Pass me the ashes. Hold the shade.

There are moods in which Horace 4.7 seems to me the most perfect poem ever written. We no longer live in a time when every schoolchild is required to translate it, but here is a famous 4-line portion 3 times rendered into English.

Damna tamen celeres reparant caelestia lunae:
nos ubi decidimus
quo pius Aeneas, quo Tullus diues et Ancus,
puluis et umbra sumus.

Her losses soon the moon supplies,
But wretched man, when once he lies
Where Priam and his sons are laid,
Is naught but ashes and a shade.
(Johnson)

But oh, whate'er the sky-led seasons mar,
Moon upon moon rebuilds it with her beams;
Come we where Tullus and where Ancus are
And good Aeneas, we are dust and dreams.
(Housman)

Yet the swift moons repair Heaven's detriment:
We, soon as thrust
Where good Aeneas, Tullus, Ancus went,
What are we? dust.
(Conington)

Save your breath

An article in the CHE asks whether believers should pray for Christopher Hitchens. The best answer: Who gives a shit? Not Hitchens, I suspect, unless he is secretly pleased to know people are thinking about him, whoever those people might be (and whatever they might be thinking). The prayerful will do Hitchens neither good nor harm, of course; whether the additional smugness and self satisfaction engendered is good for those doing the praying is none of my business, though my opinion on the subject is pretty obvious.

What is most notable is the way some of the faithful have reacted. The author, Carlin Romano, quotes, "If you don't die a excruciatingly painful death, I suspect you will have months of incredible and terrible agony. Sort of like reading your articles, but not nearly as bad. You are a nasty and hateful man." Most of the community of believers will not have phrased their feelings so bluntly, but you know that a good many are smacking their lips over the notion that Their God still can deliver personal retribution. More sad than disgusting, or more disgusting than sad?

http://chronicle.com/article/No-One-Left-to-Pray-To-/66283/

In the Cemetery of the Alexandrians

This is one of the first poems I ever wrote. It appeared in a student magazine called Foothills.


Beneath this slab of exegesis
the liver is gone, gone is the heart.
Applaud the marble Master's thesis
that shades the worms who eat the art.

from the mailbag

Q: Do you understand your own poems?

A: Sometimes. The ones dictated to me by angelic presences in tie-dyed t-shirts and hot pants often elude my full comprehension. Does it matter? About Browning's Sordello Tennyson is said to have remarked that there were only two lines in the poem which he could understand: "Who will may hear Sordello's story told" and "Who would has heard Sordello's story told," and both of them were lies.

Dear Anonymous critic:

"More cowbell" doesn't count as a critique. If you'd been first with it, or even seventh, maybe, but now? It's like writing, "I think you should adjust your line breaks." Try something different. Perhaps your next anonymous letter could begin, "If the river were whiskey and you were a diving duck... ."

Never the Twain

Yesterday was the 100th anniversary of Mark Twain's death, a good time to remember a great writer.

Twain always disappoints. He never outgrew his need to shock or clown or impress, an amusing thing in a Dave Barry-style humor columnist, but something a novelist cannot afford. The collapse of Huck Finn as it moves towards its conclusion is only the most famous example; every one of his books exhibits the same deficiencies. I tend to like Life on the Mississippi best because it is frankly a collection of sketches.

Not every novelist needs to be Henry James, but think how much good a touch of Mr James would have done Mr Clemens.

from the mailbag

I see you have a Facebook page now & you use it. Wouldn't you be better off spending all that time practicing poetry? It needs it.

No doubt. But Facebook inspires me, and I learn so much from it. Did you know there are people out there--even poet-people--with thousands of friends? It's like having phone books for friends. Did you know that when you ask people to befriend you, they might reply, "And you are who?" thus proving that the predicate nominative is still alive and well.

You know people only find there way here because you wrote that 1 pome with friction in the title right?

I have mentioned this before. I'm just happy my peeps are happy. If I have facilitated frottage, I'll just have to live with that.

Dear RHE, Did you know that it is not the medeival ages anymore?

So have I heard, and do in part believe it.

RHE, your ugly and ur mother dresses you funny.

Dear Mr Justice Scalia,

There is no need to personalize this.

Dryden says, Happy New Year

All, all of a piece throughout;
Thy chase had a beast in view;
Thy wars brought nothing about;
Thy lovers were all untrue.
'Tis well an old age is out,
And time to begin a new.

Henry did not waffle

Fowler's back, and about bloody time:

http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/72770362.html

Dead Grandpa Falls Down Stairs Quietly

Dead Grandpa fell down stairs last night. He didn't
bump much, a thing of ectoplasm mostly,
but made the clocks run backwards 20 minutes,
and all the photographs began to weep.

At times like these we know Dead Grandpa's with us,
a waning disincarnate sort of Gramps
who knows things--like what fish forks are--he never
knew before, but he cannot help us much.

He tries, we know: that's why at 2 a.m.
he's mounting stairs and falling, featherweighted,
on the Oriental runner in a heap,
light, light, like the yellow leaves or spindrift.

Why is there a "their" there?

In the CHE today "Female Science Professor" writes, "If you don't like another professor, don't take your dislike out on their students and postdocs." I am always irritated by that use of "their"--the plural pronoun with a singular antecedent, utterly illogical, calling attention to its lack of gender bias.

Mine doesn't seem to be the majority view. Those whose opinions I respect remind me that the usage goes back at least to Shakespeare,"God send every one their heart's desire!" Thackery writes, "A person can't help their birth." And "in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves," says the King James Committee.

I don't care. I find the construction, as currently used, smugly self satisfied in its correctness (and, yes, I'm probably projecting here), but each person must please themselves.

Even more pregnant and uniquer, too

The lead to this column from the Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/sep/04/why-reading-dickens

suggests that Dickens is "even more ubiquitous" than he used to be. Are there degrees of ubiquity? Can you be "even more omnipresent"? Is it childish to be annoyed by this sort of thing?

I don't want to be ungrateful, though. I learned a new word from the column, aptronym, then, from looking it up, another, the synonymous euonym. I feel more omniscienter than ever.

from the mailbag

Dear "u stink":

Yes, I get to decide whether your "comment" shows up here or not. I'm sorry you feel offended and excluded, but not all that sorry.

I can summarize your unposted comment for you; maybe that will salve your lacerated sensibilities. You don't like me; you don't like my poems; you suspect I dress funny; I was spawned by Satan; I am personally responsible for Israeli foreign policy and, apparently, Venezuela's, too; and you are convinced I was raised by evil nuns in evening gowns, who tempted me with illicit decolletage while flogging me for not having memorized Lesbia Brandon.

Actually, I made that last part up. You didn't say anything nearly that interesting. And there's an o in "people," not a double e.

P.S. Yes, I see that have only 1 "follower," though "pariah" [note spelling; it rhymes with "Mariah," as in Carey or they call the wind] seems a bit harsh. I'm sure you're correct in saying many bloggers have more--hordes, throngs, multitudes fed with loaves and anapests. All of them should be watching parking meters.

Say it ain't so

Is it true that orange rhymes with Blorenge, a hill in Wales?

from the mailbag

RHE you know nobody reads this don't you? I read it enough to know that nobody reads it, so I guess I wasn't right when I said nobody reads it. Maybe I should of said something like Almost nobody reads this blog and nobody but you cares about it. Don't you have anything better to do?

Dear Sir or Madam:

No.

Your poems all sound a lot alike to me, same voice every time. Maybe it's time for some variety.

I can't say you're wrong, but the explanation--which is that I wrote them all--suggests how little I can do about it. I have the same reaction when I read through a collected Hardy or Yeats or Frost or Housman. Superior voices, maybe, but they give one the same feeling of surfeit. The answer probably is something like, Lyric poems by the same poet shouldn't be read in bulk. A few poems at a time, from a volume dipped into at random, may be a better way to go.

You are an energizer bunny. Don't you ever get discouraged?

Thank you. Yes.

Are the bagels any good in Denver?

Not as good as they are elsewhere. The locals blame the altitude. I think it's global warming. Or maybe the Illuminati. To be fair, the rellenos can be very good indeed.

RHE

"Faith-based" discussion

I read another article this morning on the relative merits of societies predicated on religious belief and those which are secular. (It was in the CHE; you can find it at aldaily.com.) It was learned and dispassionate and even handed. It entirely missed the point. Such articles almost always do, because their unstated premise seems to be that whether we believe or not depends on what we would find most useful. Left undiscussed is truth. If there are no intellectually respectable arguments for the existence of God--and there aren't--what difference does it make whether we'd be better off in an Age of Faith? As Bishop Butler said, "Things and actions are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be: why then should we desire to be deceived?" Our preferences don't really figure into the matter.

Perhaps we should end with another famous believer. Johnson said, "the mind can only repose on the stability of truth." Of course Johnson seems to have spent much of his life muttering to himself, "I do believe. I do believe. I do, I do, I do."

Mailbag

1. For the umpty-seventh time, yes, I am the Richard Epstein. Those other Richard Epsteins are each a Richard Epstein. Yes, that professorly chap is more famous, but, dude, the gentleman is an attorney.

2. No, I do not know why a certain class of intellectual dilettante advocates the legalization of marijuana, but the prohibition of tobacco. Probably because I smoke cigars. And why are you asking a poet this question? This sort of conundrum is best addressed by Jerry Seinfeld.

3. As between Derek Walcott and Ruth Padel, I'd choose Francis Turner Palgrave, who has prior experience in the position, wore a long, but rather patchy, beard, is responsible for The Golden Treasury, which promoted the confusion of good poetry with Good Taste, and who edited a volume of selections from Robert Herrick mysteriously entitled Chrysomela.

4. No, I have no idea why the guy who played Kumar and Dr Kutner is in the White House now. What made you think I could explain this? Anyway, isn't Martin Sheen still President? Maybe Kumar/Dr Kutner knows him. Or Charlie Sheen.

5. I prefer the Oxford comma, even though Fowler eschews it, except when its omission would occasion confusion. The truth is, I like punctuation. I hope someday I shall find a grilled cheese sandwich bearing the imprint of a semi-colon. Should/would works just the same as shall/will, except that the distinction is even less observed. Do not get me started on decimate.

Particularly flarfy

Ron Silliman writes of Kevin Davies, "Davies appears to have found a spot exactly halfway between language poetry and flarf, or maybe to have heard what was particularly flarfy about Bruce Andrews’ approach to langpo."

And I stopped reading there. Mr Silliman performs a valuable service to readers in his comprehensive cataloguing of literary links. I am really grateful to him for that. But when he speaks in propria persona, he is almost always wrong. Or wrong headed. Or just silly. Whenever he first quotes, then discusses a poem, he makes me want not to read it. Perhaps that's a public service, too.

The World Downriver

The world is somewhat broader than the word
suggests—the tiny globes slotted for banks
or pencil sharpeners, the sort of news
which offers brief and intimate reviews
of life in Akron. Give a world of thanks
for not obtruding Kenya on our notice.
And which of you sophisticates has heard
the prayer that Kundar packaged on a lotus
and floated down the river for his dad,
so lately deceased? The world is somewhat bigger
than what can be ignited by a trigger
in mating season. Even with the bad
strangers excluded, still sit you and I,
a world, we say, grown old, grown dark, gone by.

A rare post about economics

The main thing I've learned from this depression is how dependent our economy is on people buying things they don't really need. The automobile industry is the perfect example. The carmakers are going under, and this is a catastrophe. Tens of thousands of people will lose their jobs, billions of dollars will disappear from the economy, and this is all a very bad thing. (Really. No tongue in cheek. Who wants to see their friends, neighbors, and countrymen lose their jobs?) But no one is saying that people are going to have to do without cars. As far as I can tell, almost everyone who wants a car already has a car or two, cars which are perfectly serviceable or which can easily be made so. The car industry is in dire straits because people aren't buying cars to replace cars which don't really need to be replaced. So, we are told, we have to fix this.

On the other hand, the pundits say, our global ecology is in imminent danger of collapse because we are such wasteful, profligate stewards of our planet. We must not flush our toilets every time; we need to recycle the aluminum foil in which we grilled our streaks (which we shouldn't be grilling) (or eating). But we need to buy cars (and stereos and computers and televisions and houses) we don't actually require, because the global economy will disintegrate if we don't. Leaving aside the minor improvements in efficiency made in each automotive model year, what could be more wasteful of resources than buying a car you don't need?

In my heart I believe that nothing could improve this situation but a population 1/3-1/2 as numerous as it is now; but the means of reaching that end are too awful to contemplate.

So all we can do is to buy as many cars as possible made entirely of recycled aluminum foil.