Thursday, April 14, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
School of Poetry
School of Poetry
I was going to start a School of Poetry,
but I couldn't find a building to lease, nor
could I gather a group of destined geniuses.
A group? Not even one foreordainedly
acclaimed scribbler. So on I rode upon
a rickety nag of my own, notebooks piling
up somewhere like a slate-castle, my wee
career in poetry careening out where the
brush grows and the tourist throws an
empty bottle of beer. I am I think
a member of a species the birders like
to call accidental. Thank God I never
started a School of Poetry. I would have
been tardy every day and distracted by
the cheerleaders for the football team,
on which I would have played free
safety, a roaming loner in search of
a concussion, scribbling dreams
between the yard-lines while ghosts
dissolved in Alka-Seltzer mists
beyond the stadium.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
I was going to start a School of Poetry,
but I couldn't find a building to lease, nor
could I gather a group of destined geniuses.
A group? Not even one foreordainedly
acclaimed scribbler. So on I rode upon
a rickety nag of my own, notebooks piling
up somewhere like a slate-castle, my wee
career in poetry careening out where the
brush grows and the tourist throws an
empty bottle of beer. I am I think
a member of a species the birders like
to call accidental. Thank God I never
started a School of Poetry. I would have
been tardy every day and distracted by
the cheerleaders for the football team,
on which I would have played free
safety, a roaming loner in search of
a concussion, scribbling dreams
between the yard-lines while ghosts
dissolved in Alka-Seltzer mists
beyond the stadium.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
Experimental Poem
My sense is that if you write an experimental poem, you probably shouldn't title it, "Experimental Poem," unless of course, in spite of being figurative, you occasionally suffer bouts of literalism. Not that you asked, but I think every poem is an experiment in writing poetry; that doesn't mean every poem is experimental, however. Which is technically a contradiction, I think, except that in the previous sentence, "experiment" refers to a process of discovery and "experimental" refers to a mode, type, or sub-genre. There should probably be a question mark after the title.
Experimental Poem
By definition, an experiment
is a former periment. A periment
is whatever you want it to be. It
sounds to me to be a part of a building,
a small amphibian, or an herb. ("Let
me draw your attention to the
periment now, if I may.") By
infinition, you who may be whoever,
especially online, may/can try whatever
you like or don't like for whatever why.
["Hello? To whom am I speaking?"]
Sure, there are courses of deep grammar,
ingrown conventions, and local customs
that will pull your perimentation toward
silted centers of common practice. Fact is,
["it just isn't done," an editor wrote to me
once, except I'd already done it] don't
let that pulley interrupt the fermentation (which,
yes, I know is rot), the chemical re-agenting
[this is too "out there," even for me, an agent
once wrote to me] underway as you pluck
drugged strings of a rubber violin on a baking
street, your sober alter-ego/oge-retla less
than [not equal to] enthused about your rumored
genius. ("I perceive you have been in Afghanistan.")
If there is a game afoot, look in the underbrush or
between mirrored pages of a glass anthology
["in the end, I did not fall in love with it"]
sitting on a table in your mind. There should
probably be a question mark after the title and
after every statement you make when you
pass the age of, say, 40.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
Experimental Poem
By definition, an experiment
is a former periment. A periment
is whatever you want it to be. It
sounds to me to be a part of a building,
a small amphibian, or an herb. ("Let
me draw your attention to the
periment now, if I may.") By
infinition, you who may be whoever,
especially online, may/can try whatever
you like or don't like for whatever why.
["Hello? To whom am I speaking?"]
Sure, there are courses of deep grammar,
ingrown conventions, and local customs
that will pull your perimentation toward
silted centers of common practice. Fact is,
["it just isn't done," an editor wrote to me
once, except I'd already done it] don't
let that pulley interrupt the fermentation (which,
yes, I know is rot), the chemical re-agenting
[this is too "out there," even for me, an agent
once wrote to me] underway as you pluck
drugged strings of a rubber violin on a baking
street, your sober alter-ego/oge-retla less
than [not equal to] enthused about your rumored
genius. ("I perceive you have been in Afghanistan.")
If there is a game afoot, look in the underbrush or
between mirrored pages of a glass anthology
["in the end, I did not fall in love with it"]
sitting on a table in your mind. There should
probably be a question mark after the title and
after every statement you make when you
pass the age of, say, 40.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
Monday, April 11, 2011
In Vienna
/
/
/
In Vienna
How the fuck did I get here? I asked myself.
Winter. Yes, yes: the opera, the history,
the goddamned magnificence. A big so what?
to all of that and more when you're thin
on money, low on rest, and loaded down
with many mistakes you made. Back "home,"
they'd elected Reagan president. That, children,
was a point of no return. Austria is
of great historical importance. Okay, fine,
but I'm hungry, I thought. So I went out,
and I went out, and I found myself a cafe,
which featured a kind of importance I
required--hot food and wine, buzz of
customers, glowing lights and cigarette
smoke, a blond woman with a wry
smile, and a sense of proportion.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
/
/
In Vienna
How the fuck did I get here? I asked myself.
Winter. Yes, yes: the opera, the history,
the goddamned magnificence. A big so what?
to all of that and more when you're thin
on money, low on rest, and loaded down
with many mistakes you made. Back "home,"
they'd elected Reagan president. That, children,
was a point of no return. Austria is
of great historical importance. Okay, fine,
but I'm hungry, I thought. So I went out,
and I went out, and I found myself a cafe,
which featured a kind of importance I
required--hot food and wine, buzz of
customers, glowing lights and cigarette
smoke, a blond woman with a wry
smile, and a sense of proportion.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
Without Acknowledged Passions
/
/
/
/
Without Acknowledged Passions
"He was wary of solitary men, people without acknowledged passions." --Maigret and the Calame Report, by Georges Simenon, Chapter 3.
Like any advanced mammal, they calculate,
the ones with unacknowledged passions, but
their cruelty is cooler, reptilian. If they would
but name their passions, we'd all be safer.
The won't say what they really want, so
they try to exact things from us. Always
in a hurry, bustling with short strides,
keeping careful records, they don't
get much done. Always arguing, they
never convince. And always opining,
they make us crave facts. The ones
without acknowledged passions fail
by seeming to succeed--like an avalanche.
What is wrong with them can't be made
right. Don't try. Pass by.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
/
/
/
Without Acknowledged Passions
"He was wary of solitary men, people without acknowledged passions." --Maigret and the Calame Report, by Georges Simenon, Chapter 3.
Like any advanced mammal, they calculate,
the ones with unacknowledged passions, but
their cruelty is cooler, reptilian. If they would
but name their passions, we'd all be safer.
The won't say what they really want, so
they try to exact things from us. Always
in a hurry, bustling with short strides,
keeping careful records, they don't
get much done. Always arguing, they
never convince. And always opining,
they make us crave facts. The ones
without acknowledged passions fail
by seeming to succeed--like an avalanche.
What is wrong with them can't be made
right. Don't try. Pass by.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
Plato, Kant, Life
Plato, Kant, Life
There is no categorical
imperative or Platonic ideal.
These things do not exist.
They are that. Life is this.
More imaginative than Kant
is God, who does not want,
who makes perfect sense,
who knows the original whence.
Plato imagined he knew
what to make of this stew,
life. His notions were less than ideal.
This stew is terribly real,
not approximation, God knows.
Out of mystery, not forms, creation flows.
We and life are history,
Whereas God is mystery.
God is neither categorical nor ideal.
God is rather formlessly real.
Copyright 2011
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Living With the Sound
/
/
/
/
Living With the Sound
I've lived with the sound of what
are called fighter-jets all my life:
sonic-booms over the Sierra Nevada then,
air-scraping roar of weapon-laden planes
over Puget Sound now. It is
a sound denoting the American Empire.
That is a fair statement. Anyway, today
when the noise materializes, a cat
lifts its head instinctively, as if to try
to discern the sound through the ceiling.
I lift my head to look at the cat. The sound
has always been the sound of something
far above and beyond my control,
closer than the sky, farther
away than the moon.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
/
/
/
Living With the Sound
I've lived with the sound of what
are called fighter-jets all my life:
sonic-booms over the Sierra Nevada then,
air-scraping roar of weapon-laden planes
over Puget Sound now. It is
a sound denoting the American Empire.
That is a fair statement. Anyway, today
when the noise materializes, a cat
lifts its head instinctively, as if to try
to discern the sound through the ceiling.
I lift my head to look at the cat. The sound
has always been the sound of something
far above and beyond my control,
closer than the sky, farther
away than the moon.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
My Country 'Tis
}
}
}
}
My Country 'Tis
My country 'tis of thee, perpetual
detainee, of thee I sing. Land of
monopoly, most
massive military, of thee I sing.
Slavery for centuries, you've
still not made it right. You dim
reconciliation's light--and
you won't sing.
Developing every mountainside,
let your ears ring. Land with
more prisoners than it ever used
to have, land always
off to war, perpetual fights
abroad, of thee who sings?
Not a republic now, more
guns than privacy,
more hate than equity, melt
freedom's ring. My country
'Tis not "mine." Don't think
it ever was. I'm as powerless
as dryer-fuzz. "My" country
belongs to the powerful, oh yes,
and I can't sing. This country
'tis of thee, perpetual detainee,
"combatant enemy," of thee
who sings? There is a They
and We, surveilled ubuity,
you'd better talk--or else:
Yes, sing, sing, sing.
From every mountainside,
let indus-military glide--
pollutants: smear them wide--
of thee. Of thee. What can
I do about thee, "my" distant
country? Not much, not much,
I fear. I cannot sing.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
}
}
}
My Country 'Tis
My country 'tis of thee, perpetual
detainee, of thee I sing. Land of
monopoly, most
massive military, of thee I sing.
Slavery for centuries, you've
still not made it right. You dim
reconciliation's light--and
you won't sing.
Developing every mountainside,
let your ears ring. Land with
more prisoners than it ever used
to have, land always
off to war, perpetual fights
abroad, of thee who sings?
Not a republic now, more
guns than privacy,
more hate than equity, melt
freedom's ring. My country
'Tis not "mine." Don't think
it ever was. I'm as powerless
as dryer-fuzz. "My" country
belongs to the powerful, oh yes,
and I can't sing. This country
'tis of thee, perpetual detainee,
"combatant enemy," of thee
who sings? There is a They
and We, surveilled ubuity,
you'd better talk--or else:
Yes, sing, sing, sing.
From every mountainside,
let indus-military glide--
pollutants: smear them wide--
of thee. Of thee. What can
I do about thee, "my" distant
country? Not much, not much,
I fear. I cannot sing.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)