Potatoes, Thyme, and the Struggle

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Potatoes, Thyme, and the Struggle

What did I hope to gain by applying
my mental powers, such as they are, to
serious problems of the day--war, famine,
economic entropy, a planet turned to kindling?
Well, I'd hoped to make a show of doing
my part. In what? If not in the Struggle,
then at least in the struggle to pay attention.

Then I lost my keys and phone and had to
track them down. I watered the garden--thyme
and potatoes doing fine. I got a haircut,
purchased bread and other basics, fetched
the mail, sent a note of sympathy and three
birthday cards, excerised as a favor to
my heart, sent electronic messages, cooked
dinner. By then the day was done.

The smug oligarchs and financial thugs,
arms dealers, hacks, handlers, and somnambulent
press will prevail, or so run today's thoughts,
because an ordinary me or a you as you are has stuff
to do even on a day off from work. They and we keep
us busy, these magna cum sociopathic human
bacteria that eat systems, wreck lives, start
wars. Life keeps us busy, and so again I listen
to Tennessee Ernie Ford: "Saint Peter, don't you
call me, 'cause I can't go. I owe my soul
to the Company Store." Sixteen tons of busy.

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

In Defense of Mark Sanford and McDonald's

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To write almost the least, I don't make a habit of defending Republican governors (or any governors, for that matter) or large corporations, so this is new territory for me.

True, Governor Mark Sanford (South Carolina) has done just about everything wrong lately. At first I thought his interminable press-conferences were simply narcissistic and self-induldgent (and they may indeed be so); then I thought, well, maybe this much talking springs from evangelical Christian rhetoric, which has been known to be voluble; now I think the guy just needs therapy--from a therapist, not from talking into cameras.

A writer for the Kansas City Star has similar thoughts: ]

http://voices.kansascity.com/node/4990

Also, Keith Olbermann [MSNBC], among others relentlessly attacks Sanford, when not too long ago, Olbermann was most incensed that people (and Congress) were making so much of President Clinton's stupid behavior in the White House. Jonathan Alter gently pointed this out on Olbermann's show the other evening, but Olbermann didn't seem to absorb the information. He's becoming as insufferable and predictable as the man he pretends to loathe, Bill O'Reilly.

Moreover, given all the real and really important crises and issues there are out there, why spend time reporting on the personal misfortunes of Mark Sanford and his family? I know the answer: ratings. Nonetheless, knock it off. Of course Sanford seems completely hypocritical, having once attacked Clinton, but so what? What exactly is the percentage of humans who aren't hypocritical at some point?

As for McDonalds (photo of the original above), I simply want to say a word in favor of its "dollar" menu. If I were out of work (there but for the grace, etc.), I think I'd make use of that menu. Yes, I know such a menu functions as a "loss-leader," which gets people in the "store." No, I don't think the dollar-menu compensates for the problems McDonalds creates, as cited in Fast Food Nation and elsewhere. Nonetheless, a cheap hot meal in a pinch is a good thing for a lot of people.

There. My counterintuitive post concludes.

Adjustment Denied

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Adjustment Denied

The man from the Building
came to adjust the Psychiatrist's
thermostat. He called the Doctor
from the Waiting Room. The electrons
of his voice spoke to those of
Voice Mail. He left a Message.
"I am from the Building. I have
come to adjust your thermostat. I
am in the Waiting Room." Beyond
the barrier of messaging, there
was no Answer. Air, however,
spoke in a constant whisper
through the ducting of the
Building, as the Doctor, so
the man from the Building guessed,
talked and listened to a Patient
in an Office which was too Cool,
too Warm, who knows?


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

A Christian Environment?

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the photo is of modern-day Damascus, to which Paul was headed
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I'm beholden to another blogger for triggering the idea for this poem, for she, too, was musing about "a Christian environment" and what different people may mean by that phrase.
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A Christian Environment


What's a Christian environment? Who loaded
that question? In the Back-When, a Christian
environment seems to have involved occupied
Pharisees (et al.) and occupying Romans.
Technically, Jesus wasn't Christian, just
as an apple tree's not an apple. (I hear
a thousand theologians running down the hill.)

Then, as now, much misery, success, poverty,
disease, wealth, pride, self-assurance, power,
doubt, heat, failure, force, cold, cruelty, and
mystery seem to have been around. The Christian
environment was hard-tilling. Ask Jesus, so
to speak. He had a go at plowing that rough

field, which harvested him. Self-confident
Christians, devout atheists, and many
others will tell you what a Christian
environment is. You don't even have to
ask them! They'll generously share. In a

dark room, one despairs of defining anything
but despair. Then air through an open window
billows shades. Sunlight, the fastest thing,
bursts through. One blinks, surprised.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Broken Government, A New Blog Concerning

I think I've written, contributed to, and edited too many encyclopedias--at least that's my excuse for writing the title of this post in alphabetical topical fashion, although more strictly, it should begin with government.

. . .This is how old I am: I can remember a time when working-class people could afford the services of doctors and medicine. I can also remember when immigration was one of the society's virtues, even as the society didn't routinely treat immigrants virtuously.

Now immigration seems chiefly to be a way for some companies to get cheap labor (I suppose it always was) and a way for some politicians (and pundits--Lou Dobbs is obsessed with the issue--which means it must be working for his ratings) to wear out the xenophobia drum. Meanwhile, no one with power seems to want to address the issue soberly.

Add two wars, cash-bloated politics (what does it cost just to run, say, for the school board?), a one-party system in two-party drag, etc., and you seem to have quite a mess. I am, by the way, officially pessimistic about any significant changes to health-care occurring. In this area, we're the embarrassment of the industrial world. Canada, France, Sweden, and England have systems that wipe the floor with ours. Ed Schultz, radio guy, nicely parried the stuff about "waiting lines" in Canada; he just took random calls from Canadians, who said, "Nah, the system is good, and you have to wait only for things like cosmetic surgery." Cosmetic surgery: what Congress and the President will perform on our health-care system.

Like a lot of people, I'm lucky to have medical insurance and to have access to good care, but like most people, I'm aware that a slight change in circumstances could make it all vanish.

I ran across a blog that touches on one aspect of the mess--how those in military power cycle into political power, and how those in political power cycle into influence-power by working for lobbyists and "think tanks":

http://123realchange.blogspot.com/

Sunday's Villanelle

A Little Something That Refrains


Let's write a little something that refrains
From trying to be more than poetry.
The language moving in a poem obtains.

For language is an actor, plays and feigns,
And hopes we'll see what it wants us to see.
Let's write a little something that refrains

Itself in lyric and won't grab for gains,
But is content simply to seem and be
The language, moving. In a poem, "obtains"

Can take an object or refuse. The lanes
Of speech form labyrinths. Let's drink some tea.
Let's write a little. Something that refrains

Might well refresh. The mind's eye strains
Relentlessly, desires profundity.
The language moving in a poem obtains:

It's there like creeks and rivulets from rains.
Word-lovers lap up language happily.
Let's write a little something that refrains.
The language moving in a poem obtains.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

University of Puget Crows

Once again this summer on the campus of the University of Puget Sound, the sign is out. It's a small temporary sign beside a walkway that runs underneath tall fir trees. It says something like, "Caution--Crow Nesting Area."

The crows' nests have eggs and/or young crows in them; therefore, the parents are in dive-bomb mode.

I actually don't mind being dived at by crows. I have a love/hate relationship with them. I love them, and they hate me. It's nothing personal on their part. It's just business. They find it advantageous to live around humans and other animals that leave food around, but they don't like humans. You can tell by the way they look at us.

Of course, the crows live on campus all year. Occasionally I'll try to chat one up as I walk to or from a class. Usually I say, "What are you doing?" I'm actually glad the crow can't talk back (in English) because, given the crow-personality, the bird would probably say, "What does it look like I'm doing?"

To like about crows:

1. They act like they own the place, any place. And I suppose they do.
2. They're sleek and black--"like gangster cars," as I once wrote in a poem.
3. Their eyes aren't exactly on the side of their heads, as most birds' are; they're almost moved up to the predator-position.
4. They seem to view flying as a chore. They much prefer hopping or strutting. When they do take off, they seem to be enjoying flight about as much as a man with bad knees enjoys climbing stairs. They seem almost too big to fly, but they climb into the air eventually. Once up there, they do fine, but they still don't like to work at it. They prefer to glide--a short distance, and then stop, perch, and start an argument.
5. Allegedly, they can count. (I'm not kidding, but I don't know exactly how ornithologists established this.)
6. They share information. In fact, crows in this area have an enormous convention on Whidbey Island, or so I have read. No word as to whether they where small crow name-tags. Also, in one experiment, they were shown to remember a human who wore a mask. To put the matter colloquially, in the crow community, word gets around.

I don't know what word has gotten around about me, but crows like to yell and dive at me. I haven't ever been hit by one, but I keep my head (and eyes) down, just in case. Otherwise, I'm vaguely amused by the attack. One of my former professors, the late Karl Shapiro, wasn't so lucky. A crow at a university in Chicago actually attacked him--not just one dive-bomb, but an attack. A scuffle. Karl managed to ward off the bird with his black umbrella, and then of course wrote a well crafted, humorous poem about the incident.

So there's Karl's poem, and Poe's famous raven poem, but the best poetic treatment of crows may be Ted Hughes's wonderful book-length work, titled simply Crow. It captures the spirit of crows, or what humans take to be that spirit.

In summer, the University of Puget Sound is a place where some summer school classes are offered, where high-school students and their parents take tours as they go through the painstaking process of choosing a college, where professors work on their research and writing, where organizations have their conferences (Methodists, cheerleaders), where the groundskeepers must work hard to keep the flourishing vegetation in order, and where frisbee-throwers, skate-boarders, and dog-walkers take advantage of the space.

Most of all, it becomes the University of Puget Crows, where large black birds take parenting and feathered family values seriously.

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.