One from Edward Thomas

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*(image: Edward Thomas)
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The poetry of Edward Thomas (1878-1917) is often grouped with that of other World War I British poets like Wilfred Owen and Siegried Sassoon, chiefly because Thomas was killed in the war (he volunteered for the army, as he was too old to be drafted), but also because he did write a few poems when he was serving in France, before he was killed by artillery-fire.

But most of his poetry concerns rural Britain, is closely observed, and--although it deploys conventional rhyme and meter--is plainspoken. Thomas made his living chiefly as a "literary journalist"--writing reviews, editing anthologies, etc., and he was an early champion of Robert Frost's poetry. Thomas liked the way Frost had ignored a lot of conventional poetic diction and written precisely but plainly. Thomas himself first published his poetry under a pen-name. Then, after Thomas's death, Walter de la Mare put together a collection. I've been reading a relatively new paperback edition from Handsdel Books, with a nice introduction by Peter Sacks.

Here's a short poem related to May from the book:

The Cherry Trees

by Edward Thomas

The cherry trees bend over and are shedding
On the old road where all that passed are dead,
Their petals, strewing the grass as for a wedding
This early May morn when there is none to wed.

Did I mention that, like Frost, Thomas could be a bit glum, even before World War I came along?

Spuds

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After a three-year hiatus, I'm going to plant some potatoes. Yukon Gold is the choice, ordered (as "sets") a bit late from a Midwest nursery-company. For some reason, I like having spuds in the ground out there. Looks like we'll have lettuce, carrots, and (green) onions, too, as well as tomatoes, although the latter ripen rather late in our global niche.

I grew up hearing potatoes sometimes referred to as "spuds." According to the OED online, this slang-term for potato emerged rather late, preceded by "spud" (as noun) as referring to a variety of tools, mostly small ones used for digging but also kinds of knives. Here is an example of the potato-reference:

1860 Slang Dict. 225 In Scotland, a spud is a raw potato; and roasted spuds are those cooked in the cinders with their jackets on.


In spite of the syntax, the spuds are the ones with their jackets on, not the cinders. One whom I know well has always found the reference to "potatoes with their jackets on" most humorous; it's a reference that appears in many cook-books, and it is charming to think of spuds going to a tailor to get fitted for potato-blazers.

Spuds
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Potatoes grow out of potatoes like an
underground dynasty while the rest
of agriculture bustles above-ground
with blossoms, pods, and fruits.
Potatoes multiply themselves in sequestered
arithmetic. They send up gestures
of leaves to appease sunlight. Meanwhile,
they populate their tomb, glow inwardly,
will stand for harvest or sit tight--possess
a kind of divine patience, an honest secrecy.
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Spuds aren't glamorous, decorative,
geometric, or vibrant. They're lumpy,
plain, idiosyncratic, and common. They
get along with rocks, advise moles, ignore
frost, and huddle in carbohydrate caucuses.
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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Philo-Silly

So we have a two-day "Reading Period" between the end of classes, a weekend, and final-exams. Given the rhythms of the academic year, this "Reading Period" is more often a period in which to collapse, or take in some oxygen, get silly, or otherwise recover. I know academia looks easy, but it's a bit of a long haul from late August through end-of-May, at least for the gray matter.

I decided to get silly and write some doggerel about philosophy, in the spirit of Reading Period, and recalling certain blue-book exams I took many moons ago. Or maybe it's catterel. Cats do tend to get that look on their faces that suggests, "I'm afraid I cannot possibly consider your request, as it conflicts with my ontology."

Philo-Silly

You can't shake Zeno's hand.
Socrates: a syllogistic man.
Look for Plato in a cave--
but only ideally, you knave.
According to Aristotle,
bottle embodies Bottle.
Nietzsche was a Super guy
who went a bit cuckoo--why?
Just to spite us, Heraclitus
said change will always change us.
Enough with playing games,
said William (not Hank) James:
How do ideas work all day,
and Say affects Do in just what way?
Sartre made a kind of cafe art
out of making meaning: to start,
you say that things are just absurd.
In the Beginning, was the Word.
Marx was one classy, bearded dude
who thought the Ruling Class was rude.
Descartes thought, thus thought he was.
Cogito, ergo Doritos, Cuz.
Spinoza knows a thing called God--
the only Substance--how very odd.
Sophie and Phil went up the hill,
then took Fig Newton's gravity pill.
Be, know, think, define, and do--
philo-silly on the nutshell. Whew.


Hans Ostrom

Plumber

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Plumber
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The plumber that summer was busy. So
many pipes seemed clogged or rusted, hence
entrusted to this fitter of tubes that transfer
effluvia and water. What was odder was
the silence of the plumber, who only sat
and smoked on breaks, would not characterize
the leaks and clogs but only fix them--with
skill firmly fitted to a will; then he would
present us, with deeply dirty hands, a bill,
which we were glad to pay, and after which
the silent plumber spoke: "I don't think
you'll have any more trouble with those
pipes," and indeed the pipes seemed to
work only too well, as if afraid the plumber
in a fit might return with a wrench in his hand.
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Basketball

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Basketball

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Only ten persons are allowed on the gleaming

dance-floor at a time, though thousands may

crowd edges of the rectangle and loom in galleries.

Also, two or three jesters dresssed in stripes

may intermingle, interrupt, blow whistles,

and make humorous gestures. The ten dancers

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improvise in clothes not dissimilar to underwear.

The ritual expresses a bifurcated attitude toward

a brown sphere. One person for instance may

desire the sphere so much as to reach, jump, dive,

beg, or flail for it; may hold it close, even dance

with it. An instant later, the same person may

cast the sphere away as if it were accursed or

diseased. Clearly, the drama partly concerns love,

possession, covetousness, fear, and fickleness.

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There are two symbolic window-panes, with

hoops and nets attached to them, at either

end of the rectangle. These installations

are supplemented by line-drawings on

the dance-floor. It is all art: set-decoration,

of interest but not crucial. Often the brown

sphere falls through those hoops and nets,

and such an accident seems to affect the crowd.

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The whole activity seems to be a privileged,

ceremonial performance much obsessed with

height and time. Indeed, a clock looms

high above the dancers, well out of reach;

a sense of haste often pervades the dance.

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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Biblical Capitalism?

I was on my way to a used bookstore today when I drove past a church, and it had one of those signs on which you can change the words as often as you like. It is a Presbyterian Church.

The sign read, "Capitalism/Biblical/Practical." I thought at first that the sign referred to three different worldviews or epistemologies. You know, like C, B, or P: choose one! But then I realized (correctly, I think; or if not, then my realization was a delusion) that the sign was suggesting capitalism was not just practical but supported by the Bible.

Is that theologically and historically correct? --To assert that capitalism is Biblical? I don't think it is. Isn't capitalism as we know it more or less one function of industrial society? And I don't think the words "capital" or "capitalism" appear in the Bible, in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, or English. We'll leave aside, for the moment, what Jesus's attitude toward wealth seems to be in the Gospels. Is there an Aramaic equivalent to "capitalism"? Hmmmm.

Anyway, at least the sign made me wonder, and I do know that the "gospel of wealth" is popular in certain Christian circles. To which I say, "Oy," or maybe "Get thee behind me."

I expended some cash but not real capital on the following books:

A first edition of Karl Shapiro's Essay On Rime, a book-length poem about prosody. (Hey, watch the prof. party down at a used bookstore.)

Oxford Blood, a mystery novel by Antonio Fraser, widow of Harold Pinter. I once interviewed her about her book on Henry VIII's wives. It was one of my favorite interviews during my three years as a part-time "books" columnists. Pinter called her during the interview--honest, I'm not lying. He did not ask her to put me on the phone. Oh, well. One with whom I live will read the mystery first. It has already disappeared into her reading-sphere.

And Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler's Olympics, by Jeremy Schaap.

I didn't find any books on Biblical, practical capitalism, but I must also admit that I did not look for any.

Rained So Hard

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Rained So Hard
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It rained so hard the roof started barking
and woke me up to a satisfactory feeling.
I got up and looked outside, saw how much
and fast water'd fallen in that prehistoric
way, where clouds bunch up, get weighty
gray with devaporated wet, set themselves
just so, separate water into individual
pearls, let go, and give them graciously
to gravitational pull. Hey, I'd have to check
with theologians and meteorologists, but
there might be molecules of perspiration
from Buddha, Moses, Jesus, the Prophet, and
Confucius, or from just plain folk, in a drop
that hits your roof or hand, and the thought
of that's satisfactory, too--is what I was
thinking in my groggy condition when
I heard that hard rendition of rain working
angles overhead. Satisfied, I went back to bed.
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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

New Poet Laureate For Tacoma

Poet and spoken-word artist Antonio Edwards is the new (and second) Poet Laureate of Tacoma. Edwards hails originally from Brooklyn and is a splendid performer of his pieces, as witnessed last Thursday night, when the announcement was made and several poets read/performed.

Edwards takes over from Bill Kupinse, who was named the first Poet Laureate of Tacoma last year (and who happens to be my colleague). It's a post sponsored by Urban Grace Church, and it is one based upon a model used in San Francisco, where a church sponsors a poet laureate. Tad Monroe, the pastor at Urban Grace, is also a poet.

The fusion of poetry, community, and spirituality that the laureate position represents and promotes is splendid--and somehow well suited to Tacoma, a bit of a counter-intuitive city that often mixes things in unexpected ways.

Novelist Rescued

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(image: Florida swamp)
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Novelist Rescued From Becoming Genius
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He got lost in his plots. Ten drafts later,
his characters went looking for him, found
him in a Florida swamp, nursed him back
to writing. "Just tell our stories, will you?"
they asked. "But I'm a genius," he explained.
"I can't just be telling stories." The characters
looked embarrassed for him. "What is it"?
he asked. "What's the matter?"
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"Well," said one of them, "that genius-test
you took? --The result turned out to be
a false-positive." "You mean . . .?" he said.
A character picked up the novelist's crest,
which had fallen. The character explained,
"You're just a story-teller. Sentences and
paragraphs--that sort of thing." The former
genius said, "This reminds me of the time
one of you showed up at an anti-war rally
costumed as Napoleon because you'd just
come from a dress-rehearsal, and then . . . ."
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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Found-Poem Finale For April

(image: badger, not greasy)

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Well, I had several poems in mind to post on this last day of write-a-poem-a-day month, a.k.a National Poetry Month.

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Then I read the newspaper this morning--the Tacoma News Tribune, which, like all newspapers, is getting smaller all the time, it seems. On page three of the first section, political writer Peter Callaghan had a piece on local building-codes and developers.

Here is one quotation from that piece: "Which is where the 'greasy badgers' came in. That's the phrase architect David Boe, the vice chairman of the [planning] commisssion, used to describe the ornery animals he sometimes has as clients (figuratively, I hope). They ask him to design buildings that 'maximize the site.'"

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I was, of course, interested in Callaghan's use of "figuratively," for, as a poet, I was hoping that the fellow's clients were literally badgers. Ah, well. To each his own. On behalf of badgers, I was a little insulted that they were described as greasy and compared to developers. What did they do to deserve that?

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But the "found-poem" lay in the headline, so thanks to the headline-writer who worked on Callaghan's piece. I have arranged the headline as a poem, and I think the found-poem is nice way to finish off National Poetry Month in this wee badger-den of the blogosphere.

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Found Poem

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Building codes

Can't save us.

We're at the mercy

Of

Developers' moods.

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from The News Tribune (Tacoma), April 30, p. A-3, bottom.

Small Poem For April

(image: Gerard Manley Hopkins)












If memory serves, I first read the poetry of Hopkins when I was 17 and a freshman in college. I was a bit younger than other freshmen because I'd skipped second grade. I don't think they have students skip grades anymore, but I'm not sure about that.

Anyway, when I read "Glory be to God for dappled things" (from "God's Grandeur"), I immediately was taken by Hopkins' poetry and his view of things, a view that is in many ways far from pious. Later I embarked on an exhaustive study of Hopkins' "sprung rhythm," the simple version of which is that instead of spacing out stresses regularly (as in iambic meter), you jam them together and then emphasize them with alliteration. I often like to say Hopkins brought Be-Bop rhythms to English verse, but I'm not sure how helpful or accurate that statement is. It is fair to say he jazzed things up.

Since I first read Hopkins' poetry, I've had many opportunities to try to teach it. A majority of students simply don't take to it, even students who are otherwise open to poetry and to poetry that may seem, at first, difficult. I've tried innumerable different ways of helping students to get inside his poetry, but nonetheless, Hopkins' poetry remains not so much an acquired taste as an instant taste. If you "get" the poetry, you are likely to "get" it right away, I've decided. At any rate, I still cherish Hopkins' counter-intuitive love of "dappled" things--that which is squiggly, dotted, spotted, cluttered, and kind of a mess in Nature. The following poem may or may not be in that vein, but it satisfies my desire to write a short poem in April. (And there's one more day to go in write-a-poem-a-day April, my friends.)


Small Poem In April

This small poem honors
smooth blue pebbles,
flecks of color on birds'
feathers, stalwart friends,
fair wages, and rest.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Summer Carpentry

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Summer Carpentry

Sometimes when Sierra sun baked
and bleached a new house's skeleton,
I'd stand on a plywood sub-floor, jeans
sweat-drenched, forearm fatigued from
hammering all day, and look up at
an immobile mountain greened with
manzanita, fir, oak, and pine, and know
something secretly but not sadly.

We'd built that thing, frame of dwelling.
Wages came, sun lavished light, mountains
mimed illusion of permanence. Everything,
everything changes always and everywhere.
This isn't news but you can come to it
newly after a long's days work with wood.

And the Old Man said, "Hans, time to pick
up the tools," and it was 4:00 p.m. that one
day once in all of time, and somebody wanted
a house by the river. A canyon-breeze caught
sweet odor of sawdust. I stopped staring,
came back to tasks, reached for a saw,
a plumb-bob, a level; moved in and with the
changes. Newly nailed partitions cast shadows.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

List-Poem on the Loose

Here's a list-poem I've been messing around with for the longest time. Actually, the time hasn't been the longest, not even close.

List-poems often work out well on the their own terms, as good poems, but they can also serve as good warm-up exercises or as ways to generate ideas.

In this one, I think I wanted a poem that could be read top-to-bottom (on the left margin) as well as left-to-right (the usual way), but, as usual, this goal ends up being too clever by half or not clever enough or something. Anyway, the point is . . . hang loose, list loosely, and have some fun with a list-poem of your own.

Each

each word a stone each
stone a weight
each weight a wish each
want a wait
each wait a time each
time loss
each loss a lake each
lake a cloak
each cloak a shade each
shade a wish
each wish a lie each
lie a word
each word a yes each word a
no each word a breath
each breath an each

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom