Some Favorite Asian American Writers

A long, long time ago (jeez, I sound like Don McLean), I created an Asian American literature class for the English Department's curriculum, chiefly because I thought the course should exist. I'd taught American literature in a variety of venues, and I'd been concentrating a lot on African American literature, but I was straying pretty far afield, and I remember having to do a ton of reading just to come close to being adequately prepared. I was prepared enough to start preparing, in a way.

I think I taught the class two or three times before, thank goodness, the department hired someone with expertise in the field. I haven't taught the class since, and the parting was most cordial indeed. The course and I thanked each other for the good times and parted ways. In addition to exploring interesting texts from good writers with interested students, I also remember a few students who were from Asian American backgrounds, who were not English majors, but who ventured into a senior-level English class because they were curious about/hungry for the material, or perhaps because they were simply curious. I also remember students-in-general being surprised by certain basic facts of American history.

One of innumerable complexities about reading, studying, and teaching this literature is that, of course, it springs from so many different communities, which themselves include many complexities. At a basic level, you have literature produced by persons with filial or cultural ties with Japan, China, the Philippines, Korea, Viet Nam, Cambodia, and so on, and so forth. Then just imagine how complex each of these nations/cultures is, and how particular any one writer's connection to the culture--and to U.S. culture--is. Yikes. Moreover, you may also encounter writers whose backgrounds weave together heritages from two or more of these cultures. I was very glad to have gone a few kilometers down this side-road of reading and teaching, but (to shift metaphors), I knew from the beginning I was merely a place-holder for someone who actually knew something about the field.

I'm still very fond of two anthologies, The Big Aiiieeeee, a landmark anthology of Asian-American literature, controversial because all anthologies are, but also controversial because of Frank Chin's combative introduction, although "combative" may be a stretch. The other one is Charlie Chan Is Dead, a fine anthology of short fiction, really superb.

Among the areas I fell very short in was drama.

I'm not exactly sure why, but I think my favorite Asian American novel, and one of my favorite novels in general, is Bone, by Fae Myenne Ng. The narrative voice and characters seem just right, and the plot is well constructed. All the proportions of the novel seem balanced. It's set in San Francisco.

Of course I like The Joy Luck Club, too, just maybe not as much as other people do. I also like China Boy, by Gus Lee, in part because Gus's primary career is not writing (or wasn't then) and in part because it's a heck of a story. I feel okay about calling Gus Gus because I interviewed him once, we got on well, and it turned out we went to the same university. Homebase, by Shawn Wong, is a classic that's earned that status. A spare, well written novel.

Favorite poets include Hisaye Yamamoto and Marilyn Chin. A terrific anthology of poetry is Watermark, edited by Barbara Tranh, which features poems by Vietnamese-American poets.

Chin is a splendid poet. She really knows what she's doing.

Of course, Japanese-American internment, the use of Chinese immigrants (among others) as lowly paid, overworked labor (especially on railroads), only to be followed by deportation, the hostility toward different immigrant-groups, inter-generational conflict, and gender-conflict loom large in much of this literature, as does the question of the extent writers want or need to identify themselves as "Asian American." I think I first offered the course over 15 years ago, so I can only imagine how much more literature is out there and how much more complex the discussions are. I haven't tried to keep up in any kind of systematic way, partly because I started working hard in African American literature and ended up co-editing a 5-volume encyclopedia on the subject. Encyclopedias are kind of time-consuming, believe it or not.

I think I'll end with my sleeper-favorite book: Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers, by Lois-Ann Yamanaka. It's a hilarious book concerning a working-class family in Hawaii and narrated by a spunky, irreverent young woman, very much her own person but also in possession of just a faint trace of Huck Finn and other famous fictional mischief-makers. Yamanaka has published a couple books since then, including Name Me Nobody.

It was too much work to get such a course going, essentially from scratch, but I'm glad I didn't discover that until afterward. I can always lie like a football coach and say that "it built character."

One semester the scheduler put the class upstairs in the old gym on campus, several steep flights up in a weird little classroom. Just getting to class was an adventure. Good times.

Assistance

I played an exceedingly small role in a wee fundraiser yesterday (and at some point I must look up "fundraiser" on the OED online). My role was to cook a lot of minestrone soup (Marcella Hazan's receipe), which was to be eaten by women tennis players after they played a kind of round-robin tournament, the occasion of which would be used to raise money for Nativity House, a drop-in center in Tacoma that hosts about 200 persons per day.

Although Nativity House is affiliated with a Catholic parish, there's no preaching in connection with the services, and no one cares what the spiritual beliefs of the visitors are. NH plays a key role because homeless persons who sleep in the shelters usually have to be out by 6:00 a.m., and they can't go back until about 6:00 p.m. Meanwhile, they need meals, shelter, and companionship, all of which they get at Nativity House, where they can also pick up some replacement-clothing, make phone calls, pick up mail, look for work, and just hang out, enjoying each other's company. There aren't shower facilities there, but such facilities exist close by, and the NH staff can direct the guests there.

At the fundraiser, I learned that about 30 % of the homeless and the guests at NH house are chronically homeless, due largely to disabilities, addictions, and/or severe mental illness. But 70 per cent are on the streets usually because of a bad break, so to speak (not that mental illness or addiction aren't bad breaks themselves). They lost their job or their apartment. They suffered domesitic abuse. A series of calamaties beyond their control afflicted them. And so on. As one might expect, the "census" at NH and other facilities is way up because of the rotten economy.

The director of NH told an amusing story concerning a plumber who came to fix a leak at NH. The director, in addition to paying the plumber, said, "Thank you." The plumber said, "No, thank you. I was a guest here once. You helped me get back on my feet." The plumber was making 40 bucks a week, had a place to live, and so on. A basic turn-around story, the way it ought to work.

The director also said that NH and agencies like it are in need of men's clothing but tend to get more women's clothing, partly because middle-class women have more clothes to give away, and because they give them away, but also because a woman can wear a man's flannel shirt (for example) but a man can't really wear a woman's silk blouse, chiefly because of the size. So if you're a man with clothes to spare, think about giving them to a place like NH. Places like that need volunteers, too, especially during the week--to help cook a meal or just to hang out, play cards, create some society.


Assistance

You know what? I might get a chance today
to stay out of someone's way, and stay out of the way
I shall. Sometimes it makes a difference. I might
get a chance to be kind. I can do that. I might be
invited to get angry. I hope to decline unless
anger's a short, quick step to appropriate action.

All over the world, people are saying, thinking,
or hoping, "Help." There's always an opportunity
to help, even on days following days when I didn't help.
Good grief! Another opportunity, and another, even
when you pass up the first or second one. Chances
to assist flow steadily like a creek. At a time and place

of your choosing, just step up and help. I think
I'll try that, too. Maybe we'll run into each other.
Maybe we'll need help, too. Why don't I end this
thing now and go help? I'll see you around.

Apostrophe's Extinction Signals Apocalypse's Arrival

(image: representation of an apostrophe, or of a tear, or of both)


One occasional reader of this blog relayed a link to a news story which reports that new or replaced street signs that once contained apostrophes will no longer contain them because "they're confusing and old fashioned"--the apostrophes, not the signs or decision-makers, apparently.

The link: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,486144,00.html

That this event should occur in Britain, where precise men with incendiary tempers such as A.E. Housman, Samuel Johnson, Lord Byron, and Alexander Pope once strode the earth (owing to some infirmities, Byron and Pope hobbled a bit, no worries), strikes an apostrophe-lover with a combination of punches.

Nonetheless, we who teach English and/or care about the language saw this one coming decades ago, for the apostrophe has been disappearing from college papers (for example--this is not to put the blame on college students) for a long time. We "correct" the papers, write something in the margin, perhaps even spend seconds in class discussing the apostrophe. The students, ignore our corrections, marginalia, and blather, as they should. They are college students. They have certain duties to uphold. Each has his or her role in the academy.

And having studied German, I knew that the possessive apostrophe had disappeared long ago.

Nonetheless, let me point out that the reasoning behind the decision to eliminate the apostrophe would not pass muster with Hume's (or Humes) or any philosopher's big toe, not considered the seat of logic.

The apostrophe's old-fashioned? Well, so is printing itself, which dates back to the 15th century. So is the monarchy. So are those goddamned wigs they wear in court over there. I say the wigs should go first; then maybe we'll pretend to discuss the demise of the apostrophe. The apostrophe has a clear semiotic use. The wig has a murky one, at best. The apostrophe is unobtrusive. The wig is not, and I'd (Id) be willing to bet that those wigs stink. I've never known an apostrophe to need a good cleaning or to harbor fleas.

Confusing? Imagine a sign that read St. John's Wood. Or St. John's Wood, One Kilometer. I'm just not feeling the confusion coming from either sign.

Now consider a sign that says William's Pub. Then one that says Williams Pub. The first sign is not confusing. The pub belongs to William, or at least William figures or figured in the history of the pub. Such niceties may be sorted out nicely in the pub over a pint, but they are niceties, not sources of confusion. Now consider the second sign. Is it William's Pub, singular? Williams' Pub, plural--the pub owned by the Williams family? One is so disgusted by the lack of clarity that one will go to another pub.

One might assert that the absence of an apostrophe will either have no effect (let's [or lets] be generous and say 10% of the time) or will, indeed, cause confusion, an absence of precision being more likely to create confusion than a persence of precision (that is my assumption)

Let us further assume that those in charge, or what Gogol called Persons of Consequence, are lying. They want to to save money and time, which are the same thing in their minds. It takes X amount of time to punch an apostrophe into a sign and then paint it. Multiply by Y, and you have an amount (illusory, of course) that you are saving. Read Dickens' [or I guess I should write Dickens and surrender) Hard Times for a flavor of this mentality.

Or maybe this is their revenge on English teachers!

I don't (I mean dont) like the slothful use of "old fashioned," unsupported by data, although my use of slothful begged the question, I grant. I don't like an assertion concerning "useless" when the assertion is not followed closely by reasoning, logic, or at least something dressed as good sense.

I like the apostrophe. It adds clarity. Nonetheless, I let it go long ago, even as I ritualisitically point out its absence (or should I write it's absence?) or its incorrect presence in papers.

With the impending official demise of the apostrophe in England, the apocaplyse's, I mean the apocolypses, intial phase has begun. Whats a person to do? Store a years worth of food? :-)

Listen, this is how loyal, to a fault, not just to people but apostrophes I am: In those rare instances when I use my telephone to "text" (sigh, text is a verb), I use the apostrophe. What percentage of texters use it? I would guess 1% at most. Nonetheless, all hail the corporate design-dude or design-dudette who allowed the phone to be programmed to include an apostrophe. Hes my hero or shes my hero, of sorts. I mean he's my hero or she's my hero.

National Lampoon might write the headline this way: ENGLAND BAN'S [SIC] APOSTROPHE, GOES IMMEDIATELY TO HELL'S ANTECHAMBER.

"Should all apostrophes be forgot and ne-ver come to mind . . . ." Cue tears, pull out handkerchief, head to William's Pub.

Patronizers

Samuel Johnson famously described a (financial) patron as one who ignores a drowning man but then, when the man has already fought his way to shore, encumbers him with assistance. I believe he was directing his lack of amusement at a person who had promised to help him pay for the great dictionary on which Johnson was working. That dictionary remains one of the quasi-miraculous achievements in scholarship. The man wrote a dictionary of the English language mostly by himself--he had a few of what we might call research-assistants--and he pulled many of the explanatory examples of definitions from his memory.

Patronizers are a different sort of creatyres, One doesn't expect money or anything else for them. One simply expects false, duplicitous "praise" or politeness that's been on the shelf way past the sell-date.


The Patronizers

I've grown to appreciate the patronizers,
who stand on an invisible wee step-ladder
and speak down. Theirs is a subtle art.
They upholster ill will with civility. They
dismiss by squeezing out an anemic compliment.

Relentlessly, they try to shrink the world
as they assume they expand. At least
the old patrons used to hand over cash
once in a while. The patronizers pilfer
superiority. They buy arrogance on credit,
spend it mincingly. They're as bold

as a spectator at a bullfight, as generous
as a dead snake, as well meaning as a rabid
skunk. They're clever and deft, though,
like old troupers. They please themselves.

Patronizers make themselves at home
in your forebearance. They're really
something. They've honed a hapless
social skill. Well done, Bravo.
*
*
Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Poet + Museum = Poem

(image: interior of Hagia Sophia)

I did write a post concerning "homeopathic treatments for writer's block" once, but otherwise I don't recall posting anything like "an English assignment," chiefly because it seems like such a nerdy, English-professory, assignmentish thing to do.

However, one of the few readers of this blog recently asked, "Where do you find your creativity?" and a) I haven't answered that question, b) I'm not sure how to answer it, but c) one way to answer it is very specifically: by suggesting a task for anyone (including oneself), any poet, in the unlikely event that person needs a task to spark the writing or the "creativity."


Before I give the task, I should probably answer the question more generally.
I like how the question is phrased, first of all--using "where" as oppposed to "how." Poets or any artists can find stuff (now there's a precise term) to interest them anywhere. So I guess one answer to the question is, "Almost everywhere." Places, situations, language (especially odd overheard phrases), conditions, new places, familiar places, strange places, work-spaces, and so on.

Another answer is that I don't feel especially more creative than other people. I think I've always just liked to write, especially poetry, and if you enjoy "doing" some kind of art, then the creativity usually arrives in a steady flow, a trickle, at least. I don't enjoy writing fiction nearly as much as poetry, so when I'm writing that, I'm aware that sometimes the creativity is running a bit low. So I guess the answer is that one finds the creativity in the making itself.


Now that that paragraph is, thankfully, done with, here is an assignment I give poetry classes. It entails visiting a gallery or a museum, although one could just as easily pick up an art- or photograph-book of some kind and go from there.

But as I almost suggested earlier, posting an "assignment" may be taken as an insult, especially by those who know quite well what they want to write about, thank-you-very-much. If you count yourself in that number, you have my apology. Then there are people who recoil from the very idea of "assigning" a poem, although I think this assignment is so loose that it almost avoids the stigma of being an assignment. Almost. Anway, if you're in the anti-assignment group, you, too, have my apology. In the unlikely event you are a poet or are wanting to write a poem and might like something new or unexpected to write about, here 'tis:


An “ekphrastic” poem is one that is in some way inspired by a work of art, usually a work from a non-literary art. W.H. Auden’s “Museé des Beaux Arts” is one of the best known examples from 20th century poetry. In the poem, Auden argues that paintings by Old Masters such as Brueghel reflected a particular view of suffering. Yeats’s “Sailing to Byzantium” is another example; it focuses on the art in a church called Hagia Sophia in Constantinople/Istanbul. That poem seems to express a desire to live permanently in an ideal world of art. Our field-trip today takes us to [ ] Gallery, which features two exhibits, The Island and Juxtaposition, which hold especially rich possibilities for poetry. Look at the exhibits and then find a space on the floor, have a seat, and write either notes toward a poem or a poem or both. The poem might react specifically to one piece in one exhibit; or it may embody an overall reaction to the exhibit; or it may concern a topic triggered by the exhibit. The references to the art-work might be strong and obvious, subtle, or ultimately even non-existent. That is, the poem will begin as something that plays off the exhibits or a piece in the exhibits, but its real subject might be something else that springs from your memory and/or the process of writing itself.

Fine With Me

"Fine" is one of those multiply deployed words in the language that depend, obviously, on different definitions, connotations, and rhetorical situations but also on slight shifts of tone. You might ask someone, "So, how's it going?" And s/he might say, "Fine," but precisely how the person says "fine" determines the meaning. S/he can say it wearily and, without going so far as irony or sarcasm, s/he can turn the meaning of fine into "not fine." Another tone of voice might suggest that the person doesn't want to reveal how he or she is doing, how it's going, so then "Fine" means "end of inquiry." Anyway, I was thinking about some of this as I fooled around with a poem.

Finery

There's a fine line between

saying there's a fine line

between two things and refusing

to say such a thing. In this case,

"fine" means not "excellent" but

"extremely thin."

Some people say, "Fine, then!"

when they're angry and want

to bring an episode of some kind

to an end, which in Latin is "fine."

In the end, a fine is indeed an

imposition, especially if it costs

a lot of money, as opposed to

being a finely calibrated token.

A fine plus jail-time seems

almost infinitely harsh.

"Finery" refers to clothing,

"refined" to manners,

but "refinery" to petroleum

and such. It's as if at some crucial

linguistic moment, someone said,

"Fine, then!" and the denotations

went their separate ways. Go

figure. Better yet, cut a fine figure;

the latter seems to refer to beauty,

not to cutting. "She's so fine,"

I remember some men saying,

of women, in the semi-fine

decade of the 1970s. I cannot

remember the last time I heard

anyone say "fine and dandy,"

and I'm perfectly fine with that.

*

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Abyss Estates

(photos: bottom, Bombay Bay, near the Salton Sea, with decaying trailer houses; and, top, an abandoned car + abode, Salton Sea)






For some reason, I've always been intrigued by places created by a reckless leap of the imagination, or of circumstances, and then abandoned, or almost so. Indeed I grew up in such a place, Sierra City, California, now population 225 but, during the Gold Rush, population 3,000. Astoundingly, people were actually considering the possibility of making nearby Downieville (population 500 now) the State Capital. All because of the Gold Rush, a spasm of history.

Therefore, the Salton Sea and environs intrigue me. It's a salty sea (or immense lake), as one might imagine, created by spillage from the Colorado River. Developers built houses around it and in nearby communities like Bombay Bay. This area is essentiallyin the desert of the far Southeast corner of California, but because a lake sprang up there, developers and promoters moved in quickly. Basically the whole thing fell apart. The area is like a bizarre modern ghost town, although some people do still live there, and bless their hearts.

Apparently, however, the Salton Sea is also home to extraordinary species of birds and other creatures, so much so that the California Legislature has attempted to provide money to save the Sea, whatever that means, and whatever that entails. Apparently one problem is that it's too salty now. There's at least one fine documentary on the place, and then a relatively recent movie was shot there. I think Val Kilmer's in it.



Abyss Estates

The salesman said, "Sir, this is a truly unique property.
People--I'm talking philosophers and poets--have talked
about it for years. Now you have a chance to buy a piece of it.
What's that? Yes, technically, you will disappear after you
take possession. Fascinating, huh? In our business, we
call it 'going all in.' It's a gambling term. But the sense

of privacy is unmatched. . . . Certainly, take your time
to decide. However--and I say this not to pressure you--
only a few parcels remain. You just don't see property
like this every day. But take your time. It's a big decision.
I can get you into Abyss Estates for 10 per cent down.
This thing's going to be an equity-machine. It's the Abyss.
I mean, there's no place like it, sir."

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Translating "Nothing"; Hounds online; cummings on blogging

(photo: e.e. cummings)



The recent post on "What Should I Say [When I Have Nothing to Say]" produced comments better than the post, as hard as that may be to comprehend. The comments deserve their own post.

A blogging colleague, Rethilbe, who happens to like poetry as much as I and who blogs on Poefrika (please check out the site), had this to write:

[About how to translate/pronounce "nothing" in other languages] "/Heetchee/ in farsi and /Leet-aw/ in Sesotho, my mother tongue. In French? "Rien", pronounced /Ree-young/"

[I knew the French one but not the others. I think I prefer "Heetchee" to "Nothing," and I know I prefer "Leet-aw" to "Nothing." Now when people ask me what I'm doing as a way of suggesting I should stop doing it, I think I'll answer, "Leet-aw; how about you, sir [or madame]?'

"Frost might have enjoyed this, and would have perhaps told us about a man who blogged his way because blogging was what he was all about, far into the reaches of his youth. Cummings might have insisted that glee was a glad blog."

["A glee was a glad blog": how great is that?]

"I'd have loved to have heard Plath on this one. She'd have found some catastrophe linked to blogging: Screen, you do not seem to understand the lifting of my skin."

[or "Screen, you will not do, Pixelated You."]

"lol. But we unfortunately can't hear these voices anew."

[But Rethilbe has helped us hear the improvised echoes.}

Another commenter (as opposed to commentator, which is someone who talks a lot about nothing on television), notes that Full Cry, the magazine all about "coon hounds" to which my father subscribed [Until I was about 9, I thought all families subscribed to it, kind of like TV Guide or Life magazine], now has a howling web presence. The commenter, from the great and icy upper Midwest, writes,

"Full Cry is still going strong:

http://www.treehound.com/html/fullcry.html

Also, this:
http://www.coondawgs.com/

And if you're some kind of goddamn flatlander:
http://urbancoonies.blogspot.com/"

I realize these links may not appeal to a massive percentage of the population, but be careful: once your interest in hunting-dogs of this kind is piqued, you find yourself becoming more and more interested, and pretty soon, you're out in the woods, it's past midnight, the hounds are up to no good, you're freezing and waving a flashlight around, and you're interpreting the different howls, barks, and yelps that are filling the air.

A recent student of mine had an internship with a dog-related publications. She and I were trying to remember the names of hound-breeds that are officially "coon hounds."

I think they are Black and Tan, Plot, Redbone, Blue Tick, and English, but I could be wrong. They tend not to be large dogs, probably because the have to be quick, fast, and durable. They are all very excitable but not, I would say, temperamental. A Redbone has a gorgeous rust-colored, very short-haired coat. The Black and Tan is pretty much self-describing, although there is more black than tan. A shiny coat.

Blue Ticks are black and white, or white with a lot of black spots and mottling, except the black really is almost blue. Plot hounds migh well be the smallest of the breeds and are dark brown or black. The ones my father owned seemed much more composed than their hound-colleagues. They seemed to take a cool professional attitude toward hunting.

Anyway, here's a shout out and a howl out to two commenters. [Someone just asked me what I'm doing. "Leet-aw," I responded. "Why do you ask?']

John Updike

The nation and, to some degree, the world seems to be losing members of a novel-writing "generation" that first found a big readership in the 1950s and 1960s: Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller, William Styron, Norman Mailer, and now John Updike (to name a few).

Updike was an important figure in my own reading-life because I picked up Rabbit, Run when I was a sophomore in high school, read it, liked it, and understood most of it. I liked the character and, young as I was, I understood the character. I was in high school, with classmates who were local athletic stars who were, in some cases, being set up for disappointment. Perhaps what I responded well to in that novel and other writing by Updike more than anything was its imagery. In terms of plotting, characterization, and moving things along, Updike was traditional. He knew how to construct and pace a novel. But in another way, he was a "poetic" novelist who had a great eye for imagery for conveying that imagery powerfully.

Later I read Couples, the other Rabbit books, story collections (like Pigeon Feathers), and even Midpoint, a book of poems that was more light verse than not. Later still I lost interest in Updike's writing not so much because I lost interest in his particular characters so much as I lost interest in the type of characters and situations he was writing about. I didn't find their stories especially urgent. I found what James Baldwin was writing about (to cite just one example) more pressing.

When Updike ventured beyond the world he knew well--semi-rural and suburban middle-America; Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New York--his powers waned. The Coup is, in my opinion, not a good novel. It's the kind of material Gore Vidal and John Le Carre and Martin Amis can handle better. But so what? It was interesting to see what Updike would do with such material.

Even later, I came to regard Updike as a kind of insider who had been taken under the wing of The New Yorker early on and who was well connected, as it were. That's probably not entirely fair because he was an extremely hard-working writer. Maybe he had an inside track, but he also ran hard. He just kept at it. By contrast, Heller and Styron seem unproductive, or less productive, at least.

But I'll always remember reading that relatively thin paperback, Rabbit, Run, in the sun or in my room, getting myself through the novel on my own, and loving it. I knew it was good writing. It made me want to keep reading. And reading. And writing.

What Should I Say?

Once again I've been inspired by another blogger. Inter-blogging inspiration seems to be a good feature of the blogosphere, although I don't know why it has to be a sphere. Can't it be amorphous like one of those "energy fields" in the old Star Trek TV series?

A Scribble or a Sonnet wrote, "What should [or maybe it was "can"] I say when I have nothing to say?" Fabulous question. The most popular answer might be "Nothing," but we mustn't stop there. A Scribble or a Sonnet came up with the most elegant answer, arguably, which was the question itself, which was something to say.

If my father were alive, he would say, of blogging, "What a goddamned waste of time." He would need to know some practical reason for blogging. On the other hand, if there were (and I'm sure there are) bloggers that write about the sub-culture of those who keep hound dogs, especially "coon dogs," he would read that blog. It's a fascinating sub-culture that, in a way, has absolutey nothing to do with raccoons.

One of my brothers would say, "Tell them about the time you . . . ." and then he would reference some comical calamity from my past.

Queen Victoria might have said, "We do not know what blogs are. We are unimpressed."

Homer, Whitman, or Ginsberg--or some other poet who likes to catalogue items in his or her poetry--would make a list of all the reasons why s/he doesn't appear to have anything to say.

One could also make a list of the different ways there are to say nothing.

How is the equivalent of "nothing" pronounced, say, in Abrabic, Farsi, Swahili, Portuguese [close to "nada" or not?], Japanese, and so forth?

Concerning Failure

Concerning Failure

*

*

Of all the ways to fail,

trying to succeed has to be

the most interesting. You

get into a vehicle and go fast

west, stop, get out, and know

immediately you're east.

*

I've pursued many goals

with grim determination

and ended up in a room

that held just grim

determination, a fly, and me.

*

Meanwhile, success finds me,

or at least it may find you.

At first it seems too light

to be success. You test its

weight. You try to trace

its origin. You wonder what

part you played in its arrival,

exactly. You want to be sure.

*

Finally you acknowledge that,

yes, success arrived. That's

success for you. It's different

from failure. At least that's

the theory anyway.

*

*

*

Hans Ostrom 2009 Copyright 2009

Poetic License: Time to Renew?

For the first time ever, I renewed my driver's license online. I kind of missed going to the local Department of Motor Vehicles office, which is always located in an obscure strip-mall, it seems, and taking a number, and sitting there for a long time, and then going up to the counter to talk with a person who has been interacting with too many people for too long concerning the same topic. Ah, well: another one of life's small pleasures, gone. Anyway, this license-renewal business got me thinking about whether one needs to renew his or her poetic license.

Poetic-License Renewal

He received a notice telling him his

poetic license had expired. He wanted to

go down (not up, it's never up) to

the Department of Poetry to renew

the license, but he was afraid.

His eyesight was probably worse,

he reckoned. Would they test him

on imagery? Also, he knew he'd

get nervous talking to the muse

behind the counter, the one who

asks questions like "If you're turning

into oncoming poetry, should you use

a simile or a hand-signal?"

Plus he hated when they took his

picture for the license because the

photo looked exactly like him. Still he knew

he had to renew. He was afraid to write

poetry without a license. What if he

got caught? They might tow away

his notebook or make him do community

service, such as writing press-releases

for actors who are on the decline.

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Beat-Memo Homage: Dig It

You don't (or I don't, or one doesn't) hear anyone say, "I dig that" or "I can dig that" in the ancient hipster or old-Beatnik sense of "I understand that" or "I'm in tune with that" much anymore--except perhaps when people are genially mocking the usage.

I still recall fondly the pop-song, "Grazing in the Grass (Is a Gas)," with its dig-related riff and refrain. Not the apogee of American music, I grant.

According the OED online, this sense of "dig" arose in English (in print, at least) around 1935:

1935 Hot News Sept. 20/2 If you listen enough, and dig him enough, you will realise that that..riff is the high-spot of the record.

1941 Life 15 Dec. 89 Dig me? 1943 M. SHULMAN Barefoot Boy with Cheek 90 Awful fine slush pump, I mean awful fine. You ought to dig that. 1944 C. CALLOWAY Hepsters Dict., Dig v.(1) Meet. (2) Look, see. (3) Comprehend, understand.

Notice that Cab Calloway is featured in an early citation. This is almost purely guesswork, but my familiarity with African American origins of some American slang and of "hepster," "hipster," and jazz-related slang induces me to hypothesize that this use "dig" may have sprang from African American colloquial speech, which heavily influenced Beat slang.

With regard to the more literal use of dig, I can report that I did a lot of digging in my youth and young adulthood, much of it related to putting in water-lines, building foundations for houses, putting in fence-posts, establishing drain-fields for septic tanks, and even looking for gold. Since then I've done a lot of digging in gardens.

Strange as it may sound, my father loved to dig. (He became a professional hard-rock gold-miner at age 17, at the Empire Mine in Grass Valley California; this meant digging.) To him it was an art. Probably the best tip I can give you from the art of digging according to him is to let the pick (or pry-bar) do the work. Never swing a pick as high or higher than your head; you really don't have to swing it at all. Work with it, and let its iron point do the work, not your forearms and back. If the pick is wearing you out, something is wrong--I mean besides the fact that there you are, using a pick.

Unfortunately, my experience digging, often alongside my father, may have ruined Seamus Heaney's famous "Digging" poem for me. In it, Heaney explicitly compares his writing ("digging" with a pen) to his father's digging in the ground. I think because I saw the comparison coming a mile away (when I first read the poem), I winced. Also, because digging is a form of labor and a skill unto itself, I'd be tempted to leave it alone and not associate it with the figurative digging of writing.

True, a pick and a pen both have a point, and so, therefore, does Heaney. But for some reason I wanted him to let writing be writing and digging be digging and not go for the comparison. I'm in an extremely tiny minority with this response, however, so I think it's mostly about me and not about Heaney's poem, which many people adore.

In any event, and in honor of those old hipsters and long-ago Beats, and in homage to writers I happen to like, here's a list-poem memo (for some reason, the idea of writing a Beat "memo" amused me, probably more than it should have):


Beat-Memo Homage

I dig Basho, Dickinson, Housman,
Lagerkvist, and Gogol. I dig Kafka, Calvino,
Borges, Brautigan. Can you dig Langston
Hughes,W.C. Williams, and Sam Johnson? I can.
Oh, man. I dig Swenson (May), Valenzuela (Luisa),
Sayers, Stout, and Conan Doyle. I dig
Shapiro, Stafford, Bukowski, and Jarrell.
Leonard Cohen and Jay McPherson: I dig
them, too. Of course I dig some of those
Beats, except they're ones who were
on the fringes of Beatly fringehood: Snyder,
Baraka, Everson, Levertov. Sure,
I dig Ginsburg and Kerouac, just
not as much as other people do. I dig Camus,
who didn't believe, and Nouwen, who did.
I dig Suzuki (Zen Mind...), St. Denis
(Cloud of...), and Spinoza. Jeffers, I
dig--Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky. I dig Rumi
an Goethke: what's not to dig? I dig
O'Connor (Frank and Flannery both).
I dig Horace and the Beowulf cat,
Tolstoy, Cervantes. Let's leave it at that.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Our Own Business

Our Own Business


I saw a man carrying a ladder walking alone beside
a highway on the plains. Dusk only just
lit up the shirt on his back and the ladder's
angles. Had he climbed, or was he going
to climb, and what? There weren't any houses,
trees, or barns around. The man had that stiff,
relentless gait of a resolute person in an awkward
situation. As I drove past him,

I was about to laugh and judge him to be
"crazy," but I noticed I was driving a car alone
across the plain listening to a radio talk-show
about mysterious lights in the sky, and I'd just
decided to bypass a human hauling a ladder,
and not to talk to him or offer transportation.

I set aside judgment, looked at the speedometer
and fuel gauge, and turned on the headlights,
which made the highway mysterious.
Say what you will about that man and me. We
were minding our own business on the plains.

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Head Officer

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Head Officer

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His head was his office. Each

day he opened an imaginary door

and entered to go to work. It was

a well appointed space, with tapestries

made of dream-threads, shelves

and cabinets full of memories,

bright synaptic lights, and windows

looking out on undulating land,

clustered skylines, and upholstered

boulders. He loved his job.

The pay, however, was sub-optimal

in the sense of nothing. So one day,

to support himself financially, he had

to get a job located outside his head.

He closed up the office in his mind. He

went to work with people on tasks

deemed socially appropriate and worth

traditional remuneration. Sometimes

he steals away to the office in his head,

that wondrous interior, and thinks what

seem to him to be marvelous thoughts,

some of which are accompanied by

unusual images: pink ferns, dolphins

broadcasting news, demitasse cups

full of melted gold. Returning makes

him wistful. The world outside the

Head Office is hard: steel, concrete,

that sort of thing. Deep sighs within these

headquarters seem to to have a salutary effect.

*

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

First Day Of Class, In the First Person

I taught, or I should say met, my first classes of the semester today. First Day of Class is such a quirky ritual, no matter what the level of education. I remember that, as a student, from first grade (I did not attend kindergarten) through graduate school, I greeted the first day of classes with apprehension, wariness. I was very much an observer.

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Now that I'm a professor, I really don't have the option of being an observer, per se, although of course I observe things. My main job is to try to give the students a sense of what they're getting into, what's expected of them, and what sort of professor I am (answer: quirky). Some of the students have taken classes from me before.

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I recall how extraordinarily nervous I was on the first day of classes in my first years of teaching. --Trepidation that was way out of proportion to the situation. Those days seem to be gone, at least for the moment. Good riddance.

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In college, one choice professors may make is whether to keep the class for the whole time on the first day. (In K-12, this isn't an option.) I usually do go the full time, and inevitably some students start to squirm, as if they preferred (and why wouldn't they?) the other alternative--get the syllabus, ask some questions, get out. I often raise the subject explicitly and say, "Well, I know you want to get out of here, but we're going to keep going." This tactic doesn't necessarily improve the response, but it might induce a grudging smile.

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There were a couple of amusing surprises today. One student in a creative-writing class asked politely whether it would be possible for us not to read material meant to "inspire" us to write. She said she'd just rather read short stories (in this case), and to inspire herself, if need be. So I agreed immediately to avoid inspiring them whenever possible. :-) Actually, she had a specific book in mind that had been used in another class and that had not proved inspirational. Anyway, that discussion provided some amusing turns. I think we tentatively decided to try to occupy a middle ground between doing things that were "inspirational" and doing things that were completely counter-productive. --A happy medium, of which Horace would have approved.

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Another student said that in a writing class she had once taken, the teacher had come close to prohibiting the use of the first-person point of view in writing short stories. I must say I did not see this anecdote coming, and since, for the most part, short-story writers must work with versions of either the first- or third-person, I had never imagined jettisoning one of those options. The student said she liked to use the first person because "Most people live life in the first person." What a fabulous quotation! It is one I must duly attribute to Amanda M.

*

I'm sure all sorts of psychologists, psychiatrists, philosophers, and neurologists would quibble with the claim, but that's beside the point, which is that Amanda M. has given us much to consider. Do people live life in the first person? If so, what does that mean? Do others live life in the third person? I know that many professional athletes refer to themselves in the third person when they are interviewed. How would you say you live your life? Would you even think in terms of first- or third-person or of "person" at all? --Maybe not, if you weren't a writer, film-maker, or reader of literature. Hard to say.

Langston Hughes and Barack Obama

(Langston Hughes 1902-1967)

Langston Hughes and Barack Obama

Let's lay down some lines for Langston Hughes

this day of news: 20 January 2009. A fine

piece of the dream's no longer deferred, though

the thought's occurred that Mr. Hughes

might focus on the people out of work or,

working, out of money. (Remember:

he gave even Roosevelt what-for.) Still I see

him in a Harlem bar, sitting next to

Jesse B., speaking in his clipped

Midwest English, having sipped

something fortified, brown eyes bright and wide.

He'd be smoking if they'd let him, saying

or thinking, "Lord, a day has come I never even

dreamed to dream in 1921." He'd go back

to the brownstone with its small garden

in front, sit down, and write a simple, profound

lyric capturing the spirit of President Obama's day.

Cross the Jordan, cross the Nile, cross the Congo--

and that Ocean, too. Cross the Harlem and

the Hudson Rivers. Cross the Mississsipi. Dear

Madame Johnson: Mr. Obama crossed the Potomac.

That's a fact, no not some dream. Think

of Mr. Hughes's rivers. The soul shivers.

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Natural Rhetoric

Natural Rhetoric

After the cat goes outside, two
perched crows open black beaks
wide to release loud sounds
suggesting outrage, warning,
threat--crow-rhetoric, mechanical,
never ornate. The cat looks up,
sees birds in feline-vision, and makes
cat-noises, nothing as loud or dire
as a warning, more of a refined
complaint, really--aristocratic.

After the cat runs and hides
in shrubbery, we make human
sounds, calling her "name," making
nonsense-noises, expressing
pretend-anger, muttering real
frustration. We're convincing
ourselves of something, not sure
what. The crows leave, the cat
reappears, we pick up the cat
and carry it into the house and talk
to each other about what just happened.

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Crossing the Creek

Unfortunately, one's dreams are about as interesting to other people as tales of one's socks. Or maybe "fortunately" is more apt. If we were all fascinated by one another's dreams, we might not get much work done.

Anyway, I'll keep this short: After my father died in '97, I kept dreaming that he was in the middle of a creek, wading upstream, toward me, or at least a P.O.V. that represented me. He and the creek always looked the same. He wasn't in distress, but he was laboring, and of course there's almost no occasion for anyone to wade directly upstream into the force of the water. Dreams are fiction. He had jeans and the usual workshirt on--but not the hat he always wore outdoors. (His was a hat, not a cap, generation.) In some versions of the short dream, he'd ask, calmly for assistance. In some he'd say someting like "It's okay. You go ahead." It some he said nothing. I rather liked the subtly of the dream. Significant (to me; boring to others) but subtle.

Almost simultaneously, I was musing casually about that dream and also wanting to engage in some poetic aerobics and write a poem in formal verse, so I decided to do both at once. Of course, sacred texts, vast crowds of poets, and so on, have been there before me with the basic "crossing" image, including Tennyson with "Crossing the Bar," so I viewed the poem as an exercise, but not necessarily as one in orginiality.

Crossing the Creek

They wait for me across the creek.
They look like shadows from this side.
One day I'll wade across to seek
The insubstantial. Petrified

With cold and fear, I'll stand, midstream,
And feel what's real: round, slippery stones,
The force of water in a seam
Of that ravine. My skin and bones

Will read the creek a final time,
Will feel its push and temperature.
I'll stand unsteadily, a mime
Without an audience and most unsure

About the balance of the act.
But then I'll move, make it across.
The creek will be the final fact--
Its gravel, boulders, trout, and moss.

The far side shall be near. I'll fall
Into the life of death. Will they assist,
Who've gone before, and bear the pall
When I fade into mottled mist?

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Rubber Bands

Based on the minimalist research I've done, I can write with 10% certainty that rubber bands are the product of the mid-19th century and may have been patented in Australia first.


Rubber Bands


I bought a bag of rubber bands. What a paltry
confession! The purchase paid retail homage (one
dollar) to simple binding and flexibility in this age
of monstrous, rigid packaging. I thought of all those
times we searched a whole abode like jonesing addicts
for just one thing: paper clip, shoe lace, thumb tack,
rubber band. Benedict Spinoza proved to my

satisfaction that anything which is, is an attribute
of the only substance (God), which includes
rubber bands, which in repose are lazy bracelets
and flaccid circles. I admit I bought a bag

of rubber bands because they were so much
themselves for so little money. Like cats,
rubber bands stretch profoundly and then
return to their original composure and serenity.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom