Saturday, July 30, 2011
Friday, July 29, 2011
What Are Your Favorite Words?
When I teach poetry-writing, I sometimes invite students to make lists of their favorite words--favorite chiefly because how they sound or intuitively "feel" to the writer, and favorite (secondarily) because of some personal connection to or memory about the word. I advise the students not to include too many words that they like simply because of a concept the word represents, like "freedom," unless the sound appeals, too. But of course I don't "prohibit" such words.
Such a list is useful in itself, but then you can also begin to work toward a poem by stringing some of the words together--going from specific language (with no subject in mind yet) toward a subject--and there's no rush.
Here's a link to a poem I read for Youtube, one made up of some of my favorite words; it's just a list poem, with "of" thrown in a lot as a kind of binding agent, mortar:
"Genitive Case"
Such a list is useful in itself, but then you can also begin to work toward a poem by stringing some of the words together--going from specific language (with no subject in mind yet) toward a subject--and there's no rush.
Here's a link to a poem I read for Youtube, one made up of some of my favorite words; it's just a list poem, with "of" thrown in a lot as a kind of binding agent, mortar:
"Genitive Case"
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Monday, July 25, 2011
Friday, July 22, 2011
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Thursday, July 14, 2011
British Poets--Youtube
It turns out I've read 88 poems by British poets on Youtube. The most viewed is "Cherry Ripe" by Robert Herrick--I don't think I read it very well because I tried to sound like a market-barker in the first few lines. The least viewed is "On Gut," by Ben Jonson. Anyway, here is a link:
British poets
British poets
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Novel Out a Year--Set in the Sierra Nevada
HONORING JUANITA, a novel I wrote, has been available for about a year. It hasn't appeared on the New York Times best-seller list, but I imagine that's just an oversight. It's a contemporary tale set in the Sierra Nevada and concerns a woman who decides to protest the building of a dam on a pristine alpine river. Her husband happens to be the county sheriff, so he has to arrest her. Complications ensue, as they often do in novels. A secondary plot is historical--the lynching of a Mexican woman during California's Gold Rush. This part's based on an actual event that happened in a town near where I grew (a town by the name of Downieville). Anyway, these stories were something I'd wanted to write since I was in about the fourth grade--well, at least the historical plot was.
The novel-publishing world is mad to categorize novels--just look at any literary agent site. Of course, "romance" is the big category. But then there's chick-lit, fantasy, multi-cultural, "literary," mystery, and so on.
HONORING JUANITA seems to have a bit of the "women's novel" about it, as far as I understand that category. And multi-cultural: Juanita is/was Mexican, and Mary Bluestone & her husband Lloyd are of mixed ethic backgrounds. And environmental? Is that a fiction-category? Also relatively short. Don't you love relatively short novels? I do, even though the enormous WAR AND PEACE remains my all-time favorite piece of fiction. But just looking at one of Georges Simenon's thin Maigret novels makes me smile. I see I've digressed.
HONORING JUANITA is available in traditional form for $11.95, less than that used on amazon, and VERY cheap on Kindle: less than a dollar! Such a deal. This post constitutes my major advertising-push and has left me exhausted. A link:
HONORING JUANITA
The novel-publishing world is mad to categorize novels--just look at any literary agent site. Of course, "romance" is the big category. But then there's chick-lit, fantasy, multi-cultural, "literary," mystery, and so on.
HONORING JUANITA seems to have a bit of the "women's novel" about it, as far as I understand that category. And multi-cultural: Juanita is/was Mexican, and Mary Bluestone & her husband Lloyd are of mixed ethic backgrounds. And environmental? Is that a fiction-category? Also relatively short. Don't you love relatively short novels? I do, even though the enormous WAR AND PEACE remains my all-time favorite piece of fiction. But just looking at one of Georges Simenon's thin Maigret novels makes me smile. I see I've digressed.
HONORING JUANITA is available in traditional form for $11.95, less than that used on amazon, and VERY cheap on Kindle: less than a dollar! Such a deal. This post constitutes my major advertising-push and has left me exhausted. A link:
HONORING JUANITA
Poems (Translated) From the Sanskrit
Here's a link to poems from the Sanskrit I've read for Youtube--all very short, and all (or most) from John Brough's wonderful translation--Poems From the Sanskrit--from Penguin, a book that should be on poetry-readers' shelves, in my presumptuous opinion:
Sanskrit poems
Sanskrit poems
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Langston Hughes's Poems--Youtube
Here is a link to the poems by Langston Hughes that I've read for my Youtube channel (which is named langstonify, after all)--and grateful acknowledgement is hereby sent to Knopf and the Estate of Langston Hughes; if you don't own Hughes's Selected or Collected yet, you might want to get them. --A highly under-rated poet, still.
Hughes poems
Hughes poems
Friday, July 8, 2011
Amusing Poems
Here is a link to some amusing poems (well, I think they are) that I've read on my Youtube channel:
Humorous Poems
Humorous Poems
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Monday, July 4, 2011
Animal Poems
Here is a link to the "Animal Poems" playlist on my youtube channel, langstonify. By the way if you're a) a poet, b) stuck regarding what to write about and c) interested in getting un-stuck, writing a poem about a creature, any creature, usually gets things going, although a pet-creature is not always the best way to go.
Animal Poems
Animal Poems
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Friday, July 1, 2011
Poems About Money and Work
Here's a link to poems (chiefly by others) I've read for Youtube that concern money and/or work:
Money/Work Poems Playlist
Money/Work Poems Playlist
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Love Poems/Erotic Poems
...So I've recorded around 500 poems for Youtube now, chiefly poems by others, and I've begun to categorize them in the "Playlists" category, and one of the categories is "Love Poems/Erotic Poems," in case anyone asks.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Monday, June 27, 2011
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Friday, June 24, 2011
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
If They
]
]
]
]
If They
If they aren't going to be near your death-bed,
If they never thought well of you,
If they never thought of you,
If they belittled everything you did even
If they thought of you,
If they never helped you dig
in the ground when you were
digging in the ground,
If they never helped you get
better when you were ill,
If they never gave you a break,
If they never helped to fix
your leaking roof,
If they never paid for a drink,
If they never had a kind word
for you or anybody else,
If they sucked up to power
and back-stabbed their associates,
If they never thought things through,
If they thought empathy was for suckers,
If they never listened,
If they never knew one goddamned
thing about you & never cared to,
Et Cetera, then
Why do you care what they think
about you, about people you care for,
and about matters dear to you?
If they are whom they have shown
themselves to be, then let them
drift on their own sea and disappear,
and disappear.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
]
]
]
If They
If they aren't going to be near your death-bed,
If they never thought well of you,
If they never thought of you,
If they belittled everything you did even
If they thought of you,
If they never helped you dig
in the ground when you were
digging in the ground,
If they never helped you get
better when you were ill,
If they never gave you a break,
If they never helped to fix
your leaking roof,
If they never paid for a drink,
If they never had a kind word
for you or anybody else,
If they sucked up to power
and back-stabbed their associates,
If they never thought things through,
If they thought empathy was for suckers,
If they never listened,
If they never knew one goddamned
thing about you & never cared to,
Et Cetera, then
Why do you care what they think
about you, about people you care for,
and about matters dear to you?
If they are whom they have shown
themselves to be, then let them
drift on their own sea and disappear,
and disappear.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Monday, June 20, 2011
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Friday, June 17, 2011
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Monday, June 13, 2011
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Cedar
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Cedar
Think red cedar consider aroma mountain geology owned science Descartes God wheat bread ground fire husbandry gather stay goat dog domesticate darkness fear myth anything can kill hope medicine faith.
Cedar consider stare wind touch-red-bark, smell cedar-sap. Memory light/no light, life/no life. Red resin. Consider cedar. Think cedar your life memory green memory red thick bark.
Yellow pollen wheat faith science knows nothing sure is ground fear darkness and cold death faith cedar rooted in ground in soil in rock. Water.
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/
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Cedar
Think red cedar consider aroma mountain geology owned science Descartes God wheat bread ground fire husbandry gather stay goat dog domesticate darkness fear myth anything can kill hope medicine faith.
Cedar consider stare wind touch-red-bark, smell cedar-sap. Memory light/no light, life/no life. Red resin. Consider cedar. Think cedar your life memory green memory red thick bark.
Yellow pollen wheat faith science knows nothing sure is ground fear darkness and cold death faith cedar rooted in ground in soil in rock. Water.
Monday, June 6, 2011
Friday, June 3, 2011
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Red Polka-Dot Dress
[re-posting this one from another blog, Red Tales]
There is a photograph of his mother wearing a dress with red polka-dots on a white background. The photograph is a color print from the negative film of a snapshot taken after the mid-point of the 20th century.
This is the most famous dress his mother owned, as things turned out. He thinks about her putting it on that day to get ready for the party, a summer-party in the High Sierra. He thinks of her thinking that the party will be a good time, an open field of behavior, an earned respite from the work of raising three children and tending one husband in rugged country 4,500 feet above sea level.
The son knows she doesn't, on that day, see the dress as a symbol in so many words or thoughts. But he imagines she looks at herself in the circular mirror of the "waterfall" bureau, imagines she sees the dress contrasting with her deep summer tan and blue eyes just so. The image she sees is attractive, and it satisfies her. The party is going to happen. She and her husband are hosting the party. The husband is not an easy husband to have. His personality is as hard and well defined as a sheer stone bluff in the Sierra. He is a rugged, overwhelming man, with a grudge against life that's masked by a child's sense of mirth, a prophet's sense of will, a peasant's capacity to toil, and a glad smile as broad as a highway-billboard. Luckily, liquor makes him gladder still. The son knows the mother knew of other women's husbands whom liquor made mean, made violent.
At the party, there will be work but also other women to do the work, so the work will seem like part of the party. There will be laughter, liquor, and food--and several compliments about the dress, which seems that day to be the perfect summer-dress, sleeveless, cotton, red polka-dots on a white background. Everyone at the party will know a great deal about World War II, hard work, the Great Depression, and the English language as spoken colloquially in the United States of America.
None of it will escape the avalanche of time, although snapshots, saving the dress, and nonfiction writing are amusing tactics of delay, the poignant motions of an amateur magician's hands, with Death sitting in the audience like the bald figure in Bergman's The Seventh Seal.
Thank God, he thinks, his mother didn't come close to thinking thoughts as melodramatic as "none of it will escape the avalanche of time," etc., that day. Thank God his mother never saw The Seventh Seal and asked him questions about the film. He would have tried to answer the questions, and his mother would have remained unconvinced by the answers. She would have disliked the film as much as she disliked puppets of any kind.
The white dress with red polka-dots fit, the alpine sun shone, friends and acquaintances arrived, and everyone acted as if they weren't about to die, and when people act that way, and they should, they seem untroubled and, indeed, immortal.
By his accounting, all the adults who attended that party are dead. The polka-dotted dress hangs in the closet of a daughter-in-law, and one of the cousins, the many cousins, painted a watercolor featuring the dress hanging on a clothesline. The dress is a cut and stitched quaint decorated piece of cloth. The snapshot lies between pages on a shelf somewhere.
Everything is taking place and changing at a speed humans cannot, do not, and best not comprehend fully. In a way, the party was over before his mother ever put on the dress, but she didn't see it that way, and that day, that's part of what mattered, he thinks.
The scandal of time is that it allows humans just enough time to arrange their thoughts and manage their habits so as to avoid confronting the scandal of time every moment. Scandalously, time makes routine seem reasonable and a bright dress permanent, and it makes summer-parties seem like a fair exchange.
There is a photograph of his mother wearing a dress with red polka-dots on a white background. The photograph is a color print from the negative film of a snapshot taken after the mid-point of the 20th century.
This is the most famous dress his mother owned, as things turned out. He thinks about her putting it on that day to get ready for the party, a summer-party in the High Sierra. He thinks of her thinking that the party will be a good time, an open field of behavior, an earned respite from the work of raising three children and tending one husband in rugged country 4,500 feet above sea level.
The son knows she doesn't, on that day, see the dress as a symbol in so many words or thoughts. But he imagines she looks at herself in the circular mirror of the "waterfall" bureau, imagines she sees the dress contrasting with her deep summer tan and blue eyes just so. The image she sees is attractive, and it satisfies her. The party is going to happen. She and her husband are hosting the party. The husband is not an easy husband to have. His personality is as hard and well defined as a sheer stone bluff in the Sierra. He is a rugged, overwhelming man, with a grudge against life that's masked by a child's sense of mirth, a prophet's sense of will, a peasant's capacity to toil, and a glad smile as broad as a highway-billboard. Luckily, liquor makes him gladder still. The son knows the mother knew of other women's husbands whom liquor made mean, made violent.
At the party, there will be work but also other women to do the work, so the work will seem like part of the party. There will be laughter, liquor, and food--and several compliments about the dress, which seems that day to be the perfect summer-dress, sleeveless, cotton, red polka-dots on a white background. Everyone at the party will know a great deal about World War II, hard work, the Great Depression, and the English language as spoken colloquially in the United States of America.
None of it will escape the avalanche of time, although snapshots, saving the dress, and nonfiction writing are amusing tactics of delay, the poignant motions of an amateur magician's hands, with Death sitting in the audience like the bald figure in Bergman's The Seventh Seal.
Thank God, he thinks, his mother didn't come close to thinking thoughts as melodramatic as "none of it will escape the avalanche of time," etc., that day. Thank God his mother never saw The Seventh Seal and asked him questions about the film. He would have tried to answer the questions, and his mother would have remained unconvinced by the answers. She would have disliked the film as much as she disliked puppets of any kind.
The white dress with red polka-dots fit, the alpine sun shone, friends and acquaintances arrived, and everyone acted as if they weren't about to die, and when people act that way, and they should, they seem untroubled and, indeed, immortal.
By his accounting, all the adults who attended that party are dead. The polka-dotted dress hangs in the closet of a daughter-in-law, and one of the cousins, the many cousins, painted a watercolor featuring the dress hanging on a clothesline. The dress is a cut and stitched quaint decorated piece of cloth. The snapshot lies between pages on a shelf somewhere.
Everything is taking place and changing at a speed humans cannot, do not, and best not comprehend fully. In a way, the party was over before his mother ever put on the dress, but she didn't see it that way, and that day, that's part of what mattered, he thinks.
The scandal of time is that it allows humans just enough time to arrange their thoughts and manage their habits so as to avoid confronting the scandal of time every moment. Scandalously, time makes routine seem reasonable and a bright dress permanent, and it makes summer-parties seem like a fair exchange.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Dissertation: A Poem
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Dissertation: A Poem
Recent scholars have overlooked
the fact that I need a topic for
my dissertation, so I'm inventing
one and pretending my dissertation
will fill a niche. This study, then,
brings together punctuation-marks,
words, phrases, clauses, sentences,
paragraphs, and page numbers
in a way that will help it slip past
my dissertation-committee, who
doomed themselves to read
dissertations, or to pretend to,
by writing one themselves, or
pretending to. The weight of
Sisyphus's boulder divided by
the weight of a dissertation
equals the weight of absurdity
generated by the process of
writing a dissertation. As a
genre, "dissertation" is like
a carcass picked at by
vultures who aren't hungry.
The carcass isn't going any-
where, and even the vultures
don't like looking at it.
I assure you, however,
moreover, and heretofore,
that my dissertation will rise
from the dead, will have flesh
on its html bones, and will
carry me into a town where
I shall be doctored. A
dissertation is a required
thing, as is all hazing: this
is one important them walking
through my dissertation.
Copyright 2011
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/
/
Dissertation: A Poem
Recent scholars have overlooked
the fact that I need a topic for
my dissertation, so I'm inventing
one and pretending my dissertation
will fill a niche. This study, then,
brings together punctuation-marks,
words, phrases, clauses, sentences,
paragraphs, and page numbers
in a way that will help it slip past
my dissertation-committee, who
doomed themselves to read
dissertations, or to pretend to,
by writing one themselves, or
pretending to. The weight of
Sisyphus's boulder divided by
the weight of a dissertation
equals the weight of absurdity
generated by the process of
writing a dissertation. As a
genre, "dissertation" is like
a carcass picked at by
vultures who aren't hungry.
The carcass isn't going any-
where, and even the vultures
don't like looking at it.
I assure you, however,
moreover, and heretofore,
that my dissertation will rise
from the dead, will have flesh
on its html bones, and will
carry me into a town where
I shall be doctored. A
dissertation is a required
thing, as is all hazing: this
is one important them walking
through my dissertation.
Copyright 2011
Monday, May 30, 2011
That Is The Real
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*
*
*
That Is The Real
That is the real is the
that: seven words and two
dots; and now we're so
far into a sentence that
we're committed, or
should be, or should send it
to a committee for review.
Let's start fresh with you,
your nostrils, the things
around you right now
that stand for the world:
that for you is the real,
that is.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
*
*
*
That Is The Real
That is the real is the
that: seven words and two
dots; and now we're so
far into a sentence that
we're committed, or
should be, or should send it
to a committee for review.
Let's start fresh with you,
your nostrils, the things
around you right now
that stand for the world:
that for you is the real,
that is.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Monday, May 16, 2011
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Friday, May 13, 2011
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Monday, May 9, 2011
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Some Fable-Days
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Some Fable-Days
For ten minutes one afternoon, I became
an elephant. I walked heavily away from
where I work, wagging my heavy head.
Cackling minions threw pebbles at my
sad ass. On another day, I became a cat:
Somebody was talking at me in front
of a group, apparently scoring clever points.
But I'd lost the topic, and word-like noises
from her mouth might as well have been
red jello for all the sense they made to me.
So I stared. I was Cat--there and not there,
dozing in the pride of my mind, not hungry
and therefore supremely disinterested.
I've spent many days as a badger, digging,
fretting, rooting around, growling to myself,
making a lovely mess of my underground
burrow, getting lots of badger-writing done.
Some fable-days, I tell you, are often
just what a human being needs--to stay human.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
)
(
)
Some Fable-Days
For ten minutes one afternoon, I became
an elephant. I walked heavily away from
where I work, wagging my heavy head.
Cackling minions threw pebbles at my
sad ass. On another day, I became a cat:
Somebody was talking at me in front
of a group, apparently scoring clever points.
But I'd lost the topic, and word-like noises
from her mouth might as well have been
red jello for all the sense they made to me.
So I stared. I was Cat--there and not there,
dozing in the pride of my mind, not hungry
and therefore supremely disinterested.
I've spent many days as a badger, digging,
fretting, rooting around, growling to myself,
making a lovely mess of my underground
burrow, getting lots of badger-writing done.
Some fable-days, I tell you, are often
just what a human being needs--to stay human.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
No God/Yes God
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(
(
No God/Yes God
No God. Physics is all. Yes
God. Yes fathom God. God
is no dice-player. Pascal will
take your wager. No God,
they say, they say atheism is
the good news, if so: yikes.
Despair, respond, no God.
Yes God, repair, despair, Oh
God? Flawed God, no God.
God fails the test, their test,
they say, no intervention into
bad. Yes God, who knows--
who knows? If no God, then
know No. If yes God, then
never the when, yes to an
infinite go, and faith in yes--
which is often a faith in I-do-
not now know, you know?
Copyright 2011
(
(
(
No God/Yes God
No God. Physics is all. Yes
God. Yes fathom God. God
is no dice-player. Pascal will
take your wager. No God,
they say, they say atheism is
the good news, if so: yikes.
Despair, respond, no God.
Yes God, repair, despair, Oh
God? Flawed God, no God.
God fails the test, their test,
they say, no intervention into
bad. Yes God, who knows--
who knows? If no God, then
know No. If yes God, then
never the when, yes to an
infinite go, and faith in yes--
which is often a faith in I-do-
not now know, you know?
Copyright 2011
Future-Perfect Sighing
)
)
)
Future-Perfect Sighing
Name it rain again.
Then sigh. Love your life
if you can. Pain, worry, fear,
and want make that hard to do
sometimes. Obviously.
Everywhere people are learning
the expression for "rain" in a
language or two different from
their native one. They are repeating
and repeating the expression like rain.
Sometimes these people are loving
their lives. Sometimes they will have sighed.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
)
)
Future-Perfect Sighing
Name it rain again.
Then sigh. Love your life
if you can. Pain, worry, fear,
and want make that hard to do
sometimes. Obviously.
Everywhere people are learning
the expression for "rain" in a
language or two different from
their native one. They are repeating
and repeating the expression like rain.
Sometimes these people are loving
their lives. Sometimes they will have sighed.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
Monday, April 25, 2011
Concerning Mischief
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Concerning Mischief
Once my wife invited a friend over
to our place, which had a narrow back yard
full of tall laurels. She was showing
the friend the yard through the large
kitchen window. I was in the yard
with a baseball bat, looking at
a hornets' nest in one of the laurels.
The nest: that beautiful gray menacing
mache mansion. I hit the nest with
the bat, I'm not sure why, and
the hornets poured out, a squadron
going after me. They hammered
my neck and head. Now a figure
in an animated cartoon, I ran toward
the house and, desperate, got in there.
The two women looked at me. I put
down the bat and panted. The women
didn't say anything. Hornets were hitting
the kitchen window. Later, my wife
asked, "Why do you do such things?"
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
/
/
/
Concerning Mischief
Once my wife invited a friend over
to our place, which had a narrow back yard
full of tall laurels. She was showing
the friend the yard through the large
kitchen window. I was in the yard
with a baseball bat, looking at
a hornets' nest in one of the laurels.
The nest: that beautiful gray menacing
mache mansion. I hit the nest with
the bat, I'm not sure why, and
the hornets poured out, a squadron
going after me. They hammered
my neck and head. Now a figure
in an animated cartoon, I ran toward
the house and, desperate, got in there.
The two women looked at me. I put
down the bat and panted. The women
didn't say anything. Hornets were hitting
the kitchen window. Later, my wife
asked, "Why do you do such things?"
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
Sympathy: A Rant
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Sympathy: A Rant
So there's this video out there of a dog
in Chile that gets hit by a car on a freeway
and is lying on the asphalt, traffic coming on, tons
of rolling steel, and another dog on the
other side of the freeway sees what's going
on, makes its way across traffic to the median,
gets over that, and with its teeth and paws,
pulls to safety the other dog, which survives.
So where we are now in this stupid muddy
pit of greed, the U.S., is that we can't even agree
to maintain social serves that are so basic--
are forms of prudent, active sympathy--
that at least one dog in South America can
instinctively master the concept and act accordingly
better than we can. Pooling resources so that
everyone's all right--fed, clothed, sheltered, doctored--
is not conservative, socialist, or liberal: it is really
so basic it is canine. A question is can the citizens
of the wealthiest large nation (and their so-called
representatives) be at least as smart,
sympathetic, and effective as a Chilean dog?
If the answer is yes, then get this American house
in order. If the answer is no, then the nation
is lying on a freeway, tons of steel onrushing.
So ends the sympathetic rant. Bowww-wowwww.
Copyright 2011
/
/
/
Sympathy: A Rant
So there's this video out there of a dog
in Chile that gets hit by a car on a freeway
and is lying on the asphalt, traffic coming on, tons
of rolling steel, and another dog on the
other side of the freeway sees what's going
on, makes its way across traffic to the median,
gets over that, and with its teeth and paws,
pulls to safety the other dog, which survives.
So where we are now in this stupid muddy
pit of greed, the U.S., is that we can't even agree
to maintain social serves that are so basic--
are forms of prudent, active sympathy--
that at least one dog in South America can
instinctively master the concept and act accordingly
better than we can. Pooling resources so that
everyone's all right--fed, clothed, sheltered, doctored--
is not conservative, socialist, or liberal: it is really
so basic it is canine. A question is can the citizens
of the wealthiest large nation (and their so-called
representatives) be at least as smart,
sympathetic, and effective as a Chilean dog?
If the answer is yes, then get this American house
in order. If the answer is no, then the nation
is lying on a freeway, tons of steel onrushing.
So ends the sympathetic rant. Bowww-wowwww.
Copyright 2011
Friday, April 15, 2011
The Idea of Aging
The Idea of Aging
We're very young when
we first know what
getting old is to mean:
that moment in childhood
when we learn not by choice
the difference between
what we just do and what
we must do.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
We're very young when
we first know what
getting old is to mean:
that moment in childhood
when we learn not by choice
the difference between
what we just do and what
we must do.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
Bold Talk
Bold Talk
Bold talk is the best kind. It
may be why talk came to mind.
Once fitted with it, talk I mean,
we could just sit and make stuff
up, say dark is sun, sky is heaven,
lie like the skin of a chameleon--
a way to feel safer, blend in when
we seemed to ourselves to be
different from all other creatures.
Bold talk remains one of the main
features of fear, confusion, despair.
There is no end to these, and no end
to talking boldly, which represents
much but not boldness. Incrementally
grows the force of talk in all its
forms, the Earth now wrapped in
electrons saturated with our telling
and our selling: endless
effluvium of conversation.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
Bold talk is the best kind. It
may be why talk came to mind.
Once fitted with it, talk I mean,
we could just sit and make stuff
up, say dark is sun, sky is heaven,
lie like the skin of a chameleon--
a way to feel safer, blend in when
we seemed to ourselves to be
different from all other creatures.
Bold talk remains one of the main
features of fear, confusion, despair.
There is no end to these, and no end
to talking boldly, which represents
much but not boldness. Incrementally
grows the force of talk in all its
forms, the Earth now wrapped in
electrons saturated with our telling
and our selling: endless
effluvium of conversation.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
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
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