a kind of army-ration first.

"Podcast" I don't quite get either. To "fly-cast" is to cast an artificial bug out onto the water, in hopes that a fish will be fooled. When you podcast, you really don't cast pods at anybody, do you? I guess they wanted to distinguish broadcasting on a small scale from regular broadcasting. Why not say narrow-casting, then? Or thin-casting? Micro-casting?

I don't like PC, either--personal computer. Computers operate because they're impersonal; that's the whole point--all those impersonal zeros and ones, codes etched in silicon, hard-drives whirring. "Laptop" is pretty inaccurate, too. Almost no one places those things on a lap. People use tables or floors.

But, as I think I've mentioned before, poets aren't to be trusted to name commercial things. A car company asked poet Marianne Moore to name a car, and she named it "The Tyrolean Turtle-Top." I'd probably come up with something like the Ford Fate, or the Chevrolet Post-Colonial. The Angst would be a good name for a German car. If it were a convertible, you could call it the Doppelganger, with two dots over the a. I wouldn't mind driving a Volvo Brooder or a Saab Morose. Perhaps a Ferrari Vengeance. The Renault Cogito, named in honor of Descartes. The Toyota Tedium, for those long commutes. A Honda Absurdity.

What line is one on when one is online?

Sonnet: More of the Same?

A while back I was reading one of John Ashbery's books of poems, Where Shall I Wander [no question mark], and in there is a poem that alludes to sonnets as "more of the same"; of course, Ashbery's poem's in free verse, and, as I guessed would be the case when I began reading it, he ends it at the 13th, not the 14th line--one final passive-aggressive insult to the fair sonnet-form. Ashbery is very clever.

And he does have a point. The ever-increasing number on the sonnetometer, which began ticking in the Renaissance, must be in the billions now, and perhaps this suggests that the form is a formula with which to beat poetry over the head. Another way to look at the issue, however, is to view the form as ever-adaptable, as only an illusory formula, rather like the rules of baseball, with its phantom strike-zone, its phantom tagging of the bag at second base, the four illusory "pitches" in an intentional walk, the trench the pitcher digs next to "the rubber," the third- and first-base coaches' "boxes," from which the coaches routinely wander, the "foul pole," which is really the "fair pole," and on and on, ad infinitum.

In honor of the sonnet's mercurial form and in response to Ashbery's 13-line non-sonnet, I have, unfortunately, made the sonnetometer tick once again.

Sonnet: Less of the Different

(after Ashbery)

A sonnet's "just more of the same"? Uh, no.
It's rather like less of the different.
There is no formula involved, you know.
True, syllables and lines and rhymes get spent
At predetermined intervals: mirage
Of order. Inside, sonnets are a mess
Of words, a slew of syntax, a barrage
Linguistically set off; are nonetheless
Provisionally impish--and as free
As freest verse to chat up any ear
Or signal any eye. The form, you see,
Is just a well mapped route from which to veer.
A sonnet is a disobedience
Of sounds, a flaunt of form, a tease of sense.

Hans Ostrom

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Shapiro on Auden and Baudelaire

Somehow I just stumbled on a short essay Karl Shapiro wrote about a poem by W.H. Auden--actually the essay's about Auden himself. I found the thing on the Kenyon Review website. Shapiro's piece appeared in the 100th volume of the review, apparently. It's classic Shapiro--brash, brusque, opinionated, and against the grain. And quick. Shapiro's prose is always in a hurry, whereas his poems, though not ponderous, take their time.

He exalts Auden, says Auden's reputation is secure whereas T.S. Eliot's is not, and refers to Baudelaire as, I think, a furniture salesman and a travel agent. I feel safe asserting that this is a way of saying that, as a poet, Baudelaire is over-rated. On the other hand, I've met some great furniture salespeople and travel agents, so I don't know that Karl had to denigrate them as he was going after Charlie. Shapiro argues that the one thing a poet should not ask himself or herself (in his or her poetry) is "Who am I?" He suggests, however, that if most poets in the 20th century followed that advice, 90% of the poetry would disappear. I think he may have said the same about politics and poetry once , meaning 180% of the poetry would disappear.

In any event, it was good to be reminded of the iconoclastic Shapiro, his admiration of Auden, and his having been unamused by Eliot, or at least by the effects Eliot had on 20th century poetry. Here is the link:

http://kenyonreview.org/blog/?p=662#more-662

Books on the Bed

I've kept books on the bed for as long as I can remember, at least since grade school. To those who co-inhabit interior spaces with me, the habit is often and understandably annoying. Why can't I just keep books on shelves and a nightstand (now there's a good word, nightstand) like everyone else? I do. It's just that I like books on the bed, too. Before I go to sleep, I like to have a wee heap of books to paw through. If the heap's not there, I get a little panicky. Sometimes I'll pick up one book, read a page or so, become dis-satisfied--it might be a good book, just not right for that moment--drop it, and reach for another. This behavior is less impulsive, if not less compulsive, than that of Samuel Johnson, who, upon becoming dissatisfied with a book, immediately stopped reading it and hurled it across the room.

Of course, I quickly accumulate too many books on the bed and am induced, by myself or someone else, to thin them out. Sometimes they fall off in the night, like sailors going over the side, into the ocean, their ship tossed by the tossing and turning. Sometimes a book will end up in the bed. I don't quite know how this happens, but it does. If this were the Sixties or the Seventies, and I had a lot of money and time, and I lived in New York, I'd probably have an "analyst"--a Freudian psychiatrist--and I'd talk to him or her about the books on my bed. Nothing would come of the analysis except a larger bank-account for the analyst, who would spend summers at Martha's Vineyard, in a cottage, where he or she would keep books on the bed.

Currently, the bed-library (it changes all the time) includes the following: There Is Confusion [how apt] a novel by Jessie Redmon Fauset; On Dialogue, a light philosophical book about communication, by David Bohm--quite intriguing, actually (Bohm liked to have people sit in a circle and talk--about no particular subject, at first--as way for them to observe how they communicated, unveil their prejudices, stances, poses, and habits; Waiting For God, a book of essays and letters by Simone Weil; the Poems of Edward Thomas (a World War I era poet, killed in the war); Classic Fiction of the Harlem Renaissance, edited by William L. Andrews; The Hollow, a Hercule Poirot novel by Agatha Christie; God's Trombones, by James Weldon Johnson--a book of poems based on sermons; if more people had read this book, they wouldn't have been so shocked by what the Reverend Wright has to say; Political Ideologies: Their Origins and Impact, by Leon Baradat; The Seven Dials Mystery, by Agatha Christie; and an Oxford hardback edition of the King James Bible. Plus a notebook and a few pens. Occasionally a Russian-blue cat (the color is actually gray), who is unamused by most books but will deign to sniff one or two sometimes. What could possibly be in a book that a cat doesn't already know, with great and final certainty?

Neither Christie novel has grabbed me so far. I've read a bunch of the stuff in the HR anthology already. Baradat's book is okay. I've read God's Trombones, but I want to read it again. Same with Edward Thomas. I like to dip into Weil's book. If I go with the KJB, I'll probably look at some psalms. Who knows? Maybe I'll write in the notebook. Or go to sleep. Or see what the other person is reading. I might replace this heap of books with a new heap tomorrow. Right now, that sounds like a brilliant idea. Okay, Bohm it is--On Dialogue. We'll see how it goes. Bedside reading is one thing; bed-top reading is quite another. The latter is the mark of a true bibliophile.

How To Write A Poem: A Poem

How To Write A Poem

First, clear the area of critics.
Next, grab an image or a supple
length of language and get going.
It’s all you now. Mumble, sing,
murmur, rage, rumble, mock,
quote, mimic, denounce, tell,
tease. Recall, refuse, regret,
reject. Dive, if you dare, into
psychic murk. Down there grab
the slick tail of something quick.
Hold it if you can. Meanwhile,
bellow, bellyache,
cry, or call, for all I care. I care.
Invent like the conning, conniving
poet you are, you lying spitter
of literature, you. Make it for
yourself and fit it to you. You
might as well. Readers, editors,
teachers, preachers, and publishers
aren’t your friends. Other poets
are busy with their own poems
and other problems. Famous poets
are off being remarkable geniuses,
eccentric visionaries, sunken wrecks,
dead, dead-drunk, or pains in the ass.
Say what you see, see what you say,
write it for love and for free. Own what
you write and give it away. Language
will always love you back, so lay
a wet kiss on the words, and when and if
in doubt, remember: what you want
to be is to be writing.

Hans Ostrom

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Technology and I

I've been invited to present at many a panel-discussion in academe, but I think the most surprising invitation so far came about two weeks ago, when someone invited me to speak about how I use technology as a professor. The invitation seemed as counterintuitive as inviting a hermit to speak about social etiquette.

One of the presenters, a professor of political science, really is gung-ho about technology and pedagogy. He revises a student-centered departmental blog with bunches of links every day. He uses Moodle and wikis and facebook. He's 15-20 years younger than I and brings a certain comfort-level to this stuff that I probably don't. He's enthralled by the possibilities. It was fun seeing him unveil some of what he's doing.

--Not that I'm uncomfortable with technology. Just slow. And occasionally skeptical. I never liked overhead projectors, for example: more trouble than they're worth. The same goes for Blackboard.

But I think a professorial web-page (on which one can post, for example, syllabi), facebook (on which one may create academic-related groups), wikis (group-writing-projects in cyberspace), and podcasting all have huge potential, so I'm slowly getting involved in these. Of course, email has been a godsend for teaching and scholarship.

In 1984, I attended one of the first "computers and composition" conferences in the U.S.--near Salt Lake City. What we thought would happen with computers and composition really didn't happen--the totally wired writing-classroom, in which the PC would be a kind of textbook. But of course computers have affected contemporary rhetoric, and the teaching thereof, in innumerable other ways.

Interestingly, two of the most skeptical colleagues at the presentation were far younger than I--humanists who, I suspect, both think all this technology is merely decorative. Instead of seeing possibilities, I think they see wasted time--or something. Another colleague just seemed confused or wearied by all the possible combinations--a blog linked to LibraryThing, youtube, and facebook--wikis on Moodle, gravy on noodles--help!! She had that too-much-information look.

I rather like just rummaging around the technology-dump, like a bear, picking things up to see if they're "edible" (useful). I'm not an enthusiast, per se, but I love the possibilities the technologies sometimes suggest.

Writing a blog has been a very nice surprise, and as I told the group, watching students write blogs and reading the blogs have been a fulfillment of something composition-studies has been interested in for 30+ years: trying to create "real" rhetorical situations (as opposed to the artificial 5-paragraph "theme" that only the prof reads) for students. Writing a blog is a great way for students or anyone else to work on writing, no matter what else the blog achieves. I think writing a blog can also help students take their academics more seriously, for they may start sharing their viewpoints with the world, may craft points of view, get responses, and evolve as thinkers.

There's a certain percentage of faculty, staff, and students that is way ahead of me on technology-and-academics, and it will only widen the lead. But I'm surprised by how relatively interested, curious, and engaged I am--especially compared with some younger folk.

And I do have to put in my usual defense of Luddites, who were not so much opposed to technology as they were in favor of keeping their jobs. When the van backs up and robots start unloading Robo-Profs to teach English, I'll probably already be out in the virtual pasture, blogging or podcasting.

A Wave in San Diego

A Wave in San Diego

A wave begins as a shrug
in the Pacific. Its shape is
the form beginning takes
just before becoming dissolves
into not-any-more. A lovely
curve of water lifts itself and
is carved by its own foamy,
bladed edge. You can't say
for sure the sudsy bubbles
frothing sand a minute later
were ever that wave, nor can
you prove they weren't of
that wave. You can believe
you remember the wave,
but that belief dissolves. You
can take a picture, or several,
but you will have a picture, or
several, not the wave. Perception
rolls through mind like a wave,
breaks on a shore of forgetting,
and more waves are always coming
until mind ends. Waves of perception
start with a wrinkle in reality,
take and give shape simultaneously,
as when for example you stand looking
at a wave in San Diego.

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom