Poetics and Ruminations

On Being Disappointed at a Basketball Game

(An Old UConn Poem Resurrected)

The sad arc of a cockeyed shot
and  lights  reflecting  from  one
unbalanced  lad loose upon this
court  are  unnerving  things for
any man to watch. OOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOO There exist
five  unraveled  ends  out there,
twining  about  the brown  locus
of our bouncing  eyes,  lurching
at ragged ends,  stitching  coo-
coo  quilts  with warped crochet
needles. OOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOO A machine wobbles and
the  stands are pincushions be-
neath both buttocks. OOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOO   Not even
crossed fingers help. OOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOO   What if
The world were to  wind in such
fashion? OOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOO And  what if it does?

What  if  that  ball were a brown
world  whirling   along  propelled
by a rheumatic Arm, aimed with
rheumy Eyes,  zagging invoids?

SMALL PRAYER

Chalmers, Hattie, Mary, Murray,
Are you watching from somewhere
While the Wildcats make ‘em worry?
Chalmers, Hattie, Mary, Murray,
Come and watch young Stephen Curry
Swish another through the air!
Chalmers, Hattie, Mary, Murray,
Are you watching from somewhere?

Doctors Dagy, Lilly, Puckett,
Are you smiling from the skies
When he sinks another bucket?
Doctors Dagy, Lilly, Puckett,
Do you think it's only luck? It
Isn't, comes as no surprise!
Doctors Dagy, Lilly, Puckett,
Are you smiling from the skies?

While the laundry staff is pressing
Hands in prayer along with shirts,
Let us offer up a blessing
While the boys are full-court pressing.
All the ghosts say, "Keep ‘em guessing"
From Cop Linker to Dean Burts
(While the laundry staff is pressing
Hands in prayer along with shirts).

R. S. Gwynn

Too bad, Sam, but it was a great game.

Lew

Obama Accused of Atomic Terrorism

Dear Friends,

It is very distressing to discover that Barack Obama is a big supporter of nuclear energy as a solution to Global Warming. This was discussed last evening on Charlie Rose, Channel 13, with the Governor of PA. His campaign is backed by nuclear industrialists.

Nuclear Leaks and Response Tested Obama in Senate — New York Times Feb 3, 2008 ... Another Obama donor, John W. Rowe, chairman of Exelon, is also chairman of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear power industry’s ... [? Is this a quote without quotation marks, or plagiarism?]

This is a terrible danger, as we are in big trouble with aging plants with nuclear waste that is highly toxic and deadly lying around at these sites and no place to dispose of it. Yucca Mountain disposal site is still under construction and way behind schedule and a disaster to begin with as it is built on an earthquake fault. I was shocked to hear that Obama is for the abomination of nuclear energy, a disaster according the Dr. Helen Caldicott and Dr. Rosalie Bertell--and a major cause of the various cancers we see in one out of two Americans who contract some form of cancer in their lifetime.

The plants have always leaked more radiation than they admit, and this is a fact testified to by Dr. Lionel B. Luttinger, doctor of chemistry from Yale who used to be brought in to measure leakage at various facilities. Nuclear plants have witnessed major disasters in our lifetime and are major targets for terrorists.

Research for yourself, Obama's connection to the nuclear industrialists at the New York TImes and other sites. Very few of his young supporters are aware of his connection to the nuclear industrialists.

Daniela Gioseffi, New Jersey

NOW who's sending whom cheap shots, Daniela?

I live in a city that has THREE operating nuclear plants. Lived here since 1965. I'm still alive. Jean is still alive. My kids show no signs of radiation poisoning. Lots of people are still alive in Oswego. My next door neighbor is a security guard at one of the plants, and he keeps an eye on my house for us when we're in Maine.

The fact is -- and it IS a fact -- that Hillary HAS LOST the nomination of the Democratic party for the Presidency, and she will stoop to absolutely ANYTHNG in her desperation. DO YOU KNOW THAT OBAMA IS IN FAVOR OF MORE NUCLEAR PLANTS? WHO HAS DONATED TO HILLARY’S CAMPAIGN? PLEASE STOP SENDING ME CHEAP SHOTS AT OBAMA, Daniela.

Lew Turco, Oswego NY

Good for you Lew!

France for one, Japan for another, and much of Europe have relied on a careful and safe use of nuclear energy (not sloppy and cheap like the Russians). After solar and wind, it is probably the most benign source of power.

That is of course, excluding Hillary's bloviation.

Jerry P., Massachusetts

Jerry,

Would that last term apply to Monica as well as Hillary?

Lew

Hi Lew –

I'm not going to get involved in your presidential malarkey, but do get very tired of these people who go into hysterics whenever nuclear power is mentioned! OK, there are risks - but there are risks or snags in all energy sources. Hopefully, the nuclear industry has learned from the accidents that have occurred. Think of the harm that has been done to generations of coal miners - and to people living down-wind of coal burning industries of all types. Nuclear waste has to be treated and eventually disposed of somewhere but the actual quantity is minuscule compared to the mountains of waste produced by coal mining and coal burning - let alone the effects on the atmosphere. Not just greenhouse gases but also acid rain and other pollutants! What about oil-spills? If all industries worked to the standards (rightly) imposed on the nuclear industry commerce would be crippled. Good to read your spirited response to 'Daniela', whoever she may be! Cheers,

John C., The Lake District, U.K. (a retired science teacher).

John,

When we first moved to Oswego the city could “boast” the largest fossil fuel burning plant in the state. It shifted from coal — which was bad — to oil, which was worse, and more expensive. Our houses (including mine) were covered with black tar smoke deposit. Niagara Mohawk had to pay to have most of them (but not mine, for some reason, though my neighbors’ on both sides) repainted. I covered the house with unpainted shakes so they’d just darken and look more or less natural. But we all, including my children, breathed that noxious stuff until the plant was closed because the atomic plants produced cheaper and cleaner power.

And up in Maine, the State keeps suing fossil-burning plants in the Midwest because they produce all this pollution which lands in Maine’s forests and kills them (and many things in them) with acid rain.

Lew

But, Lew,

Why take such a tone? It was not a cheap shot, but factual evidence of Obama's big corp. interests, no better than Rodham's or McCain's. Obama and Rodham are very close on all the issues, but I fear that Obama cannot win against McCain, and I fear the militarist McCain greatly.

Why be uncivil. I was just sending facts, and sorry that you were on my list serve. I will take you off of it. I've been more kind towards and respectful of you than you've ever been to me in tone and deed, but you don't seem to understand that with your unfriendly tone.

I am greatly educated by a scientific family of physicists of Columbia U and Princeton U. and doctors of chemistry from Yale and world renowned physicians who totally disagree with you on the tremendous dangers and incredibly huge, counter productive costs of nuclear facilities. They are all aging and full of leaking spent fuel that has no place to go and plutonium with a half life of 24,0000 years of deadly radiation. Talk with the ill survivors of Three Mile Island and Chernoble, and my friend, Dr. Rosalie Bertel of Canada, world respected epidimologist [sic; correct spelling: "epidemiologist"] etc. No need to answer. I'll be away in MA. giving readings.

Best wishes,

Daniela

Ah, Daniela,

You have a short memory. My remark about “cheap shots” was quoting YOU when you accused me of taking “cheap shots” at the Clintons a while back with my “A Cyberspace Interview with Bill Clinton” on this blog. You accused me of sending those “cheap shots” via email, BUT IN FACT I ONLY SENT YOU A LINK TO MY BLOG, which you voluntarily opened yourself. And then you sent your “private” comments to everyone on my “Friends” list serve! You’re big on facts, and THOSE ARE FACTS, which I will prove by reprinting your original message and my reply:

“Dear Lew, With all due respect, the best friend is an honest one,

“Please don't send me anymore cheap shots at The Clintons. They are off-the-wall and inaccurate, SHALLOW, glib satire based on TV sound bites. [Etc., etc., at great length.]

“Daniela (New Jersey)”

“Sorry, Daniela,

“But I didn't send you shots of any kind — I sent you a link. You opened the link. The only cheap shots I've seen in this war of words are coming from the Clinton camp.

“Lew”

Allow me to reiterate my last sentence. Would you consider your response to my “Cyberspace Interview” to be “civil”?

And please forgive me for not acknowledging your incredibly superior education to which you have often drawn my attention. However, all your assertions do not offset the fact that MY FAMILY AND I LIVED IN OSWEGO, NY, A CITY WITH THREE ATOMIC POWER PLANTS IN IT, FOR MORE THAN THIRTY YEARS without ill effect on us or upon anyone we know. That accidents can happen is true, but see John’s email above for a rebuttal.

Congratulations on all your recent successes and appearances. I have always admired your literary work, though your polemics in support of Hillary leave much to be desired.

Lew

Lew,

I lived near the very first nuclear research/reactor in the UK in the 50's. The people I went to school with socialised and rock climbed and worked there. I know of no birth defects or mental disorders, apart from rock climbing, amongst any of my friends. Later in Life I fathered four children, all of whom bred normal (what’s normal?) healthy kids. Now I hear the same idiots blithering the same lies about nuclear power. No one rabbets on about coal, why? Because they own the media, and it's vested interests that are selling the story.

Please,

Sogni come se viviate per sempre e viviate come se moriate oggi.

Terry C., Australia

Nightpiece

On the fifth anniversary, 19 March 2008, of “the war in Iraq.”

It is time to be awake. The clock
turns its face into shadow. The pendulum
swings across its arc behind night's flowers.

Elsewhere, blood blooms in the desert. Each chime
falls upon the carpet and disappears like
rain or tears. I dream of those who would love.

It is no time for dreaming. Ratchets and
wheels, the hands of silence move behind my eyes.
I am awake and helpless. The men in

their houses with their women are sleeping.
Their kitchens drowse while a world is turning its
face against the sun. How shall I tell them?

How shall I say so it will be heard, Wake!
It is a new age! Death must have a meaning,
not a slogan! Listen to the gong that

strikes numerals into waste! But the lamp
glows on my table, my chairs seat emptiness,
the streets lead from our doors to other streets

till we are webbed and hunkered among our things.
Elsewhere, blossoms fall and fade like reports from
silence. Age turns into ages. Chimes reach,

like desert storms, from life to death, room to room.

String Theory

Alice L. Teeter, String Theory, Georgia Poetry Society, Box 2184, Columbus GA 31902, March 2008, wrappers, 24 pp., $10.00.To order from the author mail a check made out to Alice Teeter for $12.50 ($10+$2.50S&H) to Alice Teeter, PO Box 766, Pine Lake, GA 30072-0766.

The winner of the 2008 Georgia Poetry Society’s Charles B. Dickson Chapbook Contest is titled String Theory, and its author is Alice L. Teeter of Pine Lake, Georgia. It is an exceedingly unusual and very interesting collection of poems for several reasons, one of which is that the author has clearly developed a personal style of writing that is instantly recognizable as uniquely hers and no one else’s. In that regard, the manuscript stood out over all the others submitted.

It stood out also, however, because, of the four levels of poetry (the typographical, the sonic, the sensory, and the ideational) the third level, that of trope and image, is highly developed and engaging. If I had to describe it, I’d say that it is at base ambiguous — ambiguity is a strong feature of modern poetry — but simultaneously clear and concrete, as in “The Woman Who Ate Anger”:

The woman who ate anger was as big as a house.
She was fat and fatter, dined on anger served up daily
by a husband, children, mother, father,
friend, neighbor, coworker, clerk, self.
She ate it all down.
She grew enormous, moved less and less,
until she couldn't fit through the door,
so she lay on her bed,
a pond of flesh flowing over the sides.
The TV cameras filmed her,
the woman who ate anger
weighed a ton.

One day she clenched her jaw against it — ground a "no"
and with her one hand that still could move
pushed away instead of pulled toward.
It wore her out. She slept.

The next day, her jaw ground shut,
then opened with a retching sound.
Her arm pushed back harder, both hands clenched,
the bed shook with her effort.
Drenched in sweat, she slept.

She dreamed she unzipped her skin and stepped out.

By the end of the year her legs kicked constantly.
Mid way through the next she got up and walked
to the door. They used saws and cut away the door frame.
Months later she left the house and the cameras
filmed her moving with her flesh
hanging like chains from her waist hips ankles and arms.
She walked into the swimming pool and rested,
her fat kept her afloat, high in the water.
All day, every day, she swam back and forth,
soon the distance got shorter.
The TV cameras grew bored and went away.

She swam and started singing.
She sang so loud that the neighbors complained.
She said “Good.” “They should complain,” and “I don’t care.”
She swam and sang and the day came
When she left the pool all wrinkled like a prune,
And still singing, she danced naked across the lawn.

Often the poems reminded me of one of my favorite novelists, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, whose landscapes and locales, characters and incidents are so dreamlike and simultaneously earthen that one might almost be persuaded that Marquez lives on two planes of existence simultaneously. Not that I think String Theory has the mark of Marquez upon it, just that this author, too, lives on two levels in these poems, and both levels are absorbing. “One Variation on a Theme” says and shows so in almost so many words.

Poem after poem here is going to be hard for readers to forget: “10 year old dancing,” or “Poem for Ellen,” about the birth of twins — I won’t quote parts of it because to do so would be to commit an injury upon it; the very strange and beautiful “Nine Womensong”; “Sleeping Giant Love,” the point of which I could not, and would not want to, pin down because it says what it says in just the way it ought to have been said, whatever “it” is.

Here I am going through the collection again and picking out poems I think are wonderful, and I shouldn’t because there isn’t a poor poem, or even a mediocre one, anywhere on these pages. I’m just very pleased String Theory came my way and I am able to guarantee that others will now be able to read and bathe in it too.
_______________________________________________________________________________________

COMMENTS

Hemorrhoids

An anal condition suffered by many people is hemorrhoids. What is such a condition suffered by hesitant people called? —hemmerrhoids.
By seamstresses? — hemmerrhoids.
By people who wish to get your attention? — ahemerrhoids
By drivers of large military-style vehicles? — Hummerrhoids.
By Bill Clinton? — hummerrhoids.
By stand-up comedians? — humorrhoids.
By readers of Greek classics? — Homerrhoids.
By heavy hitters? — homerrhoids.
By church choirs? — hymnerrhoids.
By males only? — himmerrhoids.
By bothsexes? — himorherrhoids.
By carpenters? — hammerrhoids.
By bad actors? — hammierrhoids.
By Hispanics named Jim? — Jaimerrhoids.
By the meek of the earth? — humblerroids.
By launderers? — hamperrhoids.
By sex addicts? — humperrhoids.
By florists? — asterrhoids.
By space debris? — asterrhoids.
By folks who live on an English river? — Humberrhoids.
By depressives? — umberrhoids.
By collectors of fossilized sap? — amberrhoids.
By French electrical experimenters? — Amperehoids.
By baseball officials? — umpirehoids.
By tuba players? — oompahrroids.
By Napoleonic types? — empirehoids.
By lirrle devils? — imperrhoids.
By Germans forever? — immerrhoids.
By megalomaniacs? — empirehoids.
By people who fear shade? — umberrhoids.
By fat people? — amplerrhoids.
By walkers? — amblerrhoids.
By stutterers? — ummerrhoids.
By people who live in Arizona? — Yumarrhoids.
By people who love to eat? — yummierrhoids.
By Red Sox fans? — Yankeerrhoids.
By Chinese? — Yangtserrhoids.
By westerners? — yonderrhoids.
By coveters? — yennerrhoids.
By Central Anericans? — Hondurashoids.
By Japanese car makers? — Hondarrhoids.
By scary movie watches? —horrorrhoids.
By hasty people? — hurrierrhoids.
By people who sing under their breath? — hummerrhoids.
By people who don't catch a name? — whomerrhoids.
By superheroes? — WHAMmerrhoids.
By male rabbis? — whammerrhoids.
By people who cry a lot? — whimperrhoids.
by rovers? — wanderrhoids.

Reviews of the Times

In his review of a book called Take the Cannoli written by Sarah Vowell, Rick Marin says (in The New York Times Book Review for April 9, 2000), “Sarah Vowell ought to be my kind of lady. She’s into Bruce Springsteen, Frank Sinatra and The Godfather ⎯ a rare triple. What’s the problem? Public Radio. Vowell is public radio personified. The essays in Take the Cannoli ⎯ mostly pieces she did for “This American Life” on Public Radio International ⎯ contain everything I find irritating and boring about PRI and National Public Radio. Self-indulgent monologues. Received wisdom passing for irreverence. Cozy smugness.”

I know just exactly what Mr. Marin means. When the classical music goes off and one of those fuzzy country voices comes on to tell a smug little personal history tale (Vowell is “no stranger to the ‘I’ word. Let me put it another way: Spalding Gray talks about himself less.”), I turn off the radio.

In the same issue of the Book Review Adam Kirsch reviews Jersey Rain, a book of “poems” by Robert Pinsky, America’s former extended-term Poet Laureate who ⎯ if Vowell was “Ms. Public Radio” personified ⎯ was Mr. PBS. “The author of a poem called ‘An Explanation of America,’” Kirsch writes, “is now explaining poems to America: he is to be found reading poems on PBS, videotaping them for his Favorite Poem Project, writing a primer on ‘The Sounds of Poetry.’ He has become Yeats’s ‘60-year-old smiling public man,’ almost to the year.”