Poetics and Ruminations

Uncle Wesli’s Daily Epitaph for Saturday, September 25th, 2010

 

R.I.P. RICHARD MOORE

September 25, 1927 - November 8, 2009

 

The poet Richard Moore

Wrote verses that were dour,

Yet others he’d indite

Often could be bright.

Now he has lost his spark

And we are in the dark.

Uncle Wesli’s Daily Epitaph for Monday, September 20th, 2010

 

R.I.P. DONALD HALL

September 20, 1928 -

  

He used to rhyme, but then he stopped

And turned to sentences he chopped

Up into lines that could merely pall,

And now he wears one: Donald Hall.

Men's Rights Organization

 

 

Lewis Turco on Facebook:

The N.F.L. allows (pretty, young) female reporters into its locker rooms.

Question: Does the W.N.B.A. allow (handsome, young) male reporters into its locker rooms?

Follow-up: What would happen if it did?

Gwyn McVay reply:

But how many male sports reporters fit both criteria: "handsome" and "young"? Really, does the perceived attractiveness of the reporter matter here? It seems that the key issue is one of gender, not one of fitting subjective definitions of "pretty" or "handsome."

Turco reply:

To judge by the to-do going on in the press today (Tuesday, September 14th, 2010) regarding a "pretty" and "young" female reporter who was "sexually harassed" by (perhaps naked) male athletes (whom, she says, she tried not to notice), it matters a lot. Not to me, in particular, but apparently to Women's Rights organizations.

P. S. Please note that the adjectives "pretty," "handsome," and "young" are in parenthesis because they are subordinate to the adjectives "female" and "male," which are primary and sexes, not "genders." There are no reporters (so far as I know) who have been neutered.

Paul Austin:

If they did, I can picture some WNBA players being just as bad.

Thomas Kerrigan:

If they did, I would consider changing my profession.

Turco reply:

I know you're a poet, Tom, but what's your profession? Not an older one, I hope.

Kerrigan reply:

The oldest and the filthiest, the practice of law.

Turco reply:

[Horrified non-response.]

Austin:

The horror, the horror

 

Kerrigan:

I feel your horror.

 

Turco:

I want you both to stay away from my horror. My horrorscope is shrinking every day. I cannot share what horror I have left.

Kate Mansfield:

So, just to add a strange thought into this...If a (pretty, young) female reporter went into the W.N.B.A locker room and received the same sort of catcalls, would we have the same to-do in the press? I agree with Paul Austin -- I can picture some WNBA players acting the same — some for females, some for males.

I also agree that she is exercising her right to free speech, but if she dresses suggestively, she's going to get comments!  "Harassment"?  Not so sure.

 

Pierre Bennerup:

What lack of good judgment (or perhaps prurient preoccupation) would induce a pretty young woman to enter an N.F.L. locker room? If men will be men, certainly jocks will be jocks. Why would there be any illusion about this?

 

Turco reply:

I don't know. I'll take it up with my Men's Rights organization. Are you a member?

 

Pierre Bennerup:

I would feel more comfortable in a men's wrongs society, mostly related to my politically incorrect, macho-tainted opinion of pretty young reporters stupid enough to enter N.F.L. locker rooms. Did they think they were entering a Catholic confessional?

  

 

Lewis,

Host a Dining for a Cause fundraiser at your local Ninety Nine Restaurant and when your supporters dine at the Ninety Nine on the date of your event, we'll donate 15% of sales (excluding tax/gratuity) back to your organization. It's that easy!

 

Turco reply:

Thank you for your offer, Ninety Nine Restaurant E-Club. Would it be appropriate for my Men’s Rights organization to apply?

 

Turco to Bennerup:

I don't know if Ninety-Nine Restaurants would host a Men's Wrongs Society event. They probably wouldn't host a Men's Rights Society event, either. I doubt that it would be Politically Correct, although Women's Rights Societies obviously are okay.

 

Pierre Bennerup:

I agree.  How about you and me joining together to make a "Two Wrongs Make a Right Society"?  On the other hand, maybe it should be called "Two Lefts Make a Right Society."  The former sounds too righteous and I'm too leftish to belong.

 

Clarinda Harriss:

Is there an erotic sonnet in all this? IF so, please fire it off to me and/or Moira Egan for Hot Sonnets, our upcoming anthology. Who knows — if it's really hot and really good — it could still make it into the edition.

Turco reply:

I have a friend, Wesli Court, who will begin working on it immediately. Okay, here it is:

 

SPORTS HARASSMENT EMBARRASSMENT 2010

After losing to Baltimore the Jets lose again: A Courtwright sonnet

 

By Wesli Court

 

The day when Inez Sainz came marching in

To tackle the Jets’ steamy locker room

And get an interview on her recorder

She billed herself ”the hottest sports reporter

In Mexico.” The players were abloom,

Sweaty and florid, showing a lot of skin.

She tried hard not to notice they had shed

Their shorts and towels — at least that’s what she said.

 

But it was hard to miss each whistle, call,

And all the balls the coaches threw to land

Not far from where she stood. Then quarterback

Mark Sanchez arrived; he took up the slack

And handled her like a pro. She played the hand

She had been dealt, but swore she’d never crawl.

Moira Egan:

Love this, Lew. And we watched here in Rome as half-time talk even covered the lovely Mexican reporter. In fact it's all over the Italian news. Indeed.

Within the next couple of days, we will be sending out some Hot Sonnets news. Hold tight! But don't get into too much trouble.

  

Clarinda Harriss:

Hoo hah!! You nailed it, Wes! You took the words right out of my mouth, Moira!!  Lew, I'm so glad I took your advice to look at Facebook today. Salivacious, sez I, wishing that that were actually a word. Thank you!  Best time I've had in front of the teenyweeny screen in ages. Warmest (hottest?) regards!

 

Jack Foley:

Might this be sexual harassment in shorts?

Wesli Court:

Yes, but not short subjects.

 

Gwyn McVay:

If a reporter whose social gender role is visually indeterminate (as, in this hypothetical case, is that person's biological sex) enters a locker room, does that person still get catcalled for being there?

 

Turco reply:

Good question! Hypothetically speaking, I don't know. Maybe such journalists should enter locker rooms disguised as neutered mascots of some sort. It's miss-steerious to me.

Clarinda Harriss:

Here's what you did for me this AM—mused me to write what may serve as my part of the front matter for Moira's and my Hot Sonnets anthology to which you have contributed so well. Thanks, very much,

Your fan.

P.S. Line. 2: "hold" or "wield"?

 
MY DEAR OLD SONNET 
 
My dear old Sonnet, mother of my muse, 
how can so small a creature hold such power? 
You nag me: “Tidy up! Waste not! It’s now or 
never, just get it done! So what’s to lose? 
A dozen lines plus two, some rhymes, in booze- 
talk that amounts to half a pint. An hour 
or less. Try singing an octave in the shower! 
(Of course, be careful of the words you choose.)” 
 
And yet I know this sawed-off biddy loves me. 
Loves me as much when I’m running hot and wild 
and wicked as when my breathing’s measured, mild. 
She doesn’t look askance when I talk dirty 
and loves the men who say they like it. She 
knows without routine I can’t be free.

Court reply:

Thank you. I'd go with "wield," I think.

Harriss:

Thanks from me to the
Master.  Wield it is!

"Dropping, Dropping,

 

     dropping, dropping, / Hear the pennies fall, / Every one for Jesus, / He will get them all.” We used to sing this song in the Sunday school of the church in Meriden, Connecticut, where my father was minister for seventeen years in the ‘forties and early ‘fifties of the twentieth century. I got to thinking of it when, in late July of 2010 I received a book in the mail that I hadn’t ordered. I opened the package while I was at the post office in Dresden, Maine, where I have a mailbox. I stared at the cover, opened it to see if it were inscribed because I do often receive books from friends and other writers as gifts, but I didn’t know the author of this one, Dave Hunt, and the book wasn’t signed, nor was there a review slip enclosed. I couldn’t imagine why Mr. Hunt had sent it to me because it was a religious book and I haven’t had anything to do with religion in decades, nor had I written on the subject, except that in 2009 I had published a book of history — written almost forty years before it appeared in print — titled Satan’s Scourge: A Narrative of the Age of Witchcraft in England and New England 1580-1697. Perhaps, I thought, that was it, but I hadn’t really dealt with the subject of religion per se in that book. 

    I thought that must be it, though. I recalled that when my book came out I had been interviewed by Deirdre Fleming in the Portland Sunday Telegram and I had made a few remarks there — one passage in particular — that might have caused someone to send me this book. I had said, “That was the age when the system in America and in the world, really, was shifting from what we consider sympathetic magic to science, as for instance the shift from astrology to astronomy. It's a fascinating period. This changeover from magic to science is what the Salem witch-hunt was all about. It was the last big clash between science and sympathetic magic.” 

    Ms. Fleming had asked me then, “What can we learn from that period?” I had replied, “There are lots of things we can learn — for instance, the way that witches could be saved in New England in the 17th century was if they confessed to being witches. If you read the whole book, all the accused witches who weren’t hanged in Salem confessed to being witches, and of course, they weren't witches. But some refused to confess, and they weren't witches either. They were hanged. That should tell us something about the ethics of torture. You also learn something about belief and the difference between belief and reality.” 

    “Are those things relevant today?” Ms. Fleming had asked. I replied, “We had a big witch hunt while I was in the Navy in the 1950s — it was called McCarthyism. That was a witch hunt. It is the same thing, exactly. You can learn a lot about human nature. We do repeat history. We're doomed to repeat. We never seem to learn. And there are so many mysterious things that no human being is ever probably going to get to the bottom of, such as “black holes” and “the big bang.” Well, if people have open minds, perhaps they can get their minds around such things, and then believe them. 

    “But believing them is just taking them on faith,” I continued. “Some people take it on faith that there was an initial explosion that created the universe. Other people say God created it, but how do they know that? They take it on faith. The big question is, if God created the universe, who created God? And if there was an initial “big bang,” what came before the big bang? One of these two things is based on science, and the other is based on religion, but both of them are totally mysterious, and people believe in both.” 

    When I got home from the post office I opened the book and read the preface, which was as much of the book as I intended to read. Then I sat down and wrote the author this letter. “Dear Mr. Hunt,” I said,

     “Thank you for sending me a copy of your book titled Cosmos, Creator, and Human Destiny. In your ‘Preface’ you say, ‘Anyone who sets out with an honest heart, an inquiring mind, and a sincere desire to find answers to the most important questions one can face in life will recognize a significant few that must be given priority. Does God exist? What is the origin of the universe and of the life found in such abundance on our tiny planet? What is life and what is its purpose?’ 

    “As the son of a Baptist minister I could hardly have failed to run full tilt into these questions as soon as I was taught to speak. But by the time I was twelve years of age I realized that there are some questions that are incapable of being answered by other human beings, no matter how smart they may be. Today I read this in the newspaper, which is the only reasonable response to such books as yours,” and I pasted into the letter a “Peanuts” cartoon I had recently run across. In the first panel Snoopy is sitting beside his full dish and looking at its contents. He says, “Suppertime…is this all there is to my life?” In the second panel he looks away and says, “Is this the sum-total of my existence? Do I really just live to eat? Is that all I’m really good for?” In the third panel he looks back at his dish and says nothing. In the fourth panel he gets up, bends his head to eat and says, “I must think about that some day.” 

    And then I began to think about the remark I had made in my letter about having lost my father’s faith by the time I was twelve years old and I asked myself, “ Is that true? And when did that process begin?” That’s when I remembered the Sunday school song. 

    In Meriden in those days there was a big department store down on Colony Street called Upham’s. (Parenthetically, now that I think of it, Charles W. Upham wrote a famous book titled Salem Witchcraft.) I loved to go to Upham’s with my mother because when she paid the clerk her money for a purchased item the clerk took a little iron box and stuck the money in it. Then she put the box into a compartment on a sort of trolley and pushed a button. The trolley took off on a railway of sorts — not a vacuum system of the type to be found at drive-in windows of banks these days. It clattered up and away, along the track that led from the counter up to an office that overlooked the store where a cashier sat behind a glass window where she could see everything that went on below her. She took out the money and the invoice, made change, and sent the trolley on its way back to the clerk and my mother. 

    That little railway system made a big impression on me. When we sang about the pennies dropping into the collection basket I imagined, when I was five or six years old, that some such system must be in play so that my Sunday school teacher could get the money to Jesus where he sat up in Heaven carefully watching what we did down here, for the song assured us that Jesus would get all the pennies. I took it on faith that it must be true. 

    But of course it wasn’t, which I finally figured out, doubtless by the time the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny, and Santa Claus had also gone by the boards. It was disillusioning to realize that my beloved father and my missionary mother could continue to believe such stories into adulthood and even into old age. I devoutly wished that such stories could be true. Perhaps that’s why I became a writer, for I understood, finally, that although those fantasies might not be true in the real world, they could be possible, if but briefly, in the magic world of the imagination, although ultimately that world must not be confused with the real world where sane people live.

 

 Satan’s Scourge: A Narrative of the Age of Witchcraft in England and New England 1580-1694 by Lewis Turco, www.StarCloudPress.com, 2009, ISBN 978-1-932827, jacketed cloth, $54.95; ISBN 978-1-932842-26-5; trade paperback, $39.95, 808 pages. ORDER FROM BARNES & NOBLE / ORDER FROM AMAZON.    

Sad to think of the infinite self-deception religion involves. Freud:

"[Religion] is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life."

Jack

 

As Wesli wrote in "The Universal Leaf,”

 

"Our hopes and dreams must come at last to grief

If they're not wrecked already, partway through

This span of years. We're well aware that worse

Must come to worst. We cower beneath this leaf

Which we turn over to find what we always knew:

No one cares. Not even the universe."

 

Cheers, anyway!

Mir

Uncle Wesli’s Daily Epitaph for Monday, September 13th, 2010

 

R.I.P. JOHN MALCOLM BRINNIN

September 13, 1916 – June 25, 1998

 

Although he’d shown a lot of promise,

His claim to fame is Dylan Thomas

In America where John Brinnin

Washed the Welshman’s dirty linen.

Here are Wesli Court's sestina "The Day We Bombed the Moon (and Barack Obama Won the Nobel Peace Prize)" and his self-interview on TheNervousBreakdown.com: http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/wcourt/2010/09/the-day-we-bombed-the-moon-and-barack-obama-won-the-nobel-peace-prize-a-sestina/

http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/wcourt/2010/09/wesli-court-the-tnb-self-interview/

Uncle Wesli’s Daily Epitaph for Thursday, September 9th, 2010

 

R.I.P. RALPH HODGSON

September 9, 1871 – November 3, 1962

 

He wrote a modern Mother Goose

Sort of poem, very loose

Of metre, with a heavy beat

That even Death cannot defeat.

Uncle Wesli’s Daily Epitaph for Tuesday, September 7th, 2010

 

R.I.P. ELINOR WYLIE

September 7, 1885 – December 16, 1928

 

Here lies Elinor Wylie —

Used to the life of Riley,

She wrote about “Wild Peaches”

But not what the wild life teaches.

Uncle Wesli’s Daily Epitaph for Monday, September 6th, 2010

 

R.I.P. MORTON MARCUS

September 6, 1936 – October 28, 2009

 

Here lies the offbeat Dreamer

Whose beard wound round his nose.

His rage, created by the world,

Was vented on a rose.