Wednesday, March 31, 2021

Cry "Havoc!" and Let Slip the Dogs of Joe! - doggerel with a real dog

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Cry “Havoc!” and Let Slip the Dogs of Joe!

 

That’s it. I’m not visiting the White House

Presidential dogs that bite are just too much

(If only Joe kept rabbits, or even a mouse)

I fear they’d find me toothsome to their touch

 

I wish I could attend a poetry reading

Or see Marine One land on the White House lawn

But I don’t want to be the lunch the dogs are eating

Or their contains-real-meat dog chewy-bone

 

I’m not visiting the White House, okay?

(And I haven’t been invited anyway)

Tuesday, March 30, 2021

When Even Donald Trump is Clenching his First - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

When Even Donald Trump is Clenching his Fist

 

When even Donald Trump is clenching his fist

It’s time to strike that posture off your list

Monday, March 29, 2021

Duncan White's Cold Warriors: Writers Who Waged the Literary Cold War - a one-paragraph review


Duncan White’s Cold Warriors: Writers Who Waged the Literary Cold War is an excellent history on levels: English, Soviet, and American literature, history, and individual writers in a scholarly and accessible narrative covering roughly the 70 years of the Communist ascendency. Anyone with an interest, professional or personal, in the times and the personalities will find this a useful and enjoyable read.


The War on Books - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

The War on Books

 

The war on books, codified by Stalin’s functionaries

at the Soviet Writers’ Conference in 1934 and ruthlessly

waged by the secret police for the following fifty years,

was finally coming to an end, and Zhivago’s insurgent

guerrillas were winning.

 

-Duncan White, Cold Warriors:

 Writers Who Waged the Literary Cold war

 

What books will America purge this week -

What childhood adventures, what scholarly works

What entertainments of an idle hour

Will be forbidden to us in this Land of the Free?

 

We pray that nations blessed with liberty

Will smuggle books to us, stories and poems

With innocent ideas that give delight

And in their innocence threaten tyrants

 

What books will America purge this week –

And when did we become afraid of ideas?

Sunday, March 28, 2021

Palm Sunday Well-Sanitized - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Palm Sunday Well-Sanitized

 

There is social distancing in Jerusalem

Mostly among Romans and Greeks and Jews

Who don’t much like each other anyway -

How is this day different from all other days? 1

 

This year there is no parking-lot procession

That’s good; the timing of the hymn in front

Never matches the timing ‘way in back

And the mail-order palms are sanitized

 

What hosannas this season, you may well ask:

Wave the virus and proclaim, “Wear your mask!”

 

 

1 Cf. The Seder

 

 

(This is only a bit of wry humor; good hygiene is always a matter of caritas in protecting others as well as one’s self.)

 

Verse on the Cowling of a Model T Ford - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Verse on the Cowling of a Model T Ford

 

Flapper-sips forever

            No Janes

                        No whisk-brooms

                                    Warm up your dog kennels

                                                And hop with that fire alarm

 

“This is the cat’s particulars, the bee’s knees,”

An owl-flap gushed, “Paper is so middlebrow

We hopper our lines on a motor now

It’s all about the new technologies!

 

“The old ways now stand back to let us pass

The carburetor rhythms our words with air

We write our poems with life, with speed and flair

The beat of the banger is the ultimate gas

 

“We are the apogee of poetry and art

There is no end; there is only our start!

 

“Yippee!”

Saturday, March 27, 2021

Not Quite as Gregor Mendel Observed - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Not Quite as Gregor Mendel Observed

 

Our cars are layered in pollen dust

That each old oak by nature yields

Especially on the poor windshields

Well-fertilized, and as nature must

 

By early summer –

 

Young windshields scampering across the fields

Friday, March 26, 2021

Does Cambridge Have a Comma Too? - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Does Cambridge Have a Comma Too?

 

Oh, Oxford Comma, let all hail to thee

You sorter-out of tidy sequencings

Who suffer not confusion in categories

And marshal your strong words in battle lines

 

Oh, Cambridge, poor Cambridge, you have not

A comma of your own; your sequencings

Were lost among the fens in Hereward’s days -

You might want to go a-fishing for them

 

Oh, sure, Cambridge,

 

You have your arts and poetry and drama

But only Oxford boasts her very own comma

Thursday, March 25, 2021

A Lawnmower, Chlorophyll, Birds, and Love - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

A Lawnmower, Chlorophyll, Birds, and Love

 

“A little place in the country, a dog, a few good books – every Englishman’s dream”

 

-David Niven as Sir Arthur in 55 Days at Peking

 

A lawnmower is a rackety thing

But the garden doesn’t seem to mind at all

This second mowing of the season:

“Just a little trim along the edges”

 

The bees among the flowers and their little pool

Bobbin’ robins up early for their worms

Woodpeckers and finches at the feeder

And young oak leaves showing off their new green

 

Honoring each life as a sister or brother –

Love is much better than shooting each other


Wednesday, March 24, 2021

Soft, Skin-Sensitive Vegan Leather - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Soft, Skin-Sensitive Vegan Leather

 

Is vegan leather

(The grim question must be asked)

Made from real vegans?

Tuesday, March 23, 2021

The Men of the Bible Class Pose for a Photograph on the Steps of the Methodist Church in 1968 - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

The Men of the Bible Class Pose for a Photograph

on the Steps of the Methodist Church in 1968

 

My grandfather once threatened some other old man

With his pocketknife just before the ten o’clock

Maybe it was over a point of theology

That’s surely as exciting as Bible class ever got

 

The Baptist men were the city council

And most of the school’s board of trustees too

But the Methodists somehow had more self-assurance

You can see it in their bearing and their suits

 

They seem to be their fathers in 1898

With railroads and sawmills – great times ahead

Monday, March 22, 2021

Poetry as a Form of Prayer - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Poetry as a Form of Prayer

 

(not an original observation, but let it stand)

 

Poetry is like prayer

A lifetime of study

and a study of life

 

You never get it right

The only miracle

is that you get it at all

Sunday, March 21, 2021

"Mate, There's a Mouse in me Billy Tea!" - weekly column

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

“Mate, There’s a Mouse in me Billy Tea!”

 

Australia is suffering a plague of mice said to be of “biblical proportions” ('You can't escape the smell': mouse plague grows to biblical proportions across eastern Australia | Rural Australia | The Guardian).

 

Presumably the biblical proportions bit refers to the plague, not to any given mouse. 

 

The ten plagues of Egypt were water being turned to blood, and then frogs, lice, flies, sick livestock, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, and then the deaths of the firstborn.

 

No mention of mice, though.

 

Apparently a long drought resulting the many deaths of natural predators has given Australian mice, as in the old adage, lots of play, and play they have, reproducing like, well, mice and infesting homes, shops, cars, restaurants, and crops, causing millions of dollars’ worth of damage.

 

Mice are cute only in Disney cartoons; in reality they, their urine and feces, and the parasites they host transmit lyme disease, the plague, the hantavirus, salmonella, meningitis-inducing bacteria, other lethal diseases, and a catalogue of allergens.

 

Mice are of the order Rodentia (not unlike motivational speakers) and must chew. If they don’t chew they die, and if they do chew (and they must) then you might die. Their biting strength is such that they can chew through electrical wiring, causing shorts that can burn down your house. They can chew through residential gas lines, which also can burn down your house. They chew and infect food in your pantry. They chew through plastic pipes, your car’s wiring harness, wooden walls, and drywall. They might be living in the sofa where your children nap and play and read.

 

When mice chewed into my car’s wiring – the insulation is tasty to them, and useful for nests – I got myself a few barn cats to patrol the area. They keep the mice population away and, unfortunately, enjoy the occasional robin. A pet cat will in the same way provide security inside your home. If in the autumn you see or smell signs of a mouse infestation, just leave the pantry and closet doors open for a few days and nights – Tom will do his job.

 

Sorry, kids, but Jerry and Tuffy need to die. It’s your life or theirs. Like brushing your teeth, doing your homework, eating properly, and receiving an occasional light touch of MeeMaw’s hairbrush, a mouse-free house is good for you.

 

 

-30-

 

 

 

 

Colonial Rule from Low Earth Orbit - poem

 Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Colonial Rule from Low Earth Orbit

 

Telling lies to the young is wrong

 

-Yevtushenko, “Lies”

 

Corporations and nations orbit the earth

Colonial rulers as satellites and drones

Enneagramming through our attic beams

Their mad, malevolent multi-wave streams

 

Ideas not our own – they coil and writhe

As sinister blue lights through days and nights

Device calling silently to device

In unheard hissings of infogoguery

 

We rattle our electronic chains about

And proclaim our freedom

                                                (as we are told)

Saturday, March 20, 2021

I was Hangin' with Miss Marple Last Week - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

I was Hangin' with Miss Marple Last Week


“I think, my dear, we won't talk any more about murder

 during tea.  Such an unpleasant subject.”

 

-4:50 from Paddington

 

I visited Miss Marple this past week

In her little home in St. Mary Mead

Fluffy in her appearance and pink of cheek

Troweling with vehemence another garden weed

 

Kindness itself, she asked me to sit down

On a wooden bench near the hollyhock

A warm soft evening with the bees around

And the hourly chime from the old church clock

 

Tea and scandal at four, soft-scented soap –

 

     And in Pentonville, forlorn of any hope

 

A murderer awaiting the hangman’s rope

Friday, March 19, 2021

Hey, I Really am a Neanderthal! - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Hey, I Really am a Neanderthal!

 

The spit-into-a-cup DNA folks

Advise me that 742 strands

Of vintage Neanderthal DNA

Are roaming loose in the tunnels of my being

 

It’s good to be descended from a fine old family

Maybe that’s why my ideas drag the ground

As I lope along following the science

Live chicken tastes a lot like rattlesnake

 

Why don’t you join me for dinner with the neighbors?

Their brains will go well with hyena blood

Thursday, March 18, 2021

Select All Images with Traffic Lights - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Select All Images with Traffic Lights

 

When the ink on his Gospel had barely dried

Saint Matthew was interrupted by angelic sights

And then to him a Voice from Heaven cried:

“Select all images with traffic lights!”

 

Old William Shakespeare was a poetic bloke

Who wrote his metered verse within the lines

But his editor demanded, with a voice that broke:

“Select all images with highway signs!”

 

So if, dear reader, you wish to have your say -

Forget it; you won’t pass the test anyway

Wednesday, March 17, 2021

Prison - A Song of the Lord in a Foreign Land - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

A Song of the Lord in a Foreign Land

 

“How could we sing a song of the Lord in a foreign land?

 

-Psalm 137

 

By the waters of the common sinks and stinks

They sat and wept, remembering their homes

Upon the razor wire they hung their hopes

          (Let my tongue be silent during roll call)

 

Their captors asked of them throughout the hours

Straight lines to the chow hall, well made-up bunks

On time to their classes and work details

          (Let my tongue be silent during roll call)

 

The lyrics of their songs were written by night

The notes and tones well-tuned to concrete walls

How could they sing songs of the Lord?

                                                                   How not?

          (Let my tongue be silent during roll call)

 

We all are exiles in a foreign land

          (Let our tongues sing praise after roll call)

 

 

After over a year of lockdowns, volunteers were allowed back in Texas prisons on Wednesday, Saint Patrick’s Day, 17 March 2021. Saint Patrick, too, was a prisoner.

Tuesday, March 16, 2021

Grandpa and the Kid - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Grandpa and the Kid

 

Grandpa gives his boy a toy truck

Or better yet a clanking army tank

Or maybe a plastic shovel and pail

Or a real Roy Rogers cowboy hat

 

And the little boy’s hovering mother clucks:

“Now what do you say to Grandpa? Tell me!

Say to Grandpa “Thank you.” We say “Thank you!”

No, don’t just run away; say “Thank you!”

 

[Extended Form for Certain Feasts and Seasons:

 

“Now what do you say to Grandpa? Tell me! Say to Grandpa “Thank you.” We say “Thank you!” No, don’t just run away; say “Thank you!” “Now what do you say to Grandpa? Tell me! Say to Grandpa “Thank you.” We say “Thank you!” No, don’t just run away; say “Thank you!” “Now what do you say to Grandpa? Tell me! Say to Grandpa “Thank you.” We say “Thank you!” No, don’t just run away; say “Thank you!” “Now what do you say to Grandpa? Tell me! Say to Grandpa “Thank you.” We say “Thank you!” No, don’t just run away; say “Thank you!” Amen.]

 

And Grandpa smiles and lights his favorite pipe

(His daughter rolls her disapproving eyes)

She sees tonight’s bath in the sand and grass

But Grandpa sees beyond this time and place

 

His boy builds a road, a fort, a castle, a corral

And Grandpa thanks God for his little pal

Monday, March 15, 2021

Robin Hood and Jacques Derrida - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Robin Hood and Jacques Derrida

 

As the first stars came out above the leaves

Of Merry Sherwood, the lads in peaceful repose

Put away their after-supper mending of gear

And idled over their ale of October brewing

 

Then Robin Hood spoke to Allan-a-Dale:

 

Don’t sing to us of Neo-Post-Colonial White Supremacist Patriarchal People-of-Color Matriarchal LGBTQTY Non-Binary Feminist Chomskian Existentialist (existentialist – how quaint) Hegelian Post-Structuralist Logocentric Sausurian Psychoanalytical Post-Modern Marxist Jungian New Critical Cognitive Scientific Neo-Anarchic Canon-Repudiationist Neo-Informalist Catarrhic De-Constructionism.

 

Sing to us

                                                       a story.

Sunday, March 14, 2021

His Name was Mudd - weekly column

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

His Name was Mudd

 

First, an important scientific, cultural, and civic note: the first hummingbirds have returned and more are arriving. After their incredible flight across the Gulf from Mexico and because of the scarcity of flowers after the ice and snow they need our help. Feeders up!

 

And now: once upon a time there were television reporters who respected the truth and the viewer. A young reader may shake his or her head in disbelief, but it’s true.

 

Last week Roger Mudd, of happy memory, died at 93. The reader can find his biography on the InterGossip, and the young among us can marvel that once upon a time reporting the national news was a highly ethical vocation.

 

Indeed, there are many reasons why the viewership of evening news on the formerly big three networks has decayed, including the reality that no thoughtful young man or woman will waste time on shrill, biased, and ill-mannered poseurs projecting the emotional fashions and groupthink of their eastern undergraduate days. Participants in our national conversation want news professionals who will report the news as best they can without prejudice, ideology, snarks, and incessant self-reference.

 

Early television newsies were old-school, shoe-leather street reporters, some of whom had also been combat reporters. Their editors wanted the news yesterday, of course, with an eye on the hovering deadlines, but they also wanted it right, and so did the reporters themselves. The wrath of the green eyeshade gods would fall upon a reporter who faked a story or sources, or who let his or her personal biases skew the narrative.

 

Among the best of that generation was the professional, thoughtful, dignified, and wryly humorous Roger Mudd.  For Mr. Mudd the news was about the facts as could best be determined, and about the reader and viewer, not about himself.

 

Possibly it was his failure in 1979 to coddle a party-anointed candidate with fulsome praise, and to carry and pet him through the interview with only poofy questions that cost him his well-earned promotion at Famous Name Brand network.

 

Instead of recognizing Mr. Mudd’s excellence the network jumped up to the anchor desk a Fisher-Price Play Reporter who was obsessed with projecting himself instead of getting the facts. His antics and errors and biases, poorly anchored, scuttled the network’s reputation. Trenchcoat-man was also the first to pose all look-at-me look-at-me look-at-me how-brave-I-am outside in the wind and rain during hurricanes.  This stunt became a fashion which seems not to have a needed end.

 

One never wishes anyone harm, but surely it would do no harm if some of the weather reporter-poseurs were hurricane-skidded a block or so on their a(postrophe)s for not having enough sense to come in out of the rain.

 

Roger Mudd never patronized us by indulging in low-prole trick-pone stuff for ratings. He didn’t have to, and he wouldn’t have done so in any event. In his own dignity he respected ours.

 

“Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and make perpetual Light to shine upon him.”

 

-30-

Socrates on the Courthouse Lawn in Liberty, Texas - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Socrates on the Courthouse Lawn in Liberty, Texas

 

“Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.”

 

-attributed to Socrates, but no one knows

 

Imagine if you will old Socrates

On an old wooden bench on the courthouse lawn

Playing checkers with all the other old men

On an old picnic table throughout the day

 

He lifts his old straw hat in the leafy shade

With his old bandana he wipes his old bald head

And sagely asks the old questions of us

And through his dialectic dismantles old cant

 

And that must be why, as the ages pass

They’ve made for him a monument here in the grass

 

 

(While passing through Liberty, Texas I saw on the courthouse lawn a marble slab engraved only with “Socrates”.)

 

Liberty County Courthouse - TexasCourtHouses.com

Liberty, Texas, Bed & Breakfast Hotels (usatoday.com)

Socrates (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Saturday, March 13, 2021

Penguin-Random House Sends me a Survey...poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Penguin-Random House Sends me a Survey

and Then Rules Me Unqualified to Respond


Survey Completed - Thank You / We're sorry.

You do not meet the qualifications

for this survey. We sincerely thank you

and appreciate your time and participation

 

You will be redirected in 3 seconds;

please click here to continue now.

Thursday, March 11, 2021

An Unskilled Rotor-Tiller Tiller of the Soil - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

An Unskilled Rotor-Tiller Tiller of the Soil

 

Plough Monday was by-passed some weeks ago

The Virus of Many Names kept me abed

And then the snow and ice kept me inside

And then – indolence, indolence, okay?

 

But today, oh, today!

 

The morning was fresh and cool and damp and still

I wheeled the tiller into the garden patch

Fresh gasoline, then primed the little bulb

And turned the red plastic lever just so

 

And pulled the cord

And pulled the cord

And pulled the cord

And said bad words

And pulled the cord

And pulled the cord

And pulled the cord

And snarled bad words

And pulled the cord –

 

Pow!

 

For smoke and fire

And noise – hooray!

Then forward the tines

 

The tines at first bounced off the new green grass

I pulled the smoke and noise machine back, back

And held the smoke and noise machine in place

And wrestled it, pinning it to the earth until

 

It bit into the grass, the bright spring grass

And hurled it back, and then some earth, and more

And still more earth, sweet earth, the nourishing earth

Flung up and out and back again, and down

 

And there the earth must rest for a few weeks

Then to be turned again, sweet and warm

To receive the ready seeds of happy new life

And join in the miracle of Creation

 

And in the summer when the soft breezes blow

Zinnias and sunflowers and wild marigolds

Will lift their heads and sing hymns to the sun

And bees and hummingbirds hum the “Amen”

 

And in those days I will speak kind words

To them all, and study rotor-tillers no more

Cavafy's Slight Angle to the Universe - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Cavafy’s Slight Angle to the Universe

 

“…a Greek gentleman in a straw hat, standing absolutely motionless

 at a slight angle to the universe.”

 

-C. S. Forster re C. P. Cavafy, quoted by Daniel Mendelsohn in

C. P. Cavafy: Poems, Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets

 

Maybe Cavafy stands at an angle to the world

The universe presumably built aright

In order serviceable, as Milton says,

All of creation as a liturgy

 

We all stand at an angle to the world

Which wobbles in its orbit more than it ought

We altar servers tripping more than we ought

When we forget the angle of Consecration

 

Oh, yes, Cavafy stands at an angle to the world

And he is right to do so –

                                         and so are we

Wednesday, March 10, 2021

Being an Eloi - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Being an Eloi is Okay,

But Make Sure the Smoke Alarms Have Fresh Batteries

 

Some poets are Eloi, deconstructing this

And disconnecting that in weak free verse

Between the reiki and the pilates

Trying to find an existential voice

 

And other poets are grim Morlocks, almost,

Through muscling chaos into meaning and light

Between the night shift and the morning cup

Trying to build a voice that speaks with strength

 

To shape lack of meaning into meaning

That is neither this nor that, but itself

Tuesday, March 9, 2021

Try to Look Like a Young Republican - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Try to Look Like a Young Republican

 

Whenever a student told me of his night in jail

And that he had to go to court next week

I always suggested that he wear his church suit

Or at least a new white shirt and a tie

 

“Try to look like a young Republican,”

Was my advice

                                       But I got over that

Monday, March 8, 2021

The Bishop Speaks of Lent as Basic Training - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

The Bishop Speaks of Lent as Basic Training

 

“Rise and shine and greet the new day, **** ****s!”

“Roll your socks to look like little p*****s!”

“Byda leff, byda leff, byda leff right leff…!”

“Shoulder-fired, gas-operated, semi-automatic…!”

 

“My gramma was slow but she was old!”

“SIR! I am a cockroach, SIR! Cockroach, SIR!”

“Don’t let your piece fall to the ***-**** deck!”

“Get up! You ain’t got permission to faint today!”

 

“You call this clean!? My ****’s cleaner than that!”

“You don’t **** until I tell you to ****!”

“Step over that *** ***** son-of-a-*****;

I didn’t give no one permission to die!”

 

And the ancient liturgical El chant:

 

“This is my rifle; this is my gun!

This is for fighting; this is for fun!”

 

His Grace speaks of Lent as recruit training -

Maybe, with a nice white wine and the dover sole

If not the soul,

He thought that up in his first-class from Rome

Sunday, March 7, 2021

The Grinches Who Steal Childhood - weekly column

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The Grinches Who Steal Childhood

 

He recoiled from the group-think of many of his fellow writers. “Don’t yell at me,” he said to his peers at one public meeting, where he was heckled for asserting that writers should not be given orders. “But if you must yell, at least don’t do it in unison.”

 

-Pasternak, quoted by Finn and Couvee’ in The Zhivago Affair

 

I have never read anything by Dr. Seuss. The covers look stoopid (as in “stoopid,” not merely “stupid”). And, yes, I will judge a book by its stoopid cover. I don’t care if Horton Hears the World Health Organization or if the Grinch steals Arbor Day; the covers look stoopid. So there.

 

But then, I’ve always thought that the best reading lesson is predicated on a child, a fishing pole, a pond, and an old copy of Howard Pyle’s Robin Hood on a quiet summer afternoon before it’s time to get the cows up for the evening milking.

 

Still, a great many parents whom I know to be good, kind, loving, thoughtful, intelligent, and discerning read Dr. Seuss’ books to their children and the kidlets seem to enjoy the books and have not been persuaded to become ax murderers, arsonists, terrorists, or motivational speakers.

 

And yet the Miz Grundys of the world are becoming shriller in finding evil – perhaps they are only reacting to the evil within their own cold, shriveled hearts and ossified brains – in the most innocent and most needful of childhood joys, good books. From a casual perusal of the newspapers, the InterGossip, and television anyone could list of his or her (not “their;” one man or woman cannot be “their”) own childhood books now faulted or even unavailable for not being comradely enough.

 

Technically this is not censorship, which is practiced by governments. Our national government, grounded in the First Amendment, has almost – almost – always protected our freedom to read the books we want.

 

When on an outing to Barnes & Noble a parent chooses a book for his (the pronoun is gender-neutral) children instead of another book, he is not censoring; he is making wise parental decisions as to what books will be appropriate for his children in their formative years.

 

If, however, any government entity were to forbid the publication of, say, Robin Hood, Little House on the Prairie, The Once and Future King, or Hank the Cowdog, or, more sneakily, bully the publishers into surreptitiously changing bits of the text, that would be censorship.

 

That would be illegal.

 

That would be uncivilized.

 

That would be un-American.

 

Alas for freedom, a functional censorship can be exercised by a mob, even by a mob of the purportedly educated. One infers that most of the censorious are not educated at all, but merely credentialed. There is a difference.

 

Publishers don’t appear to show much courage in the matter, so we will have to. No, no, don’t form mobs and yell at people and burn books – that’s what the credentialed do – simply make good books a part of your budget for your children, and do some comparisons to see if the writer’s original wording has been changed for recent editions.

 

As for those awkward or clumsy or maybe just plain wrong stereotypes or assumptions that date from the past, then this is when the parent enlightens the child with solid teaching about the fallibility of all people in all times.

 

Martin Luther King was not the first to remind us that the arc of history points toward the truth, but his witness enhances the lesson. We do not teach our children about the concepts of the good, the true, and the beautiful (attributed to Plato, but, again, he was not the first) by tossing books into the flames of the Orwellian Memory Hole.

 

Just think of what some future Miz Grundy will find wrong, bad, evil, and un-comradely in the book you're writing for your children.

 

Finally, for the sake of your child’s proper upbringing, don’t forget the fishing pole, the pond, and the quiet summer afternoon.

 

 

Here is a brief list of easily available books about propaganda and censorship:

 

Fahrenheit 401, novel, Ray Bradbury

 

The Book Thief, novel, Markus Zusak

 

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, novel, Mary Ann Shaffer

          and Annie Barrows

 

The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle Over a Forbidden Book,

           non-fiction, Peter Finn and Petra Couvee’

 

Cold Warriors: Writers Who Waged the Literary Cold War, non-fiction,

          Duncan White

 

The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature, non-fiction,

           Elizabeth Kantor

 

When Books Went to War: The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II,

          non-fiction, Molly Guptill Manning

 

 

-30-

 

When We Played Chase with Wind Devils - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

When We Played Chase with Dust Devils

 

Long, long ago dust devils spun across

Our childhood playground where the school used to be

And we played chase with them across the sand

As they whipped up dry earth and long-dead leaves

 

They were a little scary in their speed

The way they funneled and circled around us

Malignant faces that appeared for moments

And disappeared again – surely only dust?

 

I didn’t think they meant us any harm

But looking back just now - I’m not so sure

Saturday, March 6, 2021

A Cold Call from the Hearing-Aid Place - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

A Cold Call from the Hearing-Aid Place

 

A cold call from the hearing-aid place

I heard the young nice lady perfectly