Mere Sympathy

What should one do for others who are grieving or who are in pain or who are in crisis? That is a very tough question, one I'm often tempted to answer with words like "Something" or "Anything." But sometimes something or anything feels ineffectual, rote, routine, not all that helpful. Anyway, this topic hung around my mind long enough to get me to write a poem on it. I chose rhyming couplets, for some reason, but I went light on the rhythm, which I wanted to be low key, conversational.



Mere Sympathy


I'm feeling sorry for yourself.
I bring some empathy to your shelf

of discomfort. It's such a small
gift, sitting there against the wall.

I wonder if it does you any good.
Guilt gets me thinking I should

convert it to fuel that would power me
to cook, transport, listen; to see

to something that might lessen pain;
to soothe, repair, or entertain:

something, anything, specific for you,
that is, as opposed to

this general sympathetic feeling,
which hangs above you like a ceiling.


Hans Ostrom Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

In Times of Crisis, Count On Poets

The broken financial times call for poets. See, almost almost all poets are practical because they can't make a living by writing poetry and must therefore maintain other kinds of gainful employment to get by. Most poets are frugal, both with money and words. They have to make do, so they're used to repairing things, living on a budget, scraping by, solving problems, these sorts of things. Poets tend to be good listeners, too.

If I could assemble some poets in D.C. by, say, Thursday, I know we could pass a sensible fix-it financial bill--one good enough to let everybody gain their equilibrium and start to dig out of the larger problems caused by unregulated greed and capitalists on speed. First of all, we'd all start to get bored really fast, and we couldn't leave until we passed the thing, so we'd pass it and then to to the Library of Congress, used bookstores, cafes, or whatever.

In one column on a piece of paper, I'd list the most serious immediate problems. In another column, I'd list the best ways to solve them, realizing these are short-term repairs, like fixing a tire but not driving on it for a long time. Then I'd break the legislation, based on the repairs, into pieces, and start voting.

Obviously, credit needs to flow again. People need to pay employees and get inventory, that sort of thing. People need help making house payments and hanging on to houses as they go through bankruptcy. This screwy "mark to market" nonsense needs to stop; everybody knows that.

Aunt Sam needs to take over lending-institutions that were run by greedy morons. That can't be hard to arrange. Aunt Sam needs to hang on to these for a while, straighten them out, and then sell them back to the private sector at a modest grocery-store profit so the taxpayers don't get screwed--again.

I'd also have some of my poets call, oh, 50 billionaires in the Gates and Buffett class and ask them to put up 10 per cent of the so-called bail-out, which isn't a bail-out so much as a re-priming of the credit-flow pump and a "calm down, everybody" move. These billionaires can afford it, kicking in 10 per cent would calm nerves, and the billionaires would go down in history as heroes, not just really rich guys and gals. We could have their faces carved on a mountain somewhere, maybe in Alaska.

If it would make the timid congresspeople feel safer, I'd have a different set of them constitute the majority that passed each major section of the legislation. That way, all the praise and blame would be spread out like peanut butter on a piece of bread. You could break down the fix-it bill into, say, 5 parts and have the whole thing passed by dinner time. Then I'd have everybody read Samuel Johnson's "The Vanity of Human Wishes," and they'd get some perspective and learn something about heroic couplets and what it's like to read something written by a person who's brain seemed to work at warp-speed.

There. See how easy that is? Sonnets are hard. Legislation is easy. While no one was paying attention, lots financial folks got greedy and sloppy. That's just the kind of shit people do. They created some problems. Some short-term solutions are required to get people confident again and get some credit flowing. Then we need to create some longer-term solutions, which are more in the novelists' turf.

I'm telling you, poets have a good idea of when it's time (to dredge up a 1960s term) to get one's shit together. George needs to tell that treasury guy of his to settle down, and Congress needs to get its shit together. This isn't rocket science. It isn't even poetry. It's legislation. Sam Johnson's term for the congress-person entities would be "blockheads."

If it's broken, and it is, fix it--no later than Friday. No excuses. Do your damned job. If you can't or won't, call in the poets.

What Would Jeffers Say?

Two of the most intellectually interesting and nimble people I know are an historian of science and a political scientist, the latter specializing in Constitutional law and how the media report on matters of law. In some ways the two are different intellectually, but they share at least three qualities that help account for the quality of their minds. They are empiricists. They are willing to follow the data wherever they (the data) lead, as opposed to taking a theoretical short-cut to a destination and forcing the data to come along on the vacation Second, they have a sense of irony--about the world and themselves. Third, they're widely read, far beyond their academic specialities. Their reading includes the poetry of Robinson Jeffers.

I see these two and talk with them frequently (one of the perks of this academic job of mine). This week especially I've had them in mind, however, because of the financial debacle and accompanying political circus related to the alleged collapse of Wall Street. Here I must break for a brief rant about conservatives who like to stress "personal responsibility." Arguably, excessive de-regulation (also known as chaos) led to this mess, so how about if some conservatives take personal responsibility for having pushed de-regulation too enthusiastically since, oh, about 1981? How about a simple, "I'm sorry. We were wrong"? It is, however, somewhat amusing to see Congressional Republicans saying No to Bush with regard to the bail-out. Typically, Bush seems to have seen the alleged crisis as an opportunity to try to give the Secretary of the Treasury the powers enjoyed by Henry VIII.

At this moment, when crisis meets farce, I am of course tempted to think of Jeffers and of my two colleagues who like his work. Jeffers thought the U.S. was crumbling by the mid-1940s, as demonstrated by his poem, "Shine, Perishing Republic," in which "this America settles in the mold of its vulgarity, heavily/thickening to empire,/And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out,/and the mass hardens." Later in the poem, he writes, "corruption/Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster's feet/there are left the mountains."

Well, I don't know if even the mountains are left, what with ski resorts, open-pit mining, the spread of suburbia, drought in the Rockies, and all those noisy snow-mobiles and three-wheelers out there. In any event, today I seem to hear Jeffers whispering "See, I told you so."

I suppose it's only fair to concede that Jeffers was a bit of a misanthrope and pessimist; a few friends and family excepted, he tended to prefer the sea, large rocks, and hawks to humans. There is a chance, however, that the current corruption, mismanagement, and inept political spectacle might shock even Jeffers. I'll have to check with my colleagues to see what they think.

Anyway, Robinson, the republic (or empire) seems to be living down to your expectations these days. Maybe this is a good day to read some of e.e. cummings more exuberant, life-affirming poetry and take a break from Jeffers' rocks and hawks

Concerning That Good Night

In class we briefly discussed the villanelle, that most difficult form, in which the poet has to repeat whole lines, use only two rhyming sounds, stick to iambic pentameter, and, incidentally, make sense. As I've noted in earlier posts, Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," Theodore Roethke's "The Waking," and W.H. Auden's "If Could Tell You" are among the most venerable villanelles; however, we also studied one by Jay Parini about the event now known as "Nine-Eleven," and most of the students liked it.

We talked about some moves a poet can make to negotiate the form. We noted that many villanelles are light on imagery and rely on statements, on a kind of conversational discourse. We discussed the possibility of using half-rhymes and of altering the repeated lines slightly--turning a statement into a question, for example, or changing one word.

One student said she found the form difficult to read because of the repetition, which can indeed begin to sound like "nagging."

As great as Dylan Thomas's poem is--and it is, indisputably, a tour de force--I've always felt uneasy about the advice the poem offers, simply because I think people should be able to die with the attitude they choose--assuming, of course, that they are even able to choose the attitude with which they approach death. I had a very close older relative who died of heart failure but also, indirectly, of dementia, so she was not able to approach death--mentally or spiritually--in the way she might have chosen. So if I or anyone had advised her not to go gentle into that good night, it would have been pointless, at best. But this takes nothing away from Thomas's indelible villanelle.

Still, I finally decided to write a wee response-villanelle with D.T.'s poem in mind, although I confess the main task here is just to get a bit of a workout. Villanelles offer good aerobic poetic training, even if they don't turn out perfect or fall far short of perfect.


Go As You Wish Into That Good Night


Go as you wish into that good night.
It's not a night, of course. It's death.
To tell you how to die? I have no right.

Besides, death often hides nearby, plain sight--
Then someone's gone, as quickly as a breath.
Go as you wish into that good night,

Assuming you're allowed your wish. I might
Not even be around, to tell the truth.
To tell you how to die? I have no right.

I've not yet died, have not yet faced the fright
Of certain death, so here's my guess:
Go as you wish into that good night.

I sympathize with D.T.'s rage. That sight
Of one who's dear about to die: Damned death!
But still: go as you wish into death's night.
To tell you how to die--I have no right.

Hans Ostrom

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Should an Apple Pie Appear in a Poem?

I'm almost always afraid to put a rose in a poem because roses have been appearing in poems since about 5,000 B.C.E., or thereabouts. I make an exception when I'm writing explicitly about actually growing roses because then I have a chance of staying away from the usual symbolism, which can be religious, or romantic, or whatever.

I feel similarly about putting an apple pie in a poem. From a poetic perspective, apple pies are . . . what? Too domestic? Too "home-spun"? And then there's the unholy trinity of mom, applie pie, and the American flag. Oy.

So I guess if you write a poem that's based in some way in experience, and if the experience had something to do with baking or eating an apple pie, you're out of luck. You should probably just write a poem about something else or maybe use a different kind of dessert. That would be the smart thing to do.

I decided not to be prudent, however, and I decided to go ahead and write a poem with an apple pie in it. I don't think I entirely escaped the pitfalls of doing so, and I probably made things worse by including "love" along with the apple pie. Oh, well. So it goes with baking and with writing. Trial and error, with lots of error.

Not that you asked, but I prefer apple pies to be very light on the sugar (or the Splenda); indeed, I believe all fruit or berry pies should be tart. I believe this preference places me in a minority. I am also very much in favor of a tradition on the verge of disappearing: serving a piece of sharp cheddar cheese with a piece of pie. No, not vanilla ice cream; cheddar cheese.

Waking to Baking

My love for you
is but for you, just
like the only apple
pie of its kind, the one
I baked that day:
butter-brushed crust
just so, narrow streams
of sweet steam piping
out of vents in the top-
crust opened with a
nicked tip of a paring-
knife. Yes, my love
for you is precisely
combined like cinammon,
nutmeg, and lemon-peel--
a sparing use of sugar,
apples picked, peeled,
and cut by no other hands
but these, pieces of apple
floating in cold water
that day, that hour, the
oven pre-heating, which
is another name for heating.
You napped. You awoke
to a house inebriated with
aroma of baking apple pie,
an affection-imbued interior
weather of heat applied
to fruit, flour, and spices.


Hans Ostrom, Copyright 2008

Prophets' Return

Prophets' Return

No wonder prophets don't come back.
Their crests would fall if they returned.
See the prophets standing here, just
returned: "For this," they ask, "we spoke
the fiery truth, risked our lives, and cracked
history?" See them looking at chronic
starvation, effects of cluster- and car-bombs,
oceanic gaps between rich and poor,
advertising smeared like mucous across
humanity. See them seeing torturers,
enslavers, elected thieves and thugs.

Overhear them asking, "Why did we bother?
What we failed to eradicate with righteousness
persists, what we achieved has been forgotten
or repackaged and marketed for a profit." Ah,
but if they were to tarry, they need only read
a single suffering child's face, ingest a spore
of hope, feel courage electrifying wisdom,
and there they'd go again, trying (can you
believe it?), to change the way things are.


Hans Ostrom Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Any Storm in the Port

Any Storm in the Port


The coastline forms a question-mark,
which punctuates the sentence of this day.
From your apartment, you can't even see
buildings that have a view of the harbor.
No ship docking down there will bring
adventure to your life. Even the cargo,
quotidian as it is, will be shipped elsewhere.

Idly, you wish for strange weather--
hurricane, tsunami, dead-calm, lock-down
fog. This wish would be irresponsible if
related to a reality outside your head. You'd
never kill an albatross, interrupt a whale's
progress, organize or break a strike. You

are a cove that occasionally dreams
of being a bay. Viking--you might have
been a Viking. --Not a berserker hacking
villagers but a rower who would pull
the boat in a gray unmapped direction
for as long as it took or until you died.
You're that sort--a kind history never
notices from its panoramic view. You
pull your life through life.

Wall Street Metaphors

I don't know how appropriate it is to speak of having a retirement-account (in the making) as a blessing. Perhaps privilege is a better word. Having one, however, I was among those interested in the reported demise of such instiutions as Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch and the consequent effects on the stock market.

As a reader and poet, however, I soon became interested in the language used to describe the events: tsunami, collapse, plunge, tidal wave, earthquake, hurricane, even Armageddon. Yikes.

Of course, "Wall Street" itself is a kind of metaphor. I believe it's a metonym, in which a part of something is used to describe that something, so that the White House is sometimes used to describe the Executive Branch or the presidency. "The White House said today that . . . ." Certainly, a stock market exists on Wall Street, but all those stocks and bonds exist in vaults somewhere or, more likely, they exist only on computer-chips. I "own" stock only because some letters and numbers on a screen or a piece of paper say I do. Yikes, the Sequel.

I like this term "correction," too. I think it's meant to sound soothing. "The housing-market is undergoing a correction," it is said, or "Expect the stock market to correct." When I pause to consider the word, though, I realize that a mistake has been made--one that needs correction. "They" would probably prefer that I think of a ship making a slight "correction" (adjustment) in its course.

"Bubble" has been around a long time in connection with markets. As far back as the 18th century, I think, there was a speculative "bubble" concerning British colonial investments. It's a pretty interesting metaphor. Investments become as molecules of gas, which create a bubble, which pops, and the investments go . . . into the air. I still don't know what to make of the term "hedge," applied to investments. I think it means that you put a hedge around your investments, but hedges have never seemed that durable or protective to me. They're things birds can penetrate, after all. "Hedge-fund" just doesn't sound right. "I've decided to invest in hedges--chiefly laurel and boxwood. What do you think?"

In some ways, the financial world seems and is so technical, all mathematics and statistics. But when even the alleged experts discuss "the market," they seem quickly to slip into metaphor-speak. Nonetheless, I don't think I'd necessarily argue for putting a poet in charge of AIG, for example. By the way, who or what insures insurance companies? I guess "we" do--people who pay taxes.

We're There Yet

We're There Yet


Where shall we go? Hell is out--
much too expensive. Let's go where
the beach doesn't stink when the tide
hides. I wouldn't mind a town
that featured jobs for us but also
had people who have doubts about
strong opinions. Who am I, Kidding?
We're where we went.

This isn't home, but it will have to do.
Say, do you hear that dog barking?
That's where we are, my darling.
Why does the newspaper have
a "Travel" section every Sunday?
Is that supposed to be some kind of joke?
Why is there even a newspaper here?
The best news already happened.

Yesterday, a woman told me
she saw someone walking an
armadillo on a leash. She asked me,
"What kind of town is this?"
I said it's definitely a town
in which people might take
an armadillo for a walk. I
did not wish to mislead her.

We've arrived, regardless of
whether we planned to go here
or not. This is what our destination
looks like. Darling, do your best.

Sex

There is an online site called poemsabout.com, and as you might infer, it's a massive compendium of poems organized by topic. The lists of topics themselves intrigue. Here's just a piece of the alphabetical list:

africa
alone
america
angel
anger
animal
april
autumn
baby
ballad
beach
beautiful
beauty
believe
birth
brother
butterfly
candy

An arguably interesting writing-prompt would simply be to start with this list, begin making phrases, lines, and sentences (with additional words as needed), and see where the language led one. Richard Hugo advises this kind of approach (in The Triggering Town), when he advises poets to write "off the subject." His logic is that a poet's obsessions will out, one way or another, and that therefore one should concentrate on the medium (language), not the message. In fact, he advises that if you have a choice between conveying your "message" and writing language that is more pleasing than the language that contains the message, go with the pleasing language every time. Of course, much in writers resists such advice, which is counterintuitive because we are accustomed to thinking of language as transmission of message. Elsewhere Hugo humorously writes, "If you want to communicate, use a telephone."

At any rate, when I looked at the topics on poemsabout.com, I realized I'd never written a poem, strictly speaking, about sex. Of course I'd written some poems that referred to sex, one way or another, but I'd never written "sex" at the top of the page and started a poem. Certainly, "sex" seems like a very good topic for a poem; this claims seems indisputable. At the same time, poets who've been writing for a while know that the so-called sex-poem can be simply graphic, pornographic, and/or surprisingly not-sexy--that is to say, boring. Nevertheless, I decided to write a poem entitled "Sex," although the poem itself seems to be as much about language as it is about sex, no surprise there.


Sex


Sex is an excellent syllable, which
detonates meaning and is fillable
with much connotation. Of course
it conjures a deed done and conjugal
entanglements of bodies, when love
or lust gets down to earthy business,
when desire fires itself up and down
and on (and out of) the town. Sex
is also an implied question on a form

that may be answered M or F,
even if you’re in a mood to
answer Yes or No or Maybe So,
or "I'll get back to you later" or
"What about it?"Sex is not solely
one thing or two but more
than a few and human, too.

Sex at times is a semiotic nexus
(how sexual that sounds!) suggesting
bawdy, haughty, naughty, hottie
bodies, which touch and much more
in sex’s neck of the woulds and coulds,
the musts and lusts. Sometimes sex is
subtly intimated simply by the two-letter
syllable, it, as in getting it on, doing it,
making it, and even, alas, faking it. Oh

yes, there’s that other effing eff-word,
the one that rhymes with truck
and gets so often stuck in awkward syntactical
positions. Sex is life in frenzied love
with itself, all lips and hips, rounds
and flats, sultry strategies and tender
tactics, loads of lust and convoys
of cupidity, sensual consensual
congress. Sex can cause stupidity—
would you agree?—and vice versa.
Sex is a state of union, an exhilarating
expiration, a getting up, a getting with
it, a going down, a fear and fondness
of flying, a finding out and a knowing
about. It has been known to be
a bit of a chore, an occasional bore.
It’s mysterious and base, crude and holy,
much cause for consternation,
controversy, rules, and fools. Sex
is something else again. And again.

Hans Ostrom Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Concerning Vanity

[photo of Peter Sellers as Clouseau]



How vain of me to write and post a poem on vanity! Ah, the obscure, vainglorious trap of being a blogging poet.



Vanity Almost Rhymes Fully With Insanity


In those days of my alleged
importance, vanity
was my friend. She
maintained a list

of my accomplishments.
We sipped drinks
and traded admirations,
looking out over a bay.

We wore status
like our clothes.
We decided, vanity
and I, who was good

and worth our time. Once
vanity and I had realized
my importance, however,
I lost vanity as a friend. A

certain evaporation of
illusion left distance
between us. Obscurity
is my pal now. Oh,

obscurity makes me laugh,
and what a reliable friend.
We get together, evenings.
We warmly review

how vanity once charmed
us, the ways in which I was
ordinary at most and not
important back then. And now.


Hans Ostrom Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Ballad of the Micro-Town

[the photo is of Sierra City, California, population 225, elevation @ 4,250 feet above sea level]





Ballad of the Micro-Town


The mountains round that town are sheer
Massifs of stone. The town
Lies glinting like a coin below.
The river carves a frown.

I grew up there, so it was all.
It was the world to me.
That it and I were less than small
I'd learn eventually.

To have grown up in a small town
Is such a micro-fate,
A shrunken destiny, at best,
A morsel of time's bait.

If you are from a micro-town,
Bravo to you from me.
Our origins have blessed us with
Well known obscurity.



Hans Ostrom Copyright 2008

Hair-Cutter's Hiccups

Hair-Cutter's Hiccups


In the hair-cutting place, no longer
known as either a barber shop or salon,
I heard a child report, "Horses
are my favorite thing in the whole
universe." The woman cutting
my hair suffered from hiccups.
Of a recent customer, she said,
"He's the rudest person I've met--
hup!--in my hair-life so far." She
asked, "Sideburns trimmed?" I
answered, "Sure." She asked,
"'Shorter' or 'sure'?" I said,
"Sure, shorter." She said, "Hiccups
affect my hearing." I laughed.

Finished with my sideburns, she said,
"Look down." At the guillotine-line, she
let the humming clippers nibble my neck.
Later, she removed the black silk cape
from me with a bullfighter's flourish
and said, "There you are--hup!" We
looked in the mirror, where I
wasn't but where we saw each
other absurdly looking in the mirror.


Hans Ostrom Copyright 2008