Doppelgaenger Issues

I advertised for a doppelgaenger.
No one applied. Or, I already have
a doppelgaenger, and he intercepted
the applications. Or, I am the
double, having applied and been hired.

By whom? Me, of course. Or,
I don't have a doppel-double
because I don't deserve one,
someone has decided. Who?

You. Yes, you. Come on,
admit it. You're a forceful member
of the movement dedicated
to raising the standards of
the double, and you betray
a reactionary affection for
Jeckyll and Hyde and William
Wilson and the Justified Sinner.

Or maybe it's your double
I'm thinking of.


hans ostrom 2019

A Sultan at Sunset

Thirty feet up, the hummingbird hovered,
looking at sunset behind blue, wrinkled
Olympic Mountains. After a long day
of nectar-hauling, why not? Sitting facing

East, I watched the bird watch. I then
saw it trace with its body an enormous
precise circle in air.  Wondering what
or if this circle signified was a gift

grand enough for a sultan.  The invisible,
unforgettable shape suggested geometric
graffiti, avian ritual, or a secret signal
to the sun.  I almost applauded.

The whirring bird zipped off to close
the astounding performance: what a pro.
As Sultan, I decree my hummingbird
equal to Whitman's eagle, Poe's raven,

the crows of Ted Hughes and Al
Hitchcock, Shelley's and Mercer's
skylark, and Bukowski's murdered
mockingbird. (I refuse to discuss

Yeats's rapist Zeus-goose.) The effect of
this decree, the Sultan does not know.


hans ostrom 2017

"Poe," by Hans Ostrom

"To Helen," by Edgar Allan Poe

"Sonnet--Silence," by Edgar Allan Poe

University of Puget Crows

Once again this summer on the campus of the University of Puget Sound, the sign is out. It's a small temporary sign beside a walkway that runs underneath tall fir trees. It says something like, "Caution--Crow Nesting Area."

The crows' nests have eggs and/or young crows in them; therefore, the parents are in dive-bomb mode.

I actually don't mind being dived at by crows. I have a love/hate relationship with them. I love them, and they hate me. It's nothing personal on their part. It's just business. They find it advantageous to live around humans and other animals that leave food around, but they don't like humans. You can tell by the way they look at us.

Of course, the crows live on campus all year. Occasionally I'll try to chat one up as I walk to or from a class. Usually I say, "What are you doing?" I'm actually glad the crow can't talk back (in English) because, given the crow-personality, the bird would probably say, "What does it look like I'm doing?"

To like about crows:

1. They act like they own the place, any place. And I suppose they do.
2. They're sleek and black--"like gangster cars," as I once wrote in a poem.
3. Their eyes aren't exactly on the side of their heads, as most birds' are; they're almost moved up to the predator-position.
4. They seem to view flying as a chore. They much prefer hopping or strutting. When they do take off, they seem to be enjoying flight about as much as a man with bad knees enjoys climbing stairs. They seem almost too big to fly, but they climb into the air eventually. Once up there, they do fine, but they still don't like to work at it. They prefer to glide--a short distance, and then stop, perch, and start an argument.
5. Allegedly, they can count. (I'm not kidding, but I don't know exactly how ornithologists established this.)
6. They share information. In fact, crows in this area have an enormous convention on Whidbey Island, or so I have read. No word as to whether they where small crow name-tags. Also, in one experiment, they were shown to remember a human who wore a mask. To put the matter colloquially, in the crow community, word gets around.

I don't know what word has gotten around about me, but crows like to yell and dive at me. I haven't ever been hit by one, but I keep my head (and eyes) down, just in case. Otherwise, I'm vaguely amused by the attack. One of my former professors, the late Karl Shapiro, wasn't so lucky. A crow at a university in Chicago actually attacked him--not just one dive-bomb, but an attack. A scuffle. Karl managed to ward off the bird with his black umbrella, and then of course wrote a well crafted, humorous poem about the incident.

So there's Karl's poem, and Poe's famous raven poem, but the best poetic treatment of crows may be Ted Hughes's wonderful book-length work, titled simply Crow. It captures the spirit of crows, or what humans take to be that spirit.

In summer, the University of Puget Sound is a place where some summer school classes are offered, where high-school students and their parents take tours as they go through the painstaking process of choosing a college, where professors work on their research and writing, where organizations have their conferences (Methodists, cheerleaders), where the groundskeepers must work hard to keep the flourishing vegetation in order, and where frisbee-throwers, skate-boarders, and dog-walkers take advantage of the space.

Most of all, it becomes the University of Puget Crows, where large black birds take parenting and feathered family values seriously.

Yo, Poe

Thanks to the incalcuable effort, energy, and imagination of some colleagues, the college at which I teach is about to host "SymPOEsyium," celebrating Edgar's 200th birthday, which actually occurred about a month ago, but after 200 years, well--close enough. The celebration will feature lectures, informal discussions, a parody-contest, performances, screenings of films, the serious, the campy, and the in-between. And Lord knows Edgar was in between--serious writer; writer for pay; "Southern Gentleman"; impoverished, feckless roustabout; considered by some to be an indelibly influential writer and critic; considered by others to be juvenile and excessive. Poe was most American, perhaps, in his desperate need for acceptance, in his attempt to try on different identities, in is manic drive, and in his raging inventiveness.
*




The poetry captivated me for a brief "moment" when I was in my early teens, and "The Raven" is still quite a performance, a grand entertainment. Poe also had a way with lyricism. Like Auden, he liked to play with words.
*

Many of the stories still work for me. They aren't especially subtle (ya think?), but that trait mostly springs from Poe's idea of what a story (and, indeed, a poem) should do: go for that one effect. In many instances, the stories achieve multiple effects, and the personae that narrate many of the tales fascinate, are more complex than one might first realize.
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It's great to watch a writer essentially invent sub-genres that we now call "horror," "thriller," and "detective story." It's fun to watch a writer have fun. Poe's pleasure in entertaining comes through especially, I think, in "The Cask of Amontillado." (Unfortunately, my having worked as a stone-mason's assistant almost ruins the story for me because I know how long it takes to mix mortar, build a wall, etc. Poe glides over the details; more power to him.) "The Fall of the House of Usher" still holds great appeal, and Poe achieved so much in such a small space (so to speak) in "Murders in the Rue Morgue": genius-detective (half-amateur, half-pro); wacky crime; grisly crime-scene; the "locked-room" puzzle; the flummoxed police; the surprise ending.

Writers and readers should probably not underestimate how well Poe tended to start his stories. Some great openers.
*

In college I read and studied The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. A wild book, and not a bad novel, really.
*

For SymPOEsium, I'm going to get off my duff and, with a colleague, talk about "The Philosophy of Composition" and the famous review of Hawthorne's tales. I'll be giving Edgar an imaginary fist-bump. I hope his spirit takes it in the right spirit and doesn't try to brick me up in the catacombs. Yo, Poe: Happy Birthday.

Rain-Cow

I've been reading some literary theory (now, don't nod off immediately; wait a few moments)--specifically Genres in Discourse by Tzvetan Todorov.

Of course, we all go around assuming genres exist--things like novels, poems, plays, prayers, and autobiographies. Then there are so-called sub-genres like naturalistic novels, satiric novels, tragic plays, celebrity autobiographies, adventure films, and the curious sub-genre, "chick flick," which I think is essentially a movie with reasonably good dialogue, not much representation of violence, and maybe a little romance.

Todorov is not the first to note that while we go around assuming these genres actually exist, the more we probe them, the more permeable they seem; boundaries between alleged genres disappear. He starts with a big genre, "literature," and shows how difficult it is to prove literary writing is essentially different from other kinds of writing. He goes over the usual stuff about mimesis, self-reference, and fiction; with regard to the latter topic, he notes that novels are neither true nor false (such as a report about weather) but simply "fiction." We may assume a novel has some relation to truth, but even so, we realize it's fiction.

He also sensibly discusses, via Rene Wellek and Northrop Frye, the issues of form (or structure) and function. So at first glance, the purpose of a play seems different from that of a prayer or memo, and the structure of a poem seems different from that of a scientific report.

"Seems" is the problem, especially after Modern writers deliberately disrupted genre-boundaries and were self-conscious about the seeming part.

Todorov ends by concluding that these things, genres, are in fact not essential categories but are determined and re-determined each time people actually use them--in discourse. So a single sentence, without being changed, might appear in a scientific report or a novel, and its being associated with one genre or the other would depend upon who was writing or reading it and why. In other words, society makes up, perpetuates, and disrupts genres all the time.

In later chapters, he presents some fascinating analysis of Dostoyevsky's Notes From the Underground (what genre is this book in, for heaven's sake?) and of Poe's writing in general. Poe, says T., is all about things that are very very small or very very large. He might focus on somebody's teeth until the teeth become extraordinarily symbolic, or he may present a most extreme experience, like getting buried alive. Poe was always pushing genre-boundaries and, along the way, inventing genres, such as the detective story, the horror story, and science fiction.

Todorov does have some affection for the notion that a literary text tends to be more self-referential than a simple everyday statement like, "I'd like to buy this book." That is, the literary text is less of a purely transactional one and more of a made-thing, of interest in itself.

I witnessed a nice example of this at the mall today. A five-year old who clearly knew some sign-language signed for her grandmother, "Rain here," or "It is raining here." She even interpreted the signs for her grandmother. It was a serious, matter-of-fact exchange. Then the grandmother, feeling whimsical, signed "rain" and "cow." The five-year-old cracked up, as did the grandmother, who had essential signed a wee poem that juxtaposed "rain" and "cow" and therefore asked us to imagine a creature known as a "rain cow." What exactly would a rain cow be? Good question. Lots of possibilities. Much imagery comes to mind.

The point being--well, the point being, laughter is good--but also that by "enacting discourse," the grand-daughter and the grandmother had essentially marked off two genres--one a piece of everyday communication--messaging, we'll call it; the other a kind of self-referential performance, a word-play, intended to entertain and to disrupt messaging. The latter kind is what we might call "literature," bu there's no way we can prove, absolutely, that the two statements are essentially different, in the way nitrogen and oxygen are.

Now I think I'll go imagine what the rain-cows might be up to.

One By Poe

Some of my colleagues in the English Department are working hard to put together a conference about and celebration of Edgar Allen Poe and his writing. The event is called (wait for it) SymPOEsyium. Poe's 200th birthday is in January; the event is in February. A colleague and I are going to discuss Poe's essay "The Philosophy of Composition." There's going to be a parody-of-Poe contest, and maybe someone will open a cask of Amantillado sherry. Of course, the jokes about pendulums, live burials, and ravens abound.

I just re-read the following not-famous (also known as obscure, I suppose) poem by Poe, and I found it pleasing in some respects. The influence of Wordsworth--perhaps Coleridge, too--is evident, I think. The focus on the poem seems to be on how the river is in one sense an emblem of art but then on how it becomes a mirror that reflects a woman's face but, more importantly, reflects the adoration of someone who admires her. Of course, we've come to expect a reference, oblique or direct, to Narcissus in poems about water, but that's really not what Poe seems to be up to here. The woman isn't admiring herself.

I like the reference to "old Alberto's daughter," as if the reader is supposed to know who that is, and the line "the playful maziness of art" is most amusing, sounds modern, and doesn't quite sound like Poe. The expression freshly portrays the way a river--which seems quickly to become a brook or a creek--represents art; more typical ways would be to think of the river's flow as similar to the imagination's flow, or to conjure images of sources--headwaters, etc. "Playful maziness of art" I found to be a good surprise. Addressing the subject of the poem right away, followed by an exclamation point, was something of a conventional move, to say almost the least, in the 19th century, as was personifying nature. The poem is derivative, but it has its original moments, and for Poe, it's light, so it has that going for it, too.










To a River





by Edgar Allan Poe





Fair river! in thy bright, clear flow


Of crystal, wandering water,


Thou art an emblem of the glow


Of beauty- the unhidden heart-


The playful maziness of art


In old Alberto's daughter;


But when within thy wave she looks-


Which glistens then, and trembles-


Why, then, the prettiest of brooks


Her worshipper resembles;


For in his heart, as in thy stream,


Her image deeply lies-


His heart which trembles at the beam


Of her soul-searching eyes.

Poe; Cats and Echoes in the Coliseum

I don't recall ever having read "The Coliseum" by Edgar Allan Poe before, even though I've been reading Poe since high school. Somehow I missed that one. As in some of his other poems, Poe starts at too high a pitch and has nowhere to go, rhetorically, so the poem seems overwrought and gravitates toward self-parody. The poem is of interest, however, because it's in blank verse, whereas Poe in most of his other poetry prefers to rhyme. In a couple of places, he seems to rhyme almost accidentally here (Gesthemane/Chaldee). Also, as far as I know, Poet didn't ever visit Rome--or Italy. As a youth, he did live and go to school in England, but I don't think he visited Italy then, and I'm pretty sure he didn't visit Italy as an adult, but I could be wrong. His not having actually visited the Coliseum may explain why, a few lines into the poem, he turns literal thirst into figurative thirst, so that the speaker is thirsting for lore, not for water (after having traveled a ways to see the Coliseum). I remember being hot and thirsty when I visited the Coliseum. It is an impressive structure, considering when it was built, that's for sure. Many cats live there, so that speaks well of it, too. However, cats are everywhere in Rome, so I don't know how discerning Italian cats are. I suppose Poe would have preferred black cats. Anyway, here's the unusual poem: The Coliseum

Type of the antique Rome! Rich reliquary Of lofty contemplation left to Time By buried centuries of pomp and power! At length- at length- after so many days Of weary pilgrimage and burning thirst, (Thirst for the springs of lore that in thee lie,) I kneel, an altered and an humble man, Amid thy shadows, and so drink within My very soul thy grandeur, gloom, and glory! Vastness! and Age! and Memories of Eld! Silence! and Desolation! and dim Night! I feel ye now- I feel ye in your strength- O spells more sure than e'er Judaean king Taught in the gardens of Gethsemane! O charms more potent than the rapt Chaldee Ever drew down from out the quiet stars! Here, where a hero fell, a column falls! Here, where the mimic eagle glared in gold, A midnight vigil holds the swarthy bat! Here, where the dames of Rome their gilded hair Waved to the wind, now wave the reed and thistle! Here, where on golden throne the monarch lolled, Glides, spectre-like, unto his marble home, Lit by the wan light of the horned moon, The swift and silent lizard of the stones! But stay! these walls- these ivy-clad arcades- These moldering plinths- these sad and blackened shafts- These vague entablatures- this crumbling frieze- These shattered cornices- this wreck- this ruin- These stones- alas! these grey stones- are they all- All of the famed, and the colossal left By the corrosive Hours to Fate and me? "Not all"- the Echoes answer me- "not all! Prophetic sounds and loud, arise forever From us, and from all Ruin, unto the wise, As melody from Memnon to the Sun. We rule the hearts of mightiest men- we rule With a despotic sway all giant minds. We are not impotent- we pallid stones. Not all our power is gone- not all our fame- Not all the magic of our high renown- Not all the wonder that encircles us- Not all the mysteries that in us lie- Not all the memories that hang upon And cling around about us as a garment, Clothing us in a robe of more than glory." I do like how the Echoes insist that they and the Coliseum still matter; that's rather charming.