Catholic Worker Movement Is 75

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The Catholic Worker Movement, which Dorothy Day (photo above) helped to found, is 75 years old this year. Day's fine autobiography, The Long Loneliness, sheds light on the movement's origins. There is also a nice biographical film about Day and the movement, featuring Martin Sheen.

A link to the CWM's web site:

http://www.catholicworker.org/#

Still Life With Fish and Other Stuff

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Chardin's Still Life With Fish


In Jean-Siméon Chardin's "Still
Life with Fish, Vegetables, Gougères,
Pots, and Cruets," the paint becomes
Plexiglass because it seals off odors
I seek. Or should I say "aromas"--odors
that are formally attired? Chardin's

manipulation of pigment teases me
with an imaginary robust stench of
a French kitchen, dead cool slimy fish
hanging over vegetables and such.
Chardin invites me to the unstill
kitchen, then closes the glass door

firmly, and I'm left with an inedible,
unsniffable scene. Well done, monsieur,
to taunt the nose of an olfactory voyeur
in the deep-freeze of an art gallery.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Skype

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Skype

Skype flies out of language
like the blade of a Viking ax but describes the hyper-
civilized act of talking to an image of someone talking
to your image as you talk and see your image. Like
any new gadget, it makes life easier and more complex
and soon seems necessary. It lends a drop of adrenaline
to the bloodstream, then joins technology's long
gray line of applications that coils back to stone
and bronze and iron. Maybe I'll skype

someone in Sweden, descendant of a Viking rower
to whom the carved boat's bow seemed magical
as it sliced open a path on a gray sea that's
now virtually visible from globally positioned
satellites, wee aluminum moons dropped off by
rockets into the orbiting traffic of junk that
pongs and pings our digital signals, scalps
our privacy, and surveils our sociality.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

A Book of Iranian Poetry

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If recent or not-so-recent events in Iran have whetted your appetite for more knowledge about that republic and that part of the world, you might be interested in A History of Modern Iran, by Ervand Abrahamian (Cambridge University Press, 2008). And of particular interest to poets and readers of poetry is Belonging: New Poetry By Iranians Around the World, edited with an introduction by Niloufar Talebi. (There is a site for the latter book on facebook, incidentally.) It was published in 2008, too--by North Atlantic Books.

Time Imbibed

(Image: courtesy Discovery Channel/Discovery.com)
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The Time-Drunk


"I got out of bed last night to go to the bathroom, and I started walking backwards. Strange things happen when you get old." --Passenger on the Amtrak Cascade train

"Beyond a black hole's gravitational border -- or event horizon -- neither matter nor light can escape." --Discovery.com



He got drunk on time, toxed with sips
of minutes, gulps of years, binges of
decades. Now he staggers down alleys
of memory behind Chronology's moist
row of pubs, saloons, clubs, and dives.

A lifelong drinker of time, he knows
how drunk he is but not where. Surfaces
bump him, rough him up. Gravity trips
him using cobblestones and curbs. He
finds a door he thinks he recognizes,

enters a noise, finds the bar, orders
a wee timetail. The one behind the bar
refuses, judges, speaks the savage,
polite words, "You've already had enough.
I can pour you a coup of coffee, though,

or call you The Cab." He assumes
the false dignity of a confronted
tippler. He mumbles, "The Cab." Waiting,
he negotiates. To the one behind
the bar, he says, "Come on. One more?"


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Celebrity Author

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Celebrity Author

I think I know what the celebrity-author was
thinking: Get me out of here. He wore
fame like a hair-shirt. The thing is, the money
is great, adulation's like liquor, and it's nice
to be thought a genius. So there he was, and
there we were. Nonetheless,

he squirms and fidgets. He goes on too long
and comments on his commenting like a daft
monarch. He doesn't like other people's wit
because it shows everybody's witty and fame
is, alas, more arbitrary than not. Of course,

we'd all trade places with him in the Land
of Hypothetica, especially because we'll never
have to. He won the lottery, he's a good writer,
and there's a wider justice in his fame. Still,

he itches and scratches, poses and opines,
tries to say shocking things, grins guiltily,
reminds us of his fame and wit and money
at certain intervals, and suspects what he
knows to be true: that we, too, can't wait
for the evening to be over.

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Subjunctive Mood

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Subjunctive Mood

Subjunctive means below the junction
of fact and fact, not quite up here
where things occur. It's a mood, and
I have always loved it, as it were.
It's contrary to fact, like fiction--
speculative, like poetry. "If I were
you," we say, "I'd visit Nebraska or
Tangiers," and for a brief counter-
factual moment, we're the other person
in Nebraska or Tangiers, and then we're
back here, offering advice in the
subjunctive mood, being grammatically
correct and ignored. If I were someone
else, I could still say, "If I were
someone else," ad infinitum, so to
speak, into subjunctive infinity,
the ultra-vast space of grammar.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Images From Iran

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The site www.boston.com is carrying some amazing photographs of events in Iran. I was especially transfixed by photos #12 and #17 and have posted a thumbnail version of #17 above, but it's far more impressive on the site. The photo is from the Associated Press. There's so much to "read" in these images.

According to the original caption, the photo above is of governmental "security" men attacking a protester with clubs while other protesters rush in to try to protect the man on the ground.

Poetry From Iran

Early in my college years, I corresponded briefly with an American woman my age who was living in Iran because her father worked there. If I recall correctly, the letters had to go through a general "APO" address first, and then on to Tehran. Not many years thereafter came the overthrow of the Shah and then what was known as "the hostage crisis." I was teaching in Germany when the hostages were released and flown to an air force base near Wiesbaden, across the Rhine from Mainz, where I was living.

Now it seems another revolution in Iran may be under way, although speculation seems to be outstripping knowledge, to say the least. And you know you are in a post-modern era when Twitter.com becomes a main conduit of information. Away from the television and radio, I found my thoughts turning to the poets in Iran. There must be thousand and thousands of them, and the Persian tradition of poetry is rich vast. The famous poet Rumi, who was apparently known as Jelaluddin Balkhi, was Persian, although he was born in Afghanistan, not in the region now known as the Islamic Republic of Iran. From The Essential Rumi, edited by Coleman Barks, I learned that Rumi's birthday is September 30, 1207. Eight-hundred years (plus) later, Rumi's poetry is as popular as ever, as well it should be.

At this moment, some of the poets must be out in the streets, some must be in rooms writing in response to events, and many must be engaged in both activities.

Here is a link to a nice site for Iranian poetry:

http://www.iranian.com

/Arts/poetry.html

On it I found a fine poem called "Four Things To Know" (great title) by a poet named Sasan Seifikar. I'll provide the opening in lines. For all four things to know, please visit the site. (Poets in Iran, be well.)



from Four things to know

Inspired by a poem from Attar

by Sasan Seifikar

If I had to reduce everything I know to four things
I would choose the following empowering insights
The first is this: do not worry about your stomach or money
But be concerned for your mind and heart, before it is too late

Heavy Metal Monk

I ran across a video from Reuters that features Cesare Bonizzi, an Italian friar and former missionary to Africa who performs Heavy Metal. No fooling! He records under the name Fratello Metallo. Here is a link to the video:

http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=87126

The video put in mind William Everson, the poet and member, peripherally at least, of the Beat Generation. Everson was also known as Brother Antoninus, for he was a lay monk in the Catholic church for quite some time (I forget which order he belonged to). Everson defrocked himself--literally and figuratively--during a poetry reading at U.C. Davis in the late 1960s. He took his monk's robe off during the reading and announced he was not going to be a monk anymore. Also, Everson very much liked the music of Janis Joplin--more blues and rock than heavy metal, certainly, but in the same primal vein that appeals, apparently, to Fratello Metallo. Everson's books include Man-Fate and The Residual Years. Everson was also a master printer of books and a well known conscientious objector during the Second World War, as was William Stafford.

Slam Poetry: Capsule History

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I ran across a pithy history of Slam Poetry, the more or less competitive version of what's known as Spoken Word nowadays. Here is a link to the timeline:

http://www.slampapi.com/new_site/background/slam_timeline.htm

This history credits Marc Kelly Smith, a construction-worker in Chicago, with starting the Slam movement.

Smith now hosts poetry-shows on both Sirius and Xm radio (as the image above advertises).

If Slam Poetry is like other developments, movements, or "schools" in literary and poetic history, then its origins are no doubt in dispute. Nonetheless, let the words be spoken.

Bread, Oranges, Cadillac's Fin

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At Least I Left Bread and Oranges

At first I didn't think I'd be in
this poem, which set out to accumulate
words representing images neutrally--
blue conifer-hills, black flies pulsing
on a deer's bone, rocking red box
of a medics' truck, mineral-grin of
a Cadillac's fin. . . . The truth is

I didn't have another poem to go to,
so I visited this one. You came in
and discovered me sitting on the old
green couch. --And now there you go,
out the door, slam, and I can't
blame you, but I promise to be gone
by the time that you return, and
I did buy bread and oranges. They
are sitting on the counter.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Day Lily, China, Chinese

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My second twitter-poem [136 characters + the hash-tag #tl] concerns weather, China, Chinese (language), and the day lily. I don't know what a hash-tag is.


How many weathers are there in China, what is the Chinese word for the seventh day of the week, and what should we ask about a day lily?

Emily Dickinson and Elvis Presley on Youtube

Thanks to film-maker Joe LaSac, Emily Dickinson and Elvis Presley are now on Youtube, as dramatized by actors and imagined in a poem--and by a fine film-maker. Take a look!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naa3oK4zWxQ

My First Twitter-Poem

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I gather the Twitter phenomenon has led to the verb, "to tweet," which I guess means to post a message on Twitter. As everyone knows (I was among the last to learn this), a twitter-post (the noun must be "tweet") is limited to 140 characters.

Someone had the great idea of establishing a Twitter identity/site that features poems limited to 140 characters. The link is . . .

http://twitter.com/twitlaureate


I found the new poetic form to be irresistible. Here is my first attempt:

One hundred forty characters: a small town of letters, no mayor, no stop-lights, one grocery store, two bars. One fire truck--has flat tire.

There's so much to like about this form (not necessarily about my poem, I grant). It demands compression, and while you're composing, Twitter counts the characters for you, so you are writing and revising at the same time, as well as serving the muse, Arithmetic. I'm Matsuo Basho would not only have blogged but would have also tweeted or twittered or twicked or tweeted.

Because I'm as old as dirt (see dirt in robin's mouth above), I associate "tweet" with the song, "Rockin' Robin," in which "all the little birdies on Jay-Bird Street love to hear the robin go tweet, tweet, tweet." That song usually made me laugh.

The Invisible Book

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(the photo is a still from a cinematic version of The Invisible Man, but I forget which one--obviously a pretty cool one, though)
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The Invisible Book

He recently published an invisible book,
which sold quite well, although the figures
on that were invisible, too, so he was just
going on instinct. Every bookstore he entered
carried the book in a space between two other
books--sometimes mis-categorized, but so what?

Fond Implements was the title of the book,
and still is. It is a novel. You may acquire it
simply by pretending to hold a book in your hands
and read it. Start, if you will, with your own
imagined first sentence of Fond Implements
and continue imagining sentences for the equivalent
of 232 pages or so. I found the book to be
an excellent read. I highly recommend it.
A used copy is perfectly acceptable, of course.
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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Things I Heard Last Wednesday

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Like almost all writers of poetry, fiction, and drama (etc.), I write down what people say. I'm especially drawn to statements or questions I hear as I pass by people who are talking, so that in a sense I'm getting the quotation out of context. At other times, I simply write down things people say to me. For example, I might ask a worker in a grocery store a question about where an item might be found, and the response strikes me as not just informational but evocative, so later I write it down. Sometimes more writing springs from such notes; sometimes, not. The lists make up a kind of "pre-writing": raw material. But they can have their own appeal, too.


Things I Heard Last Wednesday

I did not want to take that out of my bank.
I wouldn't go outside with short bangs even
on Halloween.
I'll take a comparison to Lucille Ball as
a compliment any day.
The more your head is in the sink, the better.
You can't be cold.
They have a scholarship for schizophrenics.
I've never driven anything nice before.
Nutrition is near Produce but off to the left.
The archive belongs to the family, but
it's held by the company.
That doesn't mean he didn't call.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Cuba

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I remember a day during what is now known as "the Cuban Missile Crisis" when my father came home from work, mentioned something about the crisis, and had a very unusual, ashen look on his face. The look told me what I "needed" to know--at age 8 (roughly): this was serious stuff. Leap forward these many years later, and this morning's newspaper (wow, a newspaper that still exists) reports on two longtime Cuban spies being arrested. Well, fair enough; if someone spies for another nation, he or she must be ready to be arrested. But I do wonder what "intelligence" they gathered that is or was dangerous. I don't mean to excuse espionage, but sometimes I wonder if it wouldn't be easier to turn over almost as much information as a country like Cuba wanted. What, exactly, is such a country going to do with it? Doubtlessly, I'm naive, but I figure Cuba already knows where our military installations are (one is next door) and who its "enemies" are in Florida and elsewhere. To me, Cuba seems chiefly to be a small, impoverished island nation.
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Cuba

I've never been to Cuba, but I know several who
have. As a lad, I thought I'd be incinerated with
everyone because Kruschev and Kennedy almost got
us killed over nothing. Fidel's so tired, he's
traded in fatigues for peejays. The sun's rays
radiate Caribbean rocks. Let the last Cold-War
ice-cube melt. Pronounce the word as Coo-buh,
play some gin rummy while sipping rummed cola
in a folding chair. Let history's belly hang
out over tops of proletarian bluejeans and
garish tourist-shorts. Close Guantanamo, twice.
Focus on poverty and hurricanes in both
nations. That is to say, prioritize.
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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Stolen Photos

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His Photos Were Not His

The temporary celebrity wasn't celibate. He
deleted from "his" hard drive photos of himself
and others frolicking in "privacy." Digital
piracy ensued. A Dickensian clerk at the local
rag-and-computer-parts recycling shop recognized
the fellow and reconstituted images from the
celeb's impersonal computer, sold them, and
they enjoyed a viral notoriety on screens
around our sad and rocky globe. The celeb

and his publicist met the media and were
quoted. The clerk got fired and paid a
fine. There is no line. No one owns anything:
prophets have murmured this news to us over
the eras. Now the Internet has made their
knowledge common. Intellectual property
and private photos languish in the
Oxymoronic Lounge, sipping mocktails next to
an irrelevant highway. The celeb should have
hammered the hard drive with a sledge, but
paparazzi would have clicked a thousand images
of that, so there you go, and so it goes.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Kay Ryan In Second Term as U.S. Poet Laureate

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Kay Ryan is serving a second consecutive term as U.S. Poet Laureate. The position used to be known as the Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress.

Ryan's books include The Niagra River (2005), Say Uncle (2000), and Elephant Rocks (1996).

Ryan was born in San Jose, California, and she taught for many years at the College of Marin.

Here is a link to more information:

http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2009/09-073.html