Saturday, September 5, 2009

Ronald Reagan and Poetry


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(the image is of a statue of St. Patrick, who was a native of France)




I ran across an interesting site about President Ronald Reagan and poetry, and the site even includes some poetry Reagan wrote early in live, as well as an excerpt from a eulogy for him by Ron Reagan, one that is written in free verse. Here is a link to the site:

http://www.thehypertexts.com/Ronald_Reagan_Poet_and_Poetry_a_Tribute_Retrospective_and_Memorial.htm




The site also includes this information:

In his travels through Ireland, Ronald Reagan once took note of a graveside epitaph at Castlereagh, the place where St. Patrick erected the first cross in Ireland:

Remember me as you pass by,
For as you are so once was I,
and as I am you soon will be,
So be content to follow me.


The site was established by Michael R. Burch.

Friday, September 4, 2009

Captions Without Drawings

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Here are some captions that are missing their drawings (cartoons), perhaps for good reason:

1. "No, sir, I'm afraid you may not enter our convent."

2. "God spoke to me and said, 'Glenn, you are God.'"

3. "And this just in to our news desk . . . I'm embarrassed to work for this network."

4. "So how does it look? I had the tailor add some Far-Left fringe."

5. "Dude, I thought you said we were going to a dude ranch?"

6. "Senator, it's the crazy constituent calling again with those facts we don't like."

7. "I believe the American people believe no one should use the phrase, 'The American people.'"

8. "Now I know why they call it the Big Apple."

9. "Welcome to the Big Apple, sir. I'm the Big Worm."

10. "After you turn 40, never weigh yourself unless you're in outer space."

11. "My boyfriend said he wanted to start seeing other people, and I said, 'That's cool with me,' and I removed his blindfold--but not the handcuffs."

12. "I couldn't believe it. I was walking down the street minding my own business when suddenly the onus fell on me."

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Woman In A Waiting-Room

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Woman In A Waiting-Room

I guess her age to be 80. She's kept
herself looking the best she can: lean
like a late aunt of mine. The gray
hair's tinted blond but cut
with no-nonsensical reserve--the style's
what they used to call "page-boy."

Trousers, a sweater, sensible beige shoes.
Her back hardly lets her bow to examine
magazine-covers on a table. She squints
and scowls so hawkishly, I think for a
moment she's spotted a spider. She
selects none of the magazines: wise.

She sits now and looks out western windows,
lifts her face to muted afternoon light,
takes out a compact, and applies lipstick.
Blue eyes above lightly rouged cheeks look
coolly into the mirror's report. She's not
looking for approval, only information. She

forms her lips as she has done for more
than six decades. Compact and lipstick
disappear. She settles into the chair,
into defiant patience, and waits, newly
painted lips pursed, for her doctor's
nurse to open a door and call her name.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Sunday, August 30, 2009

A Painter Reads a Poem About Painters

One of my favorite poems to teach (not necessarily the students' favorite) is "Musee des Beaux Arts," by W.H. Auden, and yes, there needs to be an accent over one of those e's in Musee, but I've yet to discover how to include accents using the blog-machinery. The name of the poem is the name of a museum in Brussels, and the museum includes the main painting about which Auden writes, Breughel's "Icarus," which paints (literally) Icarus in a very unheroic, unmythical light. "About suffering," says Auden's poem, "they were never wrong,/The Old Masters." I like the poem because there are so many different things to do with it in class, including teaching it as an example of an ekphrastic poem--a poem about art, a kind of art different from poetry.

Here is a link to a nice video of painter Susan Hambleton discussing and reading the poem. The video was produced and directed by Louis Massiah and is part of the Favorite Poem Project.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlbFQ5ZtjVY&feature=user

Friday, August 28, 2009

A Graphic-Novel About Senator Kennedy

A couple recent posts noted a favorite poem and a favorite song of Edward M. Kennedy's. Concerning literature about the late senator, writer Patrick Gavin at politico.com reports that a graphic-novel about Kennedy has been in the works but will now, of course, need to be revised.

The working-title of the novel, to be published by Bluewater Productions, is "Political Power: Ted Kennedy." Bluewater Productions has already published graphic-novels about Ronald Reagan and President Obama. Here is a link to Gavin's article:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0809/26511.html

One of Senator Kennedy's Favorite Songs

As noted in an earlier post, a favorite poem of Senator Edward Kennedy's was Tennyson's "Ulysses." Today I discovered in an online article from Time that one of the senator's favorite songs was, yes, an Irish one, but no, not "Danny Boy":

'Speaking on Wednesday, former Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, an old friend of Kennedy's, revealed that one of the late Senator's favorite songs was "The Town I Loved so Well". The lyrics lament the decline of the city of Derry during Northern Ireland's 25-year sectarian conflict from a place of "happy days in so many, many ways" to a town "brought to its knees by the armored cars and bombed out bars." It was an apt choice of song for Kennedy, whose dealings with Northern Ireland were often linked to the city.'

(One may easily find the rest of the article online through the usual googlistic means, and I do hope you like that new adjective.)

When I taught in Sweden many moons ago, I met an Irish scholar who liked to sing a comic song called, "Burlington Bertie"; the reference to Prime Minister Ahern helped exhume that memory. The only line I remember is "I'm Burlington Bertie--I rise at four-thirty," meaning the man-of-leisure Bertie sleeps until late afternoon, I reckon.

From my youth, I seem to remember that one of John F. Kennedy's favorite songs was "Greensleeves." I wonder whether George Bush, President Obama, Dick Cheney, and Sarah Palin have favorite songs, and if so, what they are, and yes, I know I've just set up the stand-up comedians out there with some easy potential jokes.

I assume that politicians would have to think politically when selecting a favorite song to declare--rather like President's Obama's having to select a beer for the beer-summit with Professor Gates and the policeman. He made the safe choice, politically: Budweiser. One assumes he didn't become president by being a fool.

If asked about my favorite song, I'd first get boringly professorial and demand to know the categories, etc., and so forth, and yadda yadda. But if I answered straight from the shoulder, I'd say "Folsom Prison Blues" (or "I Don't Like It But I Guess Things Happen That Way") by Johnny Cash, and especially the former would not be a wise political choice. Nor, I presume, would "Bring on the Funk" by George Clinton and Parliament, but "Parliament" has to be one of the great band-names.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Worrisome Quatrain

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Worrisome Quatrain

I like to worry about
things I can't control.
It works as well as eating
from an empty bowl.



Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Senator Kennedy's Favorite Poem

According to a wide variety of online postings I've read today, "Ulysses," by Alfred Lord Tennyson, was apparently Senator Ted Kennedy's favorite poem. (On one site, a visitor reminded others that James Joyce had written Ulysses, but of course there is the poem by Tennyson and the novel by Joyce.) So I thought I'd post the poem, as borrowed with gratitude from the Victorian Web, which also supplied the notes following the poem:

http/:www.victorianweb.org


Ulysses

by Alfred Lord Tennyson

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers;
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle —
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me —
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads — you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

[Tennyson's "Ulysses" first appeared in Morte D'Arthur, and Other Idyls. By Alfred Tennyson. London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street, MDCCCXLII. pp. 67. This, however, was a trial book, printed but not published. The first publication of the poem occurred in Poems by Alfred Tennyson. In Two Volumes. London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street. MDCCCXLII. pp. vii, 233; vii, 231. See "Chronology" in Henry Van Dyke's Studies in Tennyson (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat, 1920; rpt., 1966).

The text of the poem has been checked against the version in Victorian Prose and Poetry, ed. Lionel Trilling and Harold Bloom (New York, Oxford, and Toronto: Oxford U. P., 1973) pp. 416-418.

. . . And Speaking of Odes

. . . And speaking of odes, as the previous post did, the Poetry Foundation's site has a nice definition of and overview of the venerable form:

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5784

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Keats's Autumnal Gem


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American baseball player Reggie Jackson was dubbed "Mr. October" because he performed so well in several different World Series. Fair enough. But before that, poet John Keats might have earned the same moniker, or at least "Mr. Autumn," for having written his great ode, "To Autumn." I thought of the poem today as, like a lot of people, I caught that hint of fall--you know, something about the air-temperature, the look of some foliage, the knowledge that a tide of students is going back to school.

Here are the opening lines, which should be indented in a certain pattern (but the blog-machinery doesn't like to cooperate with that sort of thing):

I

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom friend of the maturing sun,
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines round the thatch-even run:
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cells.


In this stanza as in the rest of the poem, Keats blends a deliberate, stately rhythm with a palpable sense of exuberance. The language of the poem itself seems almost to burst, full of ripeness. It's hard to achieve this kind of stateliness, common to odes, in contemporary poetry because there is a kind of demand for irony and cynicism. I happened to re-read the poem in Keats: The Complete Poems, edited by Miriam Allot, and published by Longman in 1970. The annotation of the poem reminded me taht the poem was written in September 1819 and was "the last of K.'s major 1819 odes" ( page 650).

Monday, August 24, 2009

A Few Words From Life

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A Few Words From Life

"I didn't make you any promises,"
said Life to the man. "You made them
and bounced them off a mirror you
named Life. You made those promises
yourself like a magician who forgets
his tricks are tricks." "Oh, I don't know,"
the man replied, "some of those illusions
I couldn't possibly have invented."


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Traveling Cat

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Traveling Cat

He was a traveling cat. He raced
and slunk, padded and trotted, sleek
and balanced, tendons full of
saved up speed. He moved silently
except for a hiss or a yowl now
and then, or a tipped over can:
never his fault. Yes, he was a

traveling cat, moving from this to
that, from at to at, detecting
motion, smooth as lotion, reading
the air, decoding sounds sent
from everywhere. Itinerant and

cool, self-possessed and freely
feline--leonine, nined up with lives,
cagey but uncaged, guileless and wise
was the traveling cat.

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Move-In Weekend For Freshmen

I'm on campus for a bit of official business, and the campus is populated chiefly people who look about 18 years old and people who look roughly 53 years old. The latter group looks a little worse for wear; members of the former group occasionally look like they can't wait for members of the latter group to leave, and to leave them to their first week of college. Alas, this is move-in weekend for first-year students at our particular venue of higher education.

When I moved into the dormitory at the college I first attended, the scheme was pretty simple. My parents dropped me off with 1 or 2 suitcases and a large trunk. I think they got out of the truck to help remove the luggage out, but then they said goodbye and drove away. I dragged the luggage into the dorm, found room and room-mate, and we had lift-off. There was no orientation program.

I was just trying to recall what the first legitimate or "serious" poem was that I wrote in college. I think it may have been one called "John Muir's Ghost," a short poem that dutifully followed through on the title and depicted Muir's ghost having a great time roaming freely in the Sierra Nevada. I think the first line was "John Muir's ghost gallops, glides, and slips." I still like the play of language in that line--the g's and p's and s's.

No sign of John Muir's ghost on move-in day, so I assume the ghost is still down in California.

Friday, August 21, 2009

Phylis McGinley on Robin Hood

I was browsing through a favorite anthology, The Oxford Book of Satirical Verse, edited by Geoffrey Grigson. I think I purchased it not long after it was published in hardback (1980) because I was beginning to work on a dissertation about satirical poetry written by British poets in the "Romantic" (earlier 19th century) period.

Here is one of the shortest poems in the book:

Speaking of Television: Robin Hood


by Phyllis McGinley

Zounds, gramercy, and rootity-toot!
Here comes the man in the green flannel suit.

Like a wee pin, the poem lets the air out of a TV version of Robin Hood, or perhaps out of the TV appearance of Errol Flynn's famous cinematic rendition. I'm inclined to apply the poem to Kevin Costner's extremely puzzling portrayal of RH.

But mainly I thought . . . what a great idea for a series of poems--two-line rhyming epigrams about things on TV, or on the Internet. So I'll toss the idea out there for an poets who want to have some fun with it, and yes, I understand that your slang may not include Zounds, gramercy, or rootity-toot.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

International Anthology of Poetry

The blogger Poefrika has just logged a nice post on Fire in the Soul: 100 Poems for Human Rights, published by New Internationalist, with the support of Amnesty International. Poefrika also mentions two Zimbabwean poets whose work is included in the book.

Here is a link to the site and the post:

http://poefrika.blogspot.com/

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

August Afternoon

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August Afternoon

A breeze off Puget Sound curls
around a corner of the abode,
rushes through a line of herbal
foliage--three kinds of mint,
a stout rosemary plant, parsley,
chives, oregano, thyme, and
leathery-leafed sage. The breeze
organizes an aromatic syndicate,
which bargains collectively with
a gardener's sense of smell
on an August afternoon.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Monday, August 17, 2009

Horizon

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Horizon

No one can measure the distance to
the horizon, only the distance from it.

The horizon doesn't exist, but it must.

One must determine the place between
high tide and low tide, then measure up

to the point from which one wants to

envisage the horizon, which is a fiction
resting on a line by the angle above sea-

level from which one overlooks ocean. Okay?

There is no fixed point to the horizon,
or to measurement, or to looking at the sea,

or even to living next to the ocean, a notion.

There is a sea, a coast, two tides, a triangle
tied to a plane on a sphere. Let's grant these,

please. There is no horizon, except insofar,
so far, as something seems to end out there

a certain uncertain distance from here. There

is no distance like show-distance to the horizon
because if one travels it, the distance, then

the horizon will have moved away. Nonetheless,

one is free to measure by the sea. They can't
take that away from thee. One is free to look

and to say, "Look, there's the horizon." Okay?

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Strong Views

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Strong Views

On the narrow road rising steeply
to Sierra City's cemetery, a wry
sign notes, "Not A Through Street."
We set the headstone of a dead aunt
next to a rock wall her brother
built. We place beneath the concrete

a full bottle of whiskey, a
horseshoe, a deer antler, and
a piece of rose quartz. Otherwise,
the aunt's not represented here
except in our memories. Her
ashes travel up by an alpine
lake somewhere. The family's
idiosyncratic, you might say,

and tardy, even haphazard, with
its burial rituals. In fact, there
are no rituals, no funerals or
formalities. People get together
eventually, share some laughs
and glum grief, eat, and drink.

A panting black dog lies
in the truck watching us lay
the headstone. Later, the aunt's
remaining brothers will visit
the stone in the shade, have
a look, say a total of, oh,
seven words, maybe. For now,

we kid around in the cemetery,
get the job done, nobody's
business but our own. Goodbye
to Aunt Nevada. The smooth blue
stone, saved from an arastra,
gives the pertinent dates, her
other last name, and a nickname--
then mentions, "Strong Views."


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Audible Is Laudable


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Audible Is Laudable

A crisper whisper would have been
audible to you. You wouldn't have
said, "What?" The whisperer wouldn't
have then withdrawn, mortified. You
wouldn't have made all those bad
guesses: Did she say, "Wild swans
used to be white, of course" or
"Michael wants you to rewrite
the reports"? or something else
entirely?
Why had she desired
to whisper? You can't ask her. She
has moved away from you to another
part of the room, is conversing
garrulously. Others look at you.
Again you say, "What?" but for
another purpose. You say it clearly.
They hear you. They say nothing.


Copyright 2009

Friday, August 14, 2009

Ford F-100 Coda

A correspondent from California who is familiar with the history of a particular Ford F-100 pickup (see previous post) observes the following:

"It should also be noted that for most of its life the F-100 rarely exceeded 40 mph so it's carbon production was very low when compared to the Ford Expedition behemoths that are rolling down the freeways of America every day at 75 or 80 mph."

Speed emits. I've never written that particular two-word sentence before; wow, that felt pretty good.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Cap and Trade: Bring It On!

Apparently one proposal for reducing carbon emissions is known as "cap and trade," a concept that, I gather, involves charging companies (for example) for emitting carbon but allows companies to trade "units" of carbon they have been allotted.

Another proposal, already enacted, involves giving people $4500 for so-called clunker automobiles if they spend the $4500 on a car that emits less carbon.

These policies converge directly on my 1969 Ford F-100 pickup (step-side style, short bed).

I'm ready.

My secret weapon is the odometer, which I, which no one, has turned back, in case you're wondering. The total miles on the odometer is now 52,480. Divide that number by 40 (years), and you get the resulting miles driven per year and carbon emitted per year. Not many miles, not much carbon.

My late father drove the pickup until 1997, so almost all the credit for low carbon emissions and minimalist driving must go to him. Most of the miles he put on the truck involved going to and from work as a carpenter and stone mason; going "to town" to pick up the mail and some groceries; going hunting, which essentially involved driving straight up into the mountains (much elevation, few miles); and going in search of gold.

However, at the insistence of the Ford F-100, I have maintained the minimalist philosophy. If you would emit less carbon, suggests the Ford, drive less. I know: it is a complex theory.

To echo lines from Treasure of the Sierra Madre, I don't need no stinking $4500 dollars for my "clunker" (a term the Ford and I find offensive, incidentally), and bring the cap-and-trade on, baby. I will amass units of carbon that I will sell to, well, I don't know to whom--Du Pont? California? NASCAR?

When I do occasionally drive the Ford into my favorite working-class shopping area in Tacoma, the Ford gets a lot of approving glances--from persons of all generations and from both genders, believe it or not. The truck is certifiably funky. It is an automotive poem.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Motorcycles, 2:10 a.m.

Motorcycles, 2:10 a.m.

At 2:10 a.m., it is too hot to sleep. An open
window reports the sound of motorcycles as they
rage away from saloons' parking lots at closing-
time and down a long dark hill out there. The
thought of a drunk riding an unmuffled engine

home and startling people all along the route
salts an insomniac's grim sense of humor. A
soused, solitary biker riding is a raucous
creature, a sad Nietzsche in bluejeans, the
gas-tank shaped like a stylized tear-drop,

the woozy rebel's jacket hand-sewn by a
tolerant, bemused aunt whose husband, an
insurance salesman and the step-father
of the lad, drives one of those silent
hybrid cars and must arise at 6:30 a.m.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Horse-Trail, High Sierra

Horse-Trail, High Sierra


Riding horses in the High Sierra, we take
trails threaded through hulking conifers,
bypass a Maidu/Washo ceremonial hill
covered with black gravel. Breezes off
Gold Lake wrangle scents of wildflowers,
thick aroma of skunk-cabbage, corn-lily,
and mountain misery. The horses snort
thin air. There's sign of bear.

Lightning felled a tree not long ago.
Now new thunder-clouds amass explosive,
creamy ambition over blue distant peaks,
east. Alpine meadows seem closer to
Paradise than most places, at least
in this easy summer's ride. The

sun-scalded cowgirl from Portola
leading the way shifts on the saddle
and hollers unsentimentally, "This
tree you're passing's over 300 years old."


Copyright 2009

Monday, August 10, 2009

Thoreau on August

Here's a quotation from Henry David "Hank" Thoreau (I think only a few of his Transcendentalist friends called him Hank) about the month of August:


"In August, the large masses of berries, which, when in flower, had attracted many wild bees,gradually assumed their bright velvety crimson hue, and by their weight again bent down and broke their tender limbs."
- Henry David Thoreau

I found the quotation, which amounts to a nice little prose-poem, at . . .

http://www.egreenway.com/months/monaug.htm

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Uncle Victor's Senility


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Uncle Victor's Senility


Uncle Victor's senility seemed comic then.
He was in fact a great-uncle, and we weren't
yet adolescents. He wore his hat when he took
a bath. He proposed marriage multiple times
to multiple nurses in the Old Folks' Home.

His skin was parchment-thin, the veins like
big blue roots. He trembled. We learned a new
word, "palsy." Now Alzheimer's and Dementia
name what we didn't know. Old Folks' Homes
are called Nursing Facilities. Victor woke

to memories scattered and broken in a meadow
of the mind. He picked one up, put it on his
head, took a bath, knew marriage was the logical
next step. To the vandals of Uncle Victor's
memory, we now say, "Shame on you."


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Poem By The Side of the Road


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Poem By the Side of the Road

Here is a poem that lives
by the side of a road
in the form of a shack
with a tin chimney stack
and a recluse stirring inside.

Walk on the road past
the shack if you will; see fine
dust rise from your foot-fall,
and if you're brave, shout a call
to the recluse stirring inside.

A poem is a shack, and a
shack is a poem, or
so the tautology flows. What's true
of poems and shacks? Who knows?
The recluse stirring inside.

Saturday, August 8, 2009

Mowers, Toes, and Phones

Mowers, Toes, and Phones

On a July day one barefoot American
teenager shouts into his phone outside
as another barefoot American teenager
is cutting grass close by with a snarling
power-mower. One of them needs to go
inside, and the other needs to put on
shoes, but only a fool would try to
tell them, so this fool, me, strolls by
and tries to enjoy the comedy and not
wince at the thought of those toes,
or of those ears owned by whoever's on
the other side of that shout, and I wonder
what marketeers created the category
"teenager," and I know one has to
have faith that young ones will grow
up and older ones will stay that way.
Yes, belief in maturation's based more
on faith than evidence, but by now
I'm a block away, and I don't have
to look at the toes inches away from
whirling steel blades or watch the
shouter compete with the voice of a mower.
A fool, I need to believe the two lads
will turn out all right, whatever than means.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

ABC of Under-the-Influence, Part Two

A correspondent from the foothills of California, where the creeks have known to run with whiskey a time or two, has offered a supplemental ABC of inebriation (below). Also, I remembered that my parents' generation occasionally described a drunken person as being "three sheets to the wind," which (being a literalist) I used to associate with bed-sheets hanging on a clothesline but which I now assume refers to sails on a ship. I also remember the same generation speaking of someone's "going on a bender," meaning the person had gone on drinking for, let's say, a week, or for a lost weekend, like Ray Milland's character in the movie.


A: Annihilated, aced, addled, ambushed

B: Blitzed, bent, bombed, blasted, bagged [in the bag], backed up, blind {blind drunk], blotto, brain dead

C: Confused, clogged, comatose

D: Detoured, damaged, dunked, (plus all of the hundreds of “drunk as…”)

E: Electrified, eighty-sixed, embalmed,

F: Feeling no pain, faced, fried, flattened, flaked

G: Gonzo, glocked, grossed out, gassed up, gone

H: Hijacked, high as a kite, half in the bag, haywire

I: In the weeds, in deep shit, in a puddle, invisible

J: Juiced, jammed up, jolted

K: Killed, knockered, kay-oed

L: Liberated, limber, lit to the gills, listing to port, lubed

M: Misty eyed, mellowed out, moronic, marinated, mummified

N: Nasty, nuked, nailed, numb

O: Over the edge, oiled, ossified,

P: Plastered, ploughed, pixilated, paralyzed, pickled

Q: Don’t know any “Q” words for drunk,
drugged, etc.

R: Roasted, ripped, rotten, ruined, rooted

S: Silly, stupid, skunked, slobbered, stinkin’ drunk, sauced, snockered (or schnockered), schwacked, sloshed

T: Toasted, tanked, throttled, totaled, thrashed

U: Undone, used up, unbalanced

V: Violated, varnished, vegetated

W: Wasted, wobbled, weirded out, woozy

X: Don’t know any “X” words for drunk, drugged, etc.

Y: Yanked, yellowed, yippy

Z: Zagged, zapped, zonked, zeroed out

Friday, August 7, 2009

An ABC of Inebriation

One interesting characteristic of most inebriated persons (and in this case, I'm using "inebriated" to refer to an altered condition created by a variety of substances, not just alcohol) is that they behave as if they are among the first persons in history to be inebriated. This is true of many college freshmen (to select but one of many groups). My generation of college freshmen--let's see, I think we began college around 1854--believed itself to be the discoverers of getting drunk, and I'm sure many freshmen in the Fall of 2009 across the globe will see themselves as discoverers of something new when they drink, smoke, etc.

Another oddity about inebriation is that, at least in the U.S., the language used to describe it is not complimentary. For example, people speak of getting "stupid," "smashed," "hammered," "destroyed," and so on. "Hey, dude, last night we got totally destroyed." I'm so happy for you! Dude.

At any rate, while I and my ancient auto were stuck in traffic (I was not inebriated), I got to thinking about an ABC of terms for getting drunk or stoned or high or whatever: inebriation in its broadest sense. So here's a list. When I have (at least as far as I know) invented a term, I have placed an asterisk beside it.

A: altered, avalanched* ("Oh, man, we got totally avalanched last night.")
B: bombed, blasted, baked
C: clobbered, crazy
D: drunk, damaged, destroyed
E: eroded* ("Jeez, we drank tequila all night and got very eroded.") I tested this descriptor on an audience, and the audience thought it was "dumb." I think it's a droll term, but drollery often fails.
F: the obvious one is "effed up," which is pretty funny when you think about it; what are those new to English to think of this? "We drank innumerable beers last night and got effed up." Really? How exactly does that work? "Fried" is one I've heard, too. Also "footless," as in "footlessly drunk."
G: giddy--hmmm, not very good; glad? No. Obviously, I'm having trouble with G.
H: Hammered; high.
I: Well, "inebriated." Also (under the) "influence". I've always thought this term was too soft. When someone gets drunk, drives the wrong way on a highway, and kills people, "influence" doesn't quite measure up. By the way, what is the condition of "ebriation"? "Honest, officer, I'm ebriated, not inebriated."
J: jacked? jolly? jacked up? joyous* ("Dude, we smoked some weed and got joyous.")
K: Kebobbed*? Knackered?
L: loaded, loopy, looped
M: mashed?
N: neutralized*?
O: obliterated; oppressed* ("Dave and I got a bottle of rum and got extremely oppressed, man.")
P: Pissed (a Britishism, I believe).
Q: Quarked*. I rather like this one. Quenched? I like this one.
R: Roaring drunk. This was a term I heard from my parents' generation. Rummy. Ravaged.
S: Ah, so many. Stoned, stupid, smashed, soused, silly, etc.
T: Trashed.
U: Unhinged*? Unbelievably drunk? That's cheating, using an adverb.
V: This is a tough one. Verved*? Vegetative? Vectored? "Hey, man, you want to go get vectored?"
W: wrecked, wiped out, whacked, etc.
X: Oy, this is tough. Xylophoned*?
Y: Young*. You know, like when old people get high, they feel young, so the next day, they say, "Hey, we got really young last night."
Z: zapped, zonked.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Highest Form Of Art


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(Image: Mount Everest)
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Highest Form of Art

"I regard," said the famous novelist,
"tragedy to be the highest form of art."
We were meant gravely to absorb this
highest form of her opinion. One among
us, however, sneezed. Another, a
notorious literalist, believed
a makeshift sculpture on Mount Everest
to be the highest form of art. A
third believed tragedy to be the lowest
form of the raw deal offered by Life.

None of us spoke, though, until later.
We knew enough not to disagree publicly
with a famous, highly paid literary
guest, who seemed to be running a mild
royal fever; who appeared to be slightly
flushed with her current stature,
the highest form of her reputation.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Fleeting Real


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Fleeting Real

There will always be time to talk
of politics, money, and law. Speak
of one, and you speak of all three.
See the gray cat sitting on a blue
chair? That's where we might begin.

We might also speak of hand-carved
spoons, fossils in a dream, or languid
lovers' restless fingers. The rest
is history, a kind of tidied up
lie or a molten sack of evil,
depending upon your point of skew.

A millenium's sadness sways
when a horse smells lightning.
Let's imbibe words on matters
such as these. The fleeting is
the real, as is a fantasy of
reeling in a moment that glanced
at memory's bait, declined to bite,
and dove to settle in the murk
far below an angler's flaccid geometry.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Snapshot

The OED online tells me that "snapshot" (as a noun) goes back to the early 1800s in print and referred then to a more-or-less un-aimed shot using a gun. However, the word took on its photographic meaning not long thereafter, whereas I'd expected this connotation (now a denotation) to come from the early 20th century:

[1860 HERSCHEL in Photogr. News 11 May 13 The possibility of taking a photograph, as it were by a snap-shot{em}of securing a picture in a tenth of a second of time.]

(Quoted from the OED online)


Snapshot

By any means, capture an image,
mark an instant's interplay between
light and facial shape. Shuffle the image
off into memorabilia, through which
someone may sort or rummage some day
not soon. Whoever it is will wonder
whose image was captured back then,
back here, where at the gathering
we think we know who's here, what
they're wearing, what they show. So
yes, of course, take an image from
the flow, stabilize it in one of
the ways we know. Store it, for it
may be of interest one day, could be.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Bear Nearby

Bear Nearby

Tonight a bear's at the perimeter,
beyond where cabin-lights dissolve.
The animal breaks brush and gulps air,
snorts, working hard, and we hear this.
We glance up at Ursa Major above
the Sierra Buttes, a risen massif.

We figure the bear's breaking down
an apple tree now and gorging--wild
and deliberate, focused and irascible.
We don't walk closer. The bear doesn't
advance. There's a distance to be kept.

There's a fascination in the dark,
which entertains a big invisible mammal
whose family's lived here since before
any human named constellations or
eavesdropped on night's business.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Top Chef

Before I post a poem, here's some this-and-that:

The Lewin Group, which the GOPers and unctuous Charles Gibson (ABC) cite when discussing health-care "reform," is owned by United Health Care, a large insurance corporation, which also controls a database other health-insurance companies use to judge how much you get reimbursed and how much doctors get paid. . . . God willing and if the creek don't rise, as the saying goes, I might be in the High Sierra this time tomorrow, in a pesky canyon that used to resist radio- and TV-transmission and that still resists cell-phone transmission. . . . 'Tis the season when most Northwesterners give up on the pretense of maintaining a lawn and let the grass go blond and brown. Actually, the grass doesn't die; it just looks that way. I saw some poor sod (so to speak) spraying his brown lawn with water tonight, but his heart wasn't in it. Holding the hose was more of a gesture. . . . Meanwhile, I'm hatching Xeriscape plans that feature lots of gravel, boulders, hardy herbs, and drought-resistant plants. --But mostly boulders. One may water boulders, but one doesn't need to do so.


Top Chef

The celebrity tasters sample dishes cooked
competitively by erstwhile celebrity chefs
on a TV food-show. The tasters are
disappointed and get ready to reprimand
the chefs. They're about to opine when the
corpse of a starved person falls from
the ceiling of the TV studio onto their TV
table. Flies swarm out of the corpse's mouth
and seize the tasters' faces. The Food Judges'
hands turn to stone. The competing chefs use
this moment to flee from the show's decadent
premise. In this episode, there is no winner.


http://www.worldhunger.org/

Monday, July 27, 2009

Buddy's Cords of Wood

Buddy's Cords of Wood

Buddy was engaged to marry a woman who
lived in a white house on the hill. He
cut and stacked cords of wood for her.
Before Winter came, she broke off
the engagement and married another man,
who moved in with her. They burned
the wood Buddy had cut. Buddy lived
with his sister from then on. This

was in a town of 225 where few
can afford the luxury of embarrassment.
When Buddy cheated too obviously
at pinochle, the men banned him
from the games for a while. For
decades, an adage flourished in town:
"Don't cut wood for your beloved
until after you marry because some
bastard might end up burning it."


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Sometimes A Cat

This summer, our household features not one but two cats, a cerebral Russian blue, female, who is 10 years old, and a tabby who may have some Norwegian Forest Cat in his background; he is one year old. Her name is Lisa Marie, after Elvis Presley's daughter, and his name is Jerry Garcia. Jerry is a native of California, very laid back but also impulsive. We sense that Lisa Marie desires him to be more thoughtful. Unless they are supervised, the cats must be kept separate. When I watch television, the tabby gets up in a nearby chair and watches it with me. --Just a couple guys watching the tube.


Sometimes A Cat

Sometimes a cat relaxes so much,
it forgets where it is. That is,
sometimes a cat, relaxed, remembers
nothing is any place and anywhere
is nowhere in particular. A cat's
among the most in-particular creatures,
a purely present artist of equilibrium,
a monarch of the moment, eyes like
twin comprehending moons.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Friday, July 24, 2009

Scott Bateman on Lou Dobbs

I'm so old I remember when CNN had some credibility as a journalistic enterprise. No, really, I'm not kidding! Then it decided to "jump the shark" for ratings, so it tolerates the increasingly bizarre, micro-minded, sour-spirited rants of Lou Dobbs, for example. In all fairness, I have to say (well, I don't have to) that observing Lou's hair over the years has been a source of fascination. I am not on firm ground here, as my own "hair style" is an oxymoron. But at one point, Lou's hair looked almost tangerine in color. I'm lucky my job doesn't involve sitting under blazing lights, wearing makeup, and reading from a tele-prompter. To this extent, I sympathize with Lou and other on-camera crooners.

In any event, one of the most talented animators in the land, Scott Bateman, has produced a nice piece on Lou. One great thing about Bateman's work is that it simply but creatively uses the exact words of its subjects. Lou speaks, Bateman animates, and Bateman inserts comments:

http://trueslant.com/scottbateman/2009/07/24/lou-dobbs-nutjob/

On the Road to the Contagious Health-Care Bill

I have to agree with Fran-from-Canada's comment on the previous post: namely, that America's competitive streak prevents the U.S. from simply looking at nations who have successfully implemented health-care (and if it's not "universal," it's not health-care, as "health" refers to "whole") and imitating them, even if we acknowledge that some aspects of our situation may be different.


We mustn't overlook the cynicism of politicians and corporations either. The GOPers have made it plain that their only strategy is to stall and that the strategy is in service of the 2010 election. I think it's refreshing that they admit as much. They rank doing well in a mid-term election higher than providing reliable health-care coverage to (at least) 45 million persons who now go without it and who, if they're "lucky," get some help at an emergency-room. Meanwhile, the DEMsters will wrestle themselves into submission, easy pickings for lobbyists.

But let us turn to a physician who wrote poetry, W.C. Williams, and his "Spring and All," with its genius first line:

Spring and All

by William Carlos Williams

By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast-a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees

All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines-

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches-

They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind-

Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
One by one objects are defined-
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf


But now the stark dignity of
entrance-Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken


Let us hope that those in charge of delivering the health-care goods will "grip down and begin to awaken."

For more information about this poem and W.C.W., please visit . . .

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5953

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Corruption Even a Poet Can Understand

To the extent other industrialized nations pay attention to the U.S., they must wonder why establishing something as basic as adequate health-care for everyone is so hard for Americans to achieve. Availability to solid health-care for all citizens in a nation is about as basic as a good fire department is for a city. In this instance, "American exceptionalism" is not a compliment. Most reliable ratings of health-care systems worldwide put that of the U.S. around 35th (or so).

As you no doubt already know, one reason for our inability to get to this basic goal is that Congresspersons in effect answer to large health-"management" companies and insurance companies, who contribute a lot of money to campaigns and who employ people who previously worked in Congress as staffers. Thanks to a fellow blogger in Tacoma, I was able to look at a simple map of such corruption involving an important participant in the health-care legislation, Max Baucus, a U.S. Senator from Montana (and once you get to the chart, you may click on it to enlarge it):

http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/projects/2009/healthcare_lobbyist_complex/#baucus

Even a poet can grasp the corruption reflected in this chart!

Ancillary problems are that the alleged two-party system is, in effect, a one-party system wherein the two large parties suck up money from the same troughs, and that corporations may legally function as persons, so that trying to limit a corporation's monetary control of elections is depicted legally as an encroachment on "free speech," as if a corporation had vocal cords.

One piece of the current legislation delays the public option (which, among other things, would put pressure on insurance companies and also spread out the risk--you remember that simple insurance-concept) until 2013--after a) another presidential election, and b) a lot of people will have died, some of whom will die because of inadequate health-care. Demographically, it's in the insurance-companies' interest to have a lot of Baby-Boomers die; what a lovely bunch of coconuts. Meanwhile, when a citizen (or a visiting American, for that matter) in Canada or Sweden becomes ill, he or she (now, follow this complexity) goes to a doctor or a hospital to get treated without fear of being turned away for insurance-reasons or of going broke after being treated. Wow. It's almost like when a brush-fire occurs in a city and a crew from the fire department puts it out with water, quickly and professionally. If Baucus were in charge, the truck would show up late, charge the land-owner, and throw gasoline on the fire. Thanks for looking out for us, Max.

And yes, I know nothing is perfect in Canada or Sweden or elsewhere, but the American system suffers from more than imperfection. It just isn't functioning.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Moon Visits Altered History


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A headline in the Tacoma News Tribune two days ago read, "Moon Visits Altered History," and for an instant I misread "Visits" as being a verb and "Altered" as an adjective, so that the headline seemed to be about a journey the moon had taken.


Moon Visits Altered History


Orbit became a wearisome groove, a tedious
channel. Sun played the same old carom-shots
with rays, and just below, sad plants and creatures
marked the days. A bored moon unclipped itself
from gravity to visit an altered history.

It visited moon-museums in the gallaxy,
drank with disappointed asterioids who'd
aspired to be moons, interviewed multi-mooned
planets to ask how they kept their lunar
calendars straight. The moon was gone for a

month, exactly. No one but a few astronomers
and surfers noticed. The moon came back
to trudge its orbit like a mule, plowing
time, spinning space into legend.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Monday, July 20, 2009

Summer-Squash Soup

Hey, who recorded "(There Ain't No Cure For) The Summertime Blues," the Who? I imagine dozens of artists have recorded it in an attempt to cure the bank-account blues.

Anyway, it turns out there's a simple cure for the summertime blues, and as you might expect, it's soup. When in doubt, make soup!

Thanks to blogger, chef, and poet Minerva, we have ourselves a link to a recipe for Summer-Squash Soup (below). (Minverva reports that she added some previously cooked chicken to give the soup a little autumnal muscle, so if you're not rolling down the Vegan Highway at present, you may give that a try.)

http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1809036

And Minerva is over at . . .

http://minervadamama.blogspot.com/

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Summer Squash


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'Tis the season, in the Northern Hemisphere at least, for squash. I grew up calling yellow or crook-necked squash "summer squash," and I prefer it to zucchini, the hide of which is a tad bitter, and the meat of which can be watery. I used to like to pick yellow squash because in the garden, it often had some fuzz on it. One reason to plant a garden, I submit, is that it produces imperfection, such as the fuzz, which is rubbed off by the time squash makes it to a super-market super-slickly. For instance, the cucumbers I just harvested look pretty gnarly. They're fat and fine inside, but the hide looks like it's been in a scuffle, and one of the cucumbers has an odd twist to it. You just can't find that kind of imperfection in a produce-department, no matter how hard you look.

In case anyone asks, and I'm sure someone will do so, "squash" as a verb can mean not just to press down or in upon but also to join in a crowd of people--to squash about in the city, as it were--this according to the OED online. "Squash" as a noun may refer not just to zucchini, etc., but also to the unripe pod of a pea, and in this iteration, the word was often used insultingly. One would call someone a "squash," a mere unripe pod. "Hey, pal, as far as I'm concerned, you're an unripe pod." And here's news: "squash" as a noun used to refer as well to a muskrat--or "musksquash." Wow.

My desultory research did not go so far as to tell me how the racket-game, squash, got its name. Squash seems like the upper-class version of racquet-ball, but I could be incorrect in that impression.

When something feels as if it has been squashed, we sometimes say it appears squishy, don't we? What was squashed was squished, or squishified. ;-) I seem to remember that "squish" was also deployed as a verb, back in grammar (or lower) school: "Squish that spider, Irving, will you? Thanks."

I wish you a good summer of unsquished squash, eaten raw, steamed, or roasted, and may the squash you harvest be perfectly imperfect.

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Moon Poems


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(image: Swiss cheese, the chief component of the moon, in spite of astronomers' and astronauts' protestations to the contrary)
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Not that you asked, but my favorite moon-poem is W.H. Auden's "This Lunar Beauty," chiefly because of the rhythm, which subtly echoes that of Jon Skelton's poetry.

Other good moon-poems include "Under the Harvest Moon," by Carl Sandburg, famous Swedish American; "Autumn Moonlight," by Matsuo Basho [how many haikus have a moon-image in the them, I wonder?] ; "Length of Moon," by Arna Bontemps; "The Moon Versus Us Ever Sleeping Together Again," by Richard Brautigan [I think we have a winner in the title-competition]; "The Moon Was But a Chin of Gold," by Emily Dickinson [I think we have a winner in the comparison-competition, and what a shock that's it's D: never mess with Ms. D.]; "Blood and the Moon," by W.B. Yeats; and "And the Moon and the Stars and the World," by Charles Bukowski.

Friday, July 17, 2009

Moon-Shot: The Missing Article


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(image: Jules Verne)
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Moon-Shot 1969: The Missing Article


Somewhere between the moon and the Sierra Nevada,
our TV-reception got fizzed. We leaned in toward
the Zenith set that labored to freight us images
of Armstrong. Outside, illusory sky still pretended
to be blue. " . . .one small step for man, one
giant leap for mankind," said the Zenith, and
I knew the first man on the moon had flubbed
prefabricated lines. The article "a" was missing,
and without it, "man" and "mankind" meant pretty
much the same thing in 1969. The article "a"

is still missing. It tumbles in the Milky Way,
silent in an unspoken vacuum. Yes, yes, I was
properly amazed like everyone else. And a little
sad. After a cumbersome astronaut stepped off a
ladder and set feet, the moon misplaced its
mythology and became dirt and a destination.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Man In A Hole


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Man In A Hole

In summer's citified humidity, one man
pierced a street's asphalt hide with a
jack-hammer. Then someone else in a yellow
back-hoe dug something like a grave. Soon
another man was standing in the hole. Orange
plastic cones stood sentry around him. He
wore a white hard-hat and an orange vest.
Cars passed thickly by on both sides, hauling
their noise, puffing exhaust-fumes, hardly
slowing down. The man's height had been cut
in half. His co-workers looked down at him
expectantly, as if he could fix anything--
sewer, water, electricity, earthquakes.
"People give me shit," he yelled, "and
I am tired of it."


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

W. H. Auden Site


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I recently ran across a site dedicated to W.H. Auden, master of lyric poems and long poems, genius at incorporating vocabulary and diction from a wide spectrum of sources into his poetry. His most anthologized poems include "Lullaby," "If I Could Tell You," "In Memoriam: W.B. Yeats," and "Musee des Beaux Arts." Collected Shorter Poems and Collected Longer Poems are both available from Random House/Vintage.

Here is a link to the site:

http://audensociety.org/

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Do You Like The Blues?


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(photo: Albert King, with smoke, perhaps from his guitar)
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Embarking on the great cleaning of the office, I exhumed The Best of Blues: The Essential CD Guide. Yes, I know, CDs belong on the scrap-heap of old technology, along with those massive 8-track contraptions. At least one may transfer the contents of a CD to one's Itunes (or whatever) "library," although a library is, by etymological definition, supposed to be composed of books.

At any rate, Roger St. Pierre put together this guide, which was published by Collins Publishers, San Francisco, in 1993. The nifty little book is postcard-size.

Not that you asked, but among my favorite blues artists, in no particular order, are Big Mama Thornton, Robert Johnson, Albert King, B.B. King, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Bessie Smith, Taj Mahal, Bonnie Raitt, Ray Charles, Mac Rebennack (Dr. John), and Son House (I just love his "John the Revelator"). I know: it's a terribly traditional list. Studies have shown that Robert Cray (from Tacoma) and Eric Clapton apparently know something about playing blues-guitar, too.

A Great Baseball-Blog

...And speaking, that is to say writing, of baseball, I'll now pass on a link to a terrific baseball blog--with poetry; but baseball fans are not to worry: the blog is all baseball all the time (and from Chicago, where the Cubs will one day win it all again--in the same century when the S.F. Giants do, perhaps, and alas):


http://the-daily-something.blogspot.com/

Monday, July 13, 2009

Baseball Poetry


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Here comes (American) baseball's All-Star game, and here's a collection of baseball poetry:

Line Drives: 100 Contemporary Baseball Poems, edited by Brooke Howath, Tim Wales, and Elinor Nauen.

It would be interesting (to me) to see poems about soccer (a.k.a. football), cricket, hockey, fencing, etc., from other cultures.

I thought I'd posted "Sestina: The Game of Baseball" before, but I guess not. I embarked on writing the poem because I thought the repetition and figurative circularity of the sestina-form might go well with baseball, a highly ritualized sport. Anyway, here it is:

Sestina: The Game of Baseball

The circle is the center of the game:
The trip from home to home; mound; ball.
And Baseball’s creed is O-penness: fields;
Gloves like birds’ mouths; past fences lies forever.
The game plays out in formulae of three.
Combinations interlock like rings.

Grave umpires speak in prophecy that rings
Out in the voice of Moses. Out, Strike, Ball
Mean really Shame, Yes, No! The game
Is subtle, though, like its faintly sloping fields.
And indefinite: A game can last forever
In theory, infinitely tied at 3 to 3.

Though rules say nine may play, it’s often three
Who improvise a play within the game.
(Tinkers, Evers, Chance) . Pitcher lends ball
To air. Potentiality of bat rings
With power in that instance. All fields
Beckon to innocence and hope forever.

One chance at a time drops from forever.
Player with a caged face grabs for ball.
But batter knocks ball back into the ring
Of readiness, at which point one of three
Things happen that can happen in the game:
Safe or Out or Ball-Beyond-All-Fields:

Home run. Inspire the ball past finite fields,
And you voyage honored on the sea that rings
The inner island. Sail home, touch three
White islands, Hero. Gamers since forever
Have tried to sail past limits of the game,
Shed physics’ laws, hold Knowledge like a ball.

To know this game you have to know the ball,
An atom when contrasted with green fields—
Less than orange, white with pinched rings
Of stitches ridged for grip. With ball come three
Essential tasks: throw, catch, bat. These are forever
Of the Circle in the Center of the Game.

Dropped in the fluid game, the solid ball
Starts widening rings of chance, concentric threes
That open out into the Field. Baseball. Forever.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Memo From November 6th Street

"November 6th Street" in Memphis connects to Monroe Avenue (among other streets and avenues)about a block from Main Street. The name of the street commemorates a day (in 1934?) when an arrangement was reached between the city of Memphis and the federal government whereby the Tennessee Valley Authority got funded.
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Memo From November 6th Street

They make it work somehow in Memphis,
bluff buttressed against an oceanic
river. Vines overwhelm scruffy trees,
weariness overtakes work, and Downtown
pines for its heyday. You know the story:
Handy, Rufus, B.B., Elvis, Booker T.
& them fused grooves like welders
building barges bound for big water.
They made it work somehow.

Sir, ma'am, if you want to, you can
sit in a black iron chair next to where
Johnny & June Cash and Ella wrote their
names in cee-ment. Pigeons and a goat
will stare down at you as you stare up
at a plastic palm tree & you'll drop money
into a yellow bucket, sit back down,
and listen to covers of Albert King,
Robert Johnson, Stevie Ray Vaughn,
Son House, and Otis Redding. Looks like
nothing's gonna change in Memphis.
Then it does. Then it doesn't. They
have to dredge the channel regularly.

Meanwhile I have to check out the Just
Like New consignment-store on November 6th
Street--Memphis, yes, sir: Memphis--caught
in a corner between Arkansas and Mississippi,
between St. Louis and New Orleans, mid-South.
They make it work somehow. Somehow they make it.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Thursday, July 9, 2009

How To Be A Cat: Illustrated

A while back, I posted a poem called "How To Be A Cat," and now a fine photographer whom I don't know has paired one of her photos with the poem. Personally, I don't have anything against the poem; in fact, it still has my full support (as presidents say of cabinet-officers they've already asked to resign), but I really like the photo, and here's a link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ilarialuciani/2572078179/

I might add that the photo includes notes--in Italian. How fabulous is that? To read the notes, you just lightly drag the cursor across the photo, and the notes appear. It's the sort of thing that would fascinate a cat.

Thanks to the photographer.

Mosey v. Saunter


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(photo: trolley on Main Street, Memphis)
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There's an "orange" alert for smog and ozone in Memphis today, so it's a good day for moseying and sauntering, at best. Officials reduced the price of a trolley-ride on Main Street from one dollar to 25 cents; they're worried about older folks, as well as children with asthma, especially.

I sauntered up to a venerable lunch-room that was bustling with downtown business-folk, and I ate some turnip greens, tomatoes, and "corn sticks" (corn bread). Great basic food, eccentric servers: superb.

Two businessmen at the table next to mine had a long serious conversation about staffing. Then one of them said, "You ready to saunter back?" "Yes," the other one said, "let's mosey."

So of course I had to check the OED online with regard to these words. "Saunter" once meant "incantation" as a noun and, as a verb, "to muse," but that was long ago. By the 1780s, it referred to a "careless" walk or walking carelessly, so it appears as if sauntering may be a slower activity than moseying; that is, to saunter is to walk aimlessly, almost.

As a verb, "mosey" was (and remains?) an Americanism going back at least as far as 1829 in print. As a noun--for example, one may "take a saunter"--it goes back only to 1960, at least in the OED. I think I'm more accustomed to seeing nouns turned into verbs--as was famously done with "impact" in the 1980s, when it began to be used in place of "affect." "The report impacted city government," e.g. Before that, the only things I remember being "impacted" were wisdom-teeth.

On campus, I almost always leave for class very early and saunter there. At least one colleague I know is a bustler, and one day, as she bustled past, she asked, "Why do you walk so slowly?" I deflected the question by saying, "It's called sauntering."

I'm not sure what the real answer to her question is. I don't like to bustle because it usually symptomizes being late (speaking of turning a noun into a verb), and I like to look at creatures like bugs and birds when I walk. I also like to have time to nod to people I know and say hello. I always arrive in plenty of time.

I wish you good moseying and sauntering today.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Metaphorical Headline; Sonnet-Challenge

Before I forget, let me point out that "Minerva" has a sonnet-challenge going this week, in case you're in a 14-line mood:


http://minervadamama.blogspot.com/2009/07/poetry-challenge-5-sonnet.html


Now, on to a headline from The Commercial Appeal, a daily newspaper in Memphis:

"Mayoral Morass Sinks Deeper Into Confusion" (Wed. July 8, 2009, page one).

As with the governor of Alaska, the Mayor of Memphis, Willie Herenton, is a bit unsure not about resigning but about when he's resigning, and the confusion is causing all sorts of political and bureaucratic problems. --Also opportunities: The legendary wrestler (or "wrassler") Jerry Lawler (Andy Kaufman wrestled him--remember?) is going to run in the special election, when and if it takes place.

At any rate, the headline troubled me slightly, with regard to the metaphor. I suppose a morass--or "swampy tract," as the OED online defines it--can sink, insofar as all pieces of land, including soaked ones, have the potential to sink. But maybe the headline-writer (as opposed to the story's writers, Amos Maki and Alex Donlach) was thinking that the situation Herenton has created is sinking into a morass of confusion; or maybe that the mayor's office and the city council are sinking into a morass. But I don't think the morass is meant to be sinking.

Anyway, I enjoyed the story and the swamp of my thinking about this metaphor....I reckon "headline" itself is a metaphor--the top of a newspaper-story or -column (for example) being compared to the head, and thus the need for "capitalization." A capital idea!

Good luck with your sonnet.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Elvis Read Books, Had Excellent Taste in Movies


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(photo: Slim Pickens and Harvey Korman, in Blazing Saddles, with books in background)
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Well, if you're in Memphis, you pretty much have to visit Graceland. I'm in Memphis, so I visited Graceland.

A "modest mansion" is an oxymoron, but I think the phrase fits Elvis's home, which he decorated immodestly. Actually, the place is probably decorated just the way most young working-class men in the 1950s-through-early-1970s would have decorated a place if a) they suddenly obtained a great deal of cash, b) were under no one's guidance, and c) were egged on by a bunch of "pals"--or hangers-on.

My second impression concerns just how much cash the site generates. The scale of the operation is difficult to fathom. It is a massive cash-machine. I do wish a significant percentage of that money were dedicated to not-for-profit aims, particularly in Memphis, to address poverty, educational needs, and even basic infrastructure-problems. That would be a good thing, such channeling.

On the tour of the larger airplane, I learned that Elvis liked to read and traveled with boxes of books. What exactly he read is unclear, but one site on the web points to some of his spiritual reading: http://www.bodhitree.com/booklists/elvis.presley.html

However, in the mansion, at least on the ground floor, there appears to have been no space for books. The scholar and bibliographer in me would love to acquire lists of books Elvis read. What was in those boxes he toted to Las Vegas? As a reader, he probably had the same habits, if not the same classical education (Humes High School v. Pembroke College, Oxford, so it goes) as Samuel Johnson, including impatience. Johnson famously tossed books across the room when he became bored with them, and one imagines the nervous, pharmaceutically sped-up Elvis reading voraciously but getting bored fast. Cat on a hot tin roof, so to speak. Go, cat, go.

I also learned that among Elvis's favorite movies to watch on the plane were Blazing Saddles and the Monty Python films. This confirms that Elvis had great taste in cinema, at least in the comedy column. Of course, as with the home-decoration, the taste in comedies also betrays a bit of male adolescent bias. As clever as Brooks and the Monty Python team are, they're also mischievous in an adolescent way.

Most of Elvis's own movies are (as you know) bad, sometimes so bad they're campy and good, but that was Hollywood's and the Colonel's fault. Elvis was actually a good instinctive actor, as Walter Matthau once observed. He worked with Elvis in King Creole, and he said that after a scene, the director told him (Matthau) to stop trying so hard, and Matthau was aware of the extent to which Elvis wasn't trying hard but had a good sense of timing. One imagines all the good, surprising, interesting movies Elvis might have made. Too bad he didn't collaborate with the Monty Python troupe early on. Too bad Samuel Johnson never got to visit Graceland.

Monday, July 6, 2009

Skin's Stars


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Skin's Stars

Freckles and moles and other colorations
constellate skin’s sky. Imagine connective
lines, then conjure epidermal legends:
huntress of the thigh, magic beetles near
the feet, miraculous bird on the back of
a hand. Or not. Go with the logistical reading,
points on a dermatological map suggesting
deeper strata of DNA, a digital code of
ancient migratory patterns--ah, but also
of collusions with sunlight. Glory be to God

wrote Hopkins (G.), for dappled things,
and skin certainly qualifies: dot-commissioned
by blots and bits of pigment, uncoalesced
pointillist portrait painted on your body’s
parchment, a realistic abstract rendering.
Scars appear like halted asteroids on this
sky, or they try to get a message through
using ghostly notation—something about
the time you fell down on creek-slate or
tried to break up a dogfight with one hand.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Sunday, July 5, 2009

Memphis Monologue




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photo: Peabody Hotel, Memphis
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Memphis Monologue

No, sir, I'm not from
Memphis. I'm from New
Orleans, but I came
to Memphis after the
Hurricane. There was
nothing left for me
down there. Been here
ever since, but it's
tough. I haven't been
able to find much work--
the economy; and all.
If you like barbecue,
you might try the
Rendezvous. You have
a good evening, sir.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Saturday, July 4, 2009

July 4th in Memphis

Well, all right, I made it to Memphis on July 4th, and what a party they're having--down by the Mississippi (fireworks), on Beale Street (one big outdoor party), and on the roof of the Peabody Hotel (a radio-station-concert/party of some kind, audible from everywhere--perhaps you can hear it through this post, even).

Until I visit the South yet again, I always forget how much I like the pace of things down here. As long as you're not in a rush, everything's cool. Once you get past, oh, Kansas, and into Oklahoma, things start to slow down. I think the plane even slowed down mid-way through the flight. ;-)

In honor of Memphis and Elvis and Emily (not to mention Aretha), I'll post a link to Joe La Sac's short film, in case you haven't seen it yet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naa3oK4zWxQ


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naa3oK4zWxQ
tav67qhgpw

Friday, July 3, 2009

True Patriot


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the photo is of Susan B. Anthony
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Here's a wee book appropriate, arguably, for July 4th festivities, conviviality, and reflection:

The True Patriot: A Pamphlet, edited by Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer.

It starts with a couple chestnuts--the D of I and Mr. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Then it moves on to George Washinton's Farewell Address, Jefferson's first inaugural address, Webster's (Daniel) dedication of a monument at Bunker Hill, and (one of) FDR's state-of-the-union address. In addition to some other more or less familiar texts, the book includes an address by Judge Learned Hand, one by Susan B. Anthony, one by Jane Addams, and a poem, "Let American Be America Again," by Langston Hughes. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, speech at the March on Washington is also included, as is one by Robert Kennedy.

The slim, nifty little book was first published by Sasquatch Books [nice name, eh?] in Seattle (2007) and printed in Canada.

Thursday, July 2, 2009

What Was That Thing?


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Song: What Was That Thing?


What was that thing
I tried to forget?
If I could recall,
I'd be glad to regret.

What was that thing
I always desired?
Seems I forgot
What I required.

What was that grudge
I used to hold?
Seems that slow smolder
went quickly cold.

Things move on down to
where flood meets sea,
a delta-land
of used-to-be.

A delta-land
of used-to-be
frees you from you
and me from me.

What was that hate
that drove me blind?
How did that love
turn me so kind?

What were those plans
I once held dear?
Hey, life came by,
changed There to Here.

Who was that I
Who once was me?
He tried too hard,
now lets it be.

Time flows through space
like silt to sea--
a delta-land,
believe you me:

a delta-land
of used-to-be
frees you from you
and me from me.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Potatoes, Thyme, and the Struggle


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Potatoes, Thyme, and the Struggle

What did I hope to gain by applying
my mental powers, such as they are, to
serious problems of the day--war, famine,
economic entropy, a planet turned to kindling?
Well, I'd hoped to make a show of doing
my part. In what? If not in the Struggle,
then at least in the struggle to pay attention.

Then I lost my keys and phone and had to
track them down. I watered the garden--thyme
and potatoes doing fine. I got a haircut,
purchased bread and other basics, fetched
the mail, sent a note of sympathy and three
birthday cards, excerised as a favor to
my heart, sent electronic messages, cooked
dinner. By then the day was done.

The smug oligarchs and financial thugs,
arms dealers, hacks, handlers, and somnambulent
press will prevail, or so run today's thoughts,
because an ordinary me or a you as you are has stuff
to do even on a day off from work. They and we keep
us busy, these magna cum sociopathic human
bacteria that eat systems, wreck lives, start
wars. Life keeps us busy, and so again I listen
to Tennessee Ernie Ford: "Saint Peter, don't you
call me, 'cause I can't go. I owe my soul
to the Company Store." Sixteen tons of busy.

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

In Defense of Mark Sanford and McDonald's


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To write almost the least, I don't make a habit of defending Republican governors (or any governors, for that matter) or large corporations, so this is new territory for me.

True, Governor Mark Sanford (South Carolina) has done just about everything wrong lately. At first I thought his interminable press-conferences were simply narcissistic and self-induldgent (and they may indeed be so); then I thought, well, maybe this much talking springs from evangelical Christian rhetoric, which has been known to be voluble; now I think the guy just needs therapy--from a therapist, not from talking into cameras.

A writer for the Kansas City Star has similar thoughts: ]

http://voices.kansascity.com/node/4990

Also, Keith Olbermann [MSNBC], among others relentlessly attacks Sanford, when not too long ago, Olbermann was most incensed that people (and Congress) were making so much of President Clinton's stupid behavior in the White House. Jonathan Alter gently pointed this out on Olbermann's show the other evening, but Olbermann didn't seem to absorb the information. He's becoming as insufferable and predictable as the man he pretends to loathe, Bill O'Reilly.

Moreover, given all the real and really important crises and issues there are out there, why spend time reporting on the personal misfortunes of Mark Sanford and his family? I know the answer: ratings. Nonetheless, knock it off. Of course Sanford seems completely hypocritical, having once attacked Clinton, but so what? What exactly is the percentage of humans who aren't hypocritical at some point?

As for McDonalds (photo of the original above), I simply want to say a word in favor of its "dollar" menu. If I were out of work (there but for the grace, etc.), I think I'd make use of that menu. Yes, I know such a menu functions as a "loss-leader," which gets people in the "store." No, I don't think the dollar-menu compensates for the problems McDonalds creates, as cited in Fast Food Nation and elsewhere. Nonetheless, a cheap hot meal in a pinch is a good thing for a lot of people.

There. My counterintuitive post concludes.