Muser Wins Award

Lumpenprofessoriat has bestowed upon Poet's Musings one of several curmudgeonly awards. The bar was set high: I had to appear to be a poet. My old bones appreciate it when the high-jump bar is placed on the ground. With the award comes a grave responsibility--to bestow other awards on other bloggers. I think you see where this is headed and why Lumpenprofessoriat suspected poets, among others, might like it. The idea is not necessarily to subvert awards, awarding, and awardification, but--well, actually, I think that may be the idea, or one of them.

Here, then, are my awards, which bring with them the image above, although I may have copied the wrong image (sigh, I am a poet), but a giant squid embracing (?) a whale is better than an Oscar, if you ask me.

1. The What's Not To Like Award goes to the Hyperborean, who writes smartly about a range of political and economic topics: what's not to like about that?

2. The Get Off Your Duff and Blog On the Road award goes to KCugno , known as ms. cugno to some, and also the blogger formerly known as Island Musings. Spanning the globe from Hawaii to New Zealand and points in between, this blogger does much more than sit in the chair and blog, and this is but one reason her blog is interesting.

3. In the grand tradition of award-giving, I give an award to the awarder, Lumpenprofessoriat ,
for inventing this ironic award-scheme, and for exhibiting the correct mixture of befuddlement and grumpiness in blogging. As many of us know, befuddlement is often a mask that is as polite as a grump can be, and grumpiness often springs from not being able to understand that which is too outrageous to understand, such as the utterance, "I'm the Decider." A Decider does not say "I'm the Decider"; thus befuddled grumpiness ensues.

4. The Scrap Irony award goes to The Scrapper Poet, for writing poetry, teaching, blogging, and driving in snow--almost simultaneously! --And for just publishing a scrappy chapbook. And because I couldn't summon the discipline to resist the pun, scrap irony.

5. The e.e. cummings/Ansel Adams award goes to Waking Jonas for deployment of the lower case and wry humor, and for photo-management on a blog. If I were to receive some training, my photo-management skills might eventually reach the level of rudimentary.

6. The Poetry Diaspora Award goes to Poefrika, a blogger who posts great poetry early and often, and who also alerts readers to new books of poetry and other literature recently published. Poefrika is among the hardest working bloggers in the blog-business.

I urge you to let the award-games continue. Play anthems of your choice.

Someone We Know

Someone We Know


"He's a nobody," people sometimes say,
as a way of saying the person described
should be ignored. Overlooked. Forgotten.
The sentence raises problems.

If the person were a nobody, he or she
wouldn't have a gender, and there'd be
nothing and no one to ignore. Also,
"a" nobody implies particularity,

when indeed we must assume that all
who constitute the mythical Nobody
are indistinguishable. If, however,
"nobody" is used only in a figurative

sense, even more problems arise.
Figurative nobodies--the obscure,
the abandoned, the betrayed, the
common, the exploited, the humble--

approach heroic stature as they
persist in their lives. Think of
an obscure waitress in Canada,
Uruguay, the Ukraine, or Lesotho.

To herself she's not obscure. She
performs tasks well, keeps herself
clean, cares for others, remains
patient and energetic amidst

persistent obscurity and impending
oblivion. How extraordinary. How
utterly not in keeping with the term,
"Nobody." The unknown, exemplary

waitress embodies somebodyness--
in secret, without hope of extraordinary
reward. At a news-stand, she glimpses
a magazine's cover, on which appears

the rendered image of an officical
Somebody, a Celebrity who appears
momentarily to have slain Time and
seized immortality. The waitress, the one

who serves, alleged by some to be
a nobody, smiles. Her smile is particular.
She is herself and specific, standing there,
just like someone we know.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Of Thin Books, Mainz, Gutenberg, and Gooseflesh, etc.

Among the innumerable privileges I enjoy is a personal library, or a close facsimile thereof: three walls of custom-made bookshelves, with a mission-style oak desk roughly equidistant from each wall. Surrounded by books. It took a while, but I finally was able, and was lucky enough, to achieve this modest goal, which for others I live with bears the additional fruit of much less clutter. A place for every book, and every book in its place: well, that's the theory anyway. In practice, some clutter still breaks out.

I was glancing at one of the shelves today when I spotted that most irresistible object: the spine of a thin book. I'm not sure why, but thin books--especially cloth-bound, but also paperbacks--have always entranced me. In fact I do judge such books by their covers, at least at first.

What made this re-discovery sweeter and more symbolic was that the book is about Johannes Gutenberg, conventionally thought to be the first printer/publisher of books in the modern sense; that is, he used movable type. It had been used before in Asia, but Gutenberg used it in a way that led to, well, that led to the Gutenberg Revolution, or what Raymond Williams calls The Long Revolution--that of printing, mass production of books, and increased literacy, all of which led to or was connected to many other revolutions.

The book is called The Gutenberg Bible, and indeed it does print images of pages from various extant copies of that famous Bible, printed by Herr. G. in Mainz in the mid-1400s, although some additional handwork on the Bible(s) was done in other cities. Martin Davies wrote the book, which was published by the British Library in 1996. As usual, I can't remember where I picked it up, but it may have been on a recent trip to Berlin, or it may have been on a recent trip to a used bookstore in Tacoma.

The thin book is mis-titled, to some degree, because its content is really a pithy overview of Gutenberg's life, discussion of the interaction between guilds and the aristocracy, and description of Mainz, a city of immense historical importance, and one that sits squarely in the midst of the Rhineland, or Rheinland.

It will not come as a surprise to anyone associated with printing, publishing, and writing that Gutenberg seemed to be in financial trouble virtually his whole adult life. In fact, many biographical details spring from records of law-suits related to these difficulties.

Another privilege I've enjoyed was teaching at Gutenberg University in Mainz for a year when I was an A.B.D. ("all but dissertation), thanks to an exchange set up by an Americna professor named James Woodress and a German professor named Hans Galinsky. I still correspond with a good friend from those days who still teaches in the American Studies Department, or Amerikanistik Abteilung.

Coincidentally, I'd just talked a day or so ago with a colleague who has also spent time in Germany. We discussed one of the innumerable grim facts of World War II: that, owing to the strategy of the "Allies," some German cities were leveled by bombing, while others were left almost completely intact. Thus about 80-90 per cent of Mainz was destroyed by bombs, whereas its sister-city, just across the river, Wiesbaden, was not bombed. The lore I have heard is that Wiesbaden was spared in part because at one point the Allies thought Eisenhower's headquarters might be there, if indeed the war went a certain way. I do not know the actual historical facts about the bombing, however. Mere lore.

In any event, the architecture in Mainz looks extremely modern, whereas in Wiesbaden, numerous "layers" of different architectures are preserved. The red sandstone cathedral in Mainz was not destroyed, and a few other buildings made it through.

Anyway, all of this and more sprang to mind when I happened, by accident, to glance at one of my shelves, saw the thin book, and read it again. I've been back to Mainz once since I taught there, and I'm hoping to get back there again soon. Among other things, wine and history, including the history of publishing, converge in Mainz; that's quite a convergence. And there's a Gutenberg Museum there, too, as one might expect.

Incidentally, the book asserts that Gutenberg's full name is Johann Gensfleisch zum Gutenberg--John Gooseflesh of the Good Mountain. That's one heck of a name. You just don't hear names like that anymore. That's a product of some serious naming practices.

International Relations

International Relations


I think I'm going to threaten
myself. I'll say," If you don't
stop threatening me, I'm going
to attack you." Then I'll over-
react to myself, and things will
escalate. Attack, counter-attack.
I'll make me sorry I ever
tangled with myself. I'll seek
total victory. If this strategy
seems madly self-destructive,
then it probably is. Maybe
I'll take the diplomatic route,
go all negotiation on myself,
sling some morphemes of
outrageous nuance, get the
conflict stuck in the mud,
the cool mud, of process,
which may make me bored
but won't make me bleed.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Manor of Speaking

Manor of Speaking


A simile is like or as
it should be, attached
to the thing it purports
to describe. Thing and
simile clutch each other
and dance in front of
an apprehending audience,
cutting a fine figure
of speech indeed, while
the dance operates
as a metaphor for how
a simile performs for
an audience. Welcome
to the mirror of halls,
where this is like that
and in so many words
is, as in were, in a
fanciful Manor of Speaking.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Light a Candle

Strictly as sources of light, candles are pretty cumbersome, in my experience. When "the power" got knocked out in the Sierra Nevada, we first went for the flashlights and then the candles. We didn't have enough bona fide candle-holders, so sometimes we'd heat the bottom of a candle and stick the candle on a saucer--precariously.

No matter what kind of holder you use, you have to walk very slowly with a candle. Then: where do you place the candles in the house? How do you make sure they don't start an unwanted fire? If you use them to read by, how do you position them? It's all quite complicated in a pre-Modern way.

We go through the same thing if and when the power goes out in the Northwest.

At the same time, candles are an immense source of fascination and can be a source of comfort. I didn't take up any religion, per se, until I was pretty far along in life (the year 2000), when I converted to Catholicism at St. Leo Parish. But when I was in Europe two decades before that, I still liked visiting cathedrals, chapels, and churches. They are cavernous, built of stone, and cold, and often (as with gothic cathedrals) the architecture is, as they say, "out there." So what's not to like? The gargoyles can be awfully fascinating, too--and the stained class, obviously.

At any rate, I always lit candles (and contriuted to the candle-fund by putting coins in a box) when I visited these places. Often I lit one for Charlie Epps, or rather for my memory of him. Charlie and another guy were killed in a car wreck one week before we all graduated from high school. The event permanently marked a lot of us who knew them. Perhaps it made us grow up, in some respects, more quickly. Hard to say.

. . . What is one doing, exactly, by "lighting a candle for" someone? Opinions vary about this quesiton. Even so, there seems to be a note of comfort there, or at least a focusing of the mind, regardless of the reason why the lighter lights the candle.

In Germany, in 1981, a colleague took me to an ancient church in the town of Kiedrich, near the Rhein. The parish had received permission to continue using the Latin liturgy. The pews were made of stone. The acolytes, et al., used large incense-burners, and there were candles lit everywhere. I knew very little about Catholicism then, chiefly the historical background, so I was very much a spectator, an outsider, a tourist. But the experience was a bit like being launched just for a moment back into the Medieval era.

In Sweden, candles are a huge part of the Christmas season, and they're associated with St. Lucia. Because the sun doesn't come up for a while in Winter up there, the non-religious connection between Winter and light (candles) is obvious. But the variety of ways Swedes use candles at that time of year is impressive. . . .

. . .Apparently candles made of soy are more environmentally friendly than those made of wax. And I do hope candles made of whale tallow are 100% a thing of the past.

Nowadays aromatic candles seem to be quite the rage. I don't buy many of them, but I pick up quite a few in stores and sniff them. Technically, does this qualify as olfactory shop-lifting? I mean, my nose is taking molecules out of the store without paying for them.


Light a Candle


Sure, light a candle. Watch the wick, air,
and fire adjust to one another. Wait
as flame rights its posture. Glance at
gleaming liquid wax in a shallow pool
around the wick. Hear the nearly
inaudible sigh of oxygen as it expires.

Think your thoughts--or no thoughts:
stare. Consider someone afflicted, recall
someone gone long, say a prayer out loud
or silently, or say nothing. Flame seems
to center silence and the darkness. Light

a candle for a primitive impulse: flame
fascinates, it always has, and aromas
pique. Shadows perform. Light one
for a practical reason: to see better.

Light a candle and carry it in a silent
parade past the Power House. Or let
the candle stand. Stay home and subvert
the Power Houses simply by thinking
for yourself. Light a candle. Good idea.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Plumb Crazy or Plum Crazy

Mostly on "western" or "cowboy" TV shows, I used to hear the word "plumb" used as an adverb, as in "That feller (fellow) is plumb crazy," meaning very crazy. Or "I'm plumb full," meaning "I can't eat another bite." Only occasionally did I hear such a phrase in real life.

According to the OED online and other sources, "plumb" got to mean "very" because it was related to a level or "plumb" line--a line that is (in theory) absolutely level . So plumb = absolutely or at least very. But of course people got it confused with "plum," as in the fruit, and indeed the first citation with regard to the American colloquialism "plumb [crazy]" cites "plum":

1588 T. HUGHES Misfortunes Arthur II. iv. 21 The mounting minde that climes the hauty cliftes..Intoxicats the braine with guiddy drifts, Then rowles, and reeles, and falles at length plum ripe. 1738 J. J. BERLU Treasury Drugs Unlock'd (ed. 2) 67 The best [jujubes] are plumb-full of Pulp, and come from Italy.

There's even a blog out there called "Plum Crazy," which bills itself as the home of the Vast New York Yankee Conspiracy." It's at www.houseofplum.com.

As late as 2002, according to the OED online, "plum" was used to refer to "testicle" in a piece of American fiction. I didn't expect that one, but I guess it makes some sense.

More interesting to me is that "plum" (in England) used to refer to the sum of 100,000 pounds--that is, a monetary "fortune," as the OED notes. I wonder if P.G. Wodehouse, whose nickname was apparently "Plum," earned a plum from his writings. If so, he did indeed earn it with all the laughs the writing generated.

This has all been a shamefully circuitious introduction to a poem that's focused on one kind of plum, the green gauge plum, which is rather large, has a firm "meat," stays the color green even after it ripens, and happens to be my favorite plum, just in case anyone asks.

Treasure

Walking on the gray road toward the place

where the yellow school-bus stopped,

I used to pause and pick a green-gauge

plum to add to my silver lunch-pail, which

I took to school every day. That had to have

been in Septembers. Nobody else seemed

to harvest the plums, which hung on trees

that no one tended to. So little pleased me

then. So much surrounded me: mountains,

water, air, and time, for instance. Also immense

pines and cedars. --Interesting how we learn

to want mostly the wrong things in great

quantities. One ripe green plum tucked into

a metal box next to a lunch my mother had wrapped

in wax-paper, a bit of wire holding the Thermos

full of milk in place: these particularities pleased

me. I picked the plum and packed it away

and had the feeling it was treasure.

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

25 Detective Novels!

(Dame Agatha Christie)






Some months ago, I wrote a post about H.R.F. Keating's wonderful book about his 100 favorite detective novels. Keating was not just an avid reader and reviewer in the genre but a detective-novelist himself, and the book has a fine essay on each choice. A link to the post, which is remarkable chiefly for the great photo of Keating:

http://poetsmusings-muser.blogspot.com/2008/06/rumpole-and-keating-brits-fit-for.html

Of course, when anyone, even experts, sets out to produce such lists, he or she knows the extent s/he's engaged in folly, especially with regard to a genre so abundant and multifaceted as detective fiction.

I decided to go for a list of 25 and not really to try to represent the genre as well as Keating does. These are simply favorite detective novels of mine, although many of them qualify generally as classics.

Actually, I already lied. There are only 24 novels here. I decided to cheat and include Conan Doyle's complete Sherlock Holmes. At least it's in one volume. And although I begin with Holmes, that is to say, Doyle, the books are really in no order in particular. And while I'm at it, let me highly recommend Leslie S. Klinger's magnificent 3-volume The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes. It is to die for, so to speak. It doesn't replace Baring-Gould's two volume work of the same kind, but it adds to it splendidly--if, that is, you're an aficionado of Holmes, Watson, and Doyle.

I confess my less is awfully predictable. Staid. Preemptive apologies if you don't see some of your "faves", or is it "favs"? I must also confess that I've published a detective novel, which does not appear on this list (apparently I do have some shame), and I'm working on another (wish me luck; oy, it's a hard genre.)

And I simply MUST expand my knowledge of the genre and find out more about Canadian detective fiction, more French detective fiction (besides Simenon, and in translation), Spanish and Latin American detective fiction, and detective fiction from nations in Africa, Arabia, Persia, and so on. Recommendations gladly accepted.

1. Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes. I have the venerable Doubleday one, with the introduction by Christopher Morley. My favorite tale? I'll go with "A Scandal in Bohemia."

2. Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon. Sam Spade.

3. Dashiell Hammett, The Thin Man. Nick Charles. I'm tempted to add Hammett's Continental Op stories. Hammett did almost the impossible by creating three highly appealing detectives. Amazing.

4. Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep. Philip Marlowe, wise-ass.

5. Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely.

6. Dorothy Sayers, Strong Poison. Keating prefers The Nine Tailors. Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane. (Harriet is not in The Nine Tailors.)

7. Agatha Christie, Taken at the Flood. Other novels by her are much better known, but this one, as well as The Clocks, has always impressed me. Poirot.

8. Agatha Christie, The Body in the Library. Miss Marple. Perhaps the classic "village cozy" detective novel.

9. Rudolph Fisher, The Conjure-Man Dies: A Mystery Novel of Dark Harlem.

10. Georges Simenon, Maigret's Revolver. There's just nothing quite like a Maigret book.

11. Georges Simenon, Maigret's Rival.

12. Henning Mankell, Sidetracked. Warning: very creepy.

13. Akimitsu Takagi, The Tattoo Murder Case. Warning: very creepy.

14. R. Austin Freeman, Mr. Pottermack's Overshight. (Great droll British title. Warning: unconventional).

15. Edmund Crispin (pen name of Bruce Montgomery, who also wrote music for films), The Moving Toy Shop. Warning: British eccentricity taken almost to the limit. Extremely witty, however.

16. Barbara Neely, Blanche Among the Talented Tenth. A most refreshing amateur-detective novel.

17. Rex Stout, Fer-de-Lance. One of the great debut novels in American crime fiction. Many moons ago, the owner (then) of the Seattle Mystery Book Shop told me this was his favorite mystery novel.

18. Rex Stout, The Golden Spiders.

20. Tony Hillerman, The Skin-Walkers. Jim Chee, Navajo.

21. Joseph Hansen, Early Deaths. Dave Brandstetter is the detective, and his, among other things, gay.

22. P.D. James, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman. I think P.D. James was made a peer of the realm, so I should refer to her as Dame James--is that right? We Americans are so bad about this stuff--and so much else. Anyway, I got to interview her once--about her book, The Children of Men, on which the recent film was based. Adam Dalgleish is her detective. I just purchased her latest Dalgleish, The Lighthouse. It looks good.

23. Walter Mosley, Devil in a Blue Dress.

24. John D. MacDonald, The Deep Blue Goodbye. This is a nostalgic choice because I was really "into" MacDonald novels in my teens, and I thought Travis McGee, was pretty cool. The novels are a tad dated, but MacDonald's a real pro.

25. Aaron Elkins, Old Bones.

I feel terribly about leaving off books by Grafton, Paretsky, Ross MacDonald, James Elmore, Elmore Leonard, J.A. Jance--and dozens & dozens of others. But these 25 I really like.

Happy detective-novel reading to you, and remember: recommendations welcome.

Positionality?

If you hang around academics who teach in the humanities, then you have my condolences. Just kidding. Before that rude clause intruded, I was about to write . . . then you will eventually hear the terms "subject-position" or "positionality."

No, the words don't refer to yoga or Zen, or to grammar, or to sports, in which one may play different positions.

They refer to what used to be called something like "point of view" or "perspective."

Yesterday my point of view was pretty glum. In fact, I may have had the blues--or "the blue-devils," as Abraham Lincoln referred to the condition. But I managed to get some perspective on my perspective by evening (nice word, evening). Good grief, now the lyric, "I just dropped in to see what condition my condition is in," is in my head--Kenny Rogers and the First Edition--help!

Anyway, my perspective, a couple of close advisors, and I watched a film from the Eighties, Diva. French film, 1981. And--surprise!--it was as good as if not better than I had remembered it, and I hadn't seen it since 1981. It is visually superb without being mannered.

In part in concerns electronic recording, and although the equipment is antique and therefore potentially laughable, the writers and directors don't make too much of the technology. Recording and plot mix with the ethics of recording, so you don't focus on extinct things like cassettes. Toss in just a bit of Zen, opera (and music in general), race, gender, wit, and exploitation, and you have a terrific movie, and one that knows its limits. It's one of those films that tries just hard enough but not too hard.

I did notice how much longer scenes from Eighties movies are. There's very little manic camera-work and editing-on-speed that characterizes most feature-films today. I think the attention-span of visual-image consumers now can't span very much.

Oh, and the diva happens to be a diva in real life: Jessye Norman, American opera-singer.

But back to "positionality." Why was a funny new word like that necessary to invent? Well, that's partly what academics do. They invent new words. Also, the emphasis is placed on what a person or a character in a novel or a writer does, as opposed to what that person sees or thinks, so there's a focus on power or (wait for it) "agency." Also, one may speak of "positions" in relation to one another. (Wow. Go crazy.) Of course, there's some recent post-modern, post-Structuralist history to the shift in terminology, but we needn't go into that.


Positionality

I've misplaced my subject-position. It happens.
According to the post-modernist rulebook, which
is only virtual, my default positionality is therefore
one of befuddlement, which could be a ruse, except
a ruse seems so pre-modern, even atavistic. One
thing's certain: I'm not a mystic. Positionality
is such a tricky business. If you write or speak

the word, "positionality," then you've pretty much
positioned yourself into a pretentious corner, and
the commonly insensitive Anglo-Saxon ax will fall
on your multi-syllabic Deluxe Latinate Impressor,
which comes with its two-speed abstractionator.

Cut to: a meadow. My subject-position transport-
system, a hot-air balloon, lies sideways and un-
inflated, mere fabric amidst flax-stubble. This
is Not A Problem. This is Laugh Out Loud.


Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Temporary

If you're a poet or a visual artist, maybe you can relate to this micro-issue I've been having (and it's not the issue of having adopted the idiom, "to have issues")--namely, that I've had the image of a barge on a river stuck in my mind. That's all. Just a barge on a river--preferably on a river at night, but not necessarily. And preferably a barge that's just drifting. I saw many barges on the Rhine, decades ago, and I saw some on the Mississippi once, and I see barges and tankers in the Pacific Northwest, but all of this experience doesn't explain why the image is stuck in my mind like lint in a dryer-screen. I like that metaphor for my mind: empty, full of hot air. Apt.

I mean, it's not like this image has some overwhelming import to it--like the image of the mountain in Close Encounters or the image of the moth-man in The Moth-Man Chronicles.
What's more, or what's less, this image of the barge is demotic at best. My sense is that barges aren't regarded as glamorous or even mysterious.

Anyway, attempting to have done with the image, I tried to put it in different poems, including this one. If you're stuck with an image, I hope it's a better one than a barge, and I have faith that you can do more with your image than I've with mine.



To a Temporary One

Ah, temporary one, why do you
fret so? Why don't you let it all
go like a barge adrift on a smelly
river? Temporary one, what
do you imagine you can stop
or start in your short time
and with your granules of power?

You ride atop a transitory train.
There's no point in yelling
at the city you pass by, asking
why the city doesn't do things
differently. Get off that train.
Forget that barge. Leave

all that complicated freight
to someone else. Yo, temporary
one: Live it out as best you can,
leave it at that, as it leaves you.


Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Flooded Farm

When I was on the train yesterday and, to a lesser extent, when I was in my car (eyes on the road), I noticed just how much farm land gets flooded, not just when river-banks won't hold the rivers but when the ground itself simply gets saturated. Obviously, much farmland is also lowland, so it makes sense that much farmland would be vulnerable to flooding. Nonetheless, the flooding of one's farm has to register way past disappointing, even if you understand the nature of low-lying land, and the work required after the water has withdrawn must seem overwhelming.

(For the short term, if you live in Western Washington or live elsewhere and want to send a dollar or two, Associated Ministries in Tacoma is coordinating many relief-efforts for flooding in general--not just for farmers. And then of course there's also the local Red Cross chapters.)

For the longer term, I wondered to what extent state and federal government entities and/or non-governmental entities take care to preserve farmland, much of which has been paved over or built upon. Even in this post-modern age, we do need things to eat, people to grow them, and land to grow them on/in.

I did discover the American Farmland Trust online: http://www.farmland.org/, and I want to learn more about its work. It looks like among their work is the preservation of farmland, not dissimilar to the way the Nature Conservancy simply (or not so simply) buys land to make sure no one develops it. That direct approach appeals to me.


Flooded Farm


When water won't stop rising, when
it rises efficiently, without violence,
and inundates your farm, wrecking
field, barn, equipment, feed; when
it fills up your house and hosts boats
sent to rescue you, you let yourself
loathe the recklessness of nature,
its ruinous spasms, which knock
farm-accounts off-balance and load
your plans with mud. Oh, you'll be back--

to clean up after flood, to stand and stare
in the silted living-room, to get children
and animals resettled. The struggle's
both a losing and continuous one.
But in this flooded moment, the engine
of the rescue-boat belches blue smoke.
Your grandfather, who started the farm,
had it much worse: that's a statement
you've learned to recite automatically.
It doesn't require belief.


Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Glimpses of Towns

(image: a piece of a road-map of Sweden, including
Söderfors)






My goodness, Washington (the state) is flooding. The combination of much recent snow in the high country plus what we call "The Pineapple Exress"--lots and lots of warm rain from the Pacific--have made many rivers burst. The nearby town of Orting is in danger of going under water. It also has the dubious honor of being in the path of a major lava-flow, should Mt. Rainier decide to wake up. Fire and rain, indeed.

Of course, I picked this day to ride the train north to Bellingham, pick up a car, and drive it back. Things went fine, although even Interstate 5 was covered with water in places, and there were menacing signs about side-highways being closed.

I stopped in the small town of Darrington to get a bite to eat--and thought of Richard Hugo, who dearly loved to visit the small towns of Washington and Montana and write poems about them--well, not really about them so much as about the responses they generated in him. In The Triggering Town, Hugo advises not knowing too much about the towns. He encouraged poets to make all sorts of (unfounded) assumptions. So if I were following his advice, I would assume that the waitress who served me food came in second in the homecoming-queen contest.

Many moons ago, in Sweden, I stopped briefly in Söderfors, Sweden, a former steel and manufacturing town (no doubt some things are still manufactured there), and based strictly on a few observations and a lot of impressions, I wrote a "triggering-town" poem. As both a reader and a writer, one must assess such poems as poems, not as journalistic reports--unless of course the poem really does present itself as an historical poem--and then a different set of legitimate criteria come into play. I remember that a municipal clock wasn't keeping the right time--a charming detail, as far as I was concerned. I remember being exceedingly fascinated by the color of bricks used in many buildings in the town: black. Perhaps the clay used to make the bricks was full of iron or another kind of mineral/metal. . . . On the train-ride today, I saw some "violent brown-black water" rushing off hillsides and out of culverts. . . .

. . .And here's hoping the rivers in Western Washington crest soon and recede quickly, as I post the Söderfors poem:

Söderfors, Sweden


Brown mortar, black bricks, buildings
from industry’s youth.

Two girls walk along a narrow
sandy path over the dam. Violent brown-black
water rushes through
the spillway. A sign cautions.

A gull nests in a granite slab.
(Incubation is a branch of geology.)

Reach for the black bricks—
to know them. Their texture is glass.
They were cooked to the point
at which manufacturing gives way

to beautiful compounds. Söderfors
is a silent town. Its cast-iron clock
is ornate and wrong. Bright green,

nearly lime: that used to be the color
of a rusting Saab parked all by itself.


Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

North Yuba River

North Yuba River


We swam in this snow-cold alpine river,
looked at trout through SCUBA masks,
picked up perwiinkles, which sheathed
themselves in tiny tubular mosaics
they made from grains of gravel.

The river was cold enough to make bones
ache. The sun was hot enough to make us
want to go back in the river again. We were
young and quick and facing upstream like
trout. Now we're not young, we're slow,

and you couldn't get us to go into such a
river without a push or a pull.
Our focus is downstream, where
the river falls away or takes a bend
into the blue canyon.


Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom