Saturday, September 25, 2010

Polonius and Hamlet

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Polonius and Hamlet

Polonius survives. Hamlet's still
the annoying star, dithering his way
to a fifth act, finally taking action
when everyone else is either dead
or exhausted. For heaven's sake,
he talks to a skull!

Polonius means well and thus
is despised. He does wormy things
to adapt, can't choose the best
advice and so gives it all like
most dads, gets stabbed through
a curtain while trying for advancement
in the company.

Hamlets are indulged, petted,
and finally enshrined. They fret
out loud and grab attention--
you know the type. They can
make you forget they're royalty.

Polonius persists in millions if not
billions--necessary but mocked, not
of the inner circle, perched on
the circumference of power, shafted
by the radius. Oh, well: they both

end up dead in the play and living
in Yorickville, borrowing for a
mortgage, lending advice and
forcing soliloquies on their friends,
stabber and stabbee. Nobody wants
to spend a lot of time with either
one of these guys. They're a lot of
work, these two, Hamlet and Polonius.


Copyright 2010

The 3:30 a.m. Non-Blues

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The 3:30 a.m. Non-Blues


When you wake up
at 3:30 a.m., you wish you
had the blues because
then you could be
conventionally sad.

When you wake up
that early in the morning
it's not
really morning but
it's not really bad.

It's way past midnight
but way before dawn.
If you say anything at all
to no one, you say it
with a yawn.

You don't have the blues,
and it turns out you can be satisfied.
You don't have the blues,
and by golly, you can be satisfied.
If you were to say you had the blues,
well, you would have just lied.



Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

"Northern Liberal," by Langston Hughes

"On 'View From the Golden Rooms,'"by Tammy Robacker

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

The Great American Poet Lottery

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The Great American Poet Lottery

Everybody--okay, about 12 people--
is upset about the state of American poetry.
There was even something about it
on the Puffington Host. What a thing
to get upset about!

None of the upsettees has read a fraction
of what's being written, so they can't really
know the state of American poetry. No one
can read more than a fraction. Spooky, I know.

They're just upset about the poetry they
have read, I guess, and they're entitled.
But they may have missed (wait for it)

the Paradigm Shift. Poetry everywhere lives
in the electronic clouds now, its relationship
to nations and literary management tenuous.

It also refuses to stop propagating, and
that bugs the shit out of some people. Less
is more. Economy of false scarcity.

The upsettees miss the old days. (Randall
Jarrell once wrote that in the Golden Age,
people probably went around complaining

about how yellow everything was.) I don't
agree with the upsettees, but I sympathize.
I'm a sympathizer. They miss those certain days

when anthologies and certain critics and
certain presses told us all who was great.
Anyway, I have a solution. The Great American

Poet Lottery. You enter it by sending in
a poem of yours, see. Drawings held--what?--
weekly? If your poem's picked, you become

a Great American Poet, lounging with Walt,
snoring with Tse Tse, giggling at Emily's
wicked jokes, laughing with Langston.

Okay, sure, a small cash-prize, paid in
Swedish kronor, don't ask me why. If you
become a Great American Poet, you get to

show up drunk and late to every reading
you give and have people still love you.
You're automatically in the running

to become Poet Lariat. (I kind of like
that joke.) You win, and the ones worried
about the state of American poetry win

because they'll have one more reason
to worry about the state of American poetry.
American poetry wins by retaining its

sense of absurdity, its crassness,
and its careening barbaric yawp. And nobody
gets hurt--something that is worth worrying about.


Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

The Work of the Writer

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The Work of the Writer


I'm a writer.
My job's to fill up notebooks.
I usually work the swing-shift.

The words are kept
in wheeled bins, which I roll
over to my station.

I unload the bins,
put the words on the conveyor
belt, which then rides the words

into the notebooks. On my breaks,
I go outside, nibble sandwich
corners, smoke cigarettes,

bullshit with the other writers
at the plant.
The shift-manager comes to fetch us,

the rat-bastard. --Back to work
until the horn goes off.
After that, we hit the taverns,

sit with vacant visages ("visages":
I saw that word on the belt today).
We try not to speak unless we have to:

You know how it is--you want to forget
work. A carpenter doesn't go to a tavern
looking to build anything. Once

I was walking home, and I saw the Muse.
She owns the plant. She's absolutely
gorgeous. I asked her for a kiss.


Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

"The Poet Fears Failure," by Erica Jong