El Greco's "Christ on the Cross"

I visited the Getty Museum in L.A. recently. As you no doubt already know, it's a renowned and controversial museum. --Renowned for the sheer volume of art it owns, much of it from uniformly famous European artists. --Controversial because it is a massive museum on a hill overlooking Hollywood and Santa Monica, as much a visual testament to one capitalist's ego as Hearst Castle is.

Also, a lot of curators think J. Paul Getty just bought indiscriminately and/or bought (sometimes) because the price was right. He would also do things like sell a painting, wait for its price to drop (because of the market), and buy it back.

Nonetheless, Getty was a lifelong, dedicated collector who assiduously kept notes on art he liked. He'd earned a a degree at Oxford (after attending USC and Berkeley)--in political science, I think--so with regard to art he was pretty much an autodidact. His money came, at first, from Oklahoma oil. His father was an investor.

The good news about the Getty is that J. Paul left SO much money in trust that it generates vast amounts of capital and makes the museum free to the public. So enormous numbers of people get to look at extraordinary art for free. Whether this free availability of art is achieved through the Getty way or through public financing, I like it. It's the way things should work. Also, the other end of the spectrum--art that's just emerging, art from artists now--needs support, not just the old stuff that people agree is "great."

Looking at Van Gogh's painting of irises (for example) does take the breath away for a moment. More importantly, it makes the painting human again. You see those brush-strokes, quirky and authoritative, made by one guy at a moment in time.

Getty also collected antiquities, manuscripts, and decorative art. He was obviously compulsive. --And Euro-centric--although his collection of early American photographs is astounding, too.

Anyway, the first visit to the Getty is likely to produce . . . gallery fatigue. So much. Too much. Thus, I bought the catalogue. It's not the same as looking at the paintings "in person," but it's a good fall-back position, and a good thing to look at just before you fall asleep. Both cookbooks and art books (ones that aren't heavy) are good pre-snooze reading, in my opinion.

Anyway, I decided to write a poem about El Greco's painting, Christ on the Cross, a painting I like very much, and one the Getty owns. I wasn't able to see it on my visit. Who knows? It could be in storage.

El Greco's Christ on the Cross

In El Greco's Christ on the Cross, earth
rolls up into sky, which looks like sea--
and it's all one blue-black mass
behind the hanging man who said
his reign was not of this shifty world.

El Greco's Jesus, stuck at the center
foreground, isn't handsome, looks up
exhausted, is almost out of here. A
city's suggested beyond and beneath
the nailed feet. It's no city you'd want
to enter. Between the small mound
of bones and limp urban spires, small
men ride tiny white horses. There's

a flag, of course--a standard, which
the painting's enormous blue note
blows away like a dry leaf. Horses
and men seem headed into a lifeless,
lightless cave or copse. Without
a doubt, the flag suggested power
to occupied and occupiers both back then,
as flags often do. El Greco's study's
an indelicate bruise of black-and blue.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Three Bridges

In the following poem, which in part concerns bridges, I use the word doppelganger, the fine German word for "[the] double," as in Jeckyll/Hyde, except the a which spans the space between g and n is supposed to have an umlaut, those two dots. The Blogger menu doesn't seem to include its own drop-down insert-symbol menu, so I attempted to import the word (via cut and paste) with the umlaut, but it was refused.

The word was stopped at the border by Customs guards. There must be some kind of tariff on umlauts or something. I didn't want to surrender doppelganger, so I went with the hideous approximation, doppelgaenger. I think this is what's known as a trivial problem.

When I studied German, I was told that, to create the umlaut-a sound, one should should say "a" while lifting the tongue as if one were saying "e," and it seems to work, generating the proper blend of a and e. Of course, even when I seemed to get it right, I didn't sound like a German, just close enough for linguistic horse-shoes.

Incidentally, some people refer to the wrecked Tacoma Narrows Bridge as Galloping Gertie. I just thought I'd mention that.





Three Bridges


You select one item from a mail-order
catalogue. The company sends two
in error. You open the package and feel
delighted, confused, and disappointed
all at once. You may feel similarly

looking at the redundancy of two
parallel suspension-bridges that
now span the Narrows next to
Tacoma. The second Tacoma Narrows

Bridge is the third, the first one lying
now under water, which is, for bridges,
Hell not baptism. Wind that killed
the first bridge plays the new bridges
like harps. Octopi strum the wreckage
of the old bridge in strong cold currents.

You may feel as if two bridges together
are one bridge too many, a failed
engineering success, a planned excess,
a doppelgaenger of spans.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Zombie

(image: cover of Zombies album, from Decca Records)









Here's the first definition of "zombie" from the OED online:

1. In the West Indies and southern states of America, a soulless corpse said to have been revived by witchcraft; formerly, the name of a snake-deity in voodoo cults of or deriving from West Africa and Haiti.

1819 R. SOUTHEY Hist. Brazil III. xxxi. 24 Zombi, the title whereby he [chief of Brazilian natives] was called, is the name for the Deity, in the Angolan tongue... NZambi is the word for Deity.


The second definition, the figurative one referring to seemingly lifeless persons or Hollywood versions of zombies, is pegged to H.L. Mencken in 1936, when he complained in print that the only roles Hollywood had for non-Caucasian actors were for "zombies." Things have certainly improved for Black, women, Asian-American ( et al.) actors--but how much?

But I digress, as almost always.

Quarter to Five

He works as a zombie from 9 to 5. He climbs
into a catatonic state and performs duties
as are assigned to him. He's under the spell
of employment. (It could be worse.) His
co-worker, Barton, said, "You scare me.
You look like the living dead." "Don't worry,"
he said, "I'm just behaving professionally. After
work I become vibrant and garrulous."
"But I don't get it," Barton said, "--what
job-title around here requires a person
to behave like a zombie?" "In my particular
case," said the man, "it's Chief Deputy for
Zombic Affairs." "And what is it exactly
you do?" asked Barton. "Barton," he said,
"you don't want to know." With his blank,
unnerving, but professionally appropriate
affect, he resumed his duties, for the clock
read only quarter to five.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

In Praise of Nostalgia

(image: 1929 Model A Ford automobile)

In an earlier post, I undercut nostalgia by referring to a quotation from poet Randall Jarrell: "In the Golden Age, everyone probably went around complaining about how yellow everything looked."

I think I'll take the opposite view this time, partly because almost all creative-writing classes and textbooks warn poets about the dangers of nostalgia--namely, sentimentality; getting cheesy. Sometimes it's good to write a poem that takes a contrarian position, for grins if nothing else.

For Nostalgia

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In the old days, nostalgia

didn't have a bad reputation.

Now it needs a publicist. Nostalgia's

a sound strategy. It lets you seem

to go to that place and realize how

much the place has changed or how

much it hasn't but is different anyway

because you've changed. Nostalgia's

also inexpensive. Sit on that big rock

you sat on, looking an lichen. Walk

through those summer streets and on

those winter paths. Go off the high dive,

plunge into the perfect perfume of

that other person's hair back then.

Remember that evening, a big bag

full of life and excellent oblique light.

Nostalgia: it's what you've been missing.

Your life and memory belong to you.

Seek a blend of both that suits you, then.

If people chide you about nostalgia,

ask them what they have to offer in

its place. Uh-huh. I thought so. Not much.

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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Desert Tale

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Whew! I'm trying to keep up with this National Poetry Month poem-a-day regime, but it's not as easy as it looks.


Desert Tale

A stone rings with heat in the desert. A
lizard answers the stone, speaking in tongue.
On the other end of the line is the Sun.
After ringing off, the lizard does push-ups,
then runs away to tell other reptiles
all the hot gossip. After sundown,

a coyote lopes out of a gulch, uses
the same stone, which is still warm,
to call the Moon, which wishes all
the mammals well, predator and prey
alike. After talking with the Moon,
the coyote yip-yips contentedly
across cooling sand.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Dogma

Dogma

Dogma's what we're supposed to to believe.
It puts the ortho in doxy. It's like architecture--
elaborate, well planned, impressive, and completely
human. Acknowledge dogma. Quibble with it if
you've the time and energy. Otherwise,
go with the simplest creed--streamlined, quick,
and pithy. Believe in God (or not: your choice)
and await further developments. Dogma's
a human pursuit, a kind of hobby. Godma
is the thing. Whatever the thing of it is, is,
is God. Cut through the crap. Believe in that.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Virgule: Forgotten or Never Known?

After class, I went to the cafe, where two people behind the counter asked me what "virgule" meant. I said, "I don't know." Then one of them went to a computer and looked it up.

"Virgule" is another name for what we commonly call (referring to punctuation) the "slash" or "forward slash," and it's used (among other ways) to indicate a line-break in poetry when, in an essay, you're quoting from a poem but not presenting the poem as it was printed. Of course I thought, "My God, I should know this word." And then I thought, "Did I know it at one point--and forgot it?" I don't think I ever read or heard the word, however, in all the literature classes I took. I think the mark in question (not a question mark) was always called a "slash." In high school, I even took a typing-class, and I know I never heard the word in there.

I think you were supposed to reach for that key with your pinky-finger, and I probably did so at one point, but now I don't. My typing-fundamentals have been eroded badly.

"Virgule" is certainly a more ornate word than "slash"; indeed, one feels as if one should keep one's virgule (emphasis on the first syllable) in one's vestibule.

Virgule: how cool.

Mr. Several

A student in a Fall semester class asked me one of those extraordinary questions students sometimes ask: "What's your favorite book?" "Of all time?" I asked. "Yes," she said. Of course, I could have used the dodge of "that's an impossible question," but the enterprise was too entertaining and challenging for that. I did take the dodge of "prefacing" my remarks, a well known academic tactic used to stall for time. I said, "Well, I'm assuming you've read all the major spiritual texts from the venerable religious traditions globally." "By "you['ve]," I meant the whole class, before whom she'd asked the question. She: "You shouldn't assume that." I: "True, but I'm going to."

Then I finally answered: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, by Shunryu Suzuki. It's a book about Zen, obviously, but it's a book about the fundamentals of everyone's existence. I also added that one does not have to adhere to the tenets of Buddhism to benefit from the book. I then went on to yadda-yadda about a variety of novels and collected poems I treasured, but I stuck with my original answer. Her question was really not the same as the "what book would you like to have on a desert island? " one (my answer to that, similar to Chesterton's, is How To Surive on a Desert Island).

In any event, Suzuki reminds us that the illusion of a stable, singular personality is just that: an illusion. Everything changes, including the "I" one is, all the time. Hence this poem, I suppose, which is a bit of a come-down from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.

Mr. Several

Mr. Several, who shall you be today?
Will you be buying low and selling high,
crisp-collared amongst incorporated towers?

Perhaps you’ll jelly your brain
with wine and weed, wipe away
drool with a purple hand, address demons

in the park. Maybe touring is in today’s
future, dragging bunioned feet
through many centuries of art,

holding in gas as you pretend
to enjoy an impressioned landscape,
which gives you less pleasure

than standing in a weedy meadow.
Whatever you choose, Mr. Several,
you will need a proper costume,

certain basic memories, beliefs,
and appetites—a language to speak,
cast-members who look like people

you know. We shall be delighted
to contact the usual arranged
establishments, Mr. Several.



Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Schooling

Schooling


I liked poetry even back then, but
it was hard to come by. I had to settle
for "The Marine Corps Hymn" and didn't
know where Tripoli was. I disliked

the tedium of projects and workbooks
and fell so far behind in one workbook,
I entered a different time-continuum.
When the teacher read to us,

my mind wandered to its own stories.
Recess provided a chance to use
the imagination. Math was okay.
Numbers nested up like ants,

and who can resist shapes?
They don't call it "grammar school"
anymore. They say "K through 12,"
mixing letters and numbers.

I can say for sure what school
taught me: for example, South
America exports coffee, and
nine times nine is eighty-one.

Who we are is what we learned.
Can we say that? Yes, we can.
May we? Sure. Should we?
Debatable. Schooling.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Africa

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During National Poetry Month, when we poets are supposed to be writing a poem a day, I thought I'd finally try a poem about Africa. Let's call it a rough draft, shall we? That would make me feel a lot better.

Of Africa

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I've not been to Africa, but

I want to return. They say the

mitochondrial DNA of every woman

can be traced back to that of one

woman in ancient Africa, before it

was ancient Africa, so my mother

was related to her; me, too. Also, I've

been staring at the shape of Africa on

maps since I was five years old.

Western cartographers put Africa

in the middle of my geographic vision.

What's more perpetually tragic and

beautiful than Africa? I don't know.

Africa seems ready to disprove

everything I think and know about Africa.

I know that much for sure. I must return

to Africa, which I've not visited yet.

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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Aristotle's Topical Ointment

(image: likeness of Aristotle)



Aristotle, who seems to have been able to understand everything about everything, helped to establish the field of rhetoric, as well as the fields of science, philosophy, politics, literary criticism, and what we might call "college teaching." (All in a day's work.) Indeed, the volume we refer to now as On Rhetoric, by Aristotle, is composed in large measure of students' notes of Ari's lectures. It's a fabulous book, if you like that sort of thing.

With regard to rhetoric, Aristotle came up with, or at least formally defined, "topics of invention." The idea was that a rhetor (writer, speaker), when approaching a new topic, could approach it equipped with categories and get going more quickly on the task of discovering ("inventing") what he or she would have to say, ultimately, on the subject.

Nowadays, the term "stock issues" is one variation on "topics of invention." In this case, "stock" doesn't mean stereotypical; it means something closer to "well known issues" related to a subject.

For example, if you're getting ready to argue, civilly, with someone about abortion, you can be sure that the issue of when life begins will come up, as will the issue of whether a fetus is a separate life or part of a woman's body (or both). I often tell my composition-students that arguments about abortion effectively end before they begin because neither side is ever going to agree on fundamental points (or stock issues). If you can't agree on "when life begins," it is unlikely that you are going to agree about abortion. In some cases, it's better simply to agree to disagree, as opposed to wasting time staking out familiar territory, getting angry, and so on. At the same time, if you want to persist in writing an argument about abortion, you can use the "stock issues" to acknowledge the "opponent's" point of view and summarize them fairly, unless of course you are a pundit on TV, in which case you will want to be unfair and loud.

A distinct option is to try to find common ground elsewhere in the topic. For example, could people who disagree about abortion agree on sex-education? Maybe such agreement is not likely, but it's not impossible; it's not impossible because the argument hasn't stalled on something like "when life begins."

Another venerable example of "topics of invention" are the journalist's questions: who, what, when, where, why, and how? Go into a story with these questions in mind, get answers to them, and you're on your way to writing a good news story.

During National Poetry Month, when we're supposed to be writing a poem a day (I usually do so anyway--more's the pity), I thought I'd reach back to some of the oldest prompts in the figurative book and steal something from rhetoric to use on poetry (Aristotle would approve, I'm convinced; he was comfortable with both arts).


Topical Poem

Who is the one you are. Good luck discovering
What makes up your Who. In the meantime, interact with
When, which is any moment you're alive, and with
Where, a space full of stuff!
How you interact is only partly up to you.
Why any of this is, is the Mystery.


I invite you to write a poem based on these venerable topics of invention, and I think the odds are quite high that your poem will surpass the one above (ya think?). Use Dr. Aristotle's Topical Ointment!

And by the way, isn't "ointment" just a fabulous word?

Narration In Three Parts, Thanks to Frank O'Connor

(image: writer Frank O'Connor, 1903-1966)




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One of the best books I know on the art of writing short fiction, as a genre distinct from novels, is The Lonely Voice, by Frank O'Connor, pseudonym of Michael O'Donovan. O'Connor wrote many great stories, but his best known one is probably still "Guests of the Nation."

In The Lonely Voice, he argues that the short-story form is better suited than novels to the project of revealing the lives of "submerged" populations in society; of course he meant the term figuratively, but during the debacle in New Orleans, the term became frightfully literal and figurative both. People perpetually at the margins of society were also inundated by water--and by incompetence & indifference.

O'Connor didn't have any formula for deciding on who is submerged and who isn't, but he thought that, for short-story writers, Nikolai Gogol led the way when he wrote about the man in "The Overcoat." Social status has something to do with being submerged, but not everything.

At least one other great thing in the book is O'Connor's simple, effective demonstration of the concepts exposition, development, and drama (or conflict). Here's his demonstration, from p. 26 of the 1985 Harper Colophon edition of the book:

"Exposition we may illustrate as 'John Fortescue was a solicitor in the little town of X'; development as 'One day Mrs. Fortescue told him she was about to leave him for another man'; and drama [conflict] as 'You will do nothing of the kind,' he [Fortescue] said."

Yesterday in the fiction-writing class, I invited students to write three "stories" in three sentences modeled on O'Connor's illustration: exposition, development, drama. I suggested that for a couple of these, they could add a fourth sentence that pointed toward a resolution to the drama. I also said they could use more than one sentence, or use a long sentence, for each section, if necessary. They came up with some terrific stuff. As usual, I wrote with them, and I decided to base one of my responses to the prompts on a familiar story. My version goes something like this (I don't think I used numbers yesterday), and I added a sentence that feinted, at least, toward a resolution:

1. Joseph, the owner of a small business in the Middle East, was engaged to a young woman from the same rural area.

2. One day Joseph said to the young woman, "This is going to sound rude, and I apologize in advance, but you look pregnant."

3. Joseph's young fiance said, "I look pregnant because I am pregnant, and what's more, I'm still a virgin, I know who the father is, you're not the father, and I'd still like to marry you."

4. Joseph said, "I'm going to need a minute."

Everybody Is A Critic

(image: canary, expressing an opinion)

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Everybody Is A Critic

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"That's not poetry," said the cat,

adding, "--it's mere doggerel."

Then the cat closed its eyes,

as if to say, "Go revise."

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Poets, even cats are critics.

Your poems will bring you love

from neither human nor creature.

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Feed the cat. Walk the dog.

Write your poetry. If you want

a friend, buy a canary. Just don't

line the cage with one of your poems.

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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom