My Father Quoted Longfellow

My father's reading-tastes were eclectic. He read two daily newspapers and a weekly one; the Reader's Digest; a magazine from the American Legion; a magazine for (ra)ccoon-hunting-hound enthusiasts called Full Cry; westerns (Louis L'Amour, Zane Grey); books about the Gold Rush; lots of state-government documents; and technical literature on how to put things together.

Every once in a while, however, when we were building a house or a stone-wall, he'd quote Longfellow, usually the opening lines of "The Village Blacksmith," but sometimes one line from the following poem:

A PSALM OF LIFE

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN
SAID TO THE PSALMIST

TELL me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream ! —
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real ! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal ;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way ;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle !
Be a hero in the strife !

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant !
Let the dead Past bury its dead !
Act,— act in the living Present !
Heart within, and God o'erhead !

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time ;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate ;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

The line my father quoted was the first one of stanza #2, except he reversed the order of the sentences. He'd say, referring to nothing in particular but perhaps to work-itself, "Life is earnest. Life is real!" It was understood that one was just supposed to listen to the quotation and not ask questions about it, and usually, right after quoting the line, he'd give an order having to do with work. The rest of the poem does not seem to reflect my father and his attitudes much--except for the last stanza, which is not a bad summation of my father's view of life: Get up early, do your job, be physically fit, don't whine, and wait. Wait for what? Oh, the arrival of Full Cry, or of summer, or the weekend (when you might go looking for gold), or hunting-season, or the next day of work, or one of his eccentric friends, who might show up with anything (like a bear-cub on a leash, a barber's chair, or a bag of paperback westerns). "Be not like dumb, driven cattle!" That, too, reflects his view of humanity. He thought anyone who lived in the suburbs or in cities was the equivalent of a dumb cow. Masses of people were, to him, by definition merely herds of conformists. But he really wasn't a recluse. In his small town and small circle of friends, he was quite convivial. He liked to go to Reno and gamble--twice a year. The rest of American suburbia and cities might as well have not existed.

"Life is earnest, life is real!" I can hear him saying this, as much to himself as anyone else--followed by "Mix me a batch of mortar, and not too wet this time, goddamnit." Life is real. Life is earnest: rather like Samuel Johnson's attempt to refute Berkeley's idealist philosophy--by kicking a stone and saying to Boswell, "Thus I refute Berkeley."

Water-Boarding Is Torture; "Unidentified" Means "Unidentified"

Poets are known for using figurative language and for taking words out of customary contexts, so to some degree they, like politicians and pundits, are known for playing "fast and loose" (whatever that means) with the language--if for purposes different from those of the pols and the pundits. However, poets tend to work within such tight limits--often in less than one page--that they tend to examine every word. Therefore, poets can sometimes be mystified by how politicians and pundits seem not to understand a given single word.

For example, the new attorney general of the United States couldn't say whether water-boarding is torture. He said he would need to see whether it was listed in some policy that dubbed it "illegal" before he could give a straight answer (I am paraphrasing, of course).

Thanks to a former soldier who had water-boarding demonstrated on him and on video, everyone knows exactly what water-boarding is. It's bringing a victim close to drowning, repeatedly. What creditable definition of torture would not include such a practice? Answer: none. The new attorney general was hiding behind a prospective legal definition when the question wasn't legal in nature. The question was this: Do you think water-boarding is torture? The only correct and proper answer is this: "Of course I do," followed, if he were feeling especially frisky, by, "What, do I look like a moron?" But that question may not have been regarded as rhetorical by those interviewing him.

For another example, Dennis Kucinich admitted to having seen an unidentified object in the sky. After he admitted that, Chris Matthews, who tends to combine a smug insider's attitude with an astounding incapacity to listen (even to himself), mocked Kucinich for admitting to having seen "UFOs." A UFO is an unidentified flying object, and "flying" is in this case understood to suggest "something in the sky," so whatever object the thing is or is not, it may seem to be floating, gliding, or hovering, not literally, narrowly "flying."

"Unidentified" means "not [yet] identified." It does not mean "identified" [as an alien craft]; otherwise, the "un" wouldn't be there. "Unidentified" clearly suggests that the person simply can't identify the object--yet. During the debate, Tim Russert allowed as how only 14% of the American people "believe in UFOs." Probably what the poll and Russert mean is that 14% of the American people believe in the existence of alien space-crafts. Of those American people who understand what "unidentified" means, 100% must necessarily believe in unidentified "flying" objects--meaning they believe it's possible, even probable, that a human being might see something in the sky and not know how to identify it without more observation and/or information.

That the new attorney general couldn't say bluntly that water-boarding is torture is further evidence that our government supports practices we identify as evil when others engage in them. That alleged reporters like Matthews and Russert don't know what "unidentified" means may be evidence that aliens have taken over our mass media--aliens who left their dictionaries home.

Poets aren't perfect, but we know torture when we see it demonstrated on video, and we know what "unidentified" means.

First Clear Memory?

In a poetry-class today, the students reported on "statements of poetics" written by Dylan Thomas, Philip Larkin, Frank O'hara, and Denise Levertov. Then we had about 15 minutes left in which to write, and I gave the students 17 prompts, all having to do with childhood. In response to one or more of the prompts, they could generate material in any way they wanted: free-writing, listing, starting a poem, etc.

I chose the prompt concerning one's first clear memory of childhood. Of course, the idea of having a first clear memory is debatable, made more debatable by the discipline of psychology. How do we know it's the first clear memory? Maybe earlier in our lives we had a clear memory that was of an even earlier time, but now we've replaced it. Or maybe the memory is as much a fiction as it is a faithful mental photograph of a very early "real" event in childhood. Or maybe we've repressed the first clear memory. What is a clear memory? Memory is such a complicated concept these days.

In any event, I came up with the following first draft of a poem about what I imagine to be my first clear memory from childhood. I'd always wanted to write about this memory, but I didn't get around to it until today.

First Memory: Snowbound

I am, and I am in snow. That is my first
clear memory. I’m on my back, and snow
surrounds me. I know I’m small. I feel
excessively bundled, although “excessively
bundled” is language that will come later.
It's been injected into the memory to help
account for a feeling. I feel excessively
bundled in black clothes, my face encircled
by a hood. Cold snow has risen up around me.
It is a problem. Immobile, I look up into
what I’ll describe now as the blank non-sky
of a snowy day. Adult faces appear above me.
They appear to laugh. I do not hear. They speak.
I hear words as sounds not words. The faces and voices
do not appear to take my being stuck—and now
anxious— seriously; the memory includes this
judgment. The memory ends there with me stuck,
over-bundled, cold, anxious, walled in by snow
I fell into backwards. History records that I
was extracted from the snow. My first clear
memory does not jibe with history. It leaves
me held in snow, looking up, restrained, alone.

Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom

Reacting To Rain

I took one of my classes to the cafe this morning to buy the students a hot beverage and have them work in groups on a project. Each semester I try to take each class to the cafe once; doing so is one of the benefits of teaching at a small college, for at a larger university, I'd probably have a lot more students in one or more of my classes, and the nearest cafe might not be within a short stroll's distance.

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

Fingernails

In adolescence, I bit my fingernails. Later I stopped. A carpenter's assistant for many summers, I performed the ritual of hitting my left thumb with a hammer, losing the nail--that black cloud of blood lying under there like a thunder-cloud. If memory serves, I didn't get my first professional manicure until after I was forty. I think I've probably gotten three more since then. In my figurative neck of the literal woods, a manicure for men was of course unheard of, and if it had been heard of, it would certainly have disrupted certain constructions of "manhood." Now, I gather, manicures for all manner of men are routine, and apparently wide-receivers in the National Football League are known to get manicures and pedicures--protecting the feet so the feet can get the body to where the pass needs to be caught by the hands, which make the money. When an old coach on television learned of this, he shook his head gravely. Another clear boundary of manhood erased! Football players going to a salon! Mercy!

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

by Hans Ostrom

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

Tiny Doctors

My wife came up with the term "tiny doctors," but I can't remember how or when. She may have been thinking of Elton John's song, "Tiny Dancer," and misspoke, but in any event, the term has been a source of humor in our family for quite a while. I took its silliness and ran with it into a poem, which turned out to be something of a Twilight Zone episode in short-poem form:

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.

More Poetic Math

Here's another poem on math, from a poet's perspective:

Doing Another Kind of Math

by Hans Ostrom

Bach over Blues
times Rock over
Mozart equals

music cubed.

Fox plus bear

divided by snow
equals dream.

Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom

Math and I

Mathematics and I were good friends up through geometry in high school. I'm not bad at arithmetic, I loved geometry (I think because I could visualize it), and I did fairly well at basic algebra. When I ran into trigonometry in high school, I had a bad teacher, but in truth, a good teacher would not have helped me much. It all seemed like gibberish to me, and I had this sneaking suspicion that "they" were simply making things up. None of the silly marks on the pages seemed to correspond to any world I knew. Of course, I was wrong. I was probably walking across bridges and riding in cars, the design of which had been affected by trigonometry.

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

As my friend Bill, a scholar in political science but a fan of selected poetry, likes to note, Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" may well be the most widely misinterpreted and therefore misused poem in American literature. When people refer to the poem, they usually mean their reference to suggest that taking the road less traveled is a brave choice but a choice that is often rewarded. Taking that road is an admirable, independent thing to do, people imply, when they allude to Frost's poem.

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

Here is another poem by Michelle Jones, a writer living in the Pacific Northwest:

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

The "list-poem" is one of the oldest modes of writing. Homer made long lists in his epics, for example, and I guess poets, being human (I'll assert this for the sake of argument), simply have that list-function in their brains, a function that Evolution must have selected early on. To Do: stay alive; find water; run from large predator.

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

Homeless

Television-news told me today that almost 200,000 of the homeless citizens in the U.S. are veterans of the military. I think that approximately 25% of the homeless were in the military, whereas only about 14% of the population is composed of former military-veterans.

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

One great source of inspiration for writers is literature itself. Imitation of established works by newer writers was part of the writing-instruction created by the Roman, Quintilian, for example, some 2,000 years ago, and creative-writing teachers nowadays use the method, too. More often, perhaps, writers produce a work that expresses a response to reading they've done, or they use an existing work as a kind of rail on a pool-table, playing a "carom shot." The piece they write doesn't imitate the earlier work as it does play off it. In all of these practices, a productive tension exists between the old piece of literature and the new one, just as there is tension between a jazz-musician's rendering of a song and the song as it was strictly composed. The tension might also be regarded as a conversation. (Parody is a "conversation" in which one work mocks another.)

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

Often I enjoy reading poems that somehow invite the reader into them. Sometimes they do so merely by being accessible, but even difficult poems can signal, in a variety of ways, that the reader is still welcome. Many of Shakespeare's sonnets and Donne's poems belong, I'd argue, in the latter category. You know going in that there will be some knots to untie, but you also know you'll probably enjoy being inside the poem nonetheless. With some so-called L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E poems, a few of Robert Creeley's poems, and a lot of Pound's poetry, I'm sometimes uncertain about how welcome I am in the 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 invitation at the end is "spoken" by the one "uttering" the poem to an implied listener "within" the poem, but the invitation is also literal. The last stanza invites you to tell an engaging, perhaps humorous, tale or anecdote today to someone you know--or to a stranger, if the stranger will stand for it.

The poem is from Subjects Apprehended, by Hans Ostrom (Ohio: Pudding House Press, 2000).

Theme and Variations

I tried an experiment whereby I treated a poem the way a jazz musician might treat a melody, playing a melodic phrase or "theme" and then improvising upon the phrase. A couple circumstances suggested, even before I started, that the experiment might be less than 100% successful. I am a piano player, although piano hacker is more accurate. My mother (not a professional piano teacher) gave me a few lessons in middle-school, and then I taught myself, so I studied with the worst. I like to play ballads from the 30s and 40s, and I do a D+ version of "Satin Doll." Okay, maybe D (the grade, not the key). Second problem: words aren't musical notes. Third problem: it's the first time I've tried this. Fourth problem: nobody really likes experimental poems, even if they say they do. Looking on the bright side, I can observe that the poem really isn't very long. It stretches out a bit, but it doesn't have that many words. Here it is:

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 2007

Poem 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

Here is a second poem from Northwest writer 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

Students in a poetry-writing class had to choose an extra book of poems to read. Almost all of the students are seniors and thus have reached the ripe old age of 21 or 22 but still qualify as youths (pronounced "yutes," remember, a la Cousin Vinny). Here are the books they chose, in no particular order:



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

Why Is Snow White?

I grew up around snow--at about 4,000 feet above sea-level in the Sierra Nevada. That was about 1,000 feet lower than the really serious snow, but each winter we still got storms that dumped a foot here, two feet there, sometimes four feet. Before I was born, the infamous storm of 1952 hit, and it dumped so much snow that drifts piled above the roofs in town and cut the town off. Highway-plows were completely useless against such a volume of snow. Lore has it that some pregnant women, among others, got nervous.

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.

Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom

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

I like that pat answer people sometimes give when you ask, "What have you been up to?" "Oh, this and that," they say. It can be a way of saying, "None of your business," or of saying, "It's too complicated to go into now," or "You are not the person I was hoping to speak with right now" or "Mere words cannot describe what I've been up to."

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

'Tis the season on many college campuses for students to write many, many essays, a.k.a "papers." Here's a little poem that takes its shape from one shape the essay sometimes takes. The poem first appeared in Willow Springs, a magazine published at Eastern Washington University, which has a fine M.F.A. program in writing.

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.

Haiku; Basho; Sneeze

Although one of my favorite books of poetry is Matsuo Basho's The Narrow Road to the Deep North, as translated in English, I hardly ever try to write haiku. Many poets specialize in the form--poets writing in English, I mean. Basho's book is great because it's part travelogue, part autobiography, part meditation, and part poetry. The poetry's interwoven with the narrative, and occasionally he'll invite someone he meets to write a poem with him. In my hands, the haiku-form just seems artificial in a way that the sonnet-form, though difficult, does not. I feel as if I'm writing in a form I don't understand fully, and I assume that there are all sorts of cultural assumptions lying behind the haiku form. For example, the 17 syllables may mean a great deal in Japanese for reasons I don't fathom, but in English, what's the difference between 17 and 16 or 17 and 15? But I certainly enjoy haiku written by other poets, and the focus on clear, "hard" imagery has a lot in common with the Imagist movement.

Anyway, here's just one haiku:

Allergic Haiku

mold, pollen, weeds, dust--

sealed building full of bad air—

she wheezes; sneezes


A-choo.

Bricks

I'm living in a brick house for the first time in my life. I like it just fine. Brick houses always look appealing from the street because you don't see peeling paint, and bricks pretty much stay bricks: they hold their shape and color. I've heard that brick houses don't fare too well in earthquakes, but I don't know that for a fact.

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

I use a huge anthology in one of my courses, and the book is one of the best of its kind I've seen in a while. It's The Wadsworth Anthology of Poetry, edited by Jay Parini.

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

Holding Back; Emerson

Here's a lesser known poem by Ralph Waldo 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.

Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom

Why Do I Like Crows?

My sense of things is that crows are not popular. They're large, loud, and insistent--and these traits are supposed to be exclusively human, aren't they? There are a lot of crows in a lot of places, and if your residence or place of work is next to tall trees, there may well be crow- families in your neighborhood. The nests are huge. The perch on top of schooners and whalers wasn't called the crow's nest for nothing. Crows don't sing or do acrobatics in the air. They're very clear about the fact that they're not here for our entertainment. They seem to eat anything, as do seagulls (are both considered carrion-birds?), but most people think seagulls have some counter-balancing positive attributes.

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.

Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom

William Miller; Golf Poems

Here is a splendid poem by William Miller that gives us a fresh perspective on golf. The poem is from findarticles.com. Copyright information appears after the poem.

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."
* * * * *

Golf

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

Warning. Red alert. Or at least maybe a burnt-umber alert. (I need to find out what umber is and who first burned to make that color.) Preachy poem ahead. Detour advised.

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

Skaters Captured

I'll continue my intermittent posting of Imagists' poems with one by John Gould Fletcher (1886-1950):

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

I just ran across a curious, humorous poem by Lorine Niedecker (1903-1970), a native of Wisconsin and a poet often grouped with William Carlos Williams and Hilda Doolittle because of her spare rhetoric and imagery. Here is the poem:

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

I was talking with a colleague who is teaching a course that includes the great Victorian novel, Middlemarch, by George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann Evans. We were observing that many passages in the novel are poetic because the phrasing is so superb, heightened without going over the top. Here is a little poem by George Eliot:

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

"Interim" is a good word. It sounds nice, for one thing, and it starts with a stressed syllable. It would be a good word with which to start a poem in that most difficult (for poets writing in English) meter, dactylic, in which each three-syllable unit must begin with a stressed syllable and end with two unstressed syllables. Unless I'm mistaken, Longfellow's poem Hiawatha is composed in dactylic meter.

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

A November Poem by Joseph Seamon Cotter, Sr.

Joseph Seamon Cotter, Sr., was a pioneering African American poet whose life and work bridged the era of slavery (he was born in 1861) and the era in which modern African American literature flourished in the Harlem Renaissance and continued to grow in the decades ahead (he died in 1949, preceded in death by his son, Joseph Jr., also a poet). I enjoy Cotter Sr.'s poem about November very much and post it here as we find ourselves in that month again:

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

My father's day-job was carpentry and stone-masonry, but for several years he took a second job as a bartender. My uncle owned the bar, The Buckhorn in Sierra City, California, and it had a juke box that played 78 rpm records. My father brought home some of the records that were removed to make way for new ones. So I grew up listening to "Folsom Prison Blues" and "Big River" by Johnny Cash, "North to Alaska" by Johnny Horton, and songs by Kitty Wells, Eddie Arnold, the Sons of the Pioneers, and many others.

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

One of the great "rant" poems in American literature announces itself, with its title, as a rant-poem: Allen Ginsberg's Howl, which harnesses the power of counter-cultural, anti-Establishiment outrage to a kind of Old Testament prophetic oratory. Amiri Baraka's "A New Reality Is Better Than a New Movie" (1972) is a durable poem in this "genre," too. Langston Hughes, who is not customarily associated with "rant" poems, actually wrote many of them, especially in the 1930s. They were often connected to labor-issues and to opposing imperialism and racism.

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

Amy Lowell; Taxi; Metro

Along with H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), Richard Aldington, and Ezra Pound, Massachusetts native Amy Lowell was an important Imagist poet in the early decades of the 20th century. Here is a poem by her about a taxi-cab:

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.

Hans Ostrom

Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom

Josephine Miles; Family

Here's a splendid poem by Josephine Miles. It's always reminded me of Stevie Smith's poem, "Not Waving But Drowning," but it's a bit less bleak. Miles (1911-1985) taught for a long time at U.C. Berkeley. Rheumatoid arthritis physically disabled her considerably. I heard/saw her read at U.C. Davis in the late 1970s, and an assistant had to carry her into and out of rooms. She gave a great reading. Her poems are droll and intelligent. The poem (from the Poetry Foundation website, so I think it's okay to post it), which my friend, and former classmate at U.C. Davis, likes very much:

Family

by Josephine Miles

When you swim in the surf off Seal Rocks, and your family

Sits in the sand

Eating potato salad, and the undertow

Comes which takes you out away down

To loss of breath loss of play and the power of play

Holler, say

Help, help, help. Hello, they will say,

Come back here for some potato salad.

It is then that a seventeen-year-old cub

Cruising in a helicopter from Antigua,

A jackstraw expert speaking only Swedish

And remote from this area as a camel, says

Look down there, there is somebody drowning.

And it is you. You say, yes, yes,

And he throws you a line.

This is what is called the brotherhood of man.

* * * * * *

Here's a different kind of poem about family:

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"

Since today is Halloween, I thought I'd briefly review some of the "holidays" (using the term loosely, in some cases). I'll start with my least favorite first and work toward the one I like the best; it happens to be the best one for poets, too, in my opinion. Here we go--and don't take offense; if you really like a holiday that I don't, more power to you, and may you write or read a great poem about it:

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

by Hans Ostrom

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.

Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom

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

Here is a fine poem by Jared Leising, a writer and professor in the Pacific Northwest and author of the chapbook, The Widows and Orphans of Winesburg, Ohio:



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

Guest-Poems by Jones and Borsten

Here are two poems, one each by Michelle Jones and Sarah Borsten, writers living in the Pacific Northwest:



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

New From Copper Canyon

I just received a new catalogue from Copper Canyon Press, one of the venerable publishers of poetry-books in the U.S. It is located in Port Townsend, Washington.

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.