Comparative Poetry Enterprises, LLC

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(photo: legendary American car-dealer Cal Worthington)
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For as long as I can remember, I've loved the language of advertising because it doesn't make any sense; or rather it makes indirect emotional sense, if you let it do so.

Let's see, what are some of my favorite words and phrases from advertising? In no particular order. . . .

1. "Hurry!" Uh, no. I don't want to hurry. Hurry, call the number. Hurry on down--our store is closing forever. Order now and we'll include the Ginsu Slicer for free. I'd be more likely to pay attention if they said, "Hey, take your time, pal."

2. "For a limited time only." Well, of course. What would we expect--that the sale would go on into infinity? Maybe for a sale of Escher prints.

3. "While supplies last." This probably means they're worried supplies WILL last.

4. "Not sold in stores." Then there arose a store, for a while at least, in malls that featured things sold "only" on TV. That was almost paradoxical.

5. "Valid at participating stores." I think they should force non-participating stores to accept the validity, too. Just kidding.

6. "[Actor's name here] like you've never seen her before!" Okay. Since I've never seen her, only her image (at best), I think I'll be able to handle it.

7. The "because" statement. This statement often comes at the end of an advert, and is preceded by . . . nothing--except perhaps the name of the company or product. But there's no assertion, no effect that is followed by a cause. "Picklewad Insurance . . . because tradition matters." Notice they don't even say "Picklewad Insurance is an old company; therefore it is arguably a traditional company; tradition matters [in a good way]; so consider buying insurance from Picklewad." No, the "because" clause must stand alone. Fabulous.

8. "The name you trust." Who said? And maybe I trust the company's name but not the company.

9. "A 50 dollar value for only 19.99." What is meant by "value"? Who set the value? Not a neutral third-party, I bet.

10. "Money-back guarantee." As opposed to the guarantee where you don't get your money back--the non-guarantee guarantee (which happens to be the real "guarantee")?

Anyway, a poem in this spirit:

Because Comparisons Matter

Leaving aside a summer's day, what
would you like to be compared to?
A winter's night? A rhino's hoof? A
traffic jam in Athens, Toronto, or
Beijing? You tell us. At

Comparative Poetry Enterprises (CPE),
LLC, we try to satisfy the subject
of our poetry. Our philosophy is
that good market-research leads to
good poetic analogies. No disrespect
to Shakespeare, but times have changed.

The poetry-market is tough, especially
in the Analogy and Love sectors, which
have been saturated. We're CPE: dedicated
to making the right comparison for you.
Contact us for a free, no-obligation
trial-poem. You'll be glad you did!
CPE . . . where comparisons are incomparable.

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Culture of Celebrity

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Here's a book I'd like to read, especially given the spectacle of the last 24 hours or so:


Framing Celebrity: New Directions in Celebrity Culture, by Su Holmes, published by Routledge in 2006.

Who Else?

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Who Else?

The famous have families, too. Leave
them to their grief, even as operatives,
lawyers, and T-shirt makers go to their
hives to get busy. Who else besides
the famous died today? Our electric
screens can't say. So we imagine
abandoned old and demented ones
dissolving into last breaths and final
hallucinations. Or we think

of soldiers, refugees, and homeless
ones who strayed so far from hope.
Others get shot, blown up, bludgeoned.
Disease and mad accidents steal others'
lives. Though the scandal of death
is always and everywhere, media explode
phosphorescently when celebrities die.
The glare blinds us momentarily. The

exhausted ritual gossip stops our ears
like beeswax. We recover, recognize
the grotesque face beneath the face
of fame, turn away, get on
with tasks. The commonplace seems
dear. The famous have families and
friends. Leave them to their
privacy if they'll have it.

Our talking screens entreat us
to come back and gaze some more. No.
Who else besides the famous died today?
In the wind, green cedars sway.

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Professors Detained in Iran

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(the photo is of a mosque in Tehran)
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CBS News (online) and other outlets are reporting that about 70 Iranian professors who met with Mr. Mousavi were detained--not arrested, apparently, but detained.

How professors go from being relatively obscure and ignored to being a threat is a phenomenon that's always intrigued me. Somehow, those seen mostly as impractical eggheads suddenly become hyper-effectual--capable (suggest those in power) of getting big and dangerous things done.

True, in some activist movements in some nations, professors have participated vigorously, and professors do have an obvious connection to younger, thoughtful persons who may express skepticism toward established institutions. Still, it's hard to view professors as being as dangerous as counter-activist forces often depict them.

David Horowitz, among others, likes constantly to depict American professors as Leftists who are "politically correct." It's probably true that a majority of professors don't identify themselves as Republican, but at the same time, I don't think a majority is Leftist, either (depending upon one's definition). Many professors I've taught with have expressed firm ideas against such developments as feminism, feminist scholarship, multi-cultural interests, affirmative action, and so on. Most professors I know own homes, raise families, do volunteer-work, and so on: not exactly radical stuff. (An earlier post concerns allegedly "Liberal Professors".) Also, no one really knows what "politically correct" means anymore, if it every meant anything; it's an empty signifier, the card that's not on the three-card-monte table.

It could be that Horowitz and others have simply discovered that professors are easy to caricature, so they keep the caricature alive. If it works, keep doing it: I guess that's the cynical attitude. Also, I think people outside of academia get suspicious of professors--of new ideas, research, intellectualism, and so on. And Lord knows professors sometimes behave arrogantly and otherwise seem out of touch.

Mostly, I think, professors symbolize potential change or potential anti-establishment attitudes. They may help to create the illusion of an avant garde. But I think significant social shifts usually get going on their own and then attract the participation of some professors, who then get detained. Or arrested. Or used in propaganda skirmishes.

By the way, Mr. Mousavi now has a page on facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/mousavi1388

Sherlock Holmes In Summer

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Sherlock Holmes? In Summer?
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Usually I think of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories and novels as Winter reading, but I might read some this summer. For back-up, I have not only the Baring-Gould two-volume annotated edition but also Leslie S. Klinger's three-volume annotated set from W.W. Norton. Klinger is typical of Holmes enthusiasts, insofar as he is an amateur scholar in the best sense of the word; he researches Holmes for the love of it. He is a lawyer by profession.

Another key element to Holmesian enthusiasm is that one must assume that Conan Doyle, Watson, Holmes, and pretty much anyone else who wanders by exist in the same world. The boundary between reality and fiction disappeared long ago; at least that's the way the game is played.

Holmes wasn't much for poetry or literature in general, although early on he takes a shot (figuratively) at Poe's Dupin, helping to erase that boundary I just mentioned: Fictional Holmes speaks of fictional Dupin as if the latter weren't fictional, and the game is afoot.

Nonetheless, Conan Doyle's Holmes stories appeal to readers and writers of poetry--at least to some of us--perhaps because they are so ritualized, and because Holmes is as much a driven, obsessive artist--monomaniacal--as he is the human apogee of rationalism and Enlightenment.

Although I relish dipping into the annotated editions, I still prefer the old Doubleday hardback or, in a pinch, a Penguin selected edition of some kind. Christopher Morley's introduction to the Doubleday collection remains charming.

True, with such things as Iranian society, American health-care, wars, famine (and so forth) at stake, reading Holmes becomes obviously escapist, but at the same time, maybe a person can be aware of and engaged in events and crises and, at the same time, take a breather to dip into familiar reading.

Here is a link, at any rate, to a site that is a gateway to numerous other Holmes-related sites (in case you happen to be an enthusiast, too):

http://www.sherlock-holmes.org/english.htm

Poem by Paul Valéry

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I've been enjoying re-reading the anthology, French Symbolist Poetry, translated by C.F. MacIntyre and published by U.C. (Berkeley) Press. It features poems by Nerval, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Corbiere, Mallarme, Rimbaud, LaForgue, and Valéry. These poets were original in their own right but also influenced poetry in English, including that of Yeats, Eliot, and Pound.

One by Paul Valéry caught my eye--titled simply "Caesar." It starts this way:

Caesar, serene Caesar, your foot on all,
hard fists in your beard, and your gloomy eyes
pregnant with eagles and battles of foreseen fall,
your heart swells, feeling itself the omnipotent cause.

It ends this way:

The spacious world, beyond the immense horizon,
the Empire awaits the torch, the order, the lightning
that will turn the evening to a furious dawn.

Happily out on the water, and cradled in hazard,
a lazy fisherman is drifting and singing,
not knowing what thunder collects in the center of Caesar.


What makes this a "symbolist" poem as opposed to just a regular old poem? The striking juxtaposition of images, I think--so striking that they begin to generate surrealism without generating confusion: "hard fists in your beard," for example--this isn't a logical, "realistic" image, but it makes emotional sense. The same goes for "thunder collects at the center of Caesar." Here Caesar becomes an institution or a phenomenon, or both--but not just a leader, dictator, or man.

Neda Agha Soltan

The reasons the flow of words and images threatens repressive institutions and assist forms of liberation are obvious, I guess, but today I've been thinking also about how images become "iconic" almost too quickly, especially with the advent of global electronic communication.

For my generation of Americans, iconic images proliferated: fire-hoses and dogs released on African Americans protesting in the South; still-photos created from the Zapruder film (and "the Zapruder film" becoming an iconic phrase); Oswald photographed crying out in pain and surprise at the moment Jack Ruby guns him down; the naked child napalmed in Viet Nam; the North Viet Namese prisoner executed by a South Viet Namese officer; Bobby Kennedy dying, lying on the floor of a kitchen; Martin Luther King lying on the balcony of a motel; the student at Kent State kneeling beside her dead friend, her arms raised in a plea; and on and on.

Now the image of a woman named Neda Agha Soltan, shot and killed in Iran, has become iconic--too quickly, perhaps. One has the urge to pause and to think of her as who she was: one person, one woman, with friends and family, one consciousness, an endlessly rich web of memories, ideas, images, emotions. A life, one life--not an "icon." Neda Agha Soltan.

Catholic Worker Movement Is 75

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The Catholic Worker Movement, which Dorothy Day (photo above) helped to found, is 75 years old this year. Day's fine autobiography, The Long Loneliness, sheds light on the movement's origins. There is also a nice biographical film about Day and the movement, featuring Martin Sheen.

A link to the CWM's web site:

http://www.catholicworker.org/#

Still Life With Fish and Other Stuff

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Chardin's Still Life With Fish


In Jean-Siméon Chardin's "Still
Life with Fish, Vegetables, Gougères,
Pots, and Cruets," the paint becomes
Plexiglass because it seals off odors
I seek. Or should I say "aromas"--odors
that are formally attired? Chardin's

manipulation of pigment teases me
with an imaginary robust stench of
a French kitchen, dead cool slimy fish
hanging over vegetables and such.
Chardin invites me to the unstill
kitchen, then closes the glass door

firmly, and I'm left with an inedible,
unsniffable scene. Well done, monsieur,
to taunt the nose of an olfactory voyeur
in the deep-freeze of an art gallery.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Skype

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Skype

Skype flies out of language
like the blade of a Viking ax but describes the hyper-
civilized act of talking to an image of someone talking
to your image as you talk and see your image. Like
any new gadget, it makes life easier and more complex
and soon seems necessary. It lends a drop of adrenaline
to the bloodstream, then joins technology's long
gray line of applications that coils back to stone
and bronze and iron. Maybe I'll skype

someone in Sweden, descendant of a Viking rower
to whom the carved boat's bow seemed magical
as it sliced open a path on a gray sea that's
now virtually visible from globally positioned
satellites, wee aluminum moons dropped off by
rockets into the orbiting traffic of junk that
pongs and pings our digital signals, scalps
our privacy, and surveils our sociality.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

A Book of Iranian Poetry

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If recent or not-so-recent events in Iran have whetted your appetite for more knowledge about that republic and that part of the world, you might be interested in A History of Modern Iran, by Ervand Abrahamian (Cambridge University Press, 2008). And of particular interest to poets and readers of poetry is Belonging: New Poetry By Iranians Around the World, edited with an introduction by Niloufar Talebi. (There is a site for the latter book on facebook, incidentally.) It was published in 2008, too--by North Atlantic Books.

Time Imbibed

(Image: courtesy Discovery Channel/Discovery.com)
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The Time-Drunk


"I got out of bed last night to go to the bathroom, and I started walking backwards. Strange things happen when you get old." --Passenger on the Amtrak Cascade train

"Beyond a black hole's gravitational border -- or event horizon -- neither matter nor light can escape." --Discovery.com



He got drunk on time, toxed with sips
of minutes, gulps of years, binges of
decades. Now he staggers down alleys
of memory behind Chronology's moist
row of pubs, saloons, clubs, and dives.

A lifelong drinker of time, he knows
how drunk he is but not where. Surfaces
bump him, rough him up. Gravity trips
him using cobblestones and curbs. He
finds a door he thinks he recognizes,

enters a noise, finds the bar, orders
a wee timetail. The one behind the bar
refuses, judges, speaks the savage,
polite words, "You've already had enough.
I can pour you a coup of coffee, though,

or call you The Cab." He assumes
the false dignity of a confronted
tippler. He mumbles, "The Cab." Waiting,
he negotiates. To the one behind
the bar, he says, "Come on. One more?"


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Celebrity Author

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Celebrity Author

I think I know what the celebrity-author was
thinking: Get me out of here. He wore
fame like a hair-shirt. The thing is, the money
is great, adulation's like liquor, and it's nice
to be thought a genius. So there he was, and
there we were. Nonetheless,

he squirms and fidgets. He goes on too long
and comments on his commenting like a daft
monarch. He doesn't like other people's wit
because it shows everybody's witty and fame
is, alas, more arbitrary than not. Of course,

we'd all trade places with him in the Land
of Hypothetica, especially because we'll never
have to. He won the lottery, he's a good writer,
and there's a wider justice in his fame. Still,

he itches and scratches, poses and opines,
tries to say shocking things, grins guiltily,
reminds us of his fame and wit and money
at certain intervals, and suspects what he
knows to be true: that we, too, can't wait
for the evening to be over.

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom