"Wireless" Redux

I stumbled upon the following poem from the very early century just-past:

Wireless, by K.G. Martin [1904]

Wireless, meaningless, save that we know

that another man in a far away land

stands by the side of a gibbering spark,

punching his message into the dark.

Into the dark of a Summer's night,
and around the world and into the light
of our brilliant Winter day
speeds the vibrant, quivering ray.

And, caught in the web of sky-flung wires,
sinks to earth, chatters, expires;
but before it dies, skillful hands of man
have torn from its soul a Marconigram.


This poem fascinates in several ways. "Marconigram," a telegram named after the radio-inventor Marconi and apparently based on a telegraph-system he or those familiar with his work created, is a lovely portmanteau word. I think the last telegram I received was in about 1986. I had to drive down to a Greyhound bus-station (where there was a tiny Western Union office) to get it: cumbersome. I would much rather have driven down there for a Marconigram. (And now of course my mind drifts to the infamous "Candy-gram for Mongo" scene in Mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles.)

Also, I like the nice mixture of being impressed by the new technology and being underwhelmed by it. The new (in 1904) technology may be whiz-bang, but in the end, it results in . . . chatter. Chatter in, chatter out, regardless of what gizmo you're using.

Now, obviously, "wireless" refers neither to radio nor to telegrams, per se, but to telephonic gizmos that are equipped to bounce signals--billions a day, one supposes--off satellites and towers. I have no idea how this technology works, and I've written before here about my discomfort with cell-phones (mobile phones), which are far too small for my paws. Companies should have "Big and Tall" stores where one can buy phones to fit one's physical . . . um . . . style.

Here is a poem I wrote perhaps seven years ago, well before I stumbled upon the "Wireless" poem by K.G. Martin, for whom now I feel a kind of kinship. It's a bit uncanny that, without knowledge of the other or the other's poem, K.G. and I both chose three four-line stanzas. Of course, back then, he felt more pressure to use rhyme than I do, so I went with free verse. Neither of us is one hundred per cent enthusiastic about this new "wireless" technology. K.G., if you read this, call me, using your wireless phone. (What is Heaven's area code?) The poem (which for some unknown wireless reason the blog-program insists on putting in Italics--not my idea, but I can't fix it, and I even took the extraordinary step of looking at the Html code):

Truly, Madly, Cellularly

By portable telephones they trysted.
Their words raptured--caromed off
corporate satellites, descended bundled
in spongy static. Some sluiced through

optic fibers. Why not speak face to face?
Unmanageable: The lovers worried words
might disappear into Society so harried, sloppy,
huge. Words cleansed in space and digitized

might be exchanged like polished stones.
Sighs and whispers might be chastened.
The two did broadcast their love, but only to
the other; and were charged by the minute.

Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom

Jets; A. R. Ammons

What happened to "sonic booms"--the noise made by airplanes that go faster than the speed of sound? I haven't heard one in ages. Growing up in the Sierra Nevada, I heard them all the time. That's an exaggeration. But at least 5 a year, usually in the summer. We assumed they were caused by high-flying jet fighter-planes coming out of an Air Force base in Nevada, but I don't remember exactly what kind of planes they were. I do remember an extraordinarily startling boom. Every so often, if lightning struck very close, the ensuing thunder might match a sonic boom, but otherwise the latter was the loudest boom I'd ever heard. It seemed like it was all the windows could do to keep from breaking, and the house rattled. Then, if you went outside and looked up (and the sky was clear), you could see the beginning of the white jet-trail, high up, and at the head of that trail, an object that looked not much bigger than a needle.

After opening with this jet-digression, I'll now present a jet-poem by A.R. Ammons, who died in 2001, after a long, distinguished career as a poet and professor. He published at least a dozen books of poems, which concerned wide-ranging, eclectic subjects, were often written in a casual, unpretentious voice, but also often featured unexpected phrasing and great attention to detail. As far as I know, it's appropriate to post this poem because it already appears online, on the Modern American Poetry site. In any case, the copyright information appears below the poem:

Elegy for a Jet Pilot

by A.R. Ammons

The blast skims
over the string
of takeoff lights
and
relinquishing
place and time
lofts to
separation:
the plume, rose
sliver, grows
across the
high-lit evening
sky: by this
Mays Landing creek
shot pinecones,
skinned huckleberry
bush, laurel
swaths define
an unbelievably
particular stop.

Copyright © 1998 A. R. Ammons. from Selected Poems, by A.R. Ammons (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1987).

My own jet-poem concerns gardening underneath (so to speak) a jet. I live much closer to an Air Force base (and an Army base with aircraft) now than when I lived in California; there are frequently U.S. airplanes overhead. The poem appeared previously in a magazine, but at the moment, I can't remember which one. I'll have to do some digging, not the gardening kind. The poem:

Skeins

Unroll a skein of shadows,
clip segments and arrange these
in a garden, where daffodil blossoms
bow. A supersonic warplane
practices overhead, unrolling
paired white skeins of ice.
Between a garden and a warplane
lies a little distance—measured
in mere feet. Told a certain way,
all of history fits into that
space, and this may be one reason
you feel small while wondering
where you stored green twine
used to tie up vines. A
short segment of daylight remains.
The warplane may still be heard.

Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom

Blank Verse; Mistakes

"Blank verse" is a term that throws even some students of literature for a loop, at least early in their studies. Basically, it's just iambic pentameter. Of course, if you don't study poetry much or had a bad experience with English in high school, you hear or read "iambic pentameter" and probably want to run away, or at least cover your ears. It sounds so technical and weird, that term.

To review, as much for myself as anyone else: verse in English works by combining syllables and stresses--a "stress" referring to a syllable that's pronounced with greater force than is the syllable before or after it (for example). When most people say "banana," they stress the first "na" more than the "ba" and the second "na." So the first "na" is the stressed syllable of the three.

One iamb (what a weird word) is made of two syllables, and the second of these syllables is stressed. "Alone" is a good example. Almost no one pronounces that word A-lone. Instead they put the stress on "lone."

String five such two-syllable units (iambs) together, and you have yourself blank verse. Easy! What's "blank" about it, aside from the fact that your mind may go blank with all this talk of iambic pentameter? It doesn't rhyme. That's all. So you could write a hundred lines of blank verse and not have to rhyme, although you probably would rhyme by accident at some point.

Iambic pentameter is in some ways the spine of Anglo-North American poetry. You find it in such forms as sonnets, villanelles, and sestinas, for example (the first two forms rhyme, of course, and the third form repeats six end words in a different pattern).

Unrhymed iambic pentameter (blank verse) has its own noble heritage. Shakespeare composed his plays--for the most part--in this verse. Milton used it in Paradise Lost. Wordsworth used it. So did any number of other well known poets. Free verse, which may pay attention to rhythm and sound, certainly, but which doesn't use a regular meter (or pattern), is now the fall-back form of poetry. Open up any literary magazine, and you expect to find free verse. In second position, I think, is blank verse, still.

Blank verse is kind of fun to write (unless you have a life). For poets, it can be like working out is for athletes. Also, the regular old English we speak every day almost "wants" to be iambic pentameter, so you don't have to work that hard to get those alternating syllables going--unstressed/stressed. And there's something conversational about blank verse--one of many reasons, probably, that Shakespeare used it in plays.

Here's a small bit of blank verse on the topic of mistakes:

Mistakes

If each mistake I’ve ever made in this,
My life, were to become a snowflake, drifts
Would rise above the eaves. I’d open wide
The door and look into a blue-tinged bank
Of snow. I’d close the door and say, “I should
Have left last week when I first heard the news
A storm was coming in." I’d light a fire.
The room would fill with smoke, however, for
I’m sure I would have left the damper closed.

One convention of blank verse is to capitalize the first word of every line, even though it may not start a sentence, so that takes some getting used to. Another convention is to pad a line with extra words from time to time to get the quota of five iambs. In this little exercise-poem, I didn't really need to write "wide," but I did because I needed a stress there, and at least "wide" is plausible. Also, I probably could have written simply "in life" instead of "in this/My life," but I padded a bit to keep the meter going.

Note, too, that "My" and "life" receive almost the same stress. All iambs are not created equally. In every line of blank verse there's also a pause that seems to occur "naturally"; the official name for it is a "caesura." Sometimes punctuation causes it; sometimes it doesn't. Milton was great at deliberately moving the caesura into different places in different lines, partly to avoid monotony.

And so I've made more mistakes to add to the pile of . . . snow: discussing "iambic pentameter" and "blank verse," calling up bad memories of high school English for some people, and writing some blank verse for God and Milton and everyone else to see should they stumble down this blind alley (see previous post) of the internet.

Try writing some blank verse, maybe while you're watching TV. When you're done, you will have joined a long line of scribblers stretching back to Shakespeare (and even further). It's a big club. Everybody's welcome.

Alleys

It's not until I got to the third definition of "alley" on the OED online that I found the definition I associate with the word (the first and second definitions seem to refer to almost any kind of passage-way in a village, town, or city):

3. a. A passage between buildings; hence, a narrow street, a lane; usually only wide enough for foot-passengers. blind alley: one that is closed at the end, so as to be no thoroughfare; a cul de sac. the Alley, particularly applied to Change Alley, London, scene of the gambling in South Sea and other stocks. (In U.S. applied to what in London is called a Mews.)

The word--with wildly different spellings, including "alei"--goes back to the 1300s but seems to have begun to take on the meaning above during the Renaissance, and at about that time it also, I suppose, began to carry unsavory connotations associated with urban life. In my micro-town in the Sierra Nevada, there were one or two legitimate alleys, but they were more like short, narrow roads between venerable, easy-going buildings--and overhung with trees. So early on, when someone spoke of an "alley" in town, favorable associations arose in my mind. Soon I would learn, from lore, that alleys in larger towns and cities were not to be trusted.

Sometimes you still occasionally hear men praise another man by saying, "He's someone I wouldn't mind having with me if I was caught in a dark alley"--meaning, of course, that the guy would be good in a fight. However, men who say this often have not been in an alley fight (nor have I, although I was in a total of one bar-fight, and I devoutly hope the tally remains at one), nor do they share plans for going through a dark alley any time soon.

I rather like alleys, but they do cause problems (besides the legendary problem of fights) with parking, driving, placement of garbage cans, etc. I think the post-World War II suburbs and suburbs built after that era pretty much did away with alleys, among other things.

A wee poem about alleys, then:

Alleys

An alley never concerns itself. An
alley always concerns the social
geometry that shapes it—a pompous

boulevard’s way of saying
alleys will gladly be whatever cities
want ‘em to be. I’ve never met

an alley, though, that didn’t have something
to say about disappointment. An alley’s
often a lane with a rap-sheet, or

a refugee-camp for shadows. Once
I knew an alley that would get drunk
and boast that it used to be a highway.

Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom

Guest Poet: William Kupinse on Rejection

Rejection is a matter of fact for all working, publishing poets.


When I was an undergraduate, I remember thinking that all living, well known poets simply had to send whatever they wrote to a magazine or (in the case of a book-manuscript) to a publisher and the work would quickly get into print.



I was taking a class from Pulitizer-Prize-winning poet Karl Shapiro at the time. He was just over 60 years old by then, had won the big prize and other prizes, had published numerous books, and had even edited arguably the most important literary magazine in the U.S., Poetry, in Chicago. He had signed a contract with the New Yorker magazine whereby he would send the prestigious magazine his new poems first before sending them elsewhere.


But one day he brought in a poem called "Humanties Building," and he said that the New Yorker would publish it only if he made certain changes, and he wanted our opinion of the poem. It was the only time he ever shared his work with us--published or not--and I think he did so because the building he described was the one in which the English Department was housed: Sproul Hall at U.C. Davis. After class, several of us students talked, and we all simply couldn't believe that the New Yorker wanted him to change the poem--or else not publish it. I remember one fellow saying that Shapiro shouldn't "give in," should refuse to make the changes. How naive we were!


Many years later, Karl's longtime publisher, Random House, simply dropped him, letting his books go out of print and expressing no interest in publishing any new books he might write. Another very well known poet was visiting the campus at the time, and I mentioned this news to him. Instead of expressing sympathy for Karl's situation, he said, "That doesn't compare with all the things that publishers have done to me!"

The experiences of these two "war horses" of American poetry helped me put my own stacks of rejection-slips from magazines and publishers in perspective, but what really helps to put rejection in perspective is poet William Kupinse's poem on the subject. Bill has kindly allowed me to post the poem on the blog:



REJECTION LETTER

By William Kupinse

It comes by stealth amid the circulars and bills,
the print of the S.A.S.E. uncanny
as catching yourself in a shop window mirror.
But instead of “who’s that . . . Hey, it’s…not so bad,”
this glimpse of self’s a backhand cheekward slap.
“Thank you, but we will not be publishing your . . .”
Or, more honestly, “We wish we could reply
to each submission individually. . .”
Something in the photocopy process makes even kind attempts
sound patronizing: “As James Fields wrote to a young
Walt Whitman, we’re sorry, Walter, but . . .”

I’ve been tearing open, reading, and resealing
through the magic of obsessive imagination
just such a letter, as I recline in Dana’s
automobile, a vehicle whose faint pungency
is liberated by a springtime afternoon
as we head north to Seattle. By the paper-mills of Fife
I confess: the letter has me blue. She nods,
recounts her psychology abstract shot down—
no expenses-paid trip to Bologna for her.
I nod; it is sometimes a kindness
to recommend your failure to a friend,
when it’s half-buried in forgetting’s murk.
We need a word for such an act;
like Schadenfreude, but more upbeat.
It could not be a German word;
it would need to come from India, or Sweden.

I lean back, farther still, into myself,
and think of all the world’s psychologists typing abstracts
and all of time’s poets licking envelopes,
and everyone trying to better everyone else,
and I think of nature red in tooth and claw,
and of chimpanzees besting other chimpanzees,
and of chimpanzees typing furiously
while glancing at the heroic couplets of other chimpanzees,
and I think of Darwin getting a leg up on Wallace and Lamarck,
and I think of every grade school boy wanting
to be an astronaut or fireman or president.

And I think of the man the country calls president
and what weird family systems therapy it would take
to sort him and America out, and how he
could never best a soul in any unrigged contest,
yet he gets to use this remarkable stationery
that always gleans a personal response.


Copyright 2007 by William Kupinse

A Few Favorite Books of Poetry

Here's some recommended reading, ten books of contemporary (meaning later 20th century or even after 2000) poetry, listed in no particular order, that one might consider buying or borrowing. And in the case of poetry-books, I almost always recommend plunging into the book randomly, rummaging about until you find a poem you like, and going from there. I'm listing the publishers from memory, so in some cases I may be wrong.

1. Gary Snyder, The Back Country--New Directions. Turtle Island won the Pulitzer, but I've always preferred this earlier book.

2. Randall Jarrell, either The Complete Poems or Selected Poems. Farrar, Strauss, Giroux.

3. Wendy Bishop, My Last Door (just published--2007, from Anhinga Press in Florida, really a splendid collection by the late Wendy Bishop.)

4. Richard Hugo, 31 Letters and 13 Dreams (they are letter-poems, not merely letters); or his collected poems, titled Making Certain It Goes On. W. W. Norton.

5. Rita Dove, Selected Poems. Vintage.

6. Langston Hughes, either The Collected Poems (edited by Rampersad and Roessel) or Selected Poems. Vintage.

7. Natasha Tretheway, Native Guard. This one won the most recent Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and the paperback came out in April, from Mariner Books. A wonderful combination of personal and historical poems.

8. Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. (Dual Language Edition). Penguin--I think.

9. Kevin Clark, In The Evening of No Warning, Western Michigan Univ. Press. (Clark is a contemporary master of narrative poetry.)

10. William Stafford, Selected Poems [I think the full title is The Darkness is Deep All Around Us], Harper? Stafford consistently wrote very good poetry, and then every so often there's a perfect poem with astonishing, orginal insight combined with superb phrasing--but in an unpretentious voice.

Fresh

Fresh Poem For Anyone

by Hans Ostrom

Here's a fresh poem for you. It snaps
crisply like a cold carrot just pulled
out of hard ground. It shocks like the time
the politician simply told the truth. It
loves like a woman sailing on a voyage
of her beauty. It's awkward and generous--
a large barn of a poem. It's a knock-kneed,
unsophisticated singer a crowd stayed
late to hear. It's a scar left by a dog's tooth,
the stench of a rattlesnake-den, a
satisfaction long denied, a time after
weeping, the thing you've known for sure
all along, and the words you were hoping
to hear. It explodes right here
into the poem you need to write, to read,
and to remember. Take it. It's fresh
and it's yours and it's free. It belongs to
you now. Start writing it, keep going, and hold on.

Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom

A Stoic Poem By Emily Bronte

Although the 19th century British writer Emily Bronte is best known, obviously, for having written Wuthering Heights, she also wrote poetry, as did her sisters Anne and Charlotte. Here is one of Emily Bronte's poems:

The Old Stoic

RICHES I hold in light esteem;
And Love I laugh to scorn;
And lust of fame was but a dream
That vanished with the morn:

And if I pray, the only prayer
That moves my lips for me
Is, " Leave the heart that now I bear,
And give me liberty !"

Yes, as my swift days near their goal,
'Tis all that I implore;
In life and death, a chainless soul,
With courage to endure.

"To endure calmly" might be one brief, adequate way to summarize stoicism in general, although Stoic philosophy as elaborated upon by (first) the Greeks (Zeno) and then Romans such as Epictitus and Seneca, had a lot of parts to it. These fellows seemed to believe in a supreme being, but a rather indifferent one, and, like Buddhists, believed that such emotions as fear and dread were the result of false perception or false attachment. Nonetheless, Stoicism still seems to come down to the individual's having the ability to "gut it out," whereas I guess the Epicurean outlook was to fill the gut and otherwise enjoy life as you were gutting it out.

But what a wonderfully concise and musical way Bronte has of expressing a Stoic's outlook.

It's possible that following poem may reveal a hint of Stoicism. It concerns a heat stroke. I hadn't heard the term until after I had suffered what it describes.

Heat Stroke

One day in July,
Sierra Nevada
(sun unblocked, high, blazing)
--I was splitting and
stacking tamarack rounds
for somebody
in town. Heat
came up
through my body to my head.
I
went blind, was seventeen,
had learned by then to be
more embarrassed
than frightened
by affliction. I saw
just well enough
to stagger down to the general store,
stumbled
into an old man, who laughed. I found
a bench,
waited for
eyesight to clear.
Somebody got water. I went
back to the wood pile
eventually.
This has been
a pattern of sorts in my
life—
work hard until I go blind or fall over,
recover, go back to
work.
Tamarack sap smells sweet, and a person’s brain
can get too hot--
how odd.

from The Coast Starlight: Collected Poems 1976-2006, Hans Ostrom

Actually, "tamarack" is a misnomer. It's what most local people called the softwood conifer whose appropriate name is Lodgepole Pine. I think the real tamarack tree lives back East. Nonetheless, that was the local name, and that's what I thought I was splitting.

1954 and I

I love what the OED online has to say about "autobiography," so I will cut and paste the whole main entry:

"The writing of one's own history; the story of one's life written by himself.

1797 Monthly Review 2nd Ser. XXIV. 375 It is not very usual in English to employ hybrid words partly Saxon and partly Greek: yet autobiography would have seemed pedantic. 1809 SOUTHEY in Q. Rev. I. 283 This very amusing and unique specimen of autobiography. 1828 CARLYLE Misc. (1857) I. 154 What would we give for such an Autobiography of Shakspeare. 1859 B. POWELL Ord. Nat. 252 Geology (as Sir C. Lyell has so happily expressed it) is ‘the autobiography of the earth.’"

The complaint from 1797 about the word's combining Greek and Saxon roots is lovely. (I have a colleague who loathes words that combine Greek and Latin words.) I almost never agree with Carlyle, but I agree with him on this sentiment: oh, for an autobiography by Shakespeare. And calling geology the autobiography of the earth: inspired. Thank you, Sir C. Lyell. And finally: how surprising that the word seems to have entered English as late as the late 18th century. I wonder when the term "celebrity autobiography" was first deployed.

Here's a (non-celebrity) autobiographical poem:

1954: The Situation

On January 29, 1:06 a.m. I was made available for appointments
with the world.
Meetings occurred between me, air, light, milk, mother, father,
brothers, snow, odors, trees, fabric, belly aches, noise. Like
other newborns, I did not know who or where I was. Did I know
that I was? Like some other newborns, I had the makings
of brown hair, blues eyes, and one hammer-toe.

Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.
Permanent Committee on Investigaions. Korean Peninsula. Eli
Lilly designs LSD for the CIA.

Rather late in the game, I walked: May of 1955.
I was neither reluctant nor satisfied. Lore says
I walked for a beer held by my Aunt Nevada;

more is the pity.
I wouldn’t have walked just for beer or
just for Aunt Nevada,
but the beer and smiling
Nevada (nicknamed "Babe") together
were too much to resist, says the lore.
Questions persist: If your name
is Nevada, why do you need a nickname,
and if you do need a nickname, why must
it be Babe?

Emmett Till. Allan Freed coins “Rock `n Roll.”
Sun Records signs Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins,
Jerry Lee Lewis, and Elvis Presley. Emmett Till.

Also, I gathered (I gather) that walking
was expected of me. Okay, fine.

Distant Early Warning. The French withdraw
from Viet Nam. Good idea.

Many years later I took up dancing.
Also, I costumed myself in pajamas,
six-gun holsters, a variety of hats.

I was a humorless, earnest dancer
and had general problems with specific gravity.
Brother Sven was always quicker on the draw.
I learned to fall down dead.

Dick Nixon. Little Richard. The deaths of Henri
Matisse and Charles Ives. Emmett Till.

I took up reading and shadow-boxing.
I’ve since abandoned shadow-boxing
except in the most figurative sense.

"Friday Night Fights" on black-and-white TV.

At six I sat on slate steps, warm in
Sierra Nevada sun. My father had built them.
Mother was inside the house or sun-bathing
on the vast porch beneath a vast Sierra sky.
I thought, “I am six, and I will remember this.”
I remember this because I willed myself
to remember this then: Memory for its own sake.

The invention of TV Dinners, advertised on TV.

Also I remember the magpie that would not
leave the woods. It let me come close and stare.
A rational bird, it was not afraid of me.
A discerning boy, I appreciated the gesture.
It seemed to want to be more than a magpie
or at least not wild. Having not been entirely
committed to walking, I understood the magpie’s
reluctance to fly, migrate, act frightened, etc.:

That is to say, “What’s the point—in what ways
will flying, migration, and fear materially
change the situation?”

It is much later now.
I have completed another sentence.

Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom

Bring in `Da Noise?

There is an excellent chance that tolerance of noise may be age-related: youth tend to be more noise-tolerant than the aging and the aged; that may be the situation. There is an excellent chance that this situation, if in fact it is the case, is ironic, for with age comes a diminishing capacity to hear, so one might think that the older one got, the more tolerant s/he would be of noise.

Of course, folks from my generation think back reflexively to all those loud concerts we blithely attended, decibels smashing into ear-drums. Huh?

I'm a wee bit surprised that, based strictly on the profit-motive, more developers don't build and "market" more houses and condominiums based on the noise-factor. There is a cornucopia of new and venerable noise-reducing and noise-eliminating products in the building trades. Of course, they add cost, but I believe a significant percentage of potential buyers would be willing to pay the extra cost for the extra silence. Quiet Estates. Come Home. . . To Silence-Ridge Properties! Wouldn't You Like to Live in Shhhhh! Towers?!

A small, quiet poem about noise, then:

I Beg Your Pardon?

It’s so noisy here, what
with automobiles, airplanes,
motors, guns, missiles, TVs,
ear-pods, crowds, amplifiCAtion, snarling
gasoline-drunk tools. The
blasting, roaring, whirring, whi-
ning, humming, droning, rum-
bling are incessant. How

funny if God were to turn out to be
slightly hard of hearing, willing
but unable to catch the melodies
of most prayers because of
these furious sounds we manufacture
all the time. How odd if God
would love to care, if it just
weren’t for the blare, the volume,
of our self-debilitating decibelity.

Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom

More Pressing Poetic Questions Posed to Presidential Aspirants

Here are some more questions that I wish moderators (many of whom seem immoderate) would ask the presidential aspirants as the aspirants stand on stage in full makeup under lights and behind podiums (or is it podia?):

1. An aphorism attributed to the famous Irish poet William Butler Yeats goes as follows: "Of our arguments with others, we make rhetoric; of our arguments with ourselves, we make poetry."


Politics is largely about arguments with others, and of course many of these arguments are staged or gratuitous; they are as much theater as rhetoric: that's the way politics works. What is one important argument you have had or continue to have with yourself? Of course, you might begin you answer with a quip, but after that, please describe a serious argument you have had or continue to have with yourself.

2. In the poem "Harlem" and in other works, American poet Langston Hughes wrote of "the dream deferred," referring perhaps to the aspirations of many African Americans, many working-poor families, and other groups. In your opinion, for whom is the American dream, so to speak, still deferred, why, and what have you done about it in your career as a politician?

3. American leader and orator Malcom X once observed, rather poetically, that "We [African Americans] didn't land on Plymouth Rock; it landed on us." What is your reaction to this observation?

4. What is your favorite poem about war, and why is it your favorite poem about war?

5. What is your favorite poem about peace, and why is it your favorite poem about peace?

6. In "Sunday Papers," the new poet laureate Charles Simic writes, "The butchery of the innocent/Never stops. That's about all/We can ever be sure of, love,/Even more sure than the roast/You are bringing out of the oven." To what extent has the United States been involved in the butchery of the innocent?

7. In "Fire and Ice," Robert Frost speculates about whether the world will end in fire or ice. What is your view? Will the world end in fire or in ice?

8. In the poem, "Motto," Langston Hughes writes, "I play it cool/And dig all jive./That's the reason/I stay alive./My motto,/As I live and learn,/is/Dig and Be Dug/In Return." What is your motto--0r at least one motto, by which you live as you learn?

9. In the widely anthologized poem, "This Be The Verse," British poet Philip Larkin writes, "They fuck you up, your mum and dad." [The moderator may have to say "eff" or be willing to be "bleeped".] In what ways did your mum and/or your dad "eff you up," and how have you dealt with this circumstance? By the way, on his Actor's Studio show, James Lipton likes to ask guests what their favorite curse-word is. What is your favorite curse-word? Do you tend to use the f-word in private conversation, or not?

10. In the poem "God's Grandeur," poet and priest Gerard Manley Hopkins writes, "Glory be to God for dappled things. . . ." Assuming for the sake of argument that you believe in God, what would you praise God for creating? Please don't say "the United States"; everyone will see that one coming. Instead, try to think of some particular thing or set of things, as Hopkins does. The more specific, the better. Thank you!

11. Poet Adrienne Rich writes about "The Phenomenology of Anger," a title of one of her poems. Will you please identify one feature of American society that has made you espeically angry in your adult life. Why has this feature made you so angry?

Jack and Jill: What Really Happened?

For some reason, "Jack and Jill" seems to be the main nursery-rhyme to have stuck in my memory since childhood. It's from the Mother Goose collection, of course. According to mothergoose.com . . . ,

The first collection of stories to bear the name "Mother Goose" was produced by Charles Perrault in 1697. His book of ten fairy tales was entitled Tales from the Past with Morals, and under the frontispiece picture of an old woman telling stories to children and a cat appeared a subtitle for the book: Contes de ma mère l'oye, or "Tales from My Mother Goose."

The name "Mother Goose" and the tales and rhymes seem to have sprung from France, although no one is sure about this. Apparently in the 800s, Queen Bertrada--mother of Charlemagne--was known as Bertrada Greatfoot and/or Queen Goosefoot. Really. And she was married to Pepin the Short, Chuck's dad. "Honey, do you want to meet Queen Goosefoot and Pepin the Short for coffee this weekend? They're in town for a few days."

But the connection between the big-footed queen and the Mother Goose collections is tenuous.

I do love the fact that in Perrault's book, the old woman is telling tales to children and a cat. Even back then, apparently, people knew cats liked a good story. The part with the pail of water must have terrified the cat.

To the matter of Jack and Jill, then:

Jack and Jill went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down and broke his crown
And Jill came tumbling after.

To people who read or write poetry, this is great stuff because of the meter (a mix of trochaic and iambic), the alliteration, the internal rhyming, and the half-rhyme (very modern!): water and after. Like all children, I just loved saying this rhyme, back in the day, and that was one part of Mother Goose's genius: it got children immersed in the play of language.

However, the plot of the nursery rhyme confused me then and confuses me now. Who sent Jack and Jill up the hill for water? Were they friends or brother and sister or cousins or what? Why was the water on a hill? Shouldn't it have been in a creek or a well or a pond? Who goes up a hill for water? As a child, I wondered whether Jack a) figuratively broke his crown and literally suffered major skull-trauma or b) literally broke a crown he was wearing. If b, where did he get the crown, why was he wearing it (for fun, for looks, or was he a prince?), why would the crown break when he fell (wouldn't it just fly off?), and why did he wear it on the water-run? If a, did he recover? This worried me, no end.

How and/or why did Jill tumble after? Did she stumble over Jack's body? Or was she shocked by Jack's tumble and did she then lose her footing? And did the pail of water spill? What is the moral of "Jack and Jill"? Don't go uphill for water? Leave the crown home? Boys are clumsier than girls? Don't send young children up a hill for water? Install indoor plumbing? These and other questions have been with me since childhood. You're right: I need a life.

Nonetheless, why hasn't there been more investigative reporting on the Jack and Jill story?! There's so much we don't know! In the meantime, I have sought to play a riff on the old n-rhyme:

Nursery Rhyme

Yet and Still
Went up a hill
To fetch
A connotation.

Yet met Fret,
A mongrel pet
Owned by
Procrastination.

Still fell ill
From sipping Nil,
Disgorging
Agitation.

Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom

Science Poetry, As Opposed to Science Fiction

I'm not quite sure how I ended up writing the following poem or what led me "into" it. Ultimately the poem turned into a little science-fiction scene. "Science poetry" isn't an expression parallel to "science fiction." I think to most people, "science poetry" would mean poetry that somehow concerns the topic of science, not poetry that speculates about other worlds or creates imaginary futures (and so on).

I think I added the title, which obviously alludes to Coleridge's famous "Kubla Khan," after the poem was pretty much done, or as done as it was going to be. Sometimes I write the title, or a title, first, but more often than not, the title comes late if not last.

I believe this is the only thing I've published in a science-fiction magazine. It was published in Hadrosaur Tales, which prints mostly science-fiction stories but also takes some "science poetry," so to speak. Anyway, I think I was playing around with the idea that one day, nobody will go outside; already a great number of American teenagers don't outside, except to get in a car or a bus to go to school--or so they tell me. Maybe--who knows?--"outside" is over-rated. I still like it quite a bit, but that's just me. The poem:

Suburban Xanadu

In this present
mood, mist filters
through massive
oaks, settles on
gravestones. Birds
are not far off.
It’s all computer-
generated, of course.
We haven’t been
outside our assigned
dome for thirty years.
We suffer from VTS—
Virtual Trauma Syndrome,
in which even
thoughts of visiting
a forest or an un-domed
sector give us terrors,
savage this present mood.

Poe; Cats and Echoes in the Coliseum

I don't recall ever having read "The Coliseum" by Edgar Allan Poe before, even though I've been reading Poe since high school. Somehow I missed that one. As in some of his other poems, Poe starts at too high a pitch and has nowhere to go, rhetorically, so the poem seems overwrought and gravitates toward self-parody. The poem is of interest, however, because it's in blank verse, whereas Poe in most of his other poetry prefers to rhyme. In a couple of places, he seems to rhyme almost accidentally here (Gesthemane/Chaldee). Also, as far as I know, Poet didn't ever visit Rome--or Italy. As a youth, he did live and go to school in England, but I don't think he visited Italy then, and I'm pretty sure he didn't visit Italy as an adult, but I could be wrong. His not having actually visited the Coliseum may explain why, a few lines into the poem, he turns literal thirst into figurative thirst, so that the speaker is thirsting for lore, not for water (after having traveled a ways to see the Coliseum). I remember being hot and thirsty when I visited the Coliseum. It is an impressive structure, considering when it was built, that's for sure. Many cats live there, so that speaks well of it, too. However, cats are everywhere in Rome, so I don't know how discerning Italian cats are. I suppose Poe would have preferred black cats. Anyway, here's the unusual poem: The Coliseum

Type of the antique Rome! Rich reliquary Of lofty contemplation left to Time By buried centuries of pomp and power! At length- at length- after so many days Of weary pilgrimage and burning thirst, (Thirst for the springs of lore that in thee lie,) I kneel, an altered and an humble man, Amid thy shadows, and so drink within My very soul thy grandeur, gloom, and glory! Vastness! and Age! and Memories of Eld! Silence! and Desolation! and dim Night! I feel ye now- I feel ye in your strength- O spells more sure than e'er Judaean king Taught in the gardens of Gethsemane! O charms more potent than the rapt Chaldee Ever drew down from out the quiet stars! Here, where a hero fell, a column falls! Here, where the mimic eagle glared in gold, A midnight vigil holds the swarthy bat! Here, where the dames of Rome their gilded hair Waved to the wind, now wave the reed and thistle! Here, where on golden throne the monarch lolled, Glides, spectre-like, unto his marble home, Lit by the wan light of the horned moon, The swift and silent lizard of the stones! But stay! these walls- these ivy-clad arcades- These moldering plinths- these sad and blackened shafts- These vague entablatures- this crumbling frieze- These shattered cornices- this wreck- this ruin- These stones- alas! these grey stones- are they all- All of the famed, and the colossal left By the corrosive Hours to Fate and me? "Not all"- the Echoes answer me- "not all! Prophetic sounds and loud, arise forever From us, and from all Ruin, unto the wise, As melody from Memnon to the Sun. We rule the hearts of mightiest men- we rule With a despotic sway all giant minds. We are not impotent- we pallid stones. Not all our power is gone- not all our fame- Not all the magic of our high renown- Not all the wonder that encircles us- Not all the mysteries that in us lie- Not all the memories that hang upon And cling around about us as a garment, Clothing us in a robe of more than glory." I do like how the Echoes insist that they and the Coliseum still matter; that's rather charming.

Fishing for Poetry

James Henry Leigh Hunt, known now and in his lifetime as simply Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), was among the lesser British Romantic poets. His most important achievement occurred in journalism, especially with The Examiner, which he edited, but also with other journals. He changed the reviewing of drama from a kind of inside-job to a more objective assessment of plays, and for calling the Prince Regent "a fat Adonis of fifty," he was thrown in jail for a while. British defamation laws then were and now are more strict than American ones with regard to the press and public figures.

In politics, Hunt tended to support such left-leaning issues as enfranchising common citizens and other kinds of reform, things that don't seem so left-leaning now to most people. He produced a lot of poetry, much of it so-so; he published one novel, a piece of historical fiction called Sir Ralph Esher; and he was known as being a tad silly and as being cheerful but improvident. He and Lord Byron were friends for a while, but Byron got tired of Hunt, especially after Hunt visited him in Italy, large family in tow; the Lord got annoyed with the kids. Hunt also helped John Keats get published early on. His most famous poems, perhaps his only famous poems now, are "Jenny Kissed Me" and "Abou ben Adhem." Both are widely available on the web and elsewhere. The following poem by Hunt intrigues me:

To a Fish

You strange, astonished-looking, angle-faced,
Dreary-mouthed, gaping wretches of the sea,
Gulping salt-water everlastingly,
Cold-blooded, though with red your blood be graced,
And mute, though dwellers in the roaring waste;
And you, all shapes beside, that fishy be,—
Some round, some flat, some long, all devilry,
Legless, unloving, infamously chaste:—

O scaly, slippery, wet, swift, staring wights,
What is't ye do? What life lead? eh, dull goggles?
How do ye vary your vile days and nights?
How pass your Sundays? Are ye still but joggles
In ceaseless wash? Still nought but gapes, and bites,
And drinks, and stares, diversified with boggles?

The poem is actually part one of a three-part poem called "The Fish, The Man, and the Spirit." In part two, the fish answers the man (in English, not bubbles--this is called poetic license), and in part three the fish turns into a man who turns into a spirit, who observes the extent to which humans are rather a lot like fish. Part one, "To a Fish," interests me in part because, refreshingly, it doesn't like the fish much. I'm surprised the speaker doesn't go even further and ask the fish, "Hey, why don't you get a job?!"

I guess fish were "infamously chaste" back then--because they make little or no contact when reproducing? I reckon there's some logic to the view.

The poem does get a bit silly, with the joggles and boggles and the "How pass your Sundays?" But it's still amusing--and unexpected.

It's difficult to say what fish-poem is the best fish-poem, but I might have to go with Elizabeth Bishop's "The Fish." I include the poem in courses often, and students tend to like it.

The following poem includes ten fish, but they're dead. It's an odd little poem, I must admit. I wrote it quite a while ago, but I think the idea was to "answer" hum-drum questions with references to creatures, and in the last line, I think I was going for a wee echo of Basho's poetry. The poem first appeared in Poetry Northwest.

From Another Part of the Forest

How are you today?
Ten dead fish float in the lake.

May I help you?
Five cattle lie in the shade.

Won’t you please sit down?
A bobcat rakes a deer’s back.

Do you love me?
A butterfly folds up its wings.

What are you waiting for?
Seven geese waddle toward a pond.

Are you sure?
A frog jumps from a log into mud.

Copyright 1986, 2007 Hans Ostrom

Does Being Alone Equal Solitude?

Lord Byron wrote a poem that presents an unconventional view of solitude; the poem is conveniently called "Solitude":

Solitude

To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,
To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,
Where things that own not man's dominion dwell,
And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been;
To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,
With the wild flock that never needs a fold;
Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean;
This is not solitude, 'tis but to hold
Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unrolled.

But midst the crowd, the hurry, the shock of men,
To hear, to see, to feel and to possess,
And roam alone, the world's tired denizen,
With none who bless us, none whom we can bless;
Minions of splendour shrinking from distress!
None that, with kindred consciousness endued,
If we were not, would seem to smile the less
Of all the flattered, followed, sought and sued;
This is to be alone; this, this is solitude!

I like the simple organization of the poem. Stanza one explains what solitude isn't. One may read the poem as an implicit disagreement with Wordsworth, one of Byron's contemporaries. Wordsworth did, in fact, celebrate the kind of solitude in which one is alone "in nature." Indeed, Wordsworth believed that such solitude brought out the best in him and others. Wordsworth would probably not take issue with the idea of "conversing" with nature--not literally talking to a tree, maybe, but allowing one's consciousness, for lack of a better term, to be influenced subtly by nature. Ironically, Byron, very much an urban, cosmopolitan creature, thinks of genuine solitude as a condition of being alone in a crowd, which seems to be a paradox and brings to mind one of Yogi Berra's dry comments: "Ah, nobody likes to go to that restaurant anymore; it's too crowded!"

So stanza two presents the second "thesis": real solitude occurs when you are in the midst of a crowd.

Certainly it's easy to grasp Byron's implied rhetorical question: Is there a greater feeling of "aloneness" than that of feeling all alone amongst a crowd of strangers? And the crowd, according to Byron, is composed of "the flattered, followed, sought and sued." That phrase might well apply to Hollywood these days.

Perhaps Byron has highlighted what is chiefly a semantic distinction. Perhaps his "solitude" is someone else's "loneliness," and it is true that you (or you and another person) can feel a sense of belonging--of not being lonely or isolated--when you are "in nature." --Maybe not literally in nature, but, say, staying in an isolated cabin in the hills. Here's a poem that contemplates that circumstance:

Cabin in Snow

Outside a cabin in snow,
we are, and hear our, breathing here.
And wind in pines shucks

itself through sound like snakes
slipping through their summer skins.
And it is easy out here. And out

here it is easy to admire
an image-aided concept
of cabins in snow. And

it is easy inside a cabin
now to believe in an Idea
of Winter, for notions of snow

furnish our true cabin,
consciousness—which, fragile amidst
oblivion’s drifts, stays sturdy against howling.

--Hans Ostrom

In other words, I think one's mind can feel quite occupied and connected when one is alone, and I certainly agree with Byron that it's possible to feel isolated and lonely in a crowd, especially a crowd that seems to be a "shock of men." What a great phrase. We might bring it up to date by writing "shock of humans" or "shock of people" (and thereby ruin the rhyme--oops), but a crowd can "shock" one even if it isn't doing something shocking, even if it isn't a mob. And sometimes, I think, a person can be quite comfortable walking in a crowded city, but maybe the person turns a corner and for some reason sees the crowd differently and is shocked by a sense of the sheer mass of people.

The converse of Byron's thesis can be true as well, of course; a hermit who has chosen to be contentedly alone might wake up one morning and feel terribly lonely, and a person in a crowd may feel quite connected to others in the crowd.

"Minions of splendour shrinking from distress." That's an intriguing line from Byron's two-part poem. If I were to associate something with the line, it might be the scene of manic shoppers at a mall in December. They do seem to be in servitude to brights lights, much noise, and lots of stuff to buy--hyper-consumerism; and maybe they are shopping so as to shrink from distress. Who knows? Such a scene can be distressing, however. In spite of custom and relentless advertising, I wouldn't be completely shocked if, one year, almost everyone stayed home and thought, "How about if we don't go out and buy a bunch of stuff this year. Let's stay home!" Such a massive, collective sigh of relief one would hear! "You mean I don't have to shopping?"

D.H. Lawrence and Thinking Too Much

Here's a poem by D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930):

Conceit

It is conceit that kills us
and makes us cowards instead of gods.

Under the great Command: Know thy self, and that
thou art mortal! we have become fatally self-conscious, fatally self-
important, fatally entangled in the cocoon coils of
our conceit.

Now we have to admit we
can't know ourselves, we can only know about ourselves.
And I am not interested to know about myself any
more, I only entangle myself in the knowing.

Now let me be myself,
now let me be myself, and flicker forth,
now let me be myself, in the being, one of the gods.

D. H. Lawrence

Lawrence was an extraordinary writer, truly as accomplished in poetry as he was in novels and short fiction. His most famous poem might well be "Snake," and his novels include Sons and Lovers and Lady Chatterly's Lover and Women in Love. "The Horse Dealer's Daughter" is an oft-anthologized story. He was "counter-Modernist" insofar as he believed that 20th century humans thought themselves to death and that they should be more spontaneous, earthy, and instinctive. He found middle-class British bourgeois, "Victorian" values especially stifling. A professor of mine once pointed out the irony that Lawrence, who celebrated the body and earthly life and opposed "over-thinking" things, wrote poems and novels that were actually full of ideas--even if they were anti-idea ideas.

Obviously, "Conceit" is written in opposition, so to speak, to psychology and to the classical adage, "know thyself." The poem implicitly advises, "Be thyself" or, even more simply, "Be. Live." Nowadays, of course, our culture seems obsessed with our knowing ourselves; this is the age of self-help books and programs, of thinking about oneself almost constantly. I guess Lawrence saw it coming, back there in the teens and the 1920s; he died in 1930.

I love Lawrence's poetry. His free-verse has a hint of Whitman's about it, though much less oratorical, and with regard to style, he and Robinson Jeffers are certainly first cousins. His novels, once scandalous (Lady Chatterly's Lover was banned for a time in the U.S., partly because of the f-word), now seem a bit old-fashioned, mannered--partly, I think, because we look at them from the other side of the sexual revolution and the influence of feminist criticism. To me, his poetry remains fresh, but even with "Conceit," I will certainly acknowledge that Lawrence may seem naive. Is it possible now simply to be oneself in the manner he desires? And what if "oneself" is a self-absorbed self? Good for him or her, I suppose, bad for the ones who have to deal with that person. Nonetheless, the poem does seem refreshingly to suggest "get on with it": you may not be perfect, but you're all you've got!

(Incidentally, there's an interesting "bio-pic" about Lawrence, a film made some 20 years ago called Priest of Love. It is not well known and may not have made it to DVD. I believe it may be Ava Gardner's last film. There is a better known film that dramatizes Women in Love, with Glenda Jackson, Oliver Reed, and Alan Bates. The nude wrestling in front of the fireplace is an especially famous scene from the novel/film. I think there was also a film made of the short story, "The Fox.")

I'm not sure whether Lawrence would have liked the following poem. I'm going to go with the odds and guess "No." To some extent, the poem may concern "just" being oneself, although there is a bit of a paradox in being oneself because if you change yourself, are you still yourself? Naturally (pun intended), Lawrence would accuse me of over-thinking, but then I like to read books and write poetry, and these activities can call for (but need not necessarily include) thinking. Put more broadly, maybe some people are being themselves when they think, even if they're over-thinking or not thinking very well. The poem:

You and You

You must be you for you to be.
I know to be the only you
is difficult. You must repeat
the same old strengths and flaws, ensure
quirks and habits stay organized,
a regiment of personhood.
You cannot disappear from you.
When you’re asleep, you’re sleeping you;
you’re altered consciousness is al-
tered you, but you-never-the-less.
It could be worse. I know you can
supply examples of just how.
But still—how strange to have just one
attempt at consciousness in all
of Time, to have to spend it on
one incarnationality—
the only I you’ll ever be.

from The Coast Starlight: Collected Poems 1976-2006, by Hans Ostrom.

How To Be a Sonnet

If you know any aspiring poems, as opposed to aspiring poets, out there that have set becoming a sonnet as a career-goal, then this poem may be of use to them:

How To Be A Sonnet

You have to utter what you have to say
Iambically, and then you must transmit
Whatever poet using you that day
Decides that she or he desires to get
Across compressedly and cleverly.
However well you carry out this task,
Please know, my dear, that you'll fail utterly.
For every sonnet-sampler now will ask,
"How can this upstart thing even presume
To carve its iambs anywhere as well
As Shakespeare's little monuments that loom
Or all the sonnets that still help to sell
Anthologies to students who view verse
As if it were a body in a hearse?"

Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom

Mum's the Word, or a Word

With apologies to the musical, grease is not the word. Mum is. "Mum's the word," people used to say (I don't hear the phrase much anymore) when they wanted a secret kept.

Indeed, mum is a word, meaning (in but one of its four noun-incarnations) "an inarticulate sound made with the lips closed," according to the OED online, and--this is lovely--the earliest reference is to Piers Plowman in 1400. I can imagine Piers making that sound a lot.

Oh, I thought I was in the vicinity of clever when I decided to write a poem envisaging a club devoted to quietness and playing off the phrase "mum's the word," but then (I should have known) I found out that the quirky 18th century got there way ahead of me. The OED online cites one of Joseph Addison's essays as referring to . . .


1711 J. ADDISON Spectator No. 9 ¶6 The Mum Club (as I am informed) is an Institution of the same Nature, and as great an Enemy to Noise.

It was a great age of clubs and--the Mum Club notwithstanding--conversation: the exuberant 18th century in London.

Meanwhile, our own era seems to be a great Friend to Noise. Alas and alack. Here's the poem:

Mum Is The Word

The League of Quiet Persons meets
monthly. Its quarters are a cavernous
warehouse away from traffic. Its
business is not to discuss business.
Minutes are read silently and tacitly approved.
Members listen to rain argue with corrugated
iron, a furnace with itself. Glances
are learnéd. It is not so much refuge
from noise the members seek in such company
as implicit permission not to speak,
not to answer or to answer for,
not to pose, chat, persuade, or hold forth.
Podium and gavel have been banned,
indeed are viewed as weaponry.
A microphone? The horror.
Several Quiet Persons interviewed
had no comment. A recorded voice
at the main office murmured only, “You
have reached the League of Quiet
Persons. After the tone, listen.”

Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom

McCoy Tyner

This poem remembers my seeing/hearing jazz pianist McCoy Tyner and group play in Berkeley--probably almost exactly 30 years ago: yikes. I'd certainly seen/heard jazz pianists attack the piano before--but nothing like Tyner did. He and the piano seemed to be having a boxing match, and yet great music came out. At one point some strings did, too. He broke them banging on the piano so hard.

Tyner

Once

in Berkeley, smoke like Bay fog lay
over heads of cool-hip-jazz-club-clientele &
waitresses slivered through tables/bodies/chairs,
kept drinks coming, ice and glass and liquid held aloft &

McCoy

--he hit the mthrfckn keys
so hard one time strings
popped & whipped around like snakes out
‘the belly of the grand dark

piano

& the percussionist had some
weird shit hanging from racks—
bones, steel tubes, feathers—

all

humid and scratchy and knock-talk
click-back bicker-bock-a-zone
sounds, & McCoy was rippin and roarin,
working the shit

out

of keyboardedness. And the horns. It was a big
marrow-filling, ear-enlightening night. Night-outside:
cool, misty Berkeley. Had a look around.
Got in the ’67 Camaro, drove back up I-80
to plain brown-cow Davis,

brain

humming like the lowest pianoforte
E-note pedaled through the measures.

Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom

Brains and Branes

Yesterday I made the terrible mistake of purchasing a copy of Scientific American. Actually the purchase was all right (if expensive); the real mistake was to read an article titled, "The Great Cosmic Roller-Coaster Ride: Could Cosmic Inflation Be a Sign That Our Universe is Embedded in a Far Vaster Realm?" by Cliff Burgess and Fernando Quevedo (November 2007). This article is all about "string theory," a unified theory of . . . everything, really--the whole physical enchilada, from the universe(s) to particles--although I don't think they use that term, enchilada. Instead the use the following terms:

observable universe--self-explanatory

other universe--"an unobserved region of spacetime" [if you say so!]

calabi-yau--this sounds like the name of an interesting dessert, but it actually refers to a six-dimensional shape; because I am able to visualize only shapes that have a maximum of three dimensions, 6 might as well be 66, as far as I'm concerned. SA tries to illustrate a calabi-yau, but it just looks like a splash of milk: a highly confused three-dimensional space, although I'm sure they were doing their best.

brane--this is short for membrane. Why don't they just say (or write) "membrane"? What's so hard about that?

scalar field--"a field described by a single number at every position. Examples: temperature, inflation field." I guess this means heat as measured by temperature is one slice of the universe.

moduli--I think this would be a good name for a car. "What are you driving these days?" "Well, I'm leasing a Moduli." Instead it refers to "scalar fields that describe the size and shape of hidden space dimensions." Oh, I see. It describes something hidden. If it's really hidden, then how can it be described? Answer: by guessing, under the cover of mathematics. Sez me.

annihilate--no, this doesn't mean what you think it means. It means "to convert completely to radiation." I believe I have done this to dinner a few times, in the oven or on the stove-top.

So I talked with my computer-science/math colleague today in the coffee shop (ah, the perks of being a professor--you can find an expert on the premises), and I said, "I think physics is looping back to philosophy." He said, "It never left philosophy!" I said, "I think these guys are just making stuff up." He smiled. I said, "I can't visualize any of what they're talking about." He said, "You [he meant "one"] can with math. Math can visualize it." Math became very uncomfortable to me after basic algegra and geometry--Euclidean geometry, I should say. I loved that kind of geometry. It made sense, and it seemed to apply to my world, or my "scalar field."

From a philosophical point of view, I approve of the idea of multiple universes, because at least it stalls for time. Otherwise we have to confront the question of what's outside the boundary of this universe. "Nothing" is one answer. To which we respond, "What does nothing look like, and where does it begin, and why does it begin there?" From a theological point of view, heaven could be one of these additional universes. So could hell, but I prefer not to talk about that, and I refuse to make a joke about the "scalar field" of "temperature" with regard to hell. Anyway, with string-theory, we can say, "There's some other stuff on the outside of the universe, and we're going to have a look at it some day, but for now . . . look at the pretty bird!"

Of course, there's also something called an anti-brane. I think it's something that annihilates a brane, but my brain was annihilated by the article, which must be some kind of anti-brane in my case.

My colleague says that string theory is pure theory insofar as it cannot (at the moment) be observed, nor can it make predictions, whereas people were able to make accurate predictions based on Einstein's theories of relativity. One prediction was that the path of light from a distant star (I guess they're all distant, including the sun) would bend when it went past the sun and was observed from Earth. Apparently this was verified during a lunar eclipse of the sun. I don't know if they just eye-balled it or whether they used instruments. :-)

I said, "Well, if you can't observe phenomena, repeat experiments, or make verifiable predictions, then you're not doing science, are you?" My colleague said, "No, and there are books out there that call string theory 'not even wrong'--that is, not even worth trying to disprove." Wow. Beyond wrong. That's pretty bad. That's almost anti-brane.

He recommended a book by Brian Greene called The Fabric of the Universe, which tries to explain string theory, I guess.

Let's talk size for a minute. According to the SA article, the observable universe is this big: 10 to the 26th power meter(s). An ant is 10 to the minus 2 power meter. Presumably an aunt is somewhat larger than that. The minimum meaningful length in "nature" is 10 to the minus 35th. That's a lot smaller than an atom, but don't go by me, because I've never seen an atom all by itself. They seem to travel in packs.

As far as poetry goes (and it seems remarkably similar to physics these days), I can get only as far as Einstein, and really I can't even get that far, but here goes:

Whereabouts Unknown

If I understand Einstein
correctly, and I don’t,
my whereabouts are, strictly
speaking, unknown.

No one is the center of the
universe, but anywhere can be.
Therefore everyone’s coordinates are
contingent, just a song at twilight.

Don’t worry: If I say I’ll be
somewhere at a certain time,
I’ll be then there—unforeseen
whereabouts notwithstanding.

That you know where to find
me, and I you, exemplifies relative
dependability, a feature of our companionship—
love’s old sweet Newtonian song.

from The Coast Starlight: Collected Poems 1976-2006, by Hans Ostrom.

Against Mazes, Etc.

For a variety of reasons, I'm drawn to people with strong, quirky opinions. If the opinions are strong and predictable (take racist views as an example), I usually react with extreme distaste or smoldering fatigue--such as when the old DNA fart, Watson, spouted his nonsense about Africa and Africans. There was so much wrong about what he said that I got angry in about four different directions at once. If the opinions are just quirky, I may or may not be amused. If they're a bit posed--"manufactured quirky"--then I'm not amused. The humor of Gallagher--the guy who hit watermelons with a club or whatever--that seemed "manufactured quirky" to me. But if the opinions are truly quirky and especially strong, I'm likely to be intrigued by them and the person holding them.

I have a friend who thinks the Beatles were/are vastly over-rated, for example. That's a good, strong quirky opinion. Whether I agree with it doesn't matter. I can stand back and look at it and say, "Well done! A good strong opinionated effort!"

I have a colleague who really hates those long sweaters some women wear with jeans--the sweaters that open in front but may have a "tie"--they hang down way below the waist. They usually seem to be brown. She just can't stand them. This is good strong, quirky stuff, this opinion.

I happen to think the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead are/were over-rated, but I know this view amounts to double-heresy, and I wouldn't spend any energy arguing with the Faithful. Moreover, I still try, every so often, to listen to the Stones or the Dead with new appreciation. I really do. But then I gravitate to the old quirky opinion. The Stones seem like rock-&-roll's equivalent to IBM, with Mick as CEO. When I listen to the Dead, my mind drifts almost immediately, as if I'm listening to traffic go by, and sometimes their harmonies sound awfully bad, and if they sound bad to me, I can only imagine what they sound like to real experts. Somehow the status of the Stones and the Dead has not been affected by my quirky opinion; imagine that! Even worse--I'm a huge Johnny Cash fan; just imagine how many people wince when they hear Johnny get off-pitch. (Even Johnny admitted he winced at himself sometimes; he spared no one, not even himself, his brutal honesty.)

But one does not hold strong, quirky opinions in order to try to change minds. Quite the opposite. One holds them for their own worth. They are opinions for opinions' sake. They may be expressed. One may play riffs on them. But they must not be taken to the level of argument and debate. That ruins everything.

To the chagrin of my family, I inherited from my mother a hatred of puppets. A few exceptions are allowed, including one or two of the Muppets. But in general, puppets make me extremely impatient. I always have the urge to go behind the barrier hiding the person and yank him or her up by the shirt-collar and say, "Everybody knows the sock isn't a person, so stop it!" It's irrational, I know--and I've never interrupted a puppet-show. But it's a strong, quirky opinion, and what's more, I never insist that anybody should agree with me. In an abstract kind of way, I can understand why puppets in general appeal to people. The world is more than welcome to its love of puppets, as long as I can take a break from that part of the variety show.

My father would never wait in line, except perhaps at a grocery store, but he usually went to the grocery store right when it opened, so he never had to wait in line. But to him the idea of waiting in line at a restaurant, for a table to open, was the height of insanity. He couldn't understand why anyone would wait in line to pay somebody money--even if that person were going to get a meal in return. Not wanting to wait in line is almost un-American. I just got back from Southern California, and waiting in line is a way of life down there.

Some people really hate TV commercials in which dogs and other animals are made to speak like humans, and this animal-speaking trend is getting more widespread because of computer-technology. I have no strong opinions about this, but I'm glad others do. I think we all need to apply strong opinions in different areas to conserve our outrage and spend it wisely, pretending for one golden moment that our opinions count. (Please see "opinion for opinion's sake" above.)

Strong, quirky opinions about food are always welcome. Most people recoil at the idea of eating those large canned sardines or pickled herring. Not me--but I appreciate the strong anti-pickled-herring viewpoints, nonetheless. Me, I can't stand brussels-sprouts. When they're cooked, they smell like unwashed feet, in my opinion. Sushi: that engenders strong, quirky opinions. I love to hear riffs on sushi--either pro or con.

Strong, quirky opinions can change--just like that! I used to loathe chick-peas (garbanzo beans). Now I like them a lot, especially with curry. I used to like National Public Radio. Now I can't stand it. I used to like sports-talk radio; now I can bear it only once every three months, and even then, only for a few moments.

I hate songs with bell-sounds in them. Fake-sleigh-bells are okay in the cheesy Christmas songs. That's a tradition, and the sleigh-bell sound doesn't annoy me. I'm talking about that single-bell sound that slips into pop-songs sometimes. The triangle makes that sound. (Who aspires to play the triangle?! A geometrist?) It must cause some kind of Pavlovian response in me. I don't salivate, but I get really perturbed.

I don't like convertibles. (Cars, I mean.) I never have. That fabric--it's ridiculous. But of course some people are enthralled by convertibles. Good for them and their strong, quirky opinions--"quirky" in the sense that a very small percentage of the cars sold in the world are convertibles.

I loathe bed-and-breakfasts, most particularly if they are decorated in some kind of "country" style. I feel as if I'm stepping into a horror film, and when I get down to breakfast and have to make nice to strangers, I know I'm in a horror film. I look around for an ax (not really--I'm kidding). I interpret The Shining as an anti-bed-and-breakfast film, even though, technically, it's set in a hotel. I don't know why more owners of bed-and-breakfasts don't go all Nicholson on their guests more often. Heeeere's breakfast! How tiresome it must be to run such a place! But of course, those who run such places have strong, quirky views opposed to mine, so it's all good.

And I don't like mazes--I mean the real kind, made of shrubbery (for example). The ones on paper I can take or leave. The following poem expresses an anti-maze prejudice, although I have invented a character who just so happens to share my views (how coincidental):

An Old Man With An Alternate Plan

Just in case, the old man
carried pruning-shears and matches
into the elaborate garden-maze.
Temporary, planned confusion
was all right with him. He
understood the concepts of art
and play. Still he wasn’t about
to endure genuine bewilderment,
not to mention ridicule, or exile
from his ordered day.

If the maze, which was in his
estimation only sculpted brush,
proved to be too sophisticated,
then he was prepared to cut,
and he was prepared to burn,
the history of landscape-design
be damned.

Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom

Employment

Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to have a job. I don't think I'm alone in this lapse. A person can get wearied by work in general or pestered by something particular at work and feel beleaguered, but usually a little chronological or spatial distance puts things in perspective.

It's no fun looking for work when you're out of work, and even when you have a job, looking for another one puts you out there "on the market" again. Oy. On the market, like a slab of bacon or an apple.

I'm very lucky to have had the same job for a long time, although when most people learn just how long and strange the path can be to a steady academic job, they just shake their heads, and I can't blame them. Earning a Ph.D. takes anywhere from 5 to 10 years, and I'd say 7 is probably the average--and that's 7 years after you've earned a B.A. or a B.S. So even if you're fairly quick and don't take detours, you're likely to be in your late 20s or early 30s before you're in a position to find secure academic employment, and usually you have to apply for jobs all over the country--and maybe even abroad. And then most academic institutions want to have a look at you from 3-6 years before they want to hang on to you permanently.

It took me 8 years, so when I've applied for loans and have had to put down the number of years of education, I put down "24"--12 to get the high-school diploma, 4 to get the B.A., and 8 more to get the Ph.D. Freshly minted Ph.D. in hand, oh these many years ago, I sent out over 60 applications, which netted me four interviews--and one job. Luckily, I needed only one job, just as the home baseball team needs only one run if the game's tied in the bottom of the ninth.

A greater percentage of academic jobs are part-time now. Community colleges and state universities meet the infamous bottom-line by hiring part-time instructors, who in turn have to piece together work at several places to compose a full-time job; and of course the benefits are shaky: yet one more reason why "health care" is on the docket during the presidential campaign.

At the same time, no one is forced to choose the academic life; it's really more of a calling.

I applied for and held lots of other jobs along the way to the relatively settled life of an academic, however. I worked as a carpenter's assistant--digging foundation-footings, framing houses, carrying hod. I cut weeds, I worked at a gravel plant, and I stocked shelves. I flipped a few burgers and made some not very stylish "frosty cones." I worked the usual jobs in college--washing pots and dishes, serving as an "R.A." in a dorm. For a while I was a part-time sportswriter, and later I worked as a part-time editor for state-government.

I think I ended up as an academic for two main reasons: I love books and writing (#1), and I like a certain autonomy (#2). If you're a professor, you're certainly part of an institution and its components, such as a department. But you're also a kind of private contractor insofar as you have to take care of your own courses, designing and delivering them. There is a hierarchy, a chain of command, at a university, but there are some interesting spaces of autonomy as well.

When I worked in state government in particular, I discovered I was somewhat allergic to the veneer of "teamwork," the unusual culture of bureaucratic and corporate life. Colleges and universities actually share much of this culture with corporations, but as a professor, you can spend much of your day in a classroom teaching or in your office working on things you have defined: reading students' essays (the "parameters" of which you have set), for example, or doing your own research, or just (just!) reading books.

In other professional venues, there may be even more pressure to be part of the group, to buy into "the philosophy." And everybody seems to have a "philosophy" now--fast-food chains, car-dealerships, insurance companies, and so on. Of course, the "philosophy" is something that decorates the real philosophy, which is to make money. And if you want to stay in business, you have to make money, but to make money, you don't necessarily need to "gin up" a "philosophy."

I think I'd prefer insurance companies just to say, "We like to make money, and we have charts that say how high we can push our rates" rather than to imply that they are my neighbor. At the same time, there are probably a lot of high-school seniors and their parents out there now wishing that colleges and universities would simply say, "We need X number of students with SAT scores in the Y range in order to meet our budget," as opposed to selling their particular curriculum or locale. Of course, the insurance companies and the colleges and universities will protest that they really do pay a lot of attention to more than the bottom line. Fair enough.

Let's just say I saw a bit too much of myself for comfort in the film Office Space, especially when I look back on my days in state government.

On the other hand, if I needed to get a job tomorrow, I'd go out there and try to get one, and I might have to do my best to pretend to "buy into" a business's or a company's "philosophy." I actually have a fear of poverty, so I'd do the philosophy-thing if I needed the paycheck. Among the innumerable hurdles standing between me and becoming a priest, to pull an extraordinary example out of thin air, is that fear of poverty. (God is no doubt a somewhat larger hurdle, but that's another story.)

All of which is an even more circuitous way than usual of saying, "Here's a poem about looking for work"--and if you happen to be looking for work, may the road rise to meet you:

Looking For Work

They said to call back tomorrow,

which is today.

I did .

They said there were

qualifications to which

everyone agreed, certain

expectations. Values, too.

They said there were values

they, we all, hold dear and

so on. They said somewhere

between qualifications and

values my application got

"misplaced." They said if

I wanted to reapply, I

should come back tomorrow,

which was yesterday. Today

is where I am and they are not.

I am not they. I am not there.

Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom

Regarding "Off"

Children and occasionally adults sometimes say a word over and over again, rapidly, until the word becomes just a sound, representing nothing, meaningless, vaguely silly. Similarly, anyone who writes, including but certainly not exclusively poets, will sometimes look at a familiar word--and look at it and look it--until it becomes unfamiliar. The writer sees it differently, perhaps even examines it for what it really is, an object formed by ink on a page, or a digitized virtual object on a screen.

This happened to me with the word, "off," for some reason, perhaps partly because "of" is buried in "off"; perhaps partly because you hear people say things like, "Well, I'm off, then," or, "I guess it's time to shove off," or, "Are you off at 1:00?", or "Come off it, will you?!"

I believe variations on the infinitive "to get off" can also have sexual connotations, and I think I've heard "off" used in TV dialogue as a verb meaning "to kill," as in "He offed him."

In any event, a small poem grew from the loam of my temporary obsession with "off," an obsession undoubtedly harder to justify than Gertrude Stein's with "rose":

Of Off

Shove Off, and it shoves back--
or seems to do so with its
stalwart inertia of absence.

A hard west wind pushes
through the O, and two F’s
stand like trees on a ridge,
boughs blown easterly.

It is not the moon
that switches tides off,
on. Rather, just
off-hand, you might say it is
relation’s ships: sun, moon, earth.

Something is in the offing,
we sometimes say, off-
handedly. Offing is the season
of imminence. If you cannot wait
for what waits in the offing,
then be you with off.

Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom