Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg at Kerouac's Gravesite

I just watched an intriguing short video featuring Allen Ginsberg talking to Bob Dylan at Jack Kerouac's gravesite. "Talking to Bob Dylan" is a fair description, as Mr. Dylan doesn't have much to say, although he does suggest that he prefers to be buried in an unmarked grave-after he dies, of course. The link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiH9QZzGc_s&feature=related

Archive of Canadian Poetry

Here is a link to an archive of Canadian poetry:

http://www.arcpoetry.ca/portage/links/canadian_poetry_archive.php

Some Off-Beat Movies

I'm hard-pressed to define what "off-beat" means in figurative terms, so I'll just roll along and say that here are ten of my favorite off-beat movies, in no particular order:

1. Two-Lane Blacktop (w/ James Taylor and Warren Oates)
2.Vanishing Point (w Barry Newman and Cleavon Little)
3. The Las Vegas Story (Victor Mature, with a song and an appearance by Hoagy Carmichael)
4. Slackers
5. The Brother From Another Planet (Joe Morton stars, if memory serves)
6. Harold and Maude
7. Fitzcarraldo (directed by Werner Herzog, starring Klaus Kinski, although Mick Jagger starred originally, but the production lasted too long.
8.Harry and Tonto (Art Carney, with cat; Carney won an Oscar)
9. My Life As A Dog (Swedish)
10. Sullivan's Travels (written by Preston
Sturges)


I will add only that I saw Cleavon Little play opposite Jackie Gleason in a stage-version of Sly Fox in San Francisco, in the late 1970s. It was great to watch two fine professional actors, with perfect timing.

Phantom Pantoum

The poet and blogger Minerva often tosses out poetic challenges on her blog:

http://www.blogger.com/profile/17803450940250232122

No long ago she challenged writers to try a pantoum, so I took the challenge.


Phantom Pantoum

From the reeds of memory's marsh,
The phantom pantoum speaks itself.
It isn't owned by anyone.
It is composed of gathered sounds.

The phantom pantoum speaks, itself
An act of filling up a page or pause.
It is composed of gathered sounds.
It is a thing that's said and made.

An act of filling up a page or pause
May satisfy the phantom pantoum.
It is a thing that's said and made
But not one, maybe, that's heard or seen.

"May satisfy the phantom pantoum":
That is not a bold assertion,
Nor one, maybe, that's heard and seen.
The phantom pantoum's like a dream.


Hans Ostrom, Copyright 2009

Poets From Nevada

Poet Donald Revell, who has published several books with Wesleyan University Press, as well as books with other presses, lives in Las Vegas, although he was born in the Bronx. He also edits the Colorado Review.

Kirk Robertson is a native of Los Angeles but has lived in Nevada since 1976. He writes and publishes poetry and is involved with a small press.

Poet Adrian Louis is a native of Nevada but now teaches in the University of Minnesota system.

For more information about Nevada and poetry, please use the link:

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

Mississippi's African American Authors

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For a comprehensive listing of African American authors from Mississipi, USA, please follow the link:


http://library.msstate.edu/special_interest/Mississippi_African-American_Authors.asp

Retired Oracle

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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

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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

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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