Category Archives: Poetry

POETS Day! A.E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad

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[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

School has started abominably early. This is the first Friday of the new school year for one of my children and I’m disgusted by overreach. The other starts next week. A proper summer vacation starts on Memorial Day and ends on Labor Day. Anything else is a presumption on liberty. Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday.

Listen to Roger Waters, and if you don’t know what I mean by that, piss off early and stream Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Learn something worth learning. But first, a little verse.

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The very popularity of Housman’s poems poses something of a problem, an embarrassment, for literary critics, who are more comfortable explaining the glories of the obscure than extolling the virtues of the accessible.
– “The tragi-comedy of A. E. Housman” by Anthony Daniels, The New Criterion, March 2014

Alfred Edward Housman was a classics scholar, and a great one; “beyond serious dispute, among the greatest of all time,” according to Shakleton Bailey, apparently an impressive classics scholar himself, in the pages of a 1959 Listener magazine. He failed to get his degree at St. John’s College, Oxford. The hindsight view is that he focused too much on the lines of study that interested him to the detriment of the whole required to graduate. I’ve also read that he spent too much time with friends.

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POETS Day! Alan Seeger

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Cover of Above the Trenches by Nathan Hale, illustrated by Nathan Hale

[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

I try to provide whatever help I can in escaping work. Not always a plan, but at the very least a little encouragement. Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday! Don’t translate desire into action and then it’s poets day; just another Friday. I don’t know how useful today’s opening will be towards that end for most.

Have you considered calling in drunk?

In ‘98 I worked with a bartender named Chris. He was as direct in conversation as you can get without coming across as rude. He went right up to that line with rapid-fire questions and clipped phrases strung together into long answers. He was a bartender, and a good one, so he had a separate personality for the public, but when not in character he was a conversational Gatling gun.

He was not exactly a manager because he was rumored, and at a later point confirmed, to have a pretty healthy drug habit, but he had some scheduling responsibilities and was the phone guy when higher ups were otherwise occupied.

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POETS Day! Harriet Monroe

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[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

It’s late at night because Trump made it so. I write this part last and now I want sleep. I didn’t expect him to go on so long. Maybe you can use that. Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. Tell the boss you were up late watching tv as a civic duty because democracy dies in darkness? If you watched it, grab an afternoon nap. If not, pretend you did and go to a bar or something fun. The speech ended around eleven thirty or so Central, in case you’re asked.

If you live in California, I don’t think this works as a POETS Day hooky excuse. You guys are so far behind the RNC was still pre-empting Judge Judy and the like. Sorry. Tell them your probiotics are out of alignment or something. That might work.

Enjoy the weekend.

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I’m a fan of James May. Top Gear, obviously, but his other stuff too: James May’s Toy Stories, James May’s Man Lab, James May: Our Man In… I’ve got the cookbook from James May: Oh Cook! He’s impish and once got fired from a magazine for a naughty acrostic.

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POETS Day! Judith Wright, Who’s from Australia

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[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday?

The idea…

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Poetry Foundation, and so Poetry magazine by extension or implication depending on which is now considered the over company, has a beef with Judith Wright. To be fair, they positively reviewed her collection, Birds, in the December 1964 issue, writing that “The form is conventional, the tone often that of a skillful, rhyming bird-lover. But the observation is acute and uncompromising and there is sometimes a surprising vigor in the transmission.” It’s praise as contrast to what is not said, but praise. And then, nothing.

Wright is among the more celebrated poets in Australia. If you’re just breaking into the Australian literary scene you’d be lucky to be considered for the Judith Wright Poetry Award for New and Emerging Poets. Got a new book out? There’s the Judith Wright Award for poetry collection by Australians. Alternately, your book or “poem of substantial length,” says Wikipedia, may qualify for the Judith Wright Calanthe Award, given each year at the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards. I’ve found descriptions and pictures of monuments praising her work for indigenous people, the extent and form of which I’m ignorant but it’s at least cleared the start-small-construction bar of worthiness. She worked to save the Great Barrier Reef in addition to playing a part in other environmental efforts. According to Wikipedia, “With some of her friends, she helped found one of the earliest nature conservation movements,” which is vague enough to conjure all manner of questions I’ll not need answered for the moment if ever but I’m sure you can read all about it at the Judith Wright Arts Centre in the Fortitude Valley suburb of Brisbane. She’s kind of a big deal.

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POETS Day! “Paul Revere’s Ride”

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[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

It’s Independence Day on a Thursday, so I’ll assume there’s no need to encourage anyone to start the weekend early.

I read The Declaration of Independence to my children every July 4th and every time I start to choke up at “firm reliance.” It was the ruin of so many of them and the most consequential insistence of agency since Magna Carta. Children should hear it outside of class, hear that resolute voice of Jefferson, press that it’s not a special day because we get to see a fireworks show but that we get to see a fireworks show because it’s a special day.

I don’t know what other celebratory stuff we’ll get up to. I’m thinking about spatchcocking a chicken and cooking it on the grill, weighed down with a foil wrapped brick or two: salt, pepper, a bit of spicy paprika and served with grilled rounds of pineapple over a bed of mixed lettuces and herbs tossed with a red wine or champagne vinaigrette. Maybe some white beans. Hot dogs are the easy celebration ‘Merica food of choice. If you want to overly complicate things, my hot dog sauce recipe is here and only considerably more expensive though way more labor intensive than buying a pre-made store brand.

This week’s poem is a long one, so I’ll be short. Longfellow made myth out of truth, and I’ve not read anything better on his “Paul Revere’s Ride” than Dana Gioia’s essay “Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: On ‘Paul Revere’s Ride.’” Years ago, I accidentally plagiarized Gioia. It was a cut and paste accident that was corrected as quickly as possible once realized, but for a horrid five minutes or so I credited myself with one of his quotes instead of crediting myself for a paragraph from an older post I wrote that included one of his quotes with proper attribution. Despite hyper-attentiveness to error regarding the man, I’m not going to quote from his essay here. Gun shy. Follow the link and read the whole thing. It’s short and, as would be expected, edifying.

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POETS Day! Bullfighting and Elizabeth Bishop

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Pectoral sandpiper by the JBWR East Pond

[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

I just saw a clip of Dick Van Dyke skipping at age 98. It’s an awkward skip, not because he’s hampered by age, but because he’s exaggerating his high step more in imitation of something from Monty Python’s Ministry of Silly Walks sketch than what you’d expect to see on a playground.

Van Dyke gets made fun of for his “cockney” accent in Mary Poppins. Eddie Izzard said he sounds cockney by way of Australia, but Izzard says it “Australiyur.” I don’t think that’s fair. What do we know about this Bert character he played? Did he immigrate? What’s his backstory? We’re not being fair to Van Dyke as an artist. Dick Van Dyke in his trailer, imagining himself into the role, Stanislovski in his ear. Who is Bert? Images run past. A small boy with a stuffed koala. Fast as a leopard. Sharks. Ping-pong balls. Inevitably he conjures Adelaide and Bert rises from the paper as flesh. Don’t assume everyone in London is British and don’t fault an actor for thinking outside the page.

I think about that a lot.

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POETS Day! Some Sonnets with 14 Lines

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Petrarch observing Simone Martini while painting a portrait of Laura – Giuseppe Ciaranfi (1818-1902)

[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

“Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday” as usual and enjoy the weekend, but I got caught this week and ran short of time. This week’s is gonna be a quick one.

I was looking to do something on George Meredith’s sonnet series called Modern Love. He’s known for his novels. At least he was. I think The Egoist is the only one many would recognize these days, and I’ll wager few have read it. Modern Love is the story of a marriage as it falls apart told over the course of fifty sixteen-line sonnets. The story is engrossing as only the best soap opera like guilty pleasures no one admits to can be. I very much want to do a post on it in the future, but I got caught up by the idea of a sixteen-line sonnet. Can you do that?

I was of the impression that the sonnet was a set form. It’s usually a thought posited in an octave with a volta, or turn, taken in a sestet that may or may not resolve the thought. It doesn’t have to be laid out with a break that way. You can set stanzas in various ways or leave it all as one beautiful verse lump. There are plenty of rhyme schemes to choose from. The one thing I’d never seen as anything but a constant is that a sonnet has fourteen lines. When defining the form, length is the characteristic that first pops to mind. I’d be surprised if I’m alone in that.

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POETS Day! Comparing Apples and Rossettis

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Lady Lilith by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (cropped)

[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

This is no time to be outdoors. It’s only 91° here in Alabama. I say “only” because we’ll settle into the mid to high nineties and see a hundred a few times before the summer’s gone, but this is the first time we’ve hit the nineties this year. I need acclimation time. This is regularly timed heat. It happens every year and we all know it’s coming, until it suddenly does.

There’s no easing into it. It’s not like a soothing warm shower where you can start at tolerable and slowly increase towards shipwreck-fog-thick steam (although it’s arguably as humid.) It’s not like a cold pool where you wade slowly in, brief tiptoe, and then settle. This is immediate and all the worse knowing how wonderfully air conditioning cools if only you were in it. It’s Tartarus.

Just a few days ago I wore a now unthinkable blazer. If you work outside, you don’t need convincing. Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. Get to shade. Save yourself. Whatever they’re paying you will be enough in a few days when you’ve had time to adjust, but right now, it ain’t.

Conversely, if you work inside you may wanna sit this week out. There will be other POETS Days and some people swear by deferred pleasure. You’re not sweltering. Stick around a while and make sure you’re seen. Maybe read a little verse.

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POETS Day! William Cowper

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[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

Paul Dean and his band were doing pretty well, but not headliner well. They opened for Kiss when that mattered and later opened for ZZ Top, which always matters. One night in Cape Cod, they went out in front of a crowd that was having none of them. The crowd wanted ZZ Top and had no patience for these appetizers on stage. They threw lighters, bottles, whatever was at hand. Dean and his guys gave up after four songs sung to boos and jeering and walked off stage.

Later, wandering an empty beach one afternoon he thought, “Where is everybody? Well, I guess they’re all waiting for the weekend.” His vocalist would change the phrasing and he and the rest of Loverboy scored a hit with “Everybody’s Waiting for the Weekend.”

Walk away from work. Think about the weekend. Profit.

Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. Be like Loverboy. Skip out of work mid-afternoon and live on your own schedule. Enjoy POETS Day.

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POETS Day! The Transcendent Shades Cahaba

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The Transcendent Shades Cahaba

[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

We spent the last two weekends clearing bramble and mischievous growth. After a miserable bout of mimosa stump clearing, I asked a horticulturalist neighbor about tilling to make way for a flower bed. He warned me off it. There are some seeds—monkey grass was the pertinent one—that lay dormant for years or decades just waiting for an earnest attempt at rose bed preparation and once awakened are up for a drawn-out fight. He recommended we forgo the tilling workout and lay down cardboard, cover it with landscaping fabric, and then toss on mulch in lieu of laboring with a hand tool for untold hours in Alabama heat and humidity.

It’s as if he told me he had a failsafe, side effect free, weight loss miracle and handed me a box of Chips Ahoy. We did what he said.

Gardening turns out to be fun. In addition to our new rose plants (two Chicago, a Tropicana, and one with a missing label but we think it was De la Soul or something), an assortment of bright things inhabiting a broken Big Green Egg that’s now a planter, and some promissory edible flowers from Idaho, we have Lane, my Fresno Chili plant. If you’ve had children you know what it’s like welcoming a Fresno Chili plant into your life. Suddenly there are Epsom salts, 5-10-10 NPK orders, spray bottles, and sitters. It’s intensive, but there are only so many daylight hours.

Do the right thing. Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. Give your chili plant (or lesser garden thing) proper care. Slip out of work and start the weekend off a few hours before The Man’s scheduled time. Permission? You don’t need that. Not when there are crops to plant. Here’s a little verse to kick start things for you.

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