Seen and Overheard

Seen and Overheard


A man walked his dog near
fir trees and spoke into a mobile
phone. He said, "How's your puppy?"
Then louder, "How's your puppy?"
Louder: "How's . . . your . . .pup-py?!"
Finally he said, "HOW'S YOUR DOG?"


This question worked. He listened
to the answer. His dog urinated on
a fir tree, lifted its nose, sampled
air. "My dog is good, too," the man
said into the phone. Then he said,
"It has been great talking to you."
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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

The Ambitionator

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The Ambitionator

Climb into the Ambitionator. Hear it

power up. Strap yourself in. Adjust

the goggles. On the screen, see your

dreams come true. Feel the force

of being in charge. Hear the acclaim.

Oops, time to power down. No,

I'm afraid it's just a ride. Yes,

you have to get out. No, you're

not anyone special. That's why

the ride feels so good. Yes,

you'd have to get in line again,

buy a ticket. If I were you, I'd

find a cafe, sit down, and be

obscure and you. The Ambitionator

is just a ride, my friend. You're

nobody in a carnival. I'm nobody

who works in one. This, my friend,

is the strangest ride of all, our lives.

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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Seeding

I'm almost two seasons off with this poem, as it chiefly concerns the seeds and seeding of Fall. However, one could argue, if one were making excuses, that Fall's payoff is about to occur. All those seeds, etc., have been biding their time, waiting for the Earth, Sun, and even the Moon to do their gravitational dance and bring on just enough sunlight, warmth, and moisture. I also allude to Darwin indirectly by mentioning Evolution, and (as I'm sure you know) it's the 150th birthday of Chuck's Origin of Species, which I read in a graduate course that was dedicated to the year 1859 in England. We red a Dickens novel and an Eliot one and lots of poetry (including Meredith's Modern Love) and essays. My particular task was to "follow" the London Times month by month in 1859--on microfilm. Oy.

The course was taught by the late Elliot Gilbert, Kipling specialist (oddly enough) but also one of the first academics to take detective literature seriously. He published a nice anthology with critical commentary with Bowling Green State University. . . .

I also mention God in the poem. I didn't ever see a particular conflict between God and Evolution, but I'm probably missing something, as usual.


Seeding


Out of the orange smoke
of California poppies materialize
thin sage-green scrolls, in which
tiny prophecies of next year's
poppies harden, darken. Lupine-
pods go black-grey, too. They bulge
and stiffen, bags of loot. Dill
supports its canopy of seeds with
spindly architecture. Hollow-boned
sparrows perch on these green, frail
stalks, gorge. They will defecate
seeds later, encasing them in
hot, effective nitrogen, part of
a plan Evolution stumbled on
way back when When didn't
exist yet. Earth backs off a bit
from Sun, tells a hemisphere
of vegetation to go to seed. A
deluge of cones, pods, hips, sacs,
fronds, and fruits surges across
one terrestrial moment in space,
predicting vegetation's recurrence
and able to deliver the goods, already
outlasting Winter yet to come.
Seeding is a vast, well organized,
ordinary miracle. Seeding is God
at God's most professional. It is a
counter-apocalypse of indetermination.
Fall concerns ferocious patience
and thinks several moves ahead.


first published in Sierra Journal 2006, Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Fallability Sonnet

I think I already posted this sonnet once, but it couldn't hurt to post it again, as even more imperfections have piled up in the meantime.

The Fallability Sonnet


My fallability has tripped me up
Again. I've fallen on the gravelly ground
Of imperfection. I would like to cut
This nonsense out, but no; my flaws have found

A way to find me even when I seem
To have evaded them successfully.
They just show up. They are a well trained team--
And venerable. Yes, some have been with me

So long, I look at them with a strange mix
Of loathing, dread, familiarity.
Of course I have some antidotal tricks
And textual guides. Spirituality

Assists. Self-admonition, too.
Regret. I sigh. But still: what's one to do?

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Copyright Hans Ostrom 2009

Important Contacts

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Important Contacts

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Talk to the wind, the perfect listener. It

will carry your words with it gladly. Rant

your rage at fire, the perfect anger. Fire

consumes even itself. Worry with Winter,

the perfect concern, the chill-factor. It

will fold your fears into its cold clouds sadly.

Connive with the sun, which loves news

and gossip and tries to get around to visiting

with everyone at some point every day.

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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Punctuation Meditation

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Punctuation Meditation

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The exclamation point isn't a point. It's a line and

a point together--a verticle board photographed

in air just above a soccer ball. The period is a

point, but a point's not a period any more than

a day is an era. A dash doesn't move, so it should

change its name. "Super-comma" is a

more marketable name for the semi-colon,

especially since a period is half a colon, whereas

a semi-colon is a leaking point. What

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does a sickle hanging above a dot have to do

with questions? When words want to pretend

they're not there, they hide between brackets,

but nobody's fooled. When they want to whisper,

they pull parentheses close like curtains, but

everybody can hear. The slash lived in obscurity

for centuries. Lots of marks did. Then came

computers. Now every squiggle and scratch

is a celebrity living in hypertext. How weird, period.

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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Titles of New James Bond Films

It appears as if the James Bond cinematic franchise is as permanent as the McDonalds beef, chicken, spuds, and sugar franchise. I'm not a real Bond fanatic, but I've seen most if not all the movies, and there is a certain campy, ritualistic pleasure to be had, regardless of how good or bad the films actually are. Bond films seem to come around in Winter, like a wee pretty snowstorm. So we watch.

I was pleasantly surprised by Daniel Craig's performances, but I probably shouldn't have been. Craig seems to be a talented, well trained, experienced actor. So much so that the execrable script of his second Bond film made me wince. The way I found to get through this film (what is it called--Quantum of Solace, Mountain of Lettuce?) is, for me, a well worn one: watch fine actors try to make the most of a bad script and muddled direction. So I watched Dame Judy Densch, Daniel Craig, Jeffrey Wright (from Basquiat, remember?), and Giancarlo Giannini get through as best they could, although Giannini seemed to let his boredom show occasionally.

Just in case the Bond franchise runs out of titles for the new films, I am here to help:

1. Never Say "Thunderball" Again

2. The Spy Who Spied On Me Without a Warrant

3. Golden Finger in the Eye

4. On His Majesty's Secret Elliptical Trainer

5. Dr. Maybe

6. From North Dakota, With Corn

7. A View To a Nap

8. Diamonds Are On Sale At The Mall

9. The Man With the Golden Gold

10. Octofussy

11. When Is Bond Not On Vacation?

12. M, Q, F, and U

13. Enough Already Forever Tomorrow

14. License To Snack

I do not expect to hear from Cubby Broccoli's family soon.

I Dropped Keats's Grecian Urn

Dropping Keats's Grecian Urn


I dropped Keats's Grecian Urn
on a tile floor today. Luckily
the thing existed only on paper
in the weighty anthology that
slipped from my hands. Still
the imaginary sound of ancient
pottery hitting mass-produced
tile was terrible and beautiful.
It made me feel guilty and thrilled.
I picked up the book and made
sure Keats's poem was all right.
Not a scratch.

"Beauty is Truth, and Truth,
Beauty": great phrasing, the kind
that gets a poem anthologized.
I like the sound of it, but I never
knew what it meant because it
went in a circle like a toy-train,
and a lot of truth is damned
ugly, and some beauty is an
illusion, which some people
consider to be different from truth.

--Like my opinion matters to Keats
or anyone else, though. Anyway,
the timeless urn is timelessly encased
in Keats's oft-reprinted words, which
are always awake and ready to conjure
images and thoughts. One way to make
your pottery unbreakable is to put it
in poetry. Pottery/poetry. That's one thing
I got out of the poem a long time ago.

True, in words, the pottery's less
beautiful, and it won't hold much liquid, but
you can always pick it up with your
eyes or your ears and hold it in
your mind's hands, never pay to
insure it, and not worry about dropping it.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

How To Write An Essay (A Poem)

Amongst English teachers--middle school, high school, college--there is something of an eternal disagreement about whether to teach students to write papers in the venerable form known as the five-paragraph essay: introduction, three "body" paragraphs, conclusion, and Bob's-your-uncle. (There's no doubt a lesser debate about whether to write "amongst" or "among." I simply like the look and sound of "amongst." I have no doubt that copy-editors have changed it to "among" in pieces I've written that were headed to publication. And may I say that copy-editors are unsung heroes?)
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I won't rehearse all the arguments here, but even if you're far from the madding crowd of English teachers (and liking the distance), you may have already deduced that the basic disagreement is about whether to teach students an alleged formula (or "mold" in which to pour words) or to teach them how to write in a more process-oriented, organic way. By "organic" I don't mean pesticide-free, although I do like students to turn in essays that aren't sprayed with pesticides. I mean that the the shape of the essays springs from the writing and thinking itself, even as the student has absorbed many conventions of thinking, analysis, expression, and yes, even form (such as "the paragraph").
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A while back I decided to write a poem about the subject, not really to take sides (although my attitude, in a nutshell, has always been, "But what if the essay needs a sixth paragraph to be successful?"), but just to play with and perhaps release some of the pent-up professional frustration that attaches itself to this debate, which must seem to have extremely low stakes indeed.
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The poem was published in a journal called Writing on the Edge--right beside an essay that actually made a compelling case for a "product-oriented" approach to teaching composition if not for the five-paragraph essay, per se, although I believe the author did mention the venerable form. He emailed me later and said the poem made him laugh, and I emailed him back and said his essay made a lot of sense. So much for debate.
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The poem features examples of what's known as a mondegreen, which is a word (or phrase) that results from somehow mis-hearing or mis-understanding another word (or phrase). An example might be "[Ex]cuse me while I kiss this guy" in place of "[Ex]cuse me while I kiss the sky," from the Hendrix song. My poem features a speaker who has, and who can blame him or her, misheard or misunderstood the English teacher.



Notes in Five Paragraphs on How to Write an Essay


According to my notes, an essay
should have a niece’s statement,
which is different from a tropical
sentence. An essay should have a
beginning (how could it not?), a
middle (seems easy enough), and
an end (unlike time, which is infinite).

An essay needs evidence. Otherwise,
the perp walks. The essay’s exertions,
if my notes are right, need supporting
retail. Paragraphs require transmissions,
and the paragraph-brakes need to work.

An essay should have an interesting title,
such as “The Duke of Windsor” or
“Vampire Vixen.” The essay should not
include any logical phalluses. It should have
a good sense of its audience, even though
no one will ever actually pay to see the essay
perform in public. Oh—and it should be

grammatically erect, I am told, and it should
impose a sin-tax on its sentences. There
shouldn’t be any coma-splices or
spit-infinitives. Obviously, nobody wants
an essay to induce a coma or project saliva.

An essay must sight its sources on a
“Works Sighted” page. The essay should
be engaged to its reader, but that sounds
kind of creepy to me. In conclusion, these
are my notes on how to write an essay.


(published in Writing on the Edge, Spring 2008) Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Quotable Men

I've been browsing this book called Quotable Men of the Twentieth Century, edited by Jessica Allen (William Morrow, 1999). Oddly enough, Allen includes no preface or introduction that might have suggested the rationale for limiting the quotations to men.

Here are some quotations about government:

"Voters don't decide issues, they decide who will decide issues." --George F. Will. They may also decide when or when not to use a comma splice, apparently, too. Will's sentiment is the old hard-line Republican or republican (vs. small-d "democratic") one; institutions like the U.S. Senate are there to slow down the alleged will of the people. Wasn't James Madison a proponent of this idea? Given how the political spectacle operates and the money involved in politics, I wonder to what extent voters still decide who will decide, but perhaps I'm being too cynical. This was on page 115, by the way.

So was this, from Milton Friedman: "Governments never learn. Only people learn." Rhetorically, this is slippery, as governments are composed of people, so if people can learn, so can governments. However, some people don't learn, including Friedman, who helped get us in this financial mess, but perhaps I'm being too critical of Milt.

Also on p. 115: "Giving money and power to the government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." P.J. O'Rourke. That one brought a grin. Actually, however, I think giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to U.S. Senators. Also, we must remember that O'Rourke is something of a Reaganite, and the Reaganites always railed aginst "big guv'ment," except that they made exceptions for military-spending (which looks an awful lot like money and power) and massive deficits (which look an awful lot like money). Reagan's deficits were bigger than Carter's.

And finally, from p. 116, this from Robin Williams: "It's a wonderful feeling when your father becomes not a god but a man to you--when he comes down from the mountain and you see he's this man with weaknesses. And you love him as this whole being, not as a figurehead." Most wise indeed. I think it's a wonderful feeling for the father, too, to shed some of that figure-head status.

Time to go check on what the deciders "we" allegedly decided should decide for us decided for us.

Wilde Thoughts

I've retreated to "the library," three walls of books, one of which (books) I pulled down: The Importance of Being A Wit: The Insults of Oscar Wilde, edited by Maria Leach and published in Oxford in 1997.

From p. 54 and, originally, The American Invasion:

"The cities of America are inexpressibly tedious. The Bostonians take their learning too sadly; culture with them is an accomplishment rather than an atmosphere, their 'Hub' as they call it, is the paradise of prigs. Chicago is a sort of monster-shop, full of bustle and bores. Political life at Washington is like political life in a suburban vestry."

Take that, America! Although Wilde claimed the cities of America are inexpressibly tedious, he seems to have expressed the tediousness well enough. I think there's still a sense in which Americans learn sadly, or think they should learn sadly, especially at colleges that position themselves as "traditional" in one sense or another. Of course, there are some colleges where learning seems to be taken not at all, so I guess things could be worse. . . . I do imagine that Wilde might have a better time in Chicago nowadays. It must have been a pretty rough "town" back then, certainly not up to his refined expectations. (Ironically, the great iconoclast comes across as a bit of a snob in this quotation.)

From p. 150 and, originally, The Critic As Artist: "Ah! It is so easy to convert others. It is so difficult to convert oneself." That's a wise one.

From p. 48 and, originally, A Woman of No Importance: "The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years." Still true, yes? Americans, the eternal teenagers.

From p. 49 and, originally, An Ideal Husband: "If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilised." I think he meant the English need to be more interesting and the Irish less self-consumed, but I'm not sure. Of course, almost all Americans still equate "talking well" (whatever that may mean) with the English and "the gift of gab" (whatever tha may mean) with the Irish. So from this side of the Atlantic, it's call good, Oscar.

And from 106, originally The Decay of Lying: "Lying and poetry are arts--arts, as Plato saw, not unconnected with each other--and they require the most careful study, the most disinterested devotion." Indeed, poets and fiction-writers sometimes forget to "lie," to change "what really happened. " Poetry isn't journalism--or autobiography, although Wordsworth really tried to make it the latter, when he wasn't trying to make it philosophy. Both philosophers and poets like to play with words, however. I think that's why Plato was so suspicious of poetry and why the early Wittgenstein was so suspicious of philosophy, why he tried to reduce it to wordless math. Auden, a most philosophical poet (at times), liked "to play with words," his chief definition of poetry.

No-transition-alert!

Wasn't Stephen Fry superb in the "biopic" about Oscar Wilde? Great casting, but also a great performance. We've been watching him and Hugh Laurie (who is now "House") in the old Jeeves and Wooster BBC show. "Just as you say, sir."

[No-conclusion-alert]

Poem In The Air

Poem In The Air

Oh, Lord, no--not another moon-poem. Oh,
yes, poetry's tethered invisibly to the moon,
which is invisibly tethered to this terrain.
Technically, the moon's not permanent,
but compared to me, it is. I walked under it

tonight--my only option, really. The moon
wasn't quite full, so it looked pinched, and
while I stared, an impulse stole my pen
and notebook and sent another moon-poem
into bright, brief, bulbous orbit. I should

have known better than to look up and stare.
I should have had my eye on the poem in the air.

Names of the Obscure

Names of the Obscure


Mr. Jiggs ran the grocery store in town. He never used
his name as an excuse for not being famous. No one ever
asked, "Hey, Jiggs, did you want to be famous?" It was
out of the question. Not so with Johnny, local mischief-artist:
A thief by age 15, in the Marines by 18, back home at 24
starting fights. He wanted fame and settled for trouble.

Meanwhile, Claude Munkerz became ever more reclusive.
With a name like that, what else was he supposed to do?
Where were "his people" from? someone once asked, not
looking for an answer. Those who made it inside Claude's
shack came back with tales of smells, guns, and incongruously
exquisite furniture. Johnny robbed Clyde (guns and cash),

left town, never came back or found fame. Jiggs let Munkerz
run a tab at the grocery. Claude paid in cash at first, then
in barter (walnut table, mahogany chair), then not at all.
He died. So did Jiggs, in Florida, after retirement. On his
lap when he had the heart attack lay People magazine--
all about famous people.

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom