Poetic License

“Poetry is the sort of thing you write late at night with a box of Kleenex on the bedstand,” –Me, circa 1992 or therabouts.

“Convincing teen-age writers to remove all instances of the word ’soul’ from their ‘poetry’ is one of the things I like least about teaching poetry” –a creative writing instructor I once had, many years after I took his class.

You might think I don’t care for poetry, but it’s not true. I like it when it’s good. But, like everything else, poetry is subject to Sturgeon’s Law (90% of everything is crap). I don’t like poetry that is all about form and nothing else. That stuff just evaporates once it’s spoken aloud. It doesn’t mean anything, which, of course, is a wet dream of a literature to critics with a deconstructionist bent. The best poetry is like the best music: it strikes a chord.

Here’s one of my favorite poems:

Someone ate the baby.
It’s rather sad to say.
Someone ate the baby
So she won’t be out to play.
We’ll never hear her whiney cry
Or have to feel if she is dry.
We’ll never hear her asking “Why?”
Someone ate the baby.

Someone ate the baby.
It’s absolutely clear
Someone ate the baby
‘Cause the baby isn’t here.
We’ll give away her toys and clothes.
We’ll never have to wipe her nose.
Dad says, “That’s the way it goes.”
Someone ate the baby.

Someone ate the baby.
What a frightful thing to eat!
Someone ate the baby
Though she wasn’t very sweet.
It was a heartless thing to do.
The policemen haven’t got a clue.
I simply can’t imagine who
Would go and (burp) eat the baby.

–Dreadful, by Shel Silverstein.

I’m also partial to this one:

Purity
Is Obscurity

–Ogden Nash

So I have an appetite for doggerel. C’est la vie, I guess.

But then there’s this:

S`io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i'odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question…
Oh, do not ask, “ What is it? ”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening.
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains.
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys.
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me.
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair–
[They will say: ``How his hair is growing thin!'']
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin–
[They will say: ``But how his arms and legs are thin!'']
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all–
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all–
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
. . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . .

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
. . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep. . . tired . . . or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet–and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “ I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”–
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor–
And this, and so much more?–
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow, or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
. . . . .
No! I am n
ot Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous–
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old . . . I grow old . . .
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

–T. S. Elliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

…and suddenly it makes it seem like everyone and their brother in the field has been squandering the potential of poetry, eh? I sometimes tell people that “T. S. Elliot said it best…” and then leave it at that.

One more. This one is deliciously sinister, and why not? It’s about death, after all. All great poetry is about love or death, or both at once:

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

–Wallace Stevens, “The Emperor of Ice Cream”

Enjoy.

Quick Hits

Because I don’t want to become the absentee landlord of this space, some thoughts and events from my recent real life:

I’m still in a sling. I go back to the orthopedists next week. I’m really goddamn sick of this. I look forward to being able to find comfortable positions in which to sleep again sometime during my lifetime, but I don’t have one now and the sleep deprivation is making me cranky. At a guess, I’m thinking that my doctors are too damned cautious when it comes to pharmacological solutions. When I was on the steroid, I could feel myself getting better. When I came off, there was no further progress. In fact, I think there has been regression. Feh. I was reading somewhere that medicine was the leading cause of death in the US last year, some 100,000 deaths ahead of heart disease. No wonder I don’t trust doctors.

I was planning to write about the AFI list of greatest American movies, but it soon became unwieldy and incoherent. Is Citizen Kane the greatest movie ever made? Much as I love it–and I do love it–it’s not even my second favorite of Orson Welles’s movies. Let’s just say this: when you have a list of greatest anythings that is a popular poll, you’ll get average results. And so it goes.

My basil crop has been a disappointment this year. I should be whipping up my first batch of pesto this week, but, alas. My peppers and tomatoes are going great guns, though.

I resume my electrolysis this weekend. I deeply regret the two month layoff, but there was nothing I could do about it. I was hoping to have my entire face cleared at least once before SCC, but I’ll be lucky if I get everything below the jawline cleared. I still hope to be done in under 200 hours, but I’m not holding my breath on that goal. We shall see.

We’ll be holding a 4th of July party next week. Jesus, we better get off our asses and get the house cleaned. It’s a mess.

Enjoy.

That Pesky Other Shoe…

You’ve heard the phrase, ” Waiting for the other shoe to drop?” Well, for us it has dropped. Felicia’s car is beginning to lose its transmission. Mind you, there are 200,000 miles on that car, but we can’t afford either a transmission repair OR another car purchase. So, once again, we are down to one car. I believe the technical term is still “screwed.”

But I have to look on the bright side. We have a new car now, which will be under warranty for the foreseeable future. Felicia’s car is paid for, too, so we aren’t on the hook for an outstanding car loan. And, for all I know, the problem might be fixable. We won’t find out until the end of the month, which is the earliest we can afford to have anyone even look at it. Fortunately, we won’t have to tow it 20 miles, either.

At the very least, I need to put out feelers. We can probably afford a $700 car, which might get us one that passes inspection, and might not. I just finished this damned process. And now here it is again.

Hades to Sisyphus: “Here you go, pal. There’s the rock. There’s the hill. Get to work…”

Another picture of the changing face of traditional values…

As some of you may know, there is a movement afoot to “reclaim” feminine pastimes like knitting and sewing and such for the modern, post-feminist, post-modern woman. I’m all for it, especially if it gives rise to stuff like THIS.

Clearly, these are not your grandmother’s crochet buddies, unless your grandmother is Grand Ma Ma from the Addams Family.

I don’t know what’s more disturbing: That these exist? Or that I want one.

Cheers.

Pride Goeth.

So I dropped by Columbia’s Pridefest today. I wish I had decided to do Pride right this year, but my arm is still screwed up and I can’t even shave, let alone put on make-up (I suppose I could do these things right-handed, but I doubt I’d be able to cover the blood involved with beard cover). It was a nice afternoon in any case. The last couple of Pride festivals I’ve attended have been staged on days with horrid weather. Today, on the other hand, was perfect. Because I’m in total boy mode right now, I can’t say I was holding up the “T” part of GLBT very well, but screw it. I was there, dammit. The big surprise for me was running into the realtor who sold me my house. I had no idea she was gay. In fact, I still wasn’t sure because she might have been representing her realty office at the booth she was manning without being gay. But then another woman came up and kissed her on the lips, which tends to be a giveaway. Her partner, as it turns out. For some reason, I feel better about the whole home-buying experience now. I like supporting the GLBT population with my business.

I kinda wish there were T-owned and operated brick-and-mortar businesses that I could support, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a thing advertised that wasn’t some kind of transformation boutique. I know that some of my friends in other cities own businesses, but because they own service-oriented businesses, I can’t exactly steer my business their way (I’m not going to send my dry-cleaning out of state, for example). Is there an online clearing-house for T-owned and operated businesses? If there’s not, there oughta be.

Slings and Arrows…

I haven’t been online much this week. My left arm has been in a sling and, in spite of ten years experience with the internet, I’m still not very adept at typing one handedly. Because I’m left-handed, I haven’t been doing much of anything, really. My elbow has been suffering from some painful, debilitating injury. I thought it was tennis elbow. When the pain became too much to endure, I went to the emergency room and they disagreed with my own diagnosis. “Olecranon bursitis,” is what they said. Because I get a lot of these kinds of injuries, they suggested that it might be a chronic condition with another root cause. They put my arm in a sling, gave me a steroid of some sort and a prescription for some pain pills and sent me on my merry way. I have a follow-up on Monday. One of the suggested under-lying causes is gout. Because I have a history of kidney stones, and because the onset of these injuries usually occurs at night while I sleep, this is not outside the realm of possibilities. I’ll find out sometime this week, I guess. Meanwhile, the cortico-steroid they gave me has worked wonders. “Will this make me grow boobs?” I asked the ER doc. “No.” “Hairy palms, then?” “Unfortunately not.” Alas.

Today was a different sort of crisis. My SO took my car into town–or intended to. While I was soaking in a nice hot bath, she called me to tell me that the car was dead. My brand. New. Car. Dead. Okay, I told her, don’t panic, I’ll be right there. I took her car–the one that gets crappy gas mileage (which is why she was driving mine) and went to meet her. She was stopped about two miles south of town. Not too far, really. When I arrived, she was weeping, convinced that she had completely ruined the car. How so? She had accidentally filled it with diesel when she got gas. She was convinced that we were looking at a catastrophic repair bill–surely this wouldn’t be covered by my warranty (it isn’t). After calming her down a bit, I sent her off in her car and waited for the tow truck. The tow is going to be the expensive part of this. A 25 mile tow isn’t cheap. The car was going to arrive at the dealership for service after they closed shop, so I chose to hike back to my house (2 miles–I can use the exercise, I guess) rather than ride into Columbia and improvise a ride home. Why would I have to improvise a ride home? Because my SO turned off her cell phone after I sent her on her merry way, and even as I write this four hours later, she hasn’t returned my message that said “Call me immediately.” Mind you, she’s the one who got me a cell phone in the first place for just such emergencies. Oh, the bitter irony. I’m not particularly upset over the whole diesel thing–it’s an honest mistake–but I’m very pissed off that she shut off her damned cell phone even though she KNEW I might need to contact her this afternoon.

But this, too, shall pass…