Splendid New Chapbook from Karen Weyant

(image: cover of Stealing Dust, by Karen J. Weyant)








I just finished reading a chapbook of poetry by Karen J. Weyant, Stealing Dust. It is splendid.

The poems are firmly anchored in working-class experiences in an area of the nation routinely called "the Rust Belt," and they represent varied, nuanced elements of those experiences, including but not limited to the perspectives of working-class women. The poems are clear and accessible but deceptively complex, and one wants to return to poems multiple times. The voice is mature and unpretentious, the imagery superb, and the control of language admirable.

Several poems have irresistible titles: "The Spring of Hand-Me-Downs," "The Girl Who Carved Jesus Into Her Forearm," "Delusions of a Die Setter's Daughter," "Beauty Tips from the Girls on the 3rd Shift," and "Why Men in Factories Should Never Write Love Stories." The latter poem may well be my favorite in the book, but it has lots of competition.

Certainly my own working-class roots (albeit on the Left Coast) and a general affinity for working-class literature draw me to the book, but at the same time, this poetry succeeds on its own merits, and if you like strong, unaffected contemporary poetry, you'll enjoy this chapbook.

It is from Finishing Line Press, P.O. Box 1626, Georgetown, Kentucky 40324, and of course it's available on amazon.com as well. The ISBNs are 1-59924-397-0 and 1-59924-397-9. Buy one for yourself and for a friend (a National Poetry Month gift), and most certainly urge your local librarian to order one. Finishing Line is a well know publisher of chapbooks.

Weyant teaches writing and literature at Jamestown Community College, and she also writes a blog called "The Scrapper Poet," which is on the blog-roll to the right.

Let Him Collect His Thoughts

Thoughts Collected

He collected his thoughts, arranged them
in a heap outside on parched hard dirt.
The assembly didn't impress. It included
a rudimentary view of Spinoza's philosophy,
a reminder to buy shoes, numerous tattered
worries, sad wee handcrafted boxes of hope,
an image of a trout, one of a grasshopper
spitting brown juice, a strong opinion about
torture, and countless scraps, shards, and bits.

As expected, the pile smelled powerfully
of confusion, the odor of which is not unlike
that of mothballs. Having collected his thoughts,
he turned his back on them, went inside,
and produced more thoughts. Homo sapiens.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Pluto's Credit- Score

(image: photo of Pluto and its satellite [or moon], Charon--taken by Professor Karen Rehbock, University of Hawaii)

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I was angry when the astronomers decided to down-grade Pluto's status from "planet" to something else, so angry that I forgot what the something else is. Boulder? Now Charon can't be a moon. It is a "satellite." Not a single astronomer consulted me before the decision was made. Go figure. Pluto had been my favorite planet in the solar system. It was, after all, the most eccentric planet.

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Pluto's Credit-Score

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When he applied for a loan, the bank

asked him for collateral property it might

seize if he were to default on the loan,

and he offered his share of Jung's collective

unconscious human mind. The bank said

his share, indeed the whole unconscious mind,

vast as it might be, was worthless, at least

in terms of collective human economics.

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He said, "The symbols of what you call

'money' are Jungian." This was a wild

guess on his part, but the bank didn't

quibble with the assertion. It refused

to lend him money. After he left the bank,

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he felt like the planet Pluto must have felt

after it had met with astronomers, who

told it that they no longer considered it

to be a planet. He heard himself say,

out loud, "Well, I don't regard you as

astronomers, so we're even!" He knew

he deserved the disapproving glances

of passersby. He knew Jung, and for

that matter Freud, would suggest that

he was projecting his financial difficulties

onto the inanimate object, Pluto. Still,

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if he were a loan-officer and Pluto

were applying for a loan, he would

approve the loan even without the

collateral of Pluto's moon, Charon.

Pluto wouldn't have to ask twice.

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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Grief-Bushes

(image: boxwood hedges; the Latin name for boxwood is Buxus japonica, I think)

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Bold Talk

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I buried several sadnesses, not knowing

they considered themselves to be seeds.

They broke through ground and grew

into grief-bushes that shadows fertilized.

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Today, I had about enough of them,

so I snipped and chopped. I yanked

out roots. I stood there like a plow-horse

lathered in sweat, too tired to be sad

or happy, with just enough energy left

to vow never to sow sadness again.

Yes, I vowed. Bold talk.

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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Mongrel

(image includes Italian Greyhounds)


There's a pet-store a few doors down from where I usually get coffee on a retail basis. I like pet-stores for supplies, but the display of animals in the window bothers me. There were some rabbits there around Easter time, and only one of three were purchased. Do I want to know what happened to the remaining rabbits? They aren't there anymore.

What are there are two "pure-bred" (whatever) Italian greyh0unds. Extremely cute, of course: that's the point of the window-schtick.

So it was with some surprise that when I looked up "mongrel" on the OED, an example included in the earliest example was "greyhound." Pure-bred Italian mongrel? As I said, "whatever." The OED [online]....

A. n.

I. The offspring or result of cross-breeding, miscegenation, mixed marriage, etc.

1. A dog having parents of different breeds (in quot. c1460 a heraldic representation of such a dog); a dog of no definable breed resulting from various crossings. Also: the offspring of a wolf and a dog (obs. rare).

c1460 Bk. Arms in Ancestor (1903) 4 250 [Azure a fesse gold between ‘quatre mains’ of gold quartered with silver] ij mongrelys of goulys. 1486 Bk. St. Albans sig. fiiij^v, A Grehownd, a Bastard, a Mengrell, a Mastyfe.


Wow, who knew that, at one point, grehound, bastard, mongrel, and mastiff were all synonyms? Of course, humans quickly if not immediately transferred their mistaken notions of dog-breeding to insane notions about human "races."

Of course, part two: the more allegedly "accidental" breeding goes on (with dogs, let's say), the more likely the gene-pool gets stronger, yes? Genetic diversity = genetic strength, or a greater likelihood thereof? Perhaps this is my own insane notion, but I doubt it.


Mongrel

Our operatives have determined he's
probably not worth our operatives' time.
He's anti-social but polite. He has problems
with authority but a Puritan's work-ethic.
He's a well-traveled, well-read hick. And
he's extremely loyal but can't grasp
the concept, patriotism. Alas, he's

a hot-tempered pacifist and a cloistered
utilitarian. He's often observed in the company
of anarchists, contrarians, the shunned,
the shy, the maladjusted, and the eccentric.

He is not to be trusted unless he's your friend.
He's jaded and guileless, optimistic, morose,
habitual, and unpredictable. He is by turns
too loud and too quiet. Our operatives,
who do a lot of listening and watching,
report he does a lot of listening
and watching. These latter are his most
worrisome traits, but our operatives
have determined he's no threat to the State.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

A Visit From 1971

(image: album-cover of Led Zeppelin IV, 1971)












Hey, 1971

1971 rolled up out of somewhere in a 1965
Ford Fairlane, which seized itself with fried
brakes and halted in a heap of smoking steel,
bringing sounds of a baritone AM DJ yelling
over the first thuds of a rock-song. 1971

got out and loped up the sidewalk
toward him. 1971's hair was mismanaged
but sincere; the year's draft number was
low. The clothes 1971 wore looked like an amateur
Cubist installation. Oh, here came 1971,
jogging now, yelling delighted words. It
grinned as it ran up and embraced him, as smelly
and guileless as a dog. He didn't know what
to say to 1971 except the ironic, "Nice Car."

1971 said, "Hey, man, could I borrow, you
know, 25 bucks or so? When I get to
San Francisco, I'll send you a cashier's check,
man. Sound good? Right on." He retained
great affection for 1971 and gave the year
a 50-dollar bill, which disappeared into a
blue-jean pocket, and BAM, the Fairlane
backfired as 1971 took off, no seat-belt.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Seven Sins

We bought an HD TV quite a while ago, but we usually forget to tune in to the HD channels, a practice that a younger member of our kinship-network finds exasperating. Today, however, we tuned to the HD version of the History Channel, or one of the HC's incarnations. HC on HD. Wow. Go crazy. Party down with some documentaries.

We watched a show on the seven (deadly) sins, which I can never list completely--and this failure on my part probably gets us closer to double-digits in sin-counting. Anway, here they are.

Envy
Sloth
Gluttony
Wrath
Pride
Lust
Greed

I'm not sure, but these look more like "common traits" than "sins," but I guess they could count as both. I also think they "bleed" into one another. Envy and pride seem to do a lot of commerce, for example. Wrath and greed. Sloth and gluttony. Eat a massive turkey dinner and then go try to be non-slothful.

The program featured some neuro-scientists from U.C. Berkeley, and, as one might expect, they have been able to map brain-responses to such things as greed (a kind of addiction, at least partly) and lust. Also, the economist Robert Reich, whose approach I happen to like, noted that a sensible goal is probably not to try to eliminate greed but to channel and manage it so that (my words, not his) the greatest good may be enjoyed by the greatest number. In other words, he's not a big "free market" guy, but then again, no one else is, either, because there's no such thing as a "free" market. Somebody's always got a finger on the scale, inside information, a head start, or whatever (in my humble, not prideful, opinion).

The scientists from Berkeley did not seem to be fatalistic. They did not imply that because our brains may be hard-wired to struggle with resisting greed or getting out of a "greed cycle," we should give up on trying to reduce greed. They are suggesting, I think, that there simply is a neurological/chemical piece to what was once described soley in terms of sin, or of one person's "moral failing." Similarly, the possible connection between clinical depression and sloth seems obvious.

I was thinking of writing some poems based on the seven (deadly) sins, but I'm feeling a little slothful--I mean tired; yeah, that's the word: tired. Besides, thriller-writer Lawrence Sanders (R.I.P.) already got there before me and wrote a series of books based on the sins. And then there's the infamous film, Seven, which I think was too greedy in its need to be horrifying. The real master of the seven sins, however, was Dante, with his Divine Comedy and its circles of Hell. ("Comedy" seems like a bit of a stretch in this case.) I don't feel any envy toward Sanders, Brad Pitt, or Dante, by the way.

Interesting Post About U.S. Weapons

Following is a link to a post about a bomb the U.S. Air Force uses. The post is from the blog, "Utopia or Bust," a reincarnation of "Hyperborean."


http://utopiaorbust.wordpress.com/2009/04/17/the-last-of-the-daisy-cutters/

Friday's Prompt

We were working on love-poems--broadly defined--today in the poetry class: love poems each student had selected from an anthology and drafts of love poems students had written. About half-way through the class, I had students (who were working in pairs) select one word they especially liked in their partner's love poem, and the resulting list was as follows:

solace, marshmallows, drool, poot, bleeds, hug, appetite, adoration, theater, Yuppie, Shiva, resonates, wishies, emerged, phenylethylamine, [and] packaged.

Then I had everyone, including me, quickly draft a poem that had to use all these words. The "rules" allowed for changing the tense of a verb (hug, hugged--if indeed one was using this word in a verbal form) and for bringing in other words, as needed. This kind of quick drafting often produces remarkable results, as does starting with language and moving toward a subject, as opposed to having a subject/topic/theme/scene in mind and going in search of the language.

Obviously, some intriguing problems and opportunities arose. Who was Shiva? God/Goddess of Destruction in Hindu spirituality. We didn't have time to discuss the topic extensively, but we concluded that a) the deity may be, for lack of a better term, androgynous, although s/he is ofte represented visually in feminine terms, and that b) referring to the deity solely as one of destruction may be reductive. We acknowledged a considerable lack of knowledge, that is.

"Wishies," we discovered, was more or less a word a poet in class had invented. Phenylethylamine is a pheromone.

And we noted that the level of diction ranged from the lofty "adoration" to the colloquial, and what some might consider vulgar, "poot." In other words, we got lucky, poetically speaking.

After writing, we had the choice of sharing all or part (one line) of what we'd written aloud with the whole group. Here is, alas, what I wrote, product of my own medicine, so to speak (and feel free to take the "challenge" yourself). I could be mistaken, and often am, but I think I managed to use all the words.

[Draft-poem from Friday's Prompt]

Following the solace of a hug,

phenylethylamine bleeds into

the theater of my Yuppie brain.

Is adoration anything more than

a packaged poot of wishies? Does

Shiva drool after devouring

marshmallows? Appetite has

emerged and resonates. That's

all I know for sure.

What does one do with such a quick draft? Well, the immediate choice is to "toss" or "keep," although I advise poets never actually to toss anything. I still like Richard Hugo's idea of "stripping a poem for parts," so that you may certainly keep a draft "out back" with other "parts," but you need not actually destroy it. If you "keep," then most likely you have a lot of revising to do.

Also, the poem may simply be a marker on the path to another poem. Maybe you'll get interested in the subject of Shiva, of marshmallows, or of pheromones. Maybe one one line or phrase will stand out, and you can remove that and build a draft of another poem around that. Often, however, quick-drafting produces energetic, surprising results, some of which can lead, eventually, to good poems.

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Sleeping Seaside

Sleeping Seaside


The sea can give only so much. It shrugs
tides inland as far as possible. Then its
conscience, the moon, urges caution. What's
left behind on strands looks broken or worn.
Anyway it's exiled from origin and function:
a cracked shell, a driftwood plank.
A receding tide's a kind of regret.

Hearing the sound of surf all night erodes
the will's high bank. That's when a tide
of sleep advances. That's when you wade
in the water, child, and shrug off the day.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Guitar

As I continue to participate as best I can in the great National Poetry Month poem-a-day roundup (cue the theme song from the ancient TV series, Rawhide), I've decided to post a guitar-poem, of sorts--meaning it is sort of a poem that's sort of about guitars.

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All Guitars

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Do you ever wonder how many people

worldwide are strumming a guitar at

the exact same instant, such as now?

Me, neither--well, except for this

one time. What if we could hear

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this simultaneous strumming's

combined sound? It would be

like a guitar-hurricane hitting

the coast of our listening. We'd

have to got to a shelter

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while the guitar-storm roared

overhead. How many strummers

strum at once? Estimating this number

creates a complex chord in the head,

a gnot of notes compelled to get along.

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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Fine Poem By Ms. Cugno

I feel compelled to share a link to a post (which includes a poem) by musingsinflux, also known as island musings, and also known as ms.-cugno-to-some:

http://kcugno.blogspot.com/2009/04/bit-o-fire.html

Deliveries

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In our small town, there was a guy named Harold Hallman who hauled freight for a living, but he didn't change his name to Haulman. He drove 3-plus hours down the mountains to Sacramento, got the stuff, and drove 3-plus hours back, delivering bread, milk, meat, etc., to the grocery store but also delivering stuff to indivuals in town.

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For example, my parents had Harold deliver milk and ice cream for a while. The only ice-cream he ever delivered was Maple Nut because that was the flavor my father liked. --Not a democracy, in case you were wondering. The ice cream came in a huge tub, which I guess held 5 gallons. Maybe ten. All the stuff came in boxes made of hardwood and metal. I think the Crystal Dairy Company in Sacramento owned them, and Harold was affiliated with it.

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At any rate, my father kept some of those boxes, which he flipped over (metal bottom on top) and put in the back of his pickup when he had too many passengers than could fit in the cab. I believe this sort of practice is illegal now, as it should be, especially in late Fall in the Sierra Nevada (when al fresco transportation is not enjoyable), but also because of the whole seat-belt thing, etc. Sometimes there were several of us back there with hounds because my father wanted to drive around looking for deer after work, towards dusk, when the weather was even more lovely.

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Rarely did we see a deer that he might shoot, I presume because the deer were at home with their feet up, reading the newspaper. Nor did we really want him to see a deer and to shoot it--for we were cold and selfish and did not wish the evening to be extended any further.

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A very classy image comes to mind: a family and its dogs riding around mountain roads. The dogs had their noses in the air.

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I'm sure my father asked Harold's permission to keep those unusually durable boxes, but it never occurred to me to ask. The strange boxes were simply part of the landscape immediately around our house. One of my brothers worked for Harold for a while, loading and unloading freight.

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Deliveries

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The time has always come

somewhere, I suppose, for

who knows what. To whomever

time has come, the what usually

becomes clear on delivery. Time

delivers the goods and the bads.

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It's the biggest shipping company,

with offices in every moment and

deliveries to any place. You look

into a moment, see the package,

open it, and say, "Hey, look what

time delivered. I don't really

remember ordering that."

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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom