Anthology of African Poetry

Finally, I ordered an anthology of African poetry. I'm afraid I made a very conventional move and went with a Penguin anthology. I'm hoping it will serve as a good place to begin, and I have no doubt many delights await me, so even if you're unamused by this choice, don't disabuse me too much. Anyway, here is the basic information, in case you'd like to join me on this adventure--or, indeed, if you'd like to disabuse me (a bit); --or, better yet, suggest additional anthologies and other books.

Gerald Moore and Ulli Beier, editors and translators, The Penguin Book of African Poetry (fifth edition), 2007.

I've read some African poetry and proverbs in translation here and there, I encountered some names of African poets when I was working on two Langston Hughes books, and I've been enjoying poems on Poefrika's blog, but this will be my first systematic foray.

A new anthology: wow--just the sort of thing to give a poet and reader of poetry an adrenalin-rush, and in a way, I wish I were kidding. Some people prefer bungee-jumping off bridges or race-car driving. Me, I go right for that table of contents, ice-water in my veins.

Mayor

(image: Mayor Richard J. Daley)











According to the OED online, "mayor" springs from the French, "mare," and used to be spelled "mair," among other ways. The governmental post seems to have been a feudal one originally, but it soon changed into the municipal-related one we think of now. Probably the most notorious mayor in my experience was Richard J. Daley of Chicago, famous for his dictatorial style, his "machine" ("vote early and often"), his bigotry, and his over-reaction to protesters at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. His son is mayor now. Probably there are many reasons for his having been elected and re-elected, but one of them must be that some people were more or less nostalgic for "the old days."

I met a woman once who had grown up in Spain when Franco was still dictator but who then moved to the U.S.--in her late teens or early 20s, I think. She recognized that Spain's government, etc., was better now than then, but she also recalled feeling "safe" in the city she lived in--because Franco ruled militaristically: no street-crime, etc. I doubt if this woman ever would have voted for Franco, assuming he'd stood for election. Nonetheless, she experienced a degree of nostalgia when thinking of her childhood when he was dictator. The current Daley is no Franco, of course, but I do wonder if some people prefer "familiar authority" sometimes.

Anyway, I've been messing around with a mayoral poem.


A Brief Message from the Mayor

I'm the Mayor of No-town,
Population: One. However,
others live here seasonally.

I like to tell people I won
the election in a run-off.
I disagree with myself,

can't decide what to do,
and change my mind a lot,
so government suffers here.

True, I don't get many
complaints. I've threatened
to resign in protest. Still,

it's a good place to live.
I might create an ad-campaign
to boost tourism--something

like "No-town: home of
the Big Yes" or "No-town . . .
for a Tiny Vacation."

This democracy of one--
I have my doubts. I think
I'll change the charter.

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Whom the Students Like: Poets

(image: ice cream fit for an emperor)

So I gave a test in the Introduction to Poetry Writing Class. I suppose it's unusual to give tests in creative-writing course, but there are other good reasons to do so besides the fact that it goes against the grain. We use a textbook [this time it's Kevin Clark's The Mind's Eye, which includes a lot of contemporary poetry] and the Norton Anthology of Poetry, and we do a fairly sustantial unit on prosody and traditional verse-forms, so although of course much of our time is spent on the students' poetry, we also read a fair amount.

On the test, I included a question about a favorite poem of theirs we've read so far--either in the Norton or in Clark's book. Shakespeare may be the earliest author I assign, although at some point, I usually discuss the English ballad tradition briefly as well as Anglo-Saxon poetry and how (for example) it influenced Hopkins.

Anway, here are the students' answers:

William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming"

Ezra Pound, "In a Station of the Metro"

Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken" [we spend some time discussing the ways in which the text of the poem doesn't "say" what people now assume it says] [2 votes]

Langston Hughes, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" [2 votes]

Countee Cullen, "Yet Do I Marvel"

Norman Dubie, "Poem" (about a child burying a hairless doll)

Barbara Hamby, "Vex Me"

Wallace Stevens, "The Emperor of Ice Cream" [3 votes]

John Donne, "The Flea"

Theodore Roethke, "The Waking" [2 votes]

Wilfred Owen, "Dulce Et Decorum Est" [2 votes]

T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" [3 votes]

I was surprised by the fact that both Stevens and Eliot received multiple votes--Stevens, especially, because I had assumed the students had found "The Emperor of Ice Cream" to be too perplexing, although I try to show that it's really not as perplexing as all that (I assumed I'd come close to failing in this regard). We will have read more women poets by the time the second test comes around, but even so I was surprised poems by Hannah Stein and Ruth Stone (for instance) didn't get a vote. On the other hand, this is a vote only for one poem.

Exuberant Palomino

(image: a palomino, not the one in question, alas)









Study: Exuberance With Yellow Mane


One bright day a rack of years ago,
I stood next to an alpine pasture and saw
a palomino horse gallop across my gaze,
kick his rear legs up, fart as loud as gunshots,
and then run more. Jeter. That was his name.
A fat, friendly, pale yellow horse, was Jeter--
not dramatic. That day, though, his body
broke into a spirited sprint, went on a riff
of freedom, expressed an acrobatic comedy
of gas. He showed the bottom of his back-hooves
to the sky. He diveted that fenced turf.
Jeter had been called to the altar of joy,
and he came running in the sun, old
gassy Jeter, possessed exuberantly,
great to see.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Old-School Brits

(image: Gerard Manley Hopkins)






In my first or second year of graduate school, the university's daily newspaper interviewed an English professor, Elliot Gilbert, whom I ended up taking 2-3 seminars from. He was a Victorianist but also published on detective fiction and other topics. The reporter wanted to know either what Gilbert's favorite authors were or maybe favorite novels. I can't quite remember. Anyway, Gilbert refused to answer and called the inquiry "a TV question." He was right. On the other hand, it's a TV question that is sometimes amusing and pleasantly frustrating to answer.

On facebook, I made a list of my 100 most recommended novels. In a few instances, I bowed to pressure and included books just because they're so widely valued. Lolita is a good example. I don't like it as much as most people seem to, but it's hard to question its status. Otherwise, I listed books that I thought were great. I left off The Scarlet Letter and Moby Dick (among others) and caught grief for it the next day, as I should have, I suppose. With listing comes responsibility.

Last night I decided to invent a much more difficult task for myself: to list my favorite 10 Old School British poets--in order of my preference. By Old School, I think I mean, oh, pre-1950, and I included Ireland in the mix, just because, poetically speaking, it is usually in the mix when people put anthologies together; otherwise, no offense intended.

How on Earth did I rank them--by what criteria? Good question. I think the answer is . . . some combination of achievement in the genre (poetry), influence on later poets, and my own personal appreciation. But the percentages change in each case. Anway, here goes:

1. W. H. Auden (the tops)
2. Gerard Manley Hopkins
3. William Shakespeare
4. William Blake
5. William Butler Yeats
6. Robert Browning
7. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
8. Stevie Smith
9. A.E. Housman
10. John Keats

Auden's achievement seems as various as any poet I can think of, and he was enormously influential. Also, it's just great to read his poetry, no matter what day or year it is. Hoplins is there because of his genuinely unique contribution, and also because when I first read him, the experience was something close to revolutionary. You can do that with poetry? I remember thinking.

Shakespeare's there because of the indelible achievement in sonnets, Blake because of the originality and daring, Yeats, I think, because he was just a fine poet. In some of those poems, his way with language is perfect. A lot of his views are just too weird to bear, and the thing with Maude Gonne and daughter got silly real fast. But as for some of the poems: hard to know what more he could have done. Browning is there, I think, because some of his poems are so precociously modern. Of the Victorians, he's the best psychological poet, in my opinion. Coleridge is on the list because, although his batting average wasn't that great, when he did "hit the ball," he hit it to the moon. Stevie Smith's vision and phrasing are just so independent, quirky, and fresh that I find her work irresistible. I can imagine lots of argument for keeping her off the list. Housman's there because of craft. Keats made it on there because of 5-10 fabulous poems.

Wordsworth almost made it on there because of the achievement in some of those lyrics--and parats of the Prelude. I've been re-reading a lot of Wordsworth lately, and the charm is definitely gone. I almost wrote a dissertation on him, and I've taught a whole course on him. He wrote a lot of bad poetry, however, and the self-absorption is unyielding. Nonetheless, some of those poems early on are superb.

If the list were a house, Wordsworth would be banging on the door wanting in. I can hear him out there. The same goes for Pope, Byron, Tennyson, E.B. Browning (Aurora Leigh is pretty great), and George Crabbe. Marvell and Donne are in the crowd, and so is Spenser--and so is Spender, although I can't imagine his banging on the door. Lots of other poets wanted in, but I had to keep the list to 10, just for the agony of it.

I also realized the extent to which I haven't kept up with post-1960/1970 British poetry in the way I have with American poetry from the same period. Part of this has to do with my getting interested in African Amerian poetry, but part of it is also a lack of discipline. I need to do some reading. The same applies to African poetry and Canadian poetry. Oy, so much poetry to read.

After you've railed in disgust at my list, please do make your own. I want to share the agony of choosing just 10--and ranking them. Good listing to you.

Use Form 9/25 For Poems, Please

(image: courtesy of postivesharing.com)

I've been playing around with an invented poetic form--a simple one in which the poem has 9 lines, and you simply count words per line in the following pattern: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. You end up with a poem that has a profile like that of a portly man, but there are other virtues to the form as well.

Unfortunately, I haven't produced very good poems using the form yet. I don't blame the form. Of course, I'm probably not the inventor of it. No doubt many have tried it. I simply haven't seen it around. Give it a try, if you like. I'm calling it Form 9/25, which sounds like a bureaucatric form, so there's that. (Nine lines, twenty-five words.)

Here are some examples, not that you need them, and not that the products are very good, as noted.

A 9/25 Poem

There

is a

kind of drama

in meeting each person

we meet, a space of

light or heavy tension

as one life

intersects with

another.

Starlings

Starlings,

dark grey

and speckled, gather

in a group--thirty

or so--on wires above

my abode. They whistle,

chatter, burble, and

flit. They're

garrulous.

[A bird-watching book I once read described starlings as "garrulous." I thought that to be a charming description.]

Literary Feud

One

drunken boaster

with a reputation

of some kind didn't

like another self-consumed writer,

and they squabbled over

the years, very

jealous: so

what?

(Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom)

Sunset Strip

(image: a section of the Sunset Strip in Hollywood)

*

*

*

*

*

Sunset Boulevard

*

Sunset Boulevard is asphalt and concrete rolled

onto crushed rock. The rest is mirage. If you forget

this, then Hollywood's done one of its jobs. Above

the line of boulevard, wealth's fortifications protrude

from high ground. Below the line, a stew of stucco cooks.

Simmering, it releases gray vapors. Conduits of

sewage, electricity, gas, and such connect it all--

networks of basics, expelled and consumed.

Most buildings and signs on Sunset seem weary

in spite of designed protestations to the contrary.

People look hunted, haunted, or harried, in spite

of display, tattoos, feints, fashion, and façades.

Beneath the boulevard lie geological formations.

On top is us, the decoration. We're the close-up.

Time's the long shot in which all of this will be

out of frame.

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Wonder: A Starter-Kit

(image: oregano--in bloom, as you no doubt deduced)










Wonder: A Starter-Kit


I find I still appreciate
remedial amazement: how
a bicycle stays upright once
someone rides it. --How
elevator-doors close on
one floor, open on another:
impressive. A seed can
become a sequoia. Laughter,
especially at no one's expense,
is a taste of paradise-pie.
A nose differentiates
between oregano and mint.

This is all still news of sorts
to me, an introduction
to fascination, a trusty primer,
a starter-kit I haven't,
apparently, outgrown.

Relatively Astounding

(image, composed of non-local digital particles: Niels Bohr, Danish physicist)





From "A Quantum Threat to Special Relativity," by David. Z. Albert and Rivka Galchen, Scientific American, March 2009, p. 32:

"...according to quantum mechanics one can arrange a pair of particles so that they are precisely two feet apart and yet neither particle on its own has a definite position. Furthermore, the standard approach to understanding quantum physics, the so-called Copenhagen intepretation--proclaimed by the great Danish physicist Niels Bohr early last century and handed down from professor to student for generations--insists that it is not that we do not know the facts about the individual particles' exact location; it is that there simply aren't any such facts. To ask after the position of a single particle would be as meaningless as, say, asking after the marital status of the number five. The problem is not epistemological (about what we know) but ontological (about what is)."

I will avoid an obvious joke and not say that I found this paragraph particularly interesting, except that I did "say" it, but the location of the joke isn't precisely knowable. That said, or not, physics is starting to sound like theology (the latter defined in the broadest sense). If the facts about the location of particles can't be known, then to what extent do we/can we know anything? Of course, we have to pretend we know, or to "know" on faith. When I walk across a street, my self-interest seems served by my pretending to know where the oncoming automobile traffic is. At the same time, the facts about the reality of that traffic may still be unknowable, even as I live my cross-walk life as if they were knowable.

In other word, Oy!

And if I read that paragraph from SA correctly (and I probably don't), physics is looping back to philosophy, where it began, in a way, with the pre-Socratics, and where it was picked up again by Aristotle, among others, but also by thinkers in other cultural traditions--including Africa and Asia. I regard this as good news--for selfish reasons: physics is more interesting to me when it admits what it can't know, and/or when it comes close to expressing or at least reinforcing amazement. That's partly because I'm a poet and a reader of poet, I suppose. For poets and readers of poets, amazement is a good thing, especially when it springs from the common--like a particle, for example, or a bee (Dickinson liked bees), a wheel barrow (red, if you have one in stock), a river (Langston Hughes), or a hawk (Hopkins).

The third "key concept" highlighted by "The Editors" in a sidebar to the article:

"This nonlocal effect is not merely counterintuitive: it presents a serious problem to Einstein's special theory of relativity, thus shaking the foundations of physics."

Ouch. I mean, "Cool."

And I was just getting used to how counterintuitive Einstein's theories are in relation to Newtonian physics. To deal with this confusion, I must go read some poetry, which most people (I assume) regard to be about as riveting as theoretical physics.

Hang on to your particles, folks, wherever they're not located.

Green In Mexico

Green In Mexico


In Mexico the jungle seemed as wet
and heavy as the sea, well almost.
A big reptile stared at me with alert
boredom. It had last been alarmed
in 1543, when a mad conquistador
had loaned it all that armor. Little

green lizards writhed underfoot.
I tried not to squash them. Birds
screamed. Trees bent under the
heavy body of humidity. I perspired
so much I started thinking about

how much human salt lay in that
soil. I was going to ask the man
in green about this notion. He
wasn't sweating. He carried
an automatic weapon. His
mustache was as black as
the gun-barrel. This Federale

didn't have to order me to
keep quiet. The jungle had
instructed me. I went into
the hut and slept with my
passport. Green waves
rolled over fitful dreams.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Creative Writers Gather Data

For the short-story-writing class today, I had students gather data over the weekend. The task was to visit a public venue, listen to people, and write down phrases, statements, and questions heard. I think we were aiming for a list of 20 separate items.

However, the idea was not to "eavesdrop," in the classic sense. Part of the plan was not to listen to whole conversation but to seize isolated utterances. We also stressed paying attention to exactly how people phrase things.

I've used the exercise a few times, both for poetry and fiction classes, but this time it proved especially rich. Numerous puzzling, shocking, hilarious, cryptic, uncanny, oddly phrased, and mysterious phrases, statements, and questions were captured.

What to do with the "data"? One implicit "lesson," I think, is to remind oneself of just how powerful speech--or, in short-fiction terms, "dialogue"--is: how complicated, full of conflict, and volatile it is. More specifically, one approach is to take what someone says literally. One example I can think of is that a person heard another person say, "I didn't know people needed blood." Of course, we can fill in around the statement to make it seem a reasonable thing to say, but for creative-writing purposes, we may want to assume it's just a stark statement of fact. Then the question to ask is under what circumstances would an adult say such a thing "for real" ? The fictional "answer" is the seed of the story.

In the airport this weekend, I tried to "do" the task myself, and I overheard a teenaged girl/woman say to another girl/woman of the same age, "She takes a lot of drugs, and vice versa." What a great thing to say! The phrasing is unwittingly funny--and wise. In what dialogue from what story might this statement work? That's the question, or one question. A student in class also observed how "vice" took on additional meaning in this case.

As one might expect, the person who wrote down a given statement, question, or phrase--because s/he knew the context or had been tempted to fill in the context--was often less able to see the creative possiblilities than those who had just heard the statement for the first time. So I guess another more or less obvious "lesson" is to try to be able to see and hear the recorded language freshly--almost naively, but not quite.

May your listening/observing be most creatively productive.

Mountain Misery and Skunk Cabbage

(image: the plant commonly known as "Mountain Misery," or
Chamaebatia Species: foliolosa)


In the High Sierra, there are at least two plants with over-powering aromas: skunk cabbage (often found in marsh-like conditions but at high altitude) and mountain misery, which seems to grow in the shade and is most drought-tolerant. These plants are serious about the way they smell. They also cause arguments. Some people, like me, like the way they smell. Other people don't. I think people from the latter group gave the plants their common (as opposed to Latin) names.


Plants, Too

Of course creatures fascinated us. Like us
they'd ended up not in Paris or Perth but
in the High Sierra--by accident; or maybe
it was a career-move; who knows? Rattlesnakes,
skinks, lizards, ouzels, kildeers, owls, potato-bugs,
scorpions, deer, periwinkles, bears, raccoons,
bobcats, cougars, water-snakes, hawks,
and company charmed us like wizards.


The plants, too, cast a magic, though, rooted,
they were easier to ignore and less dramatic.
The way milkweed actually bled milk when
snapped, every time: so cool. How skunk-cabbage
(Lysichiton americanus) and mountain misery
embraced you with their odors like a boozy,
perfumed, vivid aunt: wow. Anis-stalks tasted like
licorice. Pine-sap softened by saliva turned
into gum. Take your chances with wild berries:
elderberries, yes; inkberries, no. We climbed


pines and firs, rode them as they
bent with the wind as flexibly as
grass-blades. What was the strangest
vegetation of all? I will say the snow plant,
Sarcodes sanguinea, bereft of chlorphyll.
It was less than creature but more
than plant. One day it would simply arise
beneath a tree in snow, bright red in Winter,
broadcasting a mute allure that suggested
it might not be a part of any timely scheme.
*
*
Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Marriage-Tetrameter?

(image: two geese [I bet you guessed that], which allegedly
mate for life, although there are probably goose pre-nuptials)







My goodness, a "marriage-tetrameter" sounds like some kind of medical device. Eek.


In class the other day, a student asked whether I were a doctor. I said,"Technically, yes, as I earned a Ph.D. in English." I should pause here and explain that, in the academic world, there are those who like and want to called "Doctor," as opposed to professor or Mr. or Ms. or by their first name. Then there are those who do not want to be called Doctor. I don't know what the percentages are, nor do I know what the sociological correlatives are, but I do think it's based on something more than whim.


At any rate, I went on to say that I am not licensed to practice medicine but that, if someone on an airplane flight were to have trouble scanning a poem written in a traditional meter, the flight attendant could get on the intercom and ask, "Ladies and gentlemen, remain calm, but we have an emergency; a passenger in 24-D is having some difficulty with a 17th-century sonnet. Is there a doctor of literature on board?"


At another any rate, we have plunged into formal verse in the poetry class--meter, rhyme, traditional forms, scansion, enjambment, full rhymes, half rhymes, sprung rhythm, blank verse --the whole prosodic enchilada (a word that has two trochees, I think.)

I have great fun teaching this "unit" because I get the students writing in meter first by encourageing them not to make sense. In a way they're just writing "sound poems." Ironically, because they're concentrating just on meter, they come up with some wild, unpredictable lines--which can serve as the seed for a "real" poem. There's also a bit of groaning, of course, because some of them had a bad time with "iambic pentameter," etc., in high school.


Physician of prosody, heal thyself.

Because I'm having my students work through some prosodic exercises, I thought I should do one myself. The assignment is simply to write some modified blank verse on any subject. By "modified," I mean iambic tetrameter (8 syllables, 4 beats, with the or stresses occuring on the even-numbered syllables), unrhymed. Rather arbitrarily, I chose marriage as the topic, but really "tetrameter" is the implicit purpose of the, ahem, "poem."

No doubt I committed some "inversions" (a trochee in place of an iamb). In two places, I got too cute and split words at the end of lines, and in one place, I rhymed without intending to. In other words, it's pretty rough tetrametric road.


Tetrameter for Marriage


It seems that marriage is a kind
Of complicated puzzle that's
Constructed slowly but not solved.
One part is lust. It's there and not.
Lust is mercurial. We all
Know that. Another part is love--
I said it; there it is, plain sight--
A deep appreciation of
The other, and of what the other is
In fact, not what one wants him/her
To be. The person will be dear.
Bourgeois, the "institution?" I guess.
If you say so, though that sounds like
Pretentious babble to two ones
Who have been married, gay or straight,
Transgendered. Well, another part
Is laughter, running jokes, and irony.
It is a comedy-routine,
Is marriage. It's improved, a schtick.
I'll tell you, money helps as well--
Enough so that you have enough
To eat, to keep a place, to live.
A certain discipline's required--
No, not that kind, but if you are
Interested in that kind, you go.
Let's see. What was the topic? Oh:
A certain discipline's required,
Some self-control, especially when
Temptation cruises by, or times
Are tough. A lot of independence,
Personal space: Yes, these two help
A lot. But in the end, if mar-
Riage works, luck has to be involved.
You just keep going, laughing; work.
Link love and lust and like and laugh.
You share. You are adults, and you
Are friends. Your marriage is a puz-
Zle--that's for sure. Be sure to live
It well. It's not something to solve.
*
*
Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom