"Final Curve," by Langston Hughes

"The Day-Labourer," by Jay Macpherson

"Cinderella," by Sylvia Plath

["Well, Spring overflows the land"], by Lorine Niedecker]

Top 100 Country Hits

Okay, so I made a list of what I thought are the top 100 Country hits of "all time." Allegedly Johnny Cash made such a list for his daughter, Roseanne, but it was never published.

Let's assume a few things: Assuming you're interested in the list, you're going to disagree vehemently with some choices and absences, so I'll apologize in advance. Second, the boundaries are pretty loose, so I've no doubt included songs that might fit better in "Folk," "Pop," or "Rock," but not that many. Third, there are some artists I just don't like who have nonetheless earned a spot on such a list, but I left them out. Fourth, go ahead and make your own list and set me right. That will show me. I didn't want to rank them, so I alphabetized them. --Oh, and I probably miscounted. Anyway:

Act Naturally
All My Ex’s Live In Texas
Am I The Only One
Amarillo By Morning
Battle of New Orleans
Before The Next Teardrop Falls
Behind Closed Doors
Better Man
Bloodshot Eyes
Blue
Blue Eyes Cryin’ In the Rain
Blue Moon of Kenucky
Coat of Many Colors
Cool Water
Country Roads
Crazy
Crazy Arms
Faded Love
Fireman, The
Flowers on the Wall
Folsom Prison Blues
Forever and Ever Amen
Four Strong Winds
Friends In Low Places
Gentle On My Mind
Get Rhythm
Ghost Riders In The Sky
Golden Ring
Good Time Charlie’s Got The Blues
Harper Valley PTA
He Stopped Loving Her Today
Hello Darlin’
Hello Walls
Help Me Make It Through The Night
Hey Good Lookin’
Honky Talk Angels
Honky Tonk Man
Hurt
I Believe In You
I Can’t Stop Loving You
I Fall To Pieces
I Hope You Dance
I Never Promised You A Rose Garden
I Walk The Line
I’m Movin’ On
I’m Down To My Last Cigarette
I’m Gonna Miss Her
I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry
I’ve Been Everywhere
Jambalaya
Keep On The Sunny Side
King of the Road
Kiss An Angel Good Morning
Lily’s White Lies
Long Black Veil
Lookin’ For Love in All the Wrong Places
Luckenbach Texas
Make The World Go Away
Making Believe
Mama Tried
Man of Constant Sorrow
Mom and Dad’s Waltz
Neon Moon
North To Alaska
Ode To Billie Joe
On the Road Again
Once A Day
Orange Blossom Special
Polk Salad Annie
Rank Strangers
Ring of Fire
Rose-Colored Glasses
San Antonio Rose
Seven Year Ache
Silver Threads and Golden Needles
Sixteen Tons
Smoky Mountain Rain
Stand By Your Man
Streets of El Paso
Sunday Morning Comin’ Down
Take An Old Cold Tater And Wait
Take This Job and Shove It
Tennessee Waltz
Tennessee Stud, The
The Likes of Me
Tiger By The Tail
Today I Started Loving You Again
Tom Dooley
Travelin Soldier
Tumbling Tumbleweeds
Wabash Cannon Ball
Walkin’ The Floor Over You
Walking After Midnight
Waltz Across Texas
When I Stop Dreaming
Wildwood Flower
Will The Circle Be Unbroken
You Ain’t Woman Enough
You Are My Sunshine
Your Cheatin’ Heart

"The Naked and the Nude," by Robert Graves

"Notes on the 1860s," by Lars Gustafsson, trans. C. Middleton

"A Couple," by May Swenson

Desdemona's Wooing from Othello, Act 1 Scene 3 by William Shakespeare (s...

"The Ordinary Man," by Robert W. Service

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portugues XXVI [I lived wit...

"Lady of the Dew," by Tim Lulofs

"A Thanksgiving," by W.H. Auden

"Song for Billie Holiday," by Langston Hughes

709 [Publication -- is the Auction] by Emily Dickinson

"Sigmund Freud and Babe Ruth in Heaven" by Hans Ostrom

Truly, Madly, Cellularly

Truly, Madly, Cellularly


Via mobile telephones they trysted.
Their words raptured, caromed off
corporate satellites, descended bundled
in spongy static. Some sluiced through

optic fibers. Why not face to face?
Unmanageable: The lovers worried words
might disappear into Society so harried, sloppy,
huge. Words cleansed in space and digitized

might be exchanged like polished stones.
Sighs and whispers might be chastened.
The two did broadcast their love, but only to
the other; and were charged by the minute.


Copyright 2010

Broken Guitar

Broken Guitar


A man broke a guitar over--that is to say, on--another man's head.

The guitar-strings sounded the last chord the guitar would ever play. The surprised O of the guitar expressed this final chord, then disintegrated when wood splintered.

On the floor, the smashed instrument looked like a miniature shipwreck in an extremely small production of Shakespeare's The Tempest.

People gathered round the injured man like a chorus of bees. They murmured, turning away from the other man.

The man who'd used a musical instrument as a weapon sagged with self-hatred and remorse.

A woman entered the room. She said, "Hey, that's my guitar!"

The man who had been struck by the guitar looked deeply perplexed by recent events. His head bled, and the wound looked like a wet, red petal. “O,” he said, for life had strummed him.


Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

Found Poem

Found Poem: Your Search



1.

Your search - poets women like -
did not match any documents. Reset
search tools. Suggestions:
* Make sure all words are
spelled correctly. * Try different
keywords. * Try more general keywords.
* Try fewer keywords.

2.

Alas, the search tools
are not mine. They belong
to cybergnostic corporations.
All the words were spelled
correctly, poets women like.
Different keywords might
garner answers I don't seek:
scissors tailors hate.
Keyword Montgomery, Keyword
Patreus, Keyword Eisenhower,
Keyword Patton. Fewer key-
words: poets women; poets;
women; poets like; women like;
like; women.


Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

Poets and Technology

This summer I've encountered some poets and others interested in poetry who are using technology extensively: Youtube, blogs, different recording technologies, facebook as a serious networking site [writers helping writers], online magazines, collaboration over great geographic distances, and so on.

So I thought I'd re-post something I wrote about a year ago in which I try to guess which poets from the past would have blogged, and which would not have done so. It would also be amusing [to me] to guess which ones would have used Youtube.

Poets who blog?

3 Poems by Carter Monroe

A link to three poems by Carter Monroe in the journal Thunder Sandwich:

MUDLARK

Please check out, if you've not done so yet, the "electronic journal of poetry and poetics," Mudlark, which aptly describes itself as "never in and never out of print"; some fine poetry there:

Mudlark

"Education," by Richard Brautigan

Here is a reading/video of Richard Brautigan's very short poem, "Education," from The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster (1968):

"Education"

Tom O'Bedlam Reads Poetry

For about two years, a person with the alias Tom O'Bedlam has been reading poetry, animating the readings with images--often of the text itself--and uploading the audio/video to Youtube. His channel has now attracted over 1,600,000 views, which Youtube calls uploads. I should add that these are not "Tom's" poems but poems more or less from the canon, loosely defined. I immediately found two old favorites, "The Groundhog" and "The Fly"--for example.

I'm no expert on the overlapping micro-demographics of Blogger and Youtube, but if you found your way to this blog, you are already probably aware of Tom O'Bedlam. If by chance you're not, however, simply visit the Youtube Channel called Spoken Verse [with a space] and enjoy accessible, well produced readings of the poems, with great attention to the words themselves, but nothing overly dramatic or stagy.

You'll find old favorites and lots of surprises. And you'll find a link to a farcical story about Youtube's attempting to kick Tom off the premises, simply because he used a photo of a woman with one breast exposed in connection with a poem he read by Michael Ondaatje. Film critic Roger Ebert was drawn into the silliness, and Tom's channel was returned to good standing. I'll provide a link here to the tale as told by Ebert:

Ebert and O'Bedlam

Ebert intimates that we should be able to detect to whom the British voice belongs (an actor), so there's a bit of added "intrigue."

But Tom O'Bedlam's project is just one of those simple but splendid things made possible by mass media, which Tom is using artfully to transmit, celebrate, and, arguably, revive a non-mass-medium, poetry.

Here is Tom's own self-effacing description (from his Channel) of how he does what he does:

"I record everything sitting at my desk in my small office. The microphone I use (these days) is a Rode Podcaster plugged into a USB port. The software is either WavePad or Audacity - both free downloads. Anybody could do it."

So please do pay Tom's channel a visit, start by finding a favorite poem, and take it from there. You won't be sorry, as the advertisements like to say.

New Readings of Flash-Fiction

Readings (plus short videos) of two pieces of short-short fiction, a.k.a flash-fiction: the first by


Kathleen Wakefield, "Old Man"

and the second by

Kristin Fouquet, "For Eliza"

Margaret Walker's poem, "Childhood"

A reading of Margaret Walker's poem,

"Childhood"

Jubilee

This Is My Century: New and Collected Poems

"Falling Leaves," by Nazim Hikmet

A video/reading (about one minute)of "Falling Leaves," a poem (in translation) by Nazim Hikmet, Turkish writer.

falling leaves

"No Uncertain Term" [the apricot poem]

A reading (with mini-movie) of "No Uncertain Term":

apricot poem

"The laws of God, the laws of man," by A.E. Housman

A Youtube reading of the poem:

Housman/laws

"Faith and Works," by Muriel Spark

A reading of "Faith and Works," a poem by Muriel Spark:

sparkpoem

"Mist, Earthquake, Grace"

Youtube reading of . . .

"Mist, Earthquake, Grace"

"Winter Nocturne"

A Youtube reading of the poem, "Winter Nocturne":

winter nocturne

Reading by Arthur Vogelsang

Here is a link to Arthur Vogelsang's reading of several poems:

Arthur Vogelsang

A Reading of "Lullaby," by W.H. Auden

After I read "Lullaby," by W.H. Auden, many years ago, I suspected that it would become one of my favorite poems over the long haul, not just a well liked poem of the moment.

Here is a link to a reading (with images of the text) of it on Youtube:

Lullaby/Auden

SMOKE AND THUNDER by Jim Chandler

I recently had the pleasure of reading Smoke and Thunder: Collected Poems by Jim Chandler. It's one of the best collections of contemporary poetry I've read in a long time, partly because it presents such a unified (but nonetheless complex) voice, vision, and perspective on experience.

Chandler is a son, so to speak, of both the South and the West, having spent some time in his youth in Pomona, California, and now making Tennessee his home. The book will remind many readers of Bukowski's work insofar as the world of the poems is populated by liquor, tobacco, coffee, hard luck, hard work, self-destruction, resilience, and defiance.

The poems themselves, however, speak from their own regional, personal, and existential space; this is not an imitation of Bukowski, by any means. Chandler's style is characterized by short-lined, explosive, pugnacious narrative poems that have great forward momentum but that can stop at any moment for a surprising reflection or a satisfying detour.

And several poems are expressly meditative, like "the anger of man," a poem about the poet's own relationship with rage but also about that emotion as something connected deeply to the male American's working-class experience. Such moments of self-reflection are not rare in the book, but they are often startling, as in "crazy dave," a poem concerning the almost automatic ways in which racism is passed along but also concerning how it can be defused by maturity and good old-fashioned intelligence; of course, Chandler doesn't say this in so many words. A poet, he lets the poem do the talking.

Many poems feature Chandler wrestling--sometimes violently, often genially--with a variety of demons most of us will recognize. In this way, the book functions as a whole, a narrative about persons and people whose first instinct, being an instinct, is to live impulsively, to keep moving and living hard--but whose complexity of character intrudes to suggest, "You know, you might want to slow down occasionally." This is never a self-indulgent book, however. The poems are too quick, firmly focused, rooted in imagery, and outward looking for that.

Chandler's "Western-ness" may come out most vividly when he expresses suspicions about the State, as in the poem about Elian Gonzalez. The poems asks us to focus on the almost Kafka-esque detail of federal agents swooping in to remove the child--and then giving him play-dough. Like many a good political poem, this one shifts the debate away from the debate, so to speak (should the the boy have been returned to his father or not?) and toward behavior: how the boy is removed, how he's treated. Details.

Chandler's "Southern-ness" comes through the poems in a variety of ways. --In places and situations many are set; in the poet's intimate knowledge of good-old-boy culture; in is dealing with God, religion, family, and history, for example.

By his own admission, Chandler has sometimes been a two-fisted drinker; he's also a two-fisted poet, full of surprises, including the ones he's experienced. Chandler has found a style that works well, suits his material, and wears extremely well over the course of a book. The book is published by 1st Books Library, and it includes an introduction by Carter Monroe.

Smoke and Thunder

Tim Peeler Reads a Poem

A link to Tim Peeler reading one of his poems.

Tacoma's New Poet Laureate to Read

Tammy Robacker, Tacoma's new Poet Laureate, will give her first official reading in June:

More info

Carter Monroe Reads a Poem

Here is a link to a reading by Carter Monroe of one of his poems, good one--nice details, and a wonderful "turn" at the end:

Carter Monroe

Rank Stranger Press

Here is a link to Rank Stranger Press, presided over by Carter Monroe and Jim Chandler; the press publishes a wide variety of poetry and short fiction in both chapbook and "big" book formats. And here is a link to a performance of the song that gave the press its name:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_vtOd_d40o

Bob Dylan recorded it, too, in his inimitable style:

http://s0.ilike.com/play#Bob+Dylan:Rank+Strangers+To+Me:166494:m652663

Carter Monroe's THE NEW LOST BLUES

I just finished reading Carter Monroe's The New Lost Blues: Selected Poems 1999-2005, and it's splendid. It's a book well known in the small-press community but should be even more widely known and, one hopes, headed for a second printing. The influence of the Beats and the Black Mountain School is here, but that's not saying much as Monroe has obviously absorbed that influence and moved on to forge his own style. Many poems in the early part of the book are narrative in different ways, personal but never insular, and all guided by a firm but flexible, funny but also often coldly incisive voice.

These poems represent much from the author's world in North Carolina and elsewhere but just as much about the U.S. in the early 21st century. Other poems are more palpably jazz-influenced, and Monroe clearly knows the music and musicians there, and is no dabbler. A third kind of poem is shorter, more experimental, such as the Ra Postcards. Through it all runs a disciplined but highly inventive maturity, always a strong voice, a keen eye for detail, falsehood, self-deception, absurdity, and despair, and always a fine sense of form and line. This really is a substantial achievement, a book for readers of poetry to savor, and a book for poets to learn from and, if they're not careful, envy.

The New Lost Blues Selected Poems 1999-2005

Jim Chandler, Poet, Fiction-Writer, Essayist

I'm waiting for Jim Chandler's book of poems, Smoke and Thunder, to arrive from amazon.com, but I've already read several of his narrative poems, and they're terrific. Jim lives in Tennessee and has collaborated on many literary projects with the inimitable Carter Monroe. A link to Jim's site:

Jim Chandler

Smoke and Thunder

Bad-Boyfriend Poem Redux

Last year sometime I posted a video of Thadra Sheridan's reading her poem, "Bad Boyfriend," and apparently the post was popular. To be clear this is not a bad "boyfriend poem"; it is a good poem, and a good reading of it, about a bad boyfriend.

Link to Sheridan

Anyone out there know of any good "bad-girlfriend" poems--that aren't reflexively and predictably misogynist? Gotta be a good poem.

Purple

Short piece on purple:

Purple

Kikugirl

Please check out a new blog from a friend and colleague of mine:

kikugirl

Book of Poems by Tim Peeler

A link to Checking Out, a book of poems by Tim Peeler:

Checking Out

An Interview With Carter Monroe

Tim Peeler's interview with Carter Monroe, about poetry, of course:

interview

Carter Monroe's Spicer Series

Thanks to a blog called 9th Street Laboratories, I recently read Carter Monroe's "Spicer Series," a group of poems for and, in multiple ways, inspired by Jack Spicer, who was affiliated with the Beat Movement. For more on Spicer (1925-1965), please see . . .

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/1656

Carter Monroe is a poet, essayist, and editor who lives in eastern North Carolina. His knowledge of 20th and 21st century American poetry is vast and incisive, the product of inquisitive, disciplined eclecticism. I think the Spicer series is terrific, a deft fusion of lyricism, imagery, and philosophy. I hope you like it, too; here is a link to it as well as to a photo of Mr. Monroe:

Spicer Series by Carter Monroe

Writers on the Storm: Stories, Observations, and Essays

The New Lost Blues Selected Poems 1999-2005

Jellyfish (poem)

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Jellyfish, Commencement Bay

(for K.W.)

At an edge of Commencement Bay,
an array of jellyfish has patterned
its position near charcoal stumps
of old pilings. We could look at
sailboats, tankers, a para-glider,
a volcano, an island, two mountain-
ranges, or each other—no:

jellyfish transfix. At first they
look like ladled dollops of brown
butter floating atop bay-soup.

Then they suggest small veils
cast off by tiny mermaid brides
now on honeymoons. We lean
over a deck-railing, large mammals
with heavy heads that pretend
to know; who mumble things
about jellyfish-stings. Fascination
defeats knowledge easily.

They’re neither fish nor jelly. Do
they swim or float? Yes. Strings
that originate inside them orient
languidly toward land as if to tune
in to a broadcast from sand. Do
jellyfish communicate? Doubtful—
probably too evolved for that.
Everything’s composed of water,
light, oxygen, and byproducts:
what else is there to know?

Simple and surreal, jellyfish are
beautiful mucous, buoyant
membrane. Comatosely alert
and illumined, their shifting
forms respond to smallest
liquid undulations at an edge
of Commencement Bay.


Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

Poetry Book By Chris Mansel

A person whose judgment I trust, Carter Monroe, highly recommends a book of poems by Chris Mansel that I intend to read. It is The Ashes of Thoreau, and it is available for free download . . . here.

University of Puget Crows, Redux

On facebook, a comment I made about crows turned into a thread of comments, unexpectedly, so I thought I'd better re-post the tale of attack-crows on a college campus--posted in June of last year:


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; or maybe it is. It seems like 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 wear 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.

More Store Signs

So I went to Seattle to have some dinner with family members visiting, and once again I got mildly obsessed with store-signs.

"Crate and Barrel." You'd think this was a store that sold crates and barrels and other containers, but no. What the hell?

"Tommy Bahama." I just don't believe that "Bahama" is Tommy's last name, so I don't go into the store. Plus Tommy won't even be there.

"Banana Republic." Can you get bananas or other produce in there? No! Again: what the hell?

"QFC." A supermarket chain in the Seattle Area. But when the letters cease to mean anything, I say it's time to rename the chain. Quite Forcefully Chic? Quit Focusing on Cosmetics? Quibble Feebly, Charles?

I think we need a National Renaming Month. If "banana" is in the title, pal, I better see some bananas. Know what I'm saying?

The Milk Thing

Not long ago, inspired by another blogger, I posted about how writers often like to listen to strangers' conversations, a practice that sometimes qualifies as eavesdropping, although for genuine eavesdropping, please consult the Federal Government and its zany, madcap warrant-less wiretapping program.

I noted in the post that if, for example, you just happen to be walking by people on the street and they say something interesting, then surely that is serendipity, not eavesdropping.

Yesterday, as I was carrying bags of stuff out of a grocery store (an old-fashioned term I prefer to "supermarket," where I never find "super" to be sold), I passed by two younger men, nicely dressed (on a break from work?), smoking. One of them said to the other, "But have you tried the milk thing?" Other man: "No. What is that?" First man: "That's where you try to drink a whole gallon of milk in under and hour." Second man, matter-of-factly, "Oh. No, I haven't."

Part of the pleasure associated with serendipitous listening (in addition, sometimes, to getting an idea for a poem or story) is the impossible task of filling in the context. Was this part of that vast area of behavior related to seemingly pointless male competitions? Was it a remedy for something--I mean something besides thirst or calcium deficiency? Was it a counter-protest aimed at those who think fewer cattle should exist? Was it a kind of training for a secret mission that would require the commandos to drink great quantities of liquid in a short span? I shall never know, probably.

But I'm not going to try the milk thing.

Nazim Hikmet

It's a real gift to be able to read a poet's work (albeit in translation) after visiting his or her country. It's not that one gains a lot, or even much, knowledge of the place with merely one visit, but even getting a basic sense of a country's physical presence and different social behaviors helps with reading poetry.

So it is with Nazim Hikmet's poetry after I visited Istanbul, where he grew up. His life was not easy, as his early affiliation with socialist principles and communism didn't mesh with Turkish government in the 1930s, when he was arrested and imprisoned. Even after getting out of prison, he was harassed and threatened. Eventually he spent many years in exile.

He's credited with loosening up Turkish poetry, pretty much introducing free verse, writing long discursive, colloquial poems.

For as much grief as he suffered on account of politics, his poetry remained optimistic, buoyant, funny, and quick. The volume I'm reading is Poems of Nazim Hikment, translated by Blasing and Konuk, with a forward by Carolyn Forsche. It's published by Persea Books.

Here is an excerpt from a poem called "Regarding Art":

Sometimes I, too, tell the ah's
of my heart one by one
like the blood-red beads
of a ruby rosary strung
on strands of golden hair!

But my
poetry's muse
takes to the air
on wings made of steel
like the I-beams
of my suspension bridges!

--by Nazim Hikmet

I saw many middle-aged and older men in Istanbul who carried ruby rosaries; it's just that sort of small detail that enhances a reading of poetry in ways that aren't quantifiable.

Poems of Nazim Hikmet, Revised and Expanded Edition

Beyond the Walls: Selected Poems

Bill Hotchkiss, 1936-2010

Bill Hotchkiss died on May 18, 2010 He was an accomplished, prolific writer of poetry and novels and spent almost his whole life in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada (near Grass Valley, where he went to high school), with some stints in the foothills near Mount Shasta. He was probably more personally immersed in the Sierra Nevada than even John Muir or Gary Snyder.

Many of Bill's poetry books were published by presses he operated, first Blue Oak Press and then Castle Peak Editions.  (Before founding these presses, Bill started with one called Ponderosa Press.) He founded Blue Oak Press with Art Petersen in the late 1960s, starting with a Colt Armory press. Art went on to teach at the University of Alaska Southeast. Among the authors Blue Oak published, in addition to Bill and Art, whose book of poems was the first off the press, were Edith Snow and Randy White, as well as William Everson (Brother Antoninus): William Everson: Poet of the San Joaquin (Blue Oak, 1978). It was edited by Bill, David Carpenter, and Alan Campo. Blue Oak also published a collection of essays about Everson: Perspectives on William Everson, 1992. 

Bill's book of poems Climb to the High Country was published by W.W. Norton, as was what is probably his best achievement in the novel-form, Medicine Calf, an historical novel based on the life of James Beckwourth, a "mountain man" of both African American and Native American heritage. A pass through the Sierra Nevada mountains is named after him.

Bill had a gift for writing narrative poetry that reflected his fierce love of the wilderness, most particularly the areas around the South Fork and the Middle Fork of the Yuba River northeast of Sacramento in the Sierra Nevada range. As noted, Bill attended high school in Grass Valley, California, and excelled in track and field events--as did his brother Richard "Dick" Hotchkiss.

He also published  several novels in the "western" genre with major publishers, but these focused not on cowboys and gunslingers but mountain explorers and Native Americans.

To a degree, Bill did the impossible: He taught for decades at a community college (Sierra College, in Rocklin) but still managed to be a prolific writer. He was still on the faculty of Sierra College--the Nevada County branch--when he died. For several years, he team-taught a course with his brother, Dick, who is a master ceramicist.

I took literature courses from Bill at Sierra before I moved on to U.C. Davis. They were terrific classes, and Bill liked to heap on the reading. He read drafts of several early poems I wrote. We kept in contact over the years; we last exchanged emails a few months ago.

Bill earned the following degrees:

Bachelor in English, University California, Berkeley, 1959.

Master of Arts in English, San Francisco State University, 1960.

Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, University of Oregon, 1964.

Doctor of Arts in English, University of Oregon, 1971.

Doctor of Philosophy in English, University of Oregon, 1974.

Bill also served as the literary executor of the aforementioned William Everson (Brother Antoninus), who was, peripherally, part of the Beat Movement. Both Everson and Hotchkiss viewed themselves as the literary "children" of Robinson Jeffers, to some degree. 

So raise a glass of wine--I think he preferred red--to Bill Hotchkiss, teacher, poet, novelist, publisher, editor, and advocate for the wilderness.

Some books by Bill:

Medicine Calf

Pawnee Medicine (American Indians (Dell))

Who drinks the wine

The Graces of Fire and Other Poems

Yosemite

Climb to the High Country: Poems

Poems By C.E. Putnam

Here's a link to two poems by C.E. Putnam, a fine Seattle poet:

Poems by C.E. Putnam

Bowing In Istanbul

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Bowing In Istanbul


Toward the end of a visit
to Istanbul, I roamed a neighborhood.
I found myself starting to bow
slightly to older men I met. Some
were sitting outside shops, weary.
Some were playing games of chance.
Others sat in the park or walked
thoughtfully. Several men
ignored me, as well they might: Think
of the legion of strangers who have
passed through Istanbul, thinking
they were somebody, practicing
gestures. Some men put a hand
over the heart in response.
Others simply nodded. One man
with a sun-browned, wrinkled, noble
face who walked slowly near the park
carrying prayer beads, interpreted
my gesture as genuine respect,
as it was intended. His old
eyes flashed. He said,
“Aleichem Salam,” though I’d said
nothing except to bow. It was
a crucial, transitory moment
in Istanbul, in Istanbul . . .



Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

Eavesdropping V. Word-Scavenging: "So Unexpected"

The blogger Bowl of Orangeshas a post about "the thin line between being a pervert and being a writer." In the post, Bowl of Oranges (BOO) confesses to being an eavesdropper. I'd equated eavesdropping with being impolite but not with perversion, but I take BOO's point: writers do like to stare, overhear, smell, touch, and taste things to see if these things might just fit in with some writing or even inspire words.

I tend to listen in when the people talking are talking loud enough for others to hear. I think of it as a free broadcast. I don't ever move closer to get in better listening range. (I think I do probably stare at people too much, absorbing details, but almost always when they're not looking, so that I'm not perceived as being rude; nonetheless, I probably migrate over the "polite" line, something I need to watch, so to speak>)

What I do more often is stay receptive to what's said by people walking past on the street or waiting in line, and in a big city like Istanbul, that happens all the time--but happens frequently on a small college campus, for instance, or in a store.

For example, a few days ago, to women were walking by slowly, and I heard a snippet of their conversation. I deduced that neither was British, Canadian, or American but were mostly likely also from two different countries so that English for them as a compromise language. In any event, one of them said, with her particular was of accenting English, "Life is so unexpected."

--It is indeed, as are such bits of language for which one may scavenge as they are spoken into the air and then lost unless one captures them. What to do with the language?--well, that's all about a writer's choices. At the very least: savor them. I mean, "Life if so unexpected": what a great sentence, so unexpected.

Politics Comes to Taksim Square

My wife and I have been visiting Turkey for over a week, staying mostly in Istanbul. Yesterday we visited Taksim square, at the heart of a modernized, upscale section of Istanbul, across the Bosphorous from Sultanhamet, the most famous part of the city where Hagia Sophia, the Topkapi Palace, the Sultanhamet ("Blue") Mosque, and numerous other sites are located.

This morning Taksim Square is at the heart of an international controversy. Last night, Israeli troops boarded one of the ships attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. That ship was Turkish, and 15 of those on board were killed. Protests erupted outside the Israeli embassy near Taksim Square, and some protesters surged over the fence.

Turkey and Israel have had good diplomatic relations, but these events, as well as Turkey's involvement in a nuclear-fuel deal with Iran and Brazil, have strained the relationship immeasurably.

Complicating the present crisis are the questions of whether Israel is, according to international law, an "occupying force" in Gaza, where international law permits delivery of humanitarian aid (some ships have been let through during past deliveries), and precisely happened on the ship after Israeli soldiers boarded it.

It's been enlightening to watch BBC-Europe, as the interviewer grills spokespersons from Israel and the humanitarian group with equal ferocity. He is polite but firm, well informed, and relentless--intolerant of canned answers.

Ironically, we strolled down Isticlal Street, which angles off Taksim Square, yesterday, a wide promenade lined with shops, apartments and embassies. (The Israeli Embassy is in a high-rise nearby). The promenade was the picture of serenity, as Turks and visitors from every part of the globe enjoyed the stroll. We counted 5 Starbucks cafes along the promenade--as well as the same number of Gloria Jean's Coffee storefronts: two franchises in peaceful conflict. In an instant, Taksim Square, the venerable Isticlal Street, and embassy row have been drawn into international political conflict.

The Nature of Istanbul

I've been in Istanbul for a while, and it is, of course, a great city--addictive, in a way, like Venice.

We all have our coping-mechanisms when traveling, I assume; one of mine is to focus on the trees, plants, and birds of a place because one is bound to make familiar sightings, and one is reminded in general that this is, in fact, a small planet.

It is said the Prophet Muhammad strongly discouraged the destruction of trees, and what a sensible viewpoint. Perhaps the Prophet's views on this matter have affected the extent to which Istanbul is full of trees, and most especially in our hotel's neighborhood, which is old and working class--not that far from the seaside on the sharp slope down from Hagia Sophia.

In any case, I've seen in Istanbul so far sycamore, olive, fig, beech, oak, pine [a short species, not completely dissimilar to the scrub pine of the Sierra Nevada foothills], fir, maple, ash, locust, eucalyptus, and many species I don't recognize.

Some of the grasses and shrubs (boxwood) look familiar, and there seems to be a thistle that's similar to the star thistle. There is a low-lying flowering thing I mistook for red clover, but it's certainly not red clover. I'll have to look it up.

Grape vines grow everywhere in neighborhoods, as do fig trees: wonderful.

As for the birds, they are endlessly fascinating, especially in the morning and at dusk. There are swallows--which particular species, I dare not guess, but they dive and glide and feed on insects like the tree swallows I remember from the Sierra Nevada, and they have those great bladed wings.

The crows here are two-toned, with a gray chest and a gray cape: splendid. A wide variety of pigeons and doves and gulls. Starlings. There's a medium-sized, gray-black bird that chugs through the air; it looks like what I'd call a cowbird, but I'm sure it's not that. There are also sparrows that nest in buildings (including those of the Sultan's palace) and storks. The stork legend in Turkey is that if you see a stork flying, you will be traveling a lot. I saw a stork flying when we drove to Ephesus, so I guess I'll be traveling more.

In the small city near Ephesus, while we were having lunch, I looked outside and saw what seemed to be a crows nest--a massive construction of thick twigs. But a white head arose. It was a stork--a stork's nest. How cool is that?

Cats in Istanbul are ubiquitous and often heart-breaking: underfed, aged too quickly. The main reason for their presence, I think, is that Istanbul would be over-run with rats if the cats weren't around. There are more cats here than ever I saw in Rome.


Istanbul: The Imperial City

Istanbul Evening

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Istanbul Evening

A white, four-masted yacht slips between
dingy barges and trawlers, disappears into
a blue haze on the Sea of Marmara. The call
to prayer's an hour away. Swallows dive
and glide, pigeons prowl, and the sun's
about to settle down.

Below the terrace, lush maples and oaks
sigh and sway, leaning west. Sounds of traffic,
children, and work never cease. Near a mosque's
minaret on the hill, a faded Turkish flag
flutters in slow motion. Now a seagull appears.

It glides in a wide arc, which now becomes
a large invisible circle. The glide traces
ever smaller concentric circles against
the backdrop of the sea until the gull
lands precisely at the point of a rooftop
below the terrace. The gull stands
authoritatively, facing a low sun, and
something in the scene says all is well

even when it isn't. 

Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

A Turkish Poet's Varied Background

Here's a link to a article about/interview with a contemporary Turkish poet named Lale Müldür:

Müldür

Index of African Writers and Writing

An  Index of sources about African Writers and Writing:

African American Writers--Cornell Library

NATURAL HABITAT, by Michelle Reale

Natural Habitats, a collection of a dozen stories by Michelle Reale, has just been published by Burning River Press. Here is a link to an interview with the author:

Interview with Reale

FULL MOON AT NOONTIDE, by Ann Putnam

In the last post, I mentioned a fine new novel I'd read, and now I'd like to mention one of the best memoirs I've read in a long time, Full Moon at Noontide: A Daughter's Last Goodbye, by Ann Putnam. It's the story of identical twins, Ann's father and his brother; of their journey through life; and of their journey toward death. They almost simultaneously in the same hospital, with Ann caring for them both (the uncle was a bachelor). While Ann was finishing the book, her husband died of cancer. There's enough tragedy in the circumstances for three books, but the memoir is full of hard-earned joy, hope, and humor that lift Ann's experiences and the reader's response to them out of despair and into understanding.

The book is published by Southern Methodist University Press. Superbly written; a great read.

Full Moon at Noontide: A Daughter's Last Goodbye (MEDICAL HUMANITIES SERIES)

SNAKETOWN, by Kathleen Wakefield

I just finished reading SNAKETOWN (2010) by Kathleen Wakefield, and it’s one of the best contemporary American novels I’ve read in a long time. As fresh as its language and structure is, the book has qualities of medieval literature inasmuch as it confronts questions of evil, character, fate, and redemption unabashedly.

Set in a Southwestern mining town, the novel re-imagines the region with language and images that are at once lyrical and primal, mythic and immediate. The mountains, the mine, the valley, the town, and the key family never become fantastical, but they take on an aura that’s just surreal enough to lift the regional to the universal, as happens in the work of Morrison, Marquez, and Faulkner. Indeed, the hard-scrabble, insulated Sibel family sometimes seems distantly related to Faulkner’s Snopes clan but is more wretched. The novel opens with a note of doom and builds toward a dark symphony.

SNAKETOWN is an ambitious but unpretentious meditation on evil—how it arises, is cultivated, and overwhelms. Wakefield renders the tale in brief, carefully sculpted chapters. The character Orin Sibel, among others, is unforgettable.

SNAKETOWN won the Ruthanne Wiley Memorial Novella Contest and is published in paperback by the Cleveland State University Poetry Center. Wakefield is a lyricist as well as a fiction writer, working in television and film with Vangelis, Michel Colombier, and other composers.

Snaketown

Highly Qualified

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Highly Qualified


The lambs are qualified to be young.
We believe we're qualified to choose them
as symbols, food, and future wool.
God is not at the top of the great chain
of being, command, or corporate
personhood. God is, to say the lamby least,
beyond all that. The pasture belongs to us,
in our view. Our view carries a lot of weight
around here. A continent of clouds

advances over mountains toward our
real estate. The storm is not personal or
apocalyptic, but it does not necessarily
agree with us, and it is highly qualified.

Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

Bill Murray Ruins a Dickinson Poem

Lord knows why someone asked Bill Murray to read an Emily Dickinson poem--"I dwell in possibility"--to workers building a Poet's House in Manhattan.  Occasionally his diffident, smart-ass persona lands like a cow-pie on a girder, and this was one of those times:

Murray "Reading" Dickinson

A lot of dynamics here: male Hollywood celebrity in front of male workers; actor not knowing what Dickinson's poetry is; bad idea to have him read; etc.; he thinks he's beneath the task.

So his decision was to read it like a 5th grader who's never seen poetry before, pushing a half-rhyme to be a full-rhyme as if he just discovered Dickinson uses half-rhymes.

Why?

And why not select a poem by Langston Hughes, Jim Daniels, or Philip Levine (among many others) that would have riveted, so to speak, the workers?

What I'm Reading

In case anyone asks, I'm reading lots of students' essays and short stories right now.  The end of the semester, and all that.

However, I'm also reading The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, which I had not read before: shame on me.  I guess one good thing about waiting is that this relatively new translation is supposed to be miles better than earlier ones.  Another book I'm reading is The Vikings, by Robert Ferguson, which relies in part on recent archaeological discoveries--as late as 2001.

The Vikings: A History, by Robert Ferguson

The Idiot, , translated by Pevear and Volokhonsky (Vintage)

Sam Waterston Reads Poetry

Sad news today: NBC is canceling the long-running and, for some of us, highly addictive Law and Order.  The tightly controlled form of the show, accompanied by those "beats," reminded of a sonnet, transposed to the one-hour [@40 minutes] TV-drama genre.  Great work, Dick Wolf.  (With a tip of the cap to the late Raymond Burr, I must mention that Perry Mason had a similar crime-first, trial-second form.)

Sam Waterston, who acted on the show for a long time, reads poetry on the CD accompanying John Lithgow's anthology, Poets' Corner.

The Poets' Corner (An Unabridged Production)[6-CD Set]; The One-and-Only Poetry Book for the Whole Family

New Law Keeps Texas Profs Under Surveillance

From another blog to which I contribute:

Texas Profs


Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, by Richard Hofstadter

Red Scare!: Right-Wing Hysteria Fifties Fanaticism and Their Legacy in Texas, by Don E. Carleton

Larkin on May

I was poking around for a poem by Philip Larkin about spring, and I found this one a site called sundeepdougal:

The Trees


by Philip Larkin


The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.


Is it that they are born again
And we grow old ? No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of looking new

Is written down in rings of grain.


Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

Copyright Estate of Philip Larkin

Wow, much to like in this poem, including the terrific fourth line, "Their green is a kind of grief," and the image, "the unresting castles thresh/In fullgrown thickness . . ."

Philip Larkin: Collected Poems

Poet Publishes Novel

Hey, I published a novel. It's called Honoring Juanita, and it's a contemporary novel set in the High Sierra, where I grew up, so to that extent I wrote about what I ostensibly know.  It does have an historical subplot based on the notorious lynching of a woman named Juanita during the Gold Rush.

Anyway, here's a link, but not a sales-pitch, mind you (you have more important things to spend $ on), although if you were to mention the book to your local librarian, I wouldn't mount a huge protest:

Honoring Juanita

The brief official  recap of the novel is . . ."The global scramble for energy has made a river in California's High Sierra ripe for damming. Mary Bluestone, woodcarver and longtime resident of a remote mountain town, impulsively puts herself between the river and the dam, becoming a protester in spite of herself. Mary's husband, the county sheriff, must arrest her. A flood of unintended consequences ensues as the 21st century invades a pristine canyon. Meanwhile, Mary Bluestone is haunted by the legend of Juanita, a woman lynched during the Gold Rush Era. Honoring Juanita is a tale of entangled histories and divided loyalties, of greed, power, memory, and love."

This is the second novel I've published and, if memory serves, the 6th I've written.

With all genres, writers learn to write in them by writing in them, but I think with poetry, short fiction, and occasional essays (or creative nonfiction), I think it's easier to find ways to learn things efficiently, through reading about the genre, taking classes, etc.  Of course, one may read a lot of novels, and one should do so, but for me, at least, it's harder to extract the structure and method of a novel from a novel than to extract same from a poem.

Probably this means what I already know: I'm a poet first, an essayist second, a short-fiction writer third, and a novelist  fourth. Writing novels doesn't come easily to me.  All the more reason why I've had fun making lots of mistakes writing them. I now know many things NOT to do when writing a novel.

I teach both the writing of (short) fiction and of poetry, and occasionally I'll run into a student is is more or less a "pure" poet, and she or he and I usually end up commiserating about just how many words it takes to finish a story, let alone a novel.  And with novels, you have to manage people, move them around, remember their birthdays, know something about their extended families.  I tell you, it's exhausting work! But pure novelists like Tolstoy, Dickens, Faulkner, and Morrison didn't/don't feel that way, I suspect.

Three of my favorite poets--Randall Jarrell, Karl Shapiro, and Richard Hugo--published exactly one novel each.  I think I know why.  It's because they were, well, you know, poets. Read Faulkner's or Hemingway's poetry, and you'll see how this genre-preference thing works in the other direction.

The biggest thrill out of publishing this novel was that I got to dedicate it to my two brothers, Ike and Sven.

Anne Spencer, Poet and Gardener

Here's a link to a terrific recent article on Harlem Renaissance poet Anne Spencer, who was born in New Jersey but spent most of her life in Lynchburg, Virginia, where she tended a garden, which is the focus of the article.

Half My World, the Garden of Anne Spencer, a History and Guide

Garden-Gadget Additions

I'm a happy gardener today because I got a rain-barrel installed and two compost-barrels delivered.

The rain-barrel has an automatic overflow, a faucet at the bottom, and a screen up top.  The compost barrels are great because you just bury the bottom of them in dirt and worms come in; also, they have lids with screw-down seals, so there's no trouble with raccoons, possums, or rodents.

So now I can water the garden using the rain-barrel--after it rains.  Today, of course, it is sunny.

Dan Borba, the fellow I got the materials from, has been in the harvesting-of-rain business since 1999 (in Tacoma).  Here's a link:

harvesting rain

Seattle Signs

In Seattle yesterday I was amused and/or perplexed by several commercial signs.

 One read, "Organic To Go."  This one intrigued me because an adjective is offered as something one may take "to go," but where is the noun?  Organic what?  Maybe it's just the concept, "Organic."  "What size would you like on that concept, sir?"  "Uh, make that a medium."

Another sign read, "Coming Soon: Sullivan's Steakhouse."  I felt like responding, "Is this really necessary?"  I have nothing against steakhouses or Sullivan's Steakhouse (which I do not know), but there just seem to be so many steakhouses.   Also, I was wondering about the word, "steakhouse."  We don't really have fish-houses or salad-houses.  A chickenhouse would make us think of a coop, probably.  But steaks are served in a house.  "Coming soon: Ed's Steak-Garage."

Let's see--and then there was "Floral Masters," which sounds like an academic degree.  Or like a strange combination of flowers and martial arts.   Or maybe it brings to mind people who have mastery over flowers--bossing them around. "Yo, rose, a little brighter on the color, dude!"

Then in Starbucks there was a written-in-chalk sign for cups of coffee made individually, and one of them was "New Guinea Peaberry"--for $3.85 a cup.  Wow.  And is the beverage made from roasted coffee berries (beans) or from peaberries, in which case one would be drinking a cup of pea, which is not appealing.  But--$3.85?  For one cup?  I mean--really?

Housman: Politically Conservative

On another blog, I just posted something about A.E. Housman's being politically conservative, and I quote a humorous paragraph from an article on Housman:

Housman/conservative

And apparently Housman's Tories will be back in power soon in England, at least according to an article I read in the Economist this weekend.

Nikki Giovanni to Donate Copyrights to Virginia Tech

Thanks to fellow blogger and poet, Poefrika, I've learned that writer and professor Nikki Giovanni will bequeath copyrights to her work to Virginia Tech University, where she teaches.  Here's a link:

Poefrika/Giovanni


Bicycles: Love Poems, by Nikki Giovanni

A Fine Poem About Auden

Below is a link to a fine poem about W.H. Auden, one of my favorite poets; it was written by Australian poet Peter Nicholson, who also posts on the blog 3 Quarks Daily.

on Auden

This Thin Mist

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This Thin Mist


This thin mist, less than rain,
more than fog, enchants evening.
It turns trees into impressioned,
faded, murky shapes. It blesses
gardens, grasses, weeds, and trees.
Makes streets and metal glisten.
This thin mist is weather whispering
in between storms. It's just water,
sure, but it feels like reconciliation.


Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

New Johnny Cash Video

A correspondent from California alerted me to the new Johnny Cash video (produced by Rick Rubin and John Carter Cash), based on one of Cash's last recordings, "Ain't No Grave Can Hold Me."

Cash Video


The Man Comes Around: The Spiritual Journey of Johnny Cash

In Place of Grandparents

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In Place of Grandparents


Through circumstances--an efficient, two-word
explanation--I had grandparents but knew none
of them. Two were dead before I lived; the
two living were near enough but not to be
encountered.  Like most children, I probably
could have benefited from that mild antidote
to parents--the grandparent.  In place of it,

I got some stories--what the dead ones had
been like, what filial fractures had made
the lives ones off-limits.  Narratives became
my grandparents: unusual, sure; not horrible.

I came to know of treacheries and betrayals,
primal scenes, the weather of resentment.
The stories of other people become key parts
of our own lives. That sounds something like
a grandparent might say.


Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

Malthus Called

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Malthus Called


Malthus called today to say,
"I told you so."  Too much us,
not enough planet.  It doesn't
tale an algorithm to figure that.

I do such statistically insignificant
things as plant trees and direct
carbon dioxide their way. "This
way to the trees," I say to air.

I sealed the abode tightly
and now use those light-bulbs that
just sip electricity. None of this
will help, according to the message

left by Malthus. Theoretical doom
is no reason to give up. I called
Malthus back to tell him this, but
he was gone, back to the past.

Cardinal Newman answered
from the past instead. He asked,
"Have you tried prayer?" "Yes," I
said, "and it looks like a tree."

Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

An Essay on the Principle of Population

Strange Time

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Strange Time


When I arrived at that place, words
and actions let me know I wasn't quite
what they wanted, had expected. Yes,
I'd been invited: a technicality.  I spent

some time at the party's edge. I was
following a line of exclusionary logic:
If unwanted, behave peripherally
and keep close watch on arbiters.

Later I moved toward the center,
began to perform so as to prove
they should indeed desire my presence.
You know how that sort of thing

goes. I went from ignored to resented.
Outside finally in night air alone, I told
another departing guest, "I had a
strange time in there. I'm glad I'm out."

"You're not alone," she said to
me, adding, "and by that of
course I mean you are alone.
Good night."  "Good night," I said.


Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

Sounds Today

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Sounds Today


On the street, a man bounces a basketball.
The sound's not different from that of chopping
wood. It stops when he shoots the ball at a
hoop. The sound from this is something
like a dull bell in fog.  The man shouts--
he sounds like a seal. A car goes by

in a slow rush, air displaced largely.
The car's sound-system thumps--that
speakered pulse all of us are used to now.
The city's sounds fill in an audio backdrop.
That wood-chopping, basket-ball-on-
pavement sound continues. The man
is frenzied because the sun's out and

Winter's been so long this year. He's
furiously glad, pounds that gray pavement
with his orange, hand-held planet.


Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

Only Dreaming

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Only Dreaming


In this wet city under gray today,
you'll sense how hard and wearily
so many people work. Could be
you'll grieve for grinding toil
demanded and surrendered. Or
maybe you won't have time to
feel much because you're working.

Later you'll get across the city
somehow as gray becomes night.
Inside where you live, you'll note
again how much you and your clothes
smell of the work you do. Now other
tasks await: to cook, to listen,
to worry, to count, to try to rest.
Only dreaming will seem effortless,
but that's dreaming, which is nothing.


Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

Salvage Yard

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Salvage Yard

When I pass a salvage yard, everything
in it's dear  because it's something
crumpled, because it used to be
something designed and functional. Each
piece took some work to make and worked
for a while.  The yard as a whole presents
gnarled pyramids of contorted metal,
smeared rust, and broken tonnage.

I couldn't operate a salvage yard
because I'd want to keep the junk.
The yard's a tomb without a pharaoh,
an installation without a gallery. It's
a steel opera, a metal consequence,
a there. Flattened Cadillacs, pretzeled
I-beams, broken bridges, arrested
scrap: reusable, yes, bound for
a furnace hell. And beautiful--heaped
indiscriminately in mud.

Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

Salvage Yard Treasures of America

Two Poems By President Obama

Here is a link to two poems written by President Obama and published in 1981 in the Occidental College literary magainze:


Poems by Obama

The first one, about a father, reminds me a bit of Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz."

All Politicians Wear Makeup

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All Politicians Wear Make-Up


All politicians wear makeup because
cameras are their constituents. Actors
attempt politics because celebrity
has made them rulers of feudal
entourages. Pastors become actors
because they don't have faith that God
will fill the seats. Atheists become pastors
because they want to share the empty news.
Journalists become atheists because they
report on hell and no one seems especially
alarmed. Citizens become journalists
because journalism collapsed. Wisdom
becomes rare because so few seem
to have the patience for it. Information
replaces it.  People inhale fumes
of information, get high, gaze at their
screens, see politicians, all politicians
wearing makeup.


Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

Cosmetics: Webster's Timeline History, 2007

Extra-Time

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Extra-Time

I know there's no next time, each time
being one time and one life, one life.
So the thing is to work up an extra-time:
one as-if, a single could-be, or a solitary
the-way-it-was.  Walk in summer
up to that old barn with its baked,
rough-milled, untreated boards that
smell so great and watch black
carpenter-bees fly into, out of, holes
that just fit their bodies, and feel the body,
yours, taut, and look and breathe
that one time as someone puts a glass jar
over a bee-hole, and the next bee out
knocks itself silly against glass but
recovers, and a Ford that isn't old
passes by--sound of radio from an open
window, sound of a busted, snarling
muffler.  And there, see, are tall green
weeds and sweet-pea vines. In comes
fresh air, just as easy as that, and in
your right front pocket is a folding
knife with traces of trout-guts on
its blade, fine dust, a small
piece of quartz, and coins--
the currency of this extra-time,
this one-time borrowed back.


Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom


The Carpenter Bee

President of the EU Writes Haiku

Herman Van Rompuy, from Belgium, is the President of the European Union, and he's just published a collection of haiku.

Here is a link to an article from Reuters online about Van Rompuy and the book.

New Book On Creative Writing

British writer and professor Graeme Harper has just published a new book about creative writing, aptly titled On Creative Writing.  A link:


On Creative Writing

Rae Armantrout Wins 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

Here is a link to an article about Rae Armantrout's having won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in poetry:

Pulitzer

And a link to the book:


Versed (Wesleyan Poetry)

Recommended Writer: Wendy Perriam

Not long ago I read a novel by Wendy Perriam, Coupling.  It's terrific--one of those relatively rare fine novels about contemporary romance, sex, and love.  The book reminded me of D.H. Lawrence's writing--with the crucial addition of subtlety, and with the addition of a more complex understanding of how people behave.  There is more than a little humor as well, and the protagonist is someone you're glad to follow through a narrative.  In a sense Perriam takes the venerable sub-genre of "novel of manners" and applies it deftly to our times.

Perriam is a British author of 14 novels and several short-story collections:  She's also a professor.

Here is a link to her site:

Wendy Perriam

And here is a link to an article about her, her writing, a short story collection, and her experience with an awful personal loss:

Article on Perriam

And a link to Coupling (although there is a paperback edition as well):

Coupling

A Writer of Parables

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A Writer of Parables


Once there was a writer of parables
who aimed to treat his readers'
maladies with narrative caplets
of wisdom. Almost no one read
his parables, for almost no one
read, and those who did read
had many reading choices. The few
who read his parables didn't know
the parables were meant instructively
to heal. They liked the parables,
however, because they were short
and crisp like chopped stalks
of celery. There was the parable
of the blind fashion-photographer;
of the return of the responsible
daughter; of the man who would play
only a rented harp; and so on.
Finally the writer of parables wrote
himself into a parable. He dissolved
into a little bit of his own home-made
wisdom and entered the bloodstream
of culture, completely absorbed.


Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

New Book By Robert Sheppard

Here is a link to a new book by British poet Robert Sheppard, Warrant Error.

New Book By Stephen Bess

Here's a link to a new book by Stephen Bess, Liquid Lunch: Blues-Inspired Poems; Bess lives in Washington D.C.

Barker's Sonnet to His Mother

When I began to study poetry as an undergraduate, one of the first poems I encountered was George Barker's sonnet, "To My Mother."  Here 'tis:


To My Mother

by George Barker

Most near, most dear, most loved, and most far,
Under the huge window where I often found her
Sitting as huge as Asia, seismic with laughter,
Gin and chicken helpless in her Irish hand,
Irresistible as Rabelais but most tender for
The lame dogs and hurt birds that surround her,—
She is a procession no one can follow after
But be like a little dog following a brass band.

She will not glance up at the bomber or condescend
To drop her gin and scuttle to a cellar,
But lean on the mahogany table like a mountain
Whom only faith can move, and so I send
O all her faith and all my love to tell her
That she will move from mourning into morning.

Among My Favorites: Philip Larkin

British poet and librarian Philip Larkin's work is among my favorite.  He possessed a distinctive lyric gift, a sometimes droll, sometimes bleak view of modern life, the city, urban isolation, and a considerable sense of humor.  Probably his most famous poem is "This Be The Verse," which can probably be found online (I haven't looked).  As with Dickinson, it's difficult to pick favorites, but "High Windows" and "Home Is So Sad" certainly stand out.  The best thing to do is to rummage through is collected poems, though.  A link to that book:


Collected Poems, by Philip Larkin

And a link to the Philip Larkin Society::

http://www.philiplarkin.com/

Among My Favorites: Alan Dugan

Alan Dugan (1923-2003) remains one of my favorite poets.  His work earned him a Yale Younger Poet award and a Pulitzer Prize.  His poems tend to be quick and terse--bursts of direct first-person utterance; they're very smart but also accessible.  One of my favorites by him is "Love Song: I and Thou," which in part concerns trying to build a new house.  There is also a poem about an new bridge that is actually an old bridge.

Dugan titled his books simply Poems, Poems 2, Poems 3, and so on--up to 7, which is a collected poems edition.

A link to more information about Dugan.

Among My Favorites: James Cervantes

. . . And in another National Poetry Month episode of "Among My Favorites," I'll note  that James Cervantes, professor and poet, is among my favorites.  Here is a link to his site, which includes some terrific poems:

James Cervantes

And here is a link to a book:

Temporary Meaning: Poems, by James Cerantes