Gaming Humans

In the photo, the soccer-players seem to be ruminating on the futility of it all.

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Humans and Their Games

In golf, humans attack a tiny white ball with long
metal clubs and then walk or ride in pastures, acting
as if the attack had not occurred. A bit later, they
attack again. The ball flees from them, but it rarely
escapes. No one knows what the ball did to offend
the humans. In chess, humans move figurines around
a small board and never talk. They look like pouting
children. In bowling, people roll a large sphere
toward milk-bottles, which have been beautifully
arranged. The aim is destruction, apparently. In

soccer, people run around an enormous field arguing
about who should possess a single leather ball.
Clearly, more soccer-balls and less field constitute
one obvious solution to this prolonged frustration.
In hockey as in golf: small object, large clubs,
inexplicable anger. Ice, however, is added, and
men embrace frequently, although their attire
turns them into clumsy clowns. Now, baseball

is a game in which too much activity is considered
gauche. Standing, scratching, staring, murmuring,
yelling, signaling, spitting, waiting, eating seeds,
hiding in caves, and using tobacco are crucial to this
game and constant. There is a sense in which the
game is opposed to activity. Football, though,

is nothing less than felonious assault observed
and encouraged by thousands. Make no mistake:
in this game, men attack men. Skiing and luge
are gravity-assisted suicide. Ski-jumping is
a bad idea someone in a Nordic country once had.
It is inadvisable. Racing cars around an oval

track is loud and repetitive like the screams
of a demented man. In tennis, the net always
remains empty, and the lake around it has
dried up. Somehow, in spite of all these
absurd spectacles, we can be induced to care
who wins, after which we forget who won,
and we go back to work. The rules of these
games become our era's sacred texts.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

May I Speak To the Past, Please?

I have no doubt that the mobile phone pictured at right will soon seem obsolete or even antique. Maybe it already is the former if not the latter. The velocity of technological obsolescence seems to increase every day. As I think I've noted before, I'm opposed to these wee phones because they discriminate against us thick-fingered ones. When I attempt to hit one button, I usually hit three. It takes me all day to send a two-line text message. I feel like a bear in a sewing-class.


Phoning the Past

I telephoned the past. The number
I reached was no longer in service,
and anyway I'd wanted to reach the past,
not a number. Just as well. What would
I have said? "Hello, I used to live there"?
"Please write me a letter of recommendation
for the future"? The past is a special effect.
When I think about it, it's right beside me.
I reach for it. Then it withdraws miles and
decades instantly, and I'm left in this
lumpy present, which is always beyond
its sell-by-date and curdling into the past.
I read history, but it's a sad substitute
for what happened. So, foolishly, I phoned.
Fine. I made a mistake. That's all in the past.
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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Concerning Games

(The image is of a "shocked" Monopoly man; maybe he invested with Madoff)

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Not Much For Games
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I was never much for games. In "Hide and Seek,"
I was content to let the others remain in hiding. I
enjoyed the solitude. In "Tag," there seemed to be
celebrity attached to being It, so why share it?
I liked collisions in football, but they gave me
headaches. I liked playing right field in baseball
but was often tempted to keep walking--into other
fields beyond. In Monopoly, I wanted to disperse
the property equally, end the game, and go drink
hot cocoa--unaware the world cocoa-
market was probably controlled by a monopoly. In
charades, I always want to to say the answer and stop
the nonsense. I liked badminton and table-tennis--something
about an obsessive concentration on one object and
the pleasure of returning what came over the net.
"Gambling" is misnamed; it is ritualized losing.
My father played poker well, had no "tell."
I'm competitive, but I've never trusted the trait.
Survival is the only game, and is no game,
and will be lost in due time. Let the games
begin, and continue, but often without me.
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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Top 100 Detective Novels?

(The image is of Denzel Washington in the film-based-on-the-novel, Devil in a Blue Dress, by Walter Mosley.)


I'm double-dipping on this post, as I have posted on a related topic--on

http://upsenglish.wordpress.com/

At any rate, the following site has a list from David Lehman of the top 100 detective novels, based partly on the value of the novels themselves but also on their historical importance in the genre:

http://www.topmystery.com/lehmans100.html



Like a lot of people who, one way or another, ended up making reading central to their lives, I started reading detective fiction early. There were always a lot of paperbacks in the genre around the house, for one thing, and I also got hooked on Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes early on.

I teach a class, now and then, on detective fiction, and I've published one detective novel, Three To Get Ready--very much a first try, if you get my drift. I was so inexperienced that I didn't know I'd written a book in the sub-genre known as "police procedural" until I read a review of the book, the "police" in which are represented by a rural sheriff and his deputy.

I've always thought the detective (or "crime" or "mystery") novel had a lot in common with the sonnet, insofar as there are some strict conventions set up, and some heavy expectations--but also the expectation that one will improvise, somehow, on what's come before. In both cases, working within the conventions but also testing them and in some cases disrupting them--all part of a satisfying process, from the writer's point of view at least.

Nobel Laureates in Literature

In the Spring of 1994, I taught at Uppsala University in Sweden--one of the highlights of the academic part of my career. I was what's known as a Fulbright Senior Lecturer. I taught a couple courses and had a fine time in Sweden. My grandfather came from Sweden, and his niece lived in Uppsala, so I often had dinner with her, spoke Swedish, and revisited old times. She lived--and still lives--and Murargatan--"Brick Street."

The year before, Toni Morrison had won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the English Department at Uppsala had managed to have her visit while she was in Sweden to pick up the prize in Stockholm: what a great opportunity. I was sorry to have missed her visit but very glad she had visited.

If you're the sort of person who sometimes likes to base a schedule of reading on lists of one kind or another, then you may be interested in the last decade's worth (or so) of Nobel Laureates in Literature:

2008 Jean-Marie Gustave le Clezio
2007 Doris Lessing
2006 Orhan Pamuk
2005 Harold Pinter
2004 Elfried Jelinek
2003 J.M. Coetzee
2002 Imre Kertesz
2001 V.S. Naipaul
2000 Gao Xingjian
1999 Gunter Grass
1998 Jose Saramago
1997 Dario Fo
1996 Wislawa Szsborska
1995 Seamus Heaney
1994 Kenaburo Oe
1993 Toni Morrison
1992 Derek Walcott
1991 Nadine Gordimer
1990 Octavio Paz

For a complete list that goes back to 1901, please see . . .

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/

Tidal Sights and Sounds

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Towards Evening
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The muted roar of tidal surge
sounds like a convergence of one
million whispers.
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Reflection of the sun's unrolled
like a ragged carpet on the surface
of the sea.
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To touch the wind with your tongue
is to taste ancient salt and conjure
braids of kelp.
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Soon the sea will say its vespers
deep inside its tidal whispers.

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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

I Get Some of My News from Facebook

Ashamedly, I must confess I get some of my news from facebook, including some of the unlovely kind:

"Utah State Senator Chris Buttars recently called the LGBT community 'probably the greatest threat to America...I know of' He went on to spew a series of vile insults including:

* Lesbian and gay relationships are 'abominations.
* LGBT people are moving America toward a society that has no morals.
* LGBT people will 'destroy the foundation of American society.'

Comments like this spread ignorance and fear – promoting an atmosphere of violence against LGBT Americans. They have no place in the discourse of our elected officials."

The last two lines are commentary from someone on facebook, of course, not news, per se. The same goes for "spew vile insults": that phrase is a bit of commentary, granted.

--Not sure what do about Senator Buttars' opinions and remarks, aside from instinctively to recoil from them. Not only do I not think of "the" (sic) LGBT community (I don't think there's just the one monolithic community, but what do I know?) as a threat, I think of LGBT individuals, families, friends, and communities (etc.) as a net gain, to say almost the least.

As to the rest of Butterfingers' argument, well, I'd have to know what he thinks "the foundation of American society" is. Is it tectonic plates, or am I being too literal? Is it republican (small r) democracy, petite bourgeoisie capitalism, corporate capitalism, a theocracy, or what? I'd need to know that first. Define terms and all that boring English-major stuff.

All LGBT persons have "no morals"? This can't possibly be true. This is not borne out by my experience.

When I hear "abominaton," I always think of the abominable snowman, and I get distracted, so Butterfingrs has lost me there, too. I think of Bigfoot, with a white fur-coat on, walking in the snow.

Okay, strictly for the sake of argument, trying mightily to play along with Butterfingers, I will assume for 90 seconds that "the" LGBT community poses some kind of threat. We'll call it a "threat to be named later," for the simple reason that I don't know what the threat is. For instance, let us assume that a gay couple moves into a house next door to a married (or not) straight couple. Both couples go to work, take the garbage-cans out on garbage day, mow the lawn, walk the dog, yadda yadda. So far so good? Okay. Now, in what sense is couple A a threat to couple B, let alone a threat to all straight marriages or relationships? If couple B is running a meth-house, then couple B is a greater threat to couple A, I submit to you, your honor. I've never been able to follow this "threat" argument. But I digress. I was supposed to be playing along with Butterfingers. Playing along, I will cite the following as greater "threats," in no particular order:

1. Bunions.
2. Global warming.
3. Complete financial de-regulation.
4. Insomnia.
5. Really bad reality TV shows that are really awful. Really.
6. The designated-hitter rule in baseball.
7. Anti-biotic-resistant strains of the Staph infection
8. A mis-understanding of how the semicolon is supposed to be used.
9. The Swine Flu.
10. Chronic homelessness.
11. A widening gap between rich and poor worldwide.
12. Where to store nuclear waste.
13. Chronic illnesses such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
14. The use of the term "back order." When shops run out of something, a clerk says, "It's on back order." I'd prefer the clerk to say, "We don't have any of that stuff. Go away." The use of the term "back order" is a threat to morale.
15. Two wars.
16. Rumsfeld's religious covers to his briefing memos; they may serve to help recruit more Al Queada members than anything.
17. Dick Cheney's shotgun, espeically when he's liquored up. To be fair, anybody liquored up shoudn't wield a shotgun; this isn't personal. Johnny Walker Red and shotguns shouldn't marry. :-)
18. High cholesterol.
19. Too much salt in prepared foods.
20. A lack of appreciation for the films of Preston Sturgess.

There! I wasn't really even trying, and I came up with 20 threats that are greater than Butterfingers' (phantom, arguably) threat.! And I'm not even an expert on threats!

Senator Butterfingers, I urge you to sit down and to rearrange your priorities. Then please read Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality, Part One and a nice readable popular history called Out of the Past. Take two aspirin, and call Stephen Fry (not Hugh Laurie!) in the morning. Also, I apologize for calling you Butterfingers. It was high-schoolish of me, Senator Buttars.

Out of the Ordinary Time

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Out of the Ordinary Time
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A turquoise cable-car, yes, something
like that and not like that is tonight's
craving. I've learned not to lose sight
of basic needs (water, money). But
there's more to life than survival,
or so it seems when you're surviving,
anyway. So yes, long-haired, brown,
unamused Jesus riding a Harley
out of clouds to pay a serious visit
to pious "wealth-gospel" punks: that
would be of interest. Or a wheel-on-fire
chasing Donald Trump down an alley
in Calcutta, Shiva waiting for him
to Come to Mama. Or a furry llama
standing in mist just outside my dreams.
A seagull's scream, a shark's devotion,
some old shaggy, long-lost emotion:
these are sorts of things tonight called
to say it needed. I stood in rain. I pleaded.
Lightning sawed off a chunk of sky,
dropped it in the bay. That's
what I'm talking about.
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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Long-Lived Authors: Harper Lee, Karl Shapiro, Philip Roth

I was talking with another writer the other day, and he was observing that, when he was a very young writer, he often heard other youthful scribblers romanticizing such concepts as "surrendering your life to art" and "living hard and dying young [in relation to writing]."

I understand the romantic appeal of these ideas; on the other hand, in order to write, one does have to remain alive. It's just kind of the way things work.

So I want to say word in favor of writers who live, survive, thrive, and persist--who keep on truckin' and keep on keepin' on. Among them is Harper Lee, author (as you well know) of To Kill A Mockingbird. She recently turned 83. She's kept on writing, but she's chosen not to publish much. Philip Roth is still going strong at . . . age 73, I believe. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., lived into his 80s, as did Karl Shapiro (1913-2000). In fact, a posthumous edition of Karl's last poems was recently published by Texas Review Press. It's called Coda, and it shows how splendidly Shapiro kept writing poetry well into his late 70s. He never lost his eye for detail, his love for the whole lexicon, his confident voice, and his iconoclasm. He stayed funny. Bless his heart.

Stanley Kunitz lived for 100 years and wrote for most of those.

Keep writing and keep living--it's a both/and kind of thing.

Happy Birthday (Birth-Month), Writers

Here comes June, always an ambiguous month in the Pacific Northwest. It can be as wet and cold as January, or as summery as anywhere else in the U.S. You just never know.

However, you may know what authors were born in June, at least if you care about such things and poke around the Internet. Here's a list of some of our writerly friends, some still with us, most not (except in their words, etc.) who were born in June, starting with a howl:

Allen Ginsberg
John Masefield
Ambrose Bierce (do high-schoolers still read "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"? I hope so.)
Anne Frank
Barbara Pym
Ben Jonson
Laurie Lee
Blaise Pascal (perhaps my favorite spiritual writer--and author of a book in a genre by itself, Pensees)
Lillian Hellman (if you haven't seen the film, Pentimento, I invite you to do so)
Louise Erdrich (that's what I like--someone who's at ease with both fiction and poetry)
Luigi Pirandello
Colin Wilson
Mark Van Doren
Mary McCarthy (attended school in Tacoma)
Elizabeth Bowen
Charles Kingsley
Octavia Butler (thanks for your final book, Ms. Butler, Fledgling, not to mention the other ones)
Jean Anoulih
Pierre Corneille (we bunched the difficult French-playwright names together)
Harrie Beecher Stowe
Saul Bellow
Thomas Hardy (a.k.a. Mr. Cheerful)
John Ciardi (I have fond memories of his radio-spot on NPR, called "Good Words to You," and I very much like his translation of Dante)

Small Garden

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Small Garden
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When carrots come up, they're green hairs
on Earth's loamy pate. Already, though, they're
pointing covert orange fingers toward Earth's
molten core. Carrots like cool weather. Tomato-
plants don't and therefore hunker. They hold
out for the blaze, in which they'll then sprawl
promiscuously and weigh themselves up
with serious loads of red. That said, lettuce
is the lovely one, presenting delicate textiles
of itself to sun. So goes growth in post-Edenic
gardens, fallen and common, full of manure
and worms, seedy, sketchy, weedy, kvetchy,
half-cultivated, half-rude, all vulgar. Water
and weed, heed the almanac, fill a sack or
two at harvest time: all to the good.
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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Poets Who Would Have Blogged

(image: Emily Dickinson, the best poet ever)
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A simple speculative question, with no falsifiable answers: Which poets from the pre-blogging era would have blogged?

Homer? Yes. Although digitally print-related, blogging has much in keeping with an oral tradition out of which Homer sprang. Same goes for Virgil, who imitated Homer in every way.

Rumi? Yes. Rumi was an expansive, garrulous sort. What's not to like about blogging?

Martial? A tough call. He loved to gossip. But he may have made fun of new-fangled things.

Dante? No. However, he may have invented an additional circle of Hell for bloggers, if need be. (The might fit in existing circles.)

Chaucer? Yes. Geoff had the gift of gab. Same goes for Shakespeare, who would have found a way to revolutionize the genre. (In my poetry class this term, we decided that a good alternative name for Shakespeare was Master Shake, performance poet.)

Li Po? Yes.

Marvell and Donne? Probably, but within small circles. One would have had to subscribe to the blog.

Samuel Johnson? Why blog when you have the human blogging-software as your best friend (Boswell)? On the other hand, Johnson was such a social, verbally combative sort that he may not have been able to resist blogging. In one draft, he would have produced a sculpted, perfect essay.

Alexander Pope? No. Blogging wouldn't be traditional enough, and it would have been great satiric fodder for him.

Basho? Absolutely. Blogging on the road with a laptop. Collaborative blogging.

Wordsworth? Yes. Many posts about childhood memories and Dorothy, and childhood memories, and memories, and Wordsworth, and Dorothy, and childhood memories, and Wordsworth. Oy.

De Quincey? Maybe late at night, after the pharmaceuticals were brought on board?

Byron? Yes. Leigh Hunt? Absolutely. A journalist at heart.

Blake? Yes, if he could bring all the funky graphics on board. Oh, my: Imagine Blakean blog-posts!

Tennyson? Not so much. Arnold, no. But he would have written a poem complaining about blogs.

Emily Dickinson? Absolutely a perfect form for her. She could communicate with the world but maintain her privacy. Her posts would have been cryptic, brief, wry, and perfect.

Whitman. Are you kidding me? Blogging was made for Walt. "Blog of Myself."

Eliot? No. Pound? No. Blogging would have too much to do with the unwashed masses for their tastes. We are the hollow bloggers, we are the stuffed bloggers. Do I dare to blog?

Williams Carlos Williams? All over it. Langston Hughes? All over it. Imagine the sheer number of emails, not to mention blog-posts, Langston would have written.

C.P. Cavafy? A tough call, but no.

Auden? Yes. Spender? No. Larkin. Hmmmm.

Yeats? Absolutely not.

Marianne Moore? Oh, yes.

Frost? No.

Irving Layton? Yes. For a variety of motives.

Neruda. Hmmm. Uh, yes.

Sandburg? Yes.

Baudelaire, yes, Brautigan, yes, Victor Hugo no. Rimbaud, yes.

Goethe? Ah, come one. Germans and technology? Yes.

Something's Been Decided

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Something's Been Decided
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She told me sometimes she feels
like a short-wave radio that only
sends and doesn't receive. She
sends out good wishes, polite
inquiries, and expressions to try
to keep old friendships going.
Not much comes back, she said.
"I may have offended thoughtlessly,"
she added, "but more likely is
something's been decided. I mean,
I'm ignored because I'm ignorable."
She thanked me for stopping by.
I said, "Keep in touch." "I will,"
she said. "Will you?" We smiled.
"Send and receive," I told her.
"Let's do both."
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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom