The Chore

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The Chore


Life never seemed simple. Once,
though, it appeared to have fewer
components. That was an ego ago.

Mirrors showed compassion. Amazement
was not yet rare. Programmers
had not yet inherited the Earth.

Nostalgia, I'm told, is a yearning,
a warm emotion. What I feel is cold.
It accompanies basic, necessary work:

contrasting yesterday's illusions with today's.


Copyright Hans Ostrom 2010

Against Yesterday

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Against Yesterday


Yesterday is not a good idea. It
just happened, so it's not really
history. It's more like a today
that's started to rot. Yesterday
can't make any promises, and even
if it could, it wouldn't keep them.

Yesterday annoys--the way it blurs
into a perfectly fine today, insulation
between the two disintegrating like
wet cotton candy. Listen, I'm
not saying we ought to abolish
yesterday. I'm suggesting we impose

severe regulations. I'm thinking
we should investigate what a yester
is, why in fact yesterday isn't
yestermorrow, and who made
midnight boss.


Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

Rampant Significance

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(image: Sumerian tablet)
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It's been a while since I've seen wee advertisements on TV for videos of "girls gone wild." I gather from the ads that the "girls" in question are chiefly college students on break who are induced to lift their shirts and expose what, in Sweden (for example, would be unremarkable if nonetheless unobjectionable and certainly not without charm. Probably the videos should be called "girls gone bored" or "boys gone predictable."

I doubt if I can successfully market the idea of "significance gone rampant," so I wrote a poem.

Rampant Significance

There is too much meaning. Everywhere
you refuse to turn, something means.
Messages are getting across. Answers
proliferate like dust mites. Typhoons
of information saturate our land.

In my mind I found the image
of a solitary Sumerian slowly
etching text into stone. The notion
of a billion email messages per
[insert unit here] then swept

the Sumerian and his chisel away like
an ant in a flash flood. No one
has time to be absurd. People
are too busy making themselves understood.
To what end? Points are being stressed.


Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

Brazilian Poetry

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(image: Brasilia's Metro system)
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Today I ran across a nice little overview of Brazlian poetry. The overview appeared (and still appears) on the U.S. Brazilian Consulate's web site. I wonder if the Brazil U.S. Consulate's site has an essay about American poetry. Probably not.

Anyway, the piece sent me in search of An Anthology of Twentieth Century Brazilian Poetry, edited by Elizabeth Bishop (on whose poem, "The Fish," I once published a wee essay--pardon the self-serving but non-commercial interruption)and Emmanuel Brasil. It is, I assume in translation--for us dolts who don't read Portuguese. Anyway, I ordered the book. I was about to write that I can't wait to read it, but of course I can wait to read it--I just don't want to wait. While ordering the book, I also saw Seven Faces: Brazilian Poetry Since Modernism, edited by Charles A. Perrone--also an anthology, I gather. What a nice title.

Anyway, here is a link to the Bishop/Brasil anthology:

Brazilian poetry

They'll Grow That Way

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They'll Grow That Way


They'll grow that way, the trees--
the way they negotiate themselves
and circumstances: weather, climate,
soil, and such. They they're there.
They are. We are. We look and name,
then file trees away in this or that
taxonomy, maybe mythology,
ecology. We may place trees into
a landscape design, a farm, or an idea
of wilderness. The trees, they don't
know about this. They'll grow
that way, each a tension rooting
in and branching from a code
of seed, a pattern of environment.



Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

Skål: Swedish New Year

I spent one New Year's Eve in Kiruna, a mining city north of the Arctic Circle in Sweden. At the time, some of the miners would drive big and old American cars around the ice-packed streets, but that was quite a while ago. Many Sami (people whose ancestors were indigenous to that part of Sweden) live there, and among their artistic traditions is the engraving of pewter. More about New Year's in Sweden:

Swedish New Year

New Year's Poetry

Poetry.org has a nice feature on "New Year" poems, including the most famous one--by Robert Burns.

Link to New Year poems

Happy New Year.

WENCH

The blogger Library Love Fest has a nice review of Dolen Perkins-Valdez's novel, Wench, just out from HarperCollins/Amistad Press.

Review of Wench

Dolen is a friend and colleague, and I'll post something myself on the novel soon. In the meantime . . . get a copy of this fine novel!

Mark Halliday Reads "Scale"

Here is a video of poet and professor Mark Halliday reading his poem, "Scale," which I heard/saw him read on our campus and which I admire a lot:


Mark Halliday reads

Bad-Boyfriend Poem

I found this poem by Thadra Sheridan--delivered well by her on Def Poetry Jam--amusing and nicely crafted:

"Bad Boyfriend" Video

This Mess Proceeds

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This Mess Proceeds

wash/wish goes the traffic. rain.
tacoma's not too bright today, but
let's face it: no city's a genius.
look carefully, and you'll see
nobody's got it figured out, life
i mean: how we all dress, stand,
talk, sit, wait. especially poignant--
how we pretend to know.

pups for sale in the window, christmas
day: is that okay? televisions mumbling
sub-sonically behind what they cast
into rooms. the sun's in a hurry to
set: that's a lie in multiple ways,
but if it feels good to say, say
it: no one will be misled or get
their feelings hurt, even the
astronomer who lives next door.
december, decemberish, wash/wish
goes the traffic. this mess proceeds.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Video of Richard Hugo

Here is a link to a crisp video of Richard Hugo as he discusses the advantage of not knowing much, in a factual sense, about a subject (in this case, a town) you're approaching in your capacity as poet:

Richard Hugo video

Hagios Press

Here is a link to a Canadian publisher of poetry and fiction, Hagios Press, in Saskatchewan:

http://hagiospress.com/?s=aboutus

The Fathering Squad

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The Fathering Squad


so we face the fathering squad--
against the wall of life, executed
repeatedly, starting at birth,
for crimes we'll commit against
fathers' ideas of what we shoulda
oughtta have turned out to be or
not to be, no question about
it. then, fascinating,

we become maybe fathers ourselves
but, if lucky, realize in time we
shouldn't oughtta join the fathering
squad or at the very least refuse
to fire and instead, what a concept,
help the offspring spring on into
life. ready, aim, love.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

WHITE LIGHT PRIMITIVE by Andrew Stubbs

I've been reading and re-reading the book of poems, White Light Primitive, by Andrew Stubbs, a Canadian poet, professor, and scholar. The book was published this year--by Hagios Press.

It's one of the more memorable, impressive books of poems I've read for some time, made all the more pleasurable because I know Andy. We taught at Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, many, many moons ago.

Some of the poems concern his father's experience in World War II. Others concern--well, this is where one wants simply to say, "Read the poems." The quality of perception, phrasing, imagery, and thought makes all the difference, regardless of the "subjects" or "ideas" Andy approaches. How life actually occurs to the mind and lodges in memory is, to some degree, a fascination of the book. There comparisons to Alan Dugan, Wallace Stevens, Eli Mandel, and other poets to be made. But the genius of these poems may well lie in the individuality of perception and in the spare language that manages to be rich, always enough, never minimalist in a mannered way. For example, here's the opening of a poem called "fire and ice":

winter adding to itself, details
of the dead fill the back
yards, smell of
pine breathing snow
in swimming pools. followed by
april melt, local
river flood, now think
back in time from
open sky, july
heat, plan on

doing . . .

White Light Primitive is one of those books that induce the reader to say, simply, "Thanks."

Shelter In The Cold

We went to a rewarding Christmas Eve religious service at a place called Nativity House. It's a daytime shelter for those living on the streets or otherwise in impoverishment. The people can drop in during the day, get coffee and soup, read books, play cards, and create art. --Or just hang out and stay warm, converse.

Those attending the service were chiefly members of a Jesuit parish, or affiliated with Nativity House (serving on the board), or just knowledgeable about what NH does. (It's been in Tacoma for 30 years.) A few drop-in regulars attended, too, and one played guitar.

Presiding were a Lutheran minister and a Catholic priest. The latter is Fr. Bill Bischel, known as Father Bix locally. He routinely gets arrested when he chains himself to a gate at (for example) the Bangor, Washington, nuclear submarine base. Bix's argument, among others, is that any nuclear weapon violates international law because it produces indiscriminate killing. He goes to trial again soon.

But that was not the purpose of this evening's Christmas service. Rather the purpose was, aside from the obvious, to consider those without shelter--no room at the inn, and all that.

The service featured many lovely "mistakes," owing to two ministers presiding (both pushing 80) and other factors. Also helping to preside were both Lutheran and Jesuit volunteers--men and women who had graduated from college and wanted to volunteer for a year. One of them told us, "I'm not a Lutheran, but I'm a Lutheran volunteer because I wanted to work with the homeless."

In place of the eucharistic bread was hard-tack; in place of the wine was cranberry juice. "The wine has been transformed into cranberry juice," observed Father Bix, calmly.

In that spirit, if you will, Nativity House never proselytizes or preaches. It provides the space, the warmth, the food, and the clothes. That is all. That is enough, almost. Too much need, not quite enough material and good will. As we wait for a better system, so to speak, we do some semblance of what we can.

Poetry in Yemen

Because more people visit the abode in late December and early January, one tends to tidy up. Tidying up has resulted in more clear space on the top of the mission-style desk that hosts the laptop--and that now has room for . . . a globe. Since childhood, I've been enchanted by globes, and perhaps you have, too.

A recent spin of the globe reminded me that Yemen lies south of Saudi Arabia, possesses a long coast on the Gulf of Aden, and is east of Ethiopia and north of Somalia. It is also a land of poets, as described by (among others) Steven C. Caton, who writes of poetry as a cultural [meaning everyday?] practice in a Yemeni tribe:


Book on Yemeni Poetry

Greetings to Yemeni poets.

Before Katrina

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Before Katrina

What size, what color, how many?
said the New Orleans T-shirt merchant.

Say, buddy, jus' a minute, jus'
a minute, said the inebriated man
on Canal Street, his life misplaced
behind his eyes somewhere. Talk to you
for a minute? he said.

Now I'm back behind gauze
of hotel drapery looking
at charcoal silhouettes of
financial towers. I gave
the boozy man some money,
and to the street-vendor,
I said big, blue, and one.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Food Poetry

Here is a link to a site featuring poems about food, including "To A Goose," by Robert Southey. The goose, deducing that it was being viewed as food, probably had mixed feelings about the "tribute." Southey's not much read now, even though he was Poet Laureate of England. He is among the British Romantic generation, of course, that includes Byron and Wordsworth. Southey's best known now as the creator of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears," which is also partly about food.

Food Poems

Poet Laureate of Alabama

Sue Walker is the Poet Laureate of Alabama, serving her second term. She's a fine poet, and she's an editor and the publisher at Negative Capability Press in Mobile, Alabama:

NC Press

In the interests of full disclosure, I should add that Sue published an essay I wrote about Karl Shapiro--in a special collection of essays about him. John Updike contributed to the volume, among many others.