Bill Burr Has An Honest Elvis Conversation with Paul Anka

Mutant Country-Song

When it all falls apart
and I'm lying on my deathbed,
I hope the Lord'll forgive me for
what flashes through my head.

"I hope someone's getting laid,"
for example. Or "I hate Nashville
worse than bosses." Or "I don't
think God gives two shits about
your politics--or your religion."
And, of course, "Ouch, that hurts
like a motherfu--."

[Docking complete: begin transfer
of pickup truck (old), farm, train,
mama, daddy, pretty girl, "darlin'", 
we, they, goodbye, dancin', 
hungover, fishin', gospel.]

I hope the Lord'll forgive me
for what may flash through my head
when everything falls apart and
I'm lying on my deathbed--or

on a couch, a highway, grass,
the crapper (Elvis!), a stretcher,
or a woman (darlin').


hans ostrom 2016

Video: "Emily Dickinson and Elvis Presley In Heaven"

Re-posting the short film based on my poem of the same title.

Big Mama Thornton and Buddy Guy

Big Mama Thornton doing "Hound Dog" (she recorded it before Elvis did) with Buddy Guy on guitar: what's not to like?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XUAg1_A7IE

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

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.

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
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Emily Dickinson and Elvis Presley on Youtube

Thanks to film-maker Joe LaSac, Emily Dickinson and Elvis Presley are now on Youtube, as dramatized by actors and imagined in a poem--and by a fine film-maker. Take a look!

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

The Day's Amusements

At my local cafe, I almost always get an old-school beverage--espresso macchiato, two shots. Of course, my parents' generation regarded a CUP OF COFFEE as an old-school drink, which they never called a beverage. At any rate, today I ordered a steamed soy-milk with sugar-free vanilla flavor. The barista looked at me with grave disappointment and said, "And we thought we knew you."

So then, partly because it's tax-season, one with whom I live and I started talking finances. I had just learned that for one of our credit-cards, there are two accounts but one balance. I still don't understand how that works, and being confused, I started expressing my outrage at the world of finance. My conversational partner shook her head as if to say, "I know you too well," and she said the financial terminology I was using was completely wrong. I said, "And you know what's funnier than that?--I'm on a budget-committee where I work!" She tried to let me down easy by saying, "You're conceptually very strong. It's just that your terminology is awful." Well, kind of easy.

It's almost April, and it's almost snowing again in Tacoma. This is pretty much Unheard Of. It's as if the Weather God is saying, "Let's see, should I start Spring?. . . Nah." "Computer says nah," as Stephen Wright says. At least I think it's Stephen Wright.

Then there's this guy in L.A. with whom I'm working on a project, and he emails me via his phone from his boat out on the sunny Pacific. I understand how the technology works, but I'm still amazed by it, and I still want phones to weigh 50-60 pounds. I'm trying to tamp down my envy about the whole boat, sunshine, I-phone situation down there as I sit and watch snow-flakes attempt to form.

And I learned from a blogger that country/folk (and blues/gospel influenced) singer Kate Campbell sometimes reads my Emily/Elvis poem at concerts. How cool is that? She has some great subtle, surprising songs about Elvis. She's a terrific lyricist.

This isn't being sent from my I-phone as I lie on a boat in sunshine on the Pacific.

Happy New Year From Emily and Elvis

Karl Shapiro published an essay called "The Career of the Poem." I haven't read it in ages, but I recall that, in part, it continues his genial quarrel with T.S. Eliot's poetry. Mainly, however, I remember having been mystified by the title and having thought, "How can a poem have a career?"

Probably the only poem of mine to have a "career" is "Emily Dickinson and Elvis Presley in Heaven." By "career," I mean the poem seems to have gone on a journey of its own and to signify a wide spectrum of things to a variety of readers. It's a modest journey, to be sure; the poem is hardly famous. But for reasons I can only guess, people often respond to the poem favorably. Editors have asked to reprint the poem a few times, and (here's a scary thought), I think the poem may have ended up in some collection that's used in a few Advanced Placement English classes in high schools. The poem also gets posted on blogs from time to time. And a collage-artist named Deb Richardson constructed the collage, based on the poem, that appears above. Thanks again to her.

My ambition for the poem was simple: I wanted to publish it at least once. That was achieved in the late 1980s, in a magazine called The Sucharnochee Review. ("I'm Sucharnochee. Who are you? Are you Sucharnochee, too?") From there the poem seemed to manage its own odd wee career, without a manager, an agent, or an entourage.

So here's the poem again, this time functioning as an indirect Happy New Year from Emily and Elvis to poets, poems, blog-posters, rockers, listeners, and readers here, there, and everywhere. After the poem appears a short form of its resume, which reflects its career, which (oh, my) is in its second decade now.

Emily Dickinson and Elvis Presley in Heaven


They call each other `E.' Elvis picks
wildflowers near the river and brings
them to Emily. She explains half-rhymes to him.

In heaven Emily wears her hair long, sports
Levis and western blouses with rhinestones.
Elvis is lean again, wears baggy trousers

and T-shirts, a letterman's jacket from Tupelo High.
They take long walks and often hold hands.
She prefers they remain just friends. Forever.

Emily's poems now contain naugahyde, Cadillacs,
Electricity, jets, TV, Little Richard and Richard
Nixon. The rock-a-billy rhythm makes her smile.

Elvis likes himself with style. This afternoon
he will play guitar and sing "I Taste A Liquor
Never Brewed" to the tune of "Love Me Tender."

Emily will clap and harmonize. Alone
in their cabins later, they'll listen to the river
and nap. They will not think of Amherst

or Las Vegas. They know why God made them
roommates. It's because America
was their hometown. It's because

God is a thing without
feathers. It's because
God wears blue suede shoes.



By Hans Ostrom, The Coast Starlight: Collected Poems 1976-2006 (Indianapolis: Dog Ear Publishing, 2006). Published previously in the Sucarnochee Review, The Washington Post Book World (“Poet’s Choice” column by Rita Dove), 13 Ways of Looking For a Poem, by Wendy Bishop (Longman), and Kiss Off: Poems to Set You Free (Warner Books). Copyright Hans Ostrom.

Red Shoe Ramblings: Poetry Thursday: E and E in Heaven

Red Shoe Ramblings: Poetry Thursday: E and E in Heaven