Retired Oracle

*
*
*
*
Retired Oracle

Even oracles retire, weary of working
for the future, fed up with telling the truth,
a nasty business. The job-titles embarrass:
soothsayer, psychic, fortune-teller, card-reader,
prophet, futurist, wizard. Leaving the cave,

cubicle, or sound-stage for the last time,
the oracle welcomes a future of telling lies,
claiming ignorance, and getting things wrong.
"Things wrong": what a laugh, thinks the oracle--
things are either wrong or going there. That's

the truth. Some people need an oracle to tell them
so. Home at last, the oracle dreams of reading history,
for who can predict the past? Books on shelves
promise to tell the truth. The oracle looks
at the volumes and needs to believe them.

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Sonnet In A Bar

*
*
*
*
*
Sonnet In A Bar


I sat beside a sonnet in a bar.
The sonnet looked done in. I bought a round.
The sonnet sipped its rye and said, "Too far.
"I've come too far and lived too long. The sound
Of iambs thumping drives me mad.
And yet if someone called me up on stage,
I'd sing the syllables, and I'd look glad."
"What must a sonnet be?" I asked. "A page,"
The sonnet said, "a one-page hunk of verse.
If you're a poet, then I'm going to scream."
I bought another round. "It is a curse
To be a lyric-form that people deem
Enduring but others try to kill for good.
And--oh: the rhyme I think you'll want is "hood."

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Critic: A Poem

*
*
*
*
Critic

She prefers poetry that arrives already branded
with authority, stamped with approval. Literature
is her business, and business abhors an accident,
such as a wilderness crying in a voice, or
a great poem left anonymously on someone's doorstep.
Anthologies aren't orphanages, she thinks; they're
consolidations, portable museums. In

photographs of her, bookshelves rise behind her
like battalions, she will not smile, and she looks
ready to retaliate with one swift blow
of erudition should you express an opinion. Her
criticism is like cold storage. It isn't poetry.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Eberhart's "The Groundhog" Read

Here is a link to a nice reading, by one Tom O'Bedlam of Youtube's Spoken Verses Channel, of Richard Eberhart's "The Groundhog":


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-kdtGnngNw

I got lucky and was able to see/hear Eberhart read at U.C. Davis in the late 1970s. The venue was a large science-classroom in which the theater-like rows of seats rose steeply. I sat toward the back, so I was looking down on Eberhart even as I looked up to him as a poet. He was an exceedingly cheerful gentleman that day.

Poets Born in Mississippi

In grammar school, in California, we used to spell "Mississippi" out loud and very quickly, so that it became a song. I gather the ideas was to make the quasi-song a mnemonic device. Em-eye-ESS-ess-EYE-ess-ess-EYE-p-p-EYE.

What poets were born in Mississippi? I'm glad you asked.

Among them are . . .

Al Young
Brooks Haxton
Etheridge Knight
G.E. Patterson
Natasha Trethewey

Follow the link to more information about Mississippi and poetry:

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/440

Poet Kofi Anyidoho Reading

Here is a link to a Youtube video of poet Kofi Anyidoho:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VaxJLivRT4&feature=channel_page

Anyidoho is a Ghanaian poet and also a professor of literature at the University of Ghana. His books include Ancestral Logic and Caribbean Blues (1992).

Blacking Out In Florida

Blacking Out In Florida

"Utility to Pay $25 Million For Blackout in Florida"
--New York Times, October 9, 2009, p. A-15


I read of "a record penalty
for violating the rules of the electricity
grid" and think of the vast distance
between me and my society because
I don't know what the rules
of the electricity grid are,
what they stand for, who made them,
who the Grid-Enforcers are, and what
the phrase "substantial, wide-ranging
and specific reliability enhancement
measures" means, for the phrase is
insubstantial, diffuse, general,
un-enhanced, unreliable, and
unmeasurable. Also, I think $25
million dollars are too much to pay
just to black out in Florida, and what
is the utility, I must ask, of blacking
out in that particular state?


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Poets Born In Ohio

There certainly are a lot of poets who were born in Ohio, among them . . .

Rita Dove
Hart Crane
Richard Howard (his book of criticism, Alone With America, is a favorite of mine)
Kenneth Koch (inventive, funny poet; his send-up of W.C. Williams' "This Is Just To Say" is hilarious)
Mary Oliver (American Primitive is my favorite book of hers)
David Wagoner (prolific poet, former editor of Poetry Northwest)
Jill Bialosky

For a longer list, please follow the link:

http://www.poets.org/state.php/varState/OH

Labor Breaks You

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Labor Breaks



Labor breaks you. When you're young,
you roll through it, your muscles
and bones handling any kind of shit
labor throws your way. Labor stays
young forever while you age, though.

It laughs with you when you're young,
sure. It hits the bars and runs around
town watching you go after what you think
you want. It gets you up in the morning after
nearly no sleep--no problem, you're young.

Then one day you're not young and labor
hasn't aged a day, and it grins and shrugs
as if to say, "Nothing personal," and it
starts to hit you with the tools of your trade,
and you know then the work you do will break you.

Copyright 2009

Ten Recommended Canadian Poets

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), on which I watch news from Vancouver and CFL football, bravely and/or blithely provided its list of top ten (living) Canadian poets a while ago. One can only imagine the cacophony of questions and exclamations such a list engendered. Actually, one cannot only imagine because there are 27 comments on the story, to be found at . . .

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/books/story/2009/05/19/f-best-poets-canada.html

What are the criteria? Whose list? How can you leave off [ ]? And so forth.

With the cacophony and caveats in mind, then, here's the list (one point being . . . read some poems by these writers if you haven't already):

Don McKay
Ken Babstock
Mary Dalton
Dionne Brand
Don Domanski
David McGimsey
Skydancer Louise Bernice Halfe
Jeremy Dodds
Erin Moure [accent on the last e]
Sheri-D Wilson

Thanks for the list, CBC.

Poets Born in Pennsylvania

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
What poets were born in Pennsylvania? I'm glad you asked. My answer will be most incomplete, but it's a start. In no particular order . . . :

Gerald Stern
Robin Becker
J.D. McClatchy
Karen J. Weyant, also known
in the blogo-sphere as The Scrapper Poet
(see link at right)
W.D. Snodgrass
H.D. [Hilda Doolittle]
W.S. Di Piero
Wallace Stevens
Julia Kasdorf
Ron Silliman

Here is a link to more information about Pennsylvania, poetry, and poets:

http://www.poets.org/state.php/varState/PA

Nelson Mandela's Favorite Folktales

We are entering a variety of annual gift-bestowing days ahead, and I ran across a book written for children ages 9-12 (and thus for adults of any age) that might serve well as a literary gift. It is . . .

Nelson Mandela's Favorite African Folktales (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007), illustrated.

Unamused By Autumn

Unamused by Autumn

I don't like Fall, which poets
call "Autumn," anymore. Enough
with the leaves already. Fall's
a short road from Summer to Winter.

In the U.S., the autumnal holidays
have seen better ways: Children
trick-or-treating need body-guards
to protect them from real monsters,
and at Thanksgiving, highways
and airports congeal like cold gravy.

People called hunters shoot
lots of animals in Fall. I'm not
sure how sporting it is anymore,
what with the laser-sights, the
scopes more refined than Galileo's.
Concussions occur in football games

while spectators text-message
people on other continents. Like
a leaf, the letter n would fall
off autumn if it weren't for
the florid adjective, autumnal,
which never made me laugh.

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom