Tag Archives: Poetry

POETS Day! William Faulkner’s Go at Anachronism

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Illustrated by Rene Sears

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

The lyrics to Lindsey Buckingham’s “Holiday Road” are

I found out long ago
It’s a long way down the Holiday Road

and

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick
Take a ride on a West Coast kick

with the phrase “Holiday Road” thrown in repeatedly. The beat doesn’t change – bouncy bass and a metronomic drum with two guitar riffs that loop. One of the four lines he bothered to write was ripped from tradition; not even Mother Goose tried to claim that one as her own.

It’s not a lazy song. It’s colorful. An anthem for someone with places to go and a copy of Republican Party Reptile hidden under his mattress. And there’s a dog barking at the end.

It’s a POETS Day masterpiece. Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday.

But first, some verse.

***

When I worked as a sommelier we’d get travelers from various patches of wine country all the time hocking wares and buying lunch. It was a pretty good gig for a lot of reasons, but the lunches in particular commended themselves. These travelers would be winemakers, owners, sons and daughters of owners, national or regional sales managers, whatever. They wanted their wine on my list and, like dimpled pharma reps feting doctors, they filled us full of food and booze, hosting myself and two or three like-employed at some of the city’s best spots.

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POETS Day! Why Is Tom Bombadil?

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Illustration by Rene Sears

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

A friend of mine has a deep booming voice. Years ago, he was the MC for The Tragic City Rollers roller derby team, a play on Birmingham’s Magic City nickname. I’m not sure what to call roller derby participants. Players doesn’t sound right, but whatever they are, they pick campy or funny nicknames for themselves, kind of like drag queens.

I worked with a quiet, clever, but shy waitress around the turn of the century who moved off to Austin. Next thing I know I’m channel surfing and come across a roller derby reality show on A&E. It’s her. The waitress is on the screen smashing people and not being shy. It was amazing. She was named rookie of the year, which I know because of course I became a regular viewer. She had the best roller derby name I’ve heard. She went by Venus Envy.

Back to Birmingham, I don’t think my friend cared much for roller derby. I asked him if there was strategy and he said there was, but he didn’t know what was going on most of the time. He said he did it because his friend picked the name Sister Mary Merciless, and he really liked introducing her as “Full of grace and in your face! It’s Sister Mary Merciless!”

He said he had to be there mid-afternoon before the weekend matches. I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s what he said and it got him out of work early Friday. That was brilliant.

Whatever silly thing you want to do is a valid excuse. Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday.

But first, some verse.

—

Hey dol! merry dol! ring a dong dillo!
Ring a dong! hop along! fal lal the willow!
Tom Bom, jolly Tom, Tom Bombadillo!

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POETS Day! Mirrors and Robert Louis Stevenson

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Illustration by Rene Sears

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

I have a $50 Australian coin. It’s a 1/20 oz. gold coin from 2002. I’ve found its twin on eBay and a few other sites selling for around $210 US. It was in a desk drawer and I have no idea how it got there or what it was doing previously. Boom. Here’s a weird coin to look up on the internet.

As far as I can tell, these coins were issued with various weights of gold content, mine being the lowest, and sold to investors. Nobody in Australia is paying for a round of tappy waddles with one of these. I paid in one and two pound coins in England and it was awkward. Every so often someone starts making noise about doing away with the American paper dollar and replacing it with a coin. They say that the coin will last longer and reduce something bad. I’m against it. I don’t like change.

That’s it. I just wanted to say “I don’t like change” so it had a double meaning. It’s not even a joke, really. It was a stupid waste of time and you read it. That’s what happens at work on Friday afternoons. You waste time. Cut it out and just leave already. You’re not going to do anything productive between now and quitting time. Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday.

But first, a little verse.

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POETS Day! W.M. Praed and an Irishman

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

ChatGPT: Write a POETS Day intro

“As the clock edges toward five, a palpable excitement begins to ripple through the office—a shared anticipation, a collective sigh of relief. It’s POETS Day, and the air hums with the promise of freedom, the weekend beckoning like a long-lost friend.

The term itself, a cheeky acronym for ‘Push Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday,’ captures a spirit that runs deep in the hearts of workers everywhere. It’s not just a day; it’s a ritual, an unspoken agreement that after a week of deadlines and meetings, the horizon holds something sweeter.

In those final moments before the weekend unfolds, the chatter becomes lighter, laughter echoes a little louder, and the mundane tasks feel somehow more bearable. It’s a celebration of the ordinary, a reminder that amidst the grind, there exists the potential for spontaneity and joy. As the minutes tick down, the office transforms into a launchpad for adventures, big or small, that await just beyond the door. Here’s to the spirit of POETS Day, a nod to resilience and the joy of simply being alive.”

Close enough.

***

I got engaged over Christmas of 2001.  In a welcome flutter of sentimentality, my parents decided they wanted one last trip with a single me. We took off for Ireland a few months later, just the three of us. As much as I love my brother and sister, it was special – a hated word when used in regard to anything bonding-ish so trust that I looked for an alternative but nothing else worked quite as well – just the three of us. We hadn’t been a trio since I was three, living with them in married student housing and then briefly in Birmingham until a sister came along and spoiled everything. She was loud to begin with and later took up the trumpet.

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POETS Day! John Crowe Ransom

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[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.

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POETS Day! At Home with Edna St Vincent Millay

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Millay by Pond (photo by Arnold Genthe, 1914)

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

Vyacheslav Volodin is the speaker of the Duma, and Reuter’s says he’s warning “that if the West gave permission for such [military] strikes deep into Russian territory then it would lead to a ‘global war with the use of nuclear weapons.’”

David Lammy, UK Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs and someone I’ve heard of, tells us global warming is “is systemic. Pervasive. And accelerating towards us.”

The Detroit Lions have a pretty good football team. Google “two headed goat” and find a world of images. George R.R. Martin isn’t even bothering to write the final book. It’s getting end-timey. Do you really want to squander your shrinking allotment by working?

Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. Get out and see the world while the world’s still there. And if David Lammy’s wrong, all the better. Have a great Friday afternoon. But first, some verse.

***

I made the mistake of reading an article about Rachmaninoff. It was a good article, “Rachmaninoff reigns” by David Dubal, The New Criterion, September 2023, but it contained the following:

“Studying his pianism is an exhilarating experience, and, although Rachmaninoff wrote for his own enormous hands, few pianists can resist reveling in the growths of his exotic pianistic gardens.”

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POETS Day! The Other Side of James Hogg

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Allan, William; James Hogg (1770-1835), Poet (The Ettrick Shepherd) (The Ettrick Shepherd’s House Heating or The Celebration of his Birthday); National Galleries of Scotland

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

It’s almost another work week gone and there’s no sense in waiting for the official end. Call it a POET’S day and Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. There are books to read, people to meet, shows to catch. Shave a few hours off a Friday and enjoy.

First, a little verse for you.

***

I didn’t know he was a poet.

Until yesterday I knew James Hogg only as the author The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner and I don’t know… a lack of curiosity or preoccupation with whatever shiny thing served as a diversion after reading that novel led me elsewhere. I’ll say that his book came to my attention in the first place when I was reading and reading about Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, a book that if you’re unfamiliar, either so fascinates you that a third or fourth reading still reveals something new, or you don’t like it much at all.

The mystery writer Ian Rankin wrote his thesis on Miss Jean Brodie and in an interview he said that the main character claimed to be a descendant of Willam Brodie, a respected 18th century cabinet-maker who socialized with all the right sorts of people and spent his evenings burgling Edinburgh. Apparently, locksmithing was folded into the expected duties of a cabinet man in Scotland during the Age of Enlightenment and he kept key copies. It was a scandal when he was caught and chattering about living a double life commenced. The affair was among the inspirations for Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. According to Stevenson, another was Confessions, a book he said “has always haunted and puzzled me.”

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POETS Day! Thoughts on Part IV of TS Eliot’s “Burnt Norton”

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Sunflower in Bavaria, November 2020 – Kritzolina

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

Welcome once again to POETS Day, that wonderous day where we do our best to usher in Henry Ford’s greatest creation – the weekend – a few hours ahead of schedule by embracing the ethos of the day: Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday.

Life’s too short for work, and nobody’s gonna notice if you hoof it mid-afternoon.

***

T.S. Eliot will with good reason be best known for The Waste Land, but it’s not uncommon to come across writings that hold up Four Quartets, considered as a whole, as the better work. The former was epochal. There is poetry before The Waste Land and poetry after, the full scope and impact being the subject of numerous heavy books. The Waste Land had the advantage of making a larger splash, not having been presaged by The Waste Land as Four Quartets was. I gladly claim agnosticism; “They can both be great,” and such. Being above the fray hides all manner of deficiencies in judgement.

“Burnt Norton” was the first of the Four Quartets, published in 1936 as part of Eliot’s Collected Poems 1909–1935. In the course of production or during the run up to his play, Murder In the Cathedral, a number of lines were discarded on advice of his director, E. Martin Browne. Eliot held Browne in some esteem – the two would continue to collaborate over the following two decades – and so deferred as to what was appropriate for the stage but he held on to the lines. He hated waste. James Matthew Wilson tells us in an informative video about “Burnt Norton” (one of four in a series on Four Quartets to which I’ll be referring to in this post – well worth your viewing time) that he was slow to write, or if not slow, frustratingly contemplative. “Constipated,” Eliot would say. It wasn’t his desire to waste what was painstakingly crafted, so a priest’s struck dialogue from Murder in the Cathedral begins his poem. In the gardens of Burnt Norton, a manor house Eliot once visited with Emily Hale, he says to her,

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.

“Burnt Norton” is in five parts, as was The Waste Land and later the remaining of the Four Quartets. Eliot wrote extensively on Elizabethan drama and its five act structure is certainly being mirrored, but Wilson points out that Eliot was a devout man and this is a religious work so we see in the five parts the structure of mystical prayer. Here I’m paraphrasing, but first setting, then discovery or imagination of setting followed by a contemplation or inward turn. Fourth is a purgation, some sort of repentance or prayer of hope. Finally, we have a reconciliation.

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POETS Day! Anthony Hecht

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© OpenStreetMap-Mitwirkende, openstreetmap.org, CC BY-SA 2.0.

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

I used to work for a wine distributor. I’d carry open bottles around in my shoulder strap cooler and pour a taste for buyers and employees at restaurants and wine shops, take orders, and treat people who bought a lot or used to buy a lot but had slipped recently to lunch. It was fun at first, but after a while it became like any other job. The idea of working “in wine” is great and all, but given time and it loses its luster. You’re moving product. Might as well be shoes.

The bonus was the built in POETS Day. You didn’t need to make a “Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday” type declaration, because if all went as planned, trucks checked in that deliveries were made to all your accounts by one or two Friday afternoon and that was that. The wine buyers had weekend diners to plan for, cases to help party throwers carry to their cars, etc. And, you had whatever dregs of tasting wine was left in the shoulder bag to sip with friends. Long lunches that bled into weekends were the norm. Expected.

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POETS Day! Useful Lines and a Favorite from Pound

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There is a new Inspector Rebus TV adaptation out, at least if you’re in England or Australia. We can’t watch yet, but I have Brit Box, so hope springs. I misread the release date for the new novel. Midnight and Blue, the twenty-fifth book in the series, comes out on October 15th. Not August 15th, as I was anticipating. I am bereft.

I named my dog Rebus, if that gives any idea of how much I enjoy the books. He’s a good dog, considerate but determined when he wants something and not above cutting corners, much like his namesake. Sir Ian Rankin, the series author, responded on Twitter with wishes to a picture of him chewing on his birthday toy one year, and a birthday wish again the following two – prompted, but still. That may be the only interaction I’ve had with a peer.

It was in those books that I first came across the POETS Day concept. Rebus and Siobhan, who’s gone from supporting role to near co-protagonist, were calling it a day one Friday afternoon. POETS Day isn’t an invention of Rankin’s. Apparently, the idea has been around long enough for lost origins. But I first heard is called such by John Rebus. Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday.

I can’t believe I have to wait another two months for that book. Time for some verse.

***

I use a line – overuse, my children might say – from Yeats whenever the opportunity pops up; “O saddest harp in all the world.”

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