Tag Archives: poet

POETS Day! The Honorable Archibald MacLeish

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Illustration by Rene Sears

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

There is a sound my car makes. It’s used but I just bought it, so it’s “new to me.” I’ve had two mechanics look to try to find the cause. The sound only happens in very specific circumstances. There’s a clank, like the spare tire is sliding around when I brake quickly. Maybe it’s like the sound a metal gas can makes when you push in the side and release. The first thing I did was remove the tire and jack, get in, accelerate, and brake short. The sound was still there.

My wife and I disagree about the origin. I think it’s over the right wheel. She thinks middle rear. The first mechanic didn’t hear it at all until I drove her around. The second claimed he didn’t hear it at all. He’s insane. Both pros are clear: the car is sound, right as rain, hunky dory (honky doory, because it’s a car.) I’m allowing the Carvana send-back date to pass and keeping it.

In any case, I know how to make the sound and have learned how not to make it. Regular stopping was never an issue. Any stop that’s abrupt enough for the driver to say, “Sorry about that,” to passengers and cu-clank. But I learned to ease off the brakes at the very end. That doesn’t quite describe it. Anyway, I’ve adapted and the noise that maybe only my wife and I can hear is no longer an issue.

Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. It’s a beautiful day for a drive and the roads are more fun pre-rush hour than during. It’s safe out there again. I’m not randomly braking to see if the maybe-phantom sound is still there anymore. Much.

Just in case: If you see a silver Nissan, don’t tailgate for the next couple of weeks. First, some verse.

***

Archibald MacLeish wanted to put on a musical retelling of “The Devil and Daniel Webster” and take Broadway by storm. The play would be a torch passing. Bob Dylan would write the score. MacLeish won the Pulitzer for poetry in 1933, again in 1953, and another Pulitzer for his free verse drama, a retelling of the book of Job, J.B. Dylan was the counterculture balladeer sensation. Producers had to be happy.

It was a disaster. The established poet and hip-with-kids next generation songwriter didn’t work well together.

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POETS Day! Walter James Turner, “Australia’s Georgian Poet”

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Illustration by Rene Sears

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

This is too easy. There’s a new Pope, so Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. Tell your boss you’re going to mass to pray for the newly anointed Vicar of Christ. Odds are good that you’re not going to mass, so that’s a lie and lying’s a sin. Most churches offer Confession on Saturdays. Just don’t go stepping in front of buses or licking electrical sockets for twenty-four hours and you’ll be fine. (Pro tip: Save time at Confession by cutting in line. Minimal exposure.)

If your boss is Catholic, you’ll be out in seconds flat. If not, you’ll still be out in seconds flat because non-Catholics have no idea when obligations fall. If you aren’t Catholic, pretend you are by Googling and learning a few Latin phrases to say around the office: “May I borrow your stilus?” “Sorry I’m late, hora concursus traffic.” Etc. They’ll get it.

Happy POETS Day and enjoy your work-free afternoon. First, a little verse.

***

I put “Australia’s Georgian Poet” in quotation marks in the title because I found them on a website providing a quote from Dominic Sheridan, Professor and/or lecturer at the University of Gdansk in Poland who researches Australian War poets of World War I in particular. “Australia’s Georgian Poet” is itself in quotation marks in the Sheridan quote, so he got it from somewhere too. Whether it was a sobriquet that followed Walter James Turner, one invented by Sheridan, or something quoted from yet an earlier source, I have no idea, but I like it. This is my roundabout way of letting you know I’ve found an interesting new (to me) website called Forgotten Poets of the First World War. There are some five hundred posts going back to 2014 and sourcing at least as far as from wherever they’re based as Gdansk. Worth a look for the curious. Looks useful.

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POETS Day! Lascelles Abercrombie

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Illustration by Rene Sears

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

I sold my basketball fandom to my wife when we were dating. It wasn’t a big deal. This was back in 99 or 00, so Alabama was mid to bad and she’s a Duke grad. I don’t really care for the game anyway and it didn’t seem to be much of a conflict since Alabama and Duke were unlikely to cross paths in any meaningful way on the court. I got her football fandom in the trade for the same reason.

Now that Alabama is as good as they are, I should care more. I want them to do well, but it’s bouncy hoopty ball. It helps that I’m a jinx. I don’t watch Alabama games anymore. When I do they lose, and that’s bad because football recruits like to go to schools with good basketball teams too. All-around success by the whole athletic department is claimed as a draw for them. I’ve tuned into a game the Tide is winning and watched the lead slip away, turned it off, and checked my score app to see it reestablished. It’s uncanny.

I do my best to support non-college-football tournaments and such for the spectacle. They’re fun. In 2023, I foolishly hopped in a car with my brother in-law and headed to Louisville where I made Bama lose a Sweet Sixteen matchup with San Diego Sate University. Seriously. San Diego State.

Conference playoffs are afoot. I won’t be watching Alabama’s tip off at 7:15 tomorrow night against TBA, as of this writing. I may watch Duke play UNC at 6:00. I will definitely head to a restaurant for some of the day games even if I don’t pay too much attention. You don’t need a dog in the hunt or even a like of the game to enjoy the excitement of a basketball tournament like you don’t need to be a golf fan to have Augusta on your bucket list.

Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. Take a POETS Day and watch the fast-paced game fans say they love devolve into an hour of last minute fouling, free throw, fouling, free throw. Keep a baseball game on your phone in case you get bored (Braves v Nats, 12:05 CDT).

Try a little verse first. Roll Devils.

***

It is our tariff on imported books. Unless an author is almost certain to appeal to a large audience, in which case his book will be manufactured in America, the publisher can import only a small edition in sheets and sell it at a relatively high price. That means that he cannot do any thing to push the book, and so the author who is not known, so to speak, to begin with, has very little chance with the American public…

That Mr. Abercrombie’s early work did not immediately surmount the handicap of being imported in a very small edition is due in part to its character and in part to our taste.
               – Llewellyn Jones, The North American Review, Dec., 1924

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POETS Day! A Few Poems by Kingsley Amis as Pretense to Discuss One of His Novels

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Illustration by Rene Sears

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

I don’t like poinsettias and take comfort in the fact that they usually do the honorable thing and die shortly after Christmas time. They’re fine in season I suppose, but so are ugly sweaters and bells on adult shoes.

They’re poisonous flowers, I think. I read that people who don’t like cats but somehow ended up with one buy poinsettias intending to plead ignorance later and get on with their lives. Ours is still in the kitchen thriving in its pot so I daydream about adopting some sort of reverse cat that’s poisonous to poinsettias.

I’m supposed to be encouraging you to take a POETS Day, but I’m distracted by this velveteen-flop looking plant with one petal beginning to wilt and a couple of dozen more that won’t follow its example. I’m distracted like you might be on a Friday afternoon, so preoccupied with weekend thoughts that you can’t get any poinsettia work done, sitting performatively, wasting your time. You should Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday.

Read a poem first.

***

I’ve written about Kingsley Amis in this space numerous times (see here, here, here, and here). I’m an unabashed fan so an unapologetic writer though I don’t claim any “Best” titles for him. There are better novelists, better poets, better editors, and your average park bench made for a better husband. He simply seems to be the writer I like most most of the time.

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POETS Day! Poems Found While Reading an Essay by Anthony Hecht

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Illustrated by Rene Sears

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

There’s a constant drip to my life now. A background sound would imply direction. This isn’t that. This ubiquitous drip, this relentless hydro-metronome, reverberates from the porcelain of the bathroom behind me, the steel of the kitchen I’m in, and somehow through two bedroom doors from the other bathroom. It is of the house.

In 2010, a cold snap came. We were newly minted homeowners, landed for only a week at the time. The inspection report showed an open heating duct in the crawlspace so I donned my fiscal responsibility hat and had the duct capped immediately on moving in. The pipes froze a few days later and one burst a day or two after that. Chesterton’s fence was under my house.

In Wisconsin and other Big10 locales, pipes are insulated or designed to expand somehow. I’ve read about systems where conductive wires are wrapped around water pipes to provide warmth when switched on. This is all Star Trek stuff to Alabamians. Nobody has that here so we drip our faucets.

It hasn’t been above freezing for three days now. The drip haunts me. Mocks me. Its maddening report more assault than assurance. But what if it stops?

Take a POETS Day. Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. Nothing gets done at work on a Friday afternoon anyway, so go do fun stuff. Or if you live in Alabama, go home and listen. Listen and fear.

Drip. Drip. Dri…

***

I have a copy of Anthony Hecht’s Melodies Unheard: Essays on the Mysteries of Poetry I keep on hand when I’m in the mood. It sits in a stack with Broken Ground: Poetry and the Demon of History by William Logan, the collection of T.S. Eliot essays, Poetry and Poets, and a few like. Sometimes I think I enjoy reading about poetry, criticism and commentary, more than I like reading actual poetry. That might not be odd, but I think it is, and it warms my vanity as personal idiosyncrasies will.

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POETS Day! Skipwith Cannéll’s “Nocturnes”

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Illustration by Rene Sears

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

Birmingham may have gone out over its skis and declared a POETS Day pre-emptively. We don’t have snowplows, our shovels are sewing scissor-esque in that they’re solely for burying kin, and nobody can find the other glove. An inch of snow will paralyze us. The schools shut down and no one can get to work except liquor store owners who’ll do three Christmases and a mid-week Valantine’s Day worth of business in twelve hours. There’s a prediction of one to two inches by tomorrow morning.

I got the closing notice for my youngest’s school yesterday. My eldest’s sent an email this morning (I’m writing this on Thursday night) with an ominous pair of sentences about on-line assignments to follow (Mwu-hah-hah!). I can’t blame them for being overly cautious after the flash blizzard (three inches) of 2012 left teachers and students (not mine) stranded overnight. Rare snows put us in a bind, but I’ve been at home through more dire warnings that didn’t pan out as expected than I can count, leaving a city of day drinking dog walkers.

Nobody in my neck of the woods needs a POETS Day plan. We can’t Piss Off Early even though Tomorrow’s Saturday, because we’ll already be home. Good luck to the rest of you and your Northern ways. Fake a cough, maybe?

Whatever you gotta do, get out and have fun. But take time for a little verse first.

***

I’m pretty sure we all had the same initial thought, but this week’s featured poem was published in 1914 and the World War I biplane made by Sopwith and named the Camel due to an aerodynamic hump over the guns in the original design, wasn’t introduced until 1917. The similarity had no effect on Cannéll’s poetry; no resentment at being teased or bravado from a name evoking brief air superiority for a three year period before rapid development of technology tempered by the pressures of war led to predictable obsolescence.

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POETS Day! The Author of “A Visit from St Nicholas”… Again

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Illustration by Rene Sears

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

In the spirits of POETS Day and Christmas, I’m phoning one in this week to spend more time with my wrapping paper. Below is a reprint of “POETS Day! Clement Clark Moore” from December 23, 2022. I’ve rearranged a couple of sentences that infuriated me on reread and found a spelling error that need not be repeated, but otherwise, it is as was.

Have a wonderful Christmas, or Holiday Season if you pray otherwise. Bless you all.

***

“Not a mouse stirring.”
– Hamlet Act I, Scene I

This is another one of those weekends where there’s really not much need for a POETS Day. Heresy! You might say, and I’d be tempted to agree with you, but even those that don’t celebrate Christmas are the beneficiaries of an act of Congress marking the 25th of December as a federal holiday and that designation pretty well spills over to the days before and after in fact if not in practice. Even if you are at work, whoever you are supposed to be calling on or transferring funds to is probably tilting at last minute shopping or stuck in an airport because the U.S. is now apparently Hoth so it’s a wasted week. If you don’t work retail, you’ve likely already been given a pass to leave work early on Friday if you were expected to show up at all. There’s no need to adhere to the dictate Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday, but that doesn’t mean there’s no need for a bit of poetry. On the contrary, this is an excellent time to get all doe-eyed and the kind of overplayed optimistic cheerful that makes grown men cringe and wish they’d never heard the word ebullient and say, “But it’s always time for poetry!” I think that’s true. Hope you do too.

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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.

***

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! John Skelton, Cyndi Lauper, and Phonies

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Photo by Rene Sears, in the park, with a Pixel

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

I’m sure you’ve heard that there are only nine shopping days left until Christmas. I’m acutely aware, kept up to date by radio, tv, and internet. If I somehow managed to avoid all those electronic reminders, there’s the traffic. There’s no correct lane switching strategy with an army of Amazon vans suffocating every intersection and left averse UPS trucks double parked three to a block. Fed Ex drivers like to park in the median. Maybe they train in Philadelphia.

We let the holidays get hectic. It’s commercial and too often anxiety reigns. “Do I have a present for Dad?” “What do I get my sister?” The buildup was already an ordeal and then advertisers got shifty and started using “gift” as a verb. What gets lost in all of this is what’s important: that there are only three Fridays left to lie, scheme, and dissemble in 2023.

Carpe diebus. Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. This is the last one before your penultimate chance of the year. Don’t let the weekend just happen. Be an instigator. Fake a cough, arrange an “emergency call.” Whatever you have to do. Start your weekend on your terms and slip out a few hours before The Man™ deigns to give leave. Have a ball, but try to fit in a few minutes for a little verse. It’s POETS Day. Make the most of it.

***

“I explicated a Donne sonnet and paid uncomprehending lip-service to a beefy dirge by someone called John Skelton.” – The Rachel Papers, by Martin Amis

There is a park across the street from my house. It runs along Shades Creek, a feeder to the Cahaba River and part of the watershed that provides drinking water for the Birmingham area. That’s terrifying considering how much trash we get from upstream.

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POETS Day! Fugglestone St. Peter’s own, George Herbert

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

POETS Day snuck up on me this week. I try to extend some lifeline, no matter how flimsy it may be, to give plausible rational for skipping out of work early, but I’ve done a lot of these now. Finding a new excuse every week isn’t as easy as it may seem. Don’t let that deter you.

You don’t need me to supply you with a reason. It’s right there: TS. Piss Off Early comes with its own why. Tomorrow’s Saturday. Admire the fulgence of the anagram’s fullness and start the weekend at a time of your choosing.

Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. Catch a ball game at a bar. Take a walk in a park. On average, we only see 4,113.2 Fridays in a lifetime and at minimum 2% of those are 13ths. Don’t waste one clock-watching.

If you do manage to get out, take a moment to read a poem or three. Maybe these.

***

My wife and I honeymooned in Vancouver. It was 2002, three years after the British ceded Hong Kong to Communist China. Refugees scattered all over the Pacific Rim. These weren’t the poor. I read that British Columbia absorbed thirty thousand souls. We were told to expect amazing high-end Chinese cuisine and we found amazing high-end Chinese cuisine.

We went to an elegant place near the harbor for dim sum. It was in a hotel lobby; a huge room below a series of mezzanines with an open wall of glass extending up several floors. Neither of us had ever eaten dim sum before but we were told that instead of a menu there would be a cart full of food that would visit tableside and you chose what you wanted from there.

That’s what happened. A cart came by and there were dumplings and bao, which may or may not be a dumpling as well but seems distinct to me. I think there was soup and definitely spicy vegetables. Little strips of sticky meat. Everything was fantastic. What we didn’t know was there would be a series of carts with different offerings making the rounds.

We loaded up on the first thing that came by and though we loved what we got, we saw what we didn’t. The duck on the third cart looked impossibly crisp. There was a lesson to be learned; a variant on “Don’t make fast friends.” Get the lay of the land before you commit.

I didn’t learn that lesson.

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