Well, I never

Something called Webwiki.com says of RHE poems, "The website doesn't contain questionable content. It can be used by kids and is safe for work." I gather that "safe for work" doesn't mean "won't cause industrial accidents," but something more like, "You won't get fired just for clicking on it." I don't know how it would be "used by kids," but I am quite sure that it does contain questionable content, else what's a poem for?

The School of Real Estate

My alma mater was crowing yesterday about its "School of Real Estate & Construction Management." (No, really.) For some reason that made me think of Cardinal Newman, who wrote in The Idea of a University, "There is a knowledge which is desirable, though nothing come of it, as being of itself a treasure, and a sufficient remuneration of years of labor" and "Liberal Education makes not the Christian, not the Catholic, but the gentleman. It is well to be a gentlemen, it is well to have a cultivated intellect, a delicate taste, a candid, equitable, dispassionate mind, a noble and courteous bearing in the conduct of life." Is it fair of me to wonder whether the School of Real Estate will produce such graduates?

Just 3 Hours

Just 3 hours till our barbecue,
the sun defers to the hot coals,
the clouds muster in force, degrees fall
like dry leaves in Vallombrosa.
Phone. "Are you cancelling?" Why, no. Phone.
"Are you cancelling?" No. No. Phone.
Yes, maybe I am cancelling. Phone.
Do what you want. The brew's cold now,
and a first skunked neighbor staggers by.
"Death rides a paper cock," he says,
"and he demands a beer, your firstborn beer."
On the shade the crows glide, watching.

The Point of the Entire Universe

This appeared in Fox Cry.

The most important thing is, get a job,
my uncle said. But since my aunt was talking,
only I heard, and I was not about
to get a anything. I was still reading
whatever could be found on any subject,
hermit of bathrooms, anchorite of closets,
convinced that authors knew, and printers printed,
the point of the entire universe.
My uncle was still talking. He extinguished
his Dutch Master smack in his mashed potatoes,
which proved, since that was never done in books,
the important thing was not to get a job.

Life is What You Make It, Innit?

With names like Entropy and Bouillabaisse,
What did you hope of them? They hit the books
Until they bruised their knuckles; they despaired
Of willow, horsehide, pigskin, ping; and pong
Trailed after them like clouds of midges. Good
Boys, strong boys--maybe not Peregrine Fred--
Like freckled trout in dappled streams. They fell
Off the backs of lorries, whence they were rescued
And made to peel graffiti from the wall.
"What do it mean?" they asked each other. "Man
Is born in chains and everywhere tattooed."
No one would tell them, so they pinched the wall
And flogged it for a couple tabs of Spax.
"What do it mean?" they asked about the blue
Atomic cloud, languid above their heads,
Ate each an egg for breakfast, went home, died,
And rose next morning to be done again.

Mannering

Rain penetrates. You wouldn’t think
a solid shell would fail its past.
Back when they built a house to last,
the generations, link by link,

seasoned the walls with soot and steel.
The rats have come. Thick as a brick,
the door performed its only trick.
Now there is nothing left to feel,

no ambience but topless stairs.
The leaves pile up. Sir Morris Grouse,
beneath a stuffed and fraying mouse,
forgets the lineage he shares

with Puddleman and Bundderlice.
Mildew has come. Port circulates,
sinister towards the broken plates—
blood pudding, kidneys, sheepshead twice

baked. There once was a chandelier.
The rooftree sings. A missing pane,
inscribed in diamond, brags in vain,
The Men Who May inhabit here.

Eppur Si Muove

My fellow Americans, I come rehearsed
with lies. I have prepared a tableful
of whoppers for you; if they are consumed,
the presents of your enemies are yours.

Knowledge is numbing. No one talks about
the right and muscle of the full deception.
I bring you what-you-will: turn it around,
read it upside down. It still will be true.

I've decorated it with cloth rosettes.
I've loaded every rift with anecdotes
for which there is no cure. I'll make you sick
with longing never to be undeceived.

The earth is round. The earth is flat. It swings,
it jitterbugs beneath a smoky heaven.
The angels shimmy to be heard at last.
God is because we say so, and he moves

funky, but we are sutured to the spot
provided, swaying, cervically up.
The world is waltzing very, very slowly:
we are because we say so, but we move.

2 great losses

Dear Readers, if there are any,

Go read a couple novels by Elmore Leonard and some poems by John Hollander. 2 great losses.

Where Am I? Or Better, Where Am I At?

After reviewing the information Blogger shows me about who reads here and how they find their way, I have concluded that most visitors come here by accident, thinking it's somewhere else, or because they clicked on Next Blog, or because they're robots seeking ... what? World domination? A lubricating experience? Exploitation of the commercial potential of those who read unpublished poems by obscure poets?

The Girl in Blue Leathers

O great, God, promise more, deliver less.
Sunrise, cool. Snow on the car-snarled commute,
gnarly. But the death of soi-distant stars
rippling the love affairs of unmade species?
Non-phat. The power of a lightning zot,
scrambling the synapses of nuts and gel,
raising the dead a dollar, and then calling
the bluff the fish made, walking home for tea,
what kind of dude does that? I heard a wife,
flipping her hair as though she were unwed,
telling her husband he did best when he
did as instructed. He was praising Jesus
for having built the girl in the blue leathers,
knocking back Stolis, smoking Kools, and swaying.

Best way somebody got here today

By searching for "a poem for my mom about a fern." And by the way, one of the largest sources of traffic for this blog is something called "filmhill." What is that?

The Melting Pit

The population colors history.
I have to know so much to know them all--
The blight rights, the Ugh & How, the 3-ball-
And-guilt-trip chain. Uhuru on the bridge,
Open as sin her hailing frequency.
The nuts who fire dumdums from the ridge.

A man told me all skeletons were white.
He whispered it, tequila-style. It proved
That God uncolored whom He truly loved.
His Son, he said, was white down to the bone.
All coal, I said, is black and only white
Dead. Pure, he murmured. All alone, alone.

God gave Noah the rainbow sign. For Sale
By Owner, said the sign. His light was frail.

The Poet's Biography

Q: What is a poet's biography for?

A: It motivates the poet.

Q: No, I mean for readers. Why do they read poets' biographies?

A: To satisfy their prurient curiosity.

Q: But you read them.

A: I also eat Chili Cheese Fritos. I know they're not good for me, but I do it anyway.

Q: Dr Johnson said that the biographical part of literature was the part he loved most.

A: Then he burned his letters and his autobiographical account of his early life.
"Biographies of writers are always superfluous and usually in bad taste," said Auden, who read and reviewed them with gusto. It may surprise you to hear this, but people are complicated and not always consistent.

Q: So how do you feel about the prospect of your own biography?

A: I fear it to about the same degree as I fear hitting my head on the rim while dunking a basketball. I'm more worried about next month's utility bill. That's going to arrive, irrespective of my opinions.

And a Happy New Year to You, Too

The year sheds skin and time and cash.
The firedrake burns down to ash
His habitation. The road is clear
All the way home to Happy Year,

Coming soon. With the proper friends,
Nobody notices when it ends,
This derelict calendar. The few,
The consequent, have naught to do

But watch the helicopters tow
The End behind them as they go
West, of course, and into the spring,
Where next year’s lark prepares to sing.

The Importance of Titles

Given the time of year, I'm getting lots of visitors who typed "sentimental christmas poem" into their search engines and were referred to my poem titled, oddly enough, "A Sentimental Christmas Poem." I don't know why I never seem to learn from this sort of thing. I could attach titles like "Taylor Swift Wants to Kiss You" or "End of the World Megan Fox Bikini" or "Guns Don't Kill People, Bullets Do" to pretty much any poem, and people would just think I was whimsical or cutting edge or annoying. But they'd probably arrive here in greater numbers. Don't know if they'd read poems once they'd arrived, though. Probably not.

Poe No More

Today's Quote of the Day on my Google page is from "Ligeia."

In beauty of face no maiden ever equaled her. It was the radiance of an opium-dream – an airy and spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine than the phantasies which hovered about the slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos.

God, I detest Poe. Take a red pencil to this, and all that would remain would be "of," "an," and "the."

"Followers"

is a singularly unattractive term for those who read here, especially for those of us who cut our teeth on "Subterranean Homesick Blues."  I see I lost one recently.  I hope she's in a better place.  There must be one.

Fan mail from some flounder?

Yesterday I had mail from Anonymous (he writes often).  This time he said,

i followed your blog because i think its awesome! lol please follow mine! I think you have a great sense in literature! =) keep it up!

I have a number of comments, all of which, after time to reflect, seem superfluous.

Harlot Read

Tomorrow, when the men pick up the trash,
I'll lose a little more. Sure, I can spare,
God knows, some surplus. Every box and drawer
And cupboard bulges. Still, it took my life
To fill them up, and emptying them out
Means few forget-me-nots for you and yours
To harvest, left behind. As though you would
Endow occasions with irrelevance
Like that, forthcoming in your sequined dress
Of harlot red that 30 years have not
Fashioned for your figure, under the face
You carry off at banquets, marriages,
And Celebrations Of A Life Well Lived.
We used to call them funerals. We burned
Bodies just like the paper we collect.

And such as Chaucer is, shall Dryden be

I'm reading with great interest a short biographical dictionary of English literature (I believe it's called A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature -- http://archive.org/details/shortbiographica00cousuoft ) written in 1910, just before The Great War.  It's always worth remembering, and being reminded, how literary judgments evolve.  Tennyson is praised in terms we'd reserve for Shakespeare and maybe Milton.  Hawthorne is pronounced the greatest American author of imaginative literature and Melville dismissed in a couple sentences, the biographical lexicographer clearly of the opinion that Typee was his most important work.  Hardy and James and Yeats were still alive, so are not mentioned.  Everyone who knew of the existence of sex, and mentioned it, is downgraded for crudity.  (Of Tom Jones our author says, "All critics are agreed that the book contains passages offensive to delicacy, and some say to morality.")  (Alas, my delicacy was hopelessly offended a long time ago.  I think it was mortally wounded when I tried to read Shelley without smirking.  Of Shelley our biographer says that some of his shorter poems "reach perfection."  Of course he also says that Sir Walter Scott's work, whether considered for quantity or quality, is "marvellous," which, though I am an admirer, seems somewhat overstated.)  Emily D doesn't make the cut.  Our biographer likes Clemens/Twain more than you might expect, though not as much as Fenimore Cooper.

You might think of this book when next you gush -- or rail -- over the latest Idol of the In Crowd.

Be patient, and look elsewhere

I have removed "The Heart of Holy Moses" and "The Complete Henriad" following their acceptance by the Anglo-Aussie online journal Angle.  Someday they'll return.  (If you can't wait, call me, and I'll read them to you over the phone.)

Gol-darned new-fangled contraption

I am sorry to have switched to a newer format, but Blogger wouldn't provide access to all its features unless I did.  So many tekkies confuse change with improvement.

Oh, and thanks

I am grateful to all of you who read here, you know, even if most of you are too wonder-struck to comment.  (The last three comments I received, and rejected, were thinly disguised ads for an editorial service, which is not exactly overwhelming, as compliments go.)  Keats may have found unheard melodies sweeter, but poems like to be read.  They told me so.

Agitprop

Just as a working hypothesis: if your readers are arguing about the paraphrasable content of your poem, your poem is not a success. What's the first thing you think about when you think of, say, "Sunday Morning"? "Death isn't really the mother of beauty -- that's a neo-capitalist platitude, designed to distract labor from its dire plight"? No, I didn't think so. Or "Leda and the Swan" -- "If the campus administrators had issued her a really powerful whistle and properly trained her in Krav Maga, this could all have been avoided"? No?

Like a Requiem

for Michel, in loving memory of his wife, Lili

On mornings when there's no one else to tell
the paper still arrives. The milkman makes
dogs bark at 5 a.m. The sun comes up,
unjustly bright, exactly as you saw
it overspread your coffee and bad news.

The news read round the clock is uniform.
Everyone is dying for more life,
the radio says. The mailman's on his way,
bringing the bills that say how much it costs
to see the sun again. When you were here,

day smelled like mint and sage. Nobody had
the same day you had. Stars took special shapes,
the constellations Ampersand or Love.
Here in our garden grass grows now. The sun
rises, shines some, and passes down the west,

like requiems, which, skillful, sound the same,
whoever writes or plays them. It is not
events which give a form to forms; it was
you, and the grass grows, dogs bark, men drive off
to do what men do when they have no choice.


I wrote this poem on commission from Michel Brochetain, who wanted it for his splendid Russian art site,

www.brochetain.ca

It's worth your time and attention.

as the body is one, and hath many members

As time goes by, my verse seems to become more supple, more flexible, which makes it the mirror image of my physical body. Let us hope that the body of my verse and the body of my body demonstrate that "as the body is one, and hath many members and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body."

from Days of Our Lives

9
That year I saw 3, maybe 4 great men.
I don't recall what pearls they had to drop,
what they looked like, the timbre of their voices
or suits. I talked once, maybe for 3 minutes,
to a lapis-eyed blonde who didn't know my name.
I knew hers, remember every word,
and have concocted several dozen lives
of swift conclusion. All end up inside
her. At 2 a.m. at the Rockybilt counter,
hard and bright as a Hopper, I could drink
coffee, mop up secret sauce, and wonder
how anyone had ever finished James,
if Strether would find Bohemia in Paris,
whether he'd "live" and why anybody cared.

from Days of Our Lives

15
The chemlab flash fired in a sunburst
of eyebrows and steam, the alarms claiming
the end of class, the sprinklers playing April,
and happy singees coughing into the sunlight.
Learning seeps in, pore-wise, or explodes in-
appropriately in the absence of
loco parentals. So under dormers,
beneath graduation gift patchwork quilts,
the love of clear-cut classes multiplies
beyond reason, without regard, ungraded,
and altogether traditionally.
If by the next day the glass is swept up,
the puddles all expunged, the windows boarded,
youth blooms eternal, for a little while.

Google's quote of the day,

from Flannery O'Connor: Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.

Thank you, Ms O'Connor.

If you have to choose

Well, yes, you can find me on Facebook, and I'll be happy to note your favorite movies and relationship status; but if your time is limited, and you have to choose, visit me here. Here be poems.

Nepotism? Anyone?

If any of you regular readers (you know who you are, all 3 of you) have close family members who are like Carly Simon's father, don't be embarrassed to point them in this direction. I'm like Arlo Guthrie -- "I'm not proud...or tired."

For Dr Feldman: After Martial

Your standards, Burton, force you to condemn
A verse not passed into an apothegm.
Forgive me, will you, if I do not die
To earn the moist approval of your eye.

Expunging the visible world

From an obit for Helen Frankenthaler in the WSJ:

Frankenthaler belonged to the second generation of the New York School, whose guiding light was the critic Clement Greenberg. Greenberg held that the essence of modern painting was the expunging of all references to the visible world and an emphasis on painting's purely formal elements—the flatness of the canvas support and the colors arrayed across it.

I post this just in case you're lying awake at night, wondering why "modern painting" doesn't interest me.

From the mailbag:

The end of the year does not mean the mailbag is overflowing with copies of Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners.

"RHE, have you ever wonder why nobody cares? Maybe because no one can understand ennything you say?"

I have. There was this one guy, once, who understood something I said, but he died.


"Yo, could you write a sestina about Un ballo in maschera ?"

Yo. No.


"Who's better, Auden or Frost?"

Lou Brock. I'd give up Ernie Broglio just to get him on my team.

The Year in Review

 I did not win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

 I did not get a 10-year extension from the Angels (or, come to think of it, the Devils).

 I am not going to be the Republican nominee. Probably.

 I did not read any of my poems at the Super Bowl halftime show. (N.B. I have written new poems since then.)

 Neither Brad Pitt nor Tilda Swinton is playing me in a new biopic. (On the plus side, neither is Cee Lo Green nor The Swedish Chef.)

 My new budget is deadlocked in committee. If it isn't passed (and funded) soon, I may have to shut down.

 Last time I looked, at least 3 of the authors on the NYT bestseller list were dead. (In several more cases one just couldn't tell.) This offers me promise for the future.

From the Mailbag

Dear Dr. or Professor Epstein,

Is marriage between two siblings, one adopted and one birth, forbidden by the consanguinity laws?

Who exactly do you think I am? In any event, I'd refer all such questions to Jerry Lee Lewis and Dick Clark.

RHE--

How long are you going to keep this up?

How long you got?

RHEpoems,

WTF?

Try a comma after the W.

From the mailbag

Are you for real?

No, I'm really not.

I like your poems very much and they sound intelligent but I don't understand them. What do you think I should do?

Read them just because you like them. I understand them, mostly, and it hasn't helped me all that much.

Are you available for children's parties and bat mitzvahs?

Sorry, I can't do balloon animals. The screechy sound the balloons make paralyzes my central nervous system.

From the Mailbag

Here and at the other places where I read your comments you are such a know it all. You think you know everything don't you?

I don't know.

From the mailbag:

RHE, you've got a lot of gaul.

Yes, they said that to Caesar, too. Come see me again in March, sometime around the Ides.

I took one of your poems to class. My teacher said it was blank. I told her it wasn't and tried to show her, but she is a teacher and does not listen.

Many teachers are honorable practitioners of a noble profession. Not all. You should have told her it was a printer error.

Why do you like Kipling so much?

Aw, come on--this is just too easy.

RHE

Poetry Proper 3

is now available online. I'll bet you can't imagine why I'm telling you this.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/64246923/Poetry-Proper-3rd-Issue

Following

Thanks to those who, mysteriously, are "following" this blog, especially since I know almost none of you, so, as Gatsby might say, there's nothing merely personal about it. Much obliged.

Today's Reading

Said Job, It's tough but someone has to do it.
He boiled. His kids went AWOL. And the grass
Shrank as if cursed, a mumbo-jumbo lawn.
A snapshot of its photosynthesis
Was all he had: he propped it on the mantel.
The mantel broke. The rooftree split. His wife
Yelled and drank and tore up the laundry room
And split for Abu Dhabi. Praise the Lord,
Said Job, who had the faith, a nasty rash,
And more regrets than camels. Said the Lord,
Aha. This was a test. Had it been real,
The seas would have been emptied, deserts spun
Like bubbles in a centrifuge. His kids
Returned for dinner, fired up their bongs,
And lived in expectation. Job believed,
Yet noticed that his lawn was not the same.

from the mailbag

Yes, I can write limericks. As it happens, I had occasion to improvise a couple this week. No, I rarely do, and I don't think the local paper would be interested. Perhaps Posterity will publish my occasional verses as the final volume of my Collected Works. After all the Major Poems, of course.

I get some very odd emails.

The Scrambled Egg Principle

It has been justly observed, that discord generally operates in little things; it is inflamed to its utmost vehemence by contrariety of taste, oftener than of principles
--Johnson, Rambler 99

I had a girlfriend once who liked her eggs scrambled hard. I liked mine scrambled loose. Instead of saying that we liked our eggs cooked differently, she insisted that she scrambled eggs correctly; I scrambled them wrong. From this I derived the Scrambled Egg Principle: Do not elevate differences of taste into differences of principle. I see that, as usual, Johnson has anticipated me.

You Call This a Miracle

The sun shines, the stars shine, the breezes blow.
Yes, yes, the grasses do their stuff: they grow.
Leaves cycle through their tricks: first come, then go.

I'll bet the brook is babbling, birds are tweeting.
M. Nature, smiling, seems to bear repeating
With equanimity. Wow. It's just like meeting

Old Uncle Albert, who keeps telling stories
Worn when Trajan, new to his martial glories,
Heard them and giggled. As do all old tories,

Then praise the miracle of repetition.
And you are dead and given up to fission.
The oldest story. Used without permission.

Marcus Antonius

I threw it all away for love,
They say, but never what "it" is,
More important than what I kept,
Some qua superior to bliss,
That never, ever rhymes with "dove,"
And much more manly. Jesus wept.

You ever ride in a trireme, bud?
Better to fall on your sword or asp.
Drink while you can. Our day was done
The instant Old Baldy learned his grasp
Would not slip though slick with blood.
She can be my Rubicon.

Late last evening

"Uh...Mr....uh...Upstum, this is Obviously Phony Name at Market Research Interminable with a short survey about your political opinions."

"I'm not an Anarcho-Syndicalist."

"So are you planning on voting in the upcoming mayoral election?"

"I'm not an Anarcho-Syndicalist. I'm not even a Wobbly. And I can't spell Czolgosz."

"All right. Well, Mr....uh...Ippstern, how would you rate the possibility you will be voting for Chris Romer in the upcoming mayoral election--absolutely certain, probably absolutely certain, or maybe absolutely certain?"

"If I can't vote for Baxter B. Stiles, I'm not voting. Goodbye."

Waiting for Monday

He rose, but he did not feel resurrected.
He wasn’t doing Easter any more,
Just Sunday morning. If they wanted eggs,
He’d scramble; if they needed chocolate,
No problem; but what sermonizing dead
Itinerants had to do with plastic grass
And chicks collapsed in marshmallow--well, he

Knew, he really did. Osiris was
His middle name, practically, he wore
A golden sprig upon his sleeve and let
Sleeping gods lie, if that helped them advance,
Kings for a day in topiary groves.
Okay, he saw the sunrise--prairie light
Again this year. No matter where you are,
There always is an east. It’s over there,
East for a day. It’s always over there.

The children flexed their sugar-ridden thews
And made the windows clamor, all those panes
So light could be admitted and diffused.
It would move west. Perhaps the children, too.
And all of them would run out at the sea,
Awaiting new gods, who’d rise up from behind,
Out of the desert where the gods are born,
Into a heartland, where the gods subside.

From the mailbag:

RHE, you write like a dead guy. When you wake up, let me know.


Dear Unknown Correspondent,

That's just creepy. That would make me...what? Jesus? Osiris? Whitney Houston? A zombie?

From the mailbag

Dear Richard Epstein,

I accidentally read one of your poems while looking for the real Richard Epstein. I hope it never happens again.

Best wishes,
[name withheld]

Dialogue

Are you a famous poet?
There are no famous poets, not in the sense you mean.
Okay. Are you famous for a poet?
That's a good question. Well put.
Well?
Well what?
Are you?
No.
Oh.

Non serviam

Everyone reverentially quotes JFK's famous inaugural "Ask not..."; no one seems to think about it. If people did, they'd see it's just plain wrong. It's those who live in fascist, monolithic states whose purpose is to serve the state: their primary question is, What can we do for our government? In the US it's supposed to be exactly the opposite. The government exists to serve the citizenry, not the citizenry to serve the government. We should be asking what our country can do for us, not what what we can do for our country. Of course the answer usually is, and should be, "Leave us alone."

RHE
P.S. No, I don't believe calling it our "country," rather than the state or the government makes any difference. Are you really going to draw some mystical distinction here? Do you really think that the citizens of a country exist to "serve" it?

Note to poets everywhere

If your poems are not more interesting than you are, change vocations.

Dead Grandpa Encounters Eschatology

It's grand here, says the sublime
Old Gentleman. No need
For innocence or crime,
Legs up to here or seed.
We're much too clean for lust,
And all our loins are dust.

I miss my loins, he says.
They kept me concerned at night.
They danced to fill my days.
I never asked respite.
I'd dance for stamps and coins,
Could I have back my loins,

Dead Grandpa says, but no
One flashes him satin knickers.
They book no titty show
For arrivisted slickers.
Dead Grandpa hums a psalm
Extolling holy calm.

Here at the Pearly Gates
He met a sadder sack
Just yesterday, called Yeats,
Who blessed the golden back
Of trollops, drunks, and tarts
And claimed the healing arts

Began in carnal sweats.
No disembodied voice
Can order man, said Yeats,
Who in a cloud of noise
Ascended. DG swears,
And trudges up shiny stairs,

Dodging the falling roses,
Hoping it isn't peace,
Among all posthumous choices,
In which his travails cease,
A beer, a broad, a sleep.
Dead Grandpa's climb is steep.

the Total Abstinence Principal

"Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.

He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!"

from the mailbag

"Aphrodite rhymes with nightie. Venus rhymes with penis. Artemis doesn't rhyme with anything. Hence the virgin goddess thing. If her name had been Regina, she wouldn't have stood a chance."

Okay. Thanks for that. Bullfinch skipped that part.

Responses

Dear Faithful:

Turns out my magisterium overlaps yours after all. Too bad.


Dear Dilettante:

No, "Silence, exile, and cunning" is not the same as "Don't ask, don't tell."


Dear Fellow Student:

I regret the death of Hyman Datz, who taught Johnson and Boswell. (Well, he was old enough. What I really meant was, He taught us Johnson and Boswell.) More an anecdotalist than a scholar, given to re-using notes so old, yellow, and brittle, they looked as though they had been excavated for the occasion, he still inspired students to read authors they would otherwise have ignored. The Augustans are not always an easy sell. They did not tweet; neither were they groovy. Between them Drs Datz and Chapman animated and reanimated the deserving dead. All these years later, and how I love an opportunity to say, "Sir, I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding."

In grad school I first encountered Dr Datz in the Dept's main office. He said, "You're Epstein, right?" "Yes," I said. "I hear you're pretty smart," said Dr Datz. "Who wrote 'Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean'?" I told him. "Well, most people don't know that," he said. I didn't tell him my father used to recite that at the dinner table. He only knew a couple poems. That was one. I'd also have been safe if Dr Datz had asked me, "Who wrote, 'Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable, Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table,'" but that wasn't going to happen.

Be Gone

They boil, the leaves. I can't imagine why.
They've nothing to do but wait a while, be gone,
And be forgotten. Oh. I guess I can.
Imagine, then, that birdhouse over there--
Well, you can't see it now. Even the scraps
Of wood and seed and feathers have been moved,
Displaced, replaced--we bought it at a shop,
Biodegradable and peasant built.
The peasants moved to cities, some of them,
Others, their hands removed on grounds of state,
Differently accommodated. Now
The blue tits are unhouseled, and the squirrels
Have moved to that manor down the block, where lunch
Is carefully replenished, day by day,
As many days as squirrels will ever know.

From the mailbag

I don't understand a word you write. I used to think this was my fault, but now I think its [sic] you because you don't write very well.

Dear Anonymous: I suspect you are right. If I were you, I should stick to Great Poets, who always write clearly and simply, as though they were viewing a dead princess through pellucid water.

The child that sucketh long is shooting up,
The planet-ducted pelican of circles
Weans on an artery the genders strip;
Child of the short spark in a shapeless country
Soon sets alight a long stick from the cradle;
The horizontal cross-bones of Abaddon,
You by the cavern over the black stairs,
Rung bone and blade, the verticals of Adam,
And, manned by midnight, Jacob to the stars,

says Dylan Thomas. He's a great poet, and I'm sure you understood every word of that.

Clarity does not prove quality. Neither does difficulty. Keep in mind what Randall Jarrell said: "When you begin to read a poem you are entering a foreign country whose laws and language and life are a kind of translation of your own," and try not to judge the poem by your expectations.

Ora pro nobis, author of The Idea of a University

The beatification and canonization of someone who lived in modern times makes a silly spectacle. John Henry Newman was a talented polemicist; and given his effect on thoughtful, but somewhat weedy, young men, he must have been a charismatic figure in his way. But do you believe he worked the requisite miracles? Do you think he's specially able to intercede for you with The Virgin Mary, this author of the novels Loss and Gain and Callista?

I suspect that if we had known St Francis or St Jude or St Patrick the way men within our memory knew Newman--that is, as someone to argue politics with over a beer--we'd find their sainthood equally preposterous. Who is playing advocatus diaboli in the canonization process? Has he spoken to Chuck Kingsley and Matt Arnold yet?

Talking to Myself

So I was talking to myself. "Self," I said, "this is disappointing." "Then why do you keep sending them out?" said my self. "At your age, you still hoping to be discovered?" "What's the alternative?" I said. "Don't send them out," said my self. "Oh," I said. "I never thought of that."

It Appears There Are Swans on the Roof of That Office Building

The blancoed office building flaps,
covered in swans. The roof is white
with spots of orange, a flash of black
like semaphore. They’re never still.

Arrivals and departures seem
off schedule, bent by maintenance
left unperformed while bombardiers
brought down protest. Why here, why now,

why only on the roof, will be
explained in Union Halls, The Grange,
by Leda in her signet ring,
and CNN. A broken swan

comes tumbling 7 stories down.
Wide wings aflame in late-day sun
evaporate before they hit.
It’s love in dreams. The dying swan

pirouettes. Cobs and cobblers cry
to muted trumpets, shouldering
swansdown aside, startled and stuck,
lorelei high over black streets.

Poetry Proper

Issue 1 of Poetry Proper is now available at

poetryproper.blogspot.com

Worth your attention, if only because Paul Maddern is co-editor and it contains 2 poems by one of my favorite poets.

No Pruning Hooks

Assuming it survived, the vine would pull
The back fence down, assuming that it throve
And neither burned nor drowned, nor in a fit
Of fad became a vegan course for pests,
Of which this yard has plenty—all the block,
If truth be told, and what are vines, if not
A place to sit and tell the truth and beat
Our swords to silent crepitude? And if
The fence should fall, then we could see beyond
Each other, all those pests beyond the pale,
As those within, superior and still
And pulled towards peace—that is, if it survived.
And if it failed, we still could have a fence.

The Night Stalker

Wet shiny stones. Of course the archer tripped.
His unnotched arrow trickled to the ground,
And he stomped off, thwarted assassin, bent,
Incompetent, and loony as a grebe.

What is the point of bad guys, if it takes
A clever chappie to be nasty? Want
Is all, he told the darkness, and the cats,
Trolling for fallen nestlings, didn't care.

I meant disaster. If I had my druthers,
The gutters would run red. Babies would wail,
Alone in their bassinets. No one would come.
It's not my fault my mum smoked and my birth

Was unattended by dark prodigy
And bungled by a bonesetter half baked.
If I had my way, I'd be home in bed,
Smiling, a bloody handprint on my quilt.

Some brainy bastard cried himself to sleep.
The saintly prayed to be released. A corps
Of engineers built dams against the day
An asteroid would wallop Crater Lake.

Cities of Literature

Dublin has just been named the 4th "city of literature" by UNESCO. (Right. The UN should be trusted on the subject of literature almost as much as the Nobel Prize people.) The first 3 were Edinburgh, Melbourne, and--get ready for it--Iowa City. Super. Dublin? No argument from me. Edinburgh? Sure--the train station is called "Waverly." Melbourne? Of course. Barry Humphries is from Melbourne. Iowa City? Let us move on, shall we?

How about London and Paris? Too obvious? How about Oxford, Mississippi, and Hannibal, Missouri, then? Or Denver. There's this world-class poet... .

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.

I've Placed Cherubim

This, from These Denver Odes, appeared in Candelabrum.

I've placed cherubim in the garden,
armed of course to repel sin. My guests
see them, sigh, and say, "Oh, angels. Cute."
Maybe this garden isn't Eden,
and I am locked inside, not sin exiled.
The cherubim are defaced by rain,

as I by impure escapades,
most of which were someone else's--
Munchausen's amorous dotage.
I smile at the girl I slept with.
Since she knows nothing about it,
she thinks me harmless and makes change.

At sunset, when the wind gains
and we shrink, we remember.
We do that very well now,
half-cocked and stiff where we stand,
true lies an analgesic
in the angels' sightless eyes.

And they're all divided into 3 parts

A reader reports that when he types "rhe poems" into his search engine, the first half-dozen websites refer to gallstones and how to be rid of them. "Why?" he asks, but answer came there none.

Civilization and its contents

I've been reading Yeats lately. Despite all the time (and prose) he devoted to his "ideas," it's hard to imagine a great poet with less to say. And this isn't because he relied on inspiration: notwithstanding his loony notions of automatic writing, this is the guy who claimed to write his poems out in prose, then versify them. If that's so, I wonder what prose paragraph this started with--

Who will go drive with Fergus now,
And pierce the deep wood's woven shade,
And dance upon the level shore?
Young man, lift up your russet brow,
And lift your tender eyelids, maid,
And brood on hopes and fear no more.

And no more turn aside and brood
Upon love's bitter mystery;
For Fergus rules the brazen cars,
And rules the shadows of the wood,
And the white breast of the dim sea
And all dishevelled wandering stars.


Lift your tender eyelids, maid, my Aunt Fanny. I believe the classically Woosterian response to this is, "Pish. Oh, and tosh, too."

And yet. And yet. Was Yeats a great poet? You betcha. I'd sigh with contentment if I could have written those last 4 lines, and I have no idea what they mean. It's a very mysterious thing, Great Poetdom.

Dr Johnson & the ungilded pill

The Scottish government proposes to fight alcohol abuse by outlawing discount liquor and imposing a "social responsibility fee" on drink. Their theory, unarticulated, must be that only the affluent should be allowed to get drunk.

As so often is the case, Johnson had the best response. Mrs Thrale tells us,

—"What signifies," says some one,"giving halfpence to common beggars; they only lay it out in gin or tobacco."

"And why should they be denied such sweeteners of their existence? (says Johnson) it is surely very savage to refuse them every possible avenue to pleasure, reckoned too coarse for our own acceptance. Life is a pill which none of us can bear to swallow without gilding; yet for the poor we delight in stripping it still barer, and are not ashamed to show even visible displeasure, if ever the bitter taste is taken from their mouths."

Johnson had no great love for Puritans or Scots (though he heightened his remarks about the latter for dramatic effect); one can only imagine his response to this latest proposal, which should be outlined by a minister with a name like Praisegod Barebones.

R.I.P.

Two of my favorite popular artists died today, John Mortimer and Andrew Wyeth. Mortimer was the creator of one of those indestructible characters who survive their own begettors and the books they were put in--like Tarzan and Sherlock Holmes and Superman. But he was more than that. He was a lawyer who stood for the best thing--law as a bulwark for the protection of civil liberties, a personal rebuttal to the lawyer joke. And one admires Wyeth for the same reasons one admired Frost: he wanted to go his own way and stand against the tide of the prevailing aesthetic and produce what he thought was great art. From my perspective--that of someone whose aesthetic in painting is congruent with Tom Wolfe's The Painted Word--he succeeded.

Hoi polloi

Dear World:

Please stop writing "the hoi polloi." "Hoi" means "the." The "the" is thus redundant.

The Arbiters of Style disagree with me on this. One representatively writes,

Hoi polloi is Greek for “the common people,” but it is often misused to mean “the upper class” (does “hoi” make speakers think of “high” or "hoity-toity"?). Some urge that since “hoi” is the article “the hoi polloi” is redundant; but the general rule is that articles such as "the” and “a” in foreign language phrases cease to function as such in place names, brands, and catch phrases except for some of the most familiar ones in French and Spanish, where everyone recognizes “la"—for instance—as meaning “the.” “The El Nino” is redundant, but “the hoi polloi” is standard English.

(http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/hoipolloi.html)

They disagree, but they're wrong. And their argument, which seems to be that redundancy is acceptable when people don't recognize it, will fail completely as soon as we properly educate everyone. So stop some folks on the street today, on the elevator, at your local DazBog, and tell them, " `Hoi' means `the,' you know."

Thank you.

RHE

P.S. On the other hand, everyone in Santa Fe, natives, tourists, and employees alike, calls the famous hotel there "The La Fonda." Sometimes, piling Pelion upon Ossa, they call it "The La Fonda Hotel."

Last year, Dec. 31st,

I wrote, I am tired of reading bad poems and worse poems and, every once in a while, not-good poems, which cheer me up, because, though not good, they are better than bad and worse. The remedy is in my own hands, of course. I need to spend less time reading new poems online and more time reading old poems in books. The fault is not entirely with the online poetry sites I visit. Most new poems are bad--at every time and in every place. We forget that because history is an editor, and time has winnowed what we know. It is possible that were I to see as many brand-new Elizabethan and Caroline poems as I see Bushy verse, I should be as dismayed by then as I am by now. (I don't really believe that, you know.) But I don't. The moiety of those new poems lined pie pans and lit fires, so I never have to take them into account. Anyway, it may be that too much brand spanking new poetry, read online or off, is not good for you. I need to find out. Do I see any reason to revise that? No. Will Obaman verse be better than Bushy verse? Can't see why. The point remains that most new writing is bad. How many novels from the 80s do you remember? In another hundred years, how many will be up there with Middlemarch and Martin Chuzzlewit? Poems are no different. The more new poems you read, the more bad poems you read. There are compensations. Reading new work keeps you in touch with the Zeitgeist. It gives you a line on the competition. It helps you see what is merely local and temporary--it's what everybody else is doing, too. On the other hand, you don't really need to be kept in touch with the Zeitgeist: it's yours by definition. And your competition ought to be Marvell and Ransom, not Scuzzboy631. Read what entertains and instructs you. Read what helps you with your own work. But keeping au courant is not an end in itself; and when it is, it's mostly a dead end. Happy New Year.

Dead Grandpa Fades to Black. Or Green.

from The Complete Dead Grandpa


At last, Dead Grandpa says, the dead
live for the live, not for themselves:
he for life only, they for life in him.

Tonight the grandson feels the wind
irrigate dreams and dreams there is
a little touch of Grandpa in the night.

And just as well. The more he's dead,
the less he is. He's losing mass.
This afterlife is more than life.

Soon he will be rolled round with rocks:
have his wish worth: remember, me,
death is the reason for the long season.

Think forward to a birth, your death,
the end. We can be met as grass
and ignorant and blind and very green.

Obscurity

An email from an annoyed reader who encountered my latest poem ("Manifest Destiny"), complaining of its obscurity. The burden of her grievance is that I must do it on purpose, to show off in some way--to show that I'm superior to ordinary readers or that I know big words (perhaps I have sesquipedalian longings) or that I'm trying to attract attention for bad things because I don't deserve it for good.

It is an old, old plaint. When I hear it, I think, as I so often do, of Jarrell and his "The Obscurity of the Poet," one of my favorite passages of which goes,

If we were in the habit of reading poets their obscurity would not matter; and, once we are out of the habit, their clarity does not help. Matthew Arnold said, with plaintive respect, that there was hardly a sentence in Lear that he hadn't needed to read two or three times...You and I can afford to look at Stalky and Company, at Arnold, with dignified superiority: we know what those passages mean; we know that Shakespeare is never obscure, as if he were some modernist poet gleefully pasting puzzles together in his garret. Yet when we look at a variorum Shakespeare--with its line or two of text at the top of the page, its forty or fifty lines of wild surmise and quarrelsome conjecture at the bottom--we are troubled.

The truth is, my correspondent doesn't really like poetry. I suspect that is true of almost all the people I encounter in poetry places on the Web. They are there for other reasons--good reasons, bad reasons, their own reasons--and those rarely have anything to do with a life filled with the sound of Hopkins and Browning and Landor, Greville and Raleigh and Sidney. They need to pass some time. They require company. They need to be noticed. They need to be healed. They want to feel in touch with matters of aesthetics; and poetry still carries with it shreds and tatters of prestige--as long as you don't look at it too closely or dirty your hands with crumbly old iambs and messy tropes.

Perhaps it was too hot

Yes, I know I am a bit of fine-arts Philistine, so I shall quote a few sentences from the BBC's report of the Turner Prize competition w/o further comment:

The exhibition's curator, Sophie O'Brien, told the BBC it was a "really exciting" year for the prestigious, and often controversial, prize.

She said: "The Turner Prize is about showing things that are intriguing and surprising and interesting."

Wilkes' work features a supermarket checkout, and a female mannequin perched on a toilet with a bowl with left-over bits of dried porridge at her feet.

Last year Mark Wallinger, the artist whose work includes dressing up as a bear, took the prize for his replica of Brian Haw's anti-war protest in Parliament Square.

And from The Times:

One of them, Cathy Wilkes, 42, is a Glaswegian who gathered together a television, a sink with a single human hair and a pram and titled it She's Pregnant Again when she represented Scotland at the Venice Biennale in 2005.


This time, she has placed a mannequin on a lavatory next to two supermarket check-out counters. Four horse-shoes and bits of discarded wood dangle from wires attached to the mannequin's head. They appear to bear no relevance to the check-out counters on which the artist has arranged bowls and spoons, as well as empty jars with the remnants of food. Scattered across the floor are piles of tiles and broken pottery in a plastic bag.

And, after all, what need is there to comment? What can one say after, "Four horse-shoes and bits of discarded wood dangle from wires attached to the mannequin's head"?

From the same genre is Ron Silliman's praise of The Reality Street Book of Sonnets (http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/), which includes the following passage.

Or Tim Atkins’ “Sonnet 20”:

Dogs
Window
Gar
.
.
.
.
.
March
.
.
in jet-streams, jet-streams
.
yabber

Certainly a sonnet is possible in which these words fall in these places. Yet is not clear if anything, in fact, is missing.

It's a passage which rings perfectly true, as long as human intelligence never intervenes.

The Odd Couple

Katy is standing up for Frank O'Hara and Ernest Dowson (http://baroqueinhackney.com on August 20th, et seq.), a pair who deserve each other. I can see their shades in Poesy Limbo, reciting to no one in particular:

Pedant and pitiful. O, how his rapt gaze wars
With their stupidity! Know they what dreams divine
Lift his long, laughing reveries like enchanted wine,
And make his melancholy germane to the stars?


And here I am, the
center of all beauty!
writing these poems!
Imagine!


Together they are frank and ernest, but I have no taste for either. At least in admiring Dowson (however tongue-in-cheek the admiration may be), she is swimming against the tide. O'Hara is the poet du jour, idol of the moment: a taste for him is cheap, easy, and, to my admittedly limited mind, inexplicable.

Bad blog, boring blog

Most blogs about newly-published poems and current writing are bad and boring because most new poems are bad and boring, and trying to inflate them into subjects of real or permanent interest just won't work. It was always so. We forget how many poems have to disappear to create our impression of an era. Donne and Milton and Pope and Swift and Wordsworth and Keats and Frost and Yeats were not representative of their times--that's why we remember them. Elkanah Settle and Archibald McLeish--they were representative. But they wouldn't have been very interesting to monitor on a daily bloggy basis. Those trying to keep us up to date on What's New keep butting their heads against this immoveable wall.

It is of course possible to write sharp and funny disparagements of bad poems, but as a regular exercise, it isn't good for you, and it's wearing. And that's one of the problems with reading/writing about new poems all the time: you know in advance that most of what you're going to read will be bad. How can that be good?

The summer doldrums

seem to have begun in spring.  Global warming, I presume.  It seems quiet and sort of half hearted around the poetry areas where I read.  Perhaps the activity is all taking place in a Room of Requirements or a new branch of the He-Man Woman-Haters' Club*, undisclosed to me.  I attribute the silence here to a general sense of awe, readers struck dumb by wonder.  Occam might suggest a simpler explanation.

*Are allusions to The Little Rascals still generally comprehensible?  If I sing the "Happy Birthday, Mr. Hood" song, will anyone know what he got as a gift?

Emotion recollected in daffodils

I find it difficult to write poetry on the road. I guess I'm a Wordsworth kind of guy: the poetry comes whilst I'm distracted at my desk or during a really boring meeting. I hope I am storing materials which will produce those subsequent poems, though I suspect most of that occurred long ago, and I am still living off the capital, and I can alway write a poem out of sheer will, if I want to, but those aren't the poems one believes in most. Those come later, if they come at all.

At the moment I am noting, once again, that the English robin and the American robin are two completely different birds and wondering why, all those years I was studying English lit, no one ever said so. Important as the robin is to Merrie Old EngLit, no one mentioned it. One of the hazards of an American kid being taught English books by American teachers: I suspect they didn't know either. I think about this every time I'm here, wondering what else I've missed and what a British student, reading Faulkner or Twain, passes by unawares.