Beyond the Humptulips River

Sand daubers seem to skate

on the sheen left by retreating

surf. They move like freshly

hatched spiders. They were

called to be birds. We 

were called to be humans

and have names for birds

and everything else.

Yesterday, my love and I

crossed over the Humptulips

River, glancing past bridge

beams at a big muddy flow.

Today, we're watching 

gray waves, looking at

shivering stiff foam stacked

near driftwood. We're 

saying human things. 

It turns out we want 

more and less of life

simultaneously. Same

old story. The surf's steady

roar can be used as a

lullaby noise or heard as

the indifferent voice of reality:

that thing against which

we bump up. 

hans ostrom 2020

You, Sir, Are Morbid

Where you are well into

your sixth decade & you

think often of how you're

going to get it, it being

the absence of being.

Shot? It's America, so

yeah, good guess. Cancer?

You tried that once.

Going all the way with it:

how much pain? Acute

pneumonia: the long drowning.

Heart attack: hurt and horror.

Stroke: same. Dementia--

you're dying but it seems

like someone else is?

You always were morbid,

weren't you? Because

thinking the worst seemed

to help you pretend to 

control things. Ah, that's

it--you'll probably die 

trying to control something.

Which, in the abstract,

is kind of funny. Oh, well,

as a sage of the Sierra Nevada

once said to you, "Kid,

we gotta die of something."

hans ostrom 2020

"Woods," by Wendell Berry

 Reading/video of a very short poem by Wendell Berry about walking in the woods. Berry, a farmer, has published widely acclaimed poetry, essays, and fiction. 

link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMlIVmuEnY4

"Desert," by Josephine Miles

Reading/video of a short poem by Miles (1911-1985), who was a remarkable poet and scholar--and a remarkable person. In childhood she was afflicted with severe arthritis, and as an adult she had highly limited use of her hands, legs, and feet. I saw her read at the University of California, Davis, and an assistant carried her into the room. The reading was great. She graduated from high school in Los Angeles--John Cage was a classmate. She earned a B.A. in English at UCLA and a Ph.D. at Berkeley, where she taught her whole career. She pioneered quantitative research in the humanities, and using a punch-card computer, published a concordance to the poetry of John Dryden. Her own poetry garnered her much acclaim. She was an early supporter of Beat poetry and helped Alan Ginsberg get Howl published. She was especially interested in different modes of diction in modern poetry.

link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wd-JZHpF7pc

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