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.