Truly, Madly, Cellularly
Via mobile telephones they trysted.
Their words raptured, caromed off
corporate satellites, descended bundled
in spongy static. Some sluiced through
optic fibers. Why not face to face?
Unmanageable: The lovers worried words
might disappear into Society so harried, sloppy,
huge. Words cleansed in space and digitized
might be exchanged like polished stones.
Sighs and whispers might be chastened.
The two did broadcast their love, but only to
the other; and were charged by the minute.
Copyright 2010
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Broken Guitar
Broken Guitar
A man broke a guitar over--that is to say, on--another man's head.
The guitar-strings sounded the last chord the guitar would ever play. The surprised O of the guitar expressed this final chord, then disintegrated when wood splintered.
On the floor, the smashed instrument looked like a miniature shipwreck in an extremely small production of Shakespeare's The Tempest.
People gathered round the injured man like a chorus of bees. They murmured, turning away from the other man.
The man who'd used a musical instrument as a weapon sagged with self-hatred and remorse.
A woman entered the room. She said, "Hey, that's my guitar!"
The man who had been struck by the guitar looked deeply perplexed by recent events. His head bled, and the wound looked like a wet, red petal. “O,” he said, for life had strummed him.
Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom
A man broke a guitar over--that is to say, on--another man's head.
The guitar-strings sounded the last chord the guitar would ever play. The surprised O of the guitar expressed this final chord, then disintegrated when wood splintered.
On the floor, the smashed instrument looked like a miniature shipwreck in an extremely small production of Shakespeare's The Tempest.
People gathered round the injured man like a chorus of bees. They murmured, turning away from the other man.
The man who'd used a musical instrument as a weapon sagged with self-hatred and remorse.
A woman entered the room. She said, "Hey, that's my guitar!"
The man who had been struck by the guitar looked deeply perplexed by recent events. His head bled, and the wound looked like a wet, red petal. “O,” he said, for life had strummed him.
Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom
Found Poem
Found Poem: Your Search
1.
Your search - poets women like -
did not match any documents. Reset
search tools. Suggestions:
* Make sure all words are
spelled correctly. * Try different
keywords. * Try more general keywords.
* Try fewer keywords.
2.
Alas, the search tools
are not mine. They belong
to cybergnostic corporations.
All the words were spelled
correctly, poets women like.
Different keywords might
garner answers I don't seek:
scissors tailors hate.
Keyword Montgomery, Keyword
Patreus, Keyword Eisenhower,
Keyword Patton. Fewer key-
words: poets women; poets;
women; poets like; women like;
like; women.
Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom
1.
Your search - poets women like -
did not match any documents. Reset
search tools. Suggestions:
* Make sure all words are
spelled correctly. * Try different
keywords. * Try more general keywords.
* Try fewer keywords.
2.
Alas, the search tools
are not mine. They belong
to cybergnostic corporations.
All the words were spelled
correctly, poets women like.
Different keywords might
garner answers I don't seek:
scissors tailors hate.
Keyword Montgomery, Keyword
Patreus, Keyword Eisenhower,
Keyword Patton. Fewer key-
words: poets women; poets;
women; poets like; women like;
like; women.
Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Poets and Technology
This summer I've encountered some poets and others interested in poetry who are using technology extensively: Youtube, blogs, different recording technologies, facebook as a serious networking site [writers helping writers], online magazines, collaboration over great geographic distances, and so on.
So I thought I'd re-post something I wrote about a year ago in which I try to guess which poets from the past would have blogged, and which would not have done so. It would also be amusing [to me] to guess which ones would have used Youtube.
Poets who blog?
So I thought I'd re-post something I wrote about a year ago in which I try to guess which poets from the past would have blogged, and which would not have done so. It would also be amusing [to me] to guess which ones would have used Youtube.
Poets who blog?
Saturday, July 3, 2010
"Education," by Richard Brautigan
Here is a reading/video of Richard Brautigan's very short poem, "Education," from The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster (1968):
"Education"
"Education"
Friday, July 2, 2010
Tom O'Bedlam Reads Poetry
For about two years, a person with the alias Tom O'Bedlam has been reading poetry, animating the readings with images--often of the text itself--and uploading the audio/video to Youtube. His channel has now attracted over 1,600,000 views, which Youtube calls uploads. I should add that these are not "Tom's" poems but poems more or less from the canon, loosely defined. I immediately found two old favorites, "The Groundhog" and "The Fly"--for example.
I'm no expert on the overlapping micro-demographics of Blogger and Youtube, but if you found your way to this blog, you are already probably aware of Tom O'Bedlam. If by chance you're not, however, simply visit the Youtube Channel called Spoken Verse [with a space] and enjoy accessible, well produced readings of the poems, with great attention to the words themselves, but nothing overly dramatic or stagy.
You'll find old favorites and lots of surprises. And you'll find a link to a farcical story about Youtube's attempting to kick Tom off the premises, simply because he used a photo of a woman with one breast exposed in connection with a poem he read by Michael Ondaatje. Film critic Roger Ebert was drawn into the silliness, and Tom's channel was returned to good standing. I'll provide a link here to the tale as told by Ebert:
Ebert and O'Bedlam
Ebert intimates that we should be able to detect to whom the British voice belongs (an actor), so there's a bit of added "intrigue."
But Tom O'Bedlam's project is just one of those simple but splendid things made possible by mass media, which Tom is using artfully to transmit, celebrate, and, arguably, revive a non-mass-medium, poetry.
Here is Tom's own self-effacing description (from his Channel) of how he does what he does:
"I record everything sitting at my desk in my small office. The microphone I use (these days) is a Rode Podcaster plugged into a USB port. The software is either WavePad or Audacity - both free downloads. Anybody could do it."
So please do pay Tom's channel a visit, start by finding a favorite poem, and take it from there. You won't be sorry, as the advertisements like to say.
I'm no expert on the overlapping micro-demographics of Blogger and Youtube, but if you found your way to this blog, you are already probably aware of Tom O'Bedlam. If by chance you're not, however, simply visit the Youtube Channel called Spoken Verse [with a space] and enjoy accessible, well produced readings of the poems, with great attention to the words themselves, but nothing overly dramatic or stagy.
You'll find old favorites and lots of surprises. And you'll find a link to a farcical story about Youtube's attempting to kick Tom off the premises, simply because he used a photo of a woman with one breast exposed in connection with a poem he read by Michael Ondaatje. Film critic Roger Ebert was drawn into the silliness, and Tom's channel was returned to good standing. I'll provide a link here to the tale as told by Ebert:
Ebert and O'Bedlam
Ebert intimates that we should be able to detect to whom the British voice belongs (an actor), so there's a bit of added "intrigue."
But Tom O'Bedlam's project is just one of those simple but splendid things made possible by mass media, which Tom is using artfully to transmit, celebrate, and, arguably, revive a non-mass-medium, poetry.
Here is Tom's own self-effacing description (from his Channel) of how he does what he does:
"I record everything sitting at my desk in my small office. The microphone I use (these days) is a Rode Podcaster plugged into a USB port. The software is either WavePad or Audacity - both free downloads. Anybody could do it."
So please do pay Tom's channel a visit, start by finding a favorite poem, and take it from there. You won't be sorry, as the advertisements like to say.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
New Readings of Flash-Fiction
Readings (plus short videos) of two pieces of short-short fiction, a.k.a flash-fiction: the first by
Kathleen Wakefield, "Old Man"
and the second by
Kristin Fouquet, "For Eliza"
Kathleen Wakefield, "Old Man"
and the second by
Kristin Fouquet, "For Eliza"
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Margaret Walker's poem, "Childhood"
A reading of Margaret Walker's poem,
"Childhood"
Jubilee
This Is My Century: New and Collected Poems
"Childhood"
Jubilee
This Is My Century: New and Collected Poems
Sunday, June 27, 2010
"Falling Leaves," by Nazim Hikmet
A video/reading (about one minute)of "Falling Leaves," a poem (in translation) by Nazim Hikmet, Turkish writer.
falling leaves
falling leaves
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Friday, June 25, 2010
Thursday, June 24, 2010
A Reading of "Lullaby," by W.H. Auden
After I read "Lullaby," by W.H. Auden, many years ago, I suspected that it would become one of my favorite poems over the long haul, not just a well liked poem of the moment.
Here is a link to a reading (with images of the text) of it on Youtube:
Lullaby/Auden
Here is a link to a reading (with images of the text) of it on Youtube:
Lullaby/Auden
SMOKE AND THUNDER by Jim Chandler
I recently had the pleasure of reading Smoke and Thunder: Collected Poems by Jim Chandler. It's one of the best collections of contemporary poetry I've read in a long time, partly because it presents such a unified (but nonetheless complex) voice, vision, and perspective on experience.
Chandler is a son, so to speak, of both the South and the West, having spent some time in his youth in Pomona, California, and now making Tennessee his home. The book will remind many readers of Bukowski's work insofar as the world of the poems is populated by liquor, tobacco, coffee, hard luck, hard work, self-destruction, resilience, and defiance.
The poems themselves, however, speak from their own regional, personal, and existential space; this is not an imitation of Bukowski, by any means. Chandler's style is characterized by short-lined, explosive, pugnacious narrative poems that have great forward momentum but that can stop at any moment for a surprising reflection or a satisfying detour.
And several poems are expressly meditative, like "the anger of man," a poem about the poet's own relationship with rage but also about that emotion as something connected deeply to the male American's working-class experience. Such moments of self-reflection are not rare in the book, but they are often startling, as in "crazy dave," a poem concerning the almost automatic ways in which racism is passed along but also concerning how it can be defused by maturity and good old-fashioned intelligence; of course, Chandler doesn't say this in so many words. A poet, he lets the poem do the talking.
Many poems feature Chandler wrestling--sometimes violently, often genially--with a variety of demons most of us will recognize. In this way, the book functions as a whole, a narrative about persons and people whose first instinct, being an instinct, is to live impulsively, to keep moving and living hard--but whose complexity of character intrudes to suggest, "You know, you might want to slow down occasionally." This is never a self-indulgent book, however. The poems are too quick, firmly focused, rooted in imagery, and outward looking for that.
Chandler's "Western-ness" may come out most vividly when he expresses suspicions about the State, as in the poem about Elian Gonzalez. The poems asks us to focus on the almost Kafka-esque detail of federal agents swooping in to remove the child--and then giving him play-dough. Like many a good political poem, this one shifts the debate away from the debate, so to speak (should the the boy have been returned to his father or not?) and toward behavior: how the boy is removed, how he's treated. Details.
Chandler's "Southern-ness" comes through the poems in a variety of ways. --In places and situations many are set; in the poet's intimate knowledge of good-old-boy culture; in is dealing with God, religion, family, and history, for example.
By his own admission, Chandler has sometimes been a two-fisted drinker; he's also a two-fisted poet, full of surprises, including the ones he's experienced. Chandler has found a style that works well, suits his material, and wears extremely well over the course of a book. The book is published by 1st Books Library, and it includes an introduction by Carter Monroe.
Smoke and Thunder
Chandler is a son, so to speak, of both the South and the West, having spent some time in his youth in Pomona, California, and now making Tennessee his home. The book will remind many readers of Bukowski's work insofar as the world of the poems is populated by liquor, tobacco, coffee, hard luck, hard work, self-destruction, resilience, and defiance.
The poems themselves, however, speak from their own regional, personal, and existential space; this is not an imitation of Bukowski, by any means. Chandler's style is characterized by short-lined, explosive, pugnacious narrative poems that have great forward momentum but that can stop at any moment for a surprising reflection or a satisfying detour.
And several poems are expressly meditative, like "the anger of man," a poem about the poet's own relationship with rage but also about that emotion as something connected deeply to the male American's working-class experience. Such moments of self-reflection are not rare in the book, but they are often startling, as in "crazy dave," a poem concerning the almost automatic ways in which racism is passed along but also concerning how it can be defused by maturity and good old-fashioned intelligence; of course, Chandler doesn't say this in so many words. A poet, he lets the poem do the talking.
Many poems feature Chandler wrestling--sometimes violently, often genially--with a variety of demons most of us will recognize. In this way, the book functions as a whole, a narrative about persons and people whose first instinct, being an instinct, is to live impulsively, to keep moving and living hard--but whose complexity of character intrudes to suggest, "You know, you might want to slow down occasionally." This is never a self-indulgent book, however. The poems are too quick, firmly focused, rooted in imagery, and outward looking for that.
Chandler's "Western-ness" may come out most vividly when he expresses suspicions about the State, as in the poem about Elian Gonzalez. The poems asks us to focus on the almost Kafka-esque detail of federal agents swooping in to remove the child--and then giving him play-dough. Like many a good political poem, this one shifts the debate away from the debate, so to speak (should the the boy have been returned to his father or not?) and toward behavior: how the boy is removed, how he's treated. Details.
Chandler's "Southern-ness" comes through the poems in a variety of ways. --In places and situations many are set; in the poet's intimate knowledge of good-old-boy culture; in is dealing with God, religion, family, and history, for example.
By his own admission, Chandler has sometimes been a two-fisted drinker; he's also a two-fisted poet, full of surprises, including the ones he's experienced. Chandler has found a style that works well, suits his material, and wears extremely well over the course of a book. The book is published by 1st Books Library, and it includes an introduction by Carter Monroe.
Smoke and Thunder
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
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