Does Being Alone Equal Solitude?

Lord Byron wrote a poem that presents an unconventional view of solitude; the poem is conveniently called "Solitude":

Solitude

To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,
To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,
Where things that own not man's dominion dwell,
And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been;
To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,
With the wild flock that never needs a fold;
Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean;
This is not solitude, 'tis but to hold
Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unrolled.

But midst the crowd, the hurry, the shock of men,
To hear, to see, to feel and to possess,
And roam alone, the world's tired denizen,
With none who bless us, none whom we can bless;
Minions of splendour shrinking from distress!
None that, with kindred consciousness endued,
If we were not, would seem to smile the less
Of all the flattered, followed, sought and sued;
This is to be alone; this, this is solitude!

I like the simple organization of the poem. Stanza one explains what solitude isn't. One may read the poem as an implicit disagreement with Wordsworth, one of Byron's contemporaries. Wordsworth did, in fact, celebrate the kind of solitude in which one is alone "in nature." Indeed, Wordsworth believed that such solitude brought out the best in him and others. Wordsworth would probably not take issue with the idea of "conversing" with nature--not literally talking to a tree, maybe, but allowing one's consciousness, for lack of a better term, to be influenced subtly by nature. Ironically, Byron, very much an urban, cosmopolitan creature, thinks of genuine solitude as a condition of being alone in a crowd, which seems to be a paradox and brings to mind one of Yogi Berra's dry comments: "Ah, nobody likes to go to that restaurant anymore; it's too crowded!"

So stanza two presents the second "thesis": real solitude occurs when you are in the midst of a crowd.

Certainly it's easy to grasp Byron's implied rhetorical question: Is there a greater feeling of "aloneness" than that of feeling all alone amongst a crowd of strangers? And the crowd, according to Byron, is composed of "the flattered, followed, sought and sued." That phrase might well apply to Hollywood these days.

Perhaps Byron has highlighted what is chiefly a semantic distinction. Perhaps his "solitude" is someone else's "loneliness," and it is true that you (or you and another person) can feel a sense of belonging--of not being lonely or isolated--when you are "in nature." --Maybe not literally in nature, but, say, staying in an isolated cabin in the hills. Here's a poem that contemplates that circumstance:

Cabin in Snow

Outside a cabin in snow,
we are, and hear our, breathing here.
And wind in pines shucks

itself through sound like snakes
slipping through their summer skins.
And it is easy out here. And out

here it is easy to admire
an image-aided concept
of cabins in snow. And

it is easy inside a cabin
now to believe in an Idea
of Winter, for notions of snow

furnish our true cabin,
consciousness—which, fragile amidst
oblivion’s drifts, stays sturdy against howling.

--Hans Ostrom

In other words, I think one's mind can feel quite occupied and connected when one is alone, and I certainly agree with Byron that it's possible to feel isolated and lonely in a crowd, especially a crowd that seems to be a "shock of men." What a great phrase. We might bring it up to date by writing "shock of humans" or "shock of people" (and thereby ruin the rhyme--oops), but a crowd can "shock" one even if it isn't doing something shocking, even if it isn't a mob. And sometimes, I think, a person can be quite comfortable walking in a crowded city, but maybe the person turns a corner and for some reason sees the crowd differently and is shocked by a sense of the sheer mass of people.

The converse of Byron's thesis can be true as well, of course; a hermit who has chosen to be contentedly alone might wake up one morning and feel terribly lonely, and a person in a crowd may feel quite connected to others in the crowd.

"Minions of splendour shrinking from distress." That's an intriguing line from Byron's two-part poem. If I were to associate something with the line, it might be the scene of manic shoppers at a mall in December. They do seem to be in servitude to brights lights, much noise, and lots of stuff to buy--hyper-consumerism; and maybe they are shopping so as to shrink from distress. Who knows? Such a scene can be distressing, however. In spite of custom and relentless advertising, I wouldn't be completely shocked if, one year, almost everyone stayed home and thought, "How about if we don't go out and buy a bunch of stuff this year. Let's stay home!" Such a massive, collective sigh of relief one would hear! "You mean I don't have to shopping?"

D.H. Lawrence and Thinking Too Much

Here's a poem by D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930):

Conceit

It is conceit that kills us
and makes us cowards instead of gods.

Under the great Command: Know thy self, and that
thou art mortal! we have become fatally self-conscious, fatally self-
important, fatally entangled in the cocoon coils of
our conceit.

Now we have to admit we
can't know ourselves, we can only know about ourselves.
And I am not interested to know about myself any
more, I only entangle myself in the knowing.

Now let me be myself,
now let me be myself, and flicker forth,
now let me be myself, in the being, one of the gods.

D. H. Lawrence

Lawrence was an extraordinary writer, truly as accomplished in poetry as he was in novels and short fiction. His most famous poem might well be "Snake," and his novels include Sons and Lovers and Lady Chatterly's Lover and Women in Love. "The Horse Dealer's Daughter" is an oft-anthologized story. He was "counter-Modernist" insofar as he believed that 20th century humans thought themselves to death and that they should be more spontaneous, earthy, and instinctive. He found middle-class British bourgeois, "Victorian" values especially stifling. A professor of mine once pointed out the irony that Lawrence, who celebrated the body and earthly life and opposed "over-thinking" things, wrote poems and novels that were actually full of ideas--even if they were anti-idea ideas.

Obviously, "Conceit" is written in opposition, so to speak, to psychology and to the classical adage, "know thyself." The poem implicitly advises, "Be thyself" or, even more simply, "Be. Live." Nowadays, of course, our culture seems obsessed with our knowing ourselves; this is the age of self-help books and programs, of thinking about oneself almost constantly. I guess Lawrence saw it coming, back there in the teens and the 1920s; he died in 1930.

I love Lawrence's poetry. His free-verse has a hint of Whitman's about it, though much less oratorical, and with regard to style, he and Robinson Jeffers are certainly first cousins. His novels, once scandalous (Lady Chatterly's Lover was banned for a time in the U.S., partly because of the f-word), now seem a bit old-fashioned, mannered--partly, I think, because we look at them from the other side of the sexual revolution and the influence of feminist criticism. To me, his poetry remains fresh, but even with "Conceit," I will certainly acknowledge that Lawrence may seem naive. Is it possible now simply to be oneself in the manner he desires? And what if "oneself" is a self-absorbed self? Good for him or her, I suppose, bad for the ones who have to deal with that person. Nonetheless, the poem does seem refreshingly to suggest "get on with it": you may not be perfect, but you're all you've got!

(Incidentally, there's an interesting "bio-pic" about Lawrence, a film made some 20 years ago called Priest of Love. It is not well known and may not have made it to DVD. I believe it may be Ava Gardner's last film. There is a better known film that dramatizes Women in Love, with Glenda Jackson, Oliver Reed, and Alan Bates. The nude wrestling in front of the fireplace is an especially famous scene from the novel/film. I think there was also a film made of the short story, "The Fox.")

I'm not sure whether Lawrence would have liked the following poem. I'm going to go with the odds and guess "No." To some extent, the poem may concern "just" being oneself, although there is a bit of a paradox in being oneself because if you change yourself, are you still yourself? Naturally (pun intended), Lawrence would accuse me of over-thinking, but then I like to read books and write poetry, and these activities can call for (but need not necessarily include) thinking. Put more broadly, maybe some people are being themselves when they think, even if they're over-thinking or not thinking very well. The poem:

You and You

You must be you for you to be.
I know to be the only you
is difficult. You must repeat
the same old strengths and flaws, ensure
quirks and habits stay organized,
a regiment of personhood.
You cannot disappear from you.
When you’re asleep, you’re sleeping you;
you’re altered consciousness is al-
tered you, but you-never-the-less.
It could be worse. I know you can
supply examples of just how.
But still—how strange to have just one
attempt at consciousness in all
of Time, to have to spend it on
one incarnationality—
the only I you’ll ever be.

from The Coast Starlight: Collected Poems 1976-2006, by Hans Ostrom.

How To Be a Sonnet

If you know any aspiring poems, as opposed to aspiring poets, out there that have set becoming a sonnet as a career-goal, then this poem may be of use to them:

How To Be A Sonnet

You have to utter what you have to say
Iambically, and then you must transmit
Whatever poet using you that day
Decides that she or he desires to get
Across compressedly and cleverly.
However well you carry out this task,
Please know, my dear, that you'll fail utterly.
For every sonnet-sampler now will ask,
"How can this upstart thing even presume
To carve its iambs anywhere as well
As Shakespeare's little monuments that loom
Or all the sonnets that still help to sell
Anthologies to students who view verse
As if it were a body in a hearse?"

Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom

Mum's the Word, or a Word

With apologies to the musical, grease is not the word. Mum is. "Mum's the word," people used to say (I don't hear the phrase much anymore) when they wanted a secret kept.

Indeed, mum is a word, meaning (in but one of its four noun-incarnations) "an inarticulate sound made with the lips closed," according to the OED online, and--this is lovely--the earliest reference is to Piers Plowman in 1400. I can imagine Piers making that sound a lot.

Oh, I thought I was in the vicinity of clever when I decided to write a poem envisaging a club devoted to quietness and playing off the phrase "mum's the word," but then (I should have known) I found out that the quirky 18th century got there way ahead of me. The OED online cites one of Joseph Addison's essays as referring to . . .


1711 J. ADDISON Spectator No. 9 ¶6 The Mum Club (as I am informed) is an Institution of the same Nature, and as great an Enemy to Noise.

It was a great age of clubs and--the Mum Club notwithstanding--conversation: the exuberant 18th century in London.

Meanwhile, our own era seems to be a great Friend to Noise. Alas and alack. Here's the poem:

Mum Is The Word

The League of Quiet Persons meets
monthly. Its quarters are a cavernous
warehouse away from traffic. Its
business is not to discuss business.
Minutes are read silently and tacitly approved.
Members listen to rain argue with corrugated
iron, a furnace with itself. Glances
are learnéd. It is not so much refuge
from noise the members seek in such company
as implicit permission not to speak,
not to answer or to answer for,
not to pose, chat, persuade, or hold forth.
Podium and gavel have been banned,
indeed are viewed as weaponry.
A microphone? The horror.
Several Quiet Persons interviewed
had no comment. A recorded voice
at the main office murmured only, “You
have reached the League of Quiet
Persons. After the tone, listen.”

Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom

McCoy Tyner

This poem remembers my seeing/hearing jazz pianist McCoy Tyner and group play in Berkeley--probably almost exactly 30 years ago: yikes. I'd certainly seen/heard jazz pianists attack the piano before--but nothing like Tyner did. He and the piano seemed to be having a boxing match, and yet great music came out. At one point some strings did, too. He broke them banging on the piano so hard.

Tyner

Once

in Berkeley, smoke like Bay fog lay
over heads of cool-hip-jazz-club-clientele &
waitresses slivered through tables/bodies/chairs,
kept drinks coming, ice and glass and liquid held aloft &

McCoy

--he hit the mthrfckn keys
so hard one time strings
popped & whipped around like snakes out
‘the belly of the grand dark

piano

& the percussionist had some
weird shit hanging from racks—
bones, steel tubes, feathers—

all

humid and scratchy and knock-talk
click-back bicker-bock-a-zone
sounds, & McCoy was rippin and roarin,
working the shit

out

of keyboardedness. And the horns. It was a big
marrow-filling, ear-enlightening night. Night-outside:
cool, misty Berkeley. Had a look around.
Got in the ’67 Camaro, drove back up I-80
to plain brown-cow Davis,

brain

humming like the lowest pianoforte
E-note pedaled through the measures.

Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom

Brains and Branes

Yesterday I made the terrible mistake of purchasing a copy of Scientific American. Actually the purchase was all right (if expensive); the real mistake was to read an article titled, "The Great Cosmic Roller-Coaster Ride: Could Cosmic Inflation Be a Sign That Our Universe is Embedded in a Far Vaster Realm?" by Cliff Burgess and Fernando Quevedo (November 2007). This article is all about "string theory," a unified theory of . . . everything, really--the whole physical enchilada, from the universe(s) to particles--although I don't think they use that term, enchilada. Instead the use the following terms:

observable universe--self-explanatory

other universe--"an unobserved region of spacetime" [if you say so!]

calabi-yau--this sounds like the name of an interesting dessert, but it actually refers to a six-dimensional shape; because I am able to visualize only shapes that have a maximum of three dimensions, 6 might as well be 66, as far as I'm concerned. SA tries to illustrate a calabi-yau, but it just looks like a splash of milk: a highly confused three-dimensional space, although I'm sure they were doing their best.

brane--this is short for membrane. Why don't they just say (or write) "membrane"? What's so hard about that?

scalar field--"a field described by a single number at every position. Examples: temperature, inflation field." I guess this means heat as measured by temperature is one slice of the universe.

moduli--I think this would be a good name for a car. "What are you driving these days?" "Well, I'm leasing a Moduli." Instead it refers to "scalar fields that describe the size and shape of hidden space dimensions." Oh, I see. It describes something hidden. If it's really hidden, then how can it be described? Answer: by guessing, under the cover of mathematics. Sez me.

annihilate--no, this doesn't mean what you think it means. It means "to convert completely to radiation." I believe I have done this to dinner a few times, in the oven or on the stove-top.

So I talked with my computer-science/math colleague today in the coffee shop (ah, the perks of being a professor--you can find an expert on the premises), and I said, "I think physics is looping back to philosophy." He said, "It never left philosophy!" I said, "I think these guys are just making stuff up." He smiled. I said, "I can't visualize any of what they're talking about." He said, "You [he meant "one"] can with math. Math can visualize it." Math became very uncomfortable to me after basic algegra and geometry--Euclidean geometry, I should say. I loved that kind of geometry. It made sense, and it seemed to apply to my world, or my "scalar field."

From a philosophical point of view, I approve of the idea of multiple universes, because at least it stalls for time. Otherwise we have to confront the question of what's outside the boundary of this universe. "Nothing" is one answer. To which we respond, "What does nothing look like, and where does it begin, and why does it begin there?" From a theological point of view, heaven could be one of these additional universes. So could hell, but I prefer not to talk about that, and I refuse to make a joke about the "scalar field" of "temperature" with regard to hell. Anyway, with string-theory, we can say, "There's some other stuff on the outside of the universe, and we're going to have a look at it some day, but for now . . . look at the pretty bird!"

Of course, there's also something called an anti-brane. I think it's something that annihilates a brane, but my brain was annihilated by the article, which must be some kind of anti-brane in my case.

My colleague says that string theory is pure theory insofar as it cannot (at the moment) be observed, nor can it make predictions, whereas people were able to make accurate predictions based on Einstein's theories of relativity. One prediction was that the path of light from a distant star (I guess they're all distant, including the sun) would bend when it went past the sun and was observed from Earth. Apparently this was verified during a lunar eclipse of the sun. I don't know if they just eye-balled it or whether they used instruments. :-)

I said, "Well, if you can't observe phenomena, repeat experiments, or make verifiable predictions, then you're not doing science, are you?" My colleague said, "No, and there are books out there that call string theory 'not even wrong'--that is, not even worth trying to disprove." Wow. Beyond wrong. That's pretty bad. That's almost anti-brane.

He recommended a book by Brian Greene called The Fabric of the Universe, which tries to explain string theory, I guess.

Let's talk size for a minute. According to the SA article, the observable universe is this big: 10 to the 26th power meter(s). An ant is 10 to the minus 2 power meter. Presumably an aunt is somewhat larger than that. The minimum meaningful length in "nature" is 10 to the minus 35th. That's a lot smaller than an atom, but don't go by me, because I've never seen an atom all by itself. They seem to travel in packs.

As far as poetry goes (and it seems remarkably similar to physics these days), I can get only as far as Einstein, and really I can't even get that far, but here goes:

Whereabouts Unknown

If I understand Einstein
correctly, and I don’t,
my whereabouts are, strictly
speaking, unknown.

No one is the center of the
universe, but anywhere can be.
Therefore everyone’s coordinates are
contingent, just a song at twilight.

Don’t worry: If I say I’ll be
somewhere at a certain time,
I’ll be then there—unforeseen
whereabouts notwithstanding.

That you know where to find
me, and I you, exemplifies relative
dependability, a feature of our companionship—
love’s old sweet Newtonian song.

from The Coast Starlight: Collected Poems 1976-2006, by Hans Ostrom.

Against Mazes, Etc.

For a variety of reasons, I'm drawn to people with strong, quirky opinions. If the opinions are strong and predictable (take racist views as an example), I usually react with extreme distaste or smoldering fatigue--such as when the old DNA fart, Watson, spouted his nonsense about Africa and Africans. There was so much wrong about what he said that I got angry in about four different directions at once. If the opinions are just quirky, I may or may not be amused. If they're a bit posed--"manufactured quirky"--then I'm not amused. The humor of Gallagher--the guy who hit watermelons with a club or whatever--that seemed "manufactured quirky" to me. But if the opinions are truly quirky and especially strong, I'm likely to be intrigued by them and the person holding them.

I have a friend who thinks the Beatles were/are vastly over-rated, for example. That's a good, strong quirky opinion. Whether I agree with it doesn't matter. I can stand back and look at it and say, "Well done! A good strong opinionated effort!"

I have a colleague who really hates those long sweaters some women wear with jeans--the sweaters that open in front but may have a "tie"--they hang down way below the waist. They usually seem to be brown. She just can't stand them. This is good strong, quirky stuff, this opinion.

I happen to think the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead are/were over-rated, but I know this view amounts to double-heresy, and I wouldn't spend any energy arguing with the Faithful. Moreover, I still try, every so often, to listen to the Stones or the Dead with new appreciation. I really do. But then I gravitate to the old quirky opinion. The Stones seem like rock-&-roll's equivalent to IBM, with Mick as CEO. When I listen to the Dead, my mind drifts almost immediately, as if I'm listening to traffic go by, and sometimes their harmonies sound awfully bad, and if they sound bad to me, I can only imagine what they sound like to real experts. Somehow the status of the Stones and the Dead has not been affected by my quirky opinion; imagine that! Even worse--I'm a huge Johnny Cash fan; just imagine how many people wince when they hear Johnny get off-pitch. (Even Johnny admitted he winced at himself sometimes; he spared no one, not even himself, his brutal honesty.)

But one does not hold strong, quirky opinions in order to try to change minds. Quite the opposite. One holds them for their own worth. They are opinions for opinions' sake. They may be expressed. One may play riffs on them. But they must not be taken to the level of argument and debate. That ruins everything.

To the chagrin of my family, I inherited from my mother a hatred of puppets. A few exceptions are allowed, including one or two of the Muppets. But in general, puppets make me extremely impatient. I always have the urge to go behind the barrier hiding the person and yank him or her up by the shirt-collar and say, "Everybody knows the sock isn't a person, so stop it!" It's irrational, I know--and I've never interrupted a puppet-show. But it's a strong, quirky opinion, and what's more, I never insist that anybody should agree with me. In an abstract kind of way, I can understand why puppets in general appeal to people. The world is more than welcome to its love of puppets, as long as I can take a break from that part of the variety show.

My father would never wait in line, except perhaps at a grocery store, but he usually went to the grocery store right when it opened, so he never had to wait in line. But to him the idea of waiting in line at a restaurant, for a table to open, was the height of insanity. He couldn't understand why anyone would wait in line to pay somebody money--even if that person were going to get a meal in return. Not wanting to wait in line is almost un-American. I just got back from Southern California, and waiting in line is a way of life down there.

Some people really hate TV commercials in which dogs and other animals are made to speak like humans, and this animal-speaking trend is getting more widespread because of computer-technology. I have no strong opinions about this, but I'm glad others do. I think we all need to apply strong opinions in different areas to conserve our outrage and spend it wisely, pretending for one golden moment that our opinions count. (Please see "opinion for opinion's sake" above.)

Strong, quirky opinions about food are always welcome. Most people recoil at the idea of eating those large canned sardines or pickled herring. Not me--but I appreciate the strong anti-pickled-herring viewpoints, nonetheless. Me, I can't stand brussels-sprouts. When they're cooked, they smell like unwashed feet, in my opinion. Sushi: that engenders strong, quirky opinions. I love to hear riffs on sushi--either pro or con.

Strong, quirky opinions can change--just like that! I used to loathe chick-peas (garbanzo beans). Now I like them a lot, especially with curry. I used to like National Public Radio. Now I can't stand it. I used to like sports-talk radio; now I can bear it only once every three months, and even then, only for a few moments.

I hate songs with bell-sounds in them. Fake-sleigh-bells are okay in the cheesy Christmas songs. That's a tradition, and the sleigh-bell sound doesn't annoy me. I'm talking about that single-bell sound that slips into pop-songs sometimes. The triangle makes that sound. (Who aspires to play the triangle?! A geometrist?) It must cause some kind of Pavlovian response in me. I don't salivate, but I get really perturbed.

I don't like convertibles. (Cars, I mean.) I never have. That fabric--it's ridiculous. But of course some people are enthralled by convertibles. Good for them and their strong, quirky opinions--"quirky" in the sense that a very small percentage of the cars sold in the world are convertibles.

I loathe bed-and-breakfasts, most particularly if they are decorated in some kind of "country" style. I feel as if I'm stepping into a horror film, and when I get down to breakfast and have to make nice to strangers, I know I'm in a horror film. I look around for an ax (not really--I'm kidding). I interpret The Shining as an anti-bed-and-breakfast film, even though, technically, it's set in a hotel. I don't know why more owners of bed-and-breakfasts don't go all Nicholson on their guests more often. Heeeere's breakfast! How tiresome it must be to run such a place! But of course, those who run such places have strong, quirky views opposed to mine, so it's all good.

And I don't like mazes--I mean the real kind, made of shrubbery (for example). The ones on paper I can take or leave. The following poem expresses an anti-maze prejudice, although I have invented a character who just so happens to share my views (how coincidental):

An Old Man With An Alternate Plan

Just in case, the old man
carried pruning-shears and matches
into the elaborate garden-maze.
Temporary, planned confusion
was all right with him. He
understood the concepts of art
and play. Still he wasn’t about
to endure genuine bewilderment,
not to mention ridicule, or exile
from his ordered day.

If the maze, which was in his
estimation only sculpted brush,
proved to be too sophisticated,
then he was prepared to cut,
and he was prepared to burn,
the history of landscape-design
be damned.

Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom

Employment

Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to have a job. I don't think I'm alone in this lapse. A person can get wearied by work in general or pestered by something particular at work and feel beleaguered, but usually a little chronological or spatial distance puts things in perspective.

It's no fun looking for work when you're out of work, and even when you have a job, looking for another one puts you out there "on the market" again. Oy. On the market, like a slab of bacon or an apple.

I'm very lucky to have had the same job for a long time, although when most people learn just how long and strange the path can be to a steady academic job, they just shake their heads, and I can't blame them. Earning a Ph.D. takes anywhere from 5 to 10 years, and I'd say 7 is probably the average--and that's 7 years after you've earned a B.A. or a B.S. So even if you're fairly quick and don't take detours, you're likely to be in your late 20s or early 30s before you're in a position to find secure academic employment, and usually you have to apply for jobs all over the country--and maybe even abroad. And then most academic institutions want to have a look at you from 3-6 years before they want to hang on to you permanently.

It took me 8 years, so when I've applied for loans and have had to put down the number of years of education, I put down "24"--12 to get the high-school diploma, 4 to get the B.A., and 8 more to get the Ph.D. Freshly minted Ph.D. in hand, oh these many years ago, I sent out over 60 applications, which netted me four interviews--and one job. Luckily, I needed only one job, just as the home baseball team needs only one run if the game's tied in the bottom of the ninth.

A greater percentage of academic jobs are part-time now. Community colleges and state universities meet the infamous bottom-line by hiring part-time instructors, who in turn have to piece together work at several places to compose a full-time job; and of course the benefits are shaky: yet one more reason why "health care" is on the docket during the presidential campaign.

At the same time, no one is forced to choose the academic life; it's really more of a calling.

I applied for and held lots of other jobs along the way to the relatively settled life of an academic, however. I worked as a carpenter's assistant--digging foundation-footings, framing houses, carrying hod. I cut weeds, I worked at a gravel plant, and I stocked shelves. I flipped a few burgers and made some not very stylish "frosty cones." I worked the usual jobs in college--washing pots and dishes, serving as an "R.A." in a dorm. For a while I was a part-time sportswriter, and later I worked as a part-time editor for state-government.

I think I ended up as an academic for two main reasons: I love books and writing (#1), and I like a certain autonomy (#2). If you're a professor, you're certainly part of an institution and its components, such as a department. But you're also a kind of private contractor insofar as you have to take care of your own courses, designing and delivering them. There is a hierarchy, a chain of command, at a university, but there are some interesting spaces of autonomy as well.

When I worked in state government in particular, I discovered I was somewhat allergic to the veneer of "teamwork," the unusual culture of bureaucratic and corporate life. Colleges and universities actually share much of this culture with corporations, but as a professor, you can spend much of your day in a classroom teaching or in your office working on things you have defined: reading students' essays (the "parameters" of which you have set), for example, or doing your own research, or just (just!) reading books.

In other professional venues, there may be even more pressure to be part of the group, to buy into "the philosophy." And everybody seems to have a "philosophy" now--fast-food chains, car-dealerships, insurance companies, and so on. Of course, the "philosophy" is something that decorates the real philosophy, which is to make money. And if you want to stay in business, you have to make money, but to make money, you don't necessarily need to "gin up" a "philosophy."

I think I'd prefer insurance companies just to say, "We like to make money, and we have charts that say how high we can push our rates" rather than to imply that they are my neighbor. At the same time, there are probably a lot of high-school seniors and their parents out there now wishing that colleges and universities would simply say, "We need X number of students with SAT scores in the Y range in order to meet our budget," as opposed to selling their particular curriculum or locale. Of course, the insurance companies and the colleges and universities will protest that they really do pay a lot of attention to more than the bottom line. Fair enough.

Let's just say I saw a bit too much of myself for comfort in the film Office Space, especially when I look back on my days in state government.

On the other hand, if I needed to get a job tomorrow, I'd go out there and try to get one, and I might have to do my best to pretend to "buy into" a business's or a company's "philosophy." I actually have a fear of poverty, so I'd do the philosophy-thing if I needed the paycheck. Among the innumerable hurdles standing between me and becoming a priest, to pull an extraordinary example out of thin air, is that fear of poverty. (God is no doubt a somewhat larger hurdle, but that's another story.)

All of which is an even more circuitous way than usual of saying, "Here's a poem about looking for work"--and if you happen to be looking for work, may the road rise to meet you:

Looking For Work

They said to call back tomorrow,

which is today.

I did .

They said there were

qualifications to which

everyone agreed, certain

expectations. Values, too.

They said there were values

they, we all, hold dear and

so on. They said somewhere

between qualifications and

values my application got

"misplaced." They said if

I wanted to reapply, I

should come back tomorrow,

which was yesterday. Today

is where I am and they are not.

I am not they. I am not there.

Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom

Regarding "Off"

Children and occasionally adults sometimes say a word over and over again, rapidly, until the word becomes just a sound, representing nothing, meaningless, vaguely silly. Similarly, anyone who writes, including but certainly not exclusively poets, will sometimes look at a familiar word--and look at it and look it--until it becomes unfamiliar. The writer sees it differently, perhaps even examines it for what it really is, an object formed by ink on a page, or a digitized virtual object on a screen.

This happened to me with the word, "off," for some reason, perhaps partly because "of" is buried in "off"; perhaps partly because you hear people say things like, "Well, I'm off, then," or, "I guess it's time to shove off," or, "Are you off at 1:00?", or "Come off it, will you?!"

I believe variations on the infinitive "to get off" can also have sexual connotations, and I think I've heard "off" used in TV dialogue as a verb meaning "to kill," as in "He offed him."

In any event, a small poem grew from the loam of my temporary obsession with "off," an obsession undoubtedly harder to justify than Gertrude Stein's with "rose":

Of Off

Shove Off, and it shoves back--
or seems to do so with its
stalwart inertia of absence.

A hard west wind pushes
through the O, and two F’s
stand like trees on a ridge,
boughs blown easterly.

It is not the moon
that switches tides off,
on. Rather, just
off-hand, you might say it is
relation’s ships: sun, moon, earth.

Something is in the offing,
we sometimes say, off-
handedly. Offing is the season
of imminence. If you cannot wait
for what waits in the offing,
then be you with off.

Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom

James Weldon Johnson and Bill Cosby

I watched Larry King interview Bill Cosby and his co-author, Professor Toussaint, about their book, Come On, People, which speaks to the ways in which African Americans can address problems in their communities and families. Cosby's gotten some grief for the book and for speaking out, partly, in seems, because his thesis has been mis-construed. Even Larry King asked him, "But aren't many of these problems the result of racism in America?" And Cosby answered, of course--he'd never suggested they weren't. Cosby seemed to be running into one of the primary logical fallacies of television interviews: the false dichotomy, which dictates that the root of a problem must be either X or Y but never both X and Y. Cosby's point: both. All Americans have a responsibility to address American problems, but he just happens to be focusing now on what African Americans might do in the meantime, for America-in-general doesn't seem to be in a great rush to solve the problems.

King and his guests reviewed some of the statistics: African Americans make up 12 per cent of the general population but 44% of the prison population. The average lifespan for African Americans is six years less than that of the general population. In some cities, the high-school drop-out rate of African Americans is 50 per cent.

James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938)--African American poet, novelist, songwriter (he wrote "Lift Every Voice" and other popular songs), editor, diplomat, and professor--has a nice little poem that pertains to the topic:

To America

by James Weldon Johnson


How would you have us, as we are?
Or sinking ’neath the load we bear?
Our eyes fixed forward on a star?
Or gazing empty at despair?

Rising or falling? Men or things?
With dragging pace or footsteps fleet?
Strong, willing sinews in your wings?
Or tightening chains about your feet?

I love this poem in part because it gets to the nub, or a nub, of the matter. Whatever problems plague African Americans are problems for the whole nation to confront and solve, not shifting blame, going for easy excuses, or making things worse along the way. In fact, the "us" in the poem could represent not just African Americans (about whom Johnson was writing) but any group experiencing widespread difficulty: the homeless; the working poor; single parents; physically and psychically wounded soldiers coming back from Iraq; all people without health care or with shaky health care. In Johnson's time, even more so than in ours, the "widespread difficulty" lay with how the U.S. viewed and mistreated its African American citizens; therefore, Johnson, in his poem, was asking the question of the source of the difficulty, America.

How would you have America, America? Implicitly, that's also Johnson's question. If a 50-year-old white woman is laid off, loses her health-care insurance, and can't go to the doctor, and if a 16-year old African American man drops out of high school, the woman and the young man have a problem, but so do their families, their community, and their nation: us. America should want the woman to have health-care, no matter what, and America should want to get the lad back into school. How would we have it? Much better--especially for those who have it bad.

A Little Bit of Housman

Here's a fine but lesser-known short poem by A.E. Housman:

XVII

The stars have not dealt me the worst they could do:
My pleasures are plenty, my troubles are two.
But oh, my two troubles they reave me of rest,
The brains in my head and the heart in my breast.

Oh grant me the ease that is granted so free,
The birthright of multitudes, give it to me,
That relish their victuals and rest on their bed
With flint in the bosom and guts in the head.



There's much to like in just eight lines. A bouncy anapestic meter dominates and is appropriately inappropriate to the glum point of view, and Housman sets us up nicely to expect "my troubles are few" in line two, but he gives us "my troubles are two," and at that moment, the rest of the poem becomes irresistible. We have to find out what those two ("Only two?" we think) troubles are, and they are, merely (!), the head and the heart, which "reave" him. "Reave" means, according to the OED online:

"To commit spoliation or robbery; to plunder, pillage."

Thus is the speaker of the poem "bereaved."(Later spellings of the word included "reive" and "rieve," and I believe Faulkner has a short story called "The Rievers," which Hollywood filmed.)

The poem ends with the speaker's expressed wish to be more like what he imagines "ordinary" people to be: content with victuals and able to sleep easy. "Flint in the bosom" I take to mean a toughness in the face of passion or sentiment; the heart is hardened. "Guts in the head" can be taken to mean mental courage, or it could be taken to mean not-so-smart but the better for it. I think I'd go with the former interpretation, but "guts in the head" is a great surprising phrase with which to end the poem, even if, or especially because, it gives us quite an image with which to grapple: a head full of guts.

A gem, this poem.

Financial Advice

With the news that the housing-crisis (foreclosures; stalled sales; "credit-crunch") may affect the economy severely unless the government acts to get the flow of credit going again, I thought it might be time to break out a poem that expresses less than full confidence in such concepts as "investments" and "retirement." I once read the poem to a group from a Board of Trustees with significant fiduciary responsibilities. Before I read the poem, I assured those present that the poem was in no way a comment on their management of funds. Several in attendance were multi-millionaires, and they seemed genuinely amused by the poem. If I had millions of dollars--heck, even one million--I might find the poem more amusing. Anyway, here 'tis:

Animals And Investment

1. The Managed Fund

Crows guarded his retirement plan.
They marched around its perimeter.
Squirrels managed the fund.
They wore small green visors,
used their cheeks as briefcases,
embezzled by accident, forgetting
where they buried the dividends.

2. Fixed Income

One day so dispirited by his work
was he that he decided to retire.
He asked to begin to withdraw
his pension. The account-manager,
a raccoon, presented a box to him,
removed the lid, and waddled away.
The new pensioner peered in.
Feathers and leaves were all
the box held. His income was fixed.

from The Coast Starlight (2006), by Hans Ostrom

Some Favorite First Lines

In no particular order, here are some of my favorite first lines of others' poems:

O hideous little bat, the size of snot

(Karl Shapiro, "The Fly")

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

(William Shakespeare, Sonnet #30)

Because I could not stop for death

(Emily Dickinson)

We real cool. We

(Gwendolyn Brooks, "We Real Cool")

What happens to a dream deferred?

(Langston Hughes, "Harlem")

By the road to the contagious hospital

(William Carlos Williams, "Spring and All")

Glory be to God for dappled things

(Gerard Manley Hopkins, "God's Grandeur")

Is there any reason why a poem shouldn't

(Mark Halliday, "Functional Poem")

Body my house
my horse my hound

(two lines, I know; May Swenson, "Question")

i sing of Olaf glad and big

(e.e. cummings)

I hold my honey and I store my bread

(Gwendolyn Brooks, "my dreams, my works, must wait till after hell")

They fuck you up, your mum and dad

(Philip Larkin, "This Be the Verse")

When snow like sheep lay in the fold

(Geoffrey Hill, "In Memory of Jane Fraser")

I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.

(Kenneth Koch, "Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams")

Nothing is plumb, level or square:

(Alan Dugan, "Love Song: I and Thou")

Lay your sleeping head, my love,

(W.H. Auden, "Lullaby")