Exhumed Story-Poem

A large crowd of books and notebooks has been paroled from storage, is now assembling itself, with my encouragement, on some darned fine custom-made bookshelves. Just when the world, via Kindle, etc., is turning to digital reading-matter, I decide to get some old-fashioned built-in bookshelves. Timing is everything in show business.

In one of the exhumed notebooks I found an old story-poem--about a preacher, a man of the cloth. Oddly enough, I remember the poem's origin, too: a walk beside a creek near my brother's home in California. It's a creek that gets hit pretty hard by the human presence. How or why I took a leap, so to speak, from the creek to the story, I don't know. The poem is pretty much a free-verse ballad, I'd say.

Evangelical Detour

On the way to deposit
tithings in a secret account,
a preacher lost his way,
found himself misplaced in woods.

Hungry and bug-bitten
beside a creek that smelled
strongly of sewage, this
preacher asked God

to direct him toward
a way out. A weird
child appeared then. There
was something too wise

in her pallid face. There
was no indication she lived
anywhere but in
those words. Maybe, thought

the preacher, she lives nowhere.
She said to him, "Throw the money
away. Throw it, preacher, in
the creek." He said, "No."

He claimed the money, of course,
belonged to God. It wasn't that
the child disagreed. It was that
she smiled thinly, sweetly.

She said, "Then throw it in
the creek, preacher. Throw that cash
in the creek. Do you doubt God
will retrieve it if it belongs to Him?"

The preacher knew his powers
of conviction had left the congregation
of his mind. He was hungry
and bug-bitten, lost in woods.

He feared the child more
than any lacerating snake.
He flung the money in the creek.
He watched the currency float

on water like leaves. The child
evaporated. The preacher
was tempted to reach for the money,
run after it. In his mind,

he saw it drying on the rocks.
But he turned, and he left.
He woke up in his car. A state
trooper tapped on his window.

"Am I dead?" asked the preacher,
after the window had come down.
The servant of the people said, "No,
sir, but you look like hell."

Hans Ostrom

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Dusk Poem

Just a Poem at Twilight

Late skies drape light
over dimming woods. Smaller
animals come to life and mind--
burrowers, scuttlers in the brush.
They work very hard. Thinking
about them improves thinking,
which is nudged now toward
an idea of someone turning around

in the woods, coming back
near the cabin. She will encounter
clouds of gnats and mosquitoes.
Her thin jacket will not seem
sufficient. Sighting lit cabin-windows
will insinuate a melange of excitement
and regret. Birds and bats against
late skies--wings! Damp air.

Hans Ostrom

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

OMG! WTF!

I send approximately two text-messages per month, always to the same person, a family member. It takes me quite a while to construct and send a text-message because phones now are apparently designed to fit in the paws of very small rodents, not in humans' hands.

I gather, however, that the text-messaging language, if it can be called that, has become quite extensive. I tend not to abbreviate much, but I might use 2 in place of to and 4 in place of for. In other words, I'm a text-messaging dinosaur in this respect, too.

A colleague in philosophy posits that within 100 years, almost everyone will be illiterate by today's standards. I think he means that only eccentric groups of people will read books to any great extent and that people who do write will mostly rearrange digital-screen icons or compose short messages in a language rooted in today's text-messaging language. That is, what we think of as an abbreviation or an acronym will be a word unto itself, and those using this language won't think in terms of parallels between the abbreviated and the abbreviation.

I don't disagree with him, but on the other hand, it's almost impossible to predict what will happen with literacy and language. Language especially is such a protean, independent force that you pretty much have to sit back and just see what happens. As a teacher of writing, what I've noticed happening for a long time is the disappearance of the possessive apostrophe. I can "correct" the "mistake" until I'm blue in the face, but basically the apostrophe is toast. It doesn't exist in German, and will cease to exist in English. "Quote" as a noun has replaced "quotation," and I think at some point "alright" and "alot" will be accepted into Standard Written English. These are trivial examples, but they're also place-holders for much larger shifts of language that happen because the amorphous group of people actually using the language have decided, without deciding, that the language works better with these changes. Sociolinguists have a much better handle on how this happens than a mere writing-teacher, of course.

But people already speak of a "post-literate" society, by which is meant, I think, a society more comfortable with screens, images, and icons than with old fashioned chunks of written language--sentences, paragraphs, pages, documents, books.

I gather that OMG--which apparently stands for Old Mother Goose--and WTF--which apparently stands for Wild Truffle Foundation--are common acronyms in text messaging. Gee, I do hope I have the proper translations here.

I remember hearing Brad Comman reading a poem, many moons ago, composed entirely of three-letter acronyms much in use at the time. The art came from the juxtaposition, as I recall. For example, "LSD" and "CIA" were cheek by jowl--as well they should be, for the CIA experimented with LSD as--what? An interrogation tool? A reward for good spying? Who knows? A list like Brad's would be much different now, I reckon, but CIA might still be there, along with OMG, WTF, WTO, DVD, SDS (in revived form), and WMD. (I invite you to make your own list.) Interestingly, referring to presidents by their three initials--LBJ, JFK--has gone the way of the apostrophe. Headlines routinely included JFK and LBJ during the respective presidencies, but I don't believe I've seen GWB even once. OMG!

Spy Poet

I don't think being a poet necessarily disqualifies one from being a spy, but I could understand if espionage-agencies worldwide would be wary of deploying poets as spies. I think poets are more likely than other people to get confused by codes because poets are tempted to deconstruct codes and try to turn them into poems. Also, what "cover" could usefully be constructed for spy-poets? True, spy-poets could give readings and teach creative writing in the nation on which they were supposed to be spying, but would that put them close in information crucial to national security? I envisage a spy-poet contacting his or her handler and excitingly reported that poets from the nation in question allude to 19th century European philosophy in extremely inventive ways. I can hear the handler saying, "Gee, that's fascinating." I can also envisage spy-poets padding their expense-accounts with purchases of notebooks, poetry-books, pens, coffee, and wine. On the other hand, "the enemy" might suspect that the poet would be a spy, but the counterintuitive characteristic of a poet might also make the poet a likely spy. How convoluted this poetry-espionage gets, and so quickly!

Spy Poet

He was supposed to be in Phoenix
giving false secret information to agents
from a nation whose economy was
smaller than Arizona's. Instead he lay
in bed in North Dakota, writing poems
about cats, observing that cats know what
they want humans to do and watch to see
if humans do it, and if the humans don't
do it, the cats devise ways to change
humans' behavior. Some of the poems

worked with the idea that domestication
was not a process by which humans
changed cats but one in which cats changed
humans. He had completed drafts of several
poems when federal agents burst into his
motel-room in that sudden bursting-
federal-agent way and arrested him.
He reminded them that it was unprofessional
of them to laugh at his poems.

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Self-Cleaning Cats

Not that you asked, but I've never known how self-cleaning ovens work. I suspect I cling to my ignorance on this subject because I'm suspicious of the concept, "self-cleaning ovens." You want ovens that will cook food well and reliably, I think. Ideally, you might want self-cleaning ovens, but requiring an oven to self-clean as well as to cook reliably seems like asking too much, in the sense that whatever bizarre technology is required for "self-cleaning" might disrupt the technology that insures reliable cooking.

Cats, on the other hand, are self-cleaning in ways I understand, ways I've observed, with some fascination. Therefore, I wrote a poem on the subject.

Cats' Baths

A cat is not a user of tools,
must therefore clean its body
using only its body. At some
juncture, self-cleaning cats
persisted well in Evolution's
pageant, passed on codes
of instinct which direct regular,
thorough cleaning of fur, feet,
orifices. A cat concentrates

on cleaning longer than it
concentrates on anything else.
Cleaning calls to cats. They
are somber as they clean, not
quite grim but determined
and earnest, certainly sincere.
Distracted, cats may pause
briefly, the edge of the pink tongue
lodged between teeth, bright
and vivid like a fragment of
a rose's petal.

This cat-vocation, cleaning,
fascinates. After cats clean,
they often sleep deeply, as if
sleep were a solemn ritual
in preparation for which they
licked their fur in the direction
their fur lay, and rubbed their
ears with dampened paws,
and licked between each
separated claw-sheath.

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Found Poem, Portland

We hadn't been to Portland (Oregon) for a while, so we spent a few days there. Many moons ago, we used to stay at a cavernous old hotel called the Mallory, and then we'd go to the venerable Benson for a drink. This time we stayed a few blocks from the Benson and stopped by, only to find that they'd remodeled the lobby and pretty much gutted the great old immense bar that used to be lined with dark carved wood. Oh, well. Things get modernized.

Predictably, I went to the secular shrine for bibliophiles, Powell's Books--always a good time. The place isn't quite as magical as it used to be, but it sure seems to be thriving. So far the Internet and some of the surviving used-book stores seem to experiencing a beautiful friendship. The stores can appeal to their traditional clientele but also sell books online. Maybe Kindle and other devices will eventually undermine even these stores, or maybe paper books will survive somehow. . . .

All big cities have a lot of homeless citizens, but Portland seems to have more than its "share," whatever a share is supposed to be. There also seems to be a greater percentage of younger homeless persons--people of high-school age--in Portland. I'm wary of a state and the State having too much power, but with regard to homelessness, I lean toward Sweden's attitude, which is definitely state-heavy.

Basically, Sweden sees homelessness as unacceptable. The police pick up homeless people and take them to a shelter. I'd be in favor of building a lot more shelters and having the police, or another agency, or non-profit groups transport homeless people to the shelters. I'd rather see taxes go to that then a lot of other stuff. There is an argument, I guess, for allowing people to live on the street if they want to, but it's not an argument that convinces me. In most cases, they've been forced to live there, one way or another, or they have mental conditions so genuinely disorienting that they're not good judges of where they ought to live. Also, a huge percentage of people on the street, especially but not exclusively younger ones and women, are targets for all manner of predation and abuse. I think people have a right to shelter and basic meals, and I think society has the responsibility of getting them into shelter, maybe even in spite of initial opposition. At the same time, the shelter has to be safe, not another site of potential abuse.

Now that the rant is over, I'll mention a found poem I saw in Portland. It was composed of eight signs, one word each, on the side of a grocery store downtown--I think it's called Helen's. The words were in white, with a black background, and appeared in a line on the side of the building. I've kept them in order but arranged them vertically.

FOUND POEM: GROCERY

BEER
WINE
SNACK
DONUT
CARD
BEER
WINE
CIGARETTE

The order of the words appealed to me a great deal--three single-syllable words followed by a multiple-syllable word. Then there's the repetition of beer and wine. All the nouns are singular, although "beer" and "wine" can work as collective nouns. I also like what the "poem" says about what items are most essential, perhaps most desired, and I rather like that "card"--greeting card(s), presumably (although playing cards were available in the store--is among the perceived essentials. Beer and wine appear to be doubly essential. I agree, of course, that the list is a bit of a nutritionist's nightmare.

Successful Beading

While I was waiting for the train, which is actually a bus (it's complicated, as they say on Facebook), to Tacoma in Bellingham, I made a bracelet out of beads for someone I've known a long time. I'd ambled past many a bead-shop before, but this was my first venture into one of the shops.

I didn't have a lot of time before the train left, so I set a brisk pace as I selected beads and politely pressured the person in charge of the shop to show me how to put a bracelet together. I had the sense my speed-beading was not a customary part of bead-culture. I chose beads of a similar color--light brown, tan, burnt umber, that sort of thing. And I chose three different kinds of beads and arranged them in a pattern, a kind of visual representation of Morse Code--a simple repetition of a simple series. I also went with the wire, not the nylon string.

Crimping proved to be a huge challenge because I couldn't see what I was doing, even with glasses on. I think next time I'll make a gigantic necklace.

People usually pretend to like something you make for them yourself more than they pretend to like something you bought for them, in my experience.

I predict bead-shops will thrive in this economy, which is starting to take on Herbert Hooverish characteristics. I'm not sure Bush even knows what country he's presiding over, but I digress.

According to the OED online, "bead," spelled "byd" and then "bede," originally donated "prayers," and if I'm inte-preting things correctly, it had nothing to do with prayer beads. "Bead," as referring to a small object with a hole in it (for stringing) didn't come into the written language until about 1377, whereas bead (bede) as prayer came in about 855.

It's too bad "beady eyes" is now a cliche. It's not a bad description.

I know what "draw a bead on" means with regard to sighting something and shooting at it, but I'm not sure precisely how the metaphor was supposed to have worked originally. A lot depends upon "draw," which can mean to pull but which can also mean to mark. So maybe the phrase meant to mark, figuratively, a bead on the target; or maybe it meant that once you shot a hole in the target, you would have, so to speak, drawn (marked) a bead (a wee circular image) on the target. I think it's too much of a stretch to link "draw a bead" to the tiny sphere that used to be on the front sight of some rifles; one would visually place that "bead" in the notch of the front sight and align both with the target.

Luckily, beading is now a completely nonviolent pursuit, although I suppose patrons of a bead-shop could get into a bead-throwing fight, but judging by the customers I saw in the Bellingham shop, this is unlikely to happen.

I do have to improve on my crimping skills, meaning I have to bring a magnifying glass next time. My eyesight has become too beady. The bracelet had to be recrimped, I guess because there was a crimp in its style, nyuk, nyuk, but everything is fine now.

In any event, I encourage all poets and readers of poetry to try to make something out of beads. In some ways, a line of poetry is like a string of beads, yes?

Insurance

Insurance


Is your abode too close to the river?
Does your home sit astride a fissure
between slabs that uphold illusions
of real estate? Is there a slope
above or below your place
that will one day fall for rain?

Perchance, did you build
a match-factory next to a field
full of dry, oily brush? Well, wherever
you live, your roommate is risk,
statistically. Pay us, please, in case

your relationship with risk becomes
more, or less, than Platonic. Rest
insured. If the river riots or Earth's
complexion cracks, if all falls down
or bursts into blaze, then count

your blessings, muse on ruination,
and wait for our reply. In the meantime,
we'll be watching data gather round
the mean. We'll keep your money
in a vault well away from risk,
from you. We'll keep your money safe,
where it can work in peace for us.

Hans Ostrom

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Beyond Beyond

For some reason, I never really favored making the first line of the poem the title, or the title the first line. Some poets pull it off just fine. I thought I'd try it with this one, although I'm tempted to give the poem a different title, such as "Beyond Beyond."








The other side of the universe


is a phrase that begs the question,
and a very good question it is. One answer
is how my mind feels when it fails
to imagine what's beyond the unimaginable
borders of reality, out where minds, not
to mention Time and Space,
break like waves on invisible coasts.

Perplexity is an intriguing limit, rather
like the horizon, which doesn't exist.
Does the universe have an outside
outside itself, or
does it, like Myrtle Thompson,
an ancient eccentric in my hometown,
prefer to stay indoors, forever?

Hans Ostrom

Copyright Hans Ostrom 2008

Daphne

I've been teaching for a long time, and I think I've had only one student in class named Daphne. It's one of those great names that have gone out of fashion in the U.S., it seems. I put it in a category with Dolores, Edna, Olive, Inez, Agatha, and so on. These names probably sound bizarre to most people under a certain age, and they may even seem risible. Hunt Hawkins has a fabulous poem about "lost" women's names.

Daphne happens to be the name of a shrub, too. It's a low-growing shrub with thick dark leaves and pliable, slender branches. It "volunteered" in a yard we once had. It is spread in a classic way. Birds eat its berries, the seeds pass through the birds (along with natural nitrogen fertilizer), and there you go. Interestingly, Daphne basically refuses to be transplanted. It dies if you try to move it. Is it even available in nurseries? I've never seen it. Maybe you have to grow it from seen, like California poppies, which also die if transplanted. On the other hand, there are many different kinds of Daphne, so maybe the kind we had is especially stubborn about being moved. There are probably more agreeable kinds in nurseries. Allegedly, all types of Daphne are poisonous to humans--leaf, berry, and flower.

If I have the myth behind the name right, Apollo wanted Daphne but she didn't want him, so he turned her into a shrub. Anyway, I wrote a poem about Daphne.

Daphne

The shrub, Daphne, volunteers to grow
After birds, for example, defecate its purple berries
Onto soil. Daphne refuses to be transplanted.
Moved, it dies. The original Daphne became a tree

Because Apollo wouldn’t leave her alone. To me,
This sounds awfully much like Apollo’s version
Of events—concocted to save sunny face
When he came back without the girl.

Sunboy probably hauled a shrub back
With him, had it planted, watched it die,
And then said, “That used to be a girl,
And I warned her—if she didn’t blossom

Toward my will, she’d end up as dead
Foliage.” Whatever. Meanwhile, staying
With friends incommunicado,
Daphne told how she gave the big oaf

The slip, said why she’d live here,
Thank-you-very-much, not there.

Hans Ostrom

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Farm State

Farm State

Weary the wheat and plow the wishes.
Harvest what of God you know. Stow it
in a town-sized silo. Why grow
anything when the loans never seem
to evaporate? Summer stands over land
like a ruddy-faced fry-cook and cracks
the sky: out comes a yolk of sun.

Thunderheads filibuster like the senator
filling the Farm Bill with his high pressure.
Lightning votes. An incumbent known
as Toil rigs the election. This is a farm state,
where one day your fate may rise from loam
like a galleon shrugging foam, and maybe
you shall sail yourself away on swells of luck
toward a coast where roosters don't crow
til supper-time, tractor-axles never break,
and climate keeps its promises.

Hans Ostrom

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Paradigms and Poetry

As I continue my desultory reading of the philosophy of science, I am getting reacquainted with ideas from Thomas Kuhn, specifically his notions of "paradigm shifts" and "theory-laden data." The latter notion is meant to disrupt the idea that data can be neutral, just sitting there waiting to support this or that theory. ("Just the facts, ma'am.") Kuhn suggests that the way the data are gotten or placed or shaped springs from theory. It's not so much that, like Disraeli ("lies, damned lies, statistics"), Kuhn is mocking or dismissing data; he's just pointing out, I think, that data are never innocent ("theory, damned theory, and data").

With a paradigm-shift, I reckon a way of putting the idea is that one overarching way of looking at the world is replaced by another one. One of the most dramatic paradigm-shifts in my lifetime, I think, has been the one shaped by feminism and its effects. Not that long ago, it used to be unthinkable for women to hold a huge spectrum of jobs they now hold, and even people who remain allergic to the word "feminism" accept women in these roles--because the paradigm has shifted.

Two paradigms that simply will not, apparently, stop butting heads are so-called Evolution and Creation.

Bush took a bit of LBJ and a lot of Nixon and created a paradigm by which the president is an elected dictator, as well as a compulsive gambler. He seems to have put about as much thought into invading and occupying Iraq as a drunk does when he decides to hit on 15 at the blackjack table in Bordertown, Nevada. I exaggerate, but I wish I were exaggerating more. Even his former press-secretary, Scottie the Wonder-Dog, referred to Bush as "a gut player." That's quite a paradigm-shift.

In a minor key, the paradigm-shift can be useful for poets. You can get stuck writing one kind of poetry--first person, semi-autobiographical free verse remains a dominant paradigm, for instance. But then you can glance at Randall Jarrell's "Death of a Ball Turret Gunner," to pick just one example, and realize you can write from the perspective and in the voice of someone different from you, relate an experience you have not had but can imagine, and, by the way, have a dead person speak. Or, like Hopkins, you can look at the dominant "music" of your contemporary poetry and decide, "Gee, I think I'll blow that up." With sprung rhythm, he blew up the monotony of iambic pentameter. Dickinson ignored so many paradigms and seriously bent others that it's hard to keep track of them. Surrealism was once a scandalously new paradigm. Now it's pretty much a dominant one, as is the image-devoted poem.

I think poets are naturally comfortable with the idea of "theory laden data"; or at least they sense that all that stuff we encounter and perceive out there is laden with something. Often it's laden with our desire to write a poem about it. That summer's day didn't know Shakespeare was going to write about it and show why it shouldn't, in fact, be compared to his love; and those plums didn't realize that a) Williams would eat them and b) that he would then write a poem in the form of a note apologizing for having eaten them. They were cold, delicious, and poetry-laden data, those poems.

A Poet's Questions for Obama and McCain

I think I speak for all poets when I say no one can speak for poets, who are harder to herd than cats and, in politics, are mere noise in the data, at best, and crackpots at worst.

Situated somewhere between noise in the data and cracked-pottedness, I therefore launch my questions for the only two people who seem to be semi-serious candidates for the presidency, which in my opinion has become awfully close to a dictatorship; "has become" may be naive, however, for if the Constitution started with an electoral college and by putting the head of the executive branch in charge of the whole military, then it looks like "we" always had a hankering for a Strong Executive, or Dictator Lite. In any event, the questions:

1. The obligatory--but, I would add, a deceptively useful--one: who are your favorite poets, and what are your favorite poems, and why, gentlemen? Think of how revealing the answers to this question would be. I predict McCain would refuse to answer, perhaps get angry. I predict Obama would stall, go over the options, and then go with something wry or populist, such as "Bob Dylan".

2. Specifically, what will you do to reverse the growth of secrecy and privilege in the Executive Branch. Examples include "signing statements" (meaning "I won't obey the law you just passed, but thanks for playing"); claims of privilege that block Congress's ability to look at documents and interview employees; the unprecedented growth in "classifying" documents (new ones and old ones, paper and email) as secret because of "national security"; the excessive politicalization of the Justice Department; and so on. I predict McCain would simply revel in all the expanded powers of the Exec. Branch--which have developed over decades, even if Bush II accelerated things. I predict that Obama . . . would do the same. But this is unfair of me. Let the lads speak for themselves.

3. What, exactly, and please give us the math, will you do about the three "items" that drive the budget, which seems to have grown beyond Pluto [to which the arrows point in photos accompanying this post], which isn't even a planet anymore: defense spending; Medicare; Social Security. As far as I know, the rest of the budget is, comparatively, mere fluff. Bob "Roseanne" Barr talks about cutting the Education Department, for example, which would be like cutting one whisker from a mountain man's beard, although such analogies are probably not used much in economics circles, including pie-chart circles.

4. Why shouldn't every citizen have a health plan as good as yours? This is not a rhetorical question.

5. What will you do, if anything, about spying sans warrants on American citizens? I predict McCain and Obama would both mumble something platitudinous--and then leave the system as Bush created it. Both seem in favor of the current FISA bill, for example.

6. Okay, what will you do about torture? How about an Executive Order, written on your first day in D.C., outlawing it? I predict that whether it's Obama or McCain in office, the torturing and "rendering," also known as kidnapping as a prelude to torture, will continue.

7. Who's your favorite philosopher and why? I predict both lads would go for the joke here, if they answered at all. Neither would mention the name of a vaguely legitimate philosopher. But as with the poetry question, think of how revealing the answer would be!

8. What is the lie you told in your life (so far) that you regret the most?

9. Specifically, what will you do to roll back all the anti-trust excesses, including those in the oil industry and the media? I predict neither has any interest in dismantling media conglomerates.

10. What is the biggest line of bullshit you've uttered so far in your quest to become president? Nothing personal here, lads. Everybody knows all candidates have to speak bullshit to get elected, or just to pass the time, or to give the frenzied crowds what they want. Which line of bullshit do you yourself have trouble saying?

11. Speaking of Pluto, as we did in #3, will you promise to reinstate it as a planet? I realize the territory known as "Pluto" isn't strictly under American control, but that has rarely seemed to be an obstacle in American foreign policy, and we're just talking about restoring planetary status, not occupying the place.