Some more political questions from a poet's point of view:
1. Because reporters don't seem to ask good questions anymore, why don't they ask candidates who their favorite poets are? Sure, it's irrelevant to the election, but so are most of the other questions. I figure Obama would answer straight-up. I think there's a 35% chance he'd say Langston Hughes, chiefyy for the sense of humor, not necessarily for the ethnicity. I figure the Clintons (plural) would stall, consult their team, do some polling, and then (if it were today) name a poet from Pennsylvania. I figure John McCain would get angry and hell at the reporter, "What kind of question is that?! Shut up!"
2. Why doesn't Ralph Nader run for mayor of a city first? Why does he always have to start at the top? How about mayor of Toledo? What if we made Ralph activist-poet-laureate?
3. Will the Dems manage to lose what most political scientists view as the easiest election to win in decades? Or should I ask, How will the Dems lose . . . .?
4. If "gay marriage" is, as some allege, a "threat" to heterosexual marriages [I still don't get how it could be a threat, and I'm still in search of one good example of such a threat], does it then follow, logically, that gay divorce would be a threat to traditional divorce and therefore an aid to traditional marriage, meaning we should make gay marriage legal so that gay divorce would be legal?
5. In the 2004 election, the GOPers allegedly used ballot initiatives on gay marriage to get out (so to speak) the vote on their behalf, in Ohio, for example. What ballot initiatives are they planning this Fall?
6. Instead of sending all taxpayers (in certain brackets) a $600 refund, why doesn't the government "bundle" that money and give it to the people who can't make their house payments?
7. What is one success Bush has had? I thought about this question hard, and I came up with the following: he has given a lot of money for AIDS relief in Africa (even though he insists on so-called abstinence programs). That's a good thing. I'm even willing to take the Iraq war off the table and say that people can agree to disagree about that. But leaving that off the table, what remains? Economy = bad. Environment = bad. Eroded civil liberties = bad (in my opinion). Foreign policy [even excepting Iraq] = bad. Support for veterans = bad. Energy = bad. Response to disasters [Katrina] = bad. Speeches = bad. Appointments = bad (strictly from a competence-angle). Polar bears = bad. Immigration = no policy one way or the other; a zero. Closing gap between rich and poor = bad. But I suppose some people want that gap to widen--I mean, seriously, from some kind of effed up philosophical point of view.
8. Would anyone be in favor of electing Obama, Clinton, and McCain and giving them each roughly 16 months in office? I guess we'd simply draw straws to see who started first. Or we could give each one 8 months and then hold a referendum to see if we wanted that person to continue. Why wait four years to see how bad things can get? Society moves at a much faster pace than it did in, say, 1808, so should we speed up the presidential cycle?
9. Did you get the sense, as I did when I watched Obama giving his speech on race, that he was thinking, "I can't believe I have to explain such simple things to [white] people"? I thought it was a great speech, but I did sense an understandable weariness on his part. A kind of "I thought we covered this already in high school history" feeling.
10. Is Obama essentially doing to the Clintons what Bill Clinton did to Bush I and Bob Dole? Hoisted on his [Bill's] own . . . ?
11. Who would be in favor of a heavy tax on presidential campaigns? Not on the people who give money, mind you, but on the candidates' campaign-machines. I'd put the money directly into Medicare, Social Security, and/or homeless programs. That way, society would benefit from each campaign, no matter what. And we'd take the money from them right away, before they spent it on attack-ads or whatever. Right off the top.
12. Does Congress matter anymore? Is it even logistically possible for any Congress to say No to any president at this point? Are we pretty much working with elected dictators at this point?
Monday, March 24, 2008
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Ashbery, Dunn, and Kunitz
At the beach on the Washington coast, I read three books of poetry by three venerable poets: Where Shall I Wander [no question mark] by John Ashbery; The Insistence of Beauty, by Stephen Dunn; and a later Selected Poems (circa 1995) by Stanley Kunitz.
Although Ashbery is of the New York School and bears some relation to L*A*N*G*U*A*G*E* poets, he's pretty much a school unto himself, drawing on a vast range of diction, creating expressionistic collages of language, infusing his poems with allusions and droll linguistic wit, and almost never, it seems, being interested in straightforward rhetoric, accessible narrative, or otherwise conventionally representational poetry. I've always found his poems to be amusing and extremely clever, but I don't like them as much as many of my cohorts do. I tire of them quickly, and I do get the sense that sometimes he's just effing around--that one could take out a couple lines and replace them with other lines, give the poem to someone, and not have that person catch the switch. (I can't imagine doing that [and getting away with it] to poems by Housman, Hopkins, Dickinson, or Auden, for instance, but I think it would work with some of Ashbery's poems.) As linguistically rich and surprising as his poems are, there is nonetheless something insular or insulated about the work. I start to yearn for poetry that's more sanguine, robust, and grounded, less academic, upper-middle-class, and enervated. Ennui abounds. A lot of his poems sound like J. Alfred Prufrock on roids or Franz Kafka on laughing gas. But Ashbery's an extremely famous, celebrated poet, so I think I'm in the minority in my view; also, Ashbery's ear for all the odd phrases we're flooded with each day is extraordinary; out of nowhere will come a line like, "Attention shoppers."
Dunn's poetry is quite clear and grounded, and his voice is interesting. This particular book is a bit too insular for me--not in the way Ashbery's is, however. The book seems centered on Dunn's own immediate experience, including such things as romantic break-ups. I found myself wanting a broader range of experience represented, and sometimes things got predictable. In a poem apparently about a new lover, he speaks of the woman's former lover and brings in the old reference to three people (figuratively) being in the bed. That idea seems worn out. "Grudges" is an intriguing, well crafted villanelle, modified, about 9/11. It doesn't quite capture the global nature of the mess we're in, however. For me, it personalized 9/11 a bit too much--shrank the event. There's more than a grudge involved when planes get flown into towers and the U.S. invades a country for trumped up reasons--at a cost of a trillion dollars. Like Ashbery, however, Dunn is a venerable, much celebrated poet--of the plainer style.
I read Kunitz's book third and was glad to do so, for I felt as if earth, sky, water, air, fish, ordinary folk, fire, wood, recognizable landscapes, and less preciously rendered experiences were suddenly let back into the room. Things had gotten a bit stuffy with Ashbery and Dunn. As much as I enjoyed Ashbery's rare, relentless cleverness and Dunn's spare, self-grounded work, I was really hungry and thirsty for the kind of poetry Kunitz writes, so the order of the reading worked out beautifully.
Anyway, props to these three veterans of American poetry. Solid books, established reputations.
Although Ashbery is of the New York School and bears some relation to L*A*N*G*U*A*G*E* poets, he's pretty much a school unto himself, drawing on a vast range of diction, creating expressionistic collages of language, infusing his poems with allusions and droll linguistic wit, and almost never, it seems, being interested in straightforward rhetoric, accessible narrative, or otherwise conventionally representational poetry. I've always found his poems to be amusing and extremely clever, but I don't like them as much as many of my cohorts do. I tire of them quickly, and I do get the sense that sometimes he's just effing around--that one could take out a couple lines and replace them with other lines, give the poem to someone, and not have that person catch the switch. (I can't imagine doing that [and getting away with it] to poems by Housman, Hopkins, Dickinson, or Auden, for instance, but I think it would work with some of Ashbery's poems.) As linguistically rich and surprising as his poems are, there is nonetheless something insular or insulated about the work. I start to yearn for poetry that's more sanguine, robust, and grounded, less academic, upper-middle-class, and enervated. Ennui abounds. A lot of his poems sound like J. Alfred Prufrock on roids or Franz Kafka on laughing gas. But Ashbery's an extremely famous, celebrated poet, so I think I'm in the minority in my view; also, Ashbery's ear for all the odd phrases we're flooded with each day is extraordinary; out of nowhere will come a line like, "Attention shoppers."
Dunn's poetry is quite clear and grounded, and his voice is interesting. This particular book is a bit too insular for me--not in the way Ashbery's is, however. The book seems centered on Dunn's own immediate experience, including such things as romantic break-ups. I found myself wanting a broader range of experience represented, and sometimes things got predictable. In a poem apparently about a new lover, he speaks of the woman's former lover and brings in the old reference to three people (figuratively) being in the bed. That idea seems worn out. "Grudges" is an intriguing, well crafted villanelle, modified, about 9/11. It doesn't quite capture the global nature of the mess we're in, however. For me, it personalized 9/11 a bit too much--shrank the event. There's more than a grudge involved when planes get flown into towers and the U.S. invades a country for trumped up reasons--at a cost of a trillion dollars. Like Ashbery, however, Dunn is a venerable, much celebrated poet--of the plainer style.
I read Kunitz's book third and was glad to do so, for I felt as if earth, sky, water, air, fish, ordinary folk, fire, wood, recognizable landscapes, and less preciously rendered experiences were suddenly let back into the room. Things had gotten a bit stuffy with Ashbery and Dunn. As much as I enjoyed Ashbery's rare, relentless cleverness and Dunn's spare, self-grounded work, I was really hungry and thirsty for the kind of poetry Kunitz writes, so the order of the reading worked out beautifully.
Anyway, props to these three veterans of American poetry. Solid books, established reputations.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Dig It
One doesn't hear the term "dig it" much any longer, in the colloquial sense of "enjoy it." I have not pursued any research on the etymology of this connotation, but I suspect that it may have originated in African American vernacular expression, gotten absorbed into the broader popular culture (including the "Beat Generation"), and then lasted a while--into the 1970s, perhaps even the 1980s? When people use the term now, they tend to use it derisively, gently mocking how out of date it is. In the 1990s, there was a quasi-Hip-Hop group called Diggable Planets, which produced some very intriguing music and lyrics. But that group, too, was deploying the term wryly.
I have a good friend, a longtime friend, who works at Microsoft now. He's one of the funniest people I've ever met, and among his schticks is a faux-hip one, in which the persona goes around saying, "Hey, I can dig that!" He happens to be a fabulous musician, so ironically, when it comes to music, he can play things that are genuinely diggable, even as, in one of his comic personae, he mocks the "cool" white bourgeois dude who's tragi-comically "hip."
I do wonder the extent to which "dig" is filially linked to the term "groove." One gets in the groove or finds something groovy, just as one digs or digs into an experience, but can one dig a groove? Hmmm. Perhaps one shouldn't use "one" when writing about "dig"--speaking of tragi-comically [un]-hip.
"Can you dig it?" is a rhetorical expression, although I believe in a tune by the group Chicago ("Saturday in the Park," if memory serves), the question is not treated thusly. "Can you dig it?" is followed by "Yes, I can." Chicago produced a great sound there for a while, but even from the beginning, the group was a bit nerdy. Nerd rock.
Anyway, here is a wee riff on the term "dig it":
Imperative Mood
It is not to my credit that I couldn't resist writing "Dig the well good." It amuses me, but I do apologize. Can you dig it? Don't answer that.
I have a good friend, a longtime friend, who works at Microsoft now. He's one of the funniest people I've ever met, and among his schticks is a faux-hip one, in which the persona goes around saying, "Hey, I can dig that!" He happens to be a fabulous musician, so ironically, when it comes to music, he can play things that are genuinely diggable, even as, in one of his comic personae, he mocks the "cool" white bourgeois dude who's tragi-comically "hip."
I do wonder the extent to which "dig" is filially linked to the term "groove." One gets in the groove or finds something groovy, just as one digs or digs into an experience, but can one dig a groove? Hmmm. Perhaps one shouldn't use "one" when writing about "dig"--speaking of tragi-comically [un]-hip.
"Can you dig it?" is a rhetorical expression, although I believe in a tune by the group Chicago ("Saturday in the Park," if memory serves), the question is not treated thusly. "Can you dig it?" is followed by "Yes, I can." Chicago produced a great sound there for a while, but even from the beginning, the group was a bit nerdy. Nerd rock.
Anyway, here is a wee riff on the term "dig it":
Imperative Mood
When he said, “Dig the well,”
He wasn’t speaking Jazz or Beat
Or asking you to move your feet.
He meant shovel, and he meant hole.
The water-witching’s done, son.
Find that water-table,
If you’re able.
Dig the well good. Get it done.
It is not to my credit that I couldn't resist writing "Dig the well good." It amuses me, but I do apologize. Can you dig it? Don't answer that.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Obama's Speech
Luckily, I had the time to watch all of Barack Obama's speech about his pastor in particular and "race" in general today. Especially for a politician, Obama came perilously close not just to telling the truth but to indulging in complexity--two things we've come not to expect or accept from our political speakers.
Although the facts show I'm a privileged white male, I'm in the "minority" on a couple of issues. First, I didn't find the Reverend Wright's excerpted comments offensive or even incorrect. "G.D. America" was a bit over the top, theologically, only because I reckon it's G.'s decision whether to D. anyone or anything. But even that phrase wasn't over the top if you place it in the context of prophetic preaching. Look at the Books of Isaiah and Jeremiah, for example: preaching that calls down the thunder and makes the Reverend Wright seem mild, no offense to him intended.
Second, I'd prefer to retire the word "race" as it applies to categories of people, simply because there is no basis for this categorization in science. However, I understand the argument that because racism is alive and well, we might as well keep "race" in play. It's just that I'm persuaded by the human-genome project and its apparent discovery that our entire gene-pool may be traced back to what we might call Eastern Africa. That's where the "race" began. The stuff about Caucasians, "Orientals," Anglo-Saxons, "whites," "blacks," and "Negroes" is just invented nonsense. But I'm willing to defer to those who want to keep "race" in the lexicon for strategic and tactical purposes. Recently, scientists have found three or four genes that control skin-color--but they control skin-color, not "race."
Because I teach African American literature, I talk every day--or every M-W-F--about what Obama talked about--just not as eloquently. Or more accurately, my students and I talk about such topics--the complexities of spirituality and race, class and race, how a sense of "whiteness" depends on a complicated view of "blackness," how white folks are privileged to be "tired of talking about race," whereas black folks have to think about the topic all the time, and so on.
Of course, the mainstream commercial media and right-wing hucksters smell blood, ratings, and money in the water, so they'll continue to "harpoon" Obama--David Gergen's phrase. A moderate Republican, Gergen liked Obama's speech but allowed as how, in his opinion, the right would relentlessly attack now, no matter what Obama said. To his credit, Gergen seemed disgusted by the predictable harpooning.
Having read the works of Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Wallace Thurman, George Schuyler, Richard Wright, Ann Petry, Amiri Baraka, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Iceberg Slim, Chester Himes, Rudolph Fisher, Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and W.E.B. DuBois, among others, I would have regarded the Reverend Wright's comments as unremarkable. The media ginned up the controversy, as far as I'm concerned, and as far as I'm concerned, I'm constantly amazed that African Americans aren't more angry, dispirited, and incensed. I can't think of another ethnic group from which fate and history have exacted more suffering and asked more resilience and patience. That Obama was so resilient, patient, articulate, and nuanced today impressed me, even if, in my opinion, there was no controversy to begin with. No offense to the Reverend Wright, but his righteous indignation and its targets are not news, nor should they be. That they are news may mean that the U.S. is a bit more "static" than Obama's speech allowed. To me, white privilege looks as implacable and immovable as ever, but I'm willing to follow the lead of Obama's speech and think the best I can of this society. And Obama, in the words of Langston Hughes, let everyone know that he is "still here." (Hughes's "Still Here" is one of my favorite poems, incidentally.) To his credit, Obama expects more from his nation than I do; he is more optimistic than I. Good for him. Good, I hope, for us, too.
Although the facts show I'm a privileged white male, I'm in the "minority" on a couple of issues. First, I didn't find the Reverend Wright's excerpted comments offensive or even incorrect. "G.D. America" was a bit over the top, theologically, only because I reckon it's G.'s decision whether to D. anyone or anything. But even that phrase wasn't over the top if you place it in the context of prophetic preaching. Look at the Books of Isaiah and Jeremiah, for example: preaching that calls down the thunder and makes the Reverend Wright seem mild, no offense to him intended.
Second, I'd prefer to retire the word "race" as it applies to categories of people, simply because there is no basis for this categorization in science. However, I understand the argument that because racism is alive and well, we might as well keep "race" in play. It's just that I'm persuaded by the human-genome project and its apparent discovery that our entire gene-pool may be traced back to what we might call Eastern Africa. That's where the "race" began. The stuff about Caucasians, "Orientals," Anglo-Saxons, "whites," "blacks," and "Negroes" is just invented nonsense. But I'm willing to defer to those who want to keep "race" in the lexicon for strategic and tactical purposes. Recently, scientists have found three or four genes that control skin-color--but they control skin-color, not "race."
Because I teach African American literature, I talk every day--or every M-W-F--about what Obama talked about--just not as eloquently. Or more accurately, my students and I talk about such topics--the complexities of spirituality and race, class and race, how a sense of "whiteness" depends on a complicated view of "blackness," how white folks are privileged to be "tired of talking about race," whereas black folks have to think about the topic all the time, and so on.
Of course, the mainstream commercial media and right-wing hucksters smell blood, ratings, and money in the water, so they'll continue to "harpoon" Obama--David Gergen's phrase. A moderate Republican, Gergen liked Obama's speech but allowed as how, in his opinion, the right would relentlessly attack now, no matter what Obama said. To his credit, Gergen seemed disgusted by the predictable harpooning.
Having read the works of Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Wallace Thurman, George Schuyler, Richard Wright, Ann Petry, Amiri Baraka, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Iceberg Slim, Chester Himes, Rudolph Fisher, Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and W.E.B. DuBois, among others, I would have regarded the Reverend Wright's comments as unremarkable. The media ginned up the controversy, as far as I'm concerned, and as far as I'm concerned, I'm constantly amazed that African Americans aren't more angry, dispirited, and incensed. I can't think of another ethnic group from which fate and history have exacted more suffering and asked more resilience and patience. That Obama was so resilient, patient, articulate, and nuanced today impressed me, even if, in my opinion, there was no controversy to begin with. No offense to the Reverend Wright, but his righteous indignation and its targets are not news, nor should they be. That they are news may mean that the U.S. is a bit more "static" than Obama's speech allowed. To me, white privilege looks as implacable and immovable as ever, but I'm willing to follow the lead of Obama's speech and think the best I can of this society. And Obama, in the words of Langston Hughes, let everyone know that he is "still here." (Hughes's "Still Here" is one of my favorite poems, incidentally.) To his credit, Obama expects more from his nation than I do; he is more optimistic than I. Good for him. Good, I hope, for us, too.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Fiction v. Poetry
I sent off sample chapters of not one but two novels I've finally completed. I'd sent a rare double-query to an agent, and the agency wants to have a look at both books, which are quite different from each other. All prayers, good thoughts, and karmic vibrations are welcome, of course.
For me, fiction is hard labor. There's just no two ways around it, as my mother used to say. Poetry is work, certainly, but I feel as if I have some control; even if a poem is turning out badly, I can recognize as much and quickly start again or revise or put the poem on hiatus. With fiction, I can write chapters and chapters, drafts and drafts, and still not know quite what I have. I'm much more comfortable with nonfiction prose--reviews, essays, textbooks, journalism, scholarship.
I've met quite a few writers whom I regard as "pure" fiction-writers; they really seem to know their way around fictional narrative writing. Many of them look at poetry and shake their heads; they don't even attempt it. One fiction-writer I know flatly says, "I don't know anything about poetry."
Quite a few poets are once-only novelists: Karl Shapiro published one novel, Edsel (great title); James Dickey published one (yes, that famous one on which they based a Burt Reynolds movie: "Aintree?! You can't get there from here, boy!"); and Richard Hugo published one--a mystery novel called Death and the Good Life (great title). I think Rita Dove has published only one novel.
At the moment, the most prolific double-genre writer that comes to mind is Robert Penn Warren (All the King's Men, World Enough and Time, much poetry). I think Stephen Dobyns started as a poet and became a rather prolific mystery-writer. The fiction-machine, Joyce Carol Oates, writes plays, but I don't think she writes poetry. John Updike writes relatively light poetry. I remember reading his volume, Midpoint, about 30 years ago--or more.
I've published just one novel so far--a mystery novel that was, I found out later, a "police procedural"--because its detective is a sheriff. These other two novels have taken forever and a day to finish. Two long, strange writing-and-revision roads. Maybe they'll get published; maybe not. But it was good to get a yes to a query and fun to send them off--with the SASE, in which I expect to see them again, rejected but still my pals.
For me, fiction is hard labor. There's just no two ways around it, as my mother used to say. Poetry is work, certainly, but I feel as if I have some control; even if a poem is turning out badly, I can recognize as much and quickly start again or revise or put the poem on hiatus. With fiction, I can write chapters and chapters, drafts and drafts, and still not know quite what I have. I'm much more comfortable with nonfiction prose--reviews, essays, textbooks, journalism, scholarship.
I've met quite a few writers whom I regard as "pure" fiction-writers; they really seem to know their way around fictional narrative writing. Many of them look at poetry and shake their heads; they don't even attempt it. One fiction-writer I know flatly says, "I don't know anything about poetry."
Quite a few poets are once-only novelists: Karl Shapiro published one novel, Edsel (great title); James Dickey published one (yes, that famous one on which they based a Burt Reynolds movie: "Aintree?! You can't get there from here, boy!"); and Richard Hugo published one--a mystery novel called Death and the Good Life (great title). I think Rita Dove has published only one novel.
At the moment, the most prolific double-genre writer that comes to mind is Robert Penn Warren (All the King's Men, World Enough and Time, much poetry). I think Stephen Dobyns started as a poet and became a rather prolific mystery-writer. The fiction-machine, Joyce Carol Oates, writes plays, but I don't think she writes poetry. John Updike writes relatively light poetry. I remember reading his volume, Midpoint, about 30 years ago--or more.
I've published just one novel so far--a mystery novel that was, I found out later, a "police procedural"--because its detective is a sheriff. These other two novels have taken forever and a day to finish. Two long, strange writing-and-revision roads. Maybe they'll get published; maybe not. But it was good to get a yes to a query and fun to send them off--with the SASE, in which I expect to see them again, rejected but still my pals.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Greed Gone Wild, Lobbying Gone Looney
Maybe this is what the late 1920s felt like, financial "systems" (ha!) out of control, waves of foreclosures, no sensible planning on the part of private or governmental institutions, the never-free, loaded-dice "free market" cannibalizing itself.
What rational nation cuts taxes after hurling itself into an unnecessary five-year-plus war? Only George Herbert Hoover Bush would pull such a stunt, which enables the very rich to suck up loose cash but ruins the economy as a whole and devastates working people.
I was talking with a realtor today, who explained that after "the Fed" pumped a bunch of money into the banking system, with the idea of lowering interest-rates and getting the economy going, many makes raised interest-rates so that they would make money at both ends--from the Fed handout and from small investors (like home-buyers). Thus they stash a lot of cash, make the quarterly books look good, and raise the price of their stock. Meanwhile, the economy continues to slump, and the gap between rich and poor widens. Why wouldn't Congress (for example) regulate such behavior and instruct the banks that if they get an influx of cash for the government, the mustn't raise interest-rates? Congress/the Fed did step in to save Bear/Stearns--because they were afraid of a stock-crash. Save Bear/Stearns, but to hell with the working-class family in foreclosure. The realtor told me he has a client who can barely make house payments. He wants to negotiate a deal with the bank, but the bank won't negotiate with him unless he goes into foreclosure. It's in the bank's interest to see him fail, I guess. And the banks don't have to pay attention to Congress because banking-lobbyists own Congress.
Don't you just love the argument that lobbying, a synonym for bribery, is protected free speech? Checks, currency, and wire-transfers of money--from banking lobbyists to a congress-person's campaign, e.g.--do involve numbers and letters: texts, if you will. I will grant that technical point. But only amounts of symbolic stored energy are being expressed. No one is speaking, writing, performing, or peacefully protesting. They're just bribing.
I'm tempted to argue against lobbying and even to argue for outlawing it. I'd allow anybody to give any information they wanted to legislators. I just wouldn't allow any money to go from lobbyists and their employers to legislators. In fact, I'd require lobbyists to take a vow of poverty. Non-profit organizations would take care of their basic needs. Ideas, jokes, poems, riddles, statistics, reports, theories, draft-bills--yes to all of these. Money--no. It's not speech. It's money. Gifts--no. Favors--no. Maybe one batch of home-made cookies per year, that's it.
On second thought, however, I think I'd prefer to make lobbying not illegal but even more obviously crass and vividly bad for the common good. Like automobiles in NASCAR, legislators should have to wear patches and decals on their clothes representing every entity that's given them money. Failure to represent a lobbyist with a patch or decal would mean the legislator would have to give the money back--in a public ceremony.
And while I'm at it, let me say how disappointed I am in the Poetry Lobby. What are they doing? Why aren't they pushing the poetry-agenda more fiercely? Where are their offices, their newsletters, their think-tanks, their phony corporations, their email-alerts? I want Emily Dickinson's image to replace Jefferson's on the nickel, for instance. The Poetry Lobby could push for that. E.D. never owned slaves, and she wrote over a thousand great poems. TJ helped draft a few "founding" documents, but he's gotten enough press. He can give up the nickel.
I'd like a National Poet's Reserve. If you joined, you'd have to go to a workshop once a month and agree to be ready to be called up to active duty--for example, if the governor needed some sonnets written, or if an ailing poet needed some help with meals or errands. I'd like to see the U.S. step up poetry-exports, and I want NASA to send some poetry-satellites in orbit, so the spoken word could be broadcast around the globe more vigorously. I'd like to see the villanelle put on the Endangered Form-Poem list, and I want us to drill for poetry in Alaska. Poetry Lobby, where are you?
What rational nation cuts taxes after hurling itself into an unnecessary five-year-plus war? Only George Herbert Hoover Bush would pull such a stunt, which enables the very rich to suck up loose cash but ruins the economy as a whole and devastates working people.
I was talking with a realtor today, who explained that after "the Fed" pumped a bunch of money into the banking system, with the idea of lowering interest-rates and getting the economy going, many makes raised interest-rates so that they would make money at both ends--from the Fed handout and from small investors (like home-buyers). Thus they stash a lot of cash, make the quarterly books look good, and raise the price of their stock. Meanwhile, the economy continues to slump, and the gap between rich and poor widens. Why wouldn't Congress (for example) regulate such behavior and instruct the banks that if they get an influx of cash for the government, the mustn't raise interest-rates? Congress/the Fed did step in to save Bear/Stearns--because they were afraid of a stock-crash. Save Bear/Stearns, but to hell with the working-class family in foreclosure. The realtor told me he has a client who can barely make house payments. He wants to negotiate a deal with the bank, but the bank won't negotiate with him unless he goes into foreclosure. It's in the bank's interest to see him fail, I guess. And the banks don't have to pay attention to Congress because banking-lobbyists own Congress.
Don't you just love the argument that lobbying, a synonym for bribery, is protected free speech? Checks, currency, and wire-transfers of money--from banking lobbyists to a congress-person's campaign, e.g.--do involve numbers and letters: texts, if you will. I will grant that technical point. But only amounts of symbolic stored energy are being expressed. No one is speaking, writing, performing, or peacefully protesting. They're just bribing.
I'm tempted to argue against lobbying and even to argue for outlawing it. I'd allow anybody to give any information they wanted to legislators. I just wouldn't allow any money to go from lobbyists and their employers to legislators. In fact, I'd require lobbyists to take a vow of poverty. Non-profit organizations would take care of their basic needs. Ideas, jokes, poems, riddles, statistics, reports, theories, draft-bills--yes to all of these. Money--no. It's not speech. It's money. Gifts--no. Favors--no. Maybe one batch of home-made cookies per year, that's it.
On second thought, however, I think I'd prefer to make lobbying not illegal but even more obviously crass and vividly bad for the common good. Like automobiles in NASCAR, legislators should have to wear patches and decals on their clothes representing every entity that's given them money. Failure to represent a lobbyist with a patch or decal would mean the legislator would have to give the money back--in a public ceremony.
And while I'm at it, let me say how disappointed I am in the Poetry Lobby. What are they doing? Why aren't they pushing the poetry-agenda more fiercely? Where are their offices, their newsletters, their think-tanks, their phony corporations, their email-alerts? I want Emily Dickinson's image to replace Jefferson's on the nickel, for instance. The Poetry Lobby could push for that. E.D. never owned slaves, and she wrote over a thousand great poems. TJ helped draft a few "founding" documents, but he's gotten enough press. He can give up the nickel.
I'd like a National Poet's Reserve. If you joined, you'd have to go to a workshop once a month and agree to be ready to be called up to active duty--for example, if the governor needed some sonnets written, or if an ailing poet needed some help with meals or errands. I'd like to see the U.S. step up poetry-exports, and I want NASA to send some poetry-satellites in orbit, so the spoken word could be broadcast around the globe more vigorously. I'd like to see the villanelle put on the Endangered Form-Poem list, and I want us to drill for poetry in Alaska. Poetry Lobby, where are you?
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Deep
In a class today we talked about imagery, symbol, metaphor, and so on--the stuff of literature, but also the stuff of what we say and write, read and hear, every day. For instance, I heard someone speculate today that the Democrats will go into the November election "deeply divided." Why "deeply"? How deeply? What is the unit of measurement?
I do agree, of course, that the Democrats have an uncanny ability to find ways to lose presidential elections. This time, the Clintons seem to be in denial about the math and simply won't give up until a) many voters are embittered and unmotivated b) the current Demo money-advantage has dried up and c) the Republicans are once again positioned, essentially, to sweep the South, steal another state or two, and win. In my disinterested moments, I'm fascinated by this negative talent. The Democrats are so reliably inept. They lost to George W. Bush--twice! Yes, I know about the cheating in Florida and Ohio and the Supreme Court decision (Bush v. Gore) at which people will howl with laughter years from now. But why was the absurdist performance-artist, Bush, even close enough to win by cheating? He is a chronically failed businessman who went AWOL in military service and was addicted to cocaine. His own family, if accounts are to be believed, think he's the family loser. And the Democrats couldn't beat him! They can't even conduct basic primary elections in two of the most important states. This is disorganization that verges on the self-destructive. Maybe they were permanently infiltrated by Republicans back in the Nixon days. But "deeply" divided? I don't know.
We do seem to like these "depth" references. "Deeply" in love. "From the bottom of my heart." "He is deeply disturbed." "The depths of the soul." "Deep resentment." "Deeply wounded." Then you think, well, even full-figured people aren't really that deep. I mean the distance from any exterior point on the skin's surface to the innermost point--between spine and stomach?--isn't that far. "Depth psychology." Huh? Just drill down a few inches, and you're at the core of the brain.
Deeply convinced that the Democrats will lose deeply in the depths of Autumn, I dredged up an old "depth" poem in their honor.
I do agree, of course, that the Democrats have an uncanny ability to find ways to lose presidential elections. This time, the Clintons seem to be in denial about the math and simply won't give up until a) many voters are embittered and unmotivated b) the current Demo money-advantage has dried up and c) the Republicans are once again positioned, essentially, to sweep the South, steal another state or two, and win. In my disinterested moments, I'm fascinated by this negative talent. The Democrats are so reliably inept. They lost to George W. Bush--twice! Yes, I know about the cheating in Florida and Ohio and the Supreme Court decision (Bush v. Gore) at which people will howl with laughter years from now. But why was the absurdist performance-artist, Bush, even close enough to win by cheating? He is a chronically failed businessman who went AWOL in military service and was addicted to cocaine. His own family, if accounts are to be believed, think he's the family loser. And the Democrats couldn't beat him! They can't even conduct basic primary elections in two of the most important states. This is disorganization that verges on the self-destructive. Maybe they were permanently infiltrated by Republicans back in the Nixon days. But "deeply" divided? I don't know.
We do seem to like these "depth" references. "Deeply" in love. "From the bottom of my heart." "He is deeply disturbed." "The depths of the soul." "Deep resentment." "Deeply wounded." Then you think, well, even full-figured people aren't really that deep. I mean the distance from any exterior point on the skin's surface to the innermost point--between spine and stomach?--isn't that far. "Depth psychology." Huh? Just drill down a few inches, and you're at the core of the brain.
Deeply convinced that the Democrats will lose deeply in the depths of Autumn, I dredged up an old "depth" poem in their honor.
In and Out of My Depths
My innermost being is a point located
somewhere between my spine and navel.
The very core of my being is a vertical line
intersecting with that point and situated
close to the bottom of my heart.
I plan to use a global-positioning satellite
to find my subconscious mind one day.
If I find it, it will become my conscious
mind, and I won’t have found it. Oh, well.
When I nap, my psyche naps with me.
In fact my psyche’s like a cat,
following me around the house. My dreams
happen inside my head—I’d say about
three inches deep, maybe less.
I can’t ask my brain why it dreams any more
than it can ask me why I sleep. The depth
of my soul—I wouldn’t know about that.
That is God’s business. I’m way
out of my depth on that one.
The rib-cage, friends, is a shallow basket,
and the skull, after all, is a shallow bowl.
Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
How to Read Dickinson's Poetry
I'm guest-teaching for a colleague tomorrow, discussing imagery and symbolism (in literature) with the class and analyzing, with them, Dickinson's poem 591 (which used to be 465), "I heard a fly buzz [...]. " Whenever I have doubts about my chosen main way of earning money (teaching literature and writing), I think of being able to analyze a Dickinson poem, and suddenly it all makes sense again. I have a friend who teaches Constitutional law, and he probably has at least one topic that similarly reaffirms his choice of professions.
--Not that Dickinson is easy to teach. In fact, she's unnecessarily hard to teach, chiefly because of the baggage the culture, the critics, the anthologies, and some other teachers have heaped on her poetry and our image of her. To use an old-fashioned phrase, people get "hung up" on all sorts of nonsense that simply isn't there, in the poetry. Often, when I go into a classroom, I'm facing all the things Dickinson isn't, the preconceived notions, so I try to get around those.
So my "rules" for reading Dickinson's work are as follows:
1. Her poems are to some degree like crossword puzzles or soduku. There is always a solution to the confusion. There is, in fact, never any (lasting) confusion.
2. To the extent her poetry is mystical, philosophical, or spiritual, it is so grudgingly; that is, her work is always firmly attached to the earth, sometimes directly to earthy imagery. One key, then, is to find what that more concrete thing is to which the spirituality (assuming the spirituality really is there) is tethered. Or: Always prefer the simpler explanation to the "confusion." And: Never leap to the spirituality or "mysticism." Because she's never in a hurry to get there, and she never stays there long.
3. Take out the dashes. Put in your own punctuation. Get comfortable with the poem. Take out your punctuation. Put the dashes back in. Or: don't make a big deal of the dashes. She didn't punctuate because she didn't publish. All the pauses, etc., were in her head. The dashes are a combination of universal place-holders and a writing-quirk. She wasn't trying to be difficult. She just didn't imagine the poems would go to print. Same thing goes for the capitalization. Just a quirky habit. Ignore it.
4. She never makes mistakes. She just makes quick moves. (See #1--there is no confusion.)
5. If she hadn't been a poet, she would have been a scientist. She observes everything very carefully. She's an empiricist. (See # 2.) (Just look at her descriptions of bees, snakes, and birds.)
When, for example, in 591, she writes, "And then the Windows failed," she means the windows of the house failed to work because she (the speaker of the poem) died. Or: dead people don't see through windows, even if, in literature, they're still allowed to speak poems. Emily will go only so far with poetic license. She won't go so far as to suggest dead people can see through windows. She's practical. When, at the end of the poem, she writes, "I could not see to see," she means that, owing to death, her brain has ceased to function, she is no longer processing sensory data, and therefore does not have the capacity ("could not see") to see.
Dickinson remains the smartest, drollest, most original, and yet still most earthy poet I know. It's hard to think of one important thing the Modernists did, for example, that she didn't anticipate. Things you find in Pound, Williams, Auden, Yeats, Lawrence, Cullen, Moore, cummings, Eliot, Woolf--they're there in her work. The outlook is Modern. It is feminist. It is anti-establishment. It is anxious (in the sense Auden meant the term). It is imagistic (Williams, Pound). It is new. "No ideas but in things" (Williams). The phrasing and especially the rhyming and improvisation with meter are Modern. She's still hip. Known as a recluse, she lived in the world--the tactile, stinky, pungent, messy world of the house, the garden, and the woods. When the "I" dies in 591, "the King" is witnessed (no confusion there--but plenty of room for debate), but note that he is preceded and followed by this: a common housefly, which is blue--meaning a "blue-bottle fly," meaning a fly the color of glass left in the sun for a long time (see number 2 above).
I like Housman almost as much as Dickinson, but his range is much more limited. There's more true joy in her work than his. I like her rich simplicity as much as I like that of Langston Hughes's, but she is even quicker, less predictable, and a little more tricky. L. and E. share a great sense of whimsy--but usually with an edge; they're not just playful. Williams's imagery is often as vivid, but her point of view is more original. You never know what Yeats or Pound might drag in (like a cat) to a poem, but she can be just as surprising. Eliot has gravitas, gotta give him that, but pound for pound (ezra for ezra), her poems can go 15 rounds with his. In her own way, she's as sexy and exuberant as Neruda (with adjustments made for lingering Puritanism), as defiant as Jeffers.
Eliot and Pound threw more allusions by volume into their poems, but she is as allusive--just more efficient, and less insecure. They seem to need to show off. She doesn't.
She's not "the Belle of Amherst." She was just one hell of a hardworking, focused, precise poet. --With the gift of, not so much talent (though she sure had that), but of believing, unwaveringly, in her talent. She justs didn't know (cf. "see to see"); she knew she knew--how to write.
--Not that Dickinson is easy to teach. In fact, she's unnecessarily hard to teach, chiefly because of the baggage the culture, the critics, the anthologies, and some other teachers have heaped on her poetry and our image of her. To use an old-fashioned phrase, people get "hung up" on all sorts of nonsense that simply isn't there, in the poetry. Often, when I go into a classroom, I'm facing all the things Dickinson isn't, the preconceived notions, so I try to get around those.
So my "rules" for reading Dickinson's work are as follows:
1. Her poems are to some degree like crossword puzzles or soduku. There is always a solution to the confusion. There is, in fact, never any (lasting) confusion.
2. To the extent her poetry is mystical, philosophical, or spiritual, it is so grudgingly; that is, her work is always firmly attached to the earth, sometimes directly to earthy imagery. One key, then, is to find what that more concrete thing is to which the spirituality (assuming the spirituality really is there) is tethered. Or: Always prefer the simpler explanation to the "confusion." And: Never leap to the spirituality or "mysticism." Because she's never in a hurry to get there, and she never stays there long.
3. Take out the dashes. Put in your own punctuation. Get comfortable with the poem. Take out your punctuation. Put the dashes back in. Or: don't make a big deal of the dashes. She didn't punctuate because she didn't publish. All the pauses, etc., were in her head. The dashes are a combination of universal place-holders and a writing-quirk. She wasn't trying to be difficult. She just didn't imagine the poems would go to print. Same thing goes for the capitalization. Just a quirky habit. Ignore it.
4. She never makes mistakes. She just makes quick moves. (See #1--there is no confusion.)
5. If she hadn't been a poet, she would have been a scientist. She observes everything very carefully. She's an empiricist. (See # 2.) (Just look at her descriptions of bees, snakes, and birds.)
When, for example, in 591, she writes, "And then the Windows failed," she means the windows of the house failed to work because she (the speaker of the poem) died. Or: dead people don't see through windows, even if, in literature, they're still allowed to speak poems. Emily will go only so far with poetic license. She won't go so far as to suggest dead people can see through windows. She's practical. When, at the end of the poem, she writes, "I could not see to see," she means that, owing to death, her brain has ceased to function, she is no longer processing sensory data, and therefore does not have the capacity ("could not see") to see.
Dickinson remains the smartest, drollest, most original, and yet still most earthy poet I know. It's hard to think of one important thing the Modernists did, for example, that she didn't anticipate. Things you find in Pound, Williams, Auden, Yeats, Lawrence, Cullen, Moore, cummings, Eliot, Woolf--they're there in her work. The outlook is Modern. It is feminist. It is anti-establishment. It is anxious (in the sense Auden meant the term). It is imagistic (Williams, Pound). It is new. "No ideas but in things" (Williams). The phrasing and especially the rhyming and improvisation with meter are Modern. She's still hip. Known as a recluse, she lived in the world--the tactile, stinky, pungent, messy world of the house, the garden, and the woods. When the "I" dies in 591, "the King" is witnessed (no confusion there--but plenty of room for debate), but note that he is preceded and followed by this: a common housefly, which is blue--meaning a "blue-bottle fly," meaning a fly the color of glass left in the sun for a long time (see number 2 above).
I like Housman almost as much as Dickinson, but his range is much more limited. There's more true joy in her work than his. I like her rich simplicity as much as I like that of Langston Hughes's, but she is even quicker, less predictable, and a little more tricky. L. and E. share a great sense of whimsy--but usually with an edge; they're not just playful. Williams's imagery is often as vivid, but her point of view is more original. You never know what Yeats or Pound might drag in (like a cat) to a poem, but she can be just as surprising. Eliot has gravitas, gotta give him that, but pound for pound (ezra for ezra), her poems can go 15 rounds with his. In her own way, she's as sexy and exuberant as Neruda (with adjustments made for lingering Puritanism), as defiant as Jeffers.
Eliot and Pound threw more allusions by volume into their poems, but she is as allusive--just more efficient, and less insecure. They seem to need to show off. She doesn't.
She's not "the Belle of Amherst." She was just one hell of a hardworking, focused, precise poet. --With the gift of, not so much talent (though she sure had that), but of believing, unwaveringly, in her talent. She justs didn't know (cf. "see to see"); she knew she knew--how to write.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Sonnet With A Low Battery
Having written a sonnet that rhymes on its left, as opposed to its right, side, and an extremely narrow sonnet, I will now continue my assault on the form by writing a diminishing sonnet, a fading lyric that starts out robustly in the usual iambic pentameter but withers to monosyllabic lines. At the same time, I attempt to adhere to the 14-line limit and to follow the Shakespearian or English rhyme-scheme, based on quatrains and a couplet.
Diminishing Sonnet
I have this sonnet, and its battery
Is running down. The sonnet's theme,
I think, is flattery.
--Not, it would seem,
The best
Thing.
Psst:
Sing!
Of
What?
Love,
nut.
Oh,
no.
There we have it, an entropic sonnet that goes from iambic pentameter to mono-meter in 14 lines, includes an internal dialogue, and rhymes best with Psst. I think of it as an old wind-up sonnet that came along before sonnets could run on long-lived batteries.
I'm considering the possibilities of a square sonnet, not "square" as in the way the Beatniks used the term (although maybe that, too), but geometrically square. This could be achieved simply by playing with spacing, of course, but maybe I'll go for a more figuratively square sonnet and write 14 lines with 14 words in each line. I could also throw in an acrostic or two--top to bottom and/or diagonal. This is starting to sound not simply like lyric madness but Shakespearian soduku. Somehow, I think John Donne would have approved.
Diminishing Sonnet
I have this sonnet, and its battery
Is running down. The sonnet's theme,
I think, is flattery.
--Not, it would seem,
The best
Thing.
Psst:
Sing!
Of
What?
Love,
nut.
Oh,
no.
There we have it, an entropic sonnet that goes from iambic pentameter to mono-meter in 14 lines, includes an internal dialogue, and rhymes best with Psst. I think of it as an old wind-up sonnet that came along before sonnets could run on long-lived batteries.
I'm considering the possibilities of a square sonnet, not "square" as in the way the Beatniks used the term (although maybe that, too), but geometrically square. This could be achieved simply by playing with spacing, of course, but maybe I'll go for a more figuratively square sonnet and write 14 lines with 14 words in each line. I could also throw in an acrostic or two--top to bottom and/or diagonal. This is starting to sound not simply like lyric madness but Shakespearian soduku. Somehow, I think John Donne would have approved.
I Think of Russell Baker
As I'm attempting to recuperate from the flu, which seems to bear no relation to the "flu vaccine" I was given earlier in the year (I do wonder if they injected me with sugar-water), I've been inflicting cable-news on myself. So I watched the Spitzer-debacle unfold yesterday. Of course, the cable-outlets covered almost nothing but the scandal; meanwhile, the U.S. president had just vetoed a bill that would have banned water-boarding because water-boarding is, irrefutably, torture. Nor did the president argue that water-boarding is not torture. Instead, he chose to make the one argument that is easily disproved. He implied that "it works," whereas everyone who seems to know anything about interrogation claims that torture "doesn't work" in the sense Bush understands (?) the terminology.
So the governor of what envisages itself to be our most important state pays several thousands of dollars for sex and drags his wife to the ensuing press-conference, and a president once supported by "the Christian right" takes the side of Pontius Pilate and vetoes an anti-torture bill. It all made me think of the title of a book by Russell Baker--a book of humor, meant to salve minds as they attempt to confront absurdity. It's called So This Is Depravity.
It could be--and has been--worse. In Mississippi, where there's a primary election today, it could be 1958 instead of 2008. Sometimes thinking about African American history (for example) provides some perspective.
Nonetheless: Why is Bush president? Why are Rove and Libby not serving time for outing spies? Why is Guantanamo not closed? Why is it legal for Bush to practice torture? Why was it legal for Bush to invade Iraq? By what laws, if any, are Bush, Cheney, and Blackwater bound?
So the governor of what envisages itself to be our most important state pays several thousands of dollars for sex and drags his wife to the ensuing press-conference, and a president once supported by "the Christian right" takes the side of Pontius Pilate and vetoes an anti-torture bill. It all made me think of the title of a book by Russell Baker--a book of humor, meant to salve minds as they attempt to confront absurdity. It's called So This Is Depravity.
It could be--and has been--worse. In Mississippi, where there's a primary election today, it could be 1958 instead of 2008. Sometimes thinking about African American history (for example) provides some perspective.
Nonetheless: Why is Bush president? Why are Rove and Libby not serving time for outing spies? Why is Guantanamo not closed? Why is it legal for Bush to practice torture? Why was it legal for Bush to invade Iraq? By what laws, if any, are Bush, Cheney, and Blackwater bound?
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
The Milky Way
I almost never read scientific articles unless I'm in a waiting room. That's a pretty desultory way of keeping up on stuff scientists are up to, but probably even they can't keep up. Recently I read an article about the Milky Way and the fact that it, too, would go the way of the dinosaurs at some point and disintegrate. It's not like this is going to happen next week, but nonetheless, the news made me a little sad.
According to the OED online, one of the earliest references to the Milky Way was Chaucer's, and Milton & Pope also referred to it in their poetry:
a. The irregular, faintly luminous band that circles the night sky, now recognized as composed of billions of stars and corresponding to the main disc of our galaxy, in which are located most of its stars, including the sun; =c1450 (c1380) CHAUCER House of Fame 937 Se yonder, loo, the Galaxie, Which men clepeth the Milky Wey. 1556 R. RECORD Castle of Knowl. 105 The Milkye way in heauen, whiche many men in England do call Watlyng streete. 1615 H. CROOKE 
1667 MILTON Paradise Lost VII. 579 The Galaxie, that Milkie way Which nightly as a circling Zone thou seest Pouderd with Starrs. 1733 POPE Ess. Man I. 104 Far as the Solar walk, or Milky way.
I guess I see how someone might regard that luminous band of stars as a "way," but I probably wouldn't have described it in that manner. I don't have any bright, so to speak, ideas about what to replace "way" with, but the word just doesn't seem quite grand enough for that stellar spectacle.
To some degree, the phrase "billions of stars" means something to me. I understand it. But to a large extent, it's meaningless because I can't picture the immensity of that immensity--multiple billions of things that are like the sun.
Anyway, I wrote a poem about the impending demise of the Milky Way:
The Matter of the Milky Way
In a magazine
on astronomy
I read today that
the Milky Way
will also disintegrate.
Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom
According to the OED online, one of the earliest references to the Milky Way was Chaucer's, and Milton & Pope also referred to it in their poetry:
a. The irregular, faintly luminous band that circles the night sky, now recognized as composed of billions of stars and corresponding to the main disc of our galaxy, in which are located most of its stars, including the sun; =
I guess I see how someone might regard that luminous band of stars as a "way," but I probably wouldn't have described it in that manner. I don't have any bright, so to speak, ideas about what to replace "way" with, but the word just doesn't seem quite grand enough for that stellar spectacle.
To some degree, the phrase "billions of stars" means something to me. I understand it. But to a large extent, it's meaningless because I can't picture the immensity of that immensity--multiple billions of things that are like the sun.
Anyway, I wrote a poem about the impending demise of the Milky Way:
The Matter of the Milky Way
In a magazine
on astronomy
I read today that
the Milky Way
will also disintegrate.
Juxtaposed against
such change,
my experiences,
memories, and ambitions
are telescopically
less than microscopic.
Yet my life feels important
to me. --Habit,
I suppose. A person
goes on even as
it’s clear a powerful
case can be made
for the idea that nothing,
not even matter, matters.
But I’m not going to make
that case because I
have to go to work tomorrow,
and you never know—
I might have a few laughs,
I’ll see people I like
and one gray cat. I'll
view this bankless river they call
the Internet, which
must be observed with interest
in some parts of the Milky Way.
Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom
Monday, March 3, 2008
French Writing
Someone once told me I was too much of "a should-person." In her opinion, I tended too much to tell myself I should do things. Sometimes I'm multiply focused, a condition which often exhibits the symptoms of distraction, because I tell myself I should be doing x, y, z, and, oh yea, w, too--and why not a and m? Sometimes I'm ultra-focused on one task or project, a trait I learned and/or inherited from my father, who could be dogged, determined, and relentless when he wanted to be so. At other times, I simply take on too much. And at still other times, I invent almost-preposterous "shoulds." For example, I tell myself I really should publish the two novels I have, finally, completed, but to a large degree, that matter doesn't rest with me. That is, I really should try to get the two novels published; easier said than done. (A friend of mine just "sold" her novel to a big publisher. The news absolutely delighted me. It was lovely to learn of the breakthrough. I was vicariously ecstatic.)
For another example, I tell myself I really should read more French writing--in translation. My opportunity for learning to read French well passed long ago. I did take one year of French in college, and my teacher praised my accent in this way: "Your application of a Spanish accent to French is interesting, Monsieur Ostrom." Lo siento mucho, Mademoiselle.
I have read and do like Balzac's fiction. Balzac's writing is a bit like Dickens's in its panoramic, manic vision of society and its layers, but it has somewhat less melodrama and a lot more earthiness. I have read and do appreciate Descartes' philosophy. I think I have read almost everything by Camus, and I like both his fiction and his nonfiction more than a lot. A bit of Zola and some Stendahl. Colette: I love the Claudine novels; they're so smart, so quick and alive. I've taught them (in the one-volume, translated Penguin set) twice. Sartre, who leaves me cold, for some reason. Some of Jacques Prevert's poems. I tend to read about Simone Weil, as oppose to reading what she herself wrote. Quite a lot of Baudelaire and some of the French Symbolists. Vast heaps of Simenon novels. As terrific as they are in English, they must be heavenly in French. An anthology of translated surrealist poetry, which I loved. That's about it, I'm afraid. Awfully spot. I really should read more French writing. (I've seen a lot of French films. Does that count?)
So many shoulds, so little time.
For another example, I tell myself I really should read more French writing--in translation. My opportunity for learning to read French well passed long ago. I did take one year of French in college, and my teacher praised my accent in this way: "Your application of a Spanish accent to French is interesting, Monsieur Ostrom." Lo siento mucho, Mademoiselle.
I have read and do like Balzac's fiction. Balzac's writing is a bit like Dickens's in its panoramic, manic vision of society and its layers, but it has somewhat less melodrama and a lot more earthiness. I have read and do appreciate Descartes' philosophy. I think I have read almost everything by Camus, and I like both his fiction and his nonfiction more than a lot. A bit of Zola and some Stendahl. Colette: I love the Claudine novels; they're so smart, so quick and alive. I've taught them (in the one-volume, translated Penguin set) twice. Sartre, who leaves me cold, for some reason. Some of Jacques Prevert's poems. I tend to read about Simone Weil, as oppose to reading what she herself wrote. Quite a lot of Baudelaire and some of the French Symbolists. Vast heaps of Simenon novels. As terrific as they are in English, they must be heavenly in French. An anthology of translated surrealist poetry, which I loved. That's about it, I'm afraid. Awfully spot. I really should read more French writing. (I've seen a lot of French films. Does that count?)
So many shoulds, so little time.
Birds At Evening
Among the ways in which I've been inordinately fortunate is to have lived for large parts of my life in at least two places with superb populations of birds: the Sierra Nevada and the Pacific Northwest. I spent a fair amount of time in California's Central Valley, too, and that's a pretty darned good place for birds as well. Sweden is interesting bird-territory, too. I don't remember much about German birds. A friend of mine is living in Indiana temporarily, and the envy I feel for his being able to observe cardinals may be approaching the level of sin, according to John James Audobon, if not the Catholic Church.
Before we moved into the present abode, we had a place in the quasi-country, with lots of trees, shrubs, and flowers, nearby lakes, and a our own small pond. It was an okay neighborhood for humans, but for birds, it was truly upscale. They wanted for nothing, especially when I spent wads of cash on suet and seeds for them, maintained bird-houses, maintained not just the pond but a bird-bath, chased away stray cats, hung moth-balls to ward off raccoons from nests (it works), and let some shrubs grow into dense trees, which to birds are exclusive condominiums. For example, we had a holly "bush" that had grown into a 17-foot tree: Trump Towers. I almost hired a crow or a seagull to serve as the doorman.
The great choral cacophony of birds, especially at evening, from Spring through Fall is one thing I miss about that place. The sheer amount and variety of activity, sound, and bird busy-ness created such exuberance, such a comic display of life, that you couldn't help but smile, even as you toiled in an unmanageable garden or tried to unwind after a stressfully tedious or tediously stressful day. As a subject, birds are almost irresistible to poets--and therefore dangerous. One is likely to get trite or sentimental, or to go over old poetic ground. Also, after what Dickinson, Hopkins, and (William) Everson (among others) did with their bird-poems, the poetic bird-stask is daunting, to say almost the least. With trepidation, then, I post the following poem, which I exhumed, like a lost potato, from the loam of my hard-drive. I post it not just with a poet's trepidation, but also with an amateur's appreciation for some good bird-times.
Before we moved into the present abode, we had a place in the quasi-country, with lots of trees, shrubs, and flowers, nearby lakes, and a our own small pond. It was an okay neighborhood for humans, but for birds, it was truly upscale. They wanted for nothing, especially when I spent wads of cash on suet and seeds for them, maintained bird-houses, maintained not just the pond but a bird-bath, chased away stray cats, hung moth-balls to ward off raccoons from nests (it works), and let some shrubs grow into dense trees, which to birds are exclusive condominiums. For example, we had a holly "bush" that had grown into a 17-foot tree: Trump Towers. I almost hired a crow or a seagull to serve as the doorman.
The great choral cacophony of birds, especially at evening, from Spring through Fall is one thing I miss about that place. The sheer amount and variety of activity, sound, and bird busy-ness created such exuberance, such a comic display of life, that you couldn't help but smile, even as you toiled in an unmanageable garden or tried to unwind after a stressfully tedious or tediously stressful day. As a subject, birds are almost irresistible to poets--and therefore dangerous. One is likely to get trite or sentimental, or to go over old poetic ground. Also, after what Dickinson, Hopkins, and (William) Everson (among others) did with their bird-poems, the poetic bird-stask is daunting, to say almost the least. With trepidation, then, I post the following poem, which I exhumed, like a lost potato, from the loam of my hard-drive. I post it not just with a poet's trepidation, but also with an amateur's appreciation for some good bird-times.
Birds At Evening
Evenings, birds convene
in trees and shrubs, in sky
and fields, fill air
with sound, thesis of which is
we’re alive; repeat: we’re alive.
Bodily harmonies rise,
spill out of beaked mouths (alive).
Birds can wait,
know, react. They cannot
hope but do embody hope
by going on, by feeding
and feathering, by trickling
water down their throats, by
flitting, flying, hopping,
looking. --By shrugging
feathers into place. No look
is more alive than a bird’s glance:
old news--but still. . . . Night absorbs
last avian riffs, alive . . .live . . .
ive . .e . . Beaks close, and eyelids
shut from the bottom up.
No so much to comment on my own poem (a terrible faux pas), as to add a reinforcing coda: The way birds fluff their feathers out of and into shape has always cracked me up; it sometimes reminds me of Italian-American men "shooting the cuffs" of their tailored shirts. And, unfortunately, I do fancy the idea of birds' "songs" having a thesis. I like birds, and I'm an English teacher, so that nerdly fancy is explicable if not forgivable.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Good Old Negative Capability
John Keats invented the term "Negative Capability," in a letter. The capability is that which allows one to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at once--and let them stay there, each with equal weight. Keats described the capability as "negative," I infer, not because it was bad but because it required restraint, pulling back from that instinctual, rationalistic desire to declare one idea the winner. Life is either hopeless or it isn't, for example.
American writer James Baldwin echoed Keats without naming him as he concluded his famous essay, "Notes of a Native Son." The essay details one of the worst moments in Baldwin's life. His father has died. Baldwin is still in is teens but is essentially the head of the family, which is desperately poor in Harlem. He never understood his father, nor his father him. He doesn't have proper clothes to wear to the funeral, and Harlem has just exploded in a race riot because a white policeman has shot a Black man for suspicious reasons. He may be at the period in life when he most needs a father--and his father has died. Baldwin reports summoning the will from some unknown reservoir of determination to decide that, to survive and thrive, he must hold two opposing ideas in his had at once and forever. Idea one: Life is unjust--and especially unjust for African Americans, and demonstrably unjust for him--and will remain so. Idea two: One must never stop struggling against the injustice. That is, there is no resolution to the injustice, but you have to struggle--not just seem to struggle--as if there resolution might be possible. No crying in baseball (a tip of the cap to Tom Hanks), no seeming in the struggle.
I was reminded of Keats and Baldwin today after I attended what I'll call an activists' meeting on campus. For the immediate moment, the topic of the meeting isn't important (although it will be tomorrow morning), and this isn't the place to reveal particulars of processes under way. After about three hours, we broke for a late lunch, and I ended up dining with two impressive students: smart, informed, activist in their own ways, but by no means starry-eyed or naive.
One of them asked me how long I'd been at the college, and I told him 25 years. He then opined that it must be depressing or at least wearing to revisit the same old issues year after year with little progress. I agreed with him, but I added that, over a 25-year span, one at least has the chance to perceive some change, whereas over the usual 4-year span of an undergraduate's time on campus, nothing seems to change. I also pointed to one rather significant, concrete example of a fine academic program that had arisen from similar activism some 15 years earlier. The other student said something like "and while we're working on this problem, there's a war on." --His point being, I think, this: so many issues, so little time. One throws oneself at a local issue, only to look up and realize how many national and global issues persist.
That's where Keats and Baldwin come in. Nothing much is going to change, even over the course of a lifetime, or lifetimes (ouch), but one must live one's lifetime as if much change is possible. It's not pretending--because you don't make believe that injustice has suddenly disappeared, and you don't over-estimate your powers. It's not denial--because you are well aware of such lovely circumstances as futility and such phenomena as constituents who are natural allies becoming "enemies" strictly out of pride. It's Negative Capability. A mental, perhaps even spiritual, juggling act. Two ideas, two opposing conclusions, up in the air of the mind at the same time, each given equal weight. A more colloquial version of N.C. might be "keep on keeping on."
Keats was headed for death from tuberculosis when he wrote his letter, and Baldwin was, arguably, at the lowest point of his life with no evidence that there was an "up" from that lowest point. In their own ways, both prevailed. Yes, I know they were the exceptional of the exceptional, but it's not as if one has to compete with Keats and Baldwin. One merely has to keep on keeping on. Breaks, naps, and good night's sleeps are not only allowed but vital, so there's that.
American writer James Baldwin echoed Keats without naming him as he concluded his famous essay, "Notes of a Native Son." The essay details one of the worst moments in Baldwin's life. His father has died. Baldwin is still in is teens but is essentially the head of the family, which is desperately poor in Harlem. He never understood his father, nor his father him. He doesn't have proper clothes to wear to the funeral, and Harlem has just exploded in a race riot because a white policeman has shot a Black man for suspicious reasons. He may be at the period in life when he most needs a father--and his father has died. Baldwin reports summoning the will from some unknown reservoir of determination to decide that, to survive and thrive, he must hold two opposing ideas in his had at once and forever. Idea one: Life is unjust--and especially unjust for African Americans, and demonstrably unjust for him--and will remain so. Idea two: One must never stop struggling against the injustice. That is, there is no resolution to the injustice, but you have to struggle--not just seem to struggle--as if there resolution might be possible. No crying in baseball (a tip of the cap to Tom Hanks), no seeming in the struggle.
I was reminded of Keats and Baldwin today after I attended what I'll call an activists' meeting on campus. For the immediate moment, the topic of the meeting isn't important (although it will be tomorrow morning), and this isn't the place to reveal particulars of processes under way. After about three hours, we broke for a late lunch, and I ended up dining with two impressive students: smart, informed, activist in their own ways, but by no means starry-eyed or naive.
One of them asked me how long I'd been at the college, and I told him 25 years. He then opined that it must be depressing or at least wearing to revisit the same old issues year after year with little progress. I agreed with him, but I added that, over a 25-year span, one at least has the chance to perceive some change, whereas over the usual 4-year span of an undergraduate's time on campus, nothing seems to change. I also pointed to one rather significant, concrete example of a fine academic program that had arisen from similar activism some 15 years earlier. The other student said something like "and while we're working on this problem, there's a war on." --His point being, I think, this: so many issues, so little time. One throws oneself at a local issue, only to look up and realize how many national and global issues persist.
That's where Keats and Baldwin come in. Nothing much is going to change, even over the course of a lifetime, or lifetimes (ouch), but one must live one's lifetime as if much change is possible. It's not pretending--because you don't make believe that injustice has suddenly disappeared, and you don't over-estimate your powers. It's not denial--because you are well aware of such lovely circumstances as futility and such phenomena as constituents who are natural allies becoming "enemies" strictly out of pride. It's Negative Capability. A mental, perhaps even spiritual, juggling act. Two ideas, two opposing conclusions, up in the air of the mind at the same time, each given equal weight. A more colloquial version of N.C. might be "keep on keeping on."
Keats was headed for death from tuberculosis when he wrote his letter, and Baldwin was, arguably, at the lowest point of his life with no evidence that there was an "up" from that lowest point. In their own ways, both prevailed. Yes, I know they were the exceptional of the exceptional, but it's not as if one has to compete with Keats and Baldwin. One merely has to keep on keeping on. Breaks, naps, and good night's sleeps are not only allowed but vital, so there's that.
New Cabinet-Positions Needed
Now that a certain percentage of the U.S. population is going to elect a new president, I believe it's time to think about some new cabinet-positions.
I'll get the most self-centered one out of the way first: I think the absence of a Secretary of Poetry has represented a glaring oversight from the beginning of the republic into our present imperial period. Let's take care of that after the next election. I want some press-conferences where reporters pepper the Sec. of Poetry with questions about trochaic meter, surrealistic imagery, and women coming and going into rooms speaking of Michaelangelo.
I'd also rename the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development: The Secretary of Housing and Urban Humanity. We seem to do the development-part real well. For whom and how are different questions.
Arguably, we need a Secretary of Consequences, whose job it will be to predict what will flow from a president's decisions, precipitous and otherwise. She or he would soon probably be known as the Sec. of Uh-Oh or the Sec. of Oh, No. In this new department, perhaps there could be an Under-Secretary for History, her or his main job being to remind people that bad (and good) ideas have a history.
I'm not sure we still need a Secretary of the Treasury because there's nothing left in the treasury. Perhaps he or she could simply become the night-janitor. We need, instead, a Secretary of Debt. I believe I could get the support of Ron Paul and several recluses who live in the Mojave Desert in old Airstream trailers for this idea. Not a groundswell, per se, but, hey, you have to start small, and, in the case of Ron Paul, weird. How he manages to answer every debate questions with "The gold standard," I do not know, but I'm impressed.
I'd go back to the old name for the Secretary of Defense: the Secretary of War. It was refreshingly counter-Orwellian. I would then add a Secretary of Peace, for symmetry and out of blind hope.
A Department of Rhetoric is clearly needed. The Government Accounting Office now investigates how money is mis-spent. Although nothing is done with these investigations, it is good to know something close to the truth. The Sec. of Rhetoric would be responsible for analyzing the rhetoric of top-level politicians and explaining the traditions out of which the rhetoric sprang, the logical fallacies, the good and bad appeals, modus ponens, modus tolens, and so on. All politicians are slick. Congressperson Socrates is a politician. Therefore, . . . .
Apparently we have a Secretary of the Interior, which sounds vaguely contemplative but which actually operates the Forest Service, against whom my father held a life-long grudge involving their (its) alleged incompetence. If this department concerns itself with the outdoors, wouldn't it be better named the Department of the Exterior? Then the Department of the Interior could advise people either on decorating-choices, their inner lives, or digestion.
Do we need a Secretary of Philosophy? I would argue Yes. When Clinton quibbled with the meaning of "is," that was an obvious Wittgenstein-move, and the U.S. Dept. of Philosophy could have stepped in. Bush II is obviously an absurdist. The Secret Service's code-name for him is probably Gregor Mendel. Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope, is obviously counter-Nihilist and a bracing attack on post-Modernism. As I've noted before, that McCain calls what is a "bus" the "Straight-Talk Express" is a sophisticated irony with which philosophers could help. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama chant "Yes, we can." This implies a belief in free will. What would be the U.S. Department of Philosophy's stance on this?
Good night, and good luck.
I'll get the most self-centered one out of the way first: I think the absence of a Secretary of Poetry has represented a glaring oversight from the beginning of the republic into our present imperial period. Let's take care of that after the next election. I want some press-conferences where reporters pepper the Sec. of Poetry with questions about trochaic meter, surrealistic imagery, and women coming and going into rooms speaking of Michaelangelo.
I'd also rename the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development: The Secretary of Housing and Urban Humanity. We seem to do the development-part real well. For whom and how are different questions.
Arguably, we need a Secretary of Consequences, whose job it will be to predict what will flow from a president's decisions, precipitous and otherwise. She or he would soon probably be known as the Sec. of Uh-Oh or the Sec. of Oh, No. In this new department, perhaps there could be an Under-Secretary for History, her or his main job being to remind people that bad (and good) ideas have a history.
I'm not sure we still need a Secretary of the Treasury because there's nothing left in the treasury. Perhaps he or she could simply become the night-janitor. We need, instead, a Secretary of Debt. I believe I could get the support of Ron Paul and several recluses who live in the Mojave Desert in old Airstream trailers for this idea. Not a groundswell, per se, but, hey, you have to start small, and, in the case of Ron Paul, weird. How he manages to answer every debate questions with "The gold standard," I do not know, but I'm impressed.
I'd go back to the old name for the Secretary of Defense: the Secretary of War. It was refreshingly counter-Orwellian. I would then add a Secretary of Peace, for symmetry and out of blind hope.
A Department of Rhetoric is clearly needed. The Government Accounting Office now investigates how money is mis-spent. Although nothing is done with these investigations, it is good to know something close to the truth. The Sec. of Rhetoric would be responsible for analyzing the rhetoric of top-level politicians and explaining the traditions out of which the rhetoric sprang, the logical fallacies, the good and bad appeals, modus ponens, modus tolens, and so on. All politicians are slick. Congressperson Socrates is a politician. Therefore, . . . .
Apparently we have a Secretary of the Interior, which sounds vaguely contemplative but which actually operates the Forest Service, against whom my father held a life-long grudge involving their (its) alleged incompetence. If this department concerns itself with the outdoors, wouldn't it be better named the Department of the Exterior? Then the Department of the Interior could advise people either on decorating-choices, their inner lives, or digestion.
Do we need a Secretary of Philosophy? I would argue Yes. When Clinton quibbled with the meaning of "is," that was an obvious Wittgenstein-move, and the U.S. Dept. of Philosophy could have stepped in. Bush II is obviously an absurdist. The Secret Service's code-name for him is probably Gregor Mendel. Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope, is obviously counter-Nihilist and a bracing attack on post-Modernism. As I've noted before, that McCain calls what is a "bus" the "Straight-Talk Express" is a sophisticated irony with which philosophers could help. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama chant "Yes, we can." This implies a belief in free will. What would be the U.S. Department of Philosophy's stance on this?
Good night, and good luck.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Badger
I saw a badger once and once only in the Sierra Nevada. I was riding around with my dad in his pickup, in the back-country. I can't remember what the specific quest was--firewood, perhaps, or merely flight from boredom. No doubt he said, "Look at that--that's a god-damned badger," and left it at that. The badger was pretty impressive in its own way--low to the ground, garbed in some good-looking fur, and awfully determined. The sighting was but a glimpse--off it went, bothered, on those big paws with long claws--really low to the ground.
It's a bit odd that "badger" was turned into a verb, meaning to tease or to harangue incessantly (or at least that's my definition), and we're used to hearing it in TV court-dramas: "Your honor, I object; counsel is badgering the witness." I guess the connection is that badgers dig incessantly, looking for food--including rodents, I have learned; so "counsel" digs into the witness. But badgers seem to want to be left alone; they do not seem to aspire to become attorneys. According to the OED online, "badger" became a verb very late in the 18th century.
Unfortunately, some people still trap badgers for the fur and hunt them for--I don't know what for: just to kill them, I guess. Steve Jackson's badger website suggests badgers usually live 2-8 years in the wild, more like 14 in captivity, and, in one case, up to 26 years. Various kinds of badgers include the honey badger, the hog badger, the Eurasian badger, and the ferret badger.
Badgers are related to ferrets and weasels. I think some people call lawyers "weasels," so I guess it's technically possible to hear someone in a court-room say, "Your honor, I object; the weasel is badgering the witness."
The American badger's Latin name is Taxidea taxus, and apparently the one I saw was from the Taxidea taxus jeffersoni sub-group; another sub-group is jacksoni. Why the scientists used Jefferson and Jackson, I do not know--and I'm sure those names arose well before Steve Jackson started his site in the U.K., so we mustn't jump to conclusions. From the website, I learned that those who study the badger have a heck of a time determining their population, but badgers are spread broadly from the upper mid-western states to the west and widely over western Canada, too.
Here's a link to the badger-site, which has some photos of handsome badgers, and of one badger who is yawning (after a tough day of digging, no doubt). Badgers seem just to throw themselves into any activity, and this badger is really yawning. I mean, he or she is going for the yawn in an inspiring way.
http://www.badgers.org.uk/badgerpages/american-badger.html
Here's a badger-poem I wrote quite a while ago. I think I may have included it in the Collected Poems I put together, but I just added an epigraph from Jackson's website. I don't know if philosophers, let alone linguists, would approve of the word or the concept, "badgerness," but it amuses me (that makes one of us).
and I approve. Its body
argues for badgerness. The
rhetoric is fierce, furry, low,
leveraged, and necessary.
I prefer not to point to tall
buildings and small computers
and say Look at what we’ve done!
I am, however, in favor
of sewer systems, electric light,
and medicine. Have we
done right by the badger?
That’s a measure of civilization,
too: a judgment to limit ourselves,
to leave badger and woods
alone enough and well.
Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom
It's a bit odd that "badger" was turned into a verb, meaning to tease or to harangue incessantly (or at least that's my definition), and we're used to hearing it in TV court-dramas: "Your honor, I object; counsel is badgering the witness." I guess the connection is that badgers dig incessantly, looking for food--including rodents, I have learned; so "counsel" digs into the witness. But badgers seem to want to be left alone; they do not seem to aspire to become attorneys. According to the OED online, "badger" became a verb very late in the 18th century.
Unfortunately, some people still trap badgers for the fur and hunt them for--I don't know what for: just to kill them, I guess. Steve Jackson's badger website suggests badgers usually live 2-8 years in the wild, more like 14 in captivity, and, in one case, up to 26 years. Various kinds of badgers include the honey badger, the hog badger, the Eurasian badger, and the ferret badger.
Badgers are related to ferrets and weasels. I think some people call lawyers "weasels," so I guess it's technically possible to hear someone in a court-room say, "Your honor, I object; the weasel is badgering the witness."
The American badger's Latin name is Taxidea taxus, and apparently the one I saw was from the Taxidea taxus jeffersoni sub-group; another sub-group is jacksoni. Why the scientists used Jefferson and Jackson, I do not know--and I'm sure those names arose well before Steve Jackson started his site in the U.K., so we mustn't jump to conclusions. From the website, I learned that those who study the badger have a heck of a time determining their population, but badgers are spread broadly from the upper mid-western states to the west and widely over western Canada, too.
Here's a link to the badger-site, which has some photos of handsome badgers, and of one badger who is yawning (after a tough day of digging, no doubt). Badgers seem just to throw themselves into any activity, and this badger is really yawning. I mean, he or she is going for the yawn in an inspiring way.
http://www.badgers.org.uk/badgerpages/american-badger.html
Here's a badger-poem I wrote quite a while ago. I think I may have included it in the Collected Poems I put together, but I just added an epigraph from Jackson's website. I don't know if philosophers, let alone linguists, would approve of the word or the concept, "badgerness," but it amuses me (that makes one of us).
Regarding Badger
"A loner, it is always digging."
--Steve Jackson
and I approve. Its body
argues for badgerness. The
rhetoric is fierce, furry, low,
leveraged, and necessary.
I prefer not to point to tall
buildings and small computers
and say Look at what we’ve done!
I am, however, in favor
of sewer systems, electric light,
and medicine. Have we
done right by the badger?
That’s a measure of civilization,
too: a judgment to limit ourselves,
to leave badger and woods
alone enough and well.
Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom
Thursday, February 28, 2008
500,000 Iraqi Children
With three other professors and a member of the staff, I'm helping to facilitate an Iraq War Discussion Group where I teach. It's an official course, but it's worth only 1/4 of the academic credit usually earned in a course, it's graded on a pass/fail basis, and it meets only once a week. We try to talk about our various responses the war but also to present information about the history of the region (going back to antiquity), the British involvement during and after World War I, and the U.S. involvement in Iraq for decades. Of course we also talk about events, issues, and controversies related to the war as they arise, including those connected to the presidential primaries in the U.S.
Today we talked a bit about the first Gulf War. One of the professors, a political scientist, mentioned that he is reading a book in which a CBS "60 Minutes" interview with then-Secretary of State Madeline Albright is mentioned. The interviewer, Leslie Stahl, first notes that by most estimates, the international sactions against Iraq in the 1990s had directly or indirectly caused the death of an estimated 500,000 Iraqi children. She then asked Madeline Albright if this loss of life was worth what the sanctions were aiming to achieve. The Secretary of State answered, "Yes."
My colleague also mentioned that the U.S. had not only supported Iraq's regime during Iraq's war with Iran but that it had also, essentially, looked the other way while Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against the Kurds. He suggested that the U.S.'s "looking the other way" (my term, not his) might have contributed to Saddam Hussein's sense that the U.S. would not react to his invading Kuwait--an invasion that led, of course, to the first Gulf War, and later to the sanctions--and ultimately, I suppose, to the current war, for it seems the second president Bush believed he had to finish the war begun by the first presdient Bush. Precisely why the U.S. invaded Iraq the second time, I still don't know. Plausible reasons range from oil to Bush II's need to prove something to trying to introduce American-style capitalistic democracy to the region. Implausible reasons now include the weapons of mass destruction, which did not exist. A reason invented after the fact is that Saddam Hussein was a terrible, murderous dictator. The facts suggest he was indeed that, but Bush, et al., did not at first use that as a reason to start the war. Only after the weapons of mass destruction proved illusory (or always were illusory, as Colin Powell's "testimony" to the U.N. suggested, from the first) did this reason form part of a retroactive argument. There was also an assertion about Iraq's connection to terrorists who attacked the U.S., but that connection proved to be flimsy, at best. A reason to perpetuate the war now advanced (by McCain and others) is that to leave would embolden terrorists who are now in Iraq, but a counter-argument is that the terrorists would not be there if the U.S. hadn't invaded in the first place.
There's no good way to create a transition from these topics to a poetic one, so I will simply and abruptly mention that the site and project, Poets Against the War, is in its 7th year and has accumulated roughly 22,000 poems from around the world, as well as publishing an anthology, supporting politically oppressed writers worldwide, and continuing to express a variety of views against the war in Iraq. The site's main page also points to selected poems it receives each month, and for November 2007, there is mention of a poem by an alum of our university and a former student of mine, Sarah Borsten.
The link to the main page of Poets Against the War is http://www.poetsagainstthewar.org/,
and Sarah's poem is mentioned on the left-hand column.
Today we talked a bit about the first Gulf War. One of the professors, a political scientist, mentioned that he is reading a book in which a CBS "60 Minutes" interview with then-Secretary of State Madeline Albright is mentioned. The interviewer, Leslie Stahl, first notes that by most estimates, the international sactions against Iraq in the 1990s had directly or indirectly caused the death of an estimated 500,000 Iraqi children. She then asked Madeline Albright if this loss of life was worth what the sanctions were aiming to achieve. The Secretary of State answered, "Yes."
My colleague also mentioned that the U.S. had not only supported Iraq's regime during Iraq's war with Iran but that it had also, essentially, looked the other way while Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against the Kurds. He suggested that the U.S.'s "looking the other way" (my term, not his) might have contributed to Saddam Hussein's sense that the U.S. would not react to his invading Kuwait--an invasion that led, of course, to the first Gulf War, and later to the sanctions--and ultimately, I suppose, to the current war, for it seems the second president Bush believed he had to finish the war begun by the first presdient Bush. Precisely why the U.S. invaded Iraq the second time, I still don't know. Plausible reasons range from oil to Bush II's need to prove something to trying to introduce American-style capitalistic democracy to the region. Implausible reasons now include the weapons of mass destruction, which did not exist. A reason invented after the fact is that Saddam Hussein was a terrible, murderous dictator. The facts suggest he was indeed that, but Bush, et al., did not at first use that as a reason to start the war. Only after the weapons of mass destruction proved illusory (or always were illusory, as Colin Powell's "testimony" to the U.N. suggested, from the first) did this reason form part of a retroactive argument. There was also an assertion about Iraq's connection to terrorists who attacked the U.S., but that connection proved to be flimsy, at best. A reason to perpetuate the war now advanced (by McCain and others) is that to leave would embolden terrorists who are now in Iraq, but a counter-argument is that the terrorists would not be there if the U.S. hadn't invaded in the first place.
There's no good way to create a transition from these topics to a poetic one, so I will simply and abruptly mention that the site and project, Poets Against the War, is in its 7th year and has accumulated roughly 22,000 poems from around the world, as well as publishing an anthology, supporting politically oppressed writers worldwide, and continuing to express a variety of views against the war in Iraq. The site's main page also points to selected poems it receives each month, and for November 2007, there is mention of a poem by an alum of our university and a former student of mine, Sarah Borsten.
The link to the main page of Poets Against the War is http://www.poetsagainstthewar.org/,
and Sarah's poem is mentioned on the left-hand column.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Villanelle: The Villain, L
The villain, L, disrupts this life of ours,
And is, as the imbuer of desire,
A criminal who deftly drains our powers.
Sometimes the villain, L, recedes and cowers,
And lurks as others rush to douse a fire.
The villain, L, disrupts this life of ours.
Is L for Love? For Longing, Lonely hours?
For Lust or Loss? Or maybe just for Liar,
A criminal who deftly drains our powers.
Could it be Language? Our Linguistic powers--
That signifying engine which won’t tire?
The villain, L, disrupts this life of ours.
(In many languages other than ours,
A different letter shall be used to hire
A criminal who deftly drains our powers.)
Or L for Light, fiated Big-Bang’s flowers?
By light, we know and, knowing, we desire.
The villain, L, disrupts this Life of ours,
A criminal who deftly drains our powers.
Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom
One By Jeffers
I know two colleagues where I teach, neither of them professors of English, who enjoy the poetry of Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962), known for--well, for many things. He anticipated so-called "eco-poetry" by many decades; he often expressed a kind of anti-humanist ("inhumanist") philosophy, arguably close to Stoicism but also involving anti-imperialist ideas and a sense in which one might benefit ethically from living close by and observing raw nature.
Jeffers built his own stone house near Carmel, by the sea, in California; he built his poems with deliberate rhetoric, long lines, an austere tone, and clarity. His work is often thought to occupy a place between that of Whitman and that of writers loosely associated with the Beat Movement--Kenneth Rexroth, William Everson, and Gary Snyder, among others. In fact, Rexroth, Everson, and Snyder were pretty far removed from Beat poetry; mostly they were otherwise occupied, even though Snyder certainly knew the gang at City Lights Books and is allegedly the basis of a character in one of Kerouac's novels.
Jeffers, like Langston Hughes and William Blake, is one of those poets with great appeal outside colleges and universities. The Hughes conference I attended in 2002 (he was born in 1902) included both academics and "plain old citizens." The Blake Conference I attended in Santa Cruz in the 1980s drew academics, of course, but also ordinary folk interested in visual art and people who literally viewed Blake as a prophet. I'll never forget one fellow who casually suggested that everyone go out and do "some ecstatic dancing" in the forest after one of the sessions. I was tempted to join him and the group, but having grown up in the woods, I knew that the forest and ecstatic dancing didn't really mix. It's just too easy to fall over a log or off a rock.
Oddly enough, Jeffers and Hughes got to know each other in the 1930s, when Hughes was staying with a friend in Carmel, Noel Sullivan, and working on some stories that eventually showed up in The Ways of White Folks. Hughes attended at least one cocktail party hosted by Jeffers, whom one does not associate with such conviviality after having read his poems. Differences between the work of Hughes and Jeffers abound, and many are obvious; at the same time, both are plain-spoken poets who didn't much care whether English professors liked their work.
Here's one by Jeffers that's in the public domain. It's from his book Tamar, and unfortunately, the blog-machinery will make at least one of the long lines spill over:
To The Stone-Cutters
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
Sometimes Jeffers is so morose that he makes me smile, and although his phrasing is almost always clear, it is also often surprising. "[Y]ou foredefeated/Challengers of oblivion/Eat cynical earnings . . .". Reading the poem again, I found myself settling in with the first two phrases here and then being surprised (again) by "Eat cynical earnings." It's startling, and it also begs to be interpreted several ways, but the rhetoric is that of direct address: "You . . . eat . . . earnings."
Many undergraduates understandably do not take immediately to Jeffers' poetry. After all, most of them are enjoying life and rightly expressing optimism and hope. Suddenly there's this guy "looking forward" to when the earth will die and the sun flame out. Robinson "Happy Go Lucky" Jeffers, at your service. Anyone up for an Ingmar Bergman film?
An obvious question to ask readers of the poem is this: Do you find the "honey of peace" in Jeffers' newish old poem? Speaking only for myself, I don't necessarily find "honey" in the poem, but I find the peace of familiarity in "watching" Jeffers meditate on stone-cutters, poets, and a geologic scale of time.
Jeffers built his own stone house near Carmel, by the sea, in California; he built his poems with deliberate rhetoric, long lines, an austere tone, and clarity. His work is often thought to occupy a place between that of Whitman and that of writers loosely associated with the Beat Movement--Kenneth Rexroth, William Everson, and Gary Snyder, among others. In fact, Rexroth, Everson, and Snyder were pretty far removed from Beat poetry; mostly they were otherwise occupied, even though Snyder certainly knew the gang at City Lights Books and is allegedly the basis of a character in one of Kerouac's novels.
Jeffers, like Langston Hughes and William Blake, is one of those poets with great appeal outside colleges and universities. The Hughes conference I attended in 2002 (he was born in 1902) included both academics and "plain old citizens." The Blake Conference I attended in Santa Cruz in the 1980s drew academics, of course, but also ordinary folk interested in visual art and people who literally viewed Blake as a prophet. I'll never forget one fellow who casually suggested that everyone go out and do "some ecstatic dancing" in the forest after one of the sessions. I was tempted to join him and the group, but having grown up in the woods, I knew that the forest and ecstatic dancing didn't really mix. It's just too easy to fall over a log or off a rock.
Oddly enough, Jeffers and Hughes got to know each other in the 1930s, when Hughes was staying with a friend in Carmel, Noel Sullivan, and working on some stories that eventually showed up in The Ways of White Folks. Hughes attended at least one cocktail party hosted by Jeffers, whom one does not associate with such conviviality after having read his poems. Differences between the work of Hughes and Jeffers abound, and many are obvious; at the same time, both are plain-spoken poets who didn't much care whether English professors liked their work.
Here's one by Jeffers that's in the public domain. It's from his book Tamar, and unfortunately, the blog-machinery will make at least one of the long lines spill over:
To The Stone-Cutters
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
Sometimes Jeffers is so morose that he makes me smile, and although his phrasing is almost always clear, it is also often surprising. "[Y]ou foredefeated/Challengers of oblivion/Eat cynical earnings . . .". Reading the poem again, I found myself settling in with the first two phrases here and then being surprised (again) by "Eat cynical earnings." It's startling, and it also begs to be interpreted several ways, but the rhetoric is that of direct address: "You . . . eat . . . earnings."
Many undergraduates understandably do not take immediately to Jeffers' poetry. After all, most of them are enjoying life and rightly expressing optimism and hope. Suddenly there's this guy "looking forward" to when the earth will die and the sun flame out. Robinson "Happy Go Lucky" Jeffers, at your service. Anyone up for an Ingmar Bergman film?
An obvious question to ask readers of the poem is this: Do you find the "honey of peace" in Jeffers' newish old poem? Speaking only for myself, I don't necessarily find "honey" in the poem, but I find the peace of familiarity in "watching" Jeffers meditate on stone-cutters, poets, and a geologic scale of time.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Gwendolyn Brooks and Displacement
I was reading some poems by Gwendolyn Brooks again, in preparation for teaching them. She was born in 1917 and died in 2000 and was the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, if memory serves. Her most famous poem is "We Real Cool," which is indeed a great poem in an invented form, and a poem that's efficient in the way Dickinson's poems are. A great deal of business is transacted, so to speak, in just a few lines.
But Brooks' range was amazing, both in terms of style and voice and of subjects that interested her. Many of her poems are rooted in her neighborhood of Chicago (like "kitchenette building" and "The Bean Eaters"); indeed, the prize-winning volume is entitled A Street in Bronzeville.
She wrote excellent short narrative poems--"Sadie and Maud" is a famous one--and longer, more meditative pieces like "The Sundays of Satin-Legs Smith." She moves easily between more formal verse and free verse, is a virtuoso deployer of rhythms and diction, and displays a clear, sharp intelligence in every poem.
Partly because of temperament and partly because she started writing in the 1940s, she arrived a bit late at the political-activist eruption of the 1960s--but arrive she did. She changed publishers for activist reasons--in part to make her books more affordable for working people. She wrote some superb socially conscious poetry, including "Riot." Her homage-poem, "Malcolm X," is pithy.
Of her "neighborhood" poems, "the vacant lot" (yes, she uses no capitalization in the title) is one of my favorites. The speaker remembers the last three people--Mrs. Coley and her two children--who lived in the house that was removed to create the vacant lot. The memory is sharp and humorous, but one subtext of the poem is that the poem, the memory, is the last anyone will hear of all the history that occurred in that vacant lot. Circuitously, it's a poem about urban displacement, or urban revision, which seems constant.
I saw/heard Brooks read at U.C. Davis. Her husband was with her, and at her insistence, he read some of his poems after she did. He was a modest, wry man, and before he read, he said, "Simple logic dictates that I should have read first." We laughed, for who among us would have liked to read our poems right after Ms. Brooks had read? Of course, she had intended to honor him and his own work, but she'd put him in a tough spot, so she laughed, too.
In honor of her and her husband, I'm replicating the folly by posting a poem after talking about hers. Simple logic dictates that I should have started with my desultory poem and then moved to the main act, Gwendolyn Brooks. But no. That would have been too easy. As far as I know, this poem concerns urban displacement, too; hence the title, I reckon:
Displacement
Well, I went downtown.
They’d moved it. Some dirty bricks
were left behind, some people.
A few old buildings stood—
rats in elevator cars, For Lease
signs in windows, stench of mayoral
promises in a dumpster.
I started screaming, couldn’t stop,
stacked echo on echo, splendid rage.
My outburst brought police. They
took me to a place to which
Downtown had been transferred.
For every question they asked,
I asked two. In the hasty move,
city ordinances had been
misplaced. No one
could specify with what I should be
charged. Upon my release, I asked
myself what’s right for me to do?—an
old-fashioned interrogative that
would have played well in Old Downtown
but not, alas, in the New Here District,
where bright, new office buildings
and slick, wee bistros will sit on
an immense investment of capital.
Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom
But Brooks' range was amazing, both in terms of style and voice and of subjects that interested her. Many of her poems are rooted in her neighborhood of Chicago (like "kitchenette building" and "The Bean Eaters"); indeed, the prize-winning volume is entitled A Street in Bronzeville.
She wrote excellent short narrative poems--"Sadie and Maud" is a famous one--and longer, more meditative pieces like "The Sundays of Satin-Legs Smith." She moves easily between more formal verse and free verse, is a virtuoso deployer of rhythms and diction, and displays a clear, sharp intelligence in every poem.
Partly because of temperament and partly because she started writing in the 1940s, she arrived a bit late at the political-activist eruption of the 1960s--but arrive she did. She changed publishers for activist reasons--in part to make her books more affordable for working people. She wrote some superb socially conscious poetry, including "Riot." Her homage-poem, "Malcolm X," is pithy.
Of her "neighborhood" poems, "the vacant lot" (yes, she uses no capitalization in the title) is one of my favorites. The speaker remembers the last three people--Mrs. Coley and her two children--who lived in the house that was removed to create the vacant lot. The memory is sharp and humorous, but one subtext of the poem is that the poem, the memory, is the last anyone will hear of all the history that occurred in that vacant lot. Circuitously, it's a poem about urban displacement, or urban revision, which seems constant.
I saw/heard Brooks read at U.C. Davis. Her husband was with her, and at her insistence, he read some of his poems after she did. He was a modest, wry man, and before he read, he said, "Simple logic dictates that I should have read first." We laughed, for who among us would have liked to read our poems right after Ms. Brooks had read? Of course, she had intended to honor him and his own work, but she'd put him in a tough spot, so she laughed, too.
In honor of her and her husband, I'm replicating the folly by posting a poem after talking about hers. Simple logic dictates that I should have started with my desultory poem and then moved to the main act, Gwendolyn Brooks. But no. That would have been too easy. As far as I know, this poem concerns urban displacement, too; hence the title, I reckon:
Displacement
Well, I went downtown.
They’d moved it. Some dirty bricks
were left behind, some people.
A few old buildings stood—
rats in elevator cars, For Lease
signs in windows, stench of mayoral
promises in a dumpster.
I started screaming, couldn’t stop,
stacked echo on echo, splendid rage.
My outburst brought police. They
took me to a place to which
Downtown had been transferred.
For every question they asked,
I asked two. In the hasty move,
city ordinances had been
misplaced. No one
could specify with what I should be
charged. Upon my release, I asked
myself what’s right for me to do?—an
old-fashioned interrogative that
would have played well in Old Downtown
but not, alas, in the New Here District,
where bright, new office buildings
and slick, wee bistros will sit on
an immense investment of capital.
Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom
Friday, February 22, 2008
Unique But Constant
For some reason, I'm intrigued by the idea that, or the phenomenon whereby, each day all of us in modern, mobile societies see several, many, perhaps even hundreds of people precisely once in our lives; the moment when we encounter them and they us is vivid. That is, the sensory information about them is clear and accurate. Moments, minutes, or hours later, however, all trace of them is gone from our minds, our sense of experience, our memories, and all trace of us is gone from their minds, senses of experience, and memories. These encounters are unique, but the phenomenon is virtually constant--a steady stream of once-only, momentary encounters that are quite real--particular and concrete--but then gone, as if they were unreal.
This situation was true even in the micro-town in which I grew up. In Winter, if we went into town, we would know all the people we saw. They would at least be acquaintances we'd seen before, and we would at least know their names and a bit about them. (This circumstance is one of many reasons the pace of life is so slow in micro-towns; people have to talk to each other; deliberation is required.) Just as likely, we'd know them well, share a history with them. But in summer, when tourists streamed through town, we might encounter people exactly once, so even in an extremely rural, remote town, the automobile brought this unusual everyday anonymity, this constant flow of unique encounters, into play.
I think philosophers, psychologists, or neurologists are better suited to write about this subject than a poet, or at least better suited than this particular poet. But I gave it a whack anyway, more or less to get it out of my system:
This situation was true even in the micro-town in which I grew up. In Winter, if we went into town, we would know all the people we saw. They would at least be acquaintances we'd seen before, and we would at least know their names and a bit about them. (This circumstance is one of many reasons the pace of life is so slow in micro-towns; people have to talk to each other; deliberation is required.) Just as likely, we'd know them well, share a history with them. But in summer, when tourists streamed through town, we might encounter people exactly once, so even in an extremely rural, remote town, the automobile brought this unusual everyday anonymity, this constant flow of unique encounters, into play.
I think philosophers, psychologists, or neurologists are better suited to write about this subject than a poet, or at least better suited than this particular poet. But I gave it a whack anyway, more or less to get it out of my system:
Idiosynchronized
People we see once: flood of faces, coats,
collars--on avenues and plazas, in markets,
theaters, bars, banks, hospitals. A bent
shape hoeing weeds: one of us saw it once
one place one time from a train: This
is an example but only of itself. Its
singularity can’t be transposed. Imagine
you remember the person who interested you
terribly in that café that morning that city.
Sure it happened, but you don’t remember
because once was not in fact enough. People
we see once are our lives: Forgetting
them (we must), we lose whole arenas
of the lived. Even ghosts return, but not
this vast mass of once-only-noticed
which composes medium and matrix
of our one time here. We are adjacent and
circumstantial to strangers, just one jostle
of flux away from knowing next to everything
about their lives. The river of moments takes
a different channel; the one moment is nothing now.
The once-only appear, then appear to go
to an Elsewhere that defines us. They go on
to get to know who they get to know.
Their lives are theoretically real to us, like
subatomic particles. To them their lives
are practically real to them. From their
view, ours are not. We know they were there,
vivid strangers, because they always are,
every day. Like a wreath floating
on the ocean, memory marks a space
abandoned. In large measure life is
recall of spaces occupied. History
consists of someone who insists on being
remembered, someone who insists on
remembering, combinations of both. Familiarity
and routine join to work methodically; they
manufacture things in recall. Vivid strangers are
incidentally crucial, indigenous to a
present moment that is like a mist
over a meadow, rising, evaporating
just when we arrive, past as we are present.
Hans Ostrom
Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Extremely Narrow Sonnets
Some poets like to write in traditional forms, some like to write in free verse, some like to do both, and some like to monkey with traditional forms. Some poets like to do all four things, and I am one of them, and I am also a person who likes to use "monkey" as a verb, an idiomatic move I permanently borrowed from my parents' generation.
Sherman Alexie monkeyed with the sonnet-form by writing fourteen rather large prose-poetry paragraphs. Instead of fourteen lines in a metered, rhyming scheme, there are fourteen large chunks of writing, much of which concern American history and American Indians (or Native Americans--although I gather the former term is back in use). I like Alexie's poem, and I like what he does with the sonnet, which in my view he treats as an old-fashioned constricting form--a figurative reservation, if you will, from which Alexie wants to escape. He explodes the form, to good effect, in my opinion.
My present aims are much more modest and, arguably, whimsical. I wanted to write the narrowest sonnet possible. I'd already written a sonnet that rhymed on its left side. That is, I used the Shakespearian-sonnet rhyme-scheme and the usual iambic pentameter, but the rhyming words occurred at the beginning of each line, not at the end, so of course the rhyming-effect is completely different. I just thought it needed to be done--done, but not repeated.
A traditional sonnet is ten syllables wide and fourteen lines high. As my late friend Wendy Bishop noted, it is a 14X10 poem. Wendy was extraordinarily imaginative, but she had a great practical side, too. She also thought of the sonnet as a poem that could fit on a postcard. I think she even had her students literally write sonnets on (onto) postcards.
I supposed, then, that the narrowest possible sonnet would be composed of 14 letters that formed words vertically. Here is an example:
Wafer-Thin Sonnet
I
l
o
v
e
y
o
u,
m
y
d
e
a
r.
I like this because it fulfills the 14-line criterion, and its theme is the same as 57. 5% of all sonnets, based on no research and a blind guess. But you do have to figure that tens of thousands of sonnets have had a thesis-statement similar to "I love you, my dear," don't you?
But then I thought that I'd gone too far (or not far enough) because the rhyming had disappeared. So I decided to write an extremely narrow sonnet that still rhymed, and here it is:
Extremely Narrow Sonnet
How 'bout
If we
Went out
To see
What you
And I
Might do
And why?
Let's set
A date
And let
Our fate
Unfurl--
Or curl.
So I kept the basic rhyme scheme of a Shakespearian or English sonnet: ababcdcdefefgg. And in the interests of narrowness, I used one iambic foot per line. An even narrower sonnet would keep the rhyme scheme but just use one word per line; that would be tough. Take a whack at it, if you like.
The purpose of such foolishness? Partly, it's foolishness for its own sake. And, well, as W.H. Auden said, of his poetic vocation, "I like to play with words." He did not say "I like only to play with words," and his poems demonstrate just how much more he liked to do with poetry. But playing fanciful, whimsical games with form is not a bad thing to do after one has been hitting the serious poetry-writing hard for a while, and I think a playful connection to venerable forms actually complements a conventional connection to them. It's good training--discipline, if you will--to try to write a genuine Shakespearian sonnet--but in a contemporary idiom. It's also good to explode the sonnet, as Alexie did. It's good to "stab" the sonnet, as Shapiro claimed to do. And it's good to monkey with the sonnet. All are ways of living with words, as musicians live with sounds and rhythms, strictures and improvisations, the old and the fresh.
I invite you to attempt to monkey with villanelles, sestinas, and sonnets--ballads, too, perhaps. Venerable, venerated forms can withstand whimsy and deconstruction. Sonnet 18 by the Shakemeister General isn't going anywhere.
Sherman Alexie monkeyed with the sonnet-form by writing fourteen rather large prose-poetry paragraphs. Instead of fourteen lines in a metered, rhyming scheme, there are fourteen large chunks of writing, much of which concern American history and American Indians (or Native Americans--although I gather the former term is back in use). I like Alexie's poem, and I like what he does with the sonnet, which in my view he treats as an old-fashioned constricting form--a figurative reservation, if you will, from which Alexie wants to escape. He explodes the form, to good effect, in my opinion.
My present aims are much more modest and, arguably, whimsical. I wanted to write the narrowest sonnet possible. I'd already written a sonnet that rhymed on its left side. That is, I used the Shakespearian-sonnet rhyme-scheme and the usual iambic pentameter, but the rhyming words occurred at the beginning of each line, not at the end, so of course the rhyming-effect is completely different. I just thought it needed to be done--done, but not repeated.
A traditional sonnet is ten syllables wide and fourteen lines high. As my late friend Wendy Bishop noted, it is a 14X10 poem. Wendy was extraordinarily imaginative, but she had a great practical side, too. She also thought of the sonnet as a poem that could fit on a postcard. I think she even had her students literally write sonnets on (onto) postcards.
I supposed, then, that the narrowest possible sonnet would be composed of 14 letters that formed words vertically. Here is an example:
Wafer-Thin Sonnet
I
l
o
v
e
y
o
u,
m
y
d
e
a
r.
I like this because it fulfills the 14-line criterion, and its theme is the same as 57. 5% of all sonnets, based on no research and a blind guess. But you do have to figure that tens of thousands of sonnets have had a thesis-statement similar to "I love you, my dear," don't you?
But then I thought that I'd gone too far (or not far enough) because the rhyming had disappeared. So I decided to write an extremely narrow sonnet that still rhymed, and here it is:
Extremely Narrow Sonnet
How 'bout
If we
Went out
To see
What you
And I
Might do
And why?
Let's set
A date
And let
Our fate
Unfurl--
Or curl.
So I kept the basic rhyme scheme of a Shakespearian or English sonnet: ababcdcdefefgg. And in the interests of narrowness, I used one iambic foot per line. An even narrower sonnet would keep the rhyme scheme but just use one word per line; that would be tough. Take a whack at it, if you like.
The purpose of such foolishness? Partly, it's foolishness for its own sake. And, well, as W.H. Auden said, of his poetic vocation, "I like to play with words." He did not say "I like only to play with words," and his poems demonstrate just how much more he liked to do with poetry. But playing fanciful, whimsical games with form is not a bad thing to do after one has been hitting the serious poetry-writing hard for a while, and I think a playful connection to venerable forms actually complements a conventional connection to them. It's good training--discipline, if you will--to try to write a genuine Shakespearian sonnet--but in a contemporary idiom. It's also good to explode the sonnet, as Alexie did. It's good to "stab" the sonnet, as Shapiro claimed to do. And it's good to monkey with the sonnet. All are ways of living with words, as musicians live with sounds and rhythms, strictures and improvisations, the old and the fresh.
I invite you to attempt to monkey with villanelles, sestinas, and sonnets--ballads, too, perhaps. Venerable, venerated forms can withstand whimsy and deconstruction. Sonnet 18 by the Shakemeister General isn't going anywhere.
Poem About Reading
Here is a second guest-poem by Patrick Bizzaro, this one concerning reading (among other things):
LIKE A READER
aaaaaaa for Dave Bartholomae
I love to open a book
some previous owner
has marked and folded,
a book that turns
magically
to a page read
more often than others,
to a margin
filled with pencil prints,
checked lines,
paragraphs in brackets.
And I love the reader
I do not know
who argues with the author,
corrects him,
circles typos,
accuses the author
of plagiarism or at best
of dialog with some other writer.
I love it best
when that reader assumes
a reference to someone
who lived after
the author, someone, perhaps,
the author created,
like a character outside the book,
like a reader.
Patrick Bizzaro
Copyright 2008 by Patrick Bizzaro
LIKE A READER
aaaaaaa for Dave Bartholomae
I love to open a book
some previous owner
has marked and folded,
a book that turns
magically
to a page read
more often than others,
to a margin
filled with pencil prints,
checked lines,
paragraphs in brackets.
And I love the reader
I do not know
who argues with the author,
corrects him,
circles typos,
accuses the author
of plagiarism or at best
of dialog with some other writer.
I love it best
when that reader assumes
a reference to someone
who lived after
the author, someone, perhaps,
the author created,
like a character outside the book,
like a reader.
Patrick Bizzaro
Copyright 2008 by Patrick Bizzaro
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Guest Poem By Patrick Bizzaro
I'm delighted to post a "guest poem" by a colleague and friend from East Carolina University, Patrick Bizzaro. Patrick is also the author of a fine book on teaching creative writing, Responding to Poems, published by the National Council of Teachers of English, and he's also written criticism on the work of poet Fred Chappell. Here is the poem:
FIRST PHOTOGRAPH
for Antonio
The frame
that held my photograph
of you being born
kept changing shape.
It pushed in on you
from all directions,
clamped down
until I could tell,
when your head shrunk
into a wrinkled photo
of a baby’s birth,
you began to wrestle back.
Less moving
picture than a series of stills
presenting themselves to me now,
weeks later,
in no particular order,
the frame stretched
to fit your head
as though the photo of you being born
changed to fit its frame.
But there was a moment,
when seeing your head
deep inside the frame
of your mother’s precious parts,
foolishly noting aloud
your head’s simple size,
I thought this photo,
any photo of any birth,
impossible to frame.
So I concentrated instead
on my part in this,
circling with both hands
the all-important left leg
I’d been assigned to hold. Fortunately,
there were people in the room
determined to see this event
develop. Looking up, I watched
one possible photo after another
snap by—any one of which I might freeze here
into words—and, quite frankly, for the first time
that day or night or whenever it was
a plot entered the room, a storyline,
a sequence of tangible events
moving toward some ultimate resolution.
And though distracted by
the breaths of someone
in the distance, I noticed
all the possible first photos of you
as they changed shape
to fit this frame of your mother.
Your shape,
your mother’s shape,
became something mutual,
some unspoken agreement.
The knot on your head nodded
to everyone in the room
you would do your part.
It tightened until
it was no longer a photo of you, Antonio,
but instead a video
of a proud if undersized Sumo
entering the delivery room.
Standing beside your mother’s
left leg, I looked down for the first time
into your face and saw
you, my son,
entering the room,
the knot at the top of your head gone,
your skull in the frame
taking a shape
I recognized as skull,
your shoulders, slanting
to form a small arrow,
pointing at some target
only you could see
between your mother’s knees.
Patrick Bizzaro
Copyright 2008 Patrick Bizzaro
FIRST PHOTOGRAPH
for Antonio
The frame
that held my photograph
of you being born
kept changing shape.
It pushed in on you
from all directions,
clamped down
until I could tell,
when your head shrunk
into a wrinkled photo
of a baby’s birth,
you began to wrestle back.
Less moving
picture than a series of stills
presenting themselves to me now,
weeks later,
in no particular order,
the frame stretched
to fit your head
as though the photo of you being born
changed to fit its frame.
But there was a moment,
when seeing your head
deep inside the frame
of your mother’s precious parts,
foolishly noting aloud
your head’s simple size,
I thought this photo,
any photo of any birth,
impossible to frame.
So I concentrated instead
on my part in this,
circling with both hands
the all-important left leg
I’d been assigned to hold. Fortunately,
there were people in the room
determined to see this event
develop. Looking up, I watched
one possible photo after another
snap by—any one of which I might freeze here
into words—and, quite frankly, for the first time
that day or night or whenever it was
a plot entered the room, a storyline,
a sequence of tangible events
moving toward some ultimate resolution.
And though distracted by
the breaths of someone
in the distance, I noticed
all the possible first photos of you
as they changed shape
to fit this frame of your mother.
Your shape,
your mother’s shape,
became something mutual,
some unspoken agreement.
The knot on your head nodded
to everyone in the room
you would do your part.
It tightened until
it was no longer a photo of you, Antonio,
but instead a video
of a proud if undersized Sumo
entering the delivery room.
Standing beside your mother’s
left leg, I looked down for the first time
into your face and saw
you, my son,
entering the room,
the knot at the top of your head gone,
your skull in the frame
taking a shape
I recognized as skull,
your shoulders, slanting
to form a small arrow,
pointing at some target
only you could see
between your mother’s knees.
Patrick Bizzaro
Copyright 2008 Patrick Bizzaro
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Pascal's Successful Failure
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) toiled on a master work most of his life, a massive opus reconciling philosophy, mathematics, Catholicism, faith, reason, and even rhetoric. He failed. The book(s) never materialized, but a collection of notes toward the book(s) survived. It's now called Pensées.
It's one of those books one may read in, as opposed to reading, and every return-trip is as pleasurable as an earlier one. A good history of philosophy functions similarly, as does a book of aphorisms or Fowler's book on usage in English. Dag Hammarskjold's Markings is similar in form to Pensées, but Hammarskjold intended to write an interior, private, meditative diary, so he produced the book he had intended to produce (but not to publish, at least in his lifetime), whereas Pensées is an and accidental classic, its complete unevenness part of its charm. Pascal died thinking he had nothing more than a collection of notes. He was right. And wrong. His interminable warm-up to the book ended up being the book, and some of the entries are so pithy as to be poetic.
So you might find something lofty like this (quotations take from the Oxford World Classics paperback edition translated by Honor Levi):
#225 "Knowing God without knowing our wretchedness leads to pride. Knowing our wretchedness without knowing God leads to despair. Knowing Jesus Christ is the middle course, because in him we find both God and our wretchedness." (p. 65)
But then you might run into a stray line that truly is just a note to himself: "I too will have thoughts at the back of my mind." Nothing leads up to this, and nothing follows it, so you just have to think, "Thanks for that, Blaise."
A few favorites of mine:
"Power is the mistress of the world, not opinion. But it is opinion which exploits power." (p. 115)
"Languages are ciphers in which letters are not changed into letters, but words into words. So an unknown language is decipherable." (p. 115) This is no longer a profound observation, of course, but it still says much succinctly about language-acquisition, translation, and cryptology.
"When wickedness has reason on its side, it becomes proud, and shows off reason in all its lustre." (p. 113).
#213 "There is nothing so consistent with reason as the denial of reason." (p. 62).
#214 "Two excesses. Excluding reason, allowing only reason. (p. 62).
Then there's the famous "wager," a section of the book in which Pascal argues that if you are forced to wager whether whether God exists, you should bet that God does exist because if you bet that God doesn't exist and lose, then your soul might be in danger, whereas if you bet that God does exist and you lose, you haven't lost anything.
One more I like:
(p. 149): "The more intelligent we are, the more readily we recognize individual personality in others. The crowd finds no difference between people."
The book also includes a stand-alone treatise on rhetoric that holds up pretty well.
Different people will find different morsels to enjoy from this French philosophical, religious, meditative, aphoristic buffet of Pascal's. If you can locate a copy, just start flipping through it, and something will catch your eye, intrigue your reason, your personality, your obsessions, and/or your curiosity. It's a book that goes nowhere and everywhere.
It's one of those books one may read in, as opposed to reading, and every return-trip is as pleasurable as an earlier one. A good history of philosophy functions similarly, as does a book of aphorisms or Fowler's book on usage in English. Dag Hammarskjold's Markings is similar in form to Pensées, but Hammarskjold intended to write an interior, private, meditative diary, so he produced the book he had intended to produce (but not to publish, at least in his lifetime), whereas Pensées is an and accidental classic, its complete unevenness part of its charm. Pascal died thinking he had nothing more than a collection of notes. He was right. And wrong. His interminable warm-up to the book ended up being the book, and some of the entries are so pithy as to be poetic.
So you might find something lofty like this (quotations take from the Oxford World Classics paperback edition translated by Honor Levi):
#225 "Knowing God without knowing our wretchedness leads to pride. Knowing our wretchedness without knowing God leads to despair. Knowing Jesus Christ is the middle course, because in him we find both God and our wretchedness." (p. 65)
But then you might run into a stray line that truly is just a note to himself: "I too will have thoughts at the back of my mind." Nothing leads up to this, and nothing follows it, so you just have to think, "Thanks for that, Blaise."
A few favorites of mine:
"Power is the mistress of the world, not opinion. But it is opinion which exploits power." (p. 115)
"Languages are ciphers in which letters are not changed into letters, but words into words. So an unknown language is decipherable." (p. 115) This is no longer a profound observation, of course, but it still says much succinctly about language-acquisition, translation, and cryptology.
"When wickedness has reason on its side, it becomes proud, and shows off reason in all its lustre." (p. 113).
#213 "There is nothing so consistent with reason as the denial of reason." (p. 62).
#214 "Two excesses. Excluding reason, allowing only reason. (p. 62).
Then there's the famous "wager," a section of the book in which Pascal argues that if you are forced to wager whether whether God exists, you should bet that God does exist because if you bet that God doesn't exist and lose, then your soul might be in danger, whereas if you bet that God does exist and you lose, you haven't lost anything.
One more I like:
(p. 149): "The more intelligent we are, the more readily we recognize individual personality in others. The crowd finds no difference between people."
The book also includes a stand-alone treatise on rhetoric that holds up pretty well.
Different people will find different morsels to enjoy from this French philosophical, religious, meditative, aphoristic buffet of Pascal's. If you can locate a copy, just start flipping through it, and something will catch your eye, intrigue your reason, your personality, your obsessions, and/or your curiosity. It's a book that goes nowhere and everywhere.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
One For St. Valentine's Day
Yes, I Do
I take full responsibility for
what I’m about to write, which is
that when she eats chocolate, some
ends up in a corner of her mouth.
She reprimands cinematic villains,
speaking directly to the TV screen.
I take full responsibility for the
fact that this is turning into a
love poem. She runs a business
in a sector of the global economy
known as “not-for-profit.” She
appreciates eccentricity. Has
long, melodramatic nightmares,
from which she wakes refreshed.
She eats the whole apple, core
and all. It’s my fault that I see
these qualities and details from
the vantage-point commonly
called love, and that I’ve already
used the word “love” twice, now
three times. I hold myself
accountable. She sings on pitch.
Likes swing, rock-and-roll, Sinatra,
Domingo, soul, rockabilly reverb,
and the cello. It was my error
to begin with the detail about
chocolate in the corner of her mouth.
To the degree this is a love poem,
and getting rather domestic, at that,
I’m to blame. She’s unabashedly
happy when a hot dinner’s waiting
for her after she’s been driving
in the rain. I do love her. I take
full responsibility. I do.
from The Coast Starlight: Collected Poems 1976-2006, by Hans Ostrom
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
A Poet's Political Questions
Poets are even more notoriously naive and/or misguided about politics than "the average citizen," whoever he or she might be. Percy Shelley claimed that poets were "the unacknowledged legislators of the world," but I think most people would add "and let's make sure we keep them unacknowledged." Especially poets in the Anglo-American tradition have not-so-great political reputations: Ezra Pound, for instance. I don't know that other traditions are much better in this regard, but Pablo Neruda and Vaclav Havel seem to be writers who combined literary and political careers well (Havel is not a poet, but is a fiction-writer and a dramatist)--but I know much is contingent upon your literary and political points of view.
To support the claim that poets are naive and/or misguided about politics, I hereby submit questions I would like presidential aspirants or even Congressional aspirants to answer--I mean really answer--not just the canned non-answer. For instance, if one asks, "How large is the national debt, and how do you propose to cut it?", one does not want to hear, "My candidacy represents change." By even entertaining the possibility of a straight answer, I am being naive, of course. Questions:
1. How many American military personnel are deployed worldwide, and in what regions is this deployment unnecessary, misguided, and/or wrong? Take your time. Be specific.
2. What is the month-and-year in your administration when everyone in the U.S. who is ill or might get ill will have affordable, guaranteed access to the appropriate doctors, nurses, equipment, therapy, and medicine? No hedging, and no excuses, please, and don't bother mentioning "Canada" or "socialized medicine"; that just wastes time.
3. What is the most cynical piece of advice from your political team you have accepted and acted upon?
4. Specifically, what Executive Branch powers that Bush II has expanded will you retract--when and how?
5. What are the three most severe erosions of civil liberties in the last 8 years and how will you insure that they are repaired?
6. How many nuclear weapons does the U.S. own, and, in your opinion, how many of these should be incapacitated--and by what date?
7. In your opinion, what are the acceptable numbers of a) homeless persons and b) persons who live below the poverty-line in the U.S.? Why are these numbers acceptable? What will you do to reduce the numbers to those levels permanently?
8. On what date will you reveal what all of the interrogation techniques, incarceration practices, and "rendering" practices of the U.S. government are and explain why all of these are both morally and legally acceptable?
9. What is the emptiest piece of effective speech-making, sloganeering, and/or political advertising your campaign has used so far?
10. What are the chief differences between your political campaign and a cult? What are the chief similarities?
11. In your political life, what is the most shameless thing you have done?
To support the claim that poets are naive and/or misguided about politics, I hereby submit questions I would like presidential aspirants or even Congressional aspirants to answer--I mean really answer--not just the canned non-answer. For instance, if one asks, "How large is the national debt, and how do you propose to cut it?", one does not want to hear, "My candidacy represents change." By even entertaining the possibility of a straight answer, I am being naive, of course. Questions:
1. How many American military personnel are deployed worldwide, and in what regions is this deployment unnecessary, misguided, and/or wrong? Take your time. Be specific.
2. What is the month-and-year in your administration when everyone in the U.S. who is ill or might get ill will have affordable, guaranteed access to the appropriate doctors, nurses, equipment, therapy, and medicine? No hedging, and no excuses, please, and don't bother mentioning "Canada" or "socialized medicine"; that just wastes time.
3. What is the most cynical piece of advice from your political team you have accepted and acted upon?
4. Specifically, what Executive Branch powers that Bush II has expanded will you retract--when and how?
5. What are the three most severe erosions of civil liberties in the last 8 years and how will you insure that they are repaired?
6. How many nuclear weapons does the U.S. own, and, in your opinion, how many of these should be incapacitated--and by what date?
7. In your opinion, what are the acceptable numbers of a) homeless persons and b) persons who live below the poverty-line in the U.S.? Why are these numbers acceptable? What will you do to reduce the numbers to those levels permanently?
8. On what date will you reveal what all of the interrogation techniques, incarceration practices, and "rendering" practices of the U.S. government are and explain why all of these are both morally and legally acceptable?
9. What is the emptiest piece of effective speech-making, sloganeering, and/or political advertising your campaign has used so far?
10. What are the chief differences between your political campaign and a cult? What are the chief similarities?
11. In your political life, what is the most shameless thing you have done?
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
More Pigeons, Please
I haven't seen a pigeon in a long time. Some pigeons used to roost in the belfry at the parish to which I belong, but I think difficulties arose regarding their leavings, and someone installed some wire.
I think pigeons, like seagulls and crows, don't have great reputations. They annoy a lot of people, these birds. Some people adore pigeons, of course, including the few Italians who feed them in Piazza San Marco, which may well be the headquarters of Pigeon United Nations. I think there are some pigeons in downtown T-Town, but I haven't seen any in a while.
Sometimes I do get a bit weary watching pigeons walk because they seem to use the weight of their heads for propulsion, so with each step they thrust their heads forward. Empathetically, I start getting headaches and neck-aches. Pigeons' eyes and feather-coloring are very pleasant to look at. Pigeons seem very eager, almost as if they worked in sales, but they're not obstreperous and bossy, unlike some crows we might mention.
Probably cities with large populations of pigeons have tales to tell about how much trouble they are. . . .I used to see cousins of pigeons, doves, in the Sierra Nevada every so often. Lovely.
I've eaten squab--or cooked pigeon--once only. Fictional detective and large gourmand Nero Wolfe eats a lot of squab in those books--as well as starlings.
A friend of mine doesn't particularly like the Seahawks, Seattle's professional football team (it's a complicated story), so he refers to the them as the Sea Squab, a fine example of a satirist's deflationary move, with no loss of alliteration.
I'm not sure if this "information" springs from an urban legend or not, but I've heard that carrier pigeons are extinct. I'll need to investigate further--or await a tiny scroll delivered by a bird.
Maybe the most interesting thing about pigeons to me is the sounds they make in their throats--hence this poem:
I think pigeons, like seagulls and crows, don't have great reputations. They annoy a lot of people, these birds. Some people adore pigeons, of course, including the few Italians who feed them in Piazza San Marco, which may well be the headquarters of Pigeon United Nations. I think there are some pigeons in downtown T-Town, but I haven't seen any in a while.
Sometimes I do get a bit weary watching pigeons walk because they seem to use the weight of their heads for propulsion, so with each step they thrust their heads forward. Empathetically, I start getting headaches and neck-aches. Pigeons' eyes and feather-coloring are very pleasant to look at. Pigeons seem very eager, almost as if they worked in sales, but they're not obstreperous and bossy, unlike some crows we might mention.
Probably cities with large populations of pigeons have tales to tell about how much trouble they are. . . .I used to see cousins of pigeons, doves, in the Sierra Nevada every so often. Lovely.
I've eaten squab--or cooked pigeon--once only. Fictional detective and large gourmand Nero Wolfe eats a lot of squab in those books--as well as starlings.
A friend of mine doesn't particularly like the Seahawks, Seattle's professional football team (it's a complicated story), so he refers to the them as the Sea Squab, a fine example of a satirist's deflationary move, with no loss of alliteration.
I'm not sure if this "information" springs from an urban legend or not, but I've heard that carrier pigeons are extinct. I'll need to investigate further--or await a tiny scroll delivered by a bird.
Maybe the most interesting thing about pigeons to me is the sounds they make in their throats--hence this poem:
Pigeons’ Throats
Trickling cold-water springs bubble up
in the throats of pigeons.
In the throats of pigeons,
weary orderlies push medicine-carts
down dim hospital corridors, and
the one weak, wobbly wheel eeks.
Old men and women sit around
tables, mutter alibis, lullabies,
and goodbyes in parlors
I've imagined in pigeons' throats,
which speak in pigeon-code of untraveled
highways upholstered in ground-mist . . .
gray, green, and purple purses full of coins from
a lost currency. . . pearl light of train-windows, dawn.
Hans Ostrom
Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom
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