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

"The Caged Skylark," by Gerard Manley Hopkins

"Hinge Collection," by Hans Ostrom

Of course, this is just part
of my collection of hinges.

But it may give you some idea
of the variety and kinds of
hinges,
of their ubiquity, of the
range of their design.

Also, you will likely note that,
unattached to anything
and without box, door, or shutter,
hinges become absurd.

Sometimes I think they
look like awful jewelry
or modestly successful
instruments of annoyance.
I hate them so, my hinges.

hans ostrom 2014

"Far in a Western Brookland," by A.E. Housman