Security at an Exhibition

We stand where we are stood, assigned to fill

A vacuum till the posh begetters come.
Trust us for that. The portraits say their names,
Whereas our labels are not blessed with art
Or opulence. From pockets we spill keys
And gummi bears and Zippos from the war,
Absent the ruffs and velvet hats. Our skies
Are free of putti, pennies in a jar
Betray no pudgy burgher here. We stare,
But are not scanned. We are the dragons now,
Extant beyond the borders of the frame;
And look at this one, gilt and dark and grime:
The demigods are falling from the trees
Like caterpillars, waiting for the change.

The Good Die Young

The good die young. Will you not try

To be good temporarily?

Epstein's Constant

This also appeared in Orbis.

I’ll call this Epstein’s Constant.  It implies

the angle of the vision from the man.

It imports paraendrocrinology

into aesthetics via sense of touch.

It makes all macroeconomics just.

By Epstein’s Constant all girls understand

all boys, and boys occasionally know

something about one girl, if they apply

themselves.  And Epstein’s Constant.  When you view

the stars through Epstein’s Constant on clear nights,

Magellan’s Cloud will match both Decalogue

And the Decameron in tone and luster,

measured against whatever scale you like.

It never changes. (I said it was constant.)

It knows no history and yet applies

To what your mother told your father you

told your teacher.  Although it will not bend,

applied to love it usually finds

the path most sinuous between two points.

Dead Grandpa, He Dead

from The Complete Dead Grandpa

Goose, gander, ducat, duchess, dead dead dead,
and nothing you can say will bring me back,
nor cumulo-nimbus fleece floating atone
for birthday candles blown or naked gifts
on disco-lit parquet. Dead. Dead is croaked,
frogs on a spit, Achilles in the pit,
and ordinary Me blue in the face,
a little while at least. The high-toned art,
allusive and annoying, leaves me cold.
I'd rather be a butcher in Portales
than talked about in Paradise, where odes
are picayune accomplices of dirt.

And Beets and Pickled Okra

The pantry is a cool and cedar-lined

Room in the basement where we keep the jars
We do not need right now, but someday might.
(It hasn’t happened yet, but who can tell.)
Preserves, we call them, as if that would keep
Them biohazard-free. I think they wait
For evolution. In the night I hope
To be preserved, but I know better now,
Awake. To be a boy of 17,
A damson plum with paraffin on top
To save me from my nature—-string beans grow
Pale in their darkened room: they will not turn
To tap dancers or unicyclists if
They do not break their seals. Though tubers chant
The virtues of sequestered, reddened roots,
They do not grow, and if they did, they’d drown.

Raising Expectations

Given some rope, they've torn the statues down

To piss on legendary heads, the groins
Bedecked in amaryllis and ablaze.
(Who would have guessed that amaryllis burns,
And colorfully?) The shoppers fill their carts
With freebies. (Who'd have guessed they wanted phones
Far more than sandwiches?) The songs they sing
Are short on lyric wordplay, long on scat.
We made no plans to emigrate, but have
Our havens in the hinterlands, where treats
Are plastic shoes on Sundays, where delight
Is puddings made of pigs and doughty men
Pray to the forest just because it's there.
(Who knew that gods had green cards or that wolves
Wanted our wives for bon-bons in the smoke?)

Travelling Exhibition

appeared in The Shit Creek Review

Room by room they packed up the museum.
They filled the armored suits with porcelain,
The urns with lesser urns. They wrapped the busts
In bubble paper, squeezing now and then
Mini-explosions, just for fun, like Queen
Victoria's little wars. The paintings posed
A problem. Smaller ones in plastic sacks,
That would just do; but 19th-century
Gigantists--lacking room enough and twine,
Necessity made them inverts, hauled them out,
Hoping for fair and fine. It took a while.
The Judgement of Solomon, a red and gold
Simeon Smythe, took 12 old men to tote,
Curators with post-docs and 3 rosettes
Amongst them. When they propped the painting back
Against the mini-van to rest, it glowed.
A minion in the right foreground held out
A scimitar, prepared to bisect babes
On the command. One of the old men said,
Where is a minion where you really need one?
They left a head of Nero on the roof.
It sneered and skittered as they took the turn.

On the Border

The river flowed with blood and sparkling water,
side by side and travelling fast, unmixed.
On the far bank, lilies and pink petunias;

on mine, roses the size and hue of mothballs.
Hot here, cool showed off there.  Grasses waist high
bobbed and rebounded under a light breeze.

There, a sign the Unforgiven could read:
IF YOU'D BEEN GOOD, YOU'D ALREADY BE HERE.
I read; like my compatriots, I laughed.

The dust administered a shock.  I bled
and laughed no more.  Heaven constructs its own
retaliatory tools.  Nobody asked

me to repent, too late, too late.  I tried
to break my fast, but could not prise apart
the breadfruit package issued me.  When Might

combines with Milk, the bad, the weak, the blamed
had better fast.  Unhoped.  All Hell is still.
Nowhere, we are not going Anywhere.

A Greek Tragedy

Chorus announces: See how all is made

Proper and tidy-like. The gods abhor
Disorder. It's at tit-for-tat they stand
Up, and the stars are symbols on a vest
Of justice. Be amazed and be content.

The Elderly Man protests: It isn't so.
The baby rabbits die before they blink,
And fatty deposits in the blood of queens,
Glamorous, doomed, gone to the mattresses,
Knock them as dead as crones. Don't talk to me.

Chorus replies: All righty, then. We won't.

Why me? Why here?

Every day at least a couple readers arrive here via something called claritywritingexperts.com, the exceptionally dull website of a UK-based service, which, for a fee, will teach you how to be a ghostwriter, copywriter, etc.  (Picture mock frisson of horror.)  Although I can find on it no hint as to how people are referred from there to here, I guess I ought to say thanks.

Thanks.

In Time of Plague

This appeared in Lyric.

This morning there were microbes on my walk,
Said Alex, and I swept, then scrubbed. I smell
Invasion, which is not repelled by talk.
He power-washed his porch. I wished him well.

Affliction has no limits. In the trees
Bats plot the overthrow of priest and peasant.
The grass is crowded with bug-born disease:
Ants march, and they will not make conquest pleasant.

I wash my hands of this. And that. The soap
Is dirty now, though Alex claims a cure:
One quart ammonia, sublimated hope,
A heart that’s tainted, latex gloves too pure

For dirt’s adhesion. Listen to the song
Of angry grackles: armies in the sky
Will drop their worms upon us before long,
Then move into the rumpus room and die.

You Can't Change the Past Because It's Already Happened

This plank is now a plank for good, no, not

A tree. This wormhole is a parasite
Egressing, not a door through sap and time.
I never kissed her. I can’t climb a tree
Parquet out at 13 Hibiscus Drive,
Hidden Valley RanchoLand, 2nd Stage.
I never jumped her bones. This little chip,
Ready to cast a splinter, will not burst
Into untidy nests this spring. Its roots
Have been recalled. No reset for her touch
Or faith in promises. The bark cannot
Be squeezed from sarsaparilla. In my time
A tree fell, and I heard it. I was there.

Readership

Reposted from 2009.  Not much has changed.  FB has helped a bit because I can point people here --  ☞ This way to the Egress.    But if you look for comments, you still won't find them.  It remains true that most of my visitors are accidentals: they Googled "What is Dead Wabbit," and were offered this.

I: But people not named Epstein do too read here, at least occasionally.

Other: They don't, you know. Well, there are a couple regular nutters, I admit that, but only a very few, and they're all elderly shut-ins who talk  energetically to their cats and their hand-tinted portraits of the Queen Mum.

I: There are others, I'm almost certain. You can tell by looking at the map of the most recent "visitors."

Other: Oh, yes--you mean the folks who arrive here by Googling "poems about friction," "poems about recently deceased grandfather," "manifest destiny poem," "short blank verse poem," and "what does elegy in country churchyard mean." They are accidentals; they don't mean to be here, and they don't stay. Have you noticed that when Katy and Rebecca and Trish put up posts, they are pounded by replies? And where are your equivalents then?

I: But they're all...well, they aren't like me in some critical respects.

Other: You were going to say, "They're girls," weren't you?

I: No. Not me. Not ever. They're bright and talented and interesting writers.

Other: Oh, so that's how they differ from you.

I: Never mind. You win. I lose. It's all true. This is the blogging equivalent of vanity pressing your books, the Blogspot version of the Vantage Press. But it's a harmless outlet for my excess energies. Who knows what I might be doing, were it not for this.

Other: Spraying funereal distiches on the underpass, standing on the corner with a hand-lettered sign, "Villanelles for food. God Bless." That sort of thing?

I: No doubt. No doubt at all.

Other: And the last time you had any "excess energies," The Temptations and The Four Tops were in the Top 10.

I: Dayenu. I concede. Let me get back to being obscure.

Other: Who?

Safe

The first snowdrops are showing.
Carol loved them dearly,
Under all that snowing.
Carol marked them yearly,
Said when they'd appear,
"Through another season, safe another year."

Petronius Arbiter

A blackboard in his living room, a black
Thesaurus on a little, dirty rug,
And he asleep, a Laz-Y-Boy reclined,
Declined, perhaps, as so so many more--
Busts and the battered stragglers of the 10th
Battalion in the wood above Saint-Just,
Horns and the heads who used to wear them out,
Nuns and rabbinic doctors with a plague
Of middlesex intelligence: declined.
Baseball season upon him, though, he stirs,
Changes the channel, sits up straight, and prays
That umpires will be pure, dispassionate,
And equal to the call, the sons of men
Watched by their daughters, much less than they were.

Kindergarten In Hell

That's the mess. When the brass bell rings,
You find a seat. There's prayers and things,
And then you eat. It tastes like crap.
And then there's prayers. And then you nap.
And then comes story time. You hear
Isaac and Ishmael. The mere
Mention of Lucifer gets you spanked.
You do some chores, for which you're thanked
In homilies--Elisha's bears,
Perhaps. Confession. And then prayers.

Our Little Furry Monsters

Well, yes, there could be little furry monsters
In local garbage cans. They might be trying
Cumbersome alphabets with broken twigs.
They could be adding 1 plus none plus none.
Primary colors, cunning speech defects,
And shaggy. You would think that they would stink--
Eggshells and tea leaves, vacuum cleaner bags
Filled with hair, dust, grit, gravel, ash, and pebbles.
Leaves, butts, dead flowers, Kleenex wads, and shredded
Stuff. Stuff is the word, the bland adhesive
Which binds us bone to bone, passionate motes,
A minyan for a landfill. Where was I?
Ah, yes, the monster with its glass of milk
And cookie, with endearing mustache crumbs,
Though where the mustache ends and cheek begins
Is mere surmise. He has no bottom half.
Bones, hair, teeth, dolls, eyeglasses, wedding rings.
You wonder that there are so many monsters.
"Mingle," their mothers told them. "Go on, blend."
Monsters among us. Who'd have ever guessed.

Move along, please. No vampires here.

I hope "The Strain" is a massive failure, no matter how well done it is. I have no animus towards anyone involved, but I'd like to see the whole vampiric enterprise die for at least a generation. Obviously it plucks some sympathetic chord and endlessly fascinates millions; but between the Twilight utes and those walking dead chaps, I'm quite drained. Why are vampires so popular? Why now? It can't all be a metaphor for hedge fund managers.

Not Far Behind

Spring on the horizon, the nightbird says.
I’m here, you know, not going anywhere.
It’s in the offing, spring is. Blackwing says,
We’re here for the duration. Longtemps is
Our middle name. Now bring the car around.
We’ll soon fill it with primroses and peepers.
We feed when you’re asleep, the jetblack says,
And never seem to get enough to eat.

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