Oblique Review

This novel contained

sentence after sentence

with only punctuation

to control traffic.

As I read the novel,

the weather went

from sunny to rainy

and back again.

I find that climate

is an infinite novel

with new weather

chapters periodically.

It's funny (peculiar)

how words trick

a reader's mind into

creating a novel.

Readers should get

paid more for doing

all the work. Every

art form got taken

over by industry,

so that novels became

manufactured goods, see?

This novel is okay by me. 

hans ostrom 2020

Unicorn, Sole Horn

 A unicorn 

is a sole horn

improvising freely in the mist

of a forest,

in the midst

of an old store

of lore.

A unicorn

is a horse

with a point used to anoint

a fantasy,

a something

to see in 

the mind

as unmagical

days and 

mechanized 

ways in a 

transparent maze

grind on. 

hans ostrom 2020

"Fear," by Ciaran Carson

 Reading/video of a fine poem by Irish poet Ciaran Carson (1948-2019):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRZT01YQwNI

"Bouquet," by Langston Hughes

 Reading/video of short poem by Hughes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhzzVGOVX4M

"Again and Again," by Rainer Maria Rilke

 Short Rilke poem translated by Edward Snow, from the  Uncollected Poems of Rilke's.

Reading/video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGcEsWlCQb4

Unfinished Reading

 

Books you don't finish reading

are like mountains you don't

finish climbing or comparisons

like this that don't seem quite right.

They are like acquaintances who

don't become friends. (This seems

better.) You have been told or

think you see what's up ahead,

but a weariness sets in. Let

the book be great for others,

you think.  Just leave me out of it. 

I've resigned from the reading of

The Fairie Queen, Clarissa, The

Castle of Crossed Destinies, 

The Charterhouse at Parma, 

countless portly mystery novels.

I pretended to finish Paradise

Lost but, as with the film,

The Titanic, I had guessed the ending.

I forced myself to climb Mann's

Magic Mountain. It took

decades, and it wasn't worth it.

When Sam Johnson (who

said of Paradise Lost, "No one

wished it longer") got tired

of a book, he threw it across

the room. Bolder than I,

he didn't resign from reading.

He fired the book.

hans ostrom 2017

Women, Books, Making a Living

Apparently one of my major

aims in life was to get a lot of

books, bring them home,

and read them more or less

at the same time. Also, I

developed an interest in

women--individually 

and as a form, a genre,

of human being. Soon

I began to receive messages

about "making a living,"

which (I get it) is important

but which is immeasurably

tedious when contrasted

with books, women, and

women-and-books. Is the

way I look at it, apparently. 

hans ostrom 2020

"Tears Fall In My Heart," by Paul Verlaine

 Reading/video of a poem by French Symbolist and so-called Decadent, Paul Verlaine (1844-1896)--translated by Richard Greene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGQzml49Vys

"On the Nature of Love," by Rabindranath Tagore

 One of the better known poems by Tagore (1861-1941), poet, composer, philosopher, fiction writer, artist--astoundingly talented. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913.

Reading/video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0zLlzUJEEA

"Musical Instrument," by Luis Cernuda

 Reading/video of a short poem that, in a flash, presents a theory of creativity. Luis Cernuda was a Spanish poet who spent much of his life in exile from Franco's regime.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Lsiw5zTWf8

"Sonnet XIII: The Light That Rises from Your Feet to Your Hair," by Pablo Neruda

 Reading/video of a poem by Neruda, translated by W.S. Merwin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARm5kuBG1jg

Emily Dickinson writes of hauntings: "One Need not be a Chamber to Be Haunted"

 Video/reading of a poem by Emily Dickinson--number 407 or 670, depending upon the numbering system. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2IS5DxW2Zw

Duty

After a life, or most of one,

of doing his duty, meeting

his responsibilities and obeying

their orders, he found he couldn't

relax as others did. He made

too much even of small tasks,

compelled himself to follow

through, stay strong, be there.

Voices of authorities past

gabbed in his head. He vowed

that one day he would not do

what he was supposed to do. 

But would he follow through?

hans ostrom 2020