A colleague and poet took up Friday's challenge, which was as follows:
I selected one word each from the [love] poems [selected by students from the Norton anthology] and invited the students to try to write a poem that successfully incorporated all the words. Here is the list, in case you'd like to accept the challenge, too: ask, eye, felicity, medicine, neutral, spoken, bread, satisfaction, cloud, absence, murmur, difficult, beauty, we, hold, live, delight, cold, compare, and sunlight.
She wrote the following fine poem (which works very well as a whole piece but which, in my opinion, also has two especially splendid lines--the second and the next-to-last):
Poets Asking Metaphors
We ask:
What’s felicity to the eye, and what’s medicine?
And, what is neutral?
Does spoken bread yield satisfaction?
And, does absence murmur?
And, is beauty too difficult?
We hold, we live, we delight in this cold.
We compare this cold with sunlight.
by Tamiko Nimura Copyright 2008 Tamiko Nimura
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Friday, April 18, 2008
Love Poems and a Friday-Challenge
The students in a class I'm teaching chose one love poem each to discuss, and I left the definition of "love poem" up to them. They selected the poems from The Norton Anthology of Poetry, which now seems to weigh about 30 pounds.
Their choices, in no particular order:
"To My Excellent Lucasia, on Our Friendship," by Katherine Philips
"Love's Growth," by John Donne
"Talking in Bed," by Philip Larkin
"Unfortunate Coincidence," by Dorothy Parker
"The Ghost in the Martini," by Anthony Hecht
"Separation," by W.S. Merwin
"The Passionate Shepherd," by Christopher Marlowe
"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," by William Wordsworth
"One Flesh," by Elizabeth Jennings
"The Canonization," by John Donne
"When We Two Parted," by Lord Byron
"Whe You Are Old," by W.B. Yeats
"After Making Love," by Galway Kinnell
"Lullaby," by W.H. Auden
"Litany," by Billy Collins
"Sonnet 18," by William Shakespeare
I selected one word each from the poems and invited the students to try to write a poem that successfully incorporated all the words. Here is the list, in case you'd like to accept the challenge, too:
ask, eye, felicity, medicine, neutral, spoken, bread, satisfaction, cloud, absence, murmur, difficult, beauty, we, hold, live, delight, cold, compare, and sunlight
Their choices, in no particular order:
"To My Excellent Lucasia, on Our Friendship," by Katherine Philips
"Love's Growth," by John Donne
"Talking in Bed," by Philip Larkin
"Unfortunate Coincidence," by Dorothy Parker
"The Ghost in the Martini," by Anthony Hecht
"Separation," by W.S. Merwin
"The Passionate Shepherd," by Christopher Marlowe
"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," by William Wordsworth
"One Flesh," by Elizabeth Jennings
"The Canonization," by John Donne
"When We Two Parted," by Lord Byron
"Whe You Are Old," by W.B. Yeats
"After Making Love," by Galway Kinnell
"Lullaby," by W.H. Auden
"Litany," by Billy Collins
"Sonnet 18," by William Shakespeare
I selected one word each from the poems and invited the students to try to write a poem that successfully incorporated all the words. Here is the list, in case you'd like to accept the challenge, too:
ask, eye, felicity, medicine, neutral, spoken, bread, satisfaction, cloud, absence, murmur, difficult, beauty, we, hold, live, delight, cold, compare, and sunlight
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Revise, Revise
Yesterday in the poetry class, we worked on revisions. Sometimes I use "guided revision," whereby I have students choose from a menu of different options for revising. So we did that kind of thing with one poem, then simply had one other reader suggest how to revise another poem, and finally did some quick work on revising titles.
My suggestions for revising titles included the following: make a short title long, or make a long one short; look at the last line of one or both poems and see if a title is lurking there (perhaps with slight adjustments); write a title that is a complete sentence, such as "Maggie Ate My Shoe"; write an "ing" title, such as "Picking Gooseberries" or "Walking to Work in the Snow"; write an old-fashioned title that tells what the topic of the poem is, preceded by Of, Concerning, or About--examples include "Of Renting," "Concerning My Disloyal Friend," or "About Looking for Work"; write an intentionally alluring or figuratively seductive title, such as "Edgar Allan Poe's Secret Lover" or "Why I Have a Third Ear." A student prudently asked, "What if the poem isn't about that?" I said, "That might be a problem, but let's just take it one step at a time."
I often write and/or revise along with students, partly to get across the idea that writing and revising are work for everyone; that "the teacher" isn't somehow above the fray. Also, it helps me see how I might improve a task or "lesson" or activity I've invented. So I revised a poem I'd had sitting in a notebook for a long time, and I found a new title for it by using the last-line suggestion mentioned above.
I Know and Don't Know
In March dirt sticks to itself like tar:
I thought this as I dug in a garden plot.
Then I looked up, noted pink cherry-blossoms,
looked further up--and there was March's
boring disorganization of clouds. Then, back
to digging, I went further into mind
to imagine my years, traceable to California,
where my father had found comfort in digging
with pick and shovel because (I surmise)
it's different from talk, reduces the equation
to you versus planet, is difficult, necessary,
and absurd. Digging holes or ditches is
for a Sisyphus who doesn't like to move
from one spot. Returned from mind to garden
plot, I looked up and saw a black
cat watching me dig as I dug. Then a bird
in a beech tree made a sound in its throat
like a stick hitting a hollow wooden block.
Stuck together, this digging, seeing, hearing, recalling,
surmising, and thinking annoyed me, as March,
in fact, irritates a lot of people I know and don't know.
Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom
My suggestions for revising titles included the following: make a short title long, or make a long one short; look at the last line of one or both poems and see if a title is lurking there (perhaps with slight adjustments); write a title that is a complete sentence, such as "Maggie Ate My Shoe"; write an "ing" title, such as "Picking Gooseberries" or "Walking to Work in the Snow"; write an old-fashioned title that tells what the topic of the poem is, preceded by Of, Concerning, or About--examples include "Of Renting," "Concerning My Disloyal Friend," or "About Looking for Work"; write an intentionally alluring or figuratively seductive title, such as "Edgar Allan Poe's Secret Lover" or "Why I Have a Third Ear." A student prudently asked, "What if the poem isn't about that?" I said, "That might be a problem, but let's just take it one step at a time."
I often write and/or revise along with students, partly to get across the idea that writing and revising are work for everyone; that "the teacher" isn't somehow above the fray. Also, it helps me see how I might improve a task or "lesson" or activity I've invented. So I revised a poem I'd had sitting in a notebook for a long time, and I found a new title for it by using the last-line suggestion mentioned above.
I Know and Don't Know
In March dirt sticks to itself like tar:
I thought this as I dug in a garden plot.
Then I looked up, noted pink cherry-blossoms,
looked further up--and there was March's
boring disorganization of clouds. Then, back
to digging, I went further into mind
to imagine my years, traceable to California,
where my father had found comfort in digging
with pick and shovel because (I surmise)
it's different from talk, reduces the equation
to you versus planet, is difficult, necessary,
and absurd. Digging holes or ditches is
for a Sisyphus who doesn't like to move
from one spot. Returned from mind to garden
plot, I looked up and saw a black
cat watching me dig as I dug. Then a bird
in a beech tree made a sound in its throat
like a stick hitting a hollow wooden block.
Stuck together, this digging, seeing, hearing, recalling,
surmising, and thinking annoyed me, as March,
in fact, irritates a lot of people I know and don't know.
Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
ABC = All But Comatose
Well, I tried. I watched the Democratic debate, hosted by ABC News, for 50 minutes. Then I couldn't take it anymore. The pressing issues of the day, according to George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson, were the following:
1. What Obama meant by "bitter."
2. What actually happened when H. Clinton landed in Bosnia once.
3. The matter of wearing a flag-pin on one's lapel.
4. The (retired) pastor of Obama's church.
Why not ask about the exact blend of rayon and cotton in Obama's socks or the precise shade of Clinton's makeup? Why not really drill down into the big issues?
Why is George Stephanopoulos even in a position to be asking questions? He was a hack in the Clinton White House whom Bill Clinton and James Carville mocked. Why is the unctuous, pompous Charles Gibson in a position to be asking questions? He's like the stuffed-shirt straight man in a Marx Brothers movie. As Butch said to Sundance, "Who are these guys?"
Two wars, economic collapse, environmental collapse, the largest prison population in the industrial world, a chasm between rich and poor, no solution to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, a Vice President who wants to be a dictator and who got liquored up and shot his friend in the face, a circus clown as president, a Congress that seems to be on a permanent morphine-drip, a Supreme Court that looks like the Spanish Inquisition, a concentration camp in Guantanamo, a Justice Department that argued in favor of torture up to the brink of organ failure, the use of ethanol helping to worsen famine worldwide (feed cars, not people), the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and so on--and what do Fatuous Gibson and George Boretheshitoutofus ask about?:
Flag pins, the Bosnian tarmac 15 years ago, a retired pastor, and the word "bitter." I'm now convinced that all journalists except Helen Thomas have been taken over by the pod-people of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and are incapable of asking pertinent questions.
I ask of American journalism what I believe Casey Stengel once asked of his hapless New York Mets, as he watched them flinging themselves around the diamond like characters from Monty Pythons's sketch, "Twit of the Year": Can anybody play this game?
Of course, because HC is behind, she was only too happy to play the pin-the-flag-on-the-pastor's-tarmac game of trivia, but at least Obama had the decency to look nauseous and to ask, implicitly, "Who cares about this shit? People are out of jobs and homes." Not that Obama is some kind of hero. It's just that his brain seems still to work, so of course he was perplexed (as any normal person would be) by George and Charlie.
Is All But Comatose still owned by Disney? Are any television-journalists required to study journalism anymore?
1. What Obama meant by "bitter."
2. What actually happened when H. Clinton landed in Bosnia once.
3. The matter of wearing a flag-pin on one's lapel.
4. The (retired) pastor of Obama's church.
Why not ask about the exact blend of rayon and cotton in Obama's socks or the precise shade of Clinton's makeup? Why not really drill down into the big issues?
Why is George Stephanopoulos even in a position to be asking questions? He was a hack in the Clinton White House whom Bill Clinton and James Carville mocked. Why is the unctuous, pompous Charles Gibson in a position to be asking questions? He's like the stuffed-shirt straight man in a Marx Brothers movie. As Butch said to Sundance, "Who are these guys?"
Two wars, economic collapse, environmental collapse, the largest prison population in the industrial world, a chasm between rich and poor, no solution to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, a Vice President who wants to be a dictator and who got liquored up and shot his friend in the face, a circus clown as president, a Congress that seems to be on a permanent morphine-drip, a Supreme Court that looks like the Spanish Inquisition, a concentration camp in Guantanamo, a Justice Department that argued in favor of torture up to the brink of organ failure, the use of ethanol helping to worsen famine worldwide (feed cars, not people), the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and so on--and what do Fatuous Gibson and George Boretheshitoutofus ask about?:
Flag pins, the Bosnian tarmac 15 years ago, a retired pastor, and the word "bitter." I'm now convinced that all journalists except Helen Thomas have been taken over by the pod-people of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and are incapable of asking pertinent questions.
I ask of American journalism what I believe Casey Stengel once asked of his hapless New York Mets, as he watched them flinging themselves around the diamond like characters from Monty Pythons's sketch, "Twit of the Year": Can anybody play this game?
Of course, because HC is behind, she was only too happy to play the pin-the-flag-on-the-pastor's-tarmac game of trivia, but at least Obama had the decency to look nauseous and to ask, implicitly, "Who cares about this shit? People are out of jobs and homes." Not that Obama is some kind of hero. It's just that his brain seems still to work, so of course he was perplexed (as any normal person would be) by George and Charlie.
Is All But Comatose still owned by Disney? Are any television-journalists required to study journalism anymore?
Monday, April 14, 2008
Poem By Katie Cugno
Here is a poem by Katie Cugno (that's Ms. Cugno to some), who kindly gave me permission to reprint it from her blog; the sounds and imagery of the poem are splendid:
The Shingle Life
by Katie Cugno
Copyright 2008 by Katie Cugno
by Katie Cugno
Sneakily surveying the scene
rain spatters and bursts
at the seams
shattering through dreams
of the asleep
streams charge,
change jingling onto shaking shingles
after jumping (joyous) from the sky
anxious to rouse a ruckus
on the roof
jitterbugging into tin and wee hours,
co-mingling caution with wind
Success: the innards of this monster have been rattled--
roused as well as ruckus--
rest abating,
guts awakened and waiting
for the storm to stop
or the roof blow off
brave shingles grow afraid as well
shuddering and fluttering they
stutter and mumble to one another
will we make it, this time?
will wind subside before
we lose...our lives?
As hopefulness sways,
and faith like rest abates
a shingle is broken and bounces away
the others dismay
for a moment
but then notice
their own attachment still
to the roof.
Always to the roof.
Through the howling scowling wind and rain,
The ones who remain remain attached,
and afraid...
and some stationarily stuck
shivering shingles
stop and think wait,
to where could that wind rip a shingle away?
to certain sudden death...
or freedom, by a bay?
Free from constraints,
Far from battery by beating rain...
And the next little shingle that flittered away
lifted its own single self from its space
and fluttered--
not stumbled or violently tumbled--
off to freedom
from sleet, snow, most wind...
and rain.
To live a cozy little life on a bay.
He Heard Dead People
The kid in The Sixth Sense sees dead people, and unfortunately, I guessed what the hinge of that movie was way too early, so it got a bit tedious for me. But it was an interesting film. I think the director, M. Night, started to imitate himself, and things haven't gone so well since then. I wasn't even tempted to see the one about the woman in the swimming pool. I saw clips of it on TV, and I just thought, "Drain the pool; that ought to do it."
Edgar Lee Masters heard dead people, at least when he sat down (or stood up) to write A Spoon River Anthology (1916), still a great achievement--and perhaps an overlooked one now--in American poetry. The premise is simple: dead people from a small town finally have their say; they speak interior monologues through Masters' poetry. The poems resonate for me because they're so tough, taciturn, and down to earth, and because they do remind me of people I knew in a small town. However, I don't think you have to be from a small town to enjoy Masters' poems. Here's one called "'Indignation' Jones." That has to be one of the great nicknames--Indignation. It could apply to all of us at one time or another.
"Indignation" Jones
YOU would not believe, would you,
That I came from good Welsh stock?
That I was purer blooded than the white trash here?
And of more direct lineage than the New Englanders
And Virginians of Spoon River?
You would not believe that I had been to school
And read some books.
You saw me only as a run-down man,
With matted hair and beard
And ragged clothes.
Sometimes a man’s life turns into a cancer
From being bruised and continually bruised,
And swells into a purplish mass,
Like growths on stalks of corn.
Here was I, a carpenter, mired in a bog of life
Into which I walked, thinking it was a meadow,
With a slattern for a wife, and poor Minerva, my daughter,
Whom you tormented and drove to death.
So I crept, crept, like a snail through the days
Of my life.
No more you hear my footsteps in the morning,
Resounding on the hollow sidewalk,
Going to the grocery store for a little corn meal
And a nickel’s worth of bacon.
The poem makes me think of two men I saw this past Saturday. Before I went to Mass, I stopped to pick up some groceries, and a ragged, gaunt, bearded man was crouched behind a wall near the store. He whispered, "You wouldn't have some change . . . ?" At first I didn't know where the voice was coming from, but finally I located it. I went over and pulled a bill out of my wallet, and the fascinating thing is that he knew it was a five-dollar bill even before I did. "You're giving me a five?!" he said, incredulously. "Yes, sir," I said. I gave it to him, and he said, "God bless you." As I returned to my car, I glanced at a woman who was near her car; she had apparently observed the wee scene, and she had a bemused smile on her face. I don't think she disapproved of my giving the guy money, but I'm not sure she entirely approved either.
Then I went to church, and as I walked toward the entrance, I saw another homeless man who'd wedged himself into a nook of the church's exterior and was having a nap. He didn't wake up. He was gone when I came out. It's not uncommon to see homeless persons around our parish because there is a big food bank connected to the parish, and their is a "hospitality kitchen" that serves a meal a day. Also, economically strapped people can get free bus-passes from the parish.
Indignation Jones wasn't homeless, apparently, but he was dismissed in his town, and in his posthumous monologue, he tries to explain that he was somebody. Of course, everybody is somebody, but when someone crosses a line--into being a recluse, a pariah, or a homeless person--they officially become nobody. They have to crouch and whisper. They feel as if they have to creep, "like a snail": what a great simile.
When I see people like the ones I saw Saturday, or when I think of Indignation Jones, I think about what might have happened to keep them from crossing that social line, and I think about what might happen to bring them back across. I know the answers aren't simple. But at one point, presumably, these people were relatively content, functioning people, more or less accepted by society. One wants to hit "rewind" and go back to some mythical crucial moment when it all changed, and change that moment. It's a sentimental desire, I realize. So we write poems out of empathy, or give five bucks, or work on "the homeless problem." Or we ignore "the snail" entirely.
In poems, sometimes the best details are the oblique ones, and I love how this poem ends with the corn meal and the nickel's worth of bacon. Perfect. These details make me think of all the obscure, strange, reclusive "old timers" I saw in my hometown. One was an old miner, Bill Nichols, who seemed to wear the same pair of bluejeans and the same flannel shirt year-round, and never to take a bath. He lived in a shack outside of town. We used to take a bus 12 miles to another town to school, and every once in a while, Bill would flag down the bus and hitch a ride. Often he was wearing a holster with his six-gun: I'm not lying. Bill was from a claim-jumping era when you had to pack heat. Bill wore a gun on his hip, the way some older women wore a feather in their hats. Nowadays, I think, a bus driver would a) not stop for a hitch-hiker an b) even if he or she were tempted to stop, would probably look at the gun and think, "Maybe not today."
Edgar Lee Masters heard dead people, at least when he sat down (or stood up) to write A Spoon River Anthology (1916), still a great achievement--and perhaps an overlooked one now--in American poetry. The premise is simple: dead people from a small town finally have their say; they speak interior monologues through Masters' poetry. The poems resonate for me because they're so tough, taciturn, and down to earth, and because they do remind me of people I knew in a small town. However, I don't think you have to be from a small town to enjoy Masters' poems. Here's one called "'Indignation' Jones." That has to be one of the great nicknames--Indignation. It could apply to all of us at one time or another.
"Indignation" Jones
YOU would not believe, would you,
That I came from good Welsh stock?
That I was purer blooded than the white trash here?
And of more direct lineage than the New Englanders
And Virginians of Spoon River?
You would not believe that I had been to school
And read some books.
You saw me only as a run-down man,
With matted hair and beard
And ragged clothes.
Sometimes a man’s life turns into a cancer
From being bruised and continually bruised,
And swells into a purplish mass,
Like growths on stalks of corn.
Here was I, a carpenter, mired in a bog of life
Into which I walked, thinking it was a meadow,
With a slattern for a wife, and poor Minerva, my daughter,
Whom you tormented and drove to death.
So I crept, crept, like a snail through the days
Of my life.
No more you hear my footsteps in the morning,
Resounding on the hollow sidewalk,
Going to the grocery store for a little corn meal
And a nickel’s worth of bacon.
The poem makes me think of two men I saw this past Saturday. Before I went to Mass, I stopped to pick up some groceries, and a ragged, gaunt, bearded man was crouched behind a wall near the store. He whispered, "You wouldn't have some change . . . ?" At first I didn't know where the voice was coming from, but finally I located it. I went over and pulled a bill out of my wallet, and the fascinating thing is that he knew it was a five-dollar bill even before I did. "You're giving me a five?!" he said, incredulously. "Yes, sir," I said. I gave it to him, and he said, "God bless you." As I returned to my car, I glanced at a woman who was near her car; she had apparently observed the wee scene, and she had a bemused smile on her face. I don't think she disapproved of my giving the guy money, but I'm not sure she entirely approved either.
Then I went to church, and as I walked toward the entrance, I saw another homeless man who'd wedged himself into a nook of the church's exterior and was having a nap. He didn't wake up. He was gone when I came out. It's not uncommon to see homeless persons around our parish because there is a big food bank connected to the parish, and their is a "hospitality kitchen" that serves a meal a day. Also, economically strapped people can get free bus-passes from the parish.
Indignation Jones wasn't homeless, apparently, but he was dismissed in his town, and in his posthumous monologue, he tries to explain that he was somebody. Of course, everybody is somebody, but when someone crosses a line--into being a recluse, a pariah, or a homeless person--they officially become nobody. They have to crouch and whisper. They feel as if they have to creep, "like a snail": what a great simile.
When I see people like the ones I saw Saturday, or when I think of Indignation Jones, I think about what might have happened to keep them from crossing that social line, and I think about what might happen to bring them back across. I know the answers aren't simple. But at one point, presumably, these people were relatively content, functioning people, more or less accepted by society. One wants to hit "rewind" and go back to some mythical crucial moment when it all changed, and change that moment. It's a sentimental desire, I realize. So we write poems out of empathy, or give five bucks, or work on "the homeless problem." Or we ignore "the snail" entirely.
In poems, sometimes the best details are the oblique ones, and I love how this poem ends with the corn meal and the nickel's worth of bacon. Perfect. These details make me think of all the obscure, strange, reclusive "old timers" I saw in my hometown. One was an old miner, Bill Nichols, who seemed to wear the same pair of bluejeans and the same flannel shirt year-round, and never to take a bath. He lived in a shack outside of town. We used to take a bus 12 miles to another town to school, and every once in a while, Bill would flag down the bus and hitch a ride. Often he was wearing a holster with his six-gun: I'm not lying. Bill was from a claim-jumping era when you had to pack heat. Bill wore a gun on his hip, the way some older women wore a feather in their hats. Nowadays, I think, a bus driver would a) not stop for a hitch-hiker an b) even if he or she were tempted to stop, would probably look at the gun and think, "Maybe not today."
Murder-Mystery Poem
In a course on the Harlem Renaissance, we finished Rudolph Fisher's detective novel, The Conjure-Man Dies, not long ago. It's a well plotted novel immersed in Harlem society of the 1930s, and it also plays some inventive riffs on detective-novel conventions. Fisher tries to get it all in there: amateur-genius detective, police-detective, gothic elements, a locked room of sorts, the gathering of suspects, a whiff of the supernatural, science and forensics, and so on. Fisher, a physcian and experimenter with X-Rays, unfortunately died in his 30s; otherwise we might have a series of detective novels from him, but it's nice at least to have this one. On my own, I've been reading some detective novels by Michael Innes, Agatha Christie, and Chester Himes, too. Himes's crime novels are set in Harlem, too, but their grittier and more hard-boiled than Fisher's book.
A great afficianado of detective fiction, W.H. Auden wrote a kind of tribute-poem for the genre. Auden very much favored the "village cozy" subgenre of the form, and in an essay, he developed a rationale for his preference, asserting that the setting of the murder should be Edenic. Here's a link to his detective-story poem:
http://www.uwo.ca/english/canadianpoetry/cpjrn/vol32/diemert.htm
I decided to write a murder-mystery poem, too:
Murder-Mystery Poem
Among fictional live bodies lies a fictionally dead one,
made so not by itself but by one or more bodies who
had minds, means, and opportunity
to kill. Identification ensues. Who is dead, who
killed, who will mislead, confess, and reveal? Enter
empiricism, wearing a thick coat and having a look
around with those unmistakable Aristotelian
eyes. The empiricist is foe of secrecy, friend
of plodders who trod paths of data, and assistant
to the plot. In death, on ice, a body in this fiction
forms information incarnate. It is cause
for apprehensiveness and apprehension,
justice and correction. Ah, there in a meadow
of likelihood stands a murderer, defined
by spores of imperfection and pride, caught
by humble fact, a residue of act. Under
arrest, a fictional transgressor is held, as I,
satisfied, hold the soft paperback book in my hands.
(Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom)
The last line alludes to one of the main reasons I like detective novels: I love the feel of those pulpy paperbacks in my hands. I've been reading them for several decades, after all, and the physical aspect of a book contributes a lot to the experience--if, that is, you're a bibliophile. If you haven't read an Innes book yet, you might try From London Far, and even if you're not a detective-fiction fan, you'll probalby enjoy The Conjure Man Dies.
If you're a poet and haven't done so yet, you ought to write a poem about a kind of reading you like to do, or a memory of reading, or a genre. Or an homage to a favorite writer. The homage need not be full of unalloyed praise; it might express ambivalence, or even a kind of love-hate attitude toward the writer and/or her/his works.
A great afficianado of detective fiction, W.H. Auden wrote a kind of tribute-poem for the genre. Auden very much favored the "village cozy" subgenre of the form, and in an essay, he developed a rationale for his preference, asserting that the setting of the murder should be Edenic. Here's a link to his detective-story poem:
http://www.uwo.ca/english/canadianpoetry/cpjrn/vol32/diemert.htm
I decided to write a murder-mystery poem, too:
Murder-Mystery Poem
Among fictional live bodies lies a fictionally dead one,
made so not by itself but by one or more bodies who
had minds, means, and opportunity
to kill. Identification ensues. Who is dead, who
killed, who will mislead, confess, and reveal? Enter
empiricism, wearing a thick coat and having a look
around with those unmistakable Aristotelian
eyes. The empiricist is foe of secrecy, friend
of plodders who trod paths of data, and assistant
to the plot. In death, on ice, a body in this fiction
forms information incarnate. It is cause
for apprehensiveness and apprehension,
justice and correction. Ah, there in a meadow
of likelihood stands a murderer, defined
by spores of imperfection and pride, caught
by humble fact, a residue of act. Under
arrest, a fictional transgressor is held, as I,
satisfied, hold the soft paperback book in my hands.
(Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom)
The last line alludes to one of the main reasons I like detective novels: I love the feel of those pulpy paperbacks in my hands. I've been reading them for several decades, after all, and the physical aspect of a book contributes a lot to the experience--if, that is, you're a bibliophile. If you haven't read an Innes book yet, you might try From London Far, and even if you're not a detective-fiction fan, you'll probalby enjoy The Conjure Man Dies.
If you're a poet and haven't done so yet, you ought to write a poem about a kind of reading you like to do, or a memory of reading, or a genre. Or an homage to a favorite writer. The homage need not be full of unalloyed praise; it might express ambivalence, or even a kind of love-hate attitude toward the writer and/or her/his works.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Dickinson and Hope
Having promised solemnly, as opposed to effervescently, yesterday to write something more hopeful today, I must immediately call in reinforcements in the form of Emily Dickinson's poem #254 (according to one counting-scheme):
"HOPE" is the thing with feathers--
That perches in the soul--
And sings the tune without the words--
And never stops--at all—
And sweetest--in the Gale--is heard--
And sore must be the storm--
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm—
I've heard it in the chillest land--
And on the strangest Sea--
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb--Of Me.
It's almost always unwise to paraphrase a Dickinson poem, so I won't, but I will say that the poem makes me consider whether hope is given to most people, as part of the hardware and software package, at birth. The speaker in this poem reports having heard hope "in Extremity" --in extreme situations--but, returning to the equation of hope to bird, reports that even in such moments, when hope is arguably as important as it ever is, it doesn't ask anything in return; were it a bird, it wouldn't even ask for a crumb.
What hope has to offer to us as so many apparently intractable problems face us: well, there's the usual--things could be worse. Also, people seem at least ready to acknowledge there's a problem, Houston, with the globe's environment, Bush's catastrophic foreign policy, and race in the U.S.. The present twenty-something generation in many parts of the world seems precocious, alert, and tenacious. I feel as if I should knock on wood while saying this, but the prospect of thermo-nuclear apocalypse seems much less likely now than it did in the 1950s through the 1980s. Although Bush expanded the executive branch's power to the brink of dictatorship (arguably), there's a chance Congress might reel in the next president in this regard. For communication between peoples and fresh ways of getting and analyzing information, the Web seems to be a net-gaine (pun intended). The need to use alternative fuels (something that seemed obvious to many decades ago) seems to be close to being accepted as fact. And finally, in Tacoma, the sun is out, meaning this is our fifth try, I believe, at Spring. We'll see how it goes. The things with feathers seem pleased, and students from Hawaii are preparing for a Luau.
"HOPE" is the thing with feathers--
That perches in the soul--
And sings the tune without the words--
And never stops--at all—
And sweetest--in the Gale--is heard--
And sore must be the storm--
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm—
I've heard it in the chillest land--
And on the strangest Sea--
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb--Of Me.
It's almost always unwise to paraphrase a Dickinson poem, so I won't, but I will say that the poem makes me consider whether hope is given to most people, as part of the hardware and software package, at birth. The speaker in this poem reports having heard hope "in Extremity" --in extreme situations--but, returning to the equation of hope to bird, reports that even in such moments, when hope is arguably as important as it ever is, it doesn't ask anything in return; were it a bird, it wouldn't even ask for a crumb.
What hope has to offer to us as so many apparently intractable problems face us: well, there's the usual--things could be worse. Also, people seem at least ready to acknowledge there's a problem, Houston, with the globe's environment, Bush's catastrophic foreign policy, and race in the U.S.. The present twenty-something generation in many parts of the world seems precocious, alert, and tenacious. I feel as if I should knock on wood while saying this, but the prospect of thermo-nuclear apocalypse seems much less likely now than it did in the 1950s through the 1980s. Although Bush expanded the executive branch's power to the brink of dictatorship (arguably), there's a chance Congress might reel in the next president in this regard. For communication between peoples and fresh ways of getting and analyzing information, the Web seems to be a net-gaine (pun intended). The need to use alternative fuels (something that seemed obvious to many decades ago) seems to be close to being accepted as fact. And finally, in Tacoma, the sun is out, meaning this is our fifth try, I believe, at Spring. We'll see how it goes. The things with feathers seem pleased, and students from Hawaii are preparing for a Luau.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Watching Bush With a Political Scientist
In our Iraq-War discussion-group today, we started by playing about half of Bush's 17-minute speech on Iraq. Lately, I've found Bush almost unwatchable, but today I was fascinated by the look on his face, which suggested that even he might be having trouble getting the lies out. He simply looked like a teenager lying to his parents. Sometimes he seemed repulsed by his own language. However, I was determined not to share my views with the group because I'd much rather facilitate the conversation. I already know what I think, and I'd rather listen, in hopes that someone might change my mind.
But then the political scientist in our group--a moderate in both politics and temperament--said essentially that he didn't believe a word Bush said. That is: Things are not "better" in Iraq. A majority of Iraqis want us out. The Iraqi army is in no sense trained or ready. The "Surge" did very little to affect things "on the ground"; rather, Sadr's decision to pull back his militia was the main factor. There will be no real troop-decline. Al Qaeda is not the main problem. Shi'ite militias are. Our military is close to exhaustion, and our economy is broken. And on and on. This political scientist is so moderate that although he agrees with much of what Juan Cole writes on his blog, he doesn't like Cole's "Bush-bashing." The political scientist also thinks William Polk is a person worth listening to and reading.
Oddly enough, before class, a student was fiddling with a camera that turned out to be an infra-red one, so that if you look at the screen of the camera, and the camera is pointing at a black shirt, the shirt looks white. It was a great emblem for Bush's speech. Make everything he said the opposite, and you'll have the truth.
I had to ask the political scientist this question: "Then, assuming Bush is lying and knows he's lying, should we assume that his strategy is to stall (keeping the military in Iraq) until he's out of office." "Yes," my colleague said, "and then when things go badly, and if Obama or Clinton are indeed in the White House, the Republicans can and will blame the debacle on the Democrats." --Not that the Democrats don't have it coming. They've done almost nothing to oppose Bush on war, torture, the economy, and the erosion of civil liberties. And if McCain is in office, he's a one-term president anyway.
As Helen Thomas told me when I had the privilege of chatting with her in a hotel lobby in D.C. some three years ago: "Bush is the worst president in U.S. history."
A student in class asked, "Assuming Bush is lying, I have to ask: is it common for presidents to lie to this extent and in connection with such serious matters." The American historian then walked us through all of Johnson's lies leading up to and during the Viet Nam War--as a way of saying, "Yes, it's common."
I wish there were a poem I could read tonight that would make me feel better about the country of which I'm a citizen, its awful foreign policy, its widespread use of torture, its failure to do right by the environment and working people, and all the rest. Maybe it's the one I just posted--"The Vanity of Human Wishes." I vow solemnly to write something hopeful tomorrow. It will probably have something to do with my faith in many younger American citizens--their smarts, their will to do well and good.
But then the political scientist in our group--a moderate in both politics and temperament--said essentially that he didn't believe a word Bush said. That is: Things are not "better" in Iraq. A majority of Iraqis want us out. The Iraqi army is in no sense trained or ready. The "Surge" did very little to affect things "on the ground"; rather, Sadr's decision to pull back his militia was the main factor. There will be no real troop-decline. Al Qaeda is not the main problem. Shi'ite militias are. Our military is close to exhaustion, and our economy is broken. And on and on. This political scientist is so moderate that although he agrees with much of what Juan Cole writes on his blog, he doesn't like Cole's "Bush-bashing." The political scientist also thinks William Polk is a person worth listening to and reading.
Oddly enough, before class, a student was fiddling with a camera that turned out to be an infra-red one, so that if you look at the screen of the camera, and the camera is pointing at a black shirt, the shirt looks white. It was a great emblem for Bush's speech. Make everything he said the opposite, and you'll have the truth.
I had to ask the political scientist this question: "Then, assuming Bush is lying and knows he's lying, should we assume that his strategy is to stall (keeping the military in Iraq) until he's out of office." "Yes," my colleague said, "and then when things go badly, and if Obama or Clinton are indeed in the White House, the Republicans can and will blame the debacle on the Democrats." --Not that the Democrats don't have it coming. They've done almost nothing to oppose Bush on war, torture, the economy, and the erosion of civil liberties. And if McCain is in office, he's a one-term president anyway.
As Helen Thomas told me when I had the privilege of chatting with her in a hotel lobby in D.C. some three years ago: "Bush is the worst president in U.S. history."
A student in class asked, "Assuming Bush is lying, I have to ask: is it common for presidents to lie to this extent and in connection with such serious matters." The American historian then walked us through all of Johnson's lies leading up to and during the Viet Nam War--as a way of saying, "Yes, it's common."
I wish there were a poem I could read tonight that would make me feel better about the country of which I'm a citizen, its awful foreign policy, its widespread use of torture, its failure to do right by the environment and working people, and all the rest. Maybe it's the one I just posted--"The Vanity of Human Wishes." I vow solemnly to write something hopeful tomorrow. It will probably have something to do with my faith in many younger American citizens--their smarts, their will to do well and good.
Sam Johnson's Best Poem
My favorite 18th century British poem (not that you asked) is Samuel Johnson's "The Vanity of Human Wishes," an imitation of Juvenal's 10th satire and a noble poem of over 360 lines. It is Johnson (1709-1784) at his best: incisive, erudite, and articulate, in full command of rhyming couplets, deploying all his learning.
Aside from this poem, Johnson's poetic opus isn't that impressive, and the one novel-like work he wrote, Rasselas, is quirky. But he's still a remarkable literary figure because of his criticism, biographies of other writers, essays, and a dictionary of the English language--which, astoundingly, he wrote himself, often quoting examples of definitions from memory. No matter how might want to measure it, his intelligence was rare and ferocious. His personality is preserved in Boswell's biography. Although Johnson seems to have been in control of conversation and prose, he was a painfully self-contradictory figure, plagued by nervous disorders, depression, self-doubt, fear, rage, poverty, and procrastination (he wrote some of his best essays in one draft, while the printer waited nervously for him to finish). He was both a rationalist and a Christian, a person of enormous apetites and one of great self-discipline. He could be cruel and sexist, but among his close and genuine friends were an Afro-British man and several women. He's one of the most quotable writers and conversationalists in the language.
A few lines from near the end of "The Vanity of Human Wishes":
Where then shall Hope and Fear their objects find?
Must dull Suspense corrupt the stagnant mind?
Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate,
Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate?
Must no dislike alarm, no wishes rise,
No cries invoke the mercies of the skies?
Inquirer, cease; petitions yet remain,
Which Heaven may hear, nor deem religion vain.
Still raise for good the supplicating voice,
But leave to Heaven the measure and the choice.
"Roll darkling down the torrent of this fate." That's a fine line. Classifying "ignorance" as "sedate": that's a nice move, too. An ignorant citizenship is, arguably, a sedate one.
As usual, Johnson's (and Juvenal's) advice is hard: go ahead and pray, but as for the response (if any): "leave to Heaven the measure and the choice."
My goodness: Johnson's three-hundreth birthday is coming up. --Cause for celebration, but nothing too vain.
Aside from this poem, Johnson's poetic opus isn't that impressive, and the one novel-like work he wrote, Rasselas, is quirky. But he's still a remarkable literary figure because of his criticism, biographies of other writers, essays, and a dictionary of the English language--which, astoundingly, he wrote himself, often quoting examples of definitions from memory. No matter how might want to measure it, his intelligence was rare and ferocious. His personality is preserved in Boswell's biography. Although Johnson seems to have been in control of conversation and prose, he was a painfully self-contradictory figure, plagued by nervous disorders, depression, self-doubt, fear, rage, poverty, and procrastination (he wrote some of his best essays in one draft, while the printer waited nervously for him to finish). He was both a rationalist and a Christian, a person of enormous apetites and one of great self-discipline. He could be cruel and sexist, but among his close and genuine friends were an Afro-British man and several women. He's one of the most quotable writers and conversationalists in the language.
A few lines from near the end of "The Vanity of Human Wishes":
Where then shall Hope and Fear their objects find?
Must dull Suspense corrupt the stagnant mind?
Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate,
Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate?
Must no dislike alarm, no wishes rise,
No cries invoke the mercies of the skies?
Inquirer, cease; petitions yet remain,
Which Heaven may hear, nor deem religion vain.
Still raise for good the supplicating voice,
But leave to Heaven the measure and the choice.
"Roll darkling down the torrent of this fate." That's a fine line. Classifying "ignorance" as "sedate": that's a nice move, too. An ignorant citizenship is, arguably, a sedate one.
As usual, Johnson's (and Juvenal's) advice is hard: go ahead and pray, but as for the response (if any): "leave to Heaven the measure and the choice."
My goodness: Johnson's three-hundreth birthday is coming up. --Cause for celebration, but nothing too vain.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Proliformation
It's fascinating to watch the digital revolution get its second or third wind, with all manner of hybrid gizmos being dumped on glassy-eyed consumers, who've been told they "need" this or that. For the moment, the monopolists seem to want everything to go through the phone, which is the portable talk-device, telegrammer (text-messaging is the new name for it), data-storer, and locater (that is, law enforcement and Homeland Insecurity can locate you if your phone is near you). The phone is starting to look like a combination leash/security blanket/homing device/wiretapper to me. It wouldn't startle me to see some people sucking on them like pacifiers. I do own a cell phone, but I almost never turn it on, and I like to keep it away from my body. It's a hideous little beetle of a thing, although I like the way it flips open like William Shatner's old communicator on ST. There are only about three people I call on it (or they me), anyway. I do like the fact that my son rigged it so Johnny Cash sings "I Walk the Line" when somebody calls. The wee numbers are so close together that the few times I've tried to text-message, I look like a polar bear trying to open a candy-bar.
But I'm as attached to the (old-fashioned) computer as some people are to their souped-up phones and their boysenberries, or whatever those other things are. Gooseberries? I like the old screened beast for word-processing (now an old-fashioned term), emailing, finding information (especially academic), following threads on LibraryThing, blogging and reading blogs, poking around on Google, getting a whiff of politics, and checking on the Oakland Raiders.
I also got on facebook about a year ago, when almost no faculty were doing so. At first it seemed like it was me and some faculty members at Abilene Christian University (go figure). Now more faculty members are hopping aboard. One hidden benefit has been keeping in touch with alumni.
But I loathe all the new "applications" they've heaped on facebook, like a bad chef ruining a simple, elegant dish. Most of the applications are moronic, but even if that weren't the case, they just make the whole thing look like a strip-mall. The process seems at once self-propelling, self-accelerating, and self-defeating. Proliformation for proliformation's sake: the diseased need to keep producing products productively, prodorrhea.
I especially loathe the Top Friends facebook application--and the ones about what cartoon character you are. What the hell is that? Cartoon characters are cartoon characters, not people. I thought we covered that. Top Friends is a middle-schoolish thing, in my opinion. Next, people will list their second-tier friends, their bottom friends, their Top nemeses, their charming acquaintances, their mid-level Jungian shadows, and their moribund enemies. Some of the facebook groups, I like, however; they seem to serve either a practical or a whimsical purpose and sometimes both.
Beyond the aforementioned few digital engagements, I'm pretty clueless. (Oh, I forgot Ipod.) I know virtually (so to speak) nothing about this Second Life stuff, but it looks a lot like what we used to call "the imagination," except some programmers created it and sold it, and I gather you have to mold your fantasy-life according to what the programmers have established, like sheep going through a chute, or kids at recess. (I always hated organized stuff at recess. The whole point was to take a recess from regimentation.) Apparently there's another fantasy-thing called Entropia. Over there your Top Friends are, by definition, running out of energy, so they just take Top Naps. Thinking about Second Life annoys me as much as thinking about bed-and-breakfasts. I start feeling like Jack Nicholson's character in The Shining, and I want to take an ax to a B&B door in First Life or to all of Second Life. My two main gripes about B&B's are that they're "cute" (meaning uncomfortable and creaky, with lousy beds) and that you're forced to talk to strangers at breakfast. If I'm forced to talk to people at breakfast, then the B&B owners should pay me, is the way I think about it. The strangers are no doubt better people than I am; nothing personal; it's just that I want them to stay strangers, and I want to eat breakfast--in a place where old-pro waitresses work and don't make small-talk.
I think there should be an application-process ("application" in the old sense, not in the facebook sense), and you should have to be doing a few things right in First Life before you're allowed to play much, or at all, in Second Life. Are you a good friend? Do you imagine you're better than other people (if so, do not advance to Second Life)? Are you reducing your carbon footprint? Do you leave a good tip for hard-working servers? Have you read enough poetry? Any poetry? Have you shown a modicum of generosity? Have you sworn not to express road-rage? Do you clean up after yourself? Do you arrive on time? How are your listening skills? After looking at your answers, a counselor would come over and say, "Well, we'd like you to try a bit harder in First Life before you start playing Second Life, okay?"
Now it looks like I might, in connection with my work, have to try something called Moodle. Oy. I think I might have named it VooDoodle or Schtroodle.
But I'm as attached to the (old-fashioned) computer as some people are to their souped-up phones and their boysenberries, or whatever those other things are. Gooseberries? I like the old screened beast for word-processing (now an old-fashioned term), emailing, finding information (especially academic), following threads on LibraryThing, blogging and reading blogs, poking around on Google, getting a whiff of politics, and checking on the Oakland Raiders.
I also got on facebook about a year ago, when almost no faculty were doing so. At first it seemed like it was me and some faculty members at Abilene Christian University (go figure). Now more faculty members are hopping aboard. One hidden benefit has been keeping in touch with alumni.
But I loathe all the new "applications" they've heaped on facebook, like a bad chef ruining a simple, elegant dish. Most of the applications are moronic, but even if that weren't the case, they just make the whole thing look like a strip-mall. The process seems at once self-propelling, self-accelerating, and self-defeating. Proliformation for proliformation's sake: the diseased need to keep producing products productively, prodorrhea.
I especially loathe the Top Friends facebook application--and the ones about what cartoon character you are. What the hell is that? Cartoon characters are cartoon characters, not people. I thought we covered that. Top Friends is a middle-schoolish thing, in my opinion. Next, people will list their second-tier friends, their bottom friends, their Top nemeses, their charming acquaintances, their mid-level Jungian shadows, and their moribund enemies. Some of the facebook groups, I like, however; they seem to serve either a practical or a whimsical purpose and sometimes both.
Beyond the aforementioned few digital engagements, I'm pretty clueless. (Oh, I forgot Ipod.) I know virtually (so to speak) nothing about this Second Life stuff, but it looks a lot like what we used to call "the imagination," except some programmers created it and sold it, and I gather you have to mold your fantasy-life according to what the programmers have established, like sheep going through a chute, or kids at recess. (I always hated organized stuff at recess. The whole point was to take a recess from regimentation.) Apparently there's another fantasy-thing called Entropia. Over there your Top Friends are, by definition, running out of energy, so they just take Top Naps. Thinking about Second Life annoys me as much as thinking about bed-and-breakfasts. I start feeling like Jack Nicholson's character in The Shining, and I want to take an ax to a B&B door in First Life or to all of Second Life. My two main gripes about B&B's are that they're "cute" (meaning uncomfortable and creaky, with lousy beds) and that you're forced to talk to strangers at breakfast. If I'm forced to talk to people at breakfast, then the B&B owners should pay me, is the way I think about it. The strangers are no doubt better people than I am; nothing personal; it's just that I want them to stay strangers, and I want to eat breakfast--in a place where old-pro waitresses work and don't make small-talk.
I think there should be an application-process ("application" in the old sense, not in the facebook sense), and you should have to be doing a few things right in First Life before you're allowed to play much, or at all, in Second Life. Are you a good friend? Do you imagine you're better than other people (if so, do not advance to Second Life)? Are you reducing your carbon footprint? Do you leave a good tip for hard-working servers? Have you read enough poetry? Any poetry? Have you shown a modicum of generosity? Have you sworn not to express road-rage? Do you clean up after yourself? Do you arrive on time? How are your listening skills? After looking at your answers, a counselor would come over and say, "Well, we'd like you to try a bit harder in First Life before you start playing Second Life, okay?"
Now it looks like I might, in connection with my work, have to try something called Moodle. Oy. I think I might have named it VooDoodle or Schtroodle.
Fish Out of Water
"Like a fish out of water," used to describe someone or something that is completely out of its element, milieu, or indigenous turf, is actually a bit of an odd simile, as well as being cliche. Being cliche, it doesn't get much analysis even if it may still get some use.
When I go fly-fishing now, it's strictly catch-and-release, with barb-less hooks and a careful return of the unharmed trout to water. However, I grew up catching and keeping fish, chiefly because my family ate them regularly. Native rainbow, with the occasional German brown or Eastern brook trot, were part of our diet. Among my earliest memories is of my father going fly-fishing "down to the river" after work, returning after dusk with a creel full of trout, and dumping them in the porcelain kitchen sink. The smell of the slimy trout--with bits of fern stuck to their slimy sides--was overwhelming but appealing. As a child, I viewed the event simply as part of life, the fascinating thing unfolding before me. Now I'm more likely to think that he was a) getting out of the house & away from the family to clear his head and de-compress, and b) supplementing the grocery budget.
Later, when I started catching fish, I decided early on to knock out a caught fish--euthanasia. I'd read somewhere that Native Americans had done that (I have no idea if that's true.). --For a fish out of water is a fish experiencing a kind of drowning, slowly.
So the simile doesn't really work because it's supposed to suggest discomfort--maybe extreme discomfort, culture shock, to dredge up, so to speak, Toffler's term--but not reverse-drowning or death. It certainly does suggest that a person is out of his or her element--but it goes too far.
Assuming "fish out of water" is more poetic than literal, I think I've been a fish out of water a lot in my life. As I've moved from place to place, the places have seemed quite different from the earlier places. Remote town to suburban high school; suburban high school to community college; cc to large state university (full of pre-meds and pre-vets, while I studied English); undergraduate life to the labyrinth that is graduate school; and on to a liberal arts college, a kind of college with I was completely unfamiliar. At the same time, let's not lose sight of the fact that I'm male and white, and even though I certainly had to work on the way from there to here, I didn't have to incur the debt that most college graduates incur now.
At any rate, I think I've been more like a fish from a high-country creek that ends up in ever larger rivers--murkier waters, more fish, more kinds of fish, more complicated rules, a deceptively deadly current. Like most people, I've not been a fish out of water (thank God), but a fish in different waters. The main thing is to keep facing into the direction from which the water is flowing, look for food and other sustenance, be cordial to other fish who may swim one's way, and hope that if God or fate is fishing that day, the fisherperson is practicing catch-and-release.
When I go fly-fishing now, it's strictly catch-and-release, with barb-less hooks and a careful return of the unharmed trout to water. However, I grew up catching and keeping fish, chiefly because my family ate them regularly. Native rainbow, with the occasional German brown or Eastern brook trot, were part of our diet. Among my earliest memories is of my father going fly-fishing "down to the river" after work, returning after dusk with a creel full of trout, and dumping them in the porcelain kitchen sink. The smell of the slimy trout--with bits of fern stuck to their slimy sides--was overwhelming but appealing. As a child, I viewed the event simply as part of life, the fascinating thing unfolding before me. Now I'm more likely to think that he was a) getting out of the house & away from the family to clear his head and de-compress, and b) supplementing the grocery budget.
Later, when I started catching fish, I decided early on to knock out a caught fish--euthanasia. I'd read somewhere that Native Americans had done that (I have no idea if that's true.). --For a fish out of water is a fish experiencing a kind of drowning, slowly.
So the simile doesn't really work because it's supposed to suggest discomfort--maybe extreme discomfort, culture shock, to dredge up, so to speak, Toffler's term--but not reverse-drowning or death. It certainly does suggest that a person is out of his or her element--but it goes too far.
Assuming "fish out of water" is more poetic than literal, I think I've been a fish out of water a lot in my life. As I've moved from place to place, the places have seemed quite different from the earlier places. Remote town to suburban high school; suburban high school to community college; cc to large state university (full of pre-meds and pre-vets, while I studied English); undergraduate life to the labyrinth that is graduate school; and on to a liberal arts college, a kind of college with I was completely unfamiliar. At the same time, let's not lose sight of the fact that I'm male and white, and even though I certainly had to work on the way from there to here, I didn't have to incur the debt that most college graduates incur now.
At any rate, I think I've been more like a fish from a high-country creek that ends up in ever larger rivers--murkier waters, more fish, more kinds of fish, more complicated rules, a deceptively deadly current. Like most people, I've not been a fish out of water (thank God), but a fish in different waters. The main thing is to keep facing into the direction from which the water is flowing, look for food and other sustenance, be cordial to other fish who may swim one's way, and hope that if God or fate is fishing that day, the fisherperson is practicing catch-and-release.
Poetry Out Loud
"The spoken word" and "performance poetry" have certainly gained a higher cultural profile in the last decade or so; that is good news. Alongside of that development, traditional poetry readings seem to have flourished again as well. By traditional I just mean reading poems-in-print out loud, as opposed to performing poetry written more or less for the stage.
However, I think people in general and even student and faculty on campuses in particular are a bit reticent about poetry readings, viewing them as effete, perhaps, or potentially boring. If and when those unfamiliar with readings attend, however, they are usually pleasantly surprised. So are those who read poetry aloud to an audience for the first time.
Yesterday a few of us gathered to celebrate National Poetry Month by reading some of our favorite African American poems. About 15 people showed up, and we all took a turn reading one or two poems. As I told the group, any time there's more than 2 people at a poetry reading, it's a success.
I noticed that there was a calming effect on those listening--not calm as in sleeping, but calm as in attentive but re-composed after a harried day. I wonder if people's stress-levels, physically, are lowered at readings, in fact. I'm sure they're raised again once the person has to get up and read, even to a small audience.
The choices were great: a poem about a father, African American, who had served in the air force (or army air corps) in World War II--when the corps was still segretated. A poem by Etheridge Knight, who spent some time in prison, about photos and memories of his family--the photos pinned to his cell-wall. A poem by Audre Lorde about how all of get silenced but must find a way to keep speaking. A poem by Countee Cullen about poetry. A poem by Frances Harper about a slave-mother and one by Alice Walker paying tribute to African American mothers and mothers in general. One by Ruth Forman, and one by Langston Hughes: "Ballad of the Landlord," read by a student who has had some landlord-problems this year. I read "America" by Claude McKay and "Frederick Douglass" by Robert Hayden.
Of course, the usual poetry reading features one poet reading his or her work to an audience (I gave one of those this week), but I'm quite fond of readings at which people read the work of others, including, perhaps, some so-called established poets. There's something at once more informal and more communal about such readings. We're going to try to do more of that kind of reading next year.
Also I found out yesterday that my colleague Bill Kupinse, a fine poet (I've posted a couple of his poems here) was a) named poet laureate of Tacoma and b) in connection with that honor, "opened" for poet Billy Collins last week at a big reading in Tacoma. This is the best news I've heard in quite some time. Coincidentally, I visited Bill's poetry class yesterday, and there was much out-loud reading in there--of students' own poems and drafts, and of poems by David Wagoner. Bill happens to be a great teacher of poetry, too--very discerning in his comments about students' poetry, extremely knowledgeable about a huge range of poetry.
--Poetry out loud, often and everywhere these days, it seems: What's not to like about that?
However, I think people in general and even student and faculty on campuses in particular are a bit reticent about poetry readings, viewing them as effete, perhaps, or potentially boring. If and when those unfamiliar with readings attend, however, they are usually pleasantly surprised. So are those who read poetry aloud to an audience for the first time.
Yesterday a few of us gathered to celebrate National Poetry Month by reading some of our favorite African American poems. About 15 people showed up, and we all took a turn reading one or two poems. As I told the group, any time there's more than 2 people at a poetry reading, it's a success.
I noticed that there was a calming effect on those listening--not calm as in sleeping, but calm as in attentive but re-composed after a harried day. I wonder if people's stress-levels, physically, are lowered at readings, in fact. I'm sure they're raised again once the person has to get up and read, even to a small audience.
The choices were great: a poem about a father, African American, who had served in the air force (or army air corps) in World War II--when the corps was still segretated. A poem by Etheridge Knight, who spent some time in prison, about photos and memories of his family--the photos pinned to his cell-wall. A poem by Audre Lorde about how all of get silenced but must find a way to keep speaking. A poem by Countee Cullen about poetry. A poem by Frances Harper about a slave-mother and one by Alice Walker paying tribute to African American mothers and mothers in general. One by Ruth Forman, and one by Langston Hughes: "Ballad of the Landlord," read by a student who has had some landlord-problems this year. I read "America" by Claude McKay and "Frederick Douglass" by Robert Hayden.
Of course, the usual poetry reading features one poet reading his or her work to an audience (I gave one of those this week), but I'm quite fond of readings at which people read the work of others, including, perhaps, some so-called established poets. There's something at once more informal and more communal about such readings. We're going to try to do more of that kind of reading next year.
Also I found out yesterday that my colleague Bill Kupinse, a fine poet (I've posted a couple of his poems here) was a) named poet laureate of Tacoma and b) in connection with that honor, "opened" for poet Billy Collins last week at a big reading in Tacoma. This is the best news I've heard in quite some time. Coincidentally, I visited Bill's poetry class yesterday, and there was much out-loud reading in there--of students' own poems and drafts, and of poems by David Wagoner. Bill happens to be a great teacher of poetry, too--very discerning in his comments about students' poetry, extremely knowledgeable about a huge range of poetry.
--Poetry out loud, often and everywhere these days, it seems: What's not to like about that?
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