Dancers at Last Call

Dancers at Last Call


Where Zeno's paradox, Jesus's orthodox, and science's
anti-dox intersect stands my belief--nervously, like
a solitary traveler waiting for a bus that's more
rumored than scheduled. Science transforms mystery
into temporary knowledge, but mystery's infinite
at least, so we'll always not know. Incarnate, God
transmitted some counterintuitive news:
word, light, love, and peace are the way,
not war, invention, industry, and empire.
Who knew? The human response to the bulletin
was to hang the incarnation out to dry. Sigh.

Nonetheless, the wisdom haunts us, hounds us
down the positively positivist ages. By means
of knowing, we can never cross Zeno's line
of mystery. By means of belief, we hope we can
cross over, but hope lives in later. Faith
and science each need the other like two
dancers in a bar when Last Call comes. They
clutch one another, shuffle, and try to think
of something to say. The bartender, Zeno,
will count the tips and lock the door
behind them when they leave and get
slapped with cold wind and dark early
hours of tomorrow outside.

Hans Ostrom

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Stick

I was walking across campus today when I overheard a conversation between students. The topic seemed to concern one person's wish to have another person drive his car somewhere. She did not seem entirely committed to the proposition of driving his car. He seemed to be marshaling arguments---until a logistical question popped into his mind. He asked, "Can you drive a stick?"

What a lovely question, especially if you are unfamiliar with American English. "Drive a stick? No, as a matter of fact, I've never driven a stick. Are you mad?" Stick-shift, obviously, was the term in play, but even that term attracts fascination. I believe it springs from a healthy desire to reduce technology to the basic. "Yeah, whatever, it's a lever, and it's connected to a transmission, but I say it's still a stick."

Shifting topics abruptly, I'll mention that, regardless of what toys we acquired for our son when he was quite young, sticks were his favorite implement of fun when he was 4 and 5 years old. We lived in Sweden for 6 months at that time, and he amassed quite a collection of Swedish sticks, which look remarkably like American sticks.

I suppose there's an argument to me made for sticks having been the first human tools, although Kubrick focused on the bone in his famous cinematic rendering of an evolutionary epiphany.

"Stick" is one of those words poets need to keep nearby. Verb and/or noun, with multiple meanings in both parts of speech. A single, brisk syllable. Open to rhyming. A doorway to numerous subjects.

"Stick a feather in your cap, and call it macaroni." Now, that is a folk-song line that continues to perplex me. "No, thank you, I don't have a cap, and if I did, I wouldn't want to stick a feather in it, and even if I stuck a feather in a cap, I wouldn't call the feather or the cap macaroni. What you're asking is excessive. Good day to you, sir."

And looping back to the semi-original topic, let me say that I am surprised (but shouldn't be) how many persons do NOT know "how to drive a stick." My son knows how to drive a car with a stick shift, and he also earned his Ph.D. in stick-driving by practicing on a 1969 Ford F-100 pickup, with none of this "syncro-mesh" nonsense, and no power steering--so while you're madly trying to get the thing in gear, you're also wrestling with the wheel.

Stick.

Stories the Mainstream Media Ought to Cover

Not that you or anyone or the mainstream media asked, but following are some stories/topics I wish the mainstream media would cover. How do I define the mainstream media? By example. Example one: Any city's large daily newspaper, and in most cases, it's just one large newspaper. Example two: large news networks, cable and otherwise. Example three: "national" dailies like the New York Times or the Christian Science Monitor.

1. Themselves. I want them to cover themselves. I know; this sounds silly. But I really would like the Tacoma News Tribune to report on how its being part of a huge chain of newspapers affects the way it reports news. I'd like the media to cover the unprecedented consolidation of the media, in other words. But of course this is a story they won't cover, and it's probably a story they can't cover because their interests and the story, arguably, conflict.

2. What is happening to soldiers and contractors who are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. What are there lives like? What are the effects of so many tours of duty and so much trauma?

3. Protests. I think the media do a lousy job of covering anti-war protests, and in some cases, I think they're missing some significant stories about the police's abuse of people and rights. Of course, being a police-person in a protest isn't an easy job. Policing isn't an easy job. Neither is protesting. Both the police and the protesters have to do things right; each has a professional responsibility, as it were. I think in some instances the police have become unprofessional and abusive. Maybe I'm wrong. It's hard to tell, though, from watching and reading mainstream news because they don't seem to dig into the story.

4. Oil. How about getting some plain facts out there? The U.S. "own" about 4% of the oil that's left and it uses about 24% of the oil worldwide. This means drilling is a moot point. Also, most of the oil from Alaska (for example) does not go to the U.S. market. It goes to the world market.

5. The extraordinary, almost unchecked growth of the Executive Branch, in terms of power. Presidents from both parties are responsible for this growth, and I'd argue that Bush II + Cheney are just an extreme example of a trend that's been growing for a long time. The issues dovetails with a lot of other ones: Church and State; the role of Congress vis a vis military action; "signing statements"; civil rights; proper responses to global warming; the imperial tendencies of the U.S.

6. Poetry. I'm kidding. I really don't need the mainstream media to cover poetry. On the other hand, if they just read some great poems out loud on TV, that might fill time better than some of their stories. Who knows?

7. What is everyday life like for most people in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places around the globe?

Unexpected Turns in Poems

Here is a short poem by Irene Rutherford Mcleod, a British poet born in 1891. The poem is from an anthology published in 1920 and edited by Louis Untermeyer. I like the poem, especially the first two stanzas. The last stanza presented me with something I hadn't expected and to which I didn't respond all that favorably.

Is Love, Then, So Simple

By Irene Rutherford Mcleod

Is love, then, so simple my dear?
The opening of a door,
And seeing things all clear?
I did not know before.

I had thought it unrest and desire
Soaring only to fall,
Annihilation and fire:
It is not so at all.

I feel no desperate will,
But I think I understand
Many things, as I sit quite still,
With Eternity in my hand.

Great title and great first line, in my opinion. We're used to reading poems and other things that complicate love. Mcleod decides to go against that grain and present love as simple. In the middle stanza, the poem seems to disrupt conventional poetic treatments of love, such as those found in traditional sonnets, famous for their intentionally over-blown rhetoric.

I found myself still very much in sync with the poem through the first half of line 3 in the last stanza, but "With Eternity in my hand" is surprisingly conventional and grandiose. I didn't see that turn in the poem coming, and when it arrived, I didn't like it. I think I may have preferred an image of the two people who are "in" the poem--the hint of a scene, a suggestion of intimacy, but nothing over the top. I still like the poem, and in some ways, I like the fact that Mcleod chose to end it in a way I wouldn't have ended. I don't mind differences of opinion and tactics between me (as a reader and poet) and another poet. It's pleasurable to see another poet making a different choice, and other readers may have good reasons for liking Mcleod's choice here. I still like the poem also because the deliberately plain rhetoric, combined with a lyric-form, works nicely. The form is traditional, but the rhetoric is modern, especially by 1920 standards.

About The Author, All Right, Already

A genre unto itself is the "about the author" page or paragraph that appears on the back of a book, on a dust-jacket, or at the end of a book, among other places. I've had to write such things, or edit ones editors have written about me, and they're awkward and artificial. It's a form of bragging, of course, so there's really no lovely way to write the thing; on the other hand, I suppose a reader or two might want some information about the author.

For a while, in the 1960s and 1970s, it became not just customary but obligatory for poets, in the "about the author" paragraph, to mention what sorts of things they'd done besides writing (or teaching), and the more gritty, the better. So male poets especially mentioned that they had picked fruit for a living, or shipped out on a freighter, or worked as a fry-cook. At some point in the late 1970s, maybe the early 1980s, I remember the poet Philip Levine, who had working-class roots, implicitly mocking such references in an "About the Author" paragraph; he wrote something like, "Philip Levine has held a variety of stupid jobs."

Anyway, a while back, I was playing around with a send-up of the about-the-author pieces, including the ones I've written and read about me.

About the Author, All Right, Already

Wagging the Marsupial is Shillbay Scrum's thirteenth
book of poetry. Scrum is a member of the National
Academy of Poets (NAP) and has been on the receiving end
of a Flugelhorn Grant, a Braunschnoz Prize, and the
Agewart Medal from the American Awardamantine
Foundation. Violet Redbeak, Monopoly Professor
of Literature at Varhard University, has written
of Scrum, "His work amorously massages our eyeballs
and testifies with aching penance to the beauty of
ugliness. His unique, piquant, uncompromising voice
scrapes our nasal passages and reminds us that
we are human, not amphibian." Scrum
is Extinguished Professor of Rarity at Central
Pomp State University, Brine-Wreck-on-Hudson,
where he has never taught. He divides his time
between New York and New York. Scrum's next
book of poems will be his fourteenth.

In A City

In A City


Anyway, you're in whatever city the city is,
the one next to a harbor or a river or both or
a lake, toxic water at any rate, and of course
a big percentage of the buildings are tall--
density is money--and prestige is squeezed
into selected leased spaces, and you stop,
take effects in via senses conditioned by
memory, reason, digital imaging, and
Pavlovian repetition, and in spite of it all,
you think, "Well, I'm glad no overt war appears
to be occurring here, and I can breathe, kind
of, and these people sure work hard, but this
isn't very good, this spectacle, this big-ass
urban production, this extraordinary
collection of hard surfaces, motors, pipelines,
wires, and compressed gases," and you yawn,
and a stranger is gratuitously but unoriginally
rude to you in a way that elicits pity for
yourself, the other person, and everyone,
including the bustlers bustling past.

Hans Ostrom

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

A September Poem by Auden

Here is one of W.H. Auden's more famous poems, "September 1, 1939." It's famous in part because it responds to Germany's invasion of Poland and what people knew would be the beginning of a European war. It's also known for being a poem that Auden himself came not to like. He went so far as to remove it from collections, alleging that he didn't like the line "we must love each other or die," asserting that whether we love each other or not, we die--but I think even he knew that that wasn't the original rhetorical point in the line. I especially appreciate how the poem replicates a complicated, multifaceted response to an event of terrible global impact, and how it demonstrates Auden's comfort with many different levels and sources of diction and vocabulary.



The poem appears on the Academy of American Poets site.




September 1, 1939


by W. H. Auden



I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.


Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.


Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.


Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.
Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.


The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.


From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
"I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?


All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.


Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

Updates are Ready to Install

[image is of the Magna Carta]








Updates Are Ready to Install


USA needs to reboot
the republic, erase viruses
of repacity, racism, monopoly,
milidustry. USA needs to enlarge
its memory and improve its
applications. Also, the simpler
computations have yet to be
completed: feed the hungry,
house the homeless, love
the cast aside, lift the worker,
limit the powerful. Let people
mediate their own media,
decide what's news to them.
Let us click and drag unused
icons to the recycle-bin. Let
justice and old Magna-Carta
ways rise to the level of
the desktop. Let USA
interface with its ideals,
become user-friendly
to citizens of the commons.

Hans Ostrom

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

If

If


If the clock were to stop,
time wouldn't notice. If
the creek ran dry, it wouldn't
run at all. If "if" didn't exist,
I'm sure the other words
would miss it. If there
weren't any war, we'd
be much better off, and
that reasoning's too obvious,
and if one says such a simple
thing, then one might be
accused of using "if" as a happy
hallucinogen. Then again,

if we don't think of its and
the imaginary whats they inspire,
then we might as well proceed
to stop proceeding at all and act
as if all the possibilities
had already up and iffed
themselves away.

Hans Ostrom

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Novel: A Sonnet

When I was at Powell's Book Store in Portland recently, I saw a volume of "three-sentence novels" by a European writer. I should have purchased the book, but I'll track it down eventually.

The book reminded me of some "one-page novels" that a former professor of mine, the late Elliot Gilbert, used to write. Elliot was a marvelous professor of Victorian literature, wrote smartly on Kipling (of all people), and also knew a lot about such topics as detective fiction. He was married to the noted poet and feminist critic, Sandra Gilbert.

In any event, I decided to write a "novel" in fourteen lines--a novel stuffed into a sonnet.


Novel: A Sonnet

There was a place where people lived a long,
Long time. They soaked the place with their despair
And overloaded it with lore and song.
And then one day a stranger traveled there.
His presence was an irritant and salve,
Of course--that dual role which strangers play.
He saw someone and something he must have.
His getting them, however, would betray
A secret waiting for him all along.
A certain pressure grew under the weight
of character and fate combined. A wrong
Occurred and love turned into hate.
In more detail, the story stretches out
Three hundred fifty pages, or thereabouts.


Hans Ostrom

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Veep

At moments like these, it's a pleasure to be a part of academia because one can wander the halls and ask political scientists (PS) what they think of McCain's choice for the candidate for Vice President.

1. PS #1: I cannot explain the choice, so I will not try to explain the choice.

2. PS #2: Whether the choice is good or not depends entirely on who wins the spin-game. The GOP will try to spit the choice as a) good for women [an appeal to women who voted for Senator Clinton] and b) good for conservatives. The Dems will spin it as . . . this person is not qualified to be president, should McCain be elected and then perish.

3. PS #3: The selection makes no sense. Strictly from a political standpoint, it is nutty.

A mere poet, I watch in fascination and wonder why McCain didn't select Kay Hutchinson if the tactic was to appeal to women and conservatives. or Mike Huckabee if the tactic was to appeal to conservatives and those interested in "executive experience."

My own opinion, which is at least worthless, is that McCain had some kind of appeal-to-women in mind but is insecure and did not want to select someone from the primary-race and is also impulsive to the point of recklessness.

I also treaded online turf and sought opinions about the worst vice presidents in history. Of course, one must be a vice president of the U.S. first before one is judged, so McCain's or Obama's choices must first be elected to be eligible to be judged.

Anyway, apparently Burr [dismissed as Veep-candidate, he eventually killed Alexander Hamilton]; Calhoun; Tyler; Agnew [even Nixon thought Agnew was not qualified to hold the post--ouch]; and Quayle. The newspaper The Guardian in the U.K. gave Teddy Roosevelt, Al Gore, Lyndon Johnson, and Dick Cheney high marks. That last one puzzled me; after all, Dick did get liquored up and then proceeded to shoot his friend in the face, he lost his composure badly in the Senate, and he probably egged Bush II to occupy Iraq, out a CIA agent, and conduct illegal wiretaps. On the other hand, Dick has made the most of the post, so I guess that's the logic.

I couldn't unearth any information about Vice Presidents and poetry, but I'm still looking.

I think that after several decades of observing politics, I have come to the point at which I regard presidential politics especially as a kind of surreal poem. Of course, I do wish our nation and the rest of the world the best, but I must confess I do not understand politics as much more than a spectacle which, nonetheless, does affect people's lives, eventually. On the other hand, Veep rhymes with Jeep, so there's that.

C'est le guerre.

Liberal Professors

It seems as if at least once a year, somebody publishes a book about how almost all college professors are liberal, and I notice that this Glenn Beck fellow devoted a show to advising conservative students how to survive and thrive at colleges, which Glenn seems to think are all liberal.

Of course, there are lots of problems with the assumption that most college professors are liberal. There's the definitional problem. Indeed, to political economists, "liberal" still refers to so-called free-market expansion connected to some kind of republican (small r) captitalism. Last year, for example, I heard an economist say that the occupation of Iraq was an experiment in bringing "liberal capitalism" to the Middle East, and he meant liberal as in Adam Smith not as in George McGovern.) Also, "liberal" and "conservative" have been pummeled, misused, and food-processed in the media so much that they'e become empty signifiers. Murray Edelman has observed that, to create a political spectacle, one has to create enemies, and one way to do that is to soil the category-name of your political opponents.

It used to be that environmentalists were automatically judged to be liberal, but with big chunks of glaciers melting daily, etc., environmentalism has become what I have long suspected it to be: practical. Neither Left nor Right but Necessary. People used to mock recycling as a Lefty idea, but now municipalities have well oiled (so to speak) recycling programs, ho -hum. Vaguely responsible fiscal policy used to be associated with conservatives, but the most fiscally conservative president since 1980 has been . . . Clinton, according to the data, and the most fiscally giddy has been Bush II, who cut taxes during a war, which is kind of like quitting your job and maxing out your credit cards at the same time. It's as conservative as a drunken first-time gambler playing craps in Las Vegas. Whoopee!

Maybe the real problem with the liberal-professors thesis, however, is that the people purveying it don't know what professors do most of the time. For example, today I was advising freshmen about what classes to take. What did we discuss? Where they're from, how well they do in math, what their short-term and long-term interests are, and (drum-roll please) what classes will actually have seats left in them when this group registers on Friday. The only political topic that came up was whether to try to take introduction to American politics or introduction to political theory, and once again, the choice hinged mainly on what was open. So even if I had wanted to advocate on behalf of my eccentric politics, I wouldn't have had the time or opportunity.

More to the point, I don't have the slightest interest in advocating on behalf of my politics. I'm tired of my political ideas because I hear them all the time in my own head. 'm much more interested in what students's political views are and even more interested in how they express and support the views. That is, I'm interested in their rhetoric (not in the sense of "empty rhetoric" or "political rhetoric," but in the sense of how they present arguments, go through a reasoning process, and make appeals to authority, history, logic, and so on.) Also, in my experience (mostly from observation), if you want to be sure to dissuade young adults of your views, political or otherwise, try to convince them of the views. Parents of teenagers and young adults will know whereof I speak.

Professors spend a lot of time preparing for class, reading essays or lab reports, going to committee meetings, trying to carve out time to do research, driving their kids to soccer-practice, going to the grocery store, attempting to do something helpful to the cardio-vascular system, blogging, checking email, and so on. If there is a professor out there who wants to distribute copies of the Communist Manifesto to his or her students, I 'd bet that he or she has lost the copies somewhere in the back of the station wagon or under heaps of students' essays on the desk.

So if you saw Glenn Beck's show or read one of these books, and if you're conservative, and if you're worried about liberal professors, I hereby give you permission to chill out. On the list of things to worry about, you probably want to place "liberal professors" at around the 50,243rd slot, or lower. Seriously.

On the other hand, if you're worried that certain professors will induce students to read poetry, then your concerns are well founded. Poetry strikes fear into liberals and conservatives alike. Iambic pentameter--the great equalizer.

Duke Ellington

Some words remembering Duke Ellington:









Duke Ellington


The headline from the Sacramento Bee
Announced that Ellington had died. I think
The article may have referred to him as one
Of those things he really was. They got
It right, if I recall: they said he was
"A treasure"--treasure lost to us, to me,
Who'd only just begun to understand
What I'd been blessed to witness when I spent
A few buck on a ticket for a concert in
A cafeteria--a break from writing essays for
My English 1-B class. I got to hear
Duke Ellington--in a junior-college cafeteria.
That night I was as privileged as a prince
Who'd seen and heard Mozart conduct.
Mere Rocklin was my Salzburg, Duke's jazz
Demotic classical. Duke Ellington had passed,
The headline said. I thought of him, spotlit
That night, a black tuxedo, and the hair
Brushed back. That's how he must have looked
As he strolled past Archangel Gabriel.
To Gabe he may have said, "We love you madly--
But try it in a minor key this time."
When I saw him, I was 18 and thought
I knew just what Duke Ellington deserved.
"He's royalty," I thought, "does not deserve
This gig on cold linoleum." Time is
No satin doll who puts her arms
Round you, and now I think I' may have learned
What Mr. Ellington believed that he deserved:
To write, to play, and to conduct, as long
As God would let him, and anywhere the bus
Or train or plane might go. The music does
Not know it's in the cafeteria, or in
A segregated Cotton Club. And Mr. Ellington,
The evidence suggests, could take care of himself.
Ah, heaven's black piano's always tuned.
The A-train glides like silk into the night.
In Davis, California, and in Harlem, you
Can see the sky, and hear "Mood Indigo."

Hans Ostrom

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

How to Get Ideas For Poems

Occasionally, persons who are not, or who do not see themselves as, writers of poetry, fiction, drama, and the like ask persons who do write such stuff, "How do you get ideas for [poetry, fiction, drama, etc.]?" I can't speak for all or really any of such writers; nonetheless, I suspect some of them might agree with my sense that a lot of writers find it fairly easy to "get ideas." It's the writing itself that is sometimes, maybe even often, the difficulty. It's one thing to have a good or great idea for a short story. It's another to write that short story, and it's still another to make that story as good as you think it needs to be.

In any event, a while back I wrote a poem about how to get ideas for poems. Perhaps the title is too obvious. I'm not sure.





How to Get Ideas for Poems


It's surprisingly easy. Since you're already in
your mind, even if others claim you're not, just
look around in there and see what's on the shelves
and prairies, in the tunnels and trade-shows::
sharks, appliances, jeans, turnips, primal scenes.
Maybe foaming dog-mouths full of teeth.

Scan acres and acres of words--native, transplanted,
farmed, found, pilfered, grafted, milled, mulched. It's
a little known fact that poems are made of words.

Allergies and outrages are good. Grudges, too.
Love? Sure. Why not? Do what you have to do.
You and your mind are already in the world,
in spite of jokes philosophers tell, so you don't
have to make special trips to peaks, Paris,
bull-fighting rings, deserts, or dance-halls
to find what advertisers call inspiration.

If you want inspiration, just keep breathing.
(If you want anything, just keep breathing.)
The poems will follow. Some ideas will cling
the way stickers stab socks when you walk
through brush and grass. Others will settle--
shadow, soot, silt, and shock. Some will pound
on the mind's door like a drunken neighbor
who came back to the wrong house. Some

will whisper and mumble like spies, gossips,
gamblers, and prophets. Basically, just
let it slip that you're a poet. The news
will get around your mind, and there will be
no end to the ideas. You'll have to
fight them off with poems.


Hans Ostrom

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

The Scorpion King II

We subscribe to cable television, and so we have access to something like 31,238 channels. However, we tend to be interested in only about 6 of them, two or three that run different iterations and re-runs of Law and Order, a couple of so-called "news channels," and channels that give us access to BBC news, programs, and movies. I also like to watch C-Span, the fundamentalist Christian "network," the Weather Channel, and other anomalies.

On one of these selected channels, I saw an advertisement for the DVD of a movie called Scorpion King II. I haven't seen Scorpion King [I], but I think it may have been produced by the unusual people who are in charge of professional-wrestling-entertainment.

I've seen only a couple scorpions in my life, so I'm no expert, but I don't think scorpions are ruled by a monarchy. The scorpions I met seemed like they would rebel against the very idea of a hereditary monarchy, in fact.

However, I gather the scorpion monarchy has not been in place for a long time, as it is now ruled only by its second King. Some monarchies consolidate power via marriage, so maybe the Scorpion King will marry the Princess of Spiders or Lady Bug, who will then become the Scorpion Queen.

Interestingly, I saw no scorpions in the advertisement for The Scorpion King II. Most of the images seemed to be of young body-builders with lubricated upper bodies. They seem to be running and carrying swords from the studio's collection of swords.

The language such advertisements borrow from alleged reviews of the product being offered is a bit like exhausted poetry. For example, the quotations mentioned in this advertisement included the following: "Non-stop action!" "Bone-crushing excitement!"

I like movies in which the action stops occasionally. I like it when people stop chasing each other or hacking off limbs, sit down, and have a conversation. Also, at some point, the action in all movies needs to stop after an hour or two, don't you think? At some point, the credits have to run. As for bone-crushing excitement, I am ambivalent, at best. I can't envisage liking excitement that would result in the crushing of bones.

I don't think I'm going to rent or purchase the DVD for The Scorpion King II. If there is a so-called "Nature" show--on a Public Broadcasting channel--that focuses on scorpions, I am likely to watch it for a while, however.

The Poem Is

The Poem Is


The poem is a woman who
would sing if she weren't so
weary. The poem is a man
who would get up and fight
if he weren't so old. The poem
is a child who would come out
of the room if the world
weren't so strange.

The poem is a mountain
that would be green if
water flowed there. The
poem is a city that would
treat people right if only it
weren't a city. The poem

wants to meet a poem
that understands what
it's like to be the kind of
poem the poem is.

The poem would be epic
if it were arrogant. It would be
lyric if it weren't so lonely.

The poem breaks like a dry
stick and heals itself
miraculously and leans
on itself as it takes a walk
through the woods. The
poem thinks magically.
That is the job of the poem.

The Waiting Room

The Waiting Room


The room waited. No,
that's not true. The room
was empty, so we said
it had been waiting for people
to enter it. They entered
it. We were already there,
waiting. We watched them.
They waited. All over the
planet, operators are
standing by. A man is being
recorded shouting, "But
wait--there's more!" "What
are you waiting for?: that
is a command poorly
disguised as a question.
"I can't wait": this is best
translated as "I am saying
something as I wait." Once
someone told me, "Wait
here." I did so. I am in
fact still waiting. Here.


Hans Ostrom

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Democracy Today

Democracy Today

A politician's head swelled
and burst out of a televising screen,
crashing onto the floor of my room,
rolling to my feet, where it lay,
face up, a grin glued on like a photo
of a keyboard, eyes fixed wide open,
genderless features painted
with studio-makeup, hair
formed like fine-spun fiberglass,
forehead shining like porcelain.

I howled, jumped up, ran
out the door into the street,
where everyone wore masks
that looked like the face on
the floor of the room I'd fled.
"We're all going to vote!" the
masked crowd cried.
"You will join us!"


Hans Ostrom

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

For Rose-Gardeners

Is there a flower that humans have been more obsessed by than the rose? Maybe the cherry-blossom; and, indeed, the rose-obsession may be more Western--Greco-Roman/Euro-American--than Eastern. And it's a bit ironic that the rose itself is a bush, a shrub, and of course the cherry is a tree.

Lilies, orchids, daffodils, and poppies have all drawn their share of attention. But especially in Western religious and poetic traditions, the rose seems to have it all going on. Bill the Bard, Robert Burns, Bill Blake, Gertrude Stein, Jean Genet, and even George Eliot (in a wee poem) have famously weighed in on the rose. Rose-poems must number in the millions.

To those who grow roses--or, more accurately, assist roses in their growth--the rose tends to discard its several cultural symbols and starts to represent work, a battleground (chiefly person v. fungus and person v. aphid), a vegetative entity with diva-like whims but also astonishing resilience, and unrequited love. Yes, rose-gardeners fall in love with their roses, in many cases. It's not a pretty sight. That's when the whole thorn v. blossom mythology kicks in.

I had a 20-year fling with roses. Mulching, pruning, spraying (I stuck to organic sprays like neem oil, and a mild, non-detergent soapy spray does just fine with aphids), weeding, staring. A lot of staring. And sighing--in frustration. Fertilizing (I liked organic fertilizers). There is, of course, the illusion that it's all worth it--such as when you pick what really looks like the perfect rose--a blossom, say, from a Mister Lincoln--and the color & perfume really do almost make you swoon, and then you show it to someone else, and they almost swoon. From different objective distances, however, one may raise all sorts of objections to the time and energy spent on roses, to the Rose Industry (floral shops, rose "breeders," garden shops), and to the culture's rose-fetish.

Oddly enough, the most amazing roses I've seen are wild ones growing in a pasture in the Sierra Nevada. They basically turn into huts--an igloo of vines. Once one of our neighbors read about how much Vitamin C was in rose hips--those knots that grow after the petals have fallen--and she began to brew and drink rose-hip tea. Apparently the wild rose-hips had something else in them, however, because she got a little loopy and had to give up the tea. Jonesing for rose-hips. Wow.

Solid tips I picked up over the years: in the Pacific Northwest, prune roses on or near President's day; prune roses into a kind of bowl-shape, and attempt to eliminate the branches on the inside (roses seem to need some space "inside" to ventilate themselves; don't over-fertilize (I know: but what does that mean?) ; checking for aphids is actually more important than waging war on them (when you see them, spray a mild solution of Ivory soap on them; also, ladybugs really do like to dine on aphids).

In the imaginary court of gardening, roses and I reached an amicable rose-divorce. When I stroll past an impressive rose garden, I am most intrigued--and then fatigued, as I imagine all that work, the constant attention.

I did exceptionally well with two kinds of roses, both venerable--Queen Elizabeth and Mister Lincoln, one pink and the other red. I did okay with Peace roses, too, and I had pretty good luck with yellow roses--Sun Sprite was one I liked. A rose called Oklahoma did not do well in the Pacific Northwest, at least for me (and I'm a rank amateur), but that one had my favorite rose-aroma. Roses by other names didn't smell as sweet, nyuk, nyuk.

A poem, then, for rose-gardeners (I think it's in iambic tetrameter):

For Rose-Gardeners

To one who cares for roses, rose
Refers to the whole plant; the flow-
Ers are a kind of coda. To one
Who cares, the tale is in the soil,
Which should be dark and rich and loose.
It should be mulched, and it should breathe,
Perhaps give off a faint bouquet
Of chocolate. The tale proceeds
In pulpy roots of rose, and in
The branches which shoot up so fast
The green-and-purplish growth can seem
A little other-worldly. Leaves
Have much to say as well. They should
Be waxy and deep green but are
Impressionable, go black or brown
Or yellow from the merest wink
Of fungus. Thorns amaze--ornate
Medieval armor for a plant. If
The flowers come and keep coming,
Then one who cares for roses has
Assisted earth and plant to tell
The story well and now may stare,
May bend to sniff perfume or clip
In twilight of a long ritual--
The caring for the whole rose plant.

For Groundskeepers

On a rainy Monday in the Pacific Northwest, here's some blank verse for groundskeepers.





For Groundskeepers


At universities and schools, at parks
And hospitals, at bureaus and museums,
Banks and supermarkets, rows of shops,
Amidst steel and glass, beside the wood,
The brick, the concrete, walls, walks, facades,
In stadia at which rich athletes play,
There are the grounds, that space where those who plan
Our public spaces want to keep the Earth,
A.K.A. Nature, domesticated--kept
As in maintained. And after builders have
Departed and investors disappeared,
Now that the planners have moved on to plan
Their other things, responsibility for care
Resides exclusively with those who keep
The grounds; who dig and clip and weed and care,
Remove what's dead, restrain the growth that has
Become obese or weird. "Groundskeeper" is
One name by which they go. They are by all
Accounts almost invisible, paid not enough,
And tasked too much, no doubt, but genial
In most respects, it seems; the work with soil
And shrub, with grass and tree, must teach
A kind of patience; people who pass by,
Oblivious to the keeping grounds require,
Must also cultivate a sanguine view.
The litterer, the snob, the ones who've never
Held a shovel, wheeled a barrow: no sense
In getting angry at such folks, who are
Less sensitive than plants. Ah, well: Here's thanks
To those who keep our grounds, who care for our
Exteriority. Our cities and our towns,
The places where we work and where
We recreate would be oppresive or
Hard blighted spaces, were it not
For ones with barrows, clippers, spades.
Appreciation's due to those who keep
For us the grounds, who keep them up for us.

Hans Ostrom


Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom