Should Be Forbidden

It is customary
but not mandatory
for the old to say
of the young, "We
know more than they."
It is customary 
but not mandatory
for the young to say
of the old, "Who
cares what they know?"
It should be forbidden
of the old to say or
to think of the young,
"Who cares what
they know?"


Hans Ostrom copyright 2012

Found Poem: The Shit Parents Say

Parents don't notice
that the shit
they say
actually hurts.


alicelock, Tumblr.

I Placed a Blue Man in Tennessee

The wind scars
the surface of the lake.
He's standing there
not quite awake.

The fool stands
in mud--yes that is he,
the saddest man
in Tennessee.


--Hans Ostrom, copyright 2012

Tavern Haiku

"I put the sip in
dissipation," said the old
guy, tasting the rye.


Hans Ostrom, copyright 2012

A Presidential Election and Rhythm n Blues

Rhythm & Blues, that American
genre, holds a tale of USA.

Inside R&B a White
presidential candidate
and a Black presidential
candidate stare
at each other. Listening
to the music, you may
have to move down
many corridors, streets,
and roads before you see
them standing, staring there.

But if you have known R&B
in your life, you know
you'll see them. It is night.

Although they are only
staring, the scene feels
dangerous.  The USA
feels dangerous. If you

have known R&B in your
life, you know you can
hear danger even in a
song that is all about
sweet love. Round and round
you go, USA, round & round.

--Hans Ostrom, 2012

And So It Begins--the Semester, That Is

I'm re-posting a short poem to mark the beginning of the semester or quarter at many colleges.

"Dialogue on a College Campus"

Found Poem: Saloon Note

Hey Philip--about the Felix
THANG--
NO DRINKS until he pays
Miranda 17 dollars--
you dig?

--Hans Ostrom, 2012

Found Poem: Yeah, He Must Have Died

Yeah, he must
have died because
he's trending
on
Twitter.


--Hans Ostrom, 2012

"The Reassurance," by Thom Gunn

"Beggar Woman," by Charles Reznikoff

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

Bats Right, Throws Left

I came down from the mountains
a devout S.F. Giants fan, thanks
to radio and the Sacramento Bee.

I came down from the mountains
never having played pee-wee,
Little League, Legion, or Babe Ruth ball.
I was a baseball immigrant.

I batted left because my brother
Sven, a leftie, taught me to hit. I'd
become what I'd learn was a
dead-pull-hitter.  And
I had a glove from the Montgomery
Ward catalog.  So in high school,

I could hit the cut-off man, catch
a fly, charge a base-hit, and bunt.
At bat I was afraid of the ball:
No, not quite right. Conceptually,
I hadn't found evidence that one
shouldn't be afraid of the ball,
especially after team-mate Eddie,
nicest guy but wild, drilled me twice
in the back.  Still, I went three-
for-three one bright Spring day,
with a base-on-balls, runs scored.

But out in right field, a pasture
made for me, I often drifted
mentally, considered slipping
away ("Slip away, slip away ...").

Someone would hit a liner out
there. Manager, teammates,
and the sprinkling of fans would
say, Hey, where's the right-fielder?

And I'd be lying down with a brown
woman in a blonde meadow, or
taking a midnight train to Rome,
or writing this poem.

--Hans Ostrom 2012

Spam Found-Poem: "Hot Workplace Free"

Hot workplace free!
Workplace condition: your house
Years old: older
Pay schedule: pays for each hours
We are waiting for your reply.

HOW NOVELS BEGIN: Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen

But It Does

I don't know
why the yellow-jacket
stands motionless
on a pale green
wrinkled new leaf
of lettuce in sunlight.
But it does.
I don't know
why the universe
keeps occurring.
But it does.

--Hans Ostrom, 2012

"Portrait of Galileo as a Young Man (#5)," by George Keithley

"Libido," by Rupert Brooke

Not Afraid of Zombies

I'm not afraid
of no zombies.
They walk too slow.
I'm not afraid
of no werewolves.
They're dogs, you know.

The monsters
to keep an eye on
are the people
who seem okay.
They'll mess you up
every which damn way.

--Hans Ostrom, 2012

"If You Are Squeamish," by Saphho

Every Revery

Every revery swells
the sails of one's invisible ship.
Thinking is traveling,
and the brain is wet and salty.
The mind it harbors
is bigger than the grandest
ocean we have ever mapped
and bigger than the biggest sea
we've ever dreamed.

--Hans Ostrom, 2012

Of Poverty

“What is harder for the nonpoor to see is poverty as acute distress: The lunch that consists of Doritos or hot dog rolls, leading to faintness before the end of the shift. The “home” that is also a car or a van. The illness or injury that must be “worked through,” with gritted teeth, because there’s no sick pay or health insurance and the loss of one day’s pay will mean no groceries for the next. These experiences are not part of a sustainable lifestyle, even a lifestyle of chronic deprivation and relentless low-level punishment. They are, by almost any standard of subsistence, emergency situations. And that is how we should see the poverty of so many millions of low-wage Americans—as a state of emergency.”

—	Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed

The Checklist

reasonably healthy today? check
not in poverty? check
enough to eat? check
not in jail? check
got a job? check
have someone to love? check
memory intact? check
not in imminent danger of getting killed or raped or both? check
getting laid? check, check
benefiting from helping someone? check
access to clean water? check
indoor plumbing that works? check
lights and heat? check
roof over your head, and a bed? check
something to read? check
then count your fucking blessings and/or stop whining

--Hans Ostrom, 2012

"Life Is Fine," by Langston Hughes

Ill-Equipped by Technology

Technology has ill-equipped us.
When are we ever not behind
its trends? The nature

of capital requires us either
to be behind or to believe
we are behind or both.

The next invented, mass-
produced, and marketed
things wait in tiresome,

predictable ambush.
Place: a box canyon
of forced choices.

Think of specific
gadgets and gizmos
you don't own--

which
you will soon purchase,
by choice.

Consider whether
this new bought thing will
really improve your life.


Copyright 2012 Hans Ostrom

Nothing Personal, Just Business

When they say,
It's nothing personal--it's just
business, it's personal,
for the lie itself concerns
personality, the intimacy
of betrayal. When they say
it's just business, they mean
the opposite. They mean business

is all--it governs. Have you
known a time when business
didn't govern? When they say
these things, keep
your distance from them,
from these people who are like
dogs on chains, the chain
being business and personal.

Copyright 2012 Hans Ostrom

"My Work and Me," by Maya Angelou

"Sestina: Ellis Island, Amelia Earhart," by Hans Ostrom

"Here are the Skies," by A.E. Housman

"Love Song," by A.R. Ammons

Warm-Up Exercise for Poets: Adjective/Noun/ABC

Just a warm-up exercise.  You'll infer the "rules" from this example immediately.

Adept Zebra
Burnt Yams
Chrome Xylophone
Dry Wall
Elegant Veranda
Flexible Udders
Good Times
Hot Salsa
International Rutabaga
Jeweled Quilt
Knowing Purveyor
Lone Osprey
Murderous Narcotic
Narcoleptic Man
Obsolete Language
Prescient Knight
Questionable Jester
Restless Intern
Surly Handler
Tainted Garnish
Unique Fragrance
Venerable Epic
Wistful Dog
Xenophobic Cleric
Young Barista
Zealous Attitude.

Found Poem: Sign Beside Freeway

GRINDING AND
PAVING
NIGHTS


--Hans Ostrom

Found Poem: Four Signs Nailed to an Urban Fir Tree

MOVING &
*
CHEAP SMOKES AND BEER
*
NEED A CONTRACTOR?
*
PEST CONTROL
*

--Hans Ostrom

"Correction," by A.R. Ammons

Carter Monroe on Jack Spicer

Here is a link to a post by Carter Monroe on the 9th Street Laboratories blog.  Monroe, as you may know, is a poet, novelist, publisher, and music-expert hailing from North Carolina.  I sometimes refer to him as the sage of N.C., in fact.

Spicer was one of the troubled geniuses of the Beat Movement in San Francisco, pushing the limits of poetry and counter-cultural thought as much as he could and influencing a range of writers, including Robert Duncan. In my view, Spicer also anticipated much of what LANGUAGE poetry has attempted to do.

In the post, Monroe notes Spicer's influence on his own work and places his reading of Spicer in a biographical and cultural context in the 1970s.  The post includes excerpts from Monroe's "Spicer Series" of poems--great work.

"Into the Folds of It," by Hans Ostrom

"Across the Fields . . .," by Herman Hesse

"Somewhere or Other," by Christina Rossetti

"Dare," by Langston Hughes

Lines for a Brief Meditation

Just breathe.
Thank you.
Fo sho.
Fuck off.
No way.
You bet.
Who knows?
Bite me.
What next?
Why? Sigh.
Sigh why.
Now, then.
Right on.
Let's roll.
Hell, no.
Heck, yeah.
Be cool.
Say what?
Damn straight.
All y'all.
Love, love.
Now, now.
How, now?
When, then?
Not now.
Do this.
Bye bye.
Farewell.
Just breathe.
[Repeat, as needed.]

Copyright 2012 Hans Ostrom

In City Lights Books, 21st Century

In City Lights Books, 21st century, one young
cashier, trans-gendered, wears a gold silk turban.
There are tattooed Asian characters on each
finger. It is a regal performance of difference
and what's hip. A sign reads,

"Abandon despair, all ye who enter here."
Cute--and isn't that more or less Disney's
message, too?  The old Beat bookstore's
a wee profit-center now--"like a library,
where books are sold," but not lended
or given away.  Debit, credit, cash.

Truth is, there was as much counter-cultural
spirit in a Willie Mays basket-catch, a Navajo
steel-worker's shift, a Chinese laundry-worker's
laughter, and a Mexican's quick apple-picking
fingers as in On the Road or Howl. 

Ferlinghetti's an entrepreneur,
Jack and Allen earned canonical turf,
berets off to them, well done.

In the U.S., youth and capital absorb all cultural
revolutions that can be commodified. Which
ones can't be commodified? The turbaned
cashier asks her co-worker, "Will you try
to keep this job part-time, or just take the
higher paying one?" The latter says,
"Receipt with you or in the bag?"

The best minds of any generation are
widely dispersed, hard to identify,
impossible for any one to claim, and
often not known until much later.

Some minds in bodies pass by the
bookstore in sunlight. The space once
occupied by Jazz at Pearl's is up for lease,
estate commercial, estate real.


Copyright 2012 Hans Ostrom

Don't Write About That

Don't write about that just
because you saw it and saw it
as you. Write about this, the folly
of a human trajectory as it's
superimposed on the universe,
which is a large, ongoing explosion.

Someone will say something
about concrete images, show-don't-
tell, that sort of stuff.  People
never weary of it. To you
it will sound like the sound
of a handsaw going through pine.

You'll pretend to listen but wonder
not why someone is talking but
why someone is talking to you.
Write about this.

Copyright 2012 Hans Ostrom

Fans of Soccer, Fans of Football

To fans of soccer ("football"), American
football ("football") looks like a muddle
of armored giants that periodically
organizes itself, bursts into chaos,
then settles into entropy again. The
field is marked in rows, an accountant's
worksheet, so business-like, so American.

To fans of American football, soccer
looks like a picnic of ants, a tedioous
lesson in futility (hours of no goals). The
field's an expansive meadow ready
for a housing development. There's much
activity and arguing but little productivity,
so European.

To many people, sport means too much,
as do most human activities. We indulge
in seriousness, especially, oh yes
especially where play is concerned.
So European, so American.


Copyright 2012 Hans Ostrom

Her Cool Naked Breasts

Her cool naked breasts:
so lovely to kiss. And
to suck. And her response
to that, subtle moans, a
word, and something like
laughter in her throat.

Then comes a kind
of gentle tumble into
the physical, mental
rest of it, the rest of
it, such riches of the
instants in which
two lives overlap.


Copyright 2012 Hans Ostrom

At a Restaurant Alone

Sometimes, when
you go to a restaurant
alone, the person
who greets you says,
"Will there be just
one, then?" You don't
know why the future
tense is used. And
you feel as if you've
committed an error.

Maybe, you think,
you should say,
"No, let me go back
out the door and grab
someone so there will
be two," or "No,
there's another person
inside me, trying to
get out," or "No,
set a place for each
of my three
imaginary friends,
in which case there
will be four, then."

Copyright 2012 Hans Ostrom

May I Clarinet Your Thighs?

"The formation of substitution and contamination in speech-mistakes is, therefore, the beginning of that work of condensation which we find taking a most active part in the construction of a dream."  --Sigmund Freud, Psychopathology of Everyday Life


May I clarinet your thighs
and explicate your savanna? If
you charm it to be desirable,
I should like to alluviate down
on the excellence established
between your doric expenditures.

Listen: Let me emigrate with you
on blue and mahogany. Let us
forest the open-air museum of our
deft velvet, our fragrant fur
and slick, moist rubrics.

Oh, my dearest pungent storm,
please tell me how you'd like your
candelabra ordained in ecstasy!


Copyright 2012 Hans Ostrom

Descriptors

bookworm, voluptuary, clodhopper,
fool, lummox, clown, dark horse,
horse's ass, sleeper, empath, recluse,
gadfly, hick, draught-horse, coward,
knot-head, stalwart, naif, hustler,
rabble, contrarian, soft-touch,
laborer, pedant, poet, scavenger,
hack, scholar, idealist, vagabond,
hayseed, addict, loser, winner, dunce,
nobody, cast-off, straggler, pussy-hound,
scribbler, true-blue, oaf, lover, dabbler,
sensualist, mystic, literalist, plodder,
plodder. Plodder.

Copyright 2012 Hans Ostrom

Stuck in a Blues Song

I'm going down to the river. I'm
stuck in a blues song. Going down
to the train yard. Stuck in a blues
song. Going down the road, down
to a reckoning. Been stuck in a blues
song so long. Gonna get

evicted from an empty place, convicted
of a crime I did not do, and conscripted
to work in just an awful damn job, oh
yes. Going to go down to the juke joint,

where the blades flash and I lose my
cash, stuck in a blues song. Yeah, my
baby's long gone and I'm stuck, no luck,
yeah; yeah, stuck in a blues song.


Copyright 2012 Hans Ostrom

Entertainment

...The lovely and tainted Matilda,
ladies and rattlesnakes! Please
fire a round of a pause for Matilda!

Next up for your mooing pleasure
is the Present. Watch as two trillion
compressed images hammer your
optic nerve. Staggering is a normal

response. The bleeding will stop.
For paranoia lasting more than four
hours, call a fish, make a wish,
and give yourself an encore. You've
been a terrific audience!

Copyright 2012 Hans Ostrom

Desired Things

They're looking in a window
at things to buy. They
couldn't say why
they want the things,
except the items seem
fantastic. The light is such
that one of the people sees
in reflection the ghostly image
of a person who lives
on the street and works
full time at persisting. The
eyes of the buyer hover
on the image of this other
and then adjust to ignore
that light, that image, and
to see through glass again
at the desired things.

Copyright Hans Ostrom 2012

"This Journey," by Nazim Hikmet

"Babylon," by Siegried Sassoon

"Skeins," by Hans Ostrom

Html: Poem

and so you stand or sit
and drop these packets
of words into the electronic
river. off they float--

and yet they stay,
retrievable, for the river
flows and freezes both at once,
visible to all, theoretically.

in practice the electronic river
is a vast obscuring mass,
an orderly crash
of infodataimage.

these word-packets
are lost and found,
gone and here,
disappeared and
recovered like the legendary
vowels missing from the ancient,
mysterious word, Html,

the pronunciation of which
the imaginary scholars
at Borges University
bicker about over
glasses of claret
in the Minotaur Library.

Copyright 2012 Hans Ostrom

Advertising: The Literary Genre of the Age

After, oh, 1920, let's say,
advertising became
the dominant literary genre.
It's stories, images, and ethos
hold culture's imagination.

Advertising's the myth,
the epic poem, the novel,
the drama of our age.

Other genres pretend
at the edges, play at their
old importance. It is assumed
that publishers advertise novels,
especially best-sellers, that studios
advertise films, especially
block-busters, and that other
studios advertise music, but
novels and films and music
and the rest
publicize advertising,
the master genre

that sells space, real
and virtual, and that turns
a profit, which is the god
of our creation myth.


Copyright 2012 Hans Ostrom

"Full Moon," by Henry Dumas

"Carson McCullers," by Charles Bukowski

"Ballad of the Micro-Town," by Hans Ostrom

"Susana Soca," by Jorge Luis Borges

"For the Birds," by Hans Ostrom

"The Safety Buffalo," by Hans Ostrom

"The House on the Hill," by Edwin Arlington Robinson

"Love Song for Lucinda," by Langston Hughes

Difference-Maker

The universe is big.
It doesn't care. It
goes on forever.
We don't. Still,

today I saw
and heard a woman
laughing. So by
definition, the universe

produces humor and
joy, not to mention
women. That kind of
fact can be a real

difference-maker.

Copyright 2012 Hans Ostrom

"The Comet at Yell'Ham," by Thomas Hardy

"Ill Luck," by Charles Baudelaire

Jury Duty

We passed through voi dir,

my dear, were made peers

of a rococo realm, with its

perched presider and purchased

persuaders.  We nodded at passing

evidence, became a dozen guilty

buzzards asked to shadow

a creature offered on an altar

called The People.  We heard

arguments open and close

like shutters banging in the wind.

In a room, our opinions

accumulated like snow.  In that

drift was buried our decision,

which we seized.  The facts had

whispered to us, “He is guilty.”

We listened to them and repeated

what they said.  The defendant

bowed his head.  Shadows

of our doubt followed us outside,

where, greasy-winged, we joined

The People leading perfectly

legal lives.

--Hans Ostrom, copyright 2012

"By the Pool," by Arthur Symons

"The Cat-Lady," by John Barlas

"Teacher," by Langston Hughes

"Teacher," by Langston Hughes

Experimental Aircraft

[one from Red Tales, another blog I keep]


Once there was a woman who wished she didn't know so many things for sure. She'd learned not to try to convince people of what she knew, for they believed they knew things for sure, too. Arguing fatigued her. Besides, eventualities would demonstrate what was true better than she could: this she knew, too.

For instance, her husband took up the hobby of flying small experimental aircraft. When he'd told her of this new pursuit, she'd said, "I love you, and consider the word 'experimental,' please. When a cook experiments with a spice and fails, the result is merely an unappealing dish. When an experiment in aviation fails, gravity wrecks." Her husband had scoffed. He was jolly.

Later, when he showed her a red aircraft of startling design, she knew the plane would fail--before takeoff, she hoped. The experimental aircraft simply looked too much like art and not enough like engineering to be competent in the sky.

News of the fatal crash shocked her though she wasn't surprised. She grieved deeply. There's knowing, and then there's experiencing. Several weeks later, an attorney informed her that although her husband had intended to purchase more life insurance, he hadn't gotten around to doing so. There was some insurance, some money, but not a lot, the lawyer said. Her husband hadn't secured her economic future.

"I know," the woman said. "It's the way he was, and it's the way things are." She didn't mention how she knew that, as the plane approached the water, her husband had said "I'm sorry" to her, as if she were in the cockpit.

The little red plane didn't have a little black box, so there was no recording of her husband's last words. This absence pleased the woman, for she'd always preferred the knowing over the proof, wisdom over argument, and information over events, which could be brutal.

--Hans Ostrom, copyright 2012

"Cats," by Charles Baudelaire

"Zen Acorn," by Harryette Mullen

Two Aphorisms About Poetry

There's kind of a good news/bad news thing about aphorisms.  The fact that someone would write an aphorism, and call it that, and make it public suggests a level of arrogance: "Hey, I'm about to impart some wisdom--uh, pithily."  "Is that so? Well,  I can't wait."

Good news: the pithy part.  It's all over very quickly.

2.. Poetry concerns what most people--for many reasons, some of them excellent--prefer not to think about. Sometimes one of these people reads a poem and afterwards is glad he or she read it and thought about whatever it was the poem concerned.

2.  In one respect, poetry is like petrified wood, for it intrigues not because of what it is but because of what it seems to be.

--Hans Ostrom 

Used to Be a Place

There used to be a place.
Remember? It was a shop
next to that other place we
used to go. That was back
when we knew were to go,

knew who'd be there when
we went, what would be said
and bought and sold. We
knew where sunlight would fall,
but even those angles have
changed since then. So many

places have replaced those places
and so on. That's retail for you:
a series of disappearances adding
up to bewilderment, plus tax.

Copyright 2012 Hans Ostrom

"As If a Phantom Caressed Me," by Walt Whitman

"The Vision to Elektra," by Robert Herrick

"Green," by D.H. Lawrence

Potential Side-Effects

(re-posting this one)


Discontinue taking this medicine if your hair
turns into snakes. If you experience an erection
lasting four hours or more, then we must assume
that, for better or worse, you have a penis;
anyway, attach a small flag to the erection
and declare yourself emperor. If, after
taking this medicine, you start swallowing
pebbles, it probably has nothing to do
with the medicine. Other side-effects
may include spending too much money
on this medicine, the desire to organize
parades, death, twice the number of toes
you now have, a craving for goats' hooves
pickled in brine, and a heart-rhythm
that sounds like the samba. If you experience

a sudden drop in self-esteem, expect
your doctor to hang up when you call,
assuming you can find a doctor. If
you actually took this medicine,
then it's already too late, and an aged,
unbathed shaman will be escorting you
to another zone of time and space--
not necessarily forever; don't over-react.

As with all medicines, keep this one
beyond the reach of lemurs and hippopotami.
If you have any questions, write them out
on a piece of paper and eat the paper.
We're a pharmaceutical conglomerate.
We're not your friend. What
is it with you people, anyway?

Copyright 2012 Hans Ostrom

When the Tongue

When the tongue
touches the perfect
place linguistically
or physically:
an ecstasy,
most certainly.


—Hans Ostrom, 2012

Thank You, Rogers

Thank you, Rogers, for your fine report
on our profit-outlook. You're fired. It's
a matter of over-head. Consult the
etymology of "capital" and work
on your resume, you diligent piece
of human resources.  As for the rest

of you: Fuck off. I got my bonus,
dare me to justify it, I win, you lose:
I am the point at which nihilism
and profit meet, baby.  There's nothing
like the high you get from sniffing
the spore from the lip of the
titanium-lined abyss.

I go to church, there is no God,
I wave the flag, there is no nation,
I fund a family for whom I'm alien,
there is no nature, it's raw material,
and long-range planning is
what suckers do. Toodle-oo.

The game is to sell tomorrow
today.  Rogers, be on your way.


Copyright Hans Ostrom 2012

Technopressed

He lived his life
along coordinates befixed
and bedazzled by bots, drones,
satellites, servers, monitors, screens,
programs, screeners, and sites.

His life was a program
born of programs composed
in a binary language.

Technology expressed him/
expressed him not.


--Hans Ostrom, Copyright 2012

Conversation Between A and B

A: Would you rather look at an image or read a page?
B: Read a page.
A: What's the wildest sex you ever had?
B: Define "wild" or "wildest," please.
A: (Defines.)
B: (Answers.)
A: My god, I didn't expect it to have been that wild.
B: It was a long time ago.
A: That's a non sequitur. . . . Would you rather talk on a land-line or send/receive "texts"?
B: Land-line. Or send/receive a letter.
A: You mean paper, stamps, envelopes, closing, opening?
B: I do mean that.
A: How many times have you Skyped?
B: One and one-half.
A: Okay, I think we have enough evidence to suggest that you are old.
B: It was a long time ago.

"Satisfaction Haiku"

oh oh oh oh oh
oh Oh oh ohohoh oh.
OH, oh, oh, oh oh




--Hans Ostrom, 2012

Two Travelers Meet Inside a Phrase-Book

“My name is Carmen,” she said.

     “The Post Office is over there,” he replied.

“Thank you!  It is one o’clock.”

      “Goodbye! How are you?”

“Do you speak English?”

     “The stranger is weeping.”

“My factory is on fire. No thank you.”

     “Excuse me!”

“That dog is frothing at the mouth.”

     “You’re welcome.”

“My passport lies under your thigh.”

     “Where is the hospital?”

“The train leaves in ten minutes.”

     “Please put this on.”

“Will the coup d’etat last all week?”

     “Yes, the museum is my cousin.”

—Hans Ostrom, 2012

"At A Bach Concert," by Adrienne Rich

"Democracy Today," by Hans Ostrom

"The Broken Oar," by Henry Wadsworth Longellow

Concerning Angst

I think of angst as a soft metal.
You try to worry it into something
decorative and useful--
ring, cup--and it resists by being
too malleable. Its color mixes
gray and brown.

Some company delivers a load
of angst to you. You swear
you didn't order it. It gets
dumped anyway. Your mind

writhes inside itself like a snake
inside an egg. "Oh, God," you say,
not even meaning to pray. Oh,
that is angst for you.

Copyright 2012 Hans Ostrom

"Official Correspondence," by Hans Ostrom

"A Bar at the Folies-Bergère," by Hans Ostrom

"For Metro Riders," by Hans Ostrom

"Destiny," by Herman Hesse

"Excavation," by K.B. Imle

"The Ordinary Man," by Robert W. Service

"Walk," by Charles Bukowski

"To Those Without Pity," by Edna St. Vincent Millay

"Feast," by Edna St. Vincent Millay

"Rain Over the River," by 'Așā l-A'mā

Baseball Poems by Tim Peeler

As I wait for students to visit my office hours to discuss final papers and a poetry-portfolio, as I listen to cloud-bursts come and go, and as early-baseball-season begins to ripen into mid-season (for S.F. Giants fans, this brings thoughts of the June Swoon), I'm ordering a raft of books from a variety of online sources: the bibliophile's spring fever, I reckon.

Two books I just ordered are Touching All Bases: Baseball Poems and Waiting for Godot's First Pitch: More Baseball Poems, both by the talented, accomplished North Carolina poet Tim Peeler.  I hope they arrive as quickly as a fastball for Satchel Paige in his prime.

One of my favorite baseball poems is "Analysis of Baseball," by May Swenson.  Some of Tom Clark's baseball poems from back in the 70s day are pretty good too--although Oakland-A's-centric. I have a feeling Peeler's poems have set a new standard.

I can't prove the following: That IF American poets are interested in a sport (and interested in writing about it), that sport will likely be baseball.  But that's my guess.  The ritual, the time for reflection, the quirkiness (and the uncanny quirkiness of names), and so on: these have a certain potential appeal for poets.

Anyway, I hope you'll look into Tim Peeler's baseball-poetry-books, not to mention his other poetry books: look into them after you buy them, I mean.

One must assume that Godot's first pitch will be, ahem, long-delayed because of rain and other factors, but should it ever arrive, I'm thinking it will be in the dirt. Don't swing!

Oh--one other note.  I've been an S.F. Giants fan since I was six, and in m pre-teen years, I actually wrote a few fan-letters. One was to Gaylord Perry, who became famous for his spit-ball, and for his elaborate, charming denials of throwing a spitball. "Sometimes the fog rolls in, you know, and your fingers get wet--what are you going to do?"  At any rate, I got back not just the standard black-and-white photo postcard, but a real letter--on hotel stationery--from Gaylord, who was staying in (wait for it) North Carolina. He also included his business card: he was selling insurance.  Gaylord ended his career in Seattle, where he was nicknamed, of course (and here we circle back to poetry) the Ancient Mariner.

And a coda: One of my favorite ball players from the Sixties who wasn't a Giant was Smoky Burgess, a native of North Carolina.  Smoky became one of the great pinch-hitters of his day.  He was portly, and not a great athlete, but he had a great eye and a quick bat.  And he looked just fine in the Pittsburgh Pirates jersey.  A tip of the cap to the late Smoky.