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

As a fan of blazers, light sweaters, and undershirts I celebrate the slow but welcome change to slightly cooler highs. If such things repulse you, or even annoy you to a slight degree (Hah!), I’m sorry. The sunny hot times are waning.

I don’t know where you live. This may be too late, but there could be some swelter left in the wide sky part of the day. Get out there and sweat when the sun is highest. Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. Not many t-shirt afternoons left so don’t squander them working. Have POETS Day in the sunshine. Go. Be on your way.

But as per usual, take a moment for a little verse.

***

First, the elephant in the room: the guy had a bad-ass name. A surname is a surname so his patents may not be due any credit for the cool-sounding kicker. Crowe was his mother’s maiden name and John was his father’s first name too, so John Crowe Ransom as a moniker was a matter of judicious assembly. They could have screwed it up, though. John James Ransom was a preacher in small town Tennessee; a Methodist so probably not as fire and brimstone as some of the neighbors and less likely to need anti-venom, but any preacher’s son risks the possibility of facing the world as Ada Hezekiah or Enoch Zerubbabel. I might read a poem by Enoch Zerubbabel Ransom, but his first task as a poet would be overcoming my giggle. Nobody needs that headache.

John Crowe – and I think you have to say the two names together with an implied hyphen like you would John Paul or Mary Beth – sounds numinous. He’s a half-Indian warrior guide who saves an expedition foolish enough to ignore his earlier warnings, straight out of James Fenimore Cooper. He’s an outlaw so mean, he once shot a man for snoring too loud. Or more modern, he’s a wizened Kerouac reading high school dropout biker whose gang scares off the preppies so Eric Stoltz can have his dream date. It’s a larger-than-life name. His parents did him well.