The sonnet-form of poetry has been around for about 800 years. That's a long time, from where I'm sitting, but maybe not from where geology is sitting.
It's a form that should be worn out by now (indeed, most working poets today probably view it as a worn out form), but it's simply too addictive--to poets as well as readers of poetry--to be abandoned. From an American perspective, one might compare it to the blues form or the three-chord country-and-western song. In one sense we feel as if we've heard it all before when we think of these forms, but on closer inspection, the possibilities for variations and innovations within the tight form are endless, and indeed one source of fascination is what the next person will do with the form, given the form's tight guidelines. The tension between tight, conventional form and innovation becomes a source of inspiration and interest. Of course, it's always possible to disobey a form's guidleines significantly, something that happened when the sonnet-form lept, so to speak, from Italy to England.
"Sonnet," so the story goes, springs from a similar word in Italian that means "little song" or "little sound." Apparently it began life as a song-form within larger works, in Sicily, at the court of Frederick, in the 1200s. We associate the form now with the Renaissance Italian poet Petrarch, and his sonnets refined the octave [8 lines]/sestet [6 lines] form. It's easier to rhyme in Italian than in English, so Petrarch was able to use as few as four rhymes over the 14 lines. Thomas Wyatt tried to keep the Petrarchan form going in English but started to vary the rhyme-scheme, and his iambic pentameter was pretty rough. As we know, Shakespeare put the real English stamp on the form, solidifying the three-quatrain/couplet form, which, among other things, allows for more rhymes. Shakespeare's iambic pentameter tends to be more regular than Wyatt's; that's for sure. Shakespeare also deviated from and even made fun of conventions of the sonnet. For example, in Sonnet 18, he asks, "Shall I compare thee [his beloved] to a summer's day?" The rest of the sonnet implicitly answers, "Yes and no," because he does draw comparisons but points out their inadequacy, thereby disrupting the convention of describing someone's beauty in terms of nature (a.g., a woman's complexion = that of a rose). Not to get too cute, but Sonnet 18 is both a sonnet and a meta-sonnet, a sonnet that shows off the poet's awareness of the tradition in which he writes.
Like Dickinson's poetry, sonnets are often met with resistance because they can seem too formal, encoded, and remote--something that belongs to dusty volumes in libraries or only to English teachers. But once you crack the surface, so to speak, they're very satisfying little puzzles to work on, and they often make quick little arguments, often feinting in one direction, going in another direction, and ending with emphasis, surprise, or both. And by the time Countee Cullen writes his famous sonnet, "Yet Do I Marvel" (in the Harlem Renaissance), almost any subject is open to the sonnet; it's no longer a song of love. "Yet Do I Marvel" may well be my most favorite sonnet of all time, with all due respect to the Shake-meister-general.
In one sense, sonnet-writing and sonnet-reading can be described as a figurative addiction, not so different from that to crossword puzzles or soduku. In another sense, sonnet-writing and sonnet-reading are like a big ongoing party you can visit. It's a welcoming tradition. That one is welcome doesn't necessarily mean that the sonnet one tries to write will succeed or that every sonnet one reads will be satisfying. It just means a grand, flexible, evolving tradition continues--a moveable feast.
I usually have students (as poets or readers) write a "sound sonnet," in which individual lines or sentences make sense but in which the sonnet overall need not, and indeed should not, make sense. The idea is to liberate the students from having to mean so that they may focus on the meter and rhyming, the building of three quatrains and a couplet. Ironically, the hardest part of the exercise turns out to be not making sense. In most cases, the "sound sonnets" quickly begin to be about something.
I invite you to write a sound-sonnet, a 10 [syllables; every other syllable stressed] X 14 [lines] poem, as my late friend Wendy Bishop referred to it. Try not to mean!
I participate in the tradition chiefly by reading (and teaching) sonnets, but every so often I attend the party as a writer. In the following sonnet, I decided to have the poem try (at least) to meaning something, I decided to stick with the English or Shakespearian form (three quatrains and a couplet), I decided to adhere, with a few variations, to iambic pentameter, but I also decided to be flexible with the rhyming by using some slant- or half-rhymes.
Making the Soul’s Re-acquaintance
It seems you must give up your long-term lease
On being right and wronged, righteous and hurt.
No doubt there’s someone else who would be pleased
To lord over that haughty piece of Earth.
Move to a cottage of humility,
Cross-breezes, and a pantry full of jars
That hold your faults, preserved for scrutiny.
Live with the wretchedness of who you are.
Chop kindling from the stump of your assumptions,
And ask forgiveness from each simple wall.
It won’t be long before you sense resumption
Of simple gratitude for life and all.
Of course you’ll want to pray again, poor sod.
But keep it basic: pray there is a God.
from The Coast Starlight: Collected Poems 1976-2006, Hans Ostrom.
Here's a wonderful site, by the way, for sonnet enthusiasts, addicts, or casual visitors:
http://www.sonnets.org/
Monday, October 15, 2007
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Car-Pooling
I haven't had to carpool much in my life, thank goodness, but I do appreciate the way English so quickly absorbs such concepts and turns them into verbs. My sense is that languages like Swedish and German have more trouble doing that, and this is probably to their credit, at some level. English seems to be the great vacuum-cleaner of languages.
I have taken a fair number of public-buses in my work-life, and of course I have given and taken rides in cars to work-related destinations, but not really on a regular basis. For the better part of two decades, I've lived some 5 minutes from where I work, and we just moved again, in part to escape what had turned into a very difficult commute of 20-30 minutes (one way, for about five years). To many people, I realize, such a commute would be a piece of cake.
My uninformed sense of things is that Americans still don't take to carpooling. As bad as the traffic is in this area, one still sees many, many cars with one driver in them. There's something about the American temperament that wants to drive alone, traffic jams, global warming, petroleum prices, and going-to-war-for-oil be damned. I think I share the temperament, unfortunately; it's just that I've been lucky enough to live near my job. I think I'd rather take a bus (or a train) than car-pool, for some strange reason. I'm very glad to be able to walk to work now, leaving a lot of gasoline languishing in the tank.
In any event, here is the only carpooling poem I've written (and good luck with your commute, wherever you are--Tokyo, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Seattle, San Diego, Oklahoma City. . . . .):
I have taken a fair number of public-buses in my work-life, and of course I have given and taken rides in cars to work-related destinations, but not really on a regular basis. For the better part of two decades, I've lived some 5 minutes from where I work, and we just moved again, in part to escape what had turned into a very difficult commute of 20-30 minutes (one way, for about five years). To many people, I realize, such a commute would be a piece of cake.
My uninformed sense of things is that Americans still don't take to carpooling. As bad as the traffic is in this area, one still sees many, many cars with one driver in them. There's something about the American temperament that wants to drive alone, traffic jams, global warming, petroleum prices, and going-to-war-for-oil be damned. I think I share the temperament, unfortunately; it's just that I've been lucky enough to live near my job. I think I'd rather take a bus (or a train) than car-pool, for some strange reason. I'm very glad to be able to walk to work now, leaving a lot of gasoline languishing in the tank.
In any event, here is the only carpooling poem I've written (and good luck with your commute, wherever you are--Tokyo, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Seattle, San Diego, Oklahoma City. . . . .):
Carpooling
I’ll meet you where horizon
catches a ride with the tollway
and There tells Here where to go.
The Commissioner of Asphalt
will snip a ribbon, a way will
open, and we’ll commute on
into Nowhere. We’ll sing of
carts and dirigibles, trucks and
tri-planes, trains and schooners
and other means of trans-
importance. We’ll best be getting
along into the shaking sky. Why,
we’ll be late and early
both at once, nearing and
disappearing. Together!
Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom
Dreams, the Old-Fashioned Kind
If dreams, the kind that come with sleep, were a stock, we would say that they probably peaked in the early post-Freudian era and that then the bottom fell out of them. Nobody can say for sure what they're for, and Freud's & Jung's "interpretations" were simply interesting guesses that told us more about Freud and Jung than about dreams. There's simply no evidence that a book you or I "see" in our dreams means what Sigmund, Carl, you, I, or anybody else says it means. If anything, there has to be a statistically better chance that you know what the book means in your book-dream than anyone else, since you, at least, are the resident historian of your life.
As far as I can tell, almost everyone seems to agree that one's own dreams can be quite interesting (or not) but that the moment you tell your dream to someone else or someone tells his or her dream to you, the listener stops listening because other people's dreams are boring. Moreover, psychologists and psychiatrists don't seem to want to hear about dreams anymore. In fact, I suspect there's an inside joke in that profession whereby if you run out of things to ask the client, ask him or her about his/her dreams, right before minute 49 turns into minute 50. "Oh, I'd love to hear more about that dream, but we're out of time!"
The only "dreams" you hear about anymore are the aspiration kind--you know, all about "realizing your dreams," which is basically the same as achieving goals. Probably dreams (the sleep kind) fulfill some kind of biochemical, neurological function, flushing the wiring after a long day or helping the brain deal with stress physiologically. I assume the biochemists are working assiduously on that, especially if the pharmacological corporations think they can sell pills based on the research eventually. Dream-enhancers.
Dreams may also tell you what you may already know, namely that experience X had a powerful impact on you. For example, I still have anxiety-dreams about not passing some imaginary class in graduate school and not earning my Ph.D., which I earned in 1982, for heaven's sake, but I've just told you about a dream, and we know that no dreams but your dreams are interesting to you, so I'll stop. A poem, then:
As far as I can tell, almost everyone seems to agree that one's own dreams can be quite interesting (or not) but that the moment you tell your dream to someone else or someone tells his or her dream to you, the listener stops listening because other people's dreams are boring. Moreover, psychologists and psychiatrists don't seem to want to hear about dreams anymore. In fact, I suspect there's an inside joke in that profession whereby if you run out of things to ask the client, ask him or her about his/her dreams, right before minute 49 turns into minute 50. "Oh, I'd love to hear more about that dream, but we're out of time!"
The only "dreams" you hear about anymore are the aspiration kind--you know, all about "realizing your dreams," which is basically the same as achieving goals. Probably dreams (the sleep kind) fulfill some kind of biochemical, neurological function, flushing the wiring after a long day or helping the brain deal with stress physiologically. I assume the biochemists are working assiduously on that, especially if the pharmacological corporations think they can sell pills based on the research eventually. Dream-enhancers.
Dreams may also tell you what you may already know, namely that experience X had a powerful impact on you. For example, I still have anxiety-dreams about not passing some imaginary class in graduate school and not earning my Ph.D., which I earned in 1982, for heaven's sake, but I've just told you about a dream, and we know that no dreams but your dreams are interesting to you, so I'll stop. A poem, then:
Dream On
A small council
of evolutionary matter
in a county of the brain
knows the real purpose
of dreams, a purpose
wholly unrelated to what
we imagine dreams do
for, to, with us. So I
dutifully dream, as if
it were a chore that came
with sleeping (it is), as if
I were a member of that small,
secret provincial council,
which meets in a lodge
somewhere off of Highway Zero,
East of West, as if I had
a choice in the matter of
dreams, the dreams of
matter.
Consumocracy Coda
Regarding the "consumocracy" (blog October 13, 2007), I must add that while glancing at NFL football games on TV, I saw three commercial advertisements, one for Burger King, one for Toyota, and one for Visa. Each has a tag-line or slogan, of course:
Burger King's is "Have it your way," which is lovely because it says the exact opposite of what Fast Food is all about--namely, that if you eat at a franchise-outlet, you will, by definition, have it the franchise's way. It's also lovely because it can be taken ironically, as being similar to "Knock yourself out," which is usually a prelude to conflict. "Have it your way" [followed by faux-weary sigh]--and battle ensues. Nonetheless, I do love the fact that burgers have a king. The universe of ground-beef is, indeed, feudal, a civilization in which the warlords McDonald's, Wendy's, and Burger King wage permanent war around the globe. If one were to open a Burger Princess restaurant, one would hear immediately from the King's lawyers, I assume.
Toyota's slogan is "Moving forward," which I presume is the least anyone would want from a motorized vehicle, although a vehicle's capacity to back up has proven itself to be useful, too. Why not: "Moving forward, backward, at angles, and in broad curves"? I guess that wouldn't be catchy enough.
Maybe you've seen the Visa commercial ad, in which "everyone" is swiping plastic Visa cards to pay for things, when someone who is obviously "different" pays with cash and slows down the pace of the crowd, which is being herded through a variety of retail-chutes. Apparently the herd-mentality in the U.S. has indeed taken over to such an extent that a) to pay cash is to be "independent," a stray from the herd, a rogue and b) to be "independent" in such a painfully basic way is to be disruptive, downright subversive, requiring the herd to become impatient with you, to threaten to ostracize you--to cast you out permanently because of the shameful behavior of . . . giving a clerk currency. The accompanying slogan is "Life takes Visa." This is a metaphysical statement. Reality now depends upon one's having an account at a large credit-card firm. Eric Blair, a.k.a. George Orwell, could not have written better cautionary satire. Indeed, the reality and language--the poetry--of the Consumocracy has far outstripped Orwell, who now seems a bit naive. It has also outstripped William Golding and Lord of the
Flies. Pray you have your credit-card with you if you are stranded with a pack of retail-shoppers.
As you move forward and have it your way, know, then, that Life takes Visa. If Visa is absent, . . . . yikes. I think we may safely conclude that the Consumocracy is permanently established. It is Life. We'll be right back, after these messages.
Burger King's is "Have it your way," which is lovely because it says the exact opposite of what Fast Food is all about--namely, that if you eat at a franchise-outlet, you will, by definition, have it the franchise's way. It's also lovely because it can be taken ironically, as being similar to "Knock yourself out," which is usually a prelude to conflict. "Have it your way" [followed by faux-weary sigh]--and battle ensues. Nonetheless, I do love the fact that burgers have a king. The universe of ground-beef is, indeed, feudal, a civilization in which the warlords McDonald's, Wendy's, and Burger King wage permanent war around the globe. If one were to open a Burger Princess restaurant, one would hear immediately from the King's lawyers, I assume.
Toyota's slogan is "Moving forward," which I presume is the least anyone would want from a motorized vehicle, although a vehicle's capacity to back up has proven itself to be useful, too. Why not: "Moving forward, backward, at angles, and in broad curves"? I guess that wouldn't be catchy enough.
Maybe you've seen the Visa commercial ad, in which "everyone" is swiping plastic Visa cards to pay for things, when someone who is obviously "different" pays with cash and slows down the pace of the crowd, which is being herded through a variety of retail-chutes. Apparently the herd-mentality in the U.S. has indeed taken over to such an extent that a) to pay cash is to be "independent," a stray from the herd, a rogue and b) to be "independent" in such a painfully basic way is to be disruptive, downright subversive, requiring the herd to become impatient with you, to threaten to ostracize you--to cast you out permanently because of the shameful behavior of . . . giving a clerk currency. The accompanying slogan is "Life takes Visa." This is a metaphysical statement. Reality now depends upon one's having an account at a large credit-card firm. Eric Blair, a.k.a. George Orwell, could not have written better cautionary satire. Indeed, the reality and language--the poetry--of the Consumocracy has far outstripped Orwell, who now seems a bit naive. It has also outstripped William Golding and Lord of the
Flies. Pray you have your credit-card with you if you are stranded with a pack of retail-shoppers.
As you move forward and have it your way, know, then, that Life takes Visa. If Visa is absent, . . . . yikes. I think we may safely conclude that the Consumocracy is permanently established. It is Life. We'll be right back, after these messages.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Hotelingua
Here's a poem that's kind of a collage of language I've read or heard at various hotels. The last line is a direct borrowing from a printed note in an Italian hotel, wherein an "a" was replaced by a "u," thereby making the note truly charming. Mistranslations can break your heart.
Obviously, hotels are commercial enterprises, but they have to pretend, at least superficially, that you are a "guest," as opposed to a customer or a catch, as in a netted fish. So hotel-language seems to be forced to walk a fine polite line. Some hotels are better at it than others, and maybe the ones that aren't very good at it are preferable.
Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom
Obviously, hotels are commercial enterprises, but they have to pretend, at least superficially, that you are a "guest," as opposed to a customer or a catch, as in a netted fish. So hotel-language seems to be forced to walk a fine polite line. Some hotels are better at it than others, and maybe the ones that aren't very good at it are preferable.
Hotel-Texts
Good Evening. We
are enjoying your stay. We
have refreshed your reservations
and prepared further assistance.
Please feel free. Call Housekeeping
fore and aft your convenience. Touch
Six for in-room whining. Our
turn-down service is renowned.
We have provided tomorrow’s weather.
Have a pleasant chance of showers.
(Probabilidad de Chaparrones.) High
forty, low thirty, middle class. Please
let us know of any further enjoyment we
may provide your billing options. We
control the settings from the central desk.
We ask on time that you check out.
We are suddened by your departure.
Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom
Wheels, Money, Women, Soul
I think most poets have a tough time writing song-lyrics because song-lyrics have to be so simple and spare, and they have to have broad appeal. Not all of the songs Johnny Cash wrote were good, but when he was good, he was very, very good--because of the simplicity and honesty of the phrasing, and because he had a way of speaking to a broad audience without being bland or simple-minded. In fact, lyrics like those in "Folsom Prison Blues" are rather the opposite of bland.
At any rate, I give song-lyric-writing a try from time to time, mainly to remind myself I'm no good at it. I decided to write some blues lyrics, and let me be the first to point out, derisively, that a middle-aged academic blogger may not be the figure who springs to mind when one thinks about the blues tradition. At the same time, I'm not pretending to "sing the blues," nor am I suggesting that nobody knows the trouble I've seen. To some degree, this is a technical experiment. I asked myself what men--traditionally defined, I admit--tend to have trouble with. Of course, the list created in response to that question might stretch from here to the Mississippi Delta, so I tried to stick to basics, and I came up with automobiles ["wheels"], money [employment; prudent spending]; women [matters of the heart]; and soul [the spiritual dimensions]. With the basics identified, I wrote the lyrics, with mixed results, presented here for inspection. Can these blues be saved?! I suspect not. Robert Johnson, please pray for me. But I enjoyed the exercise.
Wheels, Money, Women, and Soul
I got troubles with my transport.
My car is broke. The bus don’t run.
I got troubles with my transport.
My car is broke. The bus don’t run.
If I was rich and had a limo,
I’d ride from dusk to rising sun.
I got troubles with the money.
It goes out but don’t come in.
I got troubles with the money
Going out, not coming in.
I’d pray to God for riches,
But they tell me it’s a sin.
I got troubles with the women.
They play me bad and do me wrong.
Always falling for a woman
Who plays me bad and does me wrong.
I’m waiting for the woman
Who’ll do me right and love me long.
I got troubles with my soul, now.
It’s tired of war and aches for peace.
I’m troubled deep in my soul, son.
It’s tired of war and aches for peace.
I don’t like to admit it, but
Sometimes I pray for sweet release.
[Bridge:]
Wheels, money, women, and soul.
The ride, the green, the girls, my soul.
I’m oh-for-four in these essentials.
Can’t cross the bridge, can’t pay the toll.
Niche
"Niche" is a pretty cool word, denoting a recessed part of a wall where somebody might put an ornament or a little statue, but also connoting the following, according to the OED online:
4. fig. a. A place or position suited to or intended for the character, capabilities, status, etc., of a person or thing.
How many people feel as if they've found their niche in life? (How many people pronounce the word "nitch," how many pronounce it "neesh," and how many prefer not to use the word at all?) Maybe most people feel or think that they're in a niche but also that the niche doesn't fit them very well, so they settle for an awkward fit. Others may feel or think that they have found a niche, that the fit is good, but then the niche or the person changes, or both change. Because it's ultimately a figurative, indeed metaphysical, concept, "niche" is difficult to discuss with accuracy, unless it's the literal hole in the wall. Humans, like cats, seem to know immediately when the body is in a comfortable position, but the psychic, spiritual, vocational, or professional dimensions of a person's niche are, obviously, more complicated. And even cats--when you move them from one human abode to another, for example--take a long time to adjust themselves, psychically, to the new place. Much pacing, sniffing, and general investigation of the premises are required. In the following poem, a person, not a cat, works to find a niche:
4. fig. a. A place or position suited to or intended for the character, capabilities, status, etc., of a person or thing.
How many people feel as if they've found their niche in life? (How many people pronounce the word "nitch," how many pronounce it "neesh," and how many prefer not to use the word at all?) Maybe most people feel or think that they're in a niche but also that the niche doesn't fit them very well, so they settle for an awkward fit. Others may feel or think that they have found a niche, that the fit is good, but then the niche or the person changes, or both change. Because it's ultimately a figurative, indeed metaphysical, concept, "niche" is difficult to discuss with accuracy, unless it's the literal hole in the wall. Humans, like cats, seem to know immediately when the body is in a comfortable position, but the psychic, spiritual, vocational, or professional dimensions of a person's niche are, obviously, more complicated. And even cats--when you move them from one human abode to another, for example--take a long time to adjust themselves, psychically, to the new place. Much pacing, sniffing, and general investigation of the premises are required. In the following poem, a person, not a cat, works to find a niche:
Niche
He viewed himself
as a spectator. A parade
ensued. It invited him.
He marched in it. It
shunted him back, back
to vantage of onlooker, and
further back into an alley.
There he watched the backs
of those watching the parade.
This he found intriguing. The
parade he couldn’t see
no longer interested him. The
backs of heads, sad backs
of coats and trousers, the
necks and ears, scuffed heels—
these fascinated. He looked
behind him. Several persons
stood there, watching him
watch. They invited
him. He declined. He
did not want to join again.
He’d found a niche
between the watchers of
parades and the ones
watching him.
Hans Ostrom Copyright 2007
The Consumocracy
A brief recap: the U.S. ceased to be a republic long ago, experts say. We became an empire by pursuing expansionism. Then the U.S. apparently shifted toward a service-economy from an industrial or manufacturing-based economy. This is still a work-in-progress, I gather, but we import many more goods than we export, and more and more jobs seem to be in the service-sector. So the food served, the toy sold, or the car leased may come from outside our borders, but we still need people to bring the food to the table, "ring up" the toy at the cash-register (which doesn't ring anymore), and haul the car from the port to the car-dealership.
Because we're more of an oligarchic empire than a democracy and more of a service-economy than an old-fashioned capitalist, industrial political economy (smoke-stacks a-blazing), then maybe the proper signifier for the U.S. is "consumocracy." Everybody has the right to buy stuff, and we hope everybody does buy stuff, because the economy depends on these retail service-jobs. United we buy. In goods we trust.
Do I have the economic and political analysis all wrong? I sure hope so, and I think the odds are very good that my hope is supported by reason. Actually, I just like the word, "consumocracy," because of the way it sounds and because of the way it describes how I see the U.S. Before I turn this space over to a poem, however, I will recommend a book about American legal history and how the concept of laissez-faire took over. It's called Lawyers and the Constitution, by Benjamin Twiss, who knew what he was talking about (unlike some we could mention), and it was published way back in the early 1940s. Its style is fresh and direct, and the research is terrific. It was reprinted in 1973, so it's probably in lots of libraries.
Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom
Because we're more of an oligarchic empire than a democracy and more of a service-economy than an old-fashioned capitalist, industrial political economy (smoke-stacks a-blazing), then maybe the proper signifier for the U.S. is "consumocracy." Everybody has the right to buy stuff, and we hope everybody does buy stuff, because the economy depends on these retail service-jobs. United we buy. In goods we trust.
Do I have the economic and political analysis all wrong? I sure hope so, and I think the odds are very good that my hope is supported by reason. Actually, I just like the word, "consumocracy," because of the way it sounds and because of the way it describes how I see the U.S. Before I turn this space over to a poem, however, I will recommend a book about American legal history and how the concept of laissez-faire took over. It's called Lawyers and the Constitution, by Benjamin Twiss, who knew what he was talking about (unlike some we could mention), and it was published way back in the early 1940s. Its style is fresh and direct, and the research is terrific. It was reprinted in 1973, so it's probably in lots of libraries.
The Consumocracy
If you don’t have it, you
must need it, and if you need
it, we can feed it to you. You’re
free to buy what you want,
and we’re free to buy ways
to entrance you to want what
we sell. This is not, as is
alleged, democracy mocking
itself. It is the consumocracy,
which the founding dads
intended their investment
to become. For a limited time,
we can offer you books and
digital videos that prove this point.
We’ll think of something
you don’t have and buy a
way to let you have it. We
like to let you have it. This is
how the consumocracy works,
see. See our product, sense
your need, see and want. Buy,
buy, see. See it there, laissez
faire. Eat the feed, pay
the fee, seed the greed. This
incredible deal won’t last! Call
now and we'll throw in something
else incredible for free. Call
now, or else.
Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom
The Phenomenon of the Business-Conference
As far as I know, I've never been to a business-conference, to which people who are in the same kind of business (a macro-example might be "sales"; micro-examples might be hand-tools, cosmetics, or sporting goods) fly or drive. They stay in a big hotel, and they put up exhibits and share information, or so I gather. Then there's the kind of conference that's focused on training: how to do your business better. People talk, and you listen, or you talk, and people listen to you. Everybody gets trained, and then they go home.
When I worked as an editor for auditors, I did go to a few training-seminars, so I got a feeling for what they are like. And I've been to numerous academic conferences, which in one sense have to be radically different from business-conferences because they're composed of academics, after all, but in another sense must be about the same. Hotels must see all conference-participants as the same, although academics probably talk more and tip less well, on average.
So anyway, I had to use my imagination when I wrote the following poem about a business-conference. Imagine that--having to use one's imagination in a poem! What next?! Whether you're an academic, a business-person, a tourist, a hotel-worker, or a spy, all hotels are pretty much the same now, so that part was easy.
2007 Copyright Hans Ostrom
When I worked as an editor for auditors, I did go to a few training-seminars, so I got a feeling for what they are like. And I've been to numerous academic conferences, which in one sense have to be radically different from business-conferences because they're composed of academics, after all, but in another sense must be about the same. Hotels must see all conference-participants as the same, although academics probably talk more and tip less well, on average.
So anyway, I had to use my imagination when I wrote the following poem about a business-conference. Imagine that--having to use one's imagination in a poem! What next?! Whether you're an academic, a business-person, a tourist, a hotel-worker, or a spy, all hotels are pretty much the same now, so that part was easy.
Business-Conference
In this high steel hotel, gray regulated
air commutes through air-ducts ceaselessly.
Whole rivers course inside
labyrinths of plumbing. Lexicons
are digitized, then sluiced through
copper, into sky to satellites and back to
ground, riding bands of width or widths
of band. We, the most expensive people
in history, sit up and stare at screens,
lie down to sleep in low-conditioned
exhalations of manufactured wind. We
are talked to, and we talk to. After training,
we are unable or unwilling to sleep. We rise
again to stare at opposing steel and other glass.
From this angle, inhabitants of City
seem at least secondary to all
engines and motors, which constitute
City, its energy and purpose. We
act out dramas of math and tools. The
hotel is satisfactory. It is a promontory
overlooking advancements in technology.
We are engine-tenders and data-shepherds.
We have registered for the conference. We
are minding our business. We are keeping
track of our expenses. We are meaning business.
2007 Copyright Hans Ostrom
Bus and Subway, Sluggish Transit, Numb Commute
I rode buses quite a lot in Germany and Sweden, have taken trains in Europe and the U.S.A., have used the subway in San Francisco, London, Paris, Barcelona, Berlin, and elsewhere, have taken commuter buses in Sacramento and Seattle. I've taken the infamous Greyhound bus a few times. The collective fatigue created by such slow mass-transit seems similar everywhere, workers and professionals hauled like so much freight. The weariness of industrial society seems distilled on such conveyances, on the platforms, escalators, stairs, in the echoing passageways. Of course, there's always the possibility that something exciting might happen--but that would be bad news in almost every case.
Once I got off a lightly populated London-Underground train at a main station, and suddenly, coming toward me, were hundreds of football (soccer fans), almost all young, male, rowdy, loud, and drunk--even though they were going to, not coming from, a match. I felt like one fish swimming in the wrong direction, schools of fish swimming toward me. Except these were humans, not fish, and their bodies were preceded by their noise. Finding a wall right-quick seemed the thing to do, so I did, and the mass of amped-up humanity passed and filtered onto trains. I did get a whiff, though, of that mob-mentality that can go wrong so quickly. The more common collective affect, if not mentality, of the commuting masses is perhaps more telling about us as a species, however, than that dangerous potential quickening of mob-thought.
Once I got off a lightly populated London-Underground train at a main station, and suddenly, coming toward me, were hundreds of football (soccer fans), almost all young, male, rowdy, loud, and drunk--even though they were going to, not coming from, a match. I felt like one fish swimming in the wrong direction, schools of fish swimming toward me. Except these were humans, not fish, and their bodies were preceded by their noise. Finding a wall right-quick seemed the thing to do, so I did, and the mass of amped-up humanity passed and filtered onto trains. I did get a whiff, though, of that mob-mentality that can go wrong so quickly. The more common collective affect, if not mentality, of the commuting masses is perhaps more telling about us as a species, however, than that dangerous potential quickening of mob-thought.
Frustration Station
At Frustration Station, crates
of bad karma get off-loaded,
vats of bile sit in storage, and
tickets turn to paste. Conductors
have called a halt. Engineers
weep, and tunnels belch hot wind
recirculated from the 1930s.
Departures and arrivals melt
into one immobile blob. Turnstiles
turn into chrome gun-barrels aimed
at one another. Vermin gnaw
the wires of ambition. Only the fiddler
playing for oily coins puts on
a cheery, sticky smile.
These faces, these faces, these
faces twist toward scream.
Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom
Friday, October 12, 2007
Acquaintances Are Not Friends
A long time ago, I had a residency at a so-called "arts colony" named Ragdale, north of Chicago, in Lake Forest. The owner of the property, which featured a large house and a couple of smaller houses, as well as original prairie-pasture, had turned it into a non-profit "colony" that artists could apply to visit from one week to a month or more in order to write, paint, sculpt, and so on. Of course, it's heavenly to go to such a place, devote oneself to one's writing (in my case), and to talk with other artists. There was a kitchen where you took care of your own breakfast and lunch needs, and then in the evening, there was a casual, communal dinner cooked by an employee. Lake Forest itself is an extremely wealthy suburb of Chicago, so when you walked into town, you were immediately identified as Not From Around Here. I kept in touch for a while with some of the people I met there, but I became friends with none of them, nor did I expect to do so. It was pleasant to be around them, but it was just business (that is to say, art): the idea was to get some work done while you were there. Such places are, naturally, also renowned for their assignations, their artistic soap operas, especially the more famous writers' colonies in the East. Ragdale, at least at that time, tried to identify itself and its ethos a bit differently. It tended to encourage the work, not the extra-curricular activities. In any event, I hunkered down in my room--and I had a great one: one of the large spaces on the second floor of the larger house. I'm sure a few of the residents got to know each other very well, but I minded my own business.
Later I visited Chicago for a conference, and by chance I ran into a woman whom I'd met at Ragdale. We'd been mere acquaintances. We'd spoken a few times at the communal dinners. I think she was a painter, and I think she actually lived in Chicago. When we ran into each other at the Art Institute in Chicago, I had the sense she was a bit down on her luck. I'd seen the exhibit I'd wanted to see and was heading for the museum-cafe, so I asked her if she wanted to join me for a bite to eat. She actually looked hungry, as if maybe she hadn't eaten breakfast that day, as if maybe she were out of work. She accepted the invitation, but very warily, and I didn't and don't begrudge her wariness.
That sort of interaction between acquaintances is actually quite complicated, for myriad reasons, and the usual reasons were complicated by the fact that I was allegedly doing her a good turn by offering to buy her a meal. Of course, she was rightly wary of the possibility that I might be doing more than a good turn, and I was hoping not to appear to want to do anything more than a good turn. (Good grief, this is the sort of over-thinking you find in a Henry James novel.) On the surface, it was a coincidental meeting of acquaintances; but of course there were all sorts of calculations and concerns operating under the surface. This poem came from that experience.
Later I visited Chicago for a conference, and by chance I ran into a woman whom I'd met at Ragdale. We'd been mere acquaintances. We'd spoken a few times at the communal dinners. I think she was a painter, and I think she actually lived in Chicago. When we ran into each other at the Art Institute in Chicago, I had the sense she was a bit down on her luck. I'd seen the exhibit I'd wanted to see and was heading for the museum-cafe, so I asked her if she wanted to join me for a bite to eat. She actually looked hungry, as if maybe she hadn't eaten breakfast that day, as if maybe she were out of work. She accepted the invitation, but very warily, and I didn't and don't begrudge her wariness.
That sort of interaction between acquaintances is actually quite complicated, for myriad reasons, and the usual reasons were complicated by the fact that I was allegedly doing her a good turn by offering to buy her a meal. Of course, she was rightly wary of the possibility that I might be doing more than a good turn, and I was hoping not to appear to want to do anything more than a good turn. (Good grief, this is the sort of over-thinking you find in a Henry James novel.) On the surface, it was a coincidental meeting of acquaintances; but of course there were all sorts of calculations and concerns operating under the surface. This poem came from that experience.
Wanting Nothing Is Impossible
At the Art Institute, an acquaintance
encountered me. We talked easily
enough. I offered to buy us something
to eat, museum café. She accepted.
Younger than I, she had lived a lot
already. I sensed she was broke—
nothing obvious; intuition.
With coffee and food, we talked
more. I said I was
glad we had run into each other.
It was true. Happenstance
had pleased me. Her
face changed. Maybe apparitions
of men she’d known had suddenly appeared
around the table. Maybe she couldn’t
recall a single social interaction
in which someone but especially
men had not seemed
to want too much from her.
I sensed she was broke. I saw she
thought she saw me wanting something.
It’s true. I wanted her to finish her
coffee and say, “Nice to see you,”
and then leave. I wanted to say,
“Nice to see you,” and leave.
Soon we said phrases like that. Her
face kept its wariness. Her
experience had put her on alert.
We left the café and parted.
Can the pronoun “he” ever
want nothing from the pronoun “her”?
Certainly, in theory. My acquaintance
did not live in theory. Her life
was composed of constant practice.
Insistent apparitions had sat at table.
I sensed she was broke. Now I hope
she’s not broke, that she’s
better and well, that her art has come along.
Well, when I think of her that day,
I sense I’m briefly sad for
simple meetings troubled
in Chicago, not to mention
everywhere. I am a ghost at
a café table in the Art Institute
looking at her guarded face. I want
to say, “I don’t want anything. Just
enjoy the hot coffee, the warm food, the rest.”
Her face says, “If you say that,
then you do want something. You
want me to believe you, and believe the rest.
That isn't possible for me. I have had
to take care of myself. Thank you and goodbye."
What To Do With An Old To-Do List?
A "found poem," as we know, is one in which the poet takes existing language from its original context and arranges it into a poem. Words from labels on food jars; instructions posted in an elevator; a note someone dropped--these sorts of things. A poet can also be more aggressive and use the "found" text as a starting place, the way a jazz musician might take a well known musical-phrase and then improvise like crazy.
Another kind of found poem is a poem you forgot you wrote; you find it in an old notebook or in an old computer-file. The following poem is a found poem in all of these ways. It starts with found language and meditates on it. But it's also a poem I'd forgotten I wrote, maybe for good reason. (The poem notwithstanding, and it probably won't withstand much, the concept of "To-Do" lists fascinates, for one is writing orders to oneself. Now that electronics are allegedly replacing paper, do people leave To-Do lists to themselves on voice-mail, and do they then delete the voice-mail in a fit of self-rebellion? Do they write To-Do lists on Blackberries? [What is a Blackberry? I'm still not sure, and yes, I know I'm a Luddite.] Do they send themselves To-Do emails or instant To-DO messages? A massive compendium of To-Do lists, taken from around the globe on a given day, might be interesting to examine.)
Another kind of found poem is a poem you forgot you wrote; you find it in an old notebook or in an old computer-file. The following poem is a found poem in all of these ways. It starts with found language and meditates on it. But it's also a poem I'd forgotten I wrote, maybe for good reason. (The poem notwithstanding, and it probably won't withstand much, the concept of "To-Do" lists fascinates, for one is writing orders to oneself. Now that electronics are allegedly replacing paper, do people leave To-Do lists to themselves on voice-mail, and do they then delete the voice-mail in a fit of self-rebellion? Do they write To-Do lists on Blackberries? [What is a Blackberry? I'm still not sure, and yes, I know I'm a Luddite.] Do they send themselves To-Do emails or instant To-DO messages? A massive compendium of To-Do lists, taken from around the globe on a given day, might be interesting to examine.)
The Author of a To-Do List Discovers It a Decade Later
Pack.
Get money.
Make sauce.
Got to school.
Organize greenhouse.
Move stuff into drawer.
Get fish.
He never liked to pack luggage--
a tedious, sad task. No doubt money
was gotten then released into a variety
of shops--into the world, the air.
(Sauce?) Noting, at age six, that School
was outfitted with drinking fountains
and free books, he has been going
there his whole life; nonetheless, reminders
to return are not unwelcome. (Sauce?)
Regarding the greenhouse, he remains
perplexed but seems to recall encouraging
plants to unionize. . . . Probably stuff
remains in a drawer, which, like certain
ancient cities, has been lost. Salmon
or halibut, which is nobler? That is not
the question. The question is: Sauce?
Was it connected to getting the fish, or
to getting the money, neither, or both?
Was the sauce, in fact, made, or does it
remain packed in a Platonic suitcase of unmixed
ingredients? Did the sauce by chance
or design end up in the drawer, at school,
on money, or in the greenhouse? The older
the To-Do List, the more
uselessly beautiful it becomes. He goes now
to get money so that he may continue
to list what to do. He goes now to list; and to do.
Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom
"Spirit-Wine, A Way of Happening, A Mouth"
Paul Laurence Dunbar was arguably the first Modern African American poet, and it's generally agreed that he was the first African American poet to gain national prominence, partly through poems written in "dialect, " Lyrics of Lowly Life, but also through such excellent non-dialect poems as "We Wear The Mask," which tends to be the one most anthologized now, and deservedly so. It's a terrific poem. In the following poem (far less well known than "We Wear the Mask"), "The Choice," Dunbar (1872-1906) expresses a poet's (guilty?) pleasure over liking "songs"--or the play of words--better than solemn verses that have something to teach, something worth learning:
The Choice
by Paul Laurence Dunbar
THEY please me not--these solemn songs
That hint of sermons covered up.
'Tis true the world should heed its wrongs,
But in a poem let me sup,
Not simples brewed to cure or ease
Humanity's confessed disease,
But the spirit-wine of a singing line,
Or a dew-drop in a honey cup!
I really like the move of turning "simple" into a noun and making it plural--and inducing it to refer to sententious bits of wisdom, bromides. I also like the way he sticks with iambic tetrameter meter up until line six, when he shifts to the more "danceable," so to speak, anapestic (more or less) meter; at any rate, the poem breaks loose in a little dance there at the end.
W.H. Auden, who in poetry played with language in what seems like innumerable ways, came at the issue of what poetry is, does, or is able to do from a different angle in his elegy, "In Memory of W.B. Yeats." Auden writes,
[...]For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.
Poetry for Auden is, momentarily at least, "a mouth," one that drinks what Dunbar calls "the spirit-wine of a singing line," and spirit-wine of a singing line is just such a line, the kind one likes to savor, say, and hear. Poetry makes poetry happen; that's about all we know for sure about poetry, even if we think we know other things about it, even if we expect more from it, and even if we imagine that it can make something (besides itself) happen.
The Choice
by Paul Laurence Dunbar
THEY please me not--these solemn songs
That hint of sermons covered up.
'Tis true the world should heed its wrongs,
But in a poem let me sup,
Not simples brewed to cure or ease
Humanity's confessed disease,
But the spirit-wine of a singing line,
Or a dew-drop in a honey cup!
I really like the move of turning "simple" into a noun and making it plural--and inducing it to refer to sententious bits of wisdom, bromides. I also like the way he sticks with iambic tetrameter meter up until line six, when he shifts to the more "danceable," so to speak, anapestic (more or less) meter; at any rate, the poem breaks loose in a little dance there at the end.
W.H. Auden, who in poetry played with language in what seems like innumerable ways, came at the issue of what poetry is, does, or is able to do from a different angle in his elegy, "In Memory of W.B. Yeats." Auden writes,
[...]For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.
Poetry for Auden is, momentarily at least, "a mouth," one that drinks what Dunbar calls "the spirit-wine of a singing line," and spirit-wine of a singing line is just such a line, the kind one likes to savor, say, and hear. Poetry makes poetry happen; that's about all we know for sure about poetry, even if we think we know other things about it, even if we expect more from it, and even if we imagine that it can make something (besides itself) happen.
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