Monday, November 12, 2007
Reacting To Rain
However, Murphy's Law dictated that today the fiercest rain-and-wind-storm would arrive, making our 100-yard trek less than ideal but, on the other hand, making the hot beverages even more welcome once we arrived.
Even in this era of severe droughts, people who aren't farmers or fire-fighters tend to react negatively to rain, especially if it's wind-driven. "It's horrible out there," people say. On student in another class said, "On days like this, we should all just agree that we're going to stay home." Of course, people who live in truly difficult wintry climates, including Alaska, would mock our Pacific Northwest discomfort with storms; we are used to rain but, oddly enough, still unamused by genuine storms. We like our rain to be docile. In any event, most of us on campus are not farmers, who look at weather a little differently. Here's a short poem about that topic. I think I wrote it about five years ago.
Not Farmers
When cold rain
comes after long
drought, we are
supposed to be
delighted. We are
grim. We lower
our heads and
herd ourselves toward
workplaces. Spectacles
get wet. Thoroughfares
clog. The TV-figure
talking of weather
becomes manic,
gestures like a drunken
mime. Dead
vegetation stays that
way, only it’s
soggy. “We needed
this rain,” we
say to each
other, not quite as if
we mean it. We
stand in our soggy shoes.
We look longingly
across vast asphalted
distances at vehicles
that will carry and
cover us. Our discomfort
descends on us like a low-
pressure front. We
do not think of thirsty
roots feeding food
appearing on our tables
months from now.
Copryight 2007 Hans Ostrom
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Fingernails
Now I have a split thumbnail, and I gather it will be split for the duration. I have not heard of a way of inducing the split to heal itself. I blame the breakdown on too much yard-work.
In any event, I've clawed my way through several drafts of a fingernail poem, and here 'tis:
Fingernails
Neither bone nor skin nor food,
fingernails are tools we mouth,
deploy, and decorate. None
of us is ever so civilized—
whatever civilized means--
that we won’t, when
need be, start to claw,
scrape, dig—evolutionary
eons collapsing, leaving
residue of whole lost worlds
in our instinctual hands. Just
to scratch the scalp is such
a human gesture—and not; such
a basic lice-finding task—and not.
If your fingernails are soiled, they
file a report on your social status.
If they are manicured, they may
purr concerning leisure’s delicacy. If
bitten, they murmur of gnawing self-
doubt. If artificial—how fascinating.
I have heard that employees of alleged
civilized societies pull out fingernails
with pliers. This is torture: remember?
It is blood underneath human fingernails.
Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Tiny Doctors
Tiny Doctors
Tiny doctors come down the street.
Their tiny white coats flare in sunshine.
Our neighborhood’s an ailment
they’ve come to diagnose.
Run away, we say to the tiny doctors,
this place cannot be cured.
They do not listen. They are tiny
determined doctors. They’ve brought
their training with them. They
surround our symptoms. We
lock them up in basements,
one by one. Tiny doctors, so
surprised, very captive. We treat
them well but keep them, poor
tiny doctors, poor miniature,
misplaced physicians.
Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom
Colloquy With a Cat
Here is a less the buoyant but nonetheless amusing poem by Weldon Kees (1914-1955), musician and poet. It features a kind of conversation with a cat, a colloquy that allows the speaker to talk over some issues with himself, perhaps. (The poem appears elsewhere online, at poemhunter.com and bryantmcgill.com.)
Colloquy
by Weldon Kees
In the broken light, in owl weather, Webs on the lawn where the leaves end, I took the thin moon and the sky for cover To pick the cat's brains and descend A weedy hill. I found him groveling Inside the summerhouse, a shadowed bulge, Furred and somnolent.-"I bring," I said, "besides this dish of liver, and an edge Of cheese, the customary torments, And the usual wonder why we live At all, and why the world thins out and perishes As it has done for me, sieved As I am toward silences. Where Are we now? Do we know anything?" -Now, on another night, his look endures. "Give me the dish," he said. I had his answer, wise as yours. |
Friday, November 9, 2007
More Poetic Math
Doing Another Kind of Math
by Hans OstromBach over Blues
times Rock over
Mozart equals
music cubed.
Fox plus bear
divided by snow
equals dream.
Math and I
Here is what one poet (me) does with math (the last line refers, rather too obviously, to one of my favorite poems, W.H. Auden's "Musee des Beaux Arts," and there needs to be an accent over Musee, but I don't know how to make the blog-program cooperate):
Equation
by Hans Ostrom
Let mathematics represent mathematicians.
If algebra stands for their desire to operate
on the world from a goodly distance,
then geometry enacts a will to map turf,
stylize hearth, fortify cave, codify material
units. Arithmetic equals
greed, larceny, accumulation, gambling, and boredom
divided by
revenge, obligation, display, and patience.
Trigonometry cosignifies rational madness,
which can be expressed as
Icarus
leaving body, soil, pragmatism, and parentage
behind for rare atmosphere and rush
of Platonic calculation—his mind finally
off and liberated from short distances
between mediocre points within the Labyrinth,
itching for a hit of Apollonian insight, yearning
to glimpse God’s system of accounting tersely for
everything.
And let Daedalus occupy a point
on plain and solid ground, having already
calculated the rate of his son’s descent,
impact imposed by physical laws,
interval required to reach the body,
which will have, he reckons,
washed ashore right about . . . there.
About suffering, some Old Masters did the
math.
Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom
Road Not Taken--Misintepreted Instead
The problem is that the poem doesn't, in fact, imply that sentiment. In fact, after the person "speaking" the poem has a look at the two roads, this is what he does and why he does it:
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Actually, then, both roads received about the same amount of traffic. One "wanted wear" just a bit more than the other, but "the passing there/Had worn them really about the same." Moreover, on that particular morning, "both . . . equally lay/In leaves no step had trodden black." So this "road less traveled" business is largely an illusion and vastly overemphasized in the "common wisdom" about the poem. One road was about as busy as the other, and let's face it: both were country roads, so we're not talking about an interstate highway vs. a country road.
More trouble for the common (mis)-interpretation occurs in the last stanza:
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Notice that the speaker is projecting himself into old age, and he has decided ahead of time what his story will be when he gets that old. No matter what really happens between now (when he takes one road) and then (when he's old), he's going to claim that a) he took the one less traveled by, even though that will be an exaggeration and b) his taking this road "has made all the difference," even though he cannot yet know what effect taking that road will have on his life. Basically, the last stanza makes this a poem about how we fabricate our autobiographies. It's not really a poem about the virtues of taking the road less traveled. So all the high-school yearbooks that quote from the poem are quoting from it for the wrong reasons. But it doesn't matter because the accepted popular interpretation is "already on the books," and there's no way to correct it, except in this or that English class, which will have no effect on Received Opinion. Nonetheless: a tip of the cap to my friend Bill, who fights the good fight, not only with regard to this poem but in other matters connected to Received Opinion.
Oddly enough, I grew up "in a wood," near a place where two country roads diverged, so my reading of the poem was always colored by that fact. A provincial lad, I read the poem provincially (I think that's a tautology). I wrote a poem about that--my reading of the poem, not the tautology:
Two Roads Redux
Two roads diverged
in a wood. One had been named
Wild Plum Road and appeared
on U.S. Forest Service maps.
The other one was once called
the Old County Road, now just
the road, and did not appear on maps.
The unmapped road led to land
our father had built a house on when
to him the town of 200 seemed too
crowded—his words. We took the road
less traveled most of the time because
it led to and from our house.
We took Wild Plum Road
when we went fishing, or let hounds
go for a run, or cut firewood. We never
took it to go pick wild plums, which we
picked elsewhere: go figure. Who knows
what difference any of this has made?
I will say this: it was just like our father
to live on an unnamed, unimproved road.
When I first read Frost’s poem,
I figured the guy talking was local and took
both roads from time to time, and I wanted
to be told precisely where the roads led—
I mean, everybody in that town had to know.
That would have made all the difference
to me and ruined the poem for everyone else.
Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom
Poem: Psychic School
Psychic School
by Michelle Jones
My mother is a psychic, or she wanted to be,
or maybe she just had this strange dream once.
In the barn, she burned her Ouiji board,
after she saw the ghost by the river.
My mother went to Colorado, and Virginia,
and after Nantucket, when she came back,
she raised a porcupine from the woods.
She predicted that porcupines have more lives than cats.
My mother also talks to her plants,
and her orchids are prettier than mine.
Love is memorizable, she says.
Once I saw my mother smashing dishes
in the garage. I thought it was a game
so I carried the broom like a champion,
and she laughed.
My mother tells me I’m going to marry a man
like my father.
She told me, he was better off dead once.
Later, she told me about the dogs in the kitchen,
with blood on the floor, quills on their tongues,
and my mother cried until the morning.
Copyright 2007 Michelle Jones
Among the many elements to like in this poem is the vivid ending. I have a similar memory from childhood, for my father always had three or four hunting-dogs, and they were almost never allowed in the house. But I do remember one hound having gotten into a scrape with a porcupine, and the dog had several quills in its mouth, so he was allowed inside for treatment. The quills are devilishly designed, amost like a fish-hook. We lived very far from the nearest veterinarian, so my father had to take the quills out himself. The best, perhaps only, way of getting some out was to pull them all the way through the skin, so of course there was a lot of blood, as in the ending of the poem. I also remember being astonished an how stoic the dog was.
List-Poem by the Numbers
Even if one doesn't end up writing a list-poem, listing is a heck of a way to prepare to write a poem. Such a preparation-list can be composed of images, associations that spring from a topic, phrases--almost anything, really. The title-poem of the late Wendy Bishop's book of poems, My Last Door, is a list poem, a catalog-poem, in which "Let my last door . . ." is repeated throughout the poem. So a list-poem can also develop into a kind of chanting-poem, incantatory.
Here's a short list-poem paying homage to the number 2:
Fortuitous Twos
by Hans Ostrom
A pair of spats. Two herons,
early morning, bending
necks to water. Windows
on each side of a carved door.
Cells dividing in a newborn baby.
A mother and a daughter
singing two-part harmony.
Two lovers waking up near
the ocean. Two moons circling
one planet. A couple of old men
golfing in a thunderstorm
two minutes before midnight.
Horns on a moonlit skull,
two miles from the water hole.
This first appeared in Wendy Bishop's textbook, 13 Ways of Looking for a Poem, still in print from Longman.
Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Homeless
Almost all cities seem confused by "the homeless problem." When homeless persons establish encampments--under bridges, for example--cities ultimately disband them. But if the homeless congregate near businesses or homes, the police move them from there. Neighborhoods trying to improve themselves are not happy to see meal-distributors show up to feed the homeless because the homeless might bring other problems, like crime. A group for whom my wife and I make sandwiches ran into that problem; the police told them to stop distributing the sandwiches in a certain area of the city. The same goes for shelters: where should cities put them? Should there be shelters on military bases for veterans who are homeless?
The following poem is several years old and goes back to a period when many homeless persons were congregating in our city's main library:
Homeless Citizens in a Library
People have retreated
from the outside
of not having homes
to the inside of not
having homes. This
week that’s the public
library. Amongst books
and terminals, people
sit and lie, squat and
sleep. In bathroom stalls,
a few sell sex or chemicals.
Something needs to be
done about this problem.
Let’s run a keyword
search. Let’s look
for authors of this failure,
Let’s identify the complete
title of our responsibility.
Let’s use our library-cards
and borrow the brains, will,
and humanity to get these
people the help they need,
to get us
people the help we need.
Hans Ostrom
Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom
Poem About a Play
The following poem, by Meredith Ott, a writer in Oregon, was inspired by British writer Caryl Churchill's play about cloning, A Number:
A Number
by Meredith Ott
Me
well what do you mean by Me?
Am I myself because if there is another
I think I should know I think I should because because
I have a right to know because
if there are two three four or more
if there are eight me’s running around
shouldn’t I do I want to know
do I should I care and would they could they be like me
am I like me who am I like tell me, tell Me
I must be like someone
don’t we all come from somewhere some genetic make-up
some test tube of the mind of the body I don’t know
who I am is Me determined by someone else?
Could you tell me would you please
if you had the chance
or would you hide it from me?
if I commit a crime against myself do I commit it against others
who are me or are they me and do they feel it--
my suicide?
or are they satisfied
with life
life that has been chosen for them life that isn’t theirs for the choosing
or do they even notice
or know or care or stop to think or fear that maybe what they have isn’t theirs?
mine
could be
you made me. You made me…
they make me, made Me make them
can’t you stop it if you
don’t you want to have one
One perfect
what is it that you’re looking for?
have you found your one
have you found it in me in them
is it in me or from me
or is it
me
?
you
became the womb
you gave birth you gave me gave them gave you
you selfish
it was all for you I was
they were it was you
playing with god and science and where is my mother
the mother of all
I need to be nurtured to grow to develop
outside of a person sterile pure yet eternally contaminated
by the lack of self, family, being, purpose
raise me love me choose me
choose to choose me
aren’t I original only simple individual complicated complex
enough?
aren’t I enough Me?
Copyright 2007 by Meredith Ott
Invitation from a Poem
Here's a poem that takes the idea of invitation both literally and figuratively:
Make Yourself, At Home
by Hans Ostrom
You are always welcome here
at the end of this sentence,
in a courtyard of expression.
Your presence shapes utterance,
organizes this garden of letters.
With your permission, afternoon
arrives. We could say “shadows
lengthen,” but that’s not very good,
and you prefer to think of Earth
always moving, pulling trees, people,
hills, and buildings toward and away
from sun. You are and change the subject.
You murmur a tale, which brings laughter
at its close. Will you tell that tale?
Please tell that tale again.
The poem is from Subjects Apprehended, by Hans Ostrom (Ohio: Pudding House Press, 2000).
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Theme and Variations
Theme And Variation
1. Theme
Be nice to her.
Nice words go far.
To go gracefully, gaze.
Her far gaze matters.
2. Variation
be
nice nice
to words to
her go go her
far gracefully far
gaze gaze
matters
3.Variation
her
to far
nice go gaze
be words gracefully matters
nice go gaze
to far
her
4. Variation
be
to
go
far
her
nice
gaze
words
matters
gracefully
Copyright Hans Ostrom 2007Poem By Hiroshi Kashiwagi
Here is a spare, wry poem from a California writer named Hiroshi Kashiwagi:
A Librarian Looks at Snails
watching
snails
coupling
I wonder
if they read
books on
sexuality
Copyright 2007 Hiroshi Kashiwagi; used by permission.
Guest Poem by Sarah Borsten
Visiting
by Sarah Borsten
Your hands look smaller
every time I see you,
knitting needles sprout
like fingers that somehow
escaped the fire.
When I visit
you are always sitting
underneath the faded Monet poster.
I ask you if the blanket you are knitting
is for my baby cousin.
You glance at the waterlilies
above your head
and reply that
life has more holes
than you can ever patch up.
Copyright 2007 Sarah Borsten
More Recommendations: Books of Poetry
Mark Strand, Blizzard of One
Pablo Neruda, The Sea and the Bells
Frank O'Hara, Collected Poems
Langston Hughes, Selected Poems
Mona Lisa Saloy, Red Beans and Ricely Yours
William Butler Yeats, Selected Poems
e.e. cummings, 100 Selected Poems
Derek Walcott, The Gulf and Other Poems
Gary Snyder, Left Out in the Rain
Marge Piercy, The Moon Is Always Female
Norman Dubie, Alehouse Sonnets
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Why Is Snow White?
Some people who grow up around snow remember it fondly and become lifelong ski-enthusiasts, etc. I associate it with work: shoveling, walking in it, putting chains on tires, getting cold, driving in it with appropriate caution (why some people speed up, only God knows), stoking wood fires. Snow and I are acquaintances, not enemies but not friends.
According to a variety of sources on the internet, snow is white because when light enters it, light gets bounced around off all the crystals that make up snow, and the light basically gets bounced right out. I think this happens fairly rapidly, as light is known to be in a big hurry all the time. Anyway, when it comes out, our eyes "read" it as "white." I remember digging paths through snow to and from the house, however, and essentially a snow-corridor took shape. The sides of the corridor looked positively blue at times, I assume because the light came out and/or went in at a different angle. . . . There is nothing quite like the silence of a snowed-over field, if the wind isn't blowing.
A wee poem, piled only four lines high, about a snow-childhood, then:
Childhood, Sierra Nevada
Snow fell on me.
I fell on snow.
Why it was white
I didn’t know.
By the way, the name "Snow White" has always puzzled me. I gather it's supposed to suggest virginity or purity. But imagine meeting her in the village. "Good morning, Snow. What's going on?"
This, That, and The Other Thing: Our Lives
But it can also be an accurate response, for our lives are occupied by This and That. This is the thing occupying us most intensely right now, whereas That is what might be on our minds, a constant thing we have to deal with, a relationship, a political cause--whatever. Our days are concerned with the This of our lives and the That of our lives, hence this wee poem:
The Position I Hold
I work for the Office of This and That.
Currently I am Vice President for the
Development of This.
For many years, however, I worked
as District Manager of That.
In many respects This and
That have been my life.
When people ask me at a party,
“What do you do?” I say, “A little bit
of This, and a little bit of That.” I’m not lying.
-Hans Ostrom
Best of luck with this, that, and the other thing--life itself. Peace be with you, and also with you.
Poem As Very Short Essay; or Essay as Very Short Poem
Bread and Bus: And Essay
by Hans Ostrom
Somebody is always,
always baking bread. It’s
been that way for thousands,
thousands of years.
Additionally, if life
is short, then there is
no such thing as
a long bus ride.
In conclusion, the bus
rolled onto a street
of shops, and we smelled
bread, baking; baking bread.
Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom
May your day be filled with the smell of freshly baked bread. And if you're working on an essay, good luck.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Haiku; Basho; Sneeze
Anyway, here's just one haiku:
Allergic Haiku
mold, pollen, weeds, dust--
sealed building full of bad air—
she wheezes; sneezes
A-choo.
Bricks
My father, a stone mason, loathed bricks. Basically, he refused to lay them. I think the process was simply too boring for him, and although he would have been furious if someone had referred to him as an "artist," he liked the fact that no two rock walls or fireplaces looked the same. He liked composing the things.
We've always bought highly used homes--a couple were even Victorians houses, ancient by American standards. No matter how much the previous occupant cleans up outside, there always seem to be things of interest (but of no or little use) left behind, such as an oddly shaped piece of metal, a broken chair, or just one brick. The just one brick is the topic of this poem.
Brick
A brick never set
into wall or walkway
seems all rectangular
for nothing, red out
of embarrassment or alarm:
Brick emergency! I need
to be part of something,
mortared into solidarity!
The isolated brick gives
the impression of being aware
of its situation, although
that is impossible.
What will happen?
Weather will get to it.
Or it will break. Anyway
it’ll return to soil, finish
the trip from clay to mold
to kiln to being brick to dirt.
Recommended Poems
The other day, I told the students that each of them could pick any poem at all from the massive book--a favorite of theirs we hadn't yet discussed in class. Most of the students are 20-21 years old, so although the sample is statistically unreliable, the list of poems the students chose does provide a window on what some "youths" [of course, this must be pronounced "yutes," as Joe Pesci's character pronounces it in My Cousin Vinny] like in the way of poetry. Here's the list, in no particular order:
"My Grandmother's Love Letters," by Hart Crane
"America," by Robert Creeley
"since feeling is first," by e.e. cummings
"Morning Song," by Sylvia Plath
"Night Mirror," by Li-Young Lee
"Lucy Gray," by William Wordsworth
"Fog," by Carl Sandburg
"Those Winter Sundays," by Robert Hayden
"America," by Allen Ginsberg
"Ode to the Beautiful Nude," by Pablo Neruda
"The Road Not Taken," by Robert Frost
"The Idea of Order at Key West," by Wallace Stevens
In Memoriam, by Alfred Tennyson
Howl, by Allen Ginsberg
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Holding Back; Emerson
Forebearance
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun;
Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk;
At rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse;
Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust;
And loved so well a high behavior
In man or maid, that thou from speech refrained,
Nobility more nobly to repay?—
O be my friend, and teach me to be thine!
This is a complex little poem. It certainly is about holding back, refraining from killing birds when looking at them will do just fine; from picking a wild rose; from letting fear get the better of you in a tough situation; and--perhaps my favorite--refraining from complimenting someone for their good behavior. In one sense, of course, we have been taught that such compliments, when properly offered, are polite and generous. Emerson's poem seems to suggest, however, that there are times when withholding the compliment leaves all the nobility to the person who behaved nobly; one refrains from "joining in," I guess, or from basking in the other person's glow. Perhaps the one puzzling reference is to being invited to a rich man's "table"--to his house for dinner--and to be served "bread and pulse." In this case, "pulse" doesn't refer to heart-beats or, obliquely, blood. It refers to food deriving from anything in the bean-family--probably a kind of mash made of beans. So I guess if you're invited to a rich man's house and expect the food to measure up to the stock-portfolio and instead you get "mere" bread and beans, hold back. Don't complain or let on that you're disappointed. Eat what is put before you. Thank the hosts.
I enjoy the last line very much because the speaker suggests that he's "not quite there yet." He can admire forebearance but hasn't gotten the hang of it yet, so he'd like a forebearing friend to teach him.
I believe the poem was published in 1842. Sometimes now you see forebearance spelled without the e after r.
Since Emerson's often linked to (Walt) Whitman in a Transcendental way, I thought I'd toss in a little poem about the sort of person who is not Whitman-like, who prefers not to "sing myself" (sing herself), who holds back (the "light under a bushel-basket syndrome"):
Not Whitman
She, too, would sing herself
if such a song seemed not so
indulgent, presumptuous.
She leaves her blades of grass
lying under drifts of reticence.
What she knows, you may
know, but only if you ask,
and even then she may answer
only by asking you to sing a little
something of yourself.
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Why Do I Like Crows?
I like crows, even when they dive at me as I walk across campus in Spring. I don't know exactly why I like them. As with cats, their selfishness doesn't seem personal; it's just business. That may appeal to me. --Although I doubt if either crows or cats would enjoy the comparison.
Once Ted Hughes published his book-length collection of crow-poetry, aptly named Crow, the rest of us were left to pick up scraps, rather like crows. I guess the same might be said of Hopkins and his falcon-poem, "The Windhover," although Yeats, at least, managed to write an equally famous poem that included falcon-imagery (in the service of his idiosyncratic "gyre" theory of history): "The Second Coming." And Robinson Jeffers went ahead and wrote his hawk poems. This business about someone's having written "the last word" on a subject can't be taken literally by poets, after all. One must press on. So here's a crow-poem, but it's really more about why on earth I'm partial to crows:
Annual Interrogative
Crows in soupy light stomp
around broad lawns, pick at buffets
of bugs, shake sandwich-wrappers.
Perturbation is part of
the ravenous package of traits crows
have hauled with them over eons.
These birds have something to say
as they lift themselves and climb
the wind clumsily. They complain,
harangue, object, savage, and smart-off;
they pronounce CAW in several dialects,
are more menacing when they’re
silent, hopping sideways, holding
a grudge with an open beak, fixing
you with a stare, filing away your
coordinates for later air-attacks.
They’re miffed, moody, pessimistic, and
heavy-footed. Why I like them
more than more charming birds
is an annual interrogative I caw—
why?!—to myself.
William Miller; Golf Poems
Night Golf
by William Miller
After dusk, on moonlit nights,
the caddies returned to play
their version of the game.
Once more, it was a black
and white world, though
they owned it now,
tamed the course
shot by shot.
They learned to play
by feel, almost like
blind men swinging
in the shadows.
But they got better
than any mill owner
who played his poor game
of slice and curse.
One day they would play,
prove themselves
forever in the daylight world.
That day was coming soon,
or so they hoped,
as they carried heavy bags
in the hot sun
for men who called
the oldest, "boy."
"William Miller teaches African American literature
and creative writingat York College of Pennsylvania.
He has published four books of poetry and
eleven books for children. COPYRIGHT 2002
African American Review."
* * * * *
by Hans Ostrom
On vast manicured pastures,
eccentric members of an obscure religious cult
seek the hard white spherical fruit
of the mythical snow-tree. Smaller
than a plum, the nutty fruit sometimes
soars away from these people; sometimes
it bounds like a rabbit into the woods;
or rolls like a perfect ice-ball
formed by a child's hands, only
to come to rest, and to melt,
in a patch of pale sand in the pasture.
Morose assistants accompany the members
of the cult and carry bags of arcane, ceremonial
weapons. Sometimes the believers stand
over the white delicacy as if they were grieving.
Sometimes, with enormous, sad deliberation,
they push away the nut with one of the weapons,
which seems more sword than club, more club
than sword. The rolling nut disappears into
a tiny rodents' hole. The believer then retrieves it,
examines it with something like regret,
then hands it to his or her assistant. People
from the village sometimes observe these
inscrutable rituals. They gather in groups,
herded behind ropes. Sometimes they applaud,
as if commanded to do so. Mostly they watch
in anxious silence. They concentrate on
the believers' every move, even when
a believer is merely walking and the white
nut is not nearby. No one seems to know
what any of this activity means.
Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom
Speak For Yourself
Can’t Complain, Am Concerned
Life provides me with assistance,
which includes oxygen, sunshine,
water, memory, blueberries, garlic,
recordings of Dinah Washington,
Rubenstein, and Johnny Cash,
cardamom, bookstores, a bed,
birds, and affection. Such largesse.
I’m wealthier than royalty
of previous eras, travel more
comfortably than Vikings,
Marco Polo, and Eisenhower.
I don’t have very much power,
one might allege,
but the same one might cite
my extraordinary American
imperial privilege.
Mere me, ordinary I: I
am one of the most expensive
people in history. I’ve worked,
but who hasn’t? There are a few,
I know, but for many, just
living is the hardest job of all.
A question of society
persists, is more than a
question of propriety:
how shall those who have
behave toward themselves
with regard to those who have
not or much less? Shall we bless
ourselves by making the
blessings go further, as a frugal person does
with what a frugal person has?
Or shall we condemn ourselves
by doing no good with having it good?
“Speak for yourself.” A fair point.
What is it I should
be doing to do the best with doing well?
is a question worth my asking myself.
"Shut up." Consider it done.
Hans Ostrom
Friday, November 2, 2007
Skaters Captured
The Skaters
by John Gould Fletcher
BLACK swallows swooping or gliding
In a flurry of entangled loops and curves,
The skaters skim over the frozen river.
And the grinding click of their skates as they impinge upon the surface
Is like the brushing together of thin wing-tips of silver.
(The word "surface" belongs at the end of the fourth line in this five-line poem.) This poem embodies the Imagists' dicta of treating "the thing" (usually something experienced through the senses, not a concept like "love") directly, writing sparely, and not being obligated to use conventional verse-forms or even previously common verse-techniques like rhyming. Although the Imagists often didn't rhyme or write in verse-forms like the sonnet or the ballad, they still paid great attention to language and the sounds of words, as this poem shows. "[T]he grinding click" seems like the perfect way to describe the sound of skates on ice. Maybe, like me, you think of Gerard Manley Hopkins' "The Windhover," in which Hopkins compares a hawk's flight to skating, just as here Fletcher compares the skaters to swallows in flight, and there certainly is a sense in which swallows, perhaps even more than hawks, skate on the air.
Lorine Niedecker: Nothing Personal
My Friend Tree
by Lorine Niedecker
My friend tree
I sawed you down
but I must attend
an older friend
the sun.
from The Academy of American Poets site: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/729
When we see the title, "My Friend Tree," we're likely to dread reading the poem because we assume it will feature sentimental personification of the tree. Well, in this one we get the personification, but it's nothing personal; it's just business: the tree has to come down, presumably to let some light in. The phrasing is child-like in its simplicity and funny because of how the speaker breaks the news to the tree, after it's been sawed down. Niedecker's background was working-class, I gather, and she lived for a long time on an island in Wisconsin, so I can envisage her sawing down a tree.
Mary Ann Wishes For Rose-Rain
ROSES
You love the roses - so do I. I wish
The sky would rain down roses, as they rain
From off the shaken bush. Why will it not?
Then all the valley would be pink and white
And soft to tread on. They would fall as light
As feathers, smelling sweet; and it would be
Like sleeping and like waking, all at once!
George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans] 1819-1880
I find much to like in this little blank-verse poem. The speaker addresses "You" and even mentions that this "You" loves roses. But by the end of line one, the poem has turned permanently to what the speaker loves, wishes for, and imagines. What a great surprise. We think the poem is going to be "to" and "about" this "You," but it's not. The poem seems to be literally about rose-rain and figuratively about wishing for something you know won't happen but enjoying the wishing just the same. Comparing roses or rose-petals to sweet-smelling feather is good, too, even if "light as feathers" is and probably already was a cliche.
Interim Report
I believe interim was lifted directly from Latin, and a few hundred years ago, one might say, "Interim, I'll get a new horse," meaning "In the meantime, I'll get new horse." So one was simply mixing two languages, Latin and English. I guess we do that sometimes now when we say something like, "See you manana,"and I'm sorry I don't know how to get that mark over the first n.
Later, interim became a noun:
1579-80 NORTH Plutarch (1676) 918 The Wars that fell out in the interim were a hindrance.
This is from the OED online. Here interim means what it means now--a period in between two other periods. And that's an interesting sentence translated from Plutarch, by the way: very understated and very British (even though it's not originally British): wars were "a hindrance." I'll say!
Nowadays you hear or read interim used as an adjective. "She was appointed interim director of the zoo."
Here is an "interim report" in the form of a poem:
Interim Report
Most of my memories—
good, bad, mixed—
concern instances and means
of trying to cope.
Nostalgia is largely lost
on me. Because the world
is none of my doing—nor
should it be—I’ve tried
to get by, discern terrain,
keep two eyes on those
in power, survive humanity
and nature. All this takes up
most of my time, thus most
of my memories.
How has it been so
far for you?
Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom
Thursday, November 1, 2007
A November Poem by Joseph Seamon Cotter, Sr.
November
by Joseph Seamon Cotter, Sr.
Old November, sere and brown,
Clothes the country, haunts the town,
Sheds its cloak of withered leaves,
Brings its sighing, soughing breeze.
Prophet of the dying year,
Builder of its funeral bier,
Bring your message here to men;
Sound it forth that they may ken
What of Life and what of Death
Linger on your frosty breath.
Let men know to you are given
Days of thanks to God in heaven;
Thanks for things which we deem best,
Thanks, O God, for all the rest
That have taught us—(trouble, strife,
Bring through Death a larger life)—
Death of our base self and fear—
(Even as the dying year,
Though through cold and frost, shall bring
Forth a new and glorious spring)—
Shall shed over us the sway
Of a new and brighter day,
With Hope, Faith and Love alway.
The first four lines read so well that they are a poem within a poem.
Country and Western Song
I think FPB is still my favorite country song. I also like Hank Penny's "Bloodshot Eyes," Patsy Cline's "Crazy," Marty Robbins' "El Paso," and different renditions of "Ghost Riders in the Sky." "Honky Tonk Angel" is pretty good, too. I can't stand most contemporary C & W. It's just corporate pablum, awful stuff. That's why Johnny Cash loathed the Nashville establishment.
Country and western lyrics are extremely difficult to write, perhaps most especially for poets, because they require such simplicity, more simplicity than is in what poets think of as their simplest poems. Of course, they have to have a sense of the common folk, too. In this respect, they're like the blues.
Obviously, I'm claiming that they're difficult to write because I've written some, and they're not very good. Oh, well. I think I hear the train a-coming, so here are the lyrics (and I did manage to sneak in the word "cash"):
I Hate My Job
Verse 1:
My boss’s head is bigger than his backside.
His backside is bigger than his car.
What I need costs more than what I make.
My paycheck goes a mile less than far.
Chorus:
I hate my job.
I can’t stand it.
But I need the cash.
So I can’t quit.
I hate my job.
But I can’t quit.
Gotta feed my family.
And that’s just it.
Verse 2:
Where I work the higher-ups
Are dumber than the dirt.
They pay me only what they want,
But never what I’m worth.
Chorus.
Bridge:
Working men and working women:
They make this country go.
But the way that we get treated
Is dirty, mean, and low.
Verse 3:
I get up and go to work each day.
But I’ve forgotten why.
If I don’t get a day off soon,
I might fall down and die.
Chorus.
Copyright Hans Ostrom 2007
Faux Fall Rant
Faux rants are an interesting form of expression, too. The ones politicians, shock-jocks, and talk-show hosts go on are frequently too predictable, fallacious, and grotesque to enjoy. I much prefer the ones delivered by the real professionals, stand-up comedians. Don Rickles had a good "rant" act, but the part where he insulted people in the audience or on the set made me uncomfortable. Lewis Black has perfected the faux rant or "angry act." He never attacks anybody in the audience, and he peforms a clever, cathartic outrage directed at things going wrong in the culture-at-large. When he's not doing the act and (for example) just being interviewed, he's quite reserved, generous, unpretentious, and smart.
Here's a faux-rant against Autumn. One problem Autumn poses for poets is that it's Autumn and not just Fall. Another problem is that at least 5 billion poems have been written about Autumn, most of them including images of leaves, of course.
Like everybody else, I rather like Fall, so the poem is obviously a schtick, and it masks the real frustration, which almost all poets feel when they sit down (or stand up) to write an Autumn poem. So to all those fans of Autumn out there: remember that this is a faux rant.
Against Autumn
I don't like Autumn or Fall, and nobody even knows
what "Autumn" means. Enough with the colorful leaves already!
They're dead. That's why they fell, not because they're colorful
or symbolize anything, okay? Scientists should turn deciduous
trees and shrubs into evergreens--or ever-oranges or ever-
browns. Even ever-pinks would be fine, as long as the leaves
stayed glued to branches. Fall is a tedious road
from Summer to Winter. It's loaded with work
and school, and there's almost no place to pull over
and rest. Its holidays--Halloween and Thanksgiving--
have become ludicrous, taken over by the sugar
industry, the Hollywood horror-sequel factory,
Pilgrim coloring-books, stupid TV decorating-shows,
turkeys on steroids, and dysfunctional airports.
People shoot lots of animals,
and sometimes each other, in Autumn, out there on
private hunting-ranches and in groomed forests.
How would you like to be a pheasant, a deer,
a duck, a quail, or the Vice President's friend
in Autumn, huh? Concussions occur in football
games on Autumn's Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.
This is a fact. In fact, the n would fall like a dead leaf off
autumn if it weren't for the word autumnal, so
couldn't we get used to saying awtoomal or
awtoomistic or even fallish (but not fallic)?!
I'm sick of the silent n in Autumn, and I've
had it with Fall. Harvests don't happen
in Autumn anymore anyway. I see squash, spuds,
and apples in the store year-round. This
is called proof. So I say
Shut it down! Shut down autumn! Winter,
Spring, and Summer would each stretch more than
a week longer, and how could anybody
be opposed to that? I oppose Autumn.
Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Amy Lowell; Taxi; Metro
The Taxi
by Amy Lowell
When I go away from you
The world beats dead
Like a slackened drum.
I call out for you against the jutted stars
And shout into the ridges of the wind.
Streets coming fast,
One after the other,
Wedge you away from me,
And the lamps of the city prick my eyes
So that I can no longer see your face.
Why should I leave you,
To wound myself upon the sharp edges of the night?
As one might expect from a working Imagist, the images are sharp, and they hold one's interest, but to my mind the most compelling feature of the poem is the speaker's relationship to the taxi. In one sense the taxi is personified ("you"), but in another it remains just a taxi. A variety of urban elements constitute barriers between the speaker and the taxi, and although we often have negative associations with taxi-cabs, one can also see how a cab might become a symbol of security. And so, suddenly, the speaker seems to be in the taxi at the end of the poem, and what has come before seems to have been speculation about how difficult life would be if he or she to leave the taxi. I enjoy how the last two lines induce us to reinterpret the lines we just read; the speaker seems to have been in the cab all along. It's a deceptively complex poem.
Here's a wee transportation-poem that's not especially complex, deceptively or otherwise:
For Metro Riders
Behind the smudged
window of a ticket-booth,
an angel evaluated your
sincerity. Now rhythms
of a city owned by noise sooth your
innermost ears. You must have
nodded off. You’re in
the right place on the right
line but after all must
still discover where you
are as you are, going.
Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom
Josephine Miles; Family
by Josephine Miles
* * * * * *
Family Legends, Small and True
by Hans Ostrom
Thomas, my father’s uncle, fist-fought
my father’s grandfather—yes, it was quite
a tangle of relations, a knuckle-riot.
This happened during the first course
of the family’s Christmas banquet in
the tall white clapboard house on a hill
in a gold-mining town, California.
They fought beside a long table. They
did not take the fight outside. Each knocked
the other down. Dining resumed. This
happened in the Ago all families, yours and
mine, occupy—that vast astral soup of time.
One day Thomas merely left and was not;
and was not heard; and was not heard from
again, ever. No news of him since: that
is a species of immortality—everlasting,
immutable Disappearance. Thomas will
never amount; he will never amount to
anything except a fistfight and a dis-
appearance and these words, which Thomas,
after a fashion writes, letting me
hear from him now that the others are all
gone, and dessert and coffee, brandy and
cigars are served, and a piece of raw, cold
steak is applied to his bruised face, and
filial hatred glows like a kerosene lamp.
Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom
On Halloween, A Review of the "Holidays"
1. I don’t like the Fourth of July. I know: not liking the Fourth of July is un-American. This kind of thing could have gotten me hauled before a Congressional committee in the 1950s--maybe today, too--who knows? I have two main reasons. I don’t like the interminable noise of fireworks and how such noise terrorizes animals (and there's the problem with fires, too). And if I were inclined to celebrate “the birth” of the U.S., I would probably do it in a more cerebral (and, I admit, boring) way—by meditating on the Constitution and its origins, for example.
2. New Year’s Eve. I used to like this “holiday” a lot, but now I dislike forcing myself to stay awake until midnight, so this is strictly age- and life-style related. I also worry very much about all the drunk-drivers out there, although I do everything I can to stay off the roads. At the same time, there’s really not much pressure to celebrate, so it’s all good, I guess. The Times Square thing was always bizarre for West Coast people because it was tape-recorded.
3. Christmas. I’m ambivalent about this holiday. I rather like a light-oriented celebration in Winter, and the Swedes especially emphasize this part. I also appreciate the celebration of The Birth, just as I appreciate other religious holy days or periods of observance that occur during the same time of year. The shopping part is way out of control; it’s really turned into a kind of national madness. A relatively new Catholic, I tend to like the masses that occur throughout the year, and I like the meditative quiet that “surrounds,” so to speak, a mass. So I did not take immediately to the Christmas-masses, and I learned that many Catholics attend mass only at Christmas and Easter. At the same time, it is pretty cool to see all the children at the mass, and I’ve gotten used to the noise. One simply has to understand and accept that it’s a different kind of mass. I very much enjoy other people opening gifts, as long as they rather like the gift. I enjoy opening gifts, especially if they’re books, of course. Our family has a very eclectic, eccentric collection of tree-ornaments, so there is great quirky pleasure in hauling those out every year. I’m actually in favor of the plastic trees, not just for environmental reasons but because they’re so wonderfully tacky. I haven't been able to convince my family yet, though. My favorite songs are “Go Tell It On the Mountain” and “Mary’s Boy Child,” a Jamaican song. I think the best version is by none other than. . . Vanessa Williams.
4. Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving’s okay because family and friends get together. I don’t like the massive meal, and if one has to deal with air-travel at all, Thanksgiving is hopeless. I think it’s probably a good idea to give thanks. I don’t really get a sense that people think much about the alleged Puritan/Pilgrim origins of this holiday, but I could be wrong--and often am.
5. Halloween is good for kids, I think. They enjoy the costumes. I tend to think of “gothic” writers like Hawthorne and Poe. Trick-or-treating has become dicey because the parents and guardians essentially have to accompany the children like a security-team, and there’s a great deal of pressure to buy huge bags of candy. Many college students seem to like this "holiday."
6. Easter’s good for a Catholic, like me. When I was young, we had the infamous Easter-egg hunts, and my father, being competitive, hid many eggs that were never found. That’s kind of amusing, now that I think about it. Probably the eggs were eaten by raccoons that very night. A cautionary tip for cat "owners": lilies are poisonous to cats, many of whom (of which) like to chew on lilies.
7. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, birthday. I like this holiday very much, not simply because of King but because interesting things happen on or near that day in schools and communities. It’s a holiday that’s handled well, in my opinion.
8. Arbor Day. Not really a holiday, I suppose, and I’ve never really celebrated it. I’ve planted lots of trees, but I’ve never planted one on Arbor Day. I need to do that. I think this Day should be turned into a bigger deal, but I don't want to see it commercialized with Arbor Day greeting cards (that would be environmentally ironic) or Arbor Day gifts.
Most trees are excellent, after all, so why not celebrate this Day? I think it’s an especially good holiday for poets, in spite of Joyce Kilmer’s infamous poem with its extraordinarily mixed metaphors. Joyce was a man, as you probably knew, and he died in World War I. Ezra Pound thought there were too many tree poems, and that was 60-70 years ago. I don’t think you can have too many tree-poems, although more of them should probably appear online as opposed to on paper, to “save” trees. My favorite tree is probably the oak. Cedars are very admirable, too, and sequoias are impressive. I planted a sequoia next to a Victorian house we once owned. If all the subsequent owners will leave it there, it will tower over the neighborhood one day, and no doubt many poems will be written about it, pax Ezra.
Tic Tacs
In the check-out line at a grocery-store the other day, I looked again at the items for sale near the cashier's post--magazines, gum, breath-mints, candy, batteries, and so on. I wondered what percentage of a grocery-store's or "super-market's" net income springs from sales of such items and how much money I've spent in my lifetime on such items.
I looked once more at the Tic Tacs in their transparent little box. I have purchased Tic Tacs a few times over the years, but I've decided I don't like them. They're candy, and they look kind of creepy, and I remembered that I'd written a little prose-poem about them:
Tic Tacs
This little glass box once held a tiny kingdom’s jewels but now imprisons maggots. Or are they petrified eggs of the world’s smallest dinosaur? A message glued to the box orders me to “collect points and get incredible stuff.” I will do so. I will remove the maggots and the eggs, and I will seal the points and incredible stuff in the demitasse casket, bury it in a little cemetery in Luxembourg or Rhode Island. On a headstone made of one small mosaic tile, I will etch the words, “Tic” and “Tac” and with bad breath mutter tiny prayers for the soul of incredible stuff.
For the heck of it, I looked for "Tic Tac" on the internet, and of course there is a site: tictacusa.com. The tag-line of the site reads as follows:
"Tic Tac Breath Mints Are Fresh Entertainment For Your Mouth."
To some degree, this line is more surrealistic than my prose-poem. One imagines sending away the very tiny stand-up comedians, jugglers, singers, and actors that had been providing entertainment, like micro-Lilliputians, on the precarious stage of one's tongue. And one imagines going to a microphone and introducing a new entertainment-act to one's mouth: "Put your teeth together for Tic Tac Breath Mints!"
In what sense do breath-mints entertain our mouths? Should they be called breath-mints, in fact, or mouth-mints, or something else (besides Tic Tacs)? What were the other names in the running when the company named this little candy? An auto-company once had the bright idea of inviting poets to submit names for a new car, and the company approached noted American poet Marianne Moore. She came up with "Tyrolean Turtle-Top." Certainly poetic, but probably not good for sales--except to poets, perhaps.
Good luck resisting that final purchase before you pass through the cashier's gate at the "super-market."
Guest Poet: Jared Leising on Beer, Ted Kooser, and Other Matters
The Drink Ted Kooser Owes Us All
Twenty-four hours in a day, 24 beers in a case. Coincidence? I think not.
- H.L. Mencken
I go to Safeway
to buy a six-pack.
Somebody’s taken
a bottle from the
last pack, so now it’s
a fiver, dammit.
Was it Kooser?—that
geezer (my mom finds
cute) who wrote about
the miracle of
a lone beer bottle
standing right side up
and empty along
the highway—each line
three syllables long,
each stanza three lines.
My students read this
without awe, as though
they’ve done this plenty
after polishing
off a bottle at
fifty, cruising down
Aurora, tossing
emptiness to wind.
by Jared Leising
Copyright 2007 Jared Leising
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Guest-Poems by Jones and Borsten
And Are We Yet Alive
by Michelle Jones
Why does this dirge happen?
Because my body hurts.
Because our ghosts are made
of silk curtains in the
window by the elm.
Must we because of this haunting
and that dirty sheet go wandering
down the steps with a crucifix
and hymn stuttering our softy voices.
And if you get there before I do,
Swing low, Swing low.
And must I wake each morning
broke back to your fist that
warns me of the blinking shut-eye,
and hear the sun buzzing at me
and camouflage my cheek with white,
the same way spilled wine stains
red on your sleeve.
And I erect like a statue with my legs
missing and your sour breath hovering
as your prompt me in the kitchen.
I am without foot, heavy in the chair
and remain with buckets of ammonia
instead of barrels of apples or bed sheets
clean from the washing.
You left me asleep with the quilt I made
and one cheek turned up so that
I could hear the dogs barking
and the bells calling me like a symphony.
The last few days, I told you that nothing hurt.
Copyright 2007 by Michelle Jones
* * * * * * * *
Yelling Fire
by Sarah Borsten
They tell me to yell fire
during personal emergencies--
the kind that would need more
than water to save me.
They tell me to yell fire
because strangers will
call nine-one-one
if they think they smell smoke
and not just cum.
It would be just like
my dreams of slogging
through thick mud,
no one around,
only this time
my lungs stretched past breath
my knees jolting terribly on cement
my thighs sore from holding myself together.
There would be a fire
but no one to put it out.
Copyright 2007 by Sarah Borsten
Monday, October 29, 2007
New From Copper Canyon
What looks good to me in the catalogue:
W.S. Merwin, New and Selected Poems--new in paperback.
Jim Harrison, Saving Daylight.
Maram al-Massri, A Red Cherry on a White-tiled Floor: Selected Poems.
June Jordan, Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan.
Alberto Rios, The Theater of Night.
Taha Muhammad Ali, So What: New & Selected Poems 1971-2005.
Ruth Stone, In the Dark. Stone's poetry is a favorite of a professor, poet, and scholar I knew at U.C. Davis, Sandra Gilbert.
Madline DeFrees, Spectral Waves. DeFrees writes poems of complex structure and startling imagery.
The catalogue also features a list of signed books from the press.
H.D. and the Mysteries
The Mysteries Remain
The mysteries remain,
I keep the same
cycle of seed-time
and of sun and rain;
Demeter in the grass,
I multiply,
renew and bless
Bacchus in the vine;
I hold the law,
I keep the mysteries true,
the first of these
to name the living, dead;
I am the wine and bread.
I keep the law,
I hold the mysteries true,
I am the vine,
the branches, you
and you.
by H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)
The images are plain but strong here. The voice captivates. It is clear and coherent, as if indeed one person were speaking to us, but it also represents a collective persona who can be Demeter (mother of Persephone and goddess of . . . agriculture, for lack of a better term), Bacchus, Adam (the naming), and any keeper of the law. The persona can also be us: "you and you." Is the persona The Life Force, God, Christ, the artistic impulse, or what or who? Yes--and no. H.D. wouldn't and didn't lie to us: "the mysteries remain."
It's hard not to like this poem.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
GLBT Poets
W.H. Auden
Countee Cullen
Mark Doty
Allen Ginsberg
John Giorno
Thom Gunn
A.E. Housman
Audre Lorde
Frank O'Hara
Adrienne Rich
Walt Whitman
Oscar Wilde (better known for his plays; a novel; being incarcerated for being gay; and one-liners, but also a good poet)
Langston Hughes, one of my all-time favorite poets, was probably bisexual, but his main biographer, Arnold Rampersad, concludes that Hughes essentially became "asexual," and this topic was easily the most controversial one mentioned in the two-volume biography. One good way of starting an argument among Hughes-scholars is to raise the question of his sexuality. I have no doubt Langston is amused my this, from his perch up there with Duke Ellington, Carl Van Vechten, Arna Bontemps, other friends, and a great number of just plain folk, whom he liked the best.
Mood and Impression: Edith Sitwell
Gray Crystal Bells
- BELLS of gray crystal
- Break on each bough--
- The swans' breath will mist all
- The cold airs now.
- Like tall pagodas
- Two people go,
- Trail their long codas
- Of talk through the snow.
- Lonely are these
- And lonely and I . . . .
- The clouds, gray Chinese geese
- Sleek through the sky.
- Edith Sitwell
Comparing people to pagodas may be a bit of a stretch, but I like the "codas" of talk: a nice way of describing what conversation sounds like outside in the cold. After "Lonely are these," we almost think there must be a typographical error in the next line: should it read "And lonely am I?" No--and this line seems better than that one would be: "And lonely and I . . ." Does the line refer, redundantly, to the two pagoda-people, or is the second "lonely" just floating freely in the speaker's head as he or she observes the two? The answer remains ambiguous, probably as Sitwell intended it to be, but the second "lonely" is followed nicely by "and I. . . ."--as if the speaker wants to turn from his or her own (painful?) thoughts and speak instead of the scene. Clouds are compared to gray Chinese geese: terrific. The image helps to book-end the poem, which early on gives us the image of swans' breath misting the cold air. The rhyme-scheme works well, even if pagodas seems to serve codas too obviously.
--A nice, mysterious, impressionistic, compact poem--as we look ahead to winter. Well done, Dame Edith!
A Poem By Abe Lincoln
To Rosa—
You are young, and I am older;
You are hopeful, I am not—
Enjoy life, ere it grow colder—
Pluck the roses ere they rot.
Teach your beau to heed the lay—
That sunshine soon is lost in shade—
That now's as good as any day—
To take thee, Rose, ere she fade.
Apparently Lincoln wrote this poem in 1858, for the daughter of a hotel proprietor.
As a writer, Lincoln tended to cut to the chase. The Gettysburg Address is a model of concision. The thesis of this one is pretty clear: "Rosa, induce your boyfriend to marry you--soon." "Pluck the roses ere they rot" delivers a punch. We're accustomed to seeing roses fade in poetry, but "rot" is less familiarly poetic in a poems comparing roses to women. Lincoln's legendary gloominess is apparent, too: "You are hopeful, I am not--." --And this was before the death of children and the disastrous early years of his first term as president, when the Civil War looked hopeless for the North, the abolitionists believed him to be too soft on slavery, and his Cabinet was a pit of snakes. (Gore Vidal's Lincoln is one of my favorite historical novels.)
The poem appears in the Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy Brasly. It also appears online on U.S. government sites.
I wonder how soon (or even whether) Rosa got married after reading this poem. I wonder what kind of poetry George W. Bush writes--or reads.
Hardy on War
The Man He Killed
Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have set us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!
But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.
I shot him dead because--
Because he was my foe,
Just so: my foe of course he was;
That's clear enough; although
He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,
Off-hand like--just as I--
Was out of work--had sold his traps--
No other reason why.
Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat, if met where any bar is,
Or help to half a crown.
A "nipperkin," by the way, is (according to the OED online):
"A small vessel used as a measure for alcoholic liquor, containing a half-pint or less."
Because they would have gotten the nipperkin wet, one might have guessed that the nipperkin was something like a napkin. "Nipperkin" can also refer to the ale or liquor in the vessel. So if you said, "May I have a nipperkin of bourbon?" and the bartender were to understand what you said, s/he would give you a certain amount of bourbon, not the nipperkin itself to take home.
As with many men and women who serve in the U.S. military, these two men enlisted because they didn't know what else to do and/or were out of work. The speaker speculates that the other man may have, like him, "sold his traps"--probably referring to fishing-traps or crab-traps. Then suddenly the two men are opposing each other on a battlefield in a war not of their making. As in Wilfred Owen's famous "Dulce et Decorum Est," there is no note of patriotism or even passion in the killing. It is accidental in the sense that two soldiers more or less wander into their respective armies and by chance oppose each other one day. If fate had gone another way, they might have had some beers together in a bar. There is more than a little of Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage in his poem. It also brings to mind a film with Toshiro Mifune and Lee Marvin, Hell in the Pacific, wherein an American and a Japanese soldier are stranded, by accident, on the same small island.
I wonder how many of those serving in Iraq now have a similar perspective on their circumstance.