"Cedars in Space," by Hans Ostrom

"I Thought It Was Tangiers I Wanted," by Langston Hughes

Letter from Samuel Johnson to Mrs. James Boswell, 1777

"Sexual Orientation," by Hans Ostrom

"Mistakes," by Hans Ostrom

"Four A.M.," performed by Joe B. Vaughan, Jr.

"love is more thicker than forget"

"Alicante," by Jacques Prevert

Time Squall

*
*
*
*
*

Time Squall

A cloud of time came over
and rained minutes. I
watched them come down,
generate rivulets, create
puddles. Wonderful to see.
I went out into it
and stood beside an hour-sized
puddle, observing its
ad hoc intricacies. The cloud
moved on, the downpour
of minutes stopped, and
the sun went to work.


Copyright Hans Ostrom 2010

Repairing

*
*
*
*
*
*

Repairing


Have you ever been trying
to fix something when you
realize you've made it worse
and pushed it past the point
of reparation? I took a pair

of spectacles to an optometrist's
shop. They looked like a Cubist's
sculpture of a bird--glue-smeared,
bits of tape hanging, sad bandages.

The woman behind the desk said,
"I see you tried to fix them."
She said it warmly, without
irony, like an aunt sipping
a gin-and-tonic who has no
interest in parenting you.

She looked closely at the
stupendous failure of my
project. Her whole young
life, she had already seen
many men pursue the male
dream of fixing it themselves.

"Let's get you a new pair,"
shall we?" she said. When
I signed the form, I couldn't
see. Writing had become like
stabbing the fog with a
pen. I enjoyed it.

I hope Heaven has assistant
angels like the optometrist's
front-desk person--there to
check you in, get you registered
for pre-Judgement events. I
hear one saying, "I see you
tried to fix your life."


Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

Writing in the Dark in Vancouver, Canada

*
*
*
*
*
*

Writing in the Dark in Vancouver, Canada

the surface of the world,
as sorted by senses,
ripples, stinks, attracts,
abrades, confuses, salts, scorns,
and so off we go.

we live not in the world but
only in its epidermis, our vibrations
and toil adding only infinitesimally
to the shifting product, adding

nothing to underneath. what's
beneath this roiling Heraclitan
surface? Emptiness, chant the
Buddhists--sacred silence.
Particles, sing
the scientists. God, pray
Godly ones. Nothing, say
the confidently righteous--
nothing at all, of course: what
you see is . . . .oh, but

nobody really listens to them
because they're not as interesting
as the others. I mean, what's
less imaginative and more boring
than nihilism? Nothing.


Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

Pound It

*
*
*
*

Pound It


H.D., Pound, and Richard
Aldington wrote:
"To use absolutely no word
that does not contribute
to the presentation." They
could have cut "absolutely,"
as it didn't contribute to
the presentation of the rule,
but I like that word there.

The rule itself is strict--
like Pound, so American, bossy,
anxious, wanting to regulate--
as long as no one regulated him.
His last name suited him. Eerily:
an extra word. As both noun and
verb: a humorless weight, a unit
of measurement; and an obsessive
striking. --Oh, and before I
forget, define "contribute"
and "presentation." And if

you're a poet, and you receive
a rule, what's the first thing
you'll want to do? That's right.
Pound it. 'Til it breaks.


Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

Not Quiet But Spare

*
*
*
*
*
A Shorter Distance

(in the midst of the "Quietude" debate)


Not quiet, no, but spare:
there--pithy, tough,
not much more than enough,
as if spoken while working,
or during love, or in hiding.

Utterance reduced--not
primitive or shy, just
taciturn, in that one
kind of American grain.
--Dickinson, whom the Beat
Boys ignored or belittled.
Not Walt, the loud guy
in a bar, and bless his
bearded heart for that.
We needed that as well.

--Thought through, pondered
on, then let go, not heavy
on the rhetorical gravy. That's
how some people talk and
some write. It's a quantity
of language showing up after
thought. Not shy, not quiet.
Just brief, one of those
short jabs no one sees
because they're watching
the guy fall down. A
straighter distance.


Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

Ken Kesey talks about Neal Cassady

mustang sally - wilson pickett

"Daybreak in Alabama," by Langston Hughes

"Lighting a Candle for W.H. Auden," by James Wright

Editors of Small Magazines

Ever since printing presses got up and running, the editors of small magazines have been crucial to all nations' literature. "Small" refers to the circulation but often also to the format. People who, say, look at the modest poetry shelf at Borders or Barnes and Noble see "culture" from the other end of the telescope, after fame (to the extent poets can be famous) has been established, earned, manufactured, or some combination thereof. You will find Frost, Eliot, Plath, Yeats. The reasons you find them are often more complicated than you would imagine.

Meanwhile, new poetry keeps getting written, and if poets want their poetry read by people other than themselves, their friends, or their local colleagues (in school or in a local poetry "scene"), they will send their poems off to small magazines. That first acceptance from a magazine outside one's circle/region/school is crucial. It brings validation. It gets the poet in a wider game, for better and worse, but mostly for better.

The first such acceptance I had, as far as I can remember, was from the oddly titled but venerable WIND: Literary Journal in Pikeville, Kentucky. It was edited solely by Quentin Howard. I'd used Len Fulton's International Directory of Small Magazines and Little Presses to look for places to send my stuff, and I'd picked Howard's magazine out for reasons I forget. The acceptance came in Winter, scrawled on the margin of a hand-printed flyer, with a guestimate of when the poem might appear. I went on to publish other poems and one story in the magazine over the years, but I never met Mr. Howard. He died, and I think some of his associates tried to keep the magazine going, but it soon folded. Many of these magazines are the product of one or two person's virtually unrewarded dedication to seeing literature into print--tough, grassroots stuff, completely hidden from mass-culture.

Now many magazines have migrated online, or started there, but their purpose is largely the same. So, a tip of the cap to editors of small magazines and little presses, where the real work gets done.

The poem Mr. Howard accepted was "Sea Monster," oddly enough. I can't trust my own memory of how the poem came to be, but I know I was taking a course, as a first-year graduate student, in transformational (or "deep") grammar; and I was most interested in the interior and dramatic monologues of Robert Browning and Randall Jarrell--chiefly for the "move" in which one inhabits a decidedly different persona from one's own; and I was still enthralled with Gerard Manley Hopkins' poetry, as I suppose I still am, because of its achievement in the poetic equivalent of jazz.

Hence, I suppose, the mention of grammar, the interior monologue spoken by a sea monster, and the ubiquity of alliteration and words with Anglo-Saxon roots.

Anyway, a link to a reading of the poem, with thanks again to the late Quentin Howard:

sea monster

"Miss Blues's Child," by Langston Hughes

Color of a Hungry Shadow

*
*
*
*
*

Color of a Hungry Shadow


for C.M.


The man asked, "What color is a hungry
shadow?"--intending to leave it at that,
a question. I answered, "Green." What
color is the sound of people turning
away, as if you were a frayed edge
of something cheap? Some in that crowd
once rejected me personally. That's

about as intimate as failure gets.
"Gray." See them now congealed
into a sluggish coil, gray raincoats
on their backs. They walk away back
to their task of arbitration. They

determine who among us shall be
heard, and they never listen: that's
the way it works. Kafka smelled
their souls. Dickinson ignored them,
returning cold fire. What's the color
of succeeding on your own terms?
Name it. You get to name it.

Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

"Nuit Blanche," by Edna St. Vincent Millay

A poem about insomnia:

nuit blanche

Chocolate

chocolate

Poetry, Sex, Heat

A good combined topic for summer:

poetry, sex, heat

"old tennis player," by Gwendolyn Brooks

old tennis player

"Hook," by James Wright

James Wright's "Hook"

"Force of Nature," performed by Joe Vaughn, Jr.

Celebrity Author

*
*
*
*
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. . . .

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 as 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 paced intervals, and suspects what he
knows to be true: that we, too, can't wait
for the evening to be over.


Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

"Lady Weeping at the Crossroads," by W.H. Auden

"Social Interaction," by Hans Ostrom

"San Joaquin," by William Everson

"It makes no difference abroad --" by Emily Dickinson

"Blank Verse for Karl Shapiro," by Hans Ostrom

Schools of Poetry

I'm indebted to Carter Monroe for re-engaging me in an ongoing debate among poets--namely, why the so-called School of Quietude, dubbed so by Ron Silliman, won't acknowledge its own existence or its own tacit (so to not speak) dominance, still, of American poetry. A waggish answer: because it's quiet. Shhhh!

I'm further indebted to Seth Abramson for finally identifying Silliman's question as bait (my word, not Abramson's) and cheerfully taking the bait, partly, I sense, so that others wouldn't have to do so, having better things to do. Actually, I think Silliman's question is more fair than the sarcasm in the last sentence suggested. At any rate, here is part of Abramson's answer:

The belief, as exhibited in and by certain contemporary poems, that the near-totality of words in an individual poem should be employed in such a way as to utilize exclusively their transcendent rather than immanent meaning. To the extent this proclivity, as to word usage, commonly generates a poem whose individual on-the-page "marks" constitute merely an "echo" of the visualizable universe of matter the poem evokes, the actual words of the poem may be considered Quiet. They are Quiet in the sense that they are not permitted their full expression as "words-qua-words," but instead remain merely signifiers of a series of referents whose acknowledgment, comprehension, and internalization is the most important work of the poem.

And it's a good answer, one that follows the assertion that what Silliman calls the School of Quietude is really a family, not a genus or a species; a big tent, in other words.

Abramson also takes pains to establish his bona fides. I guess I should, too: publishing poetry in magazines since @1978, some prizes (whatever), Ph.D. in English literature (British romantics, with an exam area in Modern British and American poetry); have taught poetry-writing and poetry as literature since 1980; have written articles and books about poets and poetry; have co-written a textbook on writing poetry and fiction; have also published fiction. Yadda yadda.

To Abramson's apt definition above--which emphasizes language as a referential medium (roll over, Jacques) and thus its image-making quality, I would add that it is still a sound-making medium--lyric, that is. Too quietly for Silliman's tastes, apparently, but I'd still argue that the spine of Anglo-North-American poetry is in the "lyre," and that in this regard Auden is the dominant influence, even for people who haven't heard of him.

That is, I don't think this is an either/or question: quietude vs. noise. It is both/and, as is often the case in debates. Maybe the debate is about volume, the kind of argument that takes place in automobiles: "Turn down the bass!"

I do get what Abramson is asserting, and I do get Silliman's point that a certain way of writing squats at the center of American poetry and dominates the poetic/literary establishment: Folks from the Black Arts Movement made this point almost five decades ago.

Finally, I think it must be said that such a squabble, to the rest of the world, must sound like A Little Gnat Music, as it does even to many of us inside the family of poetry (not the taxonomical family to which Abramson refers).

As Carter Monroe has noted, "Schools" of poetry usually arise, like ghosts, after the body is buried (my analogy, not his); they are named after the fact. This reminds me of when I published my only detective novel. I was reading a review of it, and the reviewer called my novel a "procedural." I turned to my wife and said, "Honey, I wrote a procedural!" Who knew? It was a procedural because the detective was a county sheriff, thus a "police-person," a civic, not private, pro; and thus the novel, to some degree, followed his "procedure" for solving the crime. By the way, many poets, including Auden, are attracted to detective fiction because of the stricture of form and the opportunity to bend them. It's like messing with the sonnet form.

And/or, I would add, they take on far greater cache, prestige, and leverage after the fact, so much so that the young writers of this or that generation desperately yearn to be Imagists, Modernists, Black Mountain Schoolchildren, Beats, New York Schoolchildren, and so son. These schools generate what passes for glamor in the sad wee world of poetry. And what Silliman calls the S of Q seems to own a lot of the glamor still, if the Poet Laureate position generates glamor. I do wish someone would appoint Silliman.

Luckily, I grew up in the High Sierra in a town of 200, went to school in the West, have lived and taught in the West--although I have gotten around, teaching in Sweden and Germany. This squabble does carry a whiff of one more argument from East of the Mississippi; --although, again, I will take pains to acknowledge that Silliman asks some fair questions and that Abramson goes out of his way to provide a fair answer--more than fair: enlightening. Such dust-ups are good for the system of poetry; maybe. But mainly, poets should not go out of their way, if their way is to write poetry. What you want to be doing if you are a writer is to be writing the main thing you write, not writing about Schools. School is out.

"Sasha's Hooka," performed by Joe B. Vaughn, Jr.

"Being An American," by William Stafford

"Dylan Thomas," by Stephen Spender

"The Fly," by William Blake

"Sasha's Hooka," performed by Joe B. Vaughn, Jr.

"Still Here," by Langston Hughes

"Nightsong: City," by Dennis Brutus

"Go By Brooks," by Leonard Cohen

"Double-Consciousness," by W.E.B. DuBois

"The Withheld," by Tim Peeler

"Zen Ambulance," by Hans Ostrom

"The Tax Assessor," by Sandra McPherson

"And Now, Whether," by Hans Ostrom

"Dialogue on a College Campus," by Hans Ostrom

"A Woman In Paris," by Hans Ostrom

"The Youtube Sonnet," by Hans Ostrom

"afterlife essentials," by Carter Monroe

"Ardella," by Langston Hughes

"Final Curve," by Langston Hughes

"The Day-Labourer," by Jay Macpherson

"Cinderella," by Sylvia Plath

["Well, Spring overflows the land"], by Lorine Niedecker]

Top 100 Country Hits

Okay, so I made a list of what I thought are the top 100 Country hits of "all time." Allegedly Johnny Cash made such a list for his daughter, Roseanne, but it was never published.

Let's assume a few things: Assuming you're interested in the list, you're going to disagree vehemently with some choices and absences, so I'll apologize in advance. Second, the boundaries are pretty loose, so I've no doubt included songs that might fit better in "Folk," "Pop," or "Rock," but not that many. Third, there are some artists I just don't like who have nonetheless earned a spot on such a list, but I left them out. Fourth, go ahead and make your own list and set me right. That will show me. I didn't want to rank them, so I alphabetized them. --Oh, and I probably miscounted. Anyway:

Act Naturally
All My Ex’s Live In Texas
Am I The Only One
Amarillo By Morning
Battle of New Orleans
Before The Next Teardrop Falls
Behind Closed Doors
Better Man
Bloodshot Eyes
Blue
Blue Eyes Cryin’ In the Rain
Blue Moon of Kenucky
Coat of Many Colors
Cool Water
Country Roads
Crazy
Crazy Arms
Faded Love
Fireman, The
Flowers on the Wall
Folsom Prison Blues
Forever and Ever Amen
Four Strong Winds
Friends In Low Places
Gentle On My Mind
Get Rhythm
Ghost Riders In The Sky
Golden Ring
Good Time Charlie’s Got The Blues
Harper Valley PTA
He Stopped Loving Her Today
Hello Darlin’
Hello Walls
Help Me Make It Through The Night
Hey Good Lookin’
Honky Talk Angels
Honky Tonk Man
Hurt
I Believe In You
I Can’t Stop Loving You
I Fall To Pieces
I Hope You Dance
I Never Promised You A Rose Garden
I Walk The Line
I’m Movin’ On
I’m Down To My Last Cigarette
I’m Gonna Miss Her
I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry
I’ve Been Everywhere
Jambalaya
Keep On The Sunny Side
King of the Road
Kiss An Angel Good Morning
Lily’s White Lies
Long Black Veil
Lookin’ For Love in All the Wrong Places
Luckenbach Texas
Make The World Go Away
Making Believe
Mama Tried
Man of Constant Sorrow
Mom and Dad’s Waltz
Neon Moon
North To Alaska
Ode To Billie Joe
On the Road Again
Once A Day
Orange Blossom Special
Polk Salad Annie
Rank Strangers
Ring of Fire
Rose-Colored Glasses
San Antonio Rose
Seven Year Ache
Silver Threads and Golden Needles
Sixteen Tons
Smoky Mountain Rain
Stand By Your Man
Streets of El Paso
Sunday Morning Comin’ Down
Take An Old Cold Tater And Wait
Take This Job and Shove It
Tennessee Waltz
Tennessee Stud, The
The Likes of Me
Tiger By The Tail
Today I Started Loving You Again
Tom Dooley
Travelin Soldier
Tumbling Tumbleweeds
Wabash Cannon Ball
Walkin’ The Floor Over You
Walking After Midnight
Waltz Across Texas
When I Stop Dreaming
Wildwood Flower
Will The Circle Be Unbroken
You Ain’t Woman Enough
You Are My Sunshine
Your Cheatin’ Heart

"The Naked and the Nude," by Robert Graves

"Notes on the 1860s," by Lars Gustafsson, trans. C. Middleton

"A Couple," by May Swenson

Desdemona's Wooing from Othello, Act 1 Scene 3 by William Shakespeare (s...

"The Ordinary Man," by Robert W. Service

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portugues XXVI [I lived wit...

"Lady of the Dew," by Tim Lulofs

"A Thanksgiving," by W.H. Auden

"Song for Billie Holiday," by Langston Hughes

709 [Publication -- is the Auction] by Emily Dickinson

"Sigmund Freud and Babe Ruth in Heaven" by Hans Ostrom

Truly, Madly, Cellularly

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

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

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

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?

3 Poems by Carter Monroe

A link to three poems by Carter Monroe in the journal Thunder Sandwich:

MUDLARK

Please check out, if you've not done so yet, the "electronic journal of poetry and poetics," Mudlark, which aptly describes itself as "never in and never out of print"; some fine poetry there:

Mudlark

"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"

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.

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"

Margaret Walker's poem, "Childhood"

A reading of Margaret Walker's poem,

"Childhood"

Jubilee

This Is My Century: New and Collected Poems

"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

"No Uncertain Term" [the apricot poem]

A reading (with mini-movie) of "No Uncertain Term":

apricot poem

"The laws of God, the laws of man," by A.E. Housman

A Youtube reading of the poem:

Housman/laws

"Faith and Works," by Muriel Spark

A reading of "Faith and Works," a poem by Muriel Spark:

sparkpoem

"Mist, Earthquake, Grace"

Youtube reading of . . .

"Mist, Earthquake, Grace"

"Winter Nocturne"

A Youtube reading of the poem, "Winter Nocturne":

winter nocturne

Reading by Arthur Vogelsang

Here is a link to Arthur Vogelsang's reading of several poems:

Arthur Vogelsang

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

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

Tim Peeler Reads a Poem

A link to Tim Peeler reading one of his poems.

Tacoma's New Poet Laureate to Read

Tammy Robacker, Tacoma's new Poet Laureate, will give her first official reading in June:

More info

Carter Monroe Reads a Poem

Here is a link to a reading by Carter Monroe of one of his poems, good one--nice details, and a wonderful "turn" at the end:

Carter Monroe

Rank Stranger Press

Here is a link to Rank Stranger Press, presided over by Carter Monroe and Jim Chandler; the press publishes a wide variety of poetry and short fiction in both chapbook and "big" book formats. And here is a link to a performance of the song that gave the press its name:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_vtOd_d40o

Bob Dylan recorded it, too, in his inimitable style:

http://s0.ilike.com/play#Bob+Dylan:Rank+Strangers+To+Me:166494:m652663

Carter Monroe's THE NEW LOST BLUES

I just finished reading Carter Monroe's The New Lost Blues: Selected Poems 1999-2005, and it's splendid. It's a book well known in the small-press community but should be even more widely known and, one hopes, headed for a second printing. The influence of the Beats and the Black Mountain School is here, but that's not saying much as Monroe has obviously absorbed that influence and moved on to forge his own style. Many poems in the early part of the book are narrative in different ways, personal but never insular, and all guided by a firm but flexible, funny but also often coldly incisive voice.

These poems represent much from the author's world in North Carolina and elsewhere but just as much about the U.S. in the early 21st century. Other poems are more palpably jazz-influenced, and Monroe clearly knows the music and musicians there, and is no dabbler. A third kind of poem is shorter, more experimental, such as the Ra Postcards. Through it all runs a disciplined but highly inventive maturity, always a strong voice, a keen eye for detail, falsehood, self-deception, absurdity, and despair, and always a fine sense of form and line. This really is a substantial achievement, a book for readers of poetry to savor, and a book for poets to learn from and, if they're not careful, envy.

The New Lost Blues Selected Poems 1999-2005

Jim Chandler, Poet, Fiction-Writer, Essayist

I'm waiting for Jim Chandler's book of poems, Smoke and Thunder, to arrive from amazon.com, but I've already read several of his narrative poems, and they're terrific. Jim lives in Tennessee and has collaborated on many literary projects with the inimitable Carter Monroe. A link to Jim's site:

Jim Chandler

Smoke and Thunder

Bad-Boyfriend Poem Redux

Last year sometime I posted a video of Thadra Sheridan's reading her poem, "Bad Boyfriend," and apparently the post was popular. To be clear this is not a bad "boyfriend poem"; it is a good poem, and a good reading of it, about a bad boyfriend.

Link to Sheridan

Anyone out there know of any good "bad-girlfriend" poems--that aren't reflexively and predictably misogynist? Gotta be a good poem.

Purple

Short piece on purple:

Purple

Kikugirl

Please check out a new blog from a friend and colleague of mine:

kikugirl

Book of Poems by Tim Peeler

A link to Checking Out, a book of poems by Tim Peeler:

Checking Out

An Interview With Carter Monroe

Tim Peeler's interview with Carter Monroe, about poetry, of course:

interview

Carter Monroe's Spicer Series

Thanks to a blog called 9th Street Laboratories, I recently read Carter Monroe's "Spicer Series," a group of poems for and, in multiple ways, inspired by Jack Spicer, who was affiliated with the Beat Movement. For more on Spicer (1925-1965), please see . . .

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/1656

Carter Monroe is a poet, essayist, and editor who lives in eastern North Carolina. His knowledge of 20th and 21st century American poetry is vast and incisive, the product of inquisitive, disciplined eclecticism. I think the Spicer series is terrific, a deft fusion of lyricism, imagery, and philosophy. I hope you like it, too; here is a link to it as well as to a photo of Mr. Monroe:

Spicer Series by Carter Monroe

Writers on the Storm: Stories, Observations, and Essays

The New Lost Blues Selected Poems 1999-2005

Jellyfish (poem)

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Jellyfish, Commencement Bay

(for K.W.)

At an edge of Commencement Bay,
an array of jellyfish has patterned
its position near charcoal stumps
of old pilings. We could look at
sailboats, tankers, a para-glider,
a volcano, an island, two mountain-
ranges, or each other—no:

jellyfish transfix. At first they
look like ladled dollops of brown
butter floating atop bay-soup.

Then they suggest small veils
cast off by tiny mermaid brides
now on honeymoons. We lean
over a deck-railing, large mammals
with heavy heads that pretend
to know; who mumble things
about jellyfish-stings. Fascination
defeats knowledge easily.

They’re neither fish nor jelly. Do
they swim or float? Yes. Strings
that originate inside them orient
languidly toward land as if to tune
in to a broadcast from sand. Do
jellyfish communicate? Doubtful—
probably too evolved for that.
Everything’s composed of water,
light, oxygen, and byproducts:
what else is there to know?

Simple and surreal, jellyfish are
beautiful mucous, buoyant
membrane. Comatosely alert
and illumined, their shifting
forms respond to smallest
liquid undulations at an edge
of Commencement Bay.


Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

Poetry Book By Chris Mansel

A person whose judgment I trust, Carter Monroe, highly recommends a book of poems by Chris Mansel that I intend to read. It is The Ashes of Thoreau, and it is available for free download . . . here.