Reading/video of a short poem by the great Russian writer. The poem was translated by Babette Deutsch, American writer, critic, poet, and translator.
Wednesday, September 30, 2020
Monday, September 28, 2020
Saturday, September 26, 2020
"Devotion," by Robert Frost
Reading/video of a four-line poem (I think we call that a quatrain) by Robert Frost:
"Gift," by Czeslaw Milosz
Reading/video of a short poem by Milosz, the Nobel Prize winning Polish poet:
Thursday, September 24, 2020
The Pink Pistil
a resting cat
opens its mouth
wide so I
can see its
narrow wet tongue
lengthen then curl
like the pink
pistil of a
tropical flower and
I hear hordes
of birds singing
chirping laughing safely
in the canopy.
hans ostrom 2020
In Which Small Creatures Crawl
With time, after time, success
and failure blend into
a warm tide pool
in which small creatures
crawl. "That's all?"
can be asked, rhetorically,
of both success and failure
and even doing just all right.
Asking it just might be a sign
of spiritual growth or of
something less grandiose,
like relaxing or looking
outward, or earned indifference
to worldly weights and standards.
hans ostrom
Tuesday, September 22, 2020
"At the Bottom of Things," by Karin Boye
A poem by Swedish Modernist poet Karin Boye (1900-1941), translated by David McDuff, who translated her Collected Poems from Bloodaxe Books. Reading/video:
Sunday, September 20, 2020
Poet's Musings: "For Librarians," by Hans Ostrom
Re-posting one from 10 years ago, since we're celebrating libraries/librarians:
"Library Ode," by Philip Larkin
Libraries seem more important than ever in these anti-intellectual, anti-science times. Here's a short tribute-poem to them by Philip Larkin--reading/video:
Saturday, September 19, 2020
Friday, September 18, 2020
"Step Out Onto the Planet," by Lew Welch
A short poem by Beat writer Lew Welch. Welch (1926-1971) was an important poet and teacher in the San Francisco Renaissance/Beat Movement. For a time, he functioned as the step-father of the lad who would adopt the performer's name, Huey Lewis. Welch is presumed to have committed suicide on May 26, 1971, in the Sierra Nevada. His body has never been found. City Lights Books published his Collected Poems (Ring of Bone) in 2012, with an afterword by Gary Snyder, who was Welch's roommate at Reed College. Reading/video:
What the Hell is Going On Around Here?
What the hell is going on? What
is this recklessness? Leaders
and followers, people we knew,
they see forests burning and laugh,
see murder and justify it, see
common sense and start screaming
and rolling around on the floor
like Hitler and vomit
deranged racist speech.
They say it's their civil right
to sneeze viral mucous in my face.
They say they're all about the
White Race, which--this just in--
doesn't exist. We're all humans.
One species. Google it.
Is it a pill? Propaganda?
What makes them insanely
lethal and lethally insane?
A drug? Hypnosis? A hustler
with a blond barge atop his head?
A yearning for a violent absolute?
(I refer my colleague to the comment
about Hitler I made moments ago.)
What is this burning of science
at the stake? This goddamn
making shit up and trying to
wing it when knowledge can
put things right? This living
in White basements and thinking
that they're the whole world?
What the hell is going on around here?
It's a drunken parade with guns, a pageant
of stupidity, a carnival of hatred.
Grow up, wash your hands but
don't wash your hands like Pilate,
pretend the facts are true: a mask
is good for me and you. Broaden
your horizons. Read some books.
Listen to Duke Ellington. Smash
your shrunken-head view
of a fantasy America. Stop
fearing people you don't know.
Leave the cult. Listen to your children.
Settle the fuck down. What the hell!
What the hell is going on around here?
hans ostrom 2020
Wednesday, September 16, 2020
"Chance Meetings," by Conrad Aiken
A reading/video of a poem by Conrad Aiken, American poet who won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award:
"Lines Written at the Grave of Alexandre Dumas," by Gwendolyn Bennett
Harlem Renaissance writer Gwendolyn Bennett wrote this poem about the great adventure-novelist Alexandre Dumas (The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, etc.), whose father was French and whose mother was African--and a former slave:
Goat Island
On that island wild goats
climb cliffs. Women
govern the place, living
mostly in the mountains.
It is a matriarchy,
which, based on reason
and evidence, advises
the citizenry, including men,
what to do. I've sent for a
brochure. I'm not sure
if I want to apply to live
there. But I'm a man,
and I don't mind being
directed by experts,
especially if they're women.
Apparently the fishing
is good, there's a solid
poetic tradition, and live
music thrives. I'll let you
know what happens with
me and Goat Island.
hans ostrom 2020
Tuesday, September 15, 2020
From a Diary of the Plague Year (19)
We're double-bound to home
today. There is the viral reason,
and now smoke
from the Great Western American
Fire of 2020 creams air.
Airborne ash makes
the sun look like the moon.
Birds do their best to eat
out there, but there are
no bugs in that air.
I'm calm. I stare.
I'd like to go into exile.
But where? Nobody
wants to see Americans now,
not even Americans.
hans ostrom 2020
Humid
Do me a favor,
says weather,
and carry this anvil
made of steam
around with you today:
okay?
Creeks flow
off my skin,
turning shirts
into wetlands.
After work, napping
in feverish circumstances,
I dream of alligators
belching thunder.
Humidity and feet,
I think, make for a fine
Stilton stink. With
sour thoughts,
I wait for cloud-towers
to collapse into rain:
one wet defeats another.
hans ostrom 2020
Olfactory: A Poem of Odors
(in other words, it stinks)
asphalt, freshly wet
chocolate
vanilla
musty villa
sawdust
red rust
perfume
sea spume
diesel oil
black soil
cardamom
dark rum
sweat, also
known as perspiration
irrigation
tomato, just picked--
sauce, garlic-ed
wet dog
thick fog
cinnamon
saffron bun
laundry hung in sun
roasted turkey, done
pickling brine
iodine
shampooed hair
alpine air
hills of garbage
boiled cabbage
rosemary
raspberry
red rose
painted toes
horse stall
snow fall
cedar chest
lemon
zest.
hans ostrom 2010/2020
Monday, September 14, 2020
"Rain," by Charles Bukowski
Reading/video of a poem by Charles Bukowski, one of his classical music ones:
Saturday, September 12, 2020
"The Sloth," by Theodore Roethke
Poem by the legendary University of Washington poetry teacher--and the highly successful poet--Theodore Roethke (1908-1963). It's about the animal, not the sin or lifestyle choice. Reading/video:
Friday, September 11, 2020
Coffee
Of course the coffee nodule
is neither cherry nor berry,
just as you are neither you nor
you before "you" hold the ceramic
cup in that sacred way and weigh
it gratefully, and wait for your hands
to say when the temperature
of the darkness
will love your tongue and mouth
best. You sip and smell
simultaneously. You are soothed.
You are less dim. The sun
rises just above the blue rim
of your stupor. Shapes of
thought become visible,
work becomes viable,
wants become focused.
O thank you Arabia,
thank you Ethiopia,
thank you Sudan and South
America, Indonesia . . .
Such chants continue
silently in your mind,
which small sips of shade
have clarified. Your heart
stumbles into a pace
that brings awareness
to your brain in soft
brown sacks. You begin to flirt
with thought, consider
sociability, tolerate noise,
nearly nod Yes to life.
You want to tell coffee again
that you love it, but you’re not
quite ready to speak,
and anyway coffee knows.
coffee knows, knows what you need.
hans ostrom 2020
Thursday, September 10, 2020
Please Feel Sorry for Yourself
Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Such
a tedious rebuke. Often followed
by words about gratitude or
comparative well being.
I encourage you to feel sorry
for yourself. Feel sorry for other
people, too, but save some for yourself.
Properly calibrated, self-sympathy
dulls disappointment's edge. It can
soothe depression when you're lying
there staring into your mind like it was
a dark, fishless aquarium.
The pleasure of self-pity
is under-rated. Indeed I think
some people try to shame you
out of it because they think
you might be enjoying it.
I feel sorry for them.
hans ostrom
Thanks for Coming
Thanks for coming.
I was delighted to play
a role in your arrival,
at which point you
uttered words with no
definition but much
meaning. I'm reminded
how pleasant it is to witness
someone's pleasure,
to be brought into it, to
hold it in your hands,
as it were, like a shivering
bird about to be released.
Thanks for coming.
hans ostrom 2020
Grateful for Grasshoppers
Just realized I'd yet to compliment
Life on providing grasshoppers
in the field buttressed by
Sierra Nevada peaks. They
launched themselves, those
bugs, with catapult back legs,
and tried to stay aloft with weighty
art deco wings. The theater
of tall grass and weeds featured
jazz parabolas, careening leaps,
and caroms off my legs and chest
and cheeks. A festival, a rite!
Bug ballet, nothing like it.
Butterflies applauded. Thank you.
hans ostrom 2020
Monday, September 7, 2020
Interview with Lolly Vegas of Redbone
First the universe came into being, then the Earth cooled, and finally the 1970s happened. The best-selling pop/rock song in the U.S. in 1974, I am told, was "Come and Get Your Love," by a Native American group called Redbone, headed up by Lolly and Pat Vegas, who were from a town near Fresno, California. The version of the song from "Midnight Special" on Youtube is pretty good, I think. I always liked the funkiness of the song.
In 2006 Lolly Vegas was interviewed. Good to hear his history of his music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klShZ7iYUOg
Rest in Peace, Lolly Vegas.
"The Garden," by Jacques Prévert
Video/reading of a short poem by Prévert (1900-1977), translated by Alastair Campbell--grateful acknowledgement to him:
Link:
Saturday, September 5, 2020
"Sky Song," by Robert Desnos
Video/reading of a lovely, whimsical love poem by Robert Desnos, translated from the French:
link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPqht2HE7jY
Friday, September 4, 2020
My Journey of Self-Discovery: Postponed
Once more I've had
to postpone my journey
of self-discovery. Just
too many other things
to do. Cooking, cleaning,
sleeping, reading. In
theory, sex. Plus there's
the old, yet to be solved
problem: what would
I do at the end of my
journey of self-discovery?
Write a report? Say
"Nice to meet you"?
I think it would be very
awkward to converse
with my self-discovered self.
hans ostrom 2020
The Novel of Your Life
The novel of life
goes along and then
the letters, words,
sentences, and paragraphs
start slipping off the page
until finally, all blank
pages. It's the novel
only you get to read
all the way through,
through to the end.
It's your favorite
novel because no one
wrote it, not even you.
hans ostrom 2020
From a Diary of the Plague Year (18)
(housebound)
the cat looks out a window I
look at the cat, which looks
at its paw and then at the woman
who looks at the cat and then
looks at me, who is looking out
a window and then looking at
the woman, who says "why
are you looking at me that
way?" and I say "what way?"
and she shakes her head
and looks at the cat and
the cat looks out a window
hans ostrom 2020
Avocado
And here we have
a globular gem
encased in a clear
sunrise over bright
green hills. All is
finished in fine,
pebbled leather
that ages toward black.
The name became
hybridized, starting
as the native plant
ahuacatl, shifting into
aguacate, settling
into avocado,
which resonates
with the sound
of a secret and just
society.
After disassembling
and devouring one,
we always wish to do
something with the hard
sphere surviving--
perhaps invent a sport
around it, such as
avocado billiards
or symbolic soccer.
But we feel a bit
lethargic after ingesting
yellow and green.
Waking from a nap,
we notice once again
that the little brown
planet has left our
solar system.
hans ostrom 2020
Thursday, September 3, 2020
"Autumn," by Guillaume Apollinaire
Reading/video of a short autumn poem by the French Modernist Apollinaire.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2caHsh8ZVk
Wednesday, September 2, 2020
Ten Commandments for Artists
Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral wrote "Decalogue of the Artist," a poem that sets some high standards for art. A reading/video:
Tuesday, September 1, 2020
"Lana Turner Has Collapsed," by Frank O'Hara
An amusing poem (in my opinion) by Frank O'Hara--reading/video:
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