With More Noise Comes More Silence

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With More Noise Comes More Silence

All right, don't get back to me, then. In
this age of proliferated communication,
silence too is on the rise. People ignore
or do not respond to messages, questions.
Silence is a response. It baits assumptions,
massages insecurities. It leaves you alone

with yourself, and there's that submerged
piece of you that's almost glad. There's
a pleasing ache in isolation sometimes--
like that of muscles after work or sport.

And you're asked, by yourself, "Just what
were you expecting, fool, in return for your
message, your question?"  You choose
not to respond to yourself.

Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom

"Fall Wind," by William Stafford

"Flight-Attendant's Instructions Song," by Cosmo Monkhouse

"each," by Hans Ostrom

Thoreau on Scholars

From a friend in Boston:


Thoreau:  "There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live, according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly. They make shift to live merely by conformity, practically as their fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a nobler race of men."

Poem: "Professors of Literature"

--Intentionally painting with a broad brush here. There have been and still are splendid professors of literature. I studied with a couple of them.



Professors of Literature

They don't love books so much
as covet them, jealous of students
who want casual affairs with novels
or poems. They imagine themselves
to be dead authors' agents, lawyers,
conjurers, explainers, personal friends,
stunt-doubles: "indispensable." They
behave like security-officers prowling
canons and eras.

They tend to hate themselves, each
other, and simple questions. They
dislike students except for the ones
they collect like figurines. They
make stuff up about books and
poems but aren't imaginative.

They hate to teach rhetoric, which
is a real education, as those Greeks
and Romans knew. They excrete
things to quibble about and catch
arrogance like the flu. They love
to speak in codes of theory about
theories of codes, but they always
forget to bring evidence along.
They hate writers.

Too many are small, nasty packages
of wasted thought. A fair percentage
are bullies, also lunatics obsessed
by light-bulbs they mistake for the moon.

Their parties are no fun, are a kind of
humorless hell, though cackling can
be heard, as is the case with hazing.
They treat secretaries and
waitresses like shit. The
truth is, universities wouldn't miss
them much if they were to run off
like rabid dogs, the circuits of
their narcissism finally fried.


Creative Commons License Hans Ostrom

For the Number Four," by Hans Ostrom

How Novels Begin: THE VANISHING AMERICAN, by Zane Grey

"You And This War," by Hans Ostrom

ee cummings reads "Somewhere I have never travelled..."

Creative Quotations from Diane Wakoski for Aug 3

"Retro Love"

"A Delta Land of Used-to-Be," Cosmo Monkhouse

"No End To Love," by John Hartford

"Down Where I Am," by Langston Hughes

How Novels Begin: THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES, by Arthur Conan Doyle

"Knight," by Hans Ostrom

"pity this monster," by e.e. cummings

What Are Your Favorite Words?

When I teach poetry-writing, I sometimes invite students to make lists of their favorite words--favorite chiefly because how they sound or intuitively "feel" to the writer, and favorite (secondarily) because of some personal connection to or memory about the word. I advise the students not to include too many words that they like simply because of a concept the word represents, like "freedom," unless the sound appeals, too.  But of course I don't "prohibit" such words. 

Such a list is useful in itself, but then you can also begin to work toward a poem by stringing some of the words together--going from specific language (with no subject in mind yet) toward a subject--and there's no rush.

Here's a link to a poem I read for Youtube, one made up of some of my favorite words; it's just a list poem, with "of" thrown in a lot as a kind of binding agent, mortar:

"Genitive Case"

"Sasha's Hooka," performed by Joe B. Vaughan, Jr.

"i like my body," by e.e. cummings

"The Extravagance and Reticence of Love," by Hans Ostrom

"To War Again," by Hans Ostrom

"Sudden Light," by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

"The Want of You," by Angelina Weld Grimké

"putrefaction," by Charles Bukowski

"First Love," by John Clare

"Freedom of Love," by Andre Breton

"Henry River Poem 13," by Tim Peeler

How Novels Begin: ANIMAL FARM, by George Orwell

"The Masquerade," by Olive Custance

How Novels Begin: THE SOUND AND THE FURY, by William Faulkner

"Theatre of the Absurd," by Hans Ostrom

British Poets--Youtube

It turns out I've read 88 poems by British poets on Youtube. The most viewed is "Cherry Ripe" by Robert Herrick--I don't think I read it very well because I tried to sound like a market-barker in the first few lines. The least viewed is "On Gut," by Ben Jonson.  Anyway, here is a link:

British poets

"Thomas Hardy and A.E. Housman," by Max Beerbohm

"Inventory," by Dorothy Parker

"Thomas Hardy and A.E. Housman," by Max Beerbohm

"Sestina: Ellis Island, Amelia Earhart," by Hans Ostrom

Novel Out a Year--Set in the Sierra Nevada

HONORING JUANITA, a novel I wrote, has been available for about a year. It hasn't appeared on the New York Times best-seller list, but I imagine that's just an oversight. It's a contemporary tale set in the Sierra Nevada and concerns a woman who decides to protest the building of a dam on a pristine alpine river. Her husband happens to be the county sheriff, so he has to arrest her. Complications ensue, as they often do in novels. A secondary plot is historical--the lynching of a Mexican woman during California's Gold Rush.  This part's based on an actual event that happened in a town near where I grew (a town by the name of Downieville). Anyway, these stories were something I'd wanted to write since I was in about the fourth grade--well, at least the historical plot was. 

The novel-publishing world is mad to categorize novels--just look at any literary agent site. Of course, "romance" is the big category. But then there's chick-lit, fantasy, multi-cultural, "literary," mystery, and so on.

 HONORING JUANITA seems to have a bit of the "women's novel" about it, as far as I understand that category. And multi-cultural: Juanita is/was Mexican, and Mary Bluestone & her husband Lloyd are of mixed ethic backgrounds.  And environmental?  Is that a fiction-category? Also relatively short. Don't you love relatively short novels? I do, even though the enormous WAR AND PEACE remains my all-time favorite piece of fiction. But just looking at one of Georges Simenon's thin Maigret novels makes me smile. I see I've digressed.



HONORING JUANITA is available in traditional form for $11.95, less than that used on amazon, and VERY cheap on Kindle: less than a dollar! Such a deal. This post constitutes my major advertising-push and has left me exhausted.  A link:

HONORING JUANITA

Poems (Translated) From the Sanskrit

Here's a link to poems from the Sanskrit I've read for Youtube--all very short, and all (or most) from John Brough's wonderful translation--Poems From the Sanskrit--from Penguin, a book that should be on poetry-readers' shelves, in my presumptuous opinion:


Sanskrit poems

Langston Hughes's Poems--Youtube

Here is a link to the poems by Langston Hughes that I've read for my Youtube channel (which is named langstonify, after all)--and grateful acknowledgement is hereby sent to Knopf and the Estate of Langston Hughes; if you don't own Hughes's Selected or Collected yet, you might want to get them.  --A highly under-rated poet, still.

Hughes poems

Amusing Poems

Here is a link to some amusing poems (well, I think they are) that I've read on my Youtube channel:

Humorous Poems

"Prophecy," by Elinor Wylie

"The Coast Starlight," by Hans Ostrom

Animal Poems

Here is a link to the "Animal Poems" playlist on my youtube channel, langstonify. By the way if you're a) a poet, b) stuck regarding what to write about and c) interested in getting un-stuck, writing a poem about a creature, any creature, usually gets things going, although a pet-creature is not always the best way to go.


Animal Poems

How Novels Begin: MIDDLEMARCH, by George Eliot

"The Poet," by Paul Laurence Dunbar

How Novels Begin: EMMA, by Jane Austen

Poems About Money and Work

Here's a link to poems (chiefly by others) I've read for Youtube that concern money and/or work:

Money/Work Poems Playlist

How Novels Begin: BARRABAS, by Pär Lagerkvist

Love Poems/Erotic Poems

...So I've recorded around 500 poems for Youtube now, chiefly poems by others, and I've begun to categorize them in the "Playlists" category, and one of the categories is "Love Poems/Erotic Poems," in case anyone asks.

How Novels Begin: WAR AND PEACE, by Leo Tolstoy

"Four Kinds of Trouble Blues (Wheels, Money, Women, and Soul)," by Cosm...

"Between Your Sheets," by Lady Wortley Montagu

"I Really Do," by Hans Ostrom (song)

"Bermuda Moon," instrumental song + printed lyrics, by Hans Ostrom

"Bermuda Moon," instrumental song + printed lyrics, by Hans Ostrom

"The Taxi," by Amy Lowell

"I'm Just A Guy" (song)

How Novels Begin: TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA, by Richard Brautigan

How Novels Begin: TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, by Harper Lee

"the two hanks," by Carter Monroe

"Grief for the Number Ten," by Hans Ostrom

"Heaven," by Robert Creeley

How Novels Begin: OLIVER TWIST, by Charles Dickens

If They

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If They

If they aren't going to be near your death-bed,
If they never thought well of you,
If they never thought of you,
If they belittled everything you did even
If they thought of you,

If they never helped you dig
in the ground when you were
digging in the ground,
If they never helped you get
better when you were ill,
If they never gave you a break,
If they never helped to fix
your leaking roof,
If they never paid for a drink,
If they never had a kind word
for you or anybody else,
If they sucked up to power
and back-stabbed their associates,
If they never thought things through,
If they thought empathy was for suckers,
If they never listened,
If they never knew one goddamned
thing about you & never cared to,
Et Cetera, then

Why do you care what they think
about you, about people you care for,
and about matters dear to you?
If they are whom they have shown
themselves to be, then let them
drift on their own sea and disappear,
and disappear.


Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom

"History," by Langston Hughes

"The Gift of Sight," by Robert Graves

"Lovers by Sea-Light," by Peter Davison

"The Fly," by William Blake

"Pious Celinda," by William Congreve

"Science Fiction," by Kingsley Amis

"Balloonist's Log, Final Entry," by Hans Ostrom

"City Life," by D.H. Lawrence

"A Widow Bird Sate Mourning," by Percy Bysshe Shelley

"All, All of a Piece," by John Dryden

"The Peopled Forest of My Mind," by George Santayana

Cedar

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Cedar

Think red cedar consider aroma mountain geology owned science Descartes God wheat bread ground fire husbandry gather stay goat dog domesticate darkness fear myth anything can kill hope medicine faith.

Cedar consider stare wind touch-red-bark, smell cedar-sap. Memory light/no light, life/no life. Red resin. Consider cedar. Think cedar your life memory green memory red thick bark.

Yellow pollen wheat faith science knows nothing sure is ground fear darkness and cold death faith cedar rooted in ground in soil in rock. Water.

"The First Kiss Came With Flame," by Carl Sandburg

How Novels Begin: "One Hundred Years of Solitude," by Gabriel Garcia Mar...

Red Polka-Dot Dress

[re-posting this one from another blog, Red Tales]


There is a photograph of his mother wearing a dress with red polka-dots on a white background. The photograph is a color print from the negative film of a snapshot taken after the mid-point of the 20th century.

This is the most famous dress his mother owned, as things turned out. He thinks about her putting it on that day to get ready for the party, a summer-party in the High Sierra. He thinks of her thinking that the party will be a good time, an open field of behavior, an earned respite from the work of raising three children and tending one husband in rugged country 4,500 feet above sea level.

The son knows she doesn't, on that day, see the dress as a symbol in so many words or thoughts. But he imagines she looks at herself in the circular mirror of the "waterfall" bureau, imagines she sees the dress contrasting with her deep summer tan and blue eyes just so. The image she sees is attractive, and it satisfies her. The party is going to happen. She and her husband are hosting the party. The husband is not an easy husband to have. His personality is as hard and well defined as a sheer stone bluff in the Sierra. He is a rugged, overwhelming man, with a grudge against life that's masked by a child's sense of mirth, a prophet's sense of will, a peasant's capacity to toil, and a glad smile as broad as a highway-billboard. Luckily, liquor makes him gladder still. The son knows the mother knew of other women's husbands whom liquor made mean, made violent.

At the party, there will be work but also other women to do the work, so the work will seem like part of the party. There will be laughter, liquor, and food--and several compliments about the dress, which seems that day to be the perfect summer-dress, sleeveless, cotton, red polka-dots on a white background. Everyone at the party will know a great deal about World War II, hard work, the Great Depression, and the English language as spoken colloquially in the United States of America.

None of it will escape the avalanche of time, although snapshots, saving the dress, and nonfiction writing are amusing tactics of delay, the poignant motions of an amateur magician's hands, with Death sitting in the audience like the bald figure in Bergman's The Seventh Seal.

Thank God, he thinks, his mother didn't come close to thinking thoughts as melodramatic as "none of it will escape the avalanche of time," etc., that day. Thank God his mother never saw The Seventh Seal and asked him questions about the film. He would have tried to answer the questions, and his mother would have remained unconvinced by the answers. She would have disliked the film as much as she disliked puppets of any kind.

The white dress with red polka-dots fit, the alpine sun shone, friends and acquaintances arrived, and everyone acted as if they weren't about to die, and when people act that way, and they should, they seem untroubled and, indeed, immortal.

By his accounting, all the adults who attended that party are dead. The polka-dotted dress hangs in the closet of a daughter-in-law, and one of the cousins, the many cousins, painted a watercolor featuring the dress hanging on a clothesline. The dress is a cut and stitched quaint decorated piece of cloth. The snapshot lies between pages on a shelf somewhere.

Everything is taking place and changing at a speed humans cannot, do not, and best not comprehend fully. In a way, the party was over before his mother ever put on the dress, but she didn't see it that way, and that day, that's part of what mattered, he thinks.

The scandal of time is that it allows humans just enough time to arrange their thoughts and manage their habits so as to avoid confronting the scandal of time every moment. Scandalously, time makes routine seem reasonable and a bright dress permanent, and it makes summer-parties seem like a fair exchange.

How Novels Begin: "The Spy Who Came In From the Cold," by John Le Carré

Dissertation: A Poem

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Dissertation: A Poem

Recent scholars have overlooked
the fact that I need a topic for
my dissertation, so I'm inventing
one and pretending my dissertation
will fill a niche.  This study, then,

brings together punctuation-marks,
words, phrases, clauses, sentences,
paragraphs, and page numbers
in a way that will help it slip past

my dissertation-committee, who
doomed themselves to read
dissertations, or to pretend to,
by writing one themselves, or

pretending to.  The weight of
Sisyphus's boulder divided by
the weight of a dissertation
equals the weight of absurdity
generated by the process of

writing a dissertation. As a
genre, "dissertation" is like
a carcass picked at by
vultures who aren't hungry.
The carcass isn't going any-
where, and even the vultures
don't like looking at it.

I assure you, however,
moreover, and heretofore,
that my dissertation will rise
from the dead, will have flesh
on its html bones, and will

carry me into a town where
I shall be doctored. A
dissertation is a required
thing, as is all hazing: this
is one important them walking
through my dissertation.

Copyright 2011

That Is The Real

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That Is The Real

That is the real is the
that: seven words and two
dots; and now we're so
far into a sentence that
we're committed, or
should be, or should send it
to a committee for review.

Let's start fresh with you,
your nostrils, the things
around you right now
that stand for the world:
that for you is the real,
that is.


Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom

How Novels Begin: The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man," by James Wel...

"Instead of Just One Heart," by Iona Twiston-Davies

How Novels Begin: "The Life and Times of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman," by...

Corporations are The Borg -- You Can't Reason with Them

How Novels Begin: "Their Eyes Were Watching God," by Zora Neale Hurston

"Dusk," by Mae V. Cowder

How Novels Begin: "Jazz," by Toni Morrison

How Novels Begin: The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett

How Novels Begin: Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens

How Novels Begin: The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett

"On the Grasshopper and the Cricket," by John Keats

"A Clown at Ten," by James A. Emmanuel

"Her Loveliness," by Dharmakirtri

"Reuben Bright," by Edwin Arlington Robinson

"Travel," by Edna St. Vincent Millay

"To France," by Countee Cullen