"Silence," by e.e. cummings

A recording/video of a very short poem by e.e. cummings, "Silence."

The link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTNKM0znIrM

How About We . . .?

Let's go, stay, sleep,
talk, eat, read, think,
and dance. Some of
these can be combined.

It's snowing in Reno.

Let's sweep, mop,
wash, scrub, sigh.
Let's weep. So hard.
Let's tell secrets.

You first.


hans ostrom 2019

Seagulls in Snow

Seagulls in snow step
with authority and bulk
like army officers
from the 18th century.

Their shrieks turn into
mad laughter that shreds
the insulated calm following
flurries. Sometimes

they sit on white
as swans float on water.
In search of food,
they chop at a drift

with heavy yellow
beaks: cutting tools.
The failure of snow
to surge, swirl, pulse,

pound, slap, and leap
like the sea soon bores
them. They jump into
wind then and glide

and fly forthrightly
back to a bay and cliffs
and the raucous, slow
riot of the shore.


hans ostrom 2019

The Rack of Seasons

What a rack of seasons
that was. In January
I fell backward into snow
and was almost buried. Noise
left the world. Someone
pulled me up and tossed
me into Summer, where I
heard a rattlesnake,
broke boulders with
a sledgehammer for minimal
wage, and drank cheap wine,

which tipped me over onto
Spring, where I caught a cold,
grew anxious, and hoarded
books, which opened up
into October, where I stacked
the last haul of firewood--
dry oak from dead trees.
Acorns pebbled the ground
and the North Wind
began to say No.



hans ostrom 2018

Lake Como

The mountains say
What should we do
with all this snow?

The lake says
What should I do with
all these mountains?

Together the mountains
and the lake say Get these
people out of here. We
don't need them. 


hans ostrom 2018

Allegory at Alpine Elevation

You're standing outside in the dark.
In the mountains, alpine elevation.
The cold wind's blowing hard enough
to keep the crust on the snow,
and to blur your vision, so the stars
seem momentarily to reel.

You say a word, any word,
to yourself but out loud. Wind
takes it from your mouth so fast
the word never gets fully formed.
All evidence of your having
spoken vanishes. You recognize

what has happened as the briefest
allegory about ego's status
in the flow of matter. You go
back inside. You're glad for the
warmth. Still the light and things
inside seem trivial and doomed.
You feel embarrassed for them.



hans ostrom 2017

Expedition

Scrupulously planned
and with international sanction,
an expedition discovers itself
dying on ice.

The group walks now
only to look for places
where it can walk. Each
adventurer's blood flows
down through unfeeling toes
toward an alleged sea.

In unrelenting wind and white-out
roaring from imaginary North,
air and ice become one. So do
sky and landscape, person
and expedition.

Speech becomes something
dreamed remotely--like fingers
or the word, survival. All
vocabulary accumulates
into a glacial prayer too
immense to bring out of the heart.



hans ostrom 2017

Partial Report from Childhood

Heights: obviously perilous.
Snow: tedious, never
as pleasurable as they would
persuade you it is. Adults:
loud and/or tired. Family:

a pecking order and a proliferation
of comparisons. School:
40% cruelty, 50% boredom,
10% pleasure. Men: in charge,
even if no one knows why.

Women: perfumed, patient,
smarter than they act.
Girls: fascinating, mercurial.
Did I mention fascinating?

Books: reliable. The future:
an absentee landlord.



hans ostrom 2017

"It's Not a Competition"

It's not a competition.
It is a blues rendition
of an anthem that was
manufactured long ago.

I am in no condition
to make a sound decision
about gestures I might
make to you before you go.

Now I
see life
is a
landscape
covered
with corners.

Now I
see death
is my
corpse surrounded
by mourners.

It's not fusion. It's not fission.
It's by my own volition
that I sit and watch
the rain turn into snow.


hans ostrom 2015

"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," by Robert Frost

We were asked to memorize this poem in third or fourth grade. Because we lived in rural snow-country, the subject-matter seemed perfectly ordinary, except by then, no one used horse-drawn buggies.

"Cabin in Snow"

"She Tells Her Love While Half Asleep," by Robert Graves

Concerning That Good Night

In class we briefly discussed the villanelle, that most difficult form, in which the poet has to repeat whole lines, use only two rhyming sounds, stick to iambic pentameter, and, incidentally, make sense. As I've noted in earlier posts, Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," Theodore Roethke's "The Waking," and W.H. Auden's "If Could Tell You" are among the most venerable villanelles; however, we also studied one by Jay Parini about the event now known as "Nine-Eleven," and most of the students liked it.

We talked about some moves a poet can make to negotiate the form. We noted that many villanelles are light on imagery and rely on statements, on a kind of conversational discourse. We discussed the possibility of using half-rhymes and of altering the repeated lines slightly--turning a statement into a question, for example, or changing one word.

One student said she found the form difficult to read because of the repetition, which can indeed begin to sound like "nagging."

As great as Dylan Thomas's poem is--and it is, indisputably, a tour de force--I've always felt uneasy about the advice the poem offers, simply because I think people should be able to die with the attitude they choose--assuming, of course, that they are even able to choose the attitude with which they approach death. I had a very close older relative who died of heart failure but also, indirectly, of dementia, so she was not able to approach death--mentally or spiritually--in the way she might have chosen. So if I or anyone had advised her not to go gentle into that good night, it would have been pointless, at best. But this takes nothing away from Thomas's indelible villanelle.

Still, I finally decided to write a wee response-villanelle with D.T.'s poem in mind, although I confess the main task here is just to get a bit of a workout. Villanelles offer good aerobic poetic training, even if they don't turn out perfect or fall far short of perfect.


Go As You Wish Into That Good Night


Go as you wish into that good night.
It's not a night, of course. It's death.
To tell you how to die? I have no right.

Besides, death often hides nearby, plain sight--
Then someone's gone, as quickly as a breath.
Go as you wish into that good night,

Assuming you're allowed your wish. I might
Not even be around, to tell the truth.
To tell you how to die? I have no right.

I've not yet died, have not yet faced the fright
Of certain death, so here's my guess:
Go as you wish into that good night.

I sympathize with D.T.'s rage. That sight
Of one who's dear about to die: Damned death!
But still: go as you wish into death's night.
To tell you how to die--I have no right.

Hans Ostrom

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Why Is Snow White?

I grew up around snow--at about 4,000 feet above sea-level in the Sierra Nevada. That was about 1,000 feet lower than the really serious snow, but each winter we still got storms that dumped a foot here, two feet there, sometimes four feet. Before I was born, the infamous storm of 1952 hit, and it dumped so much snow that drifts piled above the roofs in town and cut the town off. Highway-plows were completely useless against such a volume of snow. Lore has it that some pregnant women, among others, got nervous.

Some people who grow up around snow remember it fondly and become lifelong ski-enthusiasts, etc. I associate it with work: shoveling, walking in it, putting chains on tires, getting cold, driving in it with appropriate caution (why some people speed up, only God knows), stoking wood fires. Snow and I are acquaintances, not enemies but not friends.

According to a variety of sources on the internet, snow is white because when light enters it, light gets bounced around off all the crystals that make up snow, and the light basically gets bounced right out. I think this happens fairly rapidly, as light is known to be in a big hurry all the time. Anyway, when it comes out, our eyes "read" it as "white." I remember digging paths through snow to and from the house, however, and essentially a snow-corridor took shape. The sides of the corridor looked positively blue at times, I assume because the light came out and/or went in at a different angle. . . . There is nothing quite like the silence of a snowed-over field, if the wind isn't blowing.

A wee poem, piled only four lines high, about a snow-childhood, then:

Childhood, Sierra Nevada

Snow fell on me.
I fell on snow.
Why it was white
I didn’t know.

Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom

By the way, the name "Snow White" has always puzzled me. I gather it's supposed to suggest virginity or purity. But imagine meeting her in the village. "Good morning, Snow. What's going on?"