Humpty-Dumpty Omelettes

I've used a PC twice today, the first time I've really had to in about 5 years and it's freaking me out. (Where's the Command key?a! Why do I have to open my browser 3 different times to get 3 windows?!)


So I'm going to be forced to be brief, once again (don't worry, my usual long-windedness will take over soon enough). I brought along a book of "Modern European Poetry" (it includes Rilke, so that gives you an idea of their concept of what's "modern"), but found this by Gunter Grass, who I mostly knew of as a novelist.


I can't tell if it's about God or the Berlin Wall, but either way it's fantastic and so far the best thing I've found that I hadn't seen before.

In the Egg

Gunter Grass

We live in the egg.
We have covered the inside wall
of the shell with dirty drawings
and the Christian names of our enemies.
We are being hatched.


Whoever is hatching us
is hatching our pencils as well.
Set free from the egg one day
at once we shall make an image
of whoever is hatching us.


We assume that we're being hatched.
We imagine some good-natured fowl
and write school essays
about the color and breed
of the hen that is hatching us.


When shall we break the shell?
Our prophets inside the egg
for a middling salary argue
about the period of incubation.
They posit a day called X.


Out of boredom and genuine need
we have invented incubators.
We are much concerned about our offspring inside the egg.
We should be glad to recommend our patient
to her who looks after us.


But we have a roof over our heads.
Senile chicks,
polyglot embryos
chatter all day
and even discuss their dreams.


And what if we're not being hatched?
If this shell will never break?
If our horizon is only that
of our scribbles, and always will be?
We hope that we're being hatched.


Even if we only talk of hatching
there remains fear that someone
outside our shell will feel hungry
and crack us into the frying pan with a pinch of salt.
What shall we do then, my brethren inside the egg?

Saturday Suck: On the Benefits of Prosthetics

Sorry for the delay on yesterday's blog entry - we were traveling most of the day. But I'll make up for it with this incredible ode to legs. Or carpenters. Or the handicapable. Or wood. Or begging. Or perhaps all simultaneously.

Wooden Leg

James McIntyre

Misfortune sometimes is a prize,
And is a blessing in disguise,
A man with a stout wooden leg,
Through town and country he can beg.

And the people in the city,
On poor man they do take pity,
He points them to his timber leg
And tells them of his poor wife, Meg.

And if a dog tries him to bite,
With his stiff leg he doth him smite,
Or sometimes he will let him dig
His teeth into wooden leg.

Then never more will dog delight
This poor cripple man for to bite;
Rheumatic pains they never twig
Nor corns annoy foot of leg.

So cripple if he's man of sense,
Finds for ill some recompense;
And though he cannot dance a jig
He merry moves on wooden leg.

And when he only has one foot,
He needs to brush only one boot;
Through world he does jolly peg,
So cheerful with his wooden leg.

In mud or water he can stand
With his foot on the firm dry land,
For wet he doth not care a fig,
It never hurts his wooden leg.

No aches he has but on the toes
Of one foot, and but one gets froze;
He has many a jolly rig,
And oft enjoys his wooden leg.




Where can I get me one of those things?! They sound pretty dang awesome - just moving around merrily, begging, hurting living creatures, standing in mud, luxuriating in not having corns... Heck, come to think of it, what's the point of actual legs anyway?!


Stupid flesh legs... Why can't you be wooden?


A couple of things to notice - what is with Meg, the dude's poor wife? She comes out of nowhere, gets mentioned for no good reason and then vanishes again. Then there's the recommendation to "smite" small animals - according to the new AP stylebook, the only people who may smite are God and The Incredible Hulk. 


Then there's the mix of the flights of fancy with the banal, usually in the same line. It really is a masterpiece of incompetence. But what really ties it all together is the iambic tetrameter (each line has 4 syllables in a da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM pattern), and he rides that horse from here to glory. Even if it means emphasizing important words like "A" or "His" or pronouncing the word "many" like "ma-NY" and "city" like "ci-TY" and people like "peo-PLE."


If I may give some advice to any aspiring poets:


If you use couplets that are rhymed
Iambically for many lines
It may prove hard for you to be
Then taken at all seriously.

Another Desultory (Ambivalent) Phillipic

Got to make this one quick - packing for vay-cay. 

Found this poem in Poetry magazine - for something I seem to denigrate often on this blog, I seem to find some gems in it. Hmmm - maybe time to rethink my antipathy. Or not.

But what was funny about this particular issue (April 2006 - The Translation Issue) was that I enjoyed it far more than almost any other issue I could remember. The translations of poets from around the world seemed to have much more quality, depth and talent than the average selection of (mostly) American poets the mag usually takes in. 

This particular one I found really moody and evocative, a far cry from most of the navel-gazing "look at my pretty garden" verse that I derided in a post earlier this month. So here it is, hope you enjoy it, I'll try to keep writing things for your enjoyment on a daily basis, but if I don't manage I'll be sure to make up for it on the other side.

In the Fog

Giovanni Pascoli (Translated by Geoffrey Brock)

I stared into the valley: it was gone—
wholly submerged! A vast flat sea remained,
gray, with no waves, no beaches; all was one.


And here and there I noticed, when I strained,
the alien clamoring of small, wild voices:   
birds that had lost their way in that vain land.   


And high above, the skeletons of beeches,
as if suspended, and the reveries   
of ruins and of the hermit’s hidden reaches.


And a dog yelped and yelped, as if in fear,
I knew not where nor why. Perhaps he heard
strange footsteps, neither far away nor near—


echoing footsteps, neither slow nor quick,
alternating, eternal. Down I stared,
but I saw nothing, no one, looking back.


The reveries of ruins asked: “Will no
one come?” The skeletons of trees inquired:
“And who are you, forever on the go?”


I may have seen a shadow then, an errant
shadow, bearing a bundle on its head.
I saw—and no more saw, in the same instant.


All I could hear were the uneasy screeches
of the lost birds, the yelping of the stray,
and, on that sea that lacked both waves and beaches,


the footsteps, neither near nor far away.

Good Ol' Dead People

I never wanted to read Edgar Lee Masters' "Spoon River Anthology." Somewhere in high school, in my mind it got inextricably linked with things like "Our Town" and Norman Rockwell paintings and "American Gothic."

You know what I mean, all that stuff made by white people wishing for a time when all of white America was just more, you know: white. When everything was perfect and idyllic a hundred percent of the time, and if there's living and dying, it's the way of things, but it better all be white living and white dying because that's the way it's always been and devil take the hindmost if the good Lord's willin' and the creek don't rise.

So when I picked up "Spoon River" by chance and found it to be remarkably clear-eyed and gripping, you can imagine my surprise. It's basically a collection of epitaphs for the townspeople of the fictional Spoon River community: people of all ages, careers and points of view get represented. And the craziest thing of all is how completely opposing perspectives each get their fair due.

You've got jingoists and disaffected soldiers, the pious and the irreligious, psychotic unbalanced murderers and the psychotic unbalanced judges who pass sentence on them. They all have distinct and clear voices, all telling you a story you can empathize with or at least enter into their mind for a moment. Some smack of Poe or Hawthorne, others of Emerson or the Alcotts, and a few have the crazy-as-an-out-house-rat logic of Flannery O'Connor. 

It's definitely the best piece of literature I've read that's inspired by epitaphs of ancient Greece. But after Masters, there aren't many people brave enough to try it. Here are two of my favorites from the anthology.

Father Malloy

Edgar Lee Masters

YOU are over there, Father Malloy,
Where holy ground is, and the cross marks every grave,
Not here with us on the hill--
Us of wavering faith, and clouded vision
And drifting hope, and unforgiven sins.
You were so human, Father Malloy,
Taking a friendly glass sometimes with us,
Siding with us who would rescue Spoon River
From the coldness and the dreariness of village morality.
You were like a traveler who brings a little box of sand
From the wastes about the pyramids
And makes them real and Egypt real.
You were a part of and related to a great past,
And yet you were so close to many of us.
You believed in the joy of life.
You did not seem to be ashamed of the flesh.
You faced life as it is,
And as it changes.
Some of us almost came to you, Father Malloy,
Seeing how your church had divined the heart,
And provided for it,
Through Peter the Flame,
Peter the Rock.

Harry Wilmans

Edgar Lee Masters

I WAS just turned twenty-one,
And Henry Phipps, the Sunday-school superintendent,
Made a speech in Bindle's Opera House.
"The honor of the flag must be upheld," he said,
"Whether it be assailed by a barbarous tribe of Tagalogs
Or the greatest power in Europe."
And we cheered and cheered the speech and the flag he waved
As he spoke.
And I went to the war in spite of my father,
And followed the flag till I saw it raised
By our camp in a rice field near Manila,
And all of us cheered and cheered it.
But there were flies and poisonous things;
And there was the deadly water,
And the cruel heat,
And the sickening, putrid food;
And the smell of the trench just back of the tents
Where the soldiers went to empty themselves;
And there were the whores who followed us, full of syphilis;
And beastly acts between ourselves or alone,
With bullying, hatred, degradation among us,
And days of loathing and nights of fear
To the hour of the charge through the steaming swamp,
Following the flag,
Till I fell with a scream, shot through the guts.
Now there's a flag over me in
Spoon River. A flag!
A flag!

NEVER AGAIN.

My father was in Krakow, Poland recently during the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Oddly, I had already been pondering the concentration camps thanks to a flawed but awe-inspiring film by Paul Schrader called "Adam Resurrected." It's funny how that place and what happened there have been so examined, wept over, appropriated by the goyim, become Oscar fodder, turned into tourist destinations (almost as if to say, "Here, look - this is as bad as we can possible be one to another").

Back in college my future wife found a book called "Holocaust Poetry" that does an excellent job of compiling not just poems by survivors, but also the second and third waves of responses to the Holocaust. (And any collection that includes Sylvia Plath's devastating "Daddy" gets points from me.)

This is one of the first things in the collection, and from my outsider's perspective I think it serves as a pretty good epigram for the Jewish experience: not just in the mid-twentieth century, but throughout history. From the Seleucids to the pogroms, from persecution during the Renaissance to Auschwitz and Büchenwald, there are lots of knives to be born with.

Heritage

Hayim Gouri

The ram came last of all. And Abraham

did not know that it came to answer the

boy's question- first of his strength

when his day was on the wane.

The old man raised his head.

Seeing that it was no dream and that the angel

stood there - the knife slipped from his hand.

The boy, released from his bonds,

saw his father's back.

Isaac, as the story goes, was not

sacrificed. He lived for many years,

saw what pleasure had to offer

until his eyesight dimmed.

But he bequeathed that hour to his offspring.

They are born with a knife in their hearts.

As my father says, we should learn to forgive. But we should never forget. 

Poor Little RIch Girl

Man,I need to get on the ball and stop doing these a few minutes before midnight.


Updike is far more famous as a novelist, and with good reason. He does light verse and when he's not careful it veers into doggerel. 


But this one has just enough to keep it on the right side of that line. I would pay good money to read Kim Novak's (or for that matter, Lindsay Lohan's) little poems, though mostly for the amusement and not for the art.

Little Poems

John Updike

"Overcome, Kim flees in bitter frustration to her TV studio dressing room where she angrily flings a vase of flowers to the floor and sobs in abandon to a rose she destroys: "I'm tearing this flower apart like I"m destroying my life." As she often does, she later turned the episode into a little poem." - photograph caption in Life




I woke up tousled, one strap falling
Off the shoulder, casually.
In came ten Times-Life lensmen, calling,
"Novak, hold that déshabillé!"


I wen to breakfast, asked for cocoa,
Prunes and toast. "Too dark," they said.
"The film we use is Pallid-Foc-O.
Order peaches, tea and bread."


I wrote a memo, "To my agent-"
"Write instead," they said, "'Dear Mum.'"
In conference, when I made a cogent
Point, they cried, "No, no! Act dumb."


I told a rose, "I tear you as I
Tear my life," and heard them say,
"Afraid that 'as" of yours is quasi-
Classy. We like 'like.' O.K.?"


I dined with friends. The Time-Life crewmen
Interrupted: "Bare your knees,
Project your bosom, and, for human
Interest, look ill at ease."


I, weary, fled to bed. They hounded
Me with meters, tripods, eyes
Of Polaroid - I was surrounded!
The caption read, "ALONE, Kim cries."

Quickie

Election Year

Matt Quarterman

Mermaids with campaign buttons watch Vegas fakers sing
And no-one in the District’s ever seen the Fisher King.

They’ve looked for him in the nursing homes,
administered tests in the better asylums. 

They’ve scoured the sewers and dried up the drains,
they’ve found no lost leader or last Fisher King.

His arteries are cracking, his bones are withered,
he shows up on no X-ray, and his thumbs quiver.
Philosophes say it’s all over, druids speak of last things.
Priests count unicorns and phoenix to lure the Fisher King.

Red-light antennas pump guesses at his face
from the Marianas bathyscaphs to the Skylab base.
Infrared assassins let the sonar have its ping.
We form militia to find, elect, and kill the Fisher King.

Lay his corpse in the reflecting pool, join hands and chant in rings,
“We kill to be reborn by President Fisher King.”

The difference between recognition and Recognition

I am an aficionado of cynicism. Despite Conan O'Brien's recent (very genuine) farewell speech asking "especially young people" to avoid cynicism (as it's his least favorite quality), I am an admirer of the real hard-bitten, bitter skepticism that only jealousy and pettiness can bring.

Which is why this is a great poem: it's both knowing and aggravated. I love how the rhythms and omissions make this piece skitter around. Ir's also great to wonder whether the poet received too little attention for his liking or too much.

In the words of Nick Cave, "I thought of my friends who had died of exposure. And I remembered other ones who had died from the lack of it."

Personal at the Podium

Steven Barza

I am so and so

happy to introduce our illustrious

author of winer of

legendary

thanks to support from the and from the and

if I may say from my girlfriend who is here tonight

wasn't sure

as I was she was dazzled

by the boisterous first

touched by the rueful second

provoked by the self-referential third

provoked by something else lately

a fictional world of bright people and chatter

edged with perfidy I think someone here

knows perfidy has used my preoccupation

planning this event

preparing this introduction

to introduce herself to who knows who

after the reading our speaker

will take questions from the audience

I have questions for someone in the audience

like where were you

like how could you

like what now

ladies and gentlemen

we are honored

though for some of us honor is now what it was

please show a warm welcome I give yo please

especially you I give you and have given you

so show a warm welcome

so please

To Boldy Split the Infinitive...

Thanks to website info from one of my scientist friends, the past week I've been completely sucked into watching the first season of "Star Trek: The Next Generation." (Thanks a lot for the time-suck, Kristian...)


It's both awesome and lame, terrible and terrific. A lot has to do with the fact that I grew up watching the episodes, discussing them, reading books and articles about the show, and waiting impatiently for the weekend to roll around again, when I'd get to stay up late and watch a new one air on FOX.


So I decided to look for some of the best Star Trek poetry I could find! I quickly gave up and decided to look for the worst Star Trek poetry I could find, which yielded far more results.


Writing.com even had a Star Trek Poetry contest, and I feel I have to include a few of their winners. (I'm disqualifying those written in Klingon.) Here's their grand prize winner. 

Scotty

tosca

Who will beam me up

now that you have gone?

Who can I rely on

to keep me safe,

as my particles 

disintegrate?

Now when I board

with my pass

to fly business class,

it won’t be the same.

I’ll still whisper your name

and close my eyes.

But...surprise, surprise;

all my parts will remain

on the aeroplane.

And my wish won’t come true

Because you

have beamed yourself up,

Scotty. 

Mmm-mmm good. A fittingly goofy eulogy for a man who perfected the goofy Scotch accent.


This next one I actually kind of like, a mash-up of original Star Trek episode titles. It doesn't mean much, but that's part of the fun.

The Day of the Dove

Rose Grey

The Cage on this side of paradise
Holds the devil in the dark
The balance of terror and errands of mercy
Bring out the enemy with in; a wolf in the fold
With a wink of an eye we receive a taste of Armageddon


The patterns of force in a private little war
Hold no shore leave for the obsession
Of a homecoming to all our yesterdays
Let us return to tomorrow
And the City on the Edge of Forever


Where a metamorphosis can occur
Bringing about a logic to rival Spock’s brain
And the Children shall lead us
Away from the dagger of the mind
Showing us the way to Eden





But here's what really brought this all about - a half-remembered poem written for the Next Generation episode "Schisms," supposedly by one of the ship's crew.

Ode to Spot

Lt. Cmdr. Data (though probably Brannon Braga)

Felis Catus, is your taxonomic nomenclature,
an endothermic quadruped carnivorous by nature?
Your visual, olfactory and auditory senses
contribute to your hunting skills, and natural defenses.

I find myself intrigued by your subvocal oscillations,
a singular development of cat communications
that obviates your basic hedonistic predilection
for a rhythmic stroking of your fur, to demonstrate affection.

A tail is quite essential for your acrobatic talents;
you would not be so agile if you lacked its counterbalance.
And when not being utilized to aide in locomotion,
it often serves to illustrate the state of your emotion.

O Spot, the complex levels of behaviour you display
connote a fairly well-developed cognitive array.
And though you are not sentient, Spot, and do not comprehend,
I nonetheless consider you a true and valued friend.









"Captain, you have anticipated my denouement..." Just amazing.


What blows my mind is that this little ditty supposedly written by a robot is so far superior to nearly all of the fan poetry I can lay my hands on. (Some have argued that Brannon Braga is himself a robot, but I won't stoop to that level of discourse, at least among my non-Trekker friends.)


I also came across this fantastic discussion about the poem which combines the impassioned testiness of the die-hard Trekkie with the patronizing superciliousness of the English department grad student.


So there you have it, folks, all the Trek literature I can stand for one day. In the words of the inimitable science fiction author Orson Scott Card, "Ah, Star Trek - it is to laugh."

Mellow, Middle-Age Dad Rock and the Good Life

This was my first encounter both with Stephen Dunn and with Poetry magazine. I've talked about them both elsewhere, but I really can't pass this one up. 

Sisyphus in the Suburbs

Stephen Dunn

It was late and the wine had wet
an aridity he'd forgotten he had.
He could feel the evening
arching above the house,
a good black dome. No ledges,
he realized, tempted him.
The once-inviting abyss
was now just a view. 


Sisyphus put another CD on
and stroked the cat.
His wife was in Bermuda
with her younger sister,
celebrating the death
of winter, and a debt paid. 
Her missed her, and he did not. 


He'd been mixing Janis Joplin 
with Brahms, accountable now
to no one. The lights
from some long-desired festival
were not calling him.
No silent dog or calm ocean 
made him fear the next moment. 


But Sisyphus was amazed
how age sets in, how it just came
one day and stayed. And how far
away the past gets. His break
from the gods, just an episode now. 


Tomorrow he'd brave the cold,
spireless mall, look for a gift.
He'd walk through the unappeasable 
crowds as if some right thing
were findable and might be bestowed.




I'm a huge fan of classical mythology, just like I am of biblical references. It always seems to add more class, more depth, more poignancy when you're throwing in brief echoes from the past.


But what makes this astounding is how it's really about so much more than the titular character. There's both a regret and an acceptance of aging, a recognition of how much has changed since he's given up his labors.


It's also pretty cool how despite the calmness, the prose-ness of it, it never ceases to feel like poetry. The observations and descriptions are clear and concise, but also just a bit out of reach. Prose with funny spacing misses the point: it's not the line breaks that make it poetry, it's the poem-ness. Every detail seems to illuminate some corner of Sisyphus' life and surroundings and create a full, true world that is completely believable.


I guess if you're cynical you could say this is just a paean to middle-class Anglo life: your 401K stowed safely in your fraternity brother's financial institution and the dividends keep rolling in. (Sort of how Pitchfork reviewed Wilco's "Sky Blue Sky" record as "dad rock." Which is facile but that doesn't make it less true.)


I also appreciate how "Sisyphus in the Suburbs" is counter-counter-cultural. Maybe the good life really can be sitting on your deck drinking a wine you've grown to appreciate. Or better yet, maybe it's just one of many possible good lives. 


Especially living in mostly left-leaning sections of the country for the past few years, you get the sense that you're not allowed to be happy unless you've got a sign and a cause and an anthem; or that you've got to adopt an orphanage of blind lepers to prove you're a good person. There's an interesting argument to be made there - your life is significant when it is of use to others.


But it doesn't have to be grandiose all the time, does it? Being of use can't be a melodrama. I just don't see myself being able to permanently appreciate life on that kind of epic basis. 


I'm also a selfish bastard but at least I'm honest.


I appreciate being able to rest from labors, seeing age and experience as prizes to be earned instead of traps to be avoided. At least once a week a client at work will joke, "Don't ever get old!" And I'd like to say, "You can't tell me what to do - you're not my dad!" Age is wasted on the old. I aim to appreciate the onset of losing my youth.

The Beauty of the Disgusting

This one hit me first in high school, a time when I was both aflame with hormones and terrified of sex. The description of a horse's reproductive organs can still simultaneously repulse and fascinate me.

On an Old Advertisement and After a Photograph by Alfred Stieglitz

Alan Dugan

The formal, blooded stallion, the Arabian,

will stand for stud at fifty bucks a throw,

but there is naturally a richer commerce in his act,

eased in this instance by a human palm

and greased with money: the quiver in his haunch

is not from flies, no; the hollow-sounding,

kitten-crushing hooves are sharp and blind,

the hind ones hunting purchase while the fore

rake at the mare's flank of the sky.

Also, the two- or three-foot prick that curls

the mare's lip back in solar ectasy

is greater than the sum of its desiring:

the great helm of the glans, the head

of feeling in the dark, is what spits out,

beyond itself, its rankly generative cream.

After that heat, the scraggled, stallion-legged foal

is not as foolish as his acts: the bucking and

the splayed-out forelegs while at grass

are practices: he runs along her flank

in felt emergencies, inspired by love to be

his own sweet profit of the fee and the desire,

compounded at more interest than the fifty in the bank.

I'm not sure if this is the photograph referred to in the title, but thought I'd provide it anyway.

Along the same lines as the poem I think of "Equus," the incredible play by Peter Shaffer that similarly combines the glory and the ickiness of equine sexuality. (Incidentally, Anthony Shaffer, his brother wrote screenplays including "The Wicker Man." That must be one twisted family.)

To this day I'm creeped out by the poem. But I also can't stop reading it. And that's what disturbs me most.

Misdogthropy

We lost our family dog this year and I've never been happier, for myself and for the animal. (He's been pretty miserable practically since the day we got him.) One day I'll have to sit some pet-lovers down and have people really explain what they're getting out of the equation. To me it seems like a child you can't talk with, a pack animal that never carries anything and an ambulatory poop container all wrapped up in an odorous, furry, wet, ill-kempt mess. But that's just me.

But since I'm already on the subject, here's a little poem about dogs. I mentioned A.E. Stallings offhand last time, and it got me thinking about this poem, which I hadn't read for a few years. 

An Ancient Dog Grave, 

Unearthed During Construction of the Athens Metro

A.E. Stallings

It is not the curled up bones, nor even the grave
That stops me, but the blue beads on the collar
(Whose leather has long gone the way of hides) —
The ones to ward off evil. A careful master
Even now protects a favorite, just so.
But what evil could she suffer after death?
I picture the loyal companion, bereaved of her master,
Trotting the long, dark way that slopes to the river,
Nearly trampled by all the nations marching down,
One war after another, flood or famine,
Her paws sucked by the thick, caliginous mud,
Deep as her dewclaws, near the riverbank.
In the press for the ferry, who will lift her into the boat?
Will she cower under the pier and be forgotten,
Forever howling and whimpering, tail tucked under?
What stranger pays her passage? Perhaps she swims,
Dog paddling the current of oblivion.
A shake as she scrambles ashore sets the beads jingling.
And then, that last, tense moment — touching noses
Once, twice, three times, with unleashed Cerberus.

She's very talented, has a real ear for the sounds of poetry, but I really appreciate the way her poems are balanced and even. Despite dark subject matter (which also scores big points with me), she has a way of taking the long view on everything, I guess appropriate for someone so steeped in the culture of ancient Greece.

I think if anything could get me to appreciate furry, twitchy, wet, growling messes, this poem could do it.