Everyday Speech #3--The 'S' Word in the U.S.

The 'S' word--shit: virtually ubiquitous in U.S. talk. (The rest of the world observes, "We knew all along you were full of it!")

I was reminded of the ubiquity when Carter Monroe, poet, publisher, novelist, and sage, sent me the following list:

Good as shit
Bad as shit
tasty as shit [most amusing]
fast as shit
slow as shit
hard as shit
soft as shit
funny as shit
mad as shit
interesting as shit
boring as shit
smart as shit
stupid as shit

Then there's "I'm tired of this shit" or the working person's generalized complaint, often muttered with a sigh, "Well, . . . shit."

And the universal exclamation of praise: "Great shit!"

And the universal exclamation of dissatisfaction: "Shitty!"

If not an empty signifier, it is at least word that will wear any disguise.

True, other cultures like their shit-words, but most probably don't deploy it as variously as the U.S.

In the 1970s, one heard, "Man, that's some good shit," in re: some of the worst marijuana in the history of humankind. Stems and seeds, as we used to say, back when people apparently smoked stems and seeds. Or so I've heard.

Of course, Freud might have observed something about childhood development and literal shit when examining such a list, and Americans are known for their arrested development (eternal teen-agers, is the rap on us), but there's just no way to prove that kind of speculation. I think it has more to do with Americans' predilection for efficiency in *some* areas of speech, with American coarseness (which even "refined" people like to flaunt so as to project another dimension to their image, or so they think.

When I or anyone else made a hash of something on the construction-job, my father, boss, would occasionally say, "That looks like a mad woman shit." Fantastically colorful expression, so to speak. I don't know why it had to be gendered. That inclination to depict women as mad, perhaps: Sandra Gilbert and others have written about that.

Even when my brothers and I were young lads, the Old Man's parenting style was end mischief as quickly as possible, usually with a direct order: "Knock that shit off" = stop what you're doing. Or "Don't be such a shit-head" or "Don't act like a shit-head to your brother." I responded well to such directives because they were clear, uncluttered, and I didn't get the feeling I was being trained in a broader sense, although "Don't act like a shit-head to [in this case] your brother" does implicitly look forward to shit-head-less days.

Galway Kinnell

Sad to see that poet Galway Kinnell died.

I remember seeing/hearing him read at U.C. Davis in the late 1970s. It was in a relatively small classroom in Olson Hall, next to Sproul.

I recall he read a poem about not being with his mother when she died. A kind of Freudian poem, for lack of a better description, that was not rare in those days, as Freud's influence hadn't waned quite yet.

I also recall a poem in which the speaker tries to talk someone out of suicide, or at least thoughts of suicide. After he read the poem, Kinnell said, "I have to admit, it wouldn't convince me, either."

Self-deprecating, at least at that reading, and the broad, craggy face and what used to be called "an unruly shock of hair."

Fine free-verse poet.

"Conscience and Remorse," by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Revising Titles of Poems

Today I'll be working with the poets on the titles of the poems they've written this term. Here are some of the options I'll offer:


1. If the tile of your poem is long, try a title that is one word. Shapiro: "Nebraska." Langston Hughes: "Harlem."
2. Start with a participle or gerund--an "ing" word. James Wright: "Lying in a Hammock . . ."
3. Make the title a complete sentence: "Jack Eats Plastic"
4. Theme: so old-fashioned! "Of the Unfairness of Stomach Aches."
5. Allusion. "A Bird Eats my Liver"--allusion to Prometheus. "Something's Gaining On Me"--allusion to a statement by Satchel Paige.
6. Adjective plus noun: so simple! "Red Shoes." "White Folks."
7. A word or phrase from a language other than English: might sound pretentious, might not.
8. A title that springs from a word or phrase in the last 3 lines. This works uncannily well.



hans ostrom 2014

"Deader than hell . . ." Everyday Speech #2

"[It] killed him deader than hell." I heard my uncle say this when I was about 15 and changing tires on a dump trunk. He was talking about a fellow who had crawled under a dump truck to remove the jack when the jack failed, and the dump-truck crushed the man. "It killed him deader than hell," my uncle said, finishing the cautionary tale.

So: degrees of death, as if you could be just slightly dead or all the way up to deader than hell. Great vernacular touch there.

I heard it said by many men of my parents' generation. I never heard a woman say it.

I've corresponded with a poet- and publisher-friend in North Carolina who remembers hearing the same phrase, so it's apparently not regional. (My uncle was a native of Indiana, where he drove a car for a boot-legger, among other things, before moving to California to run heavy equipment, etc.)

Probably, it's not a phrase that will survive the Boomer generation, a few of whom might still say it.

A similar but more widespread phrase was, of course, "deader than door-nail," which I never liked because door nails are inanimate. I did, however, like the rhythm and alliteration.

"Wild Plum," by Orrick Johns

"Inferential," by Edwin Arlington Robinson

Everyday Speech #1

So this begins, I hope, a series in which I simply record things/sentences/phrases/words that a) I used to hear people say a lot and b) I hear people say a lot. Sometimes its "say" and "write" both, but mostly say. I got the idea when I was reading Philip Whalen's collected poems. He has a series of poems titled "Native Speech," and he records what he was hearing in the 1950s and 1960s and thereabouts.

Of course, this project (that's grandiose) will and should not be confused with something systematic or orderly.

*****

"Well, whaddya know?" I heard this one a lot growing up, less in my 20s, and so on. You can hear a lot in 1940s movies. A version is "Well, whaddya know about that?" The latter has a rhythmic lilt to it. And of course whaddya = what do you

*

"She's a fox." It means, she's sexy/she's beautiful/she's both. Virtually ubiquitous in late 1970s California. Heard much less after 1985, in my opinion. Gendered, I think; that is, it was said of woman by men and women, but not so much of men by anyone. I don't remember hearing gay acquaintances saying it of man, for example.

*

"I know, right?" Seemingly ubiquitous now, at least in my world. I haven't investigated the origin, if there is one. An older version would be, "You bet!" Or "Damn right!" Or "Right on!" Except I think "I know, right?" is more laconic, even slightly ironic, and not usually excited or overly sympathetic. I quite like it, for some reason. I believe a still-current African American version or counterpart is "All right? Mmm-Hmmn!" Heard more from Black women than Black men? I don't know.

Well, that's three or four. If you want to suggest any, go for it. I wonder if "go for it" is going out of fashion.

"Fall. Leaves, Fall," by Emily Bronte

"An Old Woman," by Mina Loy

"The Inspector," by Hans Ostrom

I don't think you're doing it the way
you're supposed to do it
(according to the specifications)
but who am I to say? And

if you're getting it done,
in this way of yours you use--
well, it's still getting done.
There is a right way and a

wrong way but at the same time
there are many ways. It isn't
logical I suppose as I have
phrased things. Anyway, consider

a mild objection almost to have
been raised. By me.
This is my job.
Sincerely, The Inspector.


hans ostrom 2014

"Politics," by Ambrose Bierce

"Two Lovers," by George Eliot