The Poems Will Keep Arriving

 

. . . and arriving. Poetry is something some

people must write or speak.

Some people, including poets,

must make distinctions about poems

and poets, for society’s a place

of endless distinctions,

which make for a lot of noise

and lists, walls and squabbles. 

Imagine someone standing on a beach,

making distinctions about waves,

saying which are good, which are bad,

which are great, which must be dismissed

and scorned.

Note that the waves keep coming.

The poems keep coming because

They must. The moon drives the waves.

What drives the poems? A trillion

Different moons, that’s what.

And one of them is language itself—

that great mystery in the brain,

in the air, in the squares, in the ears

and eyes, in the everywhere we live.

The poems will keeping arriving.

Some of them belong to you.

hans ostrom 2022

 

The Retirement of Literature

After you teach what they used to call literature
for a long time, there are some poems and books
you don't want to teach anymore, not because
of something in them or on account of
the students but because you don't want
to submit the works to any further
analysis--by anyone, especially yourself.

You want these works to enjoy
retirement, lying in the sun,
simply existing as a collection of words
and punctuation, without a career.


hans ostrom 2015

"Literary Criticism"

Today we shall define literary criticism
as the art of constructing a weak
but elaborate foundation
to support a simple but heavy opinion.

Sooner or later, that
which seemed new, brave, and rigorous
will collapse under the weight
of the opinion and

because of the weakness.
The opinion shall remain,
functioning mostly
as a grave-marker,

for--just over there!--
shall have arisen
an impressive new structure
to which the flocks are flocking.


hans ostrom 2015