Name In The Book

Name In The Book

So I called an uncle to tell him
his sister, my mother, had died,
and he said, "Well, all of our names
are written in the Book." I took this
to be a reference to preordination
if not predestination. After

the conversation, I thought
about the Book--an elegant
symbol of fate, omniscience,
or both. The when, where,
and how of our deaths are out
there, no doubt about that.

But are they fixed, as in a book
already printed? The uncle
I've never known well thinks
so. Since we don't get a good
look at the Book, the fixed
points aren't legible to us,
so my uncle's as much in
the dark as I; it's just that
he stands confidently there.

I wonder if the Book is also a
log and therefore included
the phone-call with my uncle
before the call occurred. Could
be. Who knows? I have to say,
that's how the phone-call seemed.

I wonder how people talked
about predestination before
books started getting made,
but from this uncle's point of
view, I should maybe stop
wondering so much.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Charity In Vancouver

Handouts in Vancouver, B.C.

A homeless alcoholic missing
half a smile asked me for money.
I gave him some. He said,
"Thank you. God bless you."
Moments later, we found
ourselves to be customers
in the same cafe. His use
of money to buy bread
and coffee surprised me.
I'd assumed he'd spend it
on booze to quiet tremors.

The one giving the handout
feels superior, perched to judge;
makes assumptions; and settles
into self-satisfaction. I wonder
what, if anything, he assumed
about me. I wonder if he gave me
the handout of a second thought.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

White Beard

Study: Man With White Beard

The old man's beard grew so big
it became a white cloud below
his face. Wee thunderstorms
occurred in there. Sometimes
a silver airplane from 1948
emerged, banked, and landed
on a nearby table. Behind

the beard lay the face
of a shy man whom no one
knew anymore. With the beard,
the man had grown garrulous
and querelous. He'd been
barking opinions for years.

Sometimes his family takes him
to lunch and tries to listen. They
look at the white cloud of whiskers,
which quiver when he talks. The
cloud hypnotizes them. They
don't hear the opinions coming
from the mouth behind the cloud.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Bach to Basics

Watching Bach Played


I saw a string-ensemble play
Bach's music. Each musician
leaned, turned, and swayed
in chairs differently as
they played. The women's
backs looked strong in gowns.
The men's feet in black shoes
stayed fixed to the floor.

Sometimes violin-bows poked
straight up as if probing unseen
clouds just above the players'
heads. Portly cellos had to be
held up like friendly drunks.
They mumbled low genial
gratitude. One man stood

above the players, waving
his arms and a stick as if
to try to get someone's
attention. The violinists
may have glanced at him,
I don't know, but mostly
they cuddled their polished
wooden instruments, and
let their bodies feel the music.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Taxes Make Cats Sick

As everyone except those who don't pay taxes knows, it's tax-season in the U.S. By "those who don't pay taxes," I mean those wily global capitalists. If you can run a company into the dirt, threaten nations' economies, AND get a bonus for doing all that great work, there's no way you're going to mess with anything as trivial as taxes.

Before I get to taxes and cats, I should mention that hotel-owner Leona Helmsley famously said, "Taxes? We don't pay taxes. Taxes are for the little people." Unfortunately, the government convicted her of tax-evasion, and she had to go to prison. There wasn't an immense amount to like about Leona. She was overbearing, and, a self-proclaimed perfectionist, she treated her employees terribly, humiliating them instead of interacting with them as professional employees.

Nonetheless, I had some sympathy left over for her after she got out of prison, lived as a recluse, died, and left all her money to a dog. Leaving it to a worthy non-profit would have been better, but leaving it to the dog showed just how isolated and probably almost mad she was. Apparently the dog doesn't need that much to live on (it is still alive), so I think some of the money does go to charity. "Can't buy me love . . ." does seem to apply in this case.

Anyway, we're getting ready to have our taxes "done"--quite an expression. The process requires as much work as if we figured out the taxes ourselves. The only difference is that, by having a professional fill out the forms, they're filled out correctly. That's a substantial difference.

We begin the process by scattering forms and such on the floor. We like to call this stage of the process "chaos."

The cat threw up on one of the papers. We're working on several hypotheses to explain this occurrence. 1) The cat objects to income tax. Cat's do operate in the world as if they're entitled to everything, after all. 2) The cat found an arithmetical error in the form, or it read the form and believed we'd paid too much for something--or that we should have spent the money on something cat-related. 3) The paper in question had been handled by a dog working as a cashier. 4) The cat had a hairball stuck. Most of the evidence supports 1, 2, and 3, but we haven't ruled out #4 entirely.

The upshot is that one of the supporting documents we're sending to our accountant will have a stain on it.

After we scatter the forms and other records, we fill out a booklet our accountant has given us. It's loaded with questions. Many of them seem strange to me, so strange they induced--as opposed to inspired--a poem of sorts.


Tax-Form Questions

Did you sell a medieval castle last year? If so, then go
to line 25C and wait.

Did an imaginary friend live with you more than
50% of the time last year? Did the friend pay
imaginary rent?

Did a marauding band of unfettered global
capitalists steal your retirement-fund? If so,
join the crowd, and weep in the streets.

Has anyone ever actually asked you what you'd
like your taxes to support? We thought not.

Add the total on line 36A to the total on line
1,401, 263C and divide by the total on line
6F. Then multiply by eleven. Light incense and
chant. Count on your fingers. You are ready.
Welcome to Taxland, Pilgrim.


Copyright 2009 by Hans Ostrom

Honestly!

Uh-oh: now I'm trouble. A blogging colleague and fellow poetry-enthusiast from Africa (he writes the wonderful Poefrika blog), Rethabile, has invited me to take the honesty-challenge. He writes,


"Honesty is the best policy. Yeah, right. Tell that to... too many names pop up at this. Never mind it, though. Let's play at being honest. 100% honest, this very Saturday. What with it being the first day of Spring and all.

I will be celebrating Norouz that day with family, eating Adas Pollo and drinking a nice red. Why not Australian Shiraz? But never mind that.

For Saturday, 21 March, place the Honesty badge in a post on your honest blog. By so doing, you will be inviting your honest readers to ask you an honest question each. And you swear by the skies of thunder that you will reply honestly.

Your fans are honest and good and knowledgeable enough not to ask unanswerable questions, of course. I will certainly place the badge in a post on Poéfrika, so come by and ask away. The askee has two "passes" ("no comments" in bloglese). If you can badge up a post before Saturday, by all means do so. That way we can all dream questions up, ha ha ha!"

Wow, only two passes. These are some stringent rules. Nonetheless, I'm going for it. Ask questions if you like, and I'll try to answer them honestly. Notice "try." Also notice "unanswerable questions," above.

And may Rethabile enjoy the Australian shiraz and the Adas Pollo. I just saw BOTTLE SHOCK, finally, and the Brit. who ran the famous contest in '76 (Paris) predicted that, once an American wine "beat" a French wine, all bets were off, and wine would be produced successfully around the globe--including (he predicted) Australia and South America. He also predicated Africa. I don't think I've every tasted an African wine, but I'm ready.

"Honestly!" used to be a favorite expression of my mother's--except it didn't have anything to do with honest; a rough translation might be "Good grief!" That is, she (and others of her generation) used it as an expression of frustration. I wonder how that got started. She's passed on, so I can't ask her--directly, anyway. Even if she were still here and I asked her, she might give me the cold blue stare, as if to say, "What do you mean, 'How did it get started?' It just did."

Words Effective In Poems, Experts Say

(image courtesy of International PEN organization)








Make Poems Out of Words

If in doubt, make your poems with words.
It's awfully conventional, and individual
results will vary, but usually things work
out fine. Which words? Excellent question.

Let me suggest some possibilities: hail,
moist, ax, electron, pollen, choice, chew,
choke-cherry, Tanzania,, sweat, sweet,
sulphur, gluttony, knuckle, tongue, balk,
rip, Thunder Bay, and, the, when, hence,
fennel,Lesotho, slag, Uppsala, velvet,
and torque. Spread the words out
and place additional words among so
as to create meaning and pleasure.

Stop and take a look at what you've
arranged so far. Then rearrange
the words, as necessary. Rely
on instincts. If you need more words,
remember that English contains
between half a million and a million
words, that there are hundreds of
other languages, and that you may
create your own words. I myself
invented the word "consumocracy"
not long ago. This is just an example,
and I'm sure you can do better.
The number of poems
to be made of words is infinite, so
welcome to the big project.

Copyright 2009

Poems From Africa

The Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry arrived, and of course I immediately dived in.

Certainly, the editors must have felt dispirited at times (as they imply) because their task was to represent poetry from writers in nations and homelands across a whole immense continent in a wide variety of languages--all in one volume.

Some well known writers are represented, as one might expect; these include Ben Okri, Tchicaya U Tam'si, and Wole Soyinka.

One of my favorite poems so far is "Sometimes When It Rains," by Gcina Mhlophe, a poet from South Africa. Unfortunately, no other biographical information about her appears in the back of the book. "Sometimes when it rains" is a first-line refrain in five-line, free-verse stanzas, of which there are ten. The images, experiences, memories, and/or scenes depicted in each stanza get increasingly more complex, weighty, and intense, and there's also a general movement from childhood to adulthood--and toward what might be called political awareness. A poem with this design can easily become a static list-poem, but Mhlophe escapes that outcome easily. The voice is authorative, and one never gets the feeling the poem or poet is trying to do too much, so (almost paradoxically) the poem's able to achieve a lot. I think I'm going to use this poem in classes. There's so much to admire in it.

It's hard to beat a new, interesting anthology of poetry on an unseasonably cold day in the Pacific Northwest. And I'm just getting started reading it.

Tell Us How We're Doing

We went to a restaurant the other evening, and with the check, also known as a bill, came a pre-printed card on which was printed a survey about the restaurant and the server.

I almost never fill out such surveys because I don't know what the management is going to do with them, if anything. I might have mentioned that some of the lettuce in the salad was frozen, but I'd already mentioned this fact to the server, not so much to complain or whine as to alert her to a possible refrigeration-problem. Of course, my social-scientist friends would probably critique the validity of the survey itself. Usually surveys like this are titled something along the lines of "Tell Us How We're Doing."


Tell Us How We're Doing

When our global corporation defrauded
everyone, did a representative greet you
with a smile? When we built another
nuclear missile, was it delivered in a
timely fashion? After we dumped
poison into a river without warning
anyone, did you receive a Christmas
card from us? When we took away
your rights, were we dressed properly?

We value the opinions not only of
our clients but also of our victims.
Please take a few moments and let
us know how we're doing. After
you fill out the survey, present it
to the uniformed guard who is
staring at you. Thanks!


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

In The TV

I know it's eccentric of me, but I wish a lot of television-shows, even current ones, were in black-and-white. I also wish the "test-pattern" would appear now and then--the one that used to appear when they ran out of programming. Now when they run out of programming, they run program-length commercials, which aren't as fascinating as that test-pattern, which looked like an elaborate, cryptic target. I also miss all those glass tubes you could look at when someone took the back of the TV off. Televisions now are essentially computer-monitors, aren't they? Oh, well. They seem to work pretty well.

Inside the Television

Sometimes he kept the television off
so he might imagine what was in there:
a movie in which books are characters
who talk; a news-program that reports
on only one significant story per week
in unrelenting, exacting detail, commercial-
free; a series in which celebrities interview
ordinary working people and listen; the
Saw Channel; a nest of new-born birds;
a cake; shadows folded neatly like black
linen; a collection of some excellent TV-
moments from childhood; unimagined
wonders.

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Those Who Can, Learned How To

(image: cover of book about Jaime Escalante, renowned teacher

of high-school math)

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I've been glancing at some quotations about teachers; my text is the Webster's New Explorer Dictionary of Quotations (Massachusetts: Merriam Webster, 2000), pp. 408-409.
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Probably the most famous quotation about teachers is from George Bernard Shaw's play, Man and Superman: "He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches." The quotation often appears in the plural nowadays: "Those who can . . . ." The quotation has endured because it's well phrased, reflect the great appeal that "making it" entirely on one's own has, and it gives voice to bad feelings toward and memories of schooling and teachers we might harbor.

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Apparently Shaw harbored quite a few of these about the schools he attended: Wesleyan Connexional School and the Dublin English Scientific and Commercial Day School. The trouble with these schools may have begun with their names, and it continued with such lovely practices as corporal punishment.

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Later Shaw married an heiress; they were both members of the socialist Fabian Society. I don't think the heiress gave up her inheritance. Those who have the capital tend to keep it. Ironically, Shaw helped found the London School of Economics, where at least a few of the teachers, apparently, can teach, do teach, and can practice economics. I think Mick Jagger went there. He certainly seems to have learned something about amassing capital--and about dancing in a very silly way.

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A few more quotations about teaching:

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"A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops." --Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams. I assume the quotation applies to women teachers, too, and I might add that teachers can never tell where the influence starts. It's a mystery.
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"Who dares to teach must never cease to learn." --John Cotton Dana, motto composed for Kean College, New Jersey. Amen, brother Dana. You have to keep current in the subject you teach, but as importantly, you have to maintain a certain delight in learning. And the next class-session is the none you have to do well in, regardless of how well or poorly the last session went. I don't know if Kean College still exists. I'm going to check.

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Of course, all of us learn from and teach each other all the time. That's pretty much how society and culture work. If you don't know, you ask; if you see someone struggling to figure something out, and you know something about it, you offer to show them how the thing works. If you can, and if you have the opportunity, teach someone who can't, provided they appear to be open to the idea of learning. Random acts of instruction, and all that.

Air Voltaire

(image: Voltaire)








Before Air Jordan (the U.S. basketball player, not the airline), there was Air Voltaire, although I'm not sure he actually went by that nickname.

However, in the image above, he certainly is styling, even if he doesn't seem to be leaping, sinking jump-shots, playing suffocating defense, or making lots of commercials. Voltaire was in favor of so-called "free trade," so if he were alive today, he might do American Express adverts or maybe ones for travel in France.

Actually, "Voltaire" itself is a nickname, or at least a pseudonym--for François Marie Arouet, born 1694, died 1778, and most famous, of course, for having written Candide. In his own lifetime, he was more famous for pamphlets and encyclopedia-articles (in an age when encyclopedia-articles were more sexy than they are now).

Voltaire was essentially a satirist in the tradition of Swift, whose writing he admired. He wasn't an atheist or a revolutionary but was rather a deist and a reformer. In the town he ultimately settled in, for example, he used his capital to create what we might call small business, and he built housing, which he offered to people on extremely reasonable terms.

At the same time, Candide is a hilarious, scalpel-like attack on optimism (especially that suggested by Leibniz), on religiosity, on fanaticism of any kind, and on humans' capacity for getting almost everything wrong. After Pangloss, the hopelessly optimistic philosopher, yet again expresses his view that "all was for the very best," a character named James replies, "Men," he said, "must have corrupted nature a little, because they weren't born wolves, yet they've become wolves: God didn't give them twenty-four-pounders [cannons; we might substitute "nuclear missiles"] or bayonets, but they've made themselves bayonets and cannons with which to destroy each other. I might also mention bankruptcies, and the law which takes over a bankrupt's property to defraud his creditors of it." (end of chapter three)

Imagined how amused and unsurprised Voltaire would be by the current global-captial implosion, which seems to spring directly from greed, corruption, and "de-regulation," also known as white-collar lawlessness.

Circuitously and incorrectly, Voltaire often gets blamed or credited, depending on your viewpoint, with the French Revolution, but, as Andre Maurois points out in a nice introduction to the Bantam Classic edition, Voltaire was a monarchist, a deist, and a scientist. He was Monsieur Mainstream Enlightenment, in other words, as well as being Air Voltaire. His view, as expressed in Candide, was that one needed to tend one's own garden--tend to business, that is; concentrate; practice moderation; be sensible; follow the data.

Maurois calls this a "bourgeois" worldview, as well as a scientific (in the sense of Englightenment) one, and he's probably right. Voltaire was no revolutionary. It's just that his views were so anti-establishment and anti-authoritarian at the time that people reacted as if he were a revolutionary. He often faced censorship. My own less-than-educated guess is that he managed to be a monarchist and a reformer/deist at the same time chiefly because he liked sensible order and seemed to be getting it from the system. He seems to have been a monarchist in the sense most Brits are monarchists now--liberal (in the 19th century sense, not as in U.S. Democrats), republican (small "r"), and tolerant of tradition, as long as it didn't go crazy.

Best of all, Candide is a very quick, funny book--still. Air Voltaire is in the house.

After Next

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Next

What happens next? Next happens
next. You go to a funeral, a hard
summing-up, and you feel as if
something's been sealed. Not long
thereafter you're standing in a
grocery store, buying celery,
or you're at home pawing through
mail distractedly.
*
Tides of ordinary
life roll in, unchecked by what we
deem momentous, even cataclysmic.
In the midst of broadcast
disaster, when time seems like
it should be seized, people
need to go to the bathroom,
put clothes in a closet, feed
farm-animals or a pet. Our
own parts in the flow end, yes.
The flow, no, never ends.
*
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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Announcer

(image: George Fenneman, Groucho Marx's announcer, with Groucho)










I suspect I was thinking first of the late Don LaFontaine when I wrote this poem. He was a professional announcer or voice-over specialist, famous for describing movies by starting, "In a world where . . .". He also did a very funny send-up of himself on a Geiko commercial, second only to the appearance of Little Richard (who transforms every form in which he works, even a commercial). But more broadly the poem is about all those radio and TV announcers with those resonating, cultivated voices. "Announcing" is one of those niche-careers that materialized because of the rise of electronic mass-media. Arguably, the announcer with the toughest job was George Fenneman, who had to work with the acerbic, unpredictable Groucho Marx on a game-show called You Bet Your Life. I saw it only a few times, but even when I was a kid, I sensed that Fenneman was managing Groucho, smoothing over the rough spots.

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Announcer
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For decades he told contestants
what they'd won, he introduced
the host, and he said other words
to help create The Show. He could
make his voice resonate the way
microphones like it and make it
dive down, rise up, purr in
between, but most
importantly sound optimistic
and happy for people came home
from work and watched TV or
watched TV while they cleaned
house. The Show was to make
people happy so they would
watch The Show and maybe buy
the products advertised.

Small man. Big voice. Calm
spirit. Talking through a
microphone was his work
and made as much sense
and money as anything else,
more or less. His voice won
the bread. A family, sure. He
got sick and died. People do.
Anyway the great age of
radio and TV announcers
had come and gone. Gone!
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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

You Don't Say?

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Really?

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Tell me a story.

Go ahead.

I will listen and

Nod my head.

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Talk a lot.

Make it plenty.

I'm one patient

Entity.

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Conversing's something

We can do.

We coincided:

Me and you--

*

(Or "you and I").

Is that so?

Tell me more!

I want to know.

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*

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Snoring

According to the OED online, one of the earliest appearances of "snore" and/or "snoring" in print occurred in 1140, but an arguably more entertaining quotation comes from the 18th century and essayist Richard Steele:

1710 STEELE Tatler No. 208 6 We have a Member of our Club, that when Sir Jeffery falls asleep, wakens him with Snoring.

The etymological trail of "snore" also runs through such variations as "snork" and "snort." There's just too much to like about those two words.

Snoring

A motorcycle gaggle guns its snarlers

into Larynx Tunnel. Then a nearby sea

seems to sigh. The engines rumble once

again. The process repeats itself in a crude

rhythm as the one lying next to you or

the you who listens to you subconsciously

waits for a crescendo to seize the terrible

song. Whoever is listening waits for a gulp,

a swallow, a sigh--a break of some kind

that will invite soft silence to settle

like a dew on the slumbering cacaphonic

heap of prostrate weariness. How

can tired be so loud?

*

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Auden After the News

(image: W.H. Auden)











I listened to and watched some news tonight on television. Staunch Republican Frank Gaffney is still claiming that Saddam Hussein consorted with those responsible for attacking the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon and that, therefore, the invasion of Iraq was the right thing to do. Then I learned that respected (if controversial) reporter Sy Hersh, speaking at a forum in the Midwest, explained that the Bush administration included an assassination-squad that reported directly to the Vice President and operated independently--traveling to other countries, not even bothering to communicate with the CIA, and killing people named on a list. The book containing Hersh's reporting is not due out for 18 months or so; we'll have to wait on the evidence for a while, but perhaps others will dig into the story now to see if it will hold up. Fortunately (or, in this case, unfortunately) Hersh almost always gets things right.

Having had enoughof the news, I turned to W.H. Auden's Collected Shorter Poems 1927-1957 (New York: Vintage 1975) and read "A Walk After Dark," which ends this way:


For the present stalks abroad
Like the past, and its wronged again
Whimper and are ignored,
And the truth cannot be hid;
Somebody chose their pain,
What needn't have happened did.

Occurring this very night
By no established rule,
Some event may already have hurled
Its first little No at the right
Of the laws we accept to school
Our post-diluvian world.

But the stars burn on overhead,
Unconscious of final ends,
As I walk home to bed,
Asking what judgment waits
My person, all my friends
And these Unitd States.

(pp. 232-233)

Promptly Write Poetry

I was cleaning up my computer's "desktop," which is neither a desk nor a top (an uppermost surface), and I ran across a list of "prompts" or "ideas" for poems--each prompt designed to help students start writing a poem.

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Probably, the issue of whether to use prompts in creative-writing classes (or simply in one's own writing) is less contentious now than it was 10-20 years ago. In all the creative-writing courses I took in college, we were given almost no prompts. In one class, however, Karl Shapiro gave us a semester-long task of writing poems about a poet whose worked we liked. I chose Hopkins and wrote a series of poems about him.

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I guess one argument against "assigning" poems or providing prompts is that poetry is supposed to spring purely from inspiration. Of course, a nearby philosopher will immediately order, "Define 'inspiration.'"

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With regard to this issue, I'm terribly biased, so much so that I co-wrote a book, Metro: Journeys in Writing Creatively that discusses different aspects of writing poetry, fiction, drama, and nonfiction but that, in each piece, ends with some ideas for writing. In a way, it's a book full of prompts, topics, tasks, assignments, experiments, triggers, suggestions (choose your favorite term).

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I'm the sort of writer that often likes to be given tasks or challenges, and I actually think many poets fall into (or wander into) this category. To some degree, Shakespeare challenged himself (or maybe one of his friends challenged him) to write a sonnet that disrupted conventions of sonnets when he wrote "Sonnet 18." "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" It's as if he's asking himself more than he's asking the imaginary listener. Much of the poem is taken up with his showing that the comparison isn't a good idea, so Shakespeare is writing a kind of counter-sonnet that refuses to make conventional comparisons. His implicit poetic answer to the question is, "Well, I shall and I shan't--watch this."

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Sometimes the challenge or prompt is as simple as. . . trying to write a villanelle, a sestina, a sonnet, or a pantoum, etc....or trying to write a poem in one long sentence...or trying to write a poem on a topic about which you've written a poem: refrigerator, feet, landfill (e.g.). Often, that is, "inspiration" may spring from a fairly plain task one gives oneself or from an idea or an experiment someone asks you to try. Once the writing is underway, we might find more inspiration, more reasons to keep wanting to write the thing.

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Anyway, here are the prompts I found on my non-existent but nonetheless cluttered "desktop," in the unlikely event your're interested:

Write an homage-poem about a favorite writer. You need not be enthralled by the writer or her/his work, but you should like a lot of the writing, and you should feel a strong connection to it or to her/him (as you imagine her/him—after all, the writer may have died long ago). But it’s fine to have mixed, ambivalent feelings toward the writer and his/her work. (Auden wrote an homage to Yeats; Ginsberg wrote an homage to Whitman.)

Write a poem about a time when you were excluded from a group or, at the very least, when you believed yourself to have been excluded from a group.

Pick an age, more or less arbitrarily: 11, 9, 15, 13 years old. Then write a poem in which you completely make up an “autobiographical” event. But it should seem real, not farcical or over the top. And it might even capture an emotion you might have felt at that age, even if the “facts” of the poem are entirely fictional.

Write a poem that begins, “After you lied to me, . . . .”

Write a poem that begins, “After I lied to you, . . . .”

Write a poem about an animal you have observed closely—but not a pet. It has to be an animal you’ve watched—maybe smelled or heard, too. --You know, like that one horse that slobbered on you, or the spider that lives in your bathroom.

Quickly list ten verbs, in the past tense. Then start a poem that draws heavily on this list of verbs. Let the language pull the subject. Follow the verbs. See where they go.

Write a poem consisting of 10 images you associate with a given topic, thing, subject. You might start by making a list of topics, things, or subjects--or even by asking someone else help you make the list. When you write, make your language precise. Present the images. Then see where the poem takes you.

Think of a strong emotion—fear, love, disgust, outrage. Then write a poem about something neutral—tea, a boulder, being in the library, whatever. Let the emotion drive the poem—but not overtly. Leave the emotion under the poem, like molten but unseen lava.

Write a poem that is somehow concerned with the topic of shame, but be concrete—trust the images.

Library Catalogue As Inspiration

(image: old library-catalogue, the wooden kind)

So recently I searched (online) the Nevada County (California--confusing, I know) Library catalogue to see if the library held a book by me. I thought I had donated one, but I was wrong. At any rate, I typed my name in and hit search, and although I was searching by "author," the catalogue, having not found anything related to my name, presented me with suggested keywords related to each of my names.

Consequently, in relation to "Hans," the following list was provided:

strong, lost, most, cost, position, stop, strength, St [no period], stood, lot

The list, however, was verticle and had no commas, so it looked a bit like a poem.

In relation to "Ostrom," the following list was provided:

hands, has, then, hand, as, an, answer, things, means, ask

Of course, when presented with lists of words like this--lists that are both random and not--a poet thinks he or she has just received a most extraordinary gift indeed.

In poetry-writing classes, I often have students make lists of their favorite words (although I steer them away from proper names or pets' names) and then begin to generate a poem strictly from the words themselves, without a subject or topic in mind. Of course, additional words have to come into play to help begin to stitch something together. Temporarily, I fashion a false binary and say that sometimes we're inspired by something than happens or that we remember, and then we go find language to make a poem out of it, but that at other times, we start with language and go in search of a topic. The processes are much more entangled and reciprocal than that, certainly, but the idea is to consider language itself as a kind of "inspiration," a starting place, a trigger.

In any event, I gave myself the same assignment, except that I worked with the words from the library catalogue, not with my favorite words. The initial draft looks like this:

What Things May Mean

Even the strong
will have lost most.
That is the cost
of our position.
We must stop
thinking of strength
as sainthood.

Hands have. A
hand has an answer
sometimes. In
the conversation
you will have
this afternoon,
the word “things”
means “ask.”

I don't know that I've really found a subject yet, or maybe I've found too many, but it was most pleasurable to work with these words, which had arrived unexpectedly and seemed to ask to be made into some kind of poem. Putting them into sentences and aligning their sounds were satisfying tasks. I also like the fact that databases now politely correct us and offer to make up for our mistakes by providing "helpful" suggestions, including lists of words the computer thinks we thought we meant to write. Lovely.

Naps

(image: Kindergarten students taking a collective nap)

The OED online lists and defines a dozen different versions of "nap" as a noun, ranging from a type of wool fiber to a cup to "a baby's nap"--that is, a diaper (as it's called in the U.S.) or a "nappy," as the English call it. There's also "nap" as an adjective and five different versions of "nap" as a verb. Of course, some of these incarnations of nap are now obsolete, but nonetheless, who knew "nap" was such a various-and-sundry word? The OED did, it seems. One quotation is from Dickens:

DICKENS Dombey & Son (1848) xxiii. 240 He..refreshed his mind with a nap

Through 8th grade, I went to school in a town 12 miles away from where my family lived. We road the bus there, and on the bus were kids from age 6 to 18. Because the high-school "day" was longer than the first-grade one, the teacher had us first-graders take a nap on the floor of the classroom. I gather that still goes on in kindergartens, judging by the photo I found on the web (above). We had to sleep on these bizarre naugahyde mats, and I do wonder now about the hygeine-factor, but as to the comfort-factor: children can sleep anywhere.

Anyway, the main idea, I think, was for the teacher to take a break and restore some sanity to herself while she waited for 3:30 to roll around, whereupon we'd board the bus and travel 12 miles up the mountain--on a winding highway next to a canyon: kudos to the bus-driver (usually it was one Neil Foster), who never had an accident in the 8 years I rode the bus. I recall one flat-tire, which Mr. Foster promptly changed.

Napping may be a crucial key not just to a teacher of young children but to civilization itself. It might help Americans' sanity, for example, if the U.S. were to construct its culture more along the lines of Italy and Latin America, where the afternoon nap still seems to be central.

I was reading this book, Rules of Thumb, yesterday, and according to it, a one-hour nap is equivalent to three hours of sleep at night. The book didn't explain in what way the nap was equivalent, but I assume the authors meant that body and mind were provided as much restoration by a one-hour nap as three hours of night-sleep. I have no idea whether this information is accurate, and there is the famous REM-sleep-factor to consider, but I can say that naps seem to work just fine for me, when I can fit them in. The world just seems to be a little more manageable after one takes a nap. And then there's . . .the double-nap.

The Double-Nap

*

He woke up from a nap,

stared at light left by

a gap in curtains, thought

of ambition as an acquaintance

who never repays personal

loans, enjoyed the pleasure

of second weariness, the lure

of lassitude, and lapsed once

more into napping, which

he considered to be a most

constant, reliable friend

indeed, one with an interest

in his restoration. Oh, Lord,

thought the napping man,

subluminously: a day off,

crowned by a double-nap.

*

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Anthology of African Poetry

Finally, I ordered an anthology of African poetry. I'm afraid I made a very conventional move and went with a Penguin anthology. I'm hoping it will serve as a good place to begin, and I have no doubt many delights await me, so even if you're unamused by this choice, don't disabuse me too much. Anyway, here is the basic information, in case you'd like to join me on this adventure--or, indeed, if you'd like to disabuse me (a bit); --or, better yet, suggest additional anthologies and other books.

Gerald Moore and Ulli Beier, editors and translators, The Penguin Book of African Poetry (fifth edition), 2007.

I've read some African poetry and proverbs in translation here and there, I encountered some names of African poets when I was working on two Langston Hughes books, and I've been enjoying poems on Poefrika's blog, but this will be my first systematic foray.

A new anthology: wow--just the sort of thing to give a poet and reader of poetry an adrenalin-rush, and in a way, I wish I were kidding. Some people prefer bungee-jumping off bridges or race-car driving. Me, I go right for that table of contents, ice-water in my veins.

Mayor

(image: Mayor Richard J. Daley)











According to the OED online, "mayor" springs from the French, "mare," and used to be spelled "mair," among other ways. The governmental post seems to have been a feudal one originally, but it soon changed into the municipal-related one we think of now. Probably the most notorious mayor in my experience was Richard J. Daley of Chicago, famous for his dictatorial style, his "machine" ("vote early and often"), his bigotry, and his over-reaction to protesters at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. His son is mayor now. Probably there are many reasons for his having been elected and re-elected, but one of them must be that some people were more or less nostalgic for "the old days."

I met a woman once who had grown up in Spain when Franco was still dictator but who then moved to the U.S.--in her late teens or early 20s, I think. She recognized that Spain's government, etc., was better now than then, but she also recalled feeling "safe" in the city she lived in--because Franco ruled militaristically: no street-crime, etc. I doubt if this woman ever would have voted for Franco, assuming he'd stood for election. Nonetheless, she experienced a degree of nostalgia when thinking of her childhood when he was dictator. The current Daley is no Franco, of course, but I do wonder if some people prefer "familiar authority" sometimes.

Anyway, I've been messing around with a mayoral poem.


A Brief Message from the Mayor

I'm the Mayor of No-town,
Population: One. However,
others live here seasonally.

I like to tell people I won
the election in a run-off.
I disagree with myself,

can't decide what to do,
and change my mind a lot,
so government suffers here.

True, I don't get many
complaints. I've threatened
to resign in protest. Still,

it's a good place to live.
I might create an ad-campaign
to boost tourism--something

like "No-town: home of
the Big Yes" or "No-town . . .
for a Tiny Vacation."

This democracy of one--
I have my doubts. I think
I'll change the charter.

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Whom the Students Like: Poets

(image: ice cream fit for an emperor)

So I gave a test in the Introduction to Poetry Writing Class. I suppose it's unusual to give tests in creative-writing course, but there are other good reasons to do so besides the fact that it goes against the grain. We use a textbook [this time it's Kevin Clark's The Mind's Eye, which includes a lot of contemporary poetry] and the Norton Anthology of Poetry, and we do a fairly sustantial unit on prosody and traditional verse-forms, so although of course much of our time is spent on the students' poetry, we also read a fair amount.

On the test, I included a question about a favorite poem of theirs we've read so far--either in the Norton or in Clark's book. Shakespeare may be the earliest author I assign, although at some point, I usually discuss the English ballad tradition briefly as well as Anglo-Saxon poetry and how (for example) it influenced Hopkins.

Anway, here are the students' answers:

William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming"

Ezra Pound, "In a Station of the Metro"

Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken" [we spend some time discussing the ways in which the text of the poem doesn't "say" what people now assume it says] [2 votes]

Langston Hughes, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" [2 votes]

Countee Cullen, "Yet Do I Marvel"

Norman Dubie, "Poem" (about a child burying a hairless doll)

Barbara Hamby, "Vex Me"

Wallace Stevens, "The Emperor of Ice Cream" [3 votes]

John Donne, "The Flea"

Theodore Roethke, "The Waking" [2 votes]

Wilfred Owen, "Dulce Et Decorum Est" [2 votes]

T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" [3 votes]

I was surprised by the fact that both Stevens and Eliot received multiple votes--Stevens, especially, because I had assumed the students had found "The Emperor of Ice Cream" to be too perplexing, although I try to show that it's really not as perplexing as all that (I assumed I'd come close to failing in this regard). We will have read more women poets by the time the second test comes around, but even so I was surprised poems by Hannah Stein and Ruth Stone (for instance) didn't get a vote. On the other hand, this is a vote only for one poem.

Exuberant Palomino

(image: a palomino, not the one in question, alas)









Study: Exuberance With Yellow Mane


One bright day a rack of years ago,
I stood next to an alpine pasture and saw
a palomino horse gallop across my gaze,
kick his rear legs up, fart as loud as gunshots,
and then run more. Jeter. That was his name.
A fat, friendly, pale yellow horse, was Jeter--
not dramatic. That day, though, his body
broke into a spirited sprint, went on a riff
of freedom, expressed an acrobatic comedy
of gas. He showed the bottom of his back-hooves
to the sky. He diveted that fenced turf.
Jeter had been called to the altar of joy,
and he came running in the sun, old
gassy Jeter, possessed exuberantly,
great to see.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Old-School Brits

(image: Gerard Manley Hopkins)






In my first or second year of graduate school, the university's daily newspaper interviewed an English professor, Elliot Gilbert, whom I ended up taking 2-3 seminars from. He was a Victorianist but also published on detective fiction and other topics. The reporter wanted to know either what Gilbert's favorite authors were or maybe favorite novels. I can't quite remember. Anyway, Gilbert refused to answer and called the inquiry "a TV question." He was right. On the other hand, it's a TV question that is sometimes amusing and pleasantly frustrating to answer.

On facebook, I made a list of my 100 most recommended novels. In a few instances, I bowed to pressure and included books just because they're so widely valued. Lolita is a good example. I don't like it as much as most people seem to, but it's hard to question its status. Otherwise, I listed books that I thought were great. I left off The Scarlet Letter and Moby Dick (among others) and caught grief for it the next day, as I should have, I suppose. With listing comes responsibility.

Last night I decided to invent a much more difficult task for myself: to list my favorite 10 Old School British poets--in order of my preference. By Old School, I think I mean, oh, pre-1950, and I included Ireland in the mix, just because, poetically speaking, it is usually in the mix when people put anthologies together; otherwise, no offense intended.

How on Earth did I rank them--by what criteria? Good question. I think the answer is . . . some combination of achievement in the genre (poetry), influence on later poets, and my own personal appreciation. But the percentages change in each case. Anway, here goes:

1. W. H. Auden (the tops)
2. Gerard Manley Hopkins
3. William Shakespeare
4. William Blake
5. William Butler Yeats
6. Robert Browning
7. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
8. Stevie Smith
9. A.E. Housman
10. John Keats

Auden's achievement seems as various as any poet I can think of, and he was enormously influential. Also, it's just great to read his poetry, no matter what day or year it is. Hoplins is there because of his genuinely unique contribution, and also because when I first read him, the experience was something close to revolutionary. You can do that with poetry? I remember thinking.

Shakespeare's there because of the indelible achievement in sonnets, Blake because of the originality and daring, Yeats, I think, because he was just a fine poet. In some of those poems, his way with language is perfect. A lot of his views are just too weird to bear, and the thing with Maude Gonne and daughter got silly real fast. But as for some of the poems: hard to know what more he could have done. Browning is there, I think, because some of his poems are so precociously modern. Of the Victorians, he's the best psychological poet, in my opinion. Coleridge is on the list because, although his batting average wasn't that great, when he did "hit the ball," he hit it to the moon. Stevie Smith's vision and phrasing are just so independent, quirky, and fresh that I find her work irresistible. I can imagine lots of argument for keeping her off the list. Housman's there because of craft. Keats made it on there because of 5-10 fabulous poems.

Wordsworth almost made it on there because of the achievement in some of those lyrics--and parats of the Prelude. I've been re-reading a lot of Wordsworth lately, and the charm is definitely gone. I almost wrote a dissertation on him, and I've taught a whole course on him. He wrote a lot of bad poetry, however, and the self-absorption is unyielding. Nonetheless, some of those poems early on are superb.

If the list were a house, Wordsworth would be banging on the door wanting in. I can hear him out there. The same goes for Pope, Byron, Tennyson, E.B. Browning (Aurora Leigh is pretty great), and George Crabbe. Marvell and Donne are in the crowd, and so is Spenser--and so is Spender, although I can't imagine his banging on the door. Lots of other poets wanted in, but I had to keep the list to 10, just for the agony of it.

I also realized the extent to which I haven't kept up with post-1960/1970 British poetry in the way I have with American poetry from the same period. Part of this has to do with my getting interested in African Amerian poetry, but part of it is also a lack of discipline. I need to do some reading. The same applies to African poetry and Canadian poetry. Oy, so much poetry to read.

After you've railed in disgust at my list, please do make your own. I want to share the agony of choosing just 10--and ranking them. Good listing to you.

Use Form 9/25 For Poems, Please

(image: courtesy of postivesharing.com)

I've been playing around with an invented poetic form--a simple one in which the poem has 9 lines, and you simply count words per line in the following pattern: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. You end up with a poem that has a profile like that of a portly man, but there are other virtues to the form as well.

Unfortunately, I haven't produced very good poems using the form yet. I don't blame the form. Of course, I'm probably not the inventor of it. No doubt many have tried it. I simply haven't seen it around. Give it a try, if you like. I'm calling it Form 9/25, which sounds like a bureaucatric form, so there's that. (Nine lines, twenty-five words.)

Here are some examples, not that you need them, and not that the products are very good, as noted.

A 9/25 Poem

There

is a

kind of drama

in meeting each person

we meet, a space of

light or heavy tension

as one life

intersects with

another.

Starlings

Starlings,

dark grey

and speckled, gather

in a group--thirty

or so--on wires above

my abode. They whistle,

chatter, burble, and

flit. They're

garrulous.

[A bird-watching book I once read described starlings as "garrulous." I thought that to be a charming description.]

Literary Feud

One

drunken boaster

with a reputation

of some kind didn't

like another self-consumed writer,

and they squabbled over

the years, very

jealous: so

what?

(Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom)

Sunset Strip

(image: a section of the Sunset Strip in Hollywood)

*

*

*

*

*

Sunset Boulevard

*

Sunset Boulevard is asphalt and concrete rolled

onto crushed rock. The rest is mirage. If you forget

this, then Hollywood's done one of its jobs. Above

the line of boulevard, wealth's fortifications protrude

from high ground. Below the line, a stew of stucco cooks.

Simmering, it releases gray vapors. Conduits of

sewage, electricity, gas, and such connect it all--

networks of basics, expelled and consumed.

Most buildings and signs on Sunset seem weary

in spite of designed protestations to the contrary.

People look hunted, haunted, or harried, in spite

of display, tattoos, feints, fashion, and façades.

Beneath the boulevard lie geological formations.

On top is us, the decoration. We're the close-up.

Time's the long shot in which all of this will be

out of frame.

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Wonder: A Starter-Kit

(image: oregano--in bloom, as you no doubt deduced)










Wonder: A Starter-Kit


I find I still appreciate
remedial amazement: how
a bicycle stays upright once
someone rides it. --How
elevator-doors close on
one floor, open on another:
impressive. A seed can
become a sequoia. Laughter,
especially at no one's expense,
is a taste of paradise-pie.
A nose differentiates
between oregano and mint.

This is all still news of sorts
to me, an introduction
to fascination, a trusty primer,
a starter-kit I haven't,
apparently, outgrown.

Relatively Astounding

(image, composed of non-local digital particles: Niels Bohr, Danish physicist)





From "A Quantum Threat to Special Relativity," by David. Z. Albert and Rivka Galchen, Scientific American, March 2009, p. 32:

"...according to quantum mechanics one can arrange a pair of particles so that they are precisely two feet apart and yet neither particle on its own has a definite position. Furthermore, the standard approach to understanding quantum physics, the so-called Copenhagen intepretation--proclaimed by the great Danish physicist Niels Bohr early last century and handed down from professor to student for generations--insists that it is not that we do not know the facts about the individual particles' exact location; it is that there simply aren't any such facts. To ask after the position of a single particle would be as meaningless as, say, asking after the marital status of the number five. The problem is not epistemological (about what we know) but ontological (about what is)."

I will avoid an obvious joke and not say that I found this paragraph particularly interesting, except that I did "say" it, but the location of the joke isn't precisely knowable. That said, or not, physics is starting to sound like theology (the latter defined in the broadest sense). If the facts about the location of particles can't be known, then to what extent do we/can we know anything? Of course, we have to pretend we know, or to "know" on faith. When I walk across a street, my self-interest seems served by my pretending to know where the oncoming automobile traffic is. At the same time, the facts about the reality of that traffic may still be unknowable, even as I live my cross-walk life as if they were knowable.

In other word, Oy!

And if I read that paragraph from SA correctly (and I probably don't), physics is looping back to philosophy, where it began, in a way, with the pre-Socratics, and where it was picked up again by Aristotle, among others, but also by thinkers in other cultural traditions--including Africa and Asia. I regard this as good news--for selfish reasons: physics is more interesting to me when it admits what it can't know, and/or when it comes close to expressing or at least reinforcing amazement. That's partly because I'm a poet and a reader of poet, I suppose. For poets and readers of poets, amazement is a good thing, especially when it springs from the common--like a particle, for example, or a bee (Dickinson liked bees), a wheel barrow (red, if you have one in stock), a river (Langston Hughes), or a hawk (Hopkins).

The third "key concept" highlighted by "The Editors" in a sidebar to the article:

"This nonlocal effect is not merely counterintuitive: it presents a serious problem to Einstein's special theory of relativity, thus shaking the foundations of physics."

Ouch. I mean, "Cool."

And I was just getting used to how counterintuitive Einstein's theories are in relation to Newtonian physics. To deal with this confusion, I must go read some poetry, which most people (I assume) regard to be about as riveting as theoretical physics.

Hang on to your particles, folks, wherever they're not located.

Green In Mexico

Green In Mexico


In Mexico the jungle seemed as wet
and heavy as the sea, well almost.
A big reptile stared at me with alert
boredom. It had last been alarmed
in 1543, when a mad conquistador
had loaned it all that armor. Little

green lizards writhed underfoot.
I tried not to squash them. Birds
screamed. Trees bent under the
heavy body of humidity. I perspired
so much I started thinking about

how much human salt lay in that
soil. I was going to ask the man
in green about this notion. He
wasn't sweating. He carried
an automatic weapon. His
mustache was as black as
the gun-barrel. This Federale

didn't have to order me to
keep quiet. The jungle had
instructed me. I went into
the hut and slept with my
passport. Green waves
rolled over fitful dreams.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Creative Writers Gather Data

For the short-story-writing class today, I had students gather data over the weekend. The task was to visit a public venue, listen to people, and write down phrases, statements, and questions heard. I think we were aiming for a list of 20 separate items.

However, the idea was not to "eavesdrop," in the classic sense. Part of the plan was not to listen to whole conversation but to seize isolated utterances. We also stressed paying attention to exactly how people phrase things.

I've used the exercise a few times, both for poetry and fiction classes, but this time it proved especially rich. Numerous puzzling, shocking, hilarious, cryptic, uncanny, oddly phrased, and mysterious phrases, statements, and questions were captured.

What to do with the "data"? One implicit "lesson," I think, is to remind oneself of just how powerful speech--or, in short-fiction terms, "dialogue"--is: how complicated, full of conflict, and volatile it is. More specifically, one approach is to take what someone says literally. One example I can think of is that a person heard another person say, "I didn't know people needed blood." Of course, we can fill in around the statement to make it seem a reasonable thing to say, but for creative-writing purposes, we may want to assume it's just a stark statement of fact. Then the question to ask is under what circumstances would an adult say such a thing "for real" ? The fictional "answer" is the seed of the story.

In the airport this weekend, I tried to "do" the task myself, and I overheard a teenaged girl/woman say to another girl/woman of the same age, "She takes a lot of drugs, and vice versa." What a great thing to say! The phrasing is unwittingly funny--and wise. In what dialogue from what story might this statement work? That's the question, or one question. A student in class also observed how "vice" took on additional meaning in this case.

As one might expect, the person who wrote down a given statement, question, or phrase--because s/he knew the context or had been tempted to fill in the context--was often less able to see the creative possiblilities than those who had just heard the statement for the first time. So I guess another more or less obvious "lesson" is to try to be able to see and hear the recorded language freshly--almost naively, but not quite.

May your listening/observing be most creatively productive.

Mountain Misery and Skunk Cabbage

(image: the plant commonly known as "Mountain Misery," or
Chamaebatia Species: foliolosa)


In the High Sierra, there are at least two plants with over-powering aromas: skunk cabbage (often found in marsh-like conditions but at high altitude) and mountain misery, which seems to grow in the shade and is most drought-tolerant. These plants are serious about the way they smell. They also cause arguments. Some people, like me, like the way they smell. Other people don't. I think people from the latter group gave the plants their common (as opposed to Latin) names.


Plants, Too

Of course creatures fascinated us. Like us
they'd ended up not in Paris or Perth but
in the High Sierra--by accident; or maybe
it was a career-move; who knows? Rattlesnakes,
skinks, lizards, ouzels, kildeers, owls, potato-bugs,
scorpions, deer, periwinkles, bears, raccoons,
bobcats, cougars, water-snakes, hawks,
and company charmed us like wizards.


The plants, too, cast a magic, though, rooted,
they were easier to ignore and less dramatic.
The way milkweed actually bled milk when
snapped, every time: so cool. How skunk-cabbage
(Lysichiton americanus) and mountain misery
embraced you with their odors like a boozy,
perfumed, vivid aunt: wow. Anis-stalks tasted like
licorice. Pine-sap softened by saliva turned
into gum. Take your chances with wild berries:
elderberries, yes; inkberries, no. We climbed


pines and firs, rode them as they
bent with the wind as flexibly as
grass-blades. What was the strangest
vegetation of all? I will say the snow plant,
Sarcodes sanguinea, bereft of chlorphyll.
It was less than creature but more
than plant. One day it would simply arise
beneath a tree in snow, bright red in Winter,
broadcasting a mute allure that suggested
it might not be a part of any timely scheme.
*
*
Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Marriage-Tetrameter?

(image: two geese [I bet you guessed that], which allegedly
mate for life, although there are probably goose pre-nuptials)







My goodness, a "marriage-tetrameter" sounds like some kind of medical device. Eek.


In class the other day, a student asked whether I were a doctor. I said,"Technically, yes, as I earned a Ph.D. in English." I should pause here and explain that, in the academic world, there are those who like and want to called "Doctor," as opposed to professor or Mr. or Ms. or by their first name. Then there are those who do not want to be called Doctor. I don't know what the percentages are, nor do I know what the sociological correlatives are, but I do think it's based on something more than whim.


At any rate, I went on to say that I am not licensed to practice medicine but that, if someone on an airplane flight were to have trouble scanning a poem written in a traditional meter, the flight attendant could get on the intercom and ask, "Ladies and gentlemen, remain calm, but we have an emergency; a passenger in 24-D is having some difficulty with a 17th-century sonnet. Is there a doctor of literature on board?"


At another any rate, we have plunged into formal verse in the poetry class--meter, rhyme, traditional forms, scansion, enjambment, full rhymes, half rhymes, sprung rhythm, blank verse --the whole prosodic enchilada (a word that has two trochees, I think.)

I have great fun teaching this "unit" because I get the students writing in meter first by encourageing them not to make sense. In a way they're just writing "sound poems." Ironically, because they're concentrating just on meter, they come up with some wild, unpredictable lines--which can serve as the seed for a "real" poem. There's also a bit of groaning, of course, because some of them had a bad time with "iambic pentameter," etc., in high school.


Physician of prosody, heal thyself.

Because I'm having my students work through some prosodic exercises, I thought I should do one myself. The assignment is simply to write some modified blank verse on any subject. By "modified," I mean iambic tetrameter (8 syllables, 4 beats, with the or stresses occuring on the even-numbered syllables), unrhymed. Rather arbitrarily, I chose marriage as the topic, but really "tetrameter" is the implicit purpose of the, ahem, "poem."

No doubt I committed some "inversions" (a trochee in place of an iamb). In two places, I got too cute and split words at the end of lines, and in one place, I rhymed without intending to. In other words, it's pretty rough tetrametric road.


Tetrameter for Marriage


It seems that marriage is a kind
Of complicated puzzle that's
Constructed slowly but not solved.
One part is lust. It's there and not.
Lust is mercurial. We all
Know that. Another part is love--
I said it; there it is, plain sight--
A deep appreciation of
The other, and of what the other is
In fact, not what one wants him/her
To be. The person will be dear.
Bourgeois, the "institution?" I guess.
If you say so, though that sounds like
Pretentious babble to two ones
Who have been married, gay or straight,
Transgendered. Well, another part
Is laughter, running jokes, and irony.
It is a comedy-routine,
Is marriage. It's improved, a schtick.
I'll tell you, money helps as well--
Enough so that you have enough
To eat, to keep a place, to live.
A certain discipline's required--
No, not that kind, but if you are
Interested in that kind, you go.
Let's see. What was the topic? Oh:
A certain discipline's required,
Some self-control, especially when
Temptation cruises by, or times
Are tough. A lot of independence,
Personal space: Yes, these two help
A lot. But in the end, if mar-
Riage works, luck has to be involved.
You just keep going, laughing; work.
Link love and lust and like and laugh.
You share. You are adults, and you
Are friends. Your marriage is a puz-
Zle--that's for sure. Be sure to live
It well. It's not something to solve.
*
*
Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Quick Updates!

Regarding poets who paint, etc., my colleague Professor Nimura has reminded me that, yes, indeed, e.e. cummings painted as well as wrote, and she has sent along a link:

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/cummings/paintings.htm

And another blogger (regarding "Out Here") noted that, yes, we may or may not be meant to work in relative obscurity, but it's still nice to share. Indeed. It did make me think of Dickinson, among others, however, who seemed to have an inkling that her work would be shared--except later, when she was Elsewhere. I think she might have capitalized Elsewhere, too.

(How great would it be if Dickinson returned and wrote a blog? The posts would be terse and completely original. She'd make the genre her own.)

I may have to get serious about this and develop a real list of poet/painters and painter/poets.

But not tonight. I have sleeping to do before I go more miles.

Anyway, thanks for the info/input.

Out Here

(image: gray fox)

Out Here

If you hang back like a fox, pacing

at the edge of a copse at dusk, always

reticent to enter the meadow, then you

shouldn't complain about never having

been embraced by those in the know

and the power and the glory. If you are

literally eccentric, sir or madame, you will

be stuck in circumfrantic, extra-circular

conditions. The thing is, the fox not only

loves, knows, and trusts the woods, but

the fox also likes being in the company

of few or fewer. If, like the fox, you stayed

out there, out here, then cease your pining

for the center. In fact, go back into the woods

and pursue the work you love. If few or fewer

people see it, so be it; it's still work. You're

still you. And maybe this work was what

you were meant to do.

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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Poets Who Paint, Painters Who Write

(image: painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti)

I've never had an art-lesson, and it shows. But I've been trying to paint and/or draw for decades. A few things have turned out okay, including an acrylic painting of a doe and a fawn, wherein the doe's backside faces the viewer. People seemed amused by that choice. I did some really weird facial caricatures in chalk-on-paper that make me laugh. I show them to almost no one. Then I did this big smear-paint-on-canvas thing, dominated by red, and I didn't think much of it (and still don't) and would have kept it in hiding except people with whom I live liked it enough to hang it--on the wall, I mean. This comes under the category of "go figure." I'm also an inveterate doodler, especially in meetings, and especially if I know where the meeting is heading. While I'm waiting for it to get there, I doodle, mostly faces, not faces I'm looking at, just faces.

Karl Shapiro painted a bit, I think, and so did John Betjeman. Kenneth Patchen actually made drawings to accompany his poems. I don't think they're very good, but what do I know? Blake, I guess, is the all-time champion, creating stupendous illuminations and engravings connected to his work. Dante Gabriel Rossetti painted very well and wrote very well.

So here's a shout-out to three bloggers who are poets who paint and painters who write. In some ways, blogging is a great medium for the writer/painter or painter/writer (and "painter" is kind of a place-holder for all sorts of visual art, including digital collages, photography, videography, etc.). In a weird way, the Internet is helping us loop back to medieval times, when texts were routinely illuminated and the visual & textual got on quite well. The bloggers:

http://francaldwellsnotebook.blogspot.com/ and on this one there is a link to another site with images of the blogger's paintings

http://ascribbleorasonnet.blogspot.com/

http://loosejuicyart.blogspot.com/

And here's a link to Deb Richardson's site. She does quilts and visual collages (including the Emily/Elvis one up top):

http://www.debrichardson.com/artquilts.html

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