Poets On Strike

For several months, I've been having a blast reading the Rumpole stories and novels by John Mortimer. They rival P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves narratives for pithy, hilarious writing, although because Rumpole is a barrister, there's also some underlying commentary about law and society. There's a very strong libertarian streak running through the books and Mortimer's worldview, but it's genuine libertarianism, not cloaked GOP politics (or Conservative politics, in Britain). Rumpole defends anyone with whom the State is unamused, including women, minorities, smokers, immigrants, persons deemed strange, and nonviolent criminals, including the Timson family. If you're looking for quick summer reading that will bring belly laughs, knowledge of poetry, and stylish British writing, go with John Mortimer and Rumpole. It doesn't matter where in the series you start, either. Just go to a used bookstore and pick one out.

The late actor Leo McKern played Horace Rumpole on the BBC (I've posted a photo of him), and you'll enjoy that video series, too.

In a story called "Rumpole and the Summer of Discontent," strikes or "industrial action" are featured. The clerk in Rumpole's firm threatens to strike, and Rumpole is sympathetic but reasons that the action in this case would be about as effective as if poets or pavement artists were to go on strike. Most amusing, and most certainly true.

Indeed, if poets were to go on strike, who would care? This is not to say that poetry is unimportant. It's only to say that society regards poetry as inessential. If you would test what profession, service, or vocation is essential, ask whether a strike by said profession, service, or vocation would be effective, would cause consternation if not chaos. Police, fire, emergency rooms, truckers, longshoremen, teachers, farmworkers: essential. (Teachers are essential in part because both parents work and even if both parents don't work, they want a break from the kids.) Poets, painters, interior decorators, stock brokers, philosophers, priests, rabbis: not essential. Of course, people might be wistful that such folk were on strike, but society would not grind to a halt.

Should Rumpole's observation (and remember, Rumpole loves poetry, especially that which appears in Quiller-Couch's edition of the Oxford Book of English Verse--it's just that, as a barrister, he must practice Realpolitik and even observes that knowledge the law only unnecessarily encumbers a barrister) be depressing to poets? Heavens, no. We poets (and philosophers) do what we do because poetry and philosophy are essential in ways that vegetable-produce, gasoline, and emergency medicine are not. There are different kinds of "essential," that's all. Oxygen is essential in one way; poetry is essential in another. Luckily for people and oxygen, people know right away when they are deprived of oxygen. Unfortunately, it may take the better part of a lifetime for someone to realize how much better life would be with poetry.

Rumpole regards employment, trial by jury, innocent until judged to be guilty, wine, small cigars, shepherd's pie, and poetry to be essential. Like Samuel Johnson, Rumpole is a dangerous person with whom to disagree. Therefore, I shall continue to read the Rumple stories and poetry, and I shall continue to write poetry, but I've decided not to go on strike, at this time.

Maher Unamused by God

Someone showed me a copy of Playboy magazine in which appeared an article by comedian Bill Maher concerning a book he's about to publish. The book apparently attacks all religion. I think the illustration of Maher that accompanied the article was meant to be flattering, but it didn't seem so.

The article mentions an image of a giant in Ireland (I think), carved into a hillside. The reference is meant to illustrate that people will preserve religious images long after the particular religion has died, but the real purpose of the reference is, predictably, to go for a penis-joke. Then Maher slides over to more established religions and mocks the opulence of the Vatican. Gee, that's a new one. Finally he gets to his point, which is apparently that belief in "groundless" things leads to all manner of evil.

That the article should appear in Hefner's surreal, exhausted magazine is itself amusing--an attack on religion sandwiched between the ultimate Middle Schooler's airbrushed, Barbie-esque nudes and lame cartoons. More amusing is the sense one gets that Maher takes himself seriously as a critic of religion and as a "thinker," and that he imagines he's breaking new ground. I think he may also believe he's being slightly mischievous as he attacks religion. On his HBO show, he often gets a look on his face that suggests he thinks he's being quite daring. "Watch this: I'm going to say the F-word!"

Well, if groundlessness is the criterion, he should also attack everything else human. It's not as if science is based on solid ground, for example. Just ask Hume--or Einstein. The more science discovers, the more Jello-like becomes the "ground" on which it's based. Also, what is more absurd--religion or stand-up comedy? A priest or a diminutive fellow wearing makeup and reading from a tele-prompter? I should think it's at least a toss-up.

I think one key to a humorous and by no means stupid fellow like Maher is, ironically, his naivete. He seems ultra-hip, ultra-cynical, and jaded. When he was on top of the mass-media world with a show called Politically Incorrect, he fashioned himself a gadfly who would say all manner of offensive things, allegedly insulting the "politically correct" [whatever that means] Left and the prudish Right. Ah, but who fired him and for what? His corporate bosses fired him for suggesting that terrorists who blow themselves up are braver than American pilots who drop bombs. So, of course, it wasn't feminists or professors or multicultural theorists or pastors' wives in Nebraska who got offended and censored him by firing him. It was the corporate suits. And for some reason, he didn't see it coming: that was the surprising part. He seemed to assume his carefully modulated mischief, with good ratings, wouldn't piss off the corporate types. Oops, one slip, and you're out.

Now, like Christopher Hitchens, he seems to have discovered atheism and wants to tell the world. Next, I suppose, will come some breaking news about gravity. As a friend of mine (an atheist and politically radical person) used to say, "Get in the game," meaning: People have been having these arguments about religion since religion came on the scene. Nothing Maher asserts hasn't been asserted more effectively than by writers in the tradition, including contemporary ones like Garry Wills. And then there's this: the atheist jokes aren't that funny. I think there's probably a more productive comic vein to mine at this point than religion, just as there may be a slightly more daring magazine (ya think?) than Playboy. In other words, snore. Bertrand Russell is a lot funnier than Bill Maher when it comes to atheism, and Bertrand is dead.

The one fellow on Maher's show recently who seemed to get the better of him was Russell Simmons, the record producer and inventor of Def Poetry Jam. Maher was mocking how ego-maniacal most Hip Hop artists seemed to him, and Russell Simmons merely observed, ". . Whereas you have no ego?"

God must be quaking in the celestial boots after hearing about Maher's impending attack.

Counterpoints

Counterpoints


Snow. A red bird. Fog.
A yellow scarf. Rain. A
white cat. Wind. An
orange leaf. Hail. Blue
marbles. Mist.
Silver fish-scales.


Hans Ostrom

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

The Herman Melville Invitational Golf Tournament

The Herman Melville Invitational Golf Tournament


Hawthorne reached the 9th green in two, but lightning
struck him down as he walked up the fairway.
Edgar Allan Poe was buried alive in a sand-trap
on the 13th. Walt Whitman fell in love
with his caddy. Near the hazard on 15th,
there was an unusual set of divets
leading up the the water, and a harpoon
had been driven into the green.

Emily Dickinson carried the day,
("epic for show, lyric for dough"),
and Fred Douglass presented her
with the trophy. Henry David Thoreau
filed suit against the developers
who'd wiped out a perfectly good
marsh to carve the course.

Hans Ostrom

Copyright Hans Ostrom 2008

Business As Usual

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxFranz Kafka

Business As Usual


"Bonnie, will you get
Mrs. Phillips on the line
and remind her that everything
except Emptiness is an illusion?
Oh, yes, and tell her she's
trapped in the nightmare
of history. Ask her if next
Monday is a good day for her
to come in and discuss
her portfolio. Thanks, Bonnie."

Hans Ostrom

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

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