Sunday, May 3, 2020
Most of Our Penguins are Scotch-Taped Now - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Civilization is sometimes held together
By the stern parsimony of Scotch Tape™
Which locks tattered covers and pages in bond
To await opening by old hands or young
Young is better; for we were young, and too
The world was young, and is, as Camelot
Sends forth each day noble adventures, ideas 1
In battle luminous against chaos and evil
Civilization is always held together
When old and young face the dragon in unity
1 An allusion to Tennyson’s Idylls of the King
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Most of Our Penguins are Scotch-Taped Now
Civilization is sometimes held together
By the stern parsimony of Scotch Tape™
Which locks tattered covers and pages in bond
To await opening by old hands or young
Young is better; for we were young, and too
The world was young, and is, as Camelot
Sends forth each day noble adventures, ideas 1
In battle luminous against chaos and evil
Civilization is always held together
When old and young face the dragon in unity
1 An allusion to Tennyson’s Idylls of the King
Saturday, May 2, 2020
Where's MeeMaw? - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
She always gave her grandchildren kisses for luck
After their visits when she picked them up from school
After spoiling them with candy and sody-pop
Over the protests of her diet-conscious daughter
She always gave her daughter kisses for luck
“My house, my rules – I get to treat ‘em!”
“Oh, MeeMaw, you’ll turn them into rotten kids!”
“And you can feed them twigs and leaves at home!”
She always gave her grandchildren kisses for luck –
Her sheeted corpse was shoved into a rented truck
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/license-for-new-york-funeral-home-where-dozens-of-bodies-were-removed-from-trucks-has-been-suspended/ar-BB13ulp5
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Where’s MeeMaw?
“A nameless number on a list that was afterwards mislaid.”
-Yevgrav in Doctor Zhivago
She always gave her grandchildren kisses for luck
After their visits when she picked them up from school
After spoiling them with candy and sody-pop
Over the protests of her diet-conscious daughter
She always gave her daughter kisses for luck
“My house, my rules – I get to treat ‘em!”
“Oh, MeeMaw, you’ll turn them into rotten kids!”
“And you can feed them twigs and leaves at home!”
She always gave her grandchildren kisses for luck –
Her sheeted corpse was shoved into a rented truck
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/license-for-new-york-funeral-home-where-dozens-of-bodies-were-removed-from-trucks-has-been-suspended/ar-BB13ulp5
Friday, May 1, 2020
The Last Supper as Takeout - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
His Grace the Bishop has given his blessing
To a drive-through Eucharist on Saturday night
From six to six-thirty in the parking lot
While maintaining distance and decorum
Maybe
With creamers, sweeteners, paper napkins, plastic straws,
Salt, pepper, sporks, and our super-secret sauce
In a paper sack bearing as a motto
A sentiment left over from last year’s Earth Day
Well, I will go and take and eat, not understand –
A little humility is always in order
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The Last Supper as Takeout
The command, after all, was Take, eat; not Take, understand.
-C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm
His Grace the Bishop has given his blessing
To a drive-through Eucharist on Saturday night
From six to six-thirty in the parking lot
While maintaining distance and decorum
Maybe
With creamers, sweeteners, paper napkins, plastic straws,
Salt, pepper, sporks, and our super-secret sauce
In a paper sack bearing as a motto
A sentiment left over from last year’s Earth Day
Well, I will go and take and eat, not understand –
A little humility is always in order
Thursday, April 30, 2020
The Poetics of Tomato Plants - weekly column
Lawrence (Mack) Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
30 April 2020
The enforced isolation of The Virus-Time has led y’r ‘umble scrivener to plant a garden and to read more poetry
The garden is mostly unplanned, for I meant to be happy with a few sunflowers and some tomato plants and my existing apple trees. However, a young friend who haunts the big-box stores at the ends of seasons brought me tomato seedlings, marigold seedlings, squash seedlings, nasturtiums (nasturtia?), lavender and other mints, zinnia seeds, a little mulberry tree, three little lemon trees, and two little apple trees.
With the lockdown I did not find sunflower seeds, and so scouted out old packets, including one I bought in South Dakota years ago, and while the germination rate was low, I have about twenty young plants who turn their heads to the rising sun each dawn. Biologists tell us that heliotropes don’t really choose to greet the sun; their DNA is programmed to blah, blah, blah. Poor biologists – they seldom perceive the magic.
Some of the squash failed, and I replaced them with eggplant I found at Darrell and Kathy’s The Barn in Kirbyville while buying a sack of chicken scratch for the birds and squirrels.
Curiously, I don’t care for about half these fruits and vegetables, feeling that if God wanted us to be vegetarians He would not have invented and blessed Jenny’s Fried Chicken and Sonic’s Breakfast Toaster. But tomatoes and such are easy and rather fun to grow, and are aesthetically pleasing in appearance.
I was raised on the farm, but this is about as agricultural as I want to get now, although I am a Life Member of the FFA courtesy of Jody Folk and Kirbyville High School. The FFA is a great program for young people, and teaches mature self-governance and mutual respect as a requisite for any activity, including raising cattle and crops.
After a few hours of dragging hoses these dry spring days, the cool, breezy late afternoons are perfect for lingering outside with a refreshing beverage and some of the books we perused only lightly and under duress in school.
Poetry was culturally significant in all social and economic classes in England, Europe, Canada, and the U.S.A. until after the First World War, whose death and desolation led to a cultural collapse that remains with us (https://www.history.com/news/how-world-war-i-changed-literature). The works of John Milton, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley (unhappy name), William Wordsworth, John Keats, Rudyard Kipling and thousands of published, unpublished, and parlour-poets celebrated all the challenges, sorrows, and victories of life. Every newspaper once published poetry, and all school functions featured original student work. If it was often clunky and derivative, well, practice is how we make good work in the end.
My uncle, Bob Holmes of happy memory, a farmer and dairyman, over coffee recited from memory John Milton’s “On His Blindness.” I’m not sure he finished high school, but he remembered this favorite from his boyhood.
Despite the post-war infestation of free verse (which is not verse at all), such poets as Robert Frost, James Weldon Johnson (“Lift Every Voice and Sing,” George McKay Brown, Randall Jarrell, Langston Hughes, Wendell Berry, Claude McKay (his “If We Must Die” was quoted by Churchill in defiance of the Nazis), and so many others, in spite of fashionable despair continued to write poetry that addressed and celebrated the human condition meaningfully and skillfully.
In 1945 Field Marshal Wavell (https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/wavell), who in 1915 lost an eye (but never his true vision) at Ypres, published an anthology of poems that had been important to him in his military career. Despite its unfortunate title, Other Men’s Flowers (a quote from Montaigne), this little book demonstrates the strength and skill and muscularity of real poetry as opposed to the weak, self-pitying, I-I-I-Me-Me-Poor-Me free verse drivel now occupying shelf-space that could be used for something more substantial – Mickey Mouse funny books come to mind.
Those who teach at home (there are no such constructs, either as nouns or verbs, as “home school” or, worse, “homeschool”) or who work within more formal school situations, could hardly do better than to introduce a boy or girl to Wavell’s anthology from perhaps the fifth grade.
Poetry, like farming and the family, is part of the fertile soil of civilization, not an accessory.
Besides, the bees and hummingbirds will enjoy hearing you read to them.
That’s the latest buzz, anyway.
Mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
30 April 2020
The Poetics of Tomato Plants
The enforced isolation of The Virus-Time has led y’r ‘umble scrivener to plant a garden and to read more poetry
The garden is mostly unplanned, for I meant to be happy with a few sunflowers and some tomato plants and my existing apple trees. However, a young friend who haunts the big-box stores at the ends of seasons brought me tomato seedlings, marigold seedlings, squash seedlings, nasturtiums (nasturtia?), lavender and other mints, zinnia seeds, a little mulberry tree, three little lemon trees, and two little apple trees.
With the lockdown I did not find sunflower seeds, and so scouted out old packets, including one I bought in South Dakota years ago, and while the germination rate was low, I have about twenty young plants who turn their heads to the rising sun each dawn. Biologists tell us that heliotropes don’t really choose to greet the sun; their DNA is programmed to blah, blah, blah. Poor biologists – they seldom perceive the magic.
Some of the squash failed, and I replaced them with eggplant I found at Darrell and Kathy’s The Barn in Kirbyville while buying a sack of chicken scratch for the birds and squirrels.
Curiously, I don’t care for about half these fruits and vegetables, feeling that if God wanted us to be vegetarians He would not have invented and blessed Jenny’s Fried Chicken and Sonic’s Breakfast Toaster. But tomatoes and such are easy and rather fun to grow, and are aesthetically pleasing in appearance.
I was raised on the farm, but this is about as agricultural as I want to get now, although I am a Life Member of the FFA courtesy of Jody Folk and Kirbyville High School. The FFA is a great program for young people, and teaches mature self-governance and mutual respect as a requisite for any activity, including raising cattle and crops.
After a few hours of dragging hoses these dry spring days, the cool, breezy late afternoons are perfect for lingering outside with a refreshing beverage and some of the books we perused only lightly and under duress in school.
Poetry was culturally significant in all social and economic classes in England, Europe, Canada, and the U.S.A. until after the First World War, whose death and desolation led to a cultural collapse that remains with us (https://www.history.com/news/how-world-war-i-changed-literature). The works of John Milton, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley (unhappy name), William Wordsworth, John Keats, Rudyard Kipling and thousands of published, unpublished, and parlour-poets celebrated all the challenges, sorrows, and victories of life. Every newspaper once published poetry, and all school functions featured original student work. If it was often clunky and derivative, well, practice is how we make good work in the end.
My uncle, Bob Holmes of happy memory, a farmer and dairyman, over coffee recited from memory John Milton’s “On His Blindness.” I’m not sure he finished high school, but he remembered this favorite from his boyhood.
Despite the post-war infestation of free verse (which is not verse at all), such poets as Robert Frost, James Weldon Johnson (“Lift Every Voice and Sing,” George McKay Brown, Randall Jarrell, Langston Hughes, Wendell Berry, Claude McKay (his “If We Must Die” was quoted by Churchill in defiance of the Nazis), and so many others, in spite of fashionable despair continued to write poetry that addressed and celebrated the human condition meaningfully and skillfully.
In 1945 Field Marshal Wavell (https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/wavell), who in 1915 lost an eye (but never his true vision) at Ypres, published an anthology of poems that had been important to him in his military career. Despite its unfortunate title, Other Men’s Flowers (a quote from Montaigne), this little book demonstrates the strength and skill and muscularity of real poetry as opposed to the weak, self-pitying, I-I-I-Me-Me-Poor-Me free verse drivel now occupying shelf-space that could be used for something more substantial – Mickey Mouse funny books come to mind.
Those who teach at home (there are no such constructs, either as nouns or verbs, as “home school” or, worse, “homeschool”) or who work within more formal school situations, could hardly do better than to introduce a boy or girl to Wavell’s anthology from perhaps the fifth grade.
Poetry, like farming and the family, is part of the fertile soil of civilization, not an accessory.
Besides, the bees and hummingbirds will enjoy hearing you read to them.
That’s the latest buzz, anyway.
-30-
I am not one of the Masses - rhyming couplet
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Get off your lazy editorial *sses -
Respect all readers; we are not “the Masses”
“As Popular in Her Day as J.K. Rowling, Gene Stratton-Porter Wrote to the Masses About America's Fading Natural Beauty” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/books/
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
I am not one of the Masses
To Smithsonian Magazine
Get off your lazy editorial *sses -
Respect all readers; we are not “the Masses”
“As Popular in Her Day as J.K. Rowling, Gene Stratton-Porter Wrote to the Masses About America's Fading Natural Beauty” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/books/
Wednesday, April 29, 2020
On Reading Thomas Merton: I Didn't Know an Eyebrow was Involved - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
To read Thomas Merton, we are scold-told
Is middlebrow spirituality 1
I never knew that a brow was involved
Because I see the barber every week
But I like Father Louis (bourgeois or not)
And his brave travelogues of life and soul
And that he missed his pen and pocketknife
When he surrendered all through his holy vows
So, yeah, that man is flawed, as flawed as can be
And thus flawed Thomas is just the man for me
1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Storey_Mountain
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
On Reading Thomas Merton:
I Didn’t Know an Eyebrow was Involved
To read Thomas Merton, we are scold-told
Is middlebrow spirituality 1
I never knew that a brow was involved
Because I see the barber every week
But I like Father Louis (bourgeois or not)
And his brave travelogues of life and soul
And that he missed his pen and pocketknife
When he surrendered all through his holy vows
So, yeah, that man is flawed, as flawed as can be
And thus flawed Thomas is just the man for me
1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Storey_Mountain
Tuesday, April 28, 2020
Plautus and Tarzan - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The plays of Plautus all repose in peace
Next to my boyhood’s tattered Tarzan books
University classes and summer days
I suppose Mercury brought his own vines
Kafka is up against Rilke and Parzival
They seem to get along with each other
Cavafy and Plath talk out their issues
As do Hammarskjold and Dostoyevsky
I mean to organize my books someday
But Thoreau suggests I go fishing instead
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Plautus and Tarzan
The plays of Plautus all repose in peace
Next to my boyhood’s tattered Tarzan books
University classes and summer days
I suppose Mercury brought his own vines
Kafka is up against Rilke and Parzival
They seem to get along with each other
Cavafy and Plath talk out their issues
As do Hammarskjold and Dostoyevsky
I mean to organize my books someday
But Thoreau suggests I go fishing instead
Monday, April 27, 2020
Zoomstreaming - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
All my co-workers are kind and just and fun
Consistent in their professionalism
Both in the office and on the loading dock
And now on screens among the Zoom-ery
I miss so much our daily merriment
Our morning hellos, how was your weekend
The secular liturgy of each day’s work
The rhythm of appointments, files, and ‘phones
Zooming with office-pals is Work’s new way -
But I don’t want them in my apartment all day!
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Zoomstreaming
All my co-workers are kind and just and fun
Consistent in their professionalism
Both in the office and on the loading dock
And now on screens among the Zoom-ery
I miss so much our daily merriment
Our morning hellos, how was your weekend
The secular liturgy of each day’s work
The rhythm of appointments, files, and ‘phones
Zooming with office-pals is Work’s new way -
But I don’t want them in my apartment all day!
Sunday, April 26, 2020
The President's Haircut - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Dear Governor Abbott:
I can’t help but notice that your hair is trim
As is your little buddy’s, Dannie Scott
I want to be as neat as you and him
But as for getting a haircut, I may not
Because you have closed all the hair-care shops
I can’t visit a barber, not any, not one -
I would be arrested by one of your cops
(Just whisper to me where you get your hair done)
But…
Whatever hair-envy I might harbor
Please don’t refer me to the President’s barber!
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The President’s Haircut
Dear Governor Abbott:
I can’t help but notice that your hair is trim
As is your little buddy’s, Dannie Scott
I want to be as neat as you and him
But as for getting a haircut, I may not
Because you have closed all the hair-care shops
I can’t visit a barber, not any, not one -
I would be arrested by one of your cops
(Just whisper to me where you get your hair done)
But…
Whatever hair-envy I might harbor
Please don’t refer me to the President’s barber!
Saturday, April 25, 2020
This is not a (sniff) Teabag - rhyming couplet
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Well, whaddaya know, and whaddaya say
It’s not a teabag; it’s a swank sachet!
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
This is not a (sniff) Teabag
Per Harney & Sons
Well, whaddaya know, and whaddaya say
It’s not a teabag; it’s a swank sachet!
Friday, April 24, 2020
Harris County Judge Lena Hidalgo Sued over Face Mask Requirement - poem (of a sort)
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
But the Hidalgo
who rules over us
So speaking of
masks – where is our Zorro?
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Harris County Judge Lena Hidalgo Sued over
Face Mask Requirement
“Who was that masked man?”
-various minor characters
in The Lone Ranger
Once upon a time
masks were forbidden
Those fashion
statements of outlaws and Klan
Whose faces and crimes
they kept hidden
Behind funny facewear,
like Batman
As if we were
Spanish colonials
Dismisses our
rights as superfluous
Written off by
her edicts baronial
To tell the
Alcalde – “Masks no more-oh!”
(Relax,
Ms. Grundy, it’s just a bit of fun with layered allusions to Texas history; I
have my mask.)
Thursday, April 23, 2020
The Shifting Vocabulary of Whatever We're Calling That Disease This Week - weekly column
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
23 April 2020
In the last few months all the peoples of the earth have been impacted by and are dealing with a disease that has killed thousands of our fellow humans – even a few supercilious Darwinians – and we don’t even agree on what to label it. Consider these many documented terms crowding up and down the steps of that Babylonian ziggurat:
Wuhan virus
Wuhan flu
Chinese virus
CCP Virus
Bat virus
Bat flu
Batflu
Corona virus
Coronavirus
CoronaVirus
Covid-19
COVID-19
COVID19
Covid19
SARS-CoV-2
C-19
C19
If we’re going to work together (or, rather, #together apart) in order to survive a certain disease, we should agree on what that disease is.
Another problem is the fuzzy filler-language of tired and inappropriate metaphors and allusions that block effective communications. Consider this limited sampling:
Wartime president
War footing
Our generation’s Pearl Harbor
Our generation’s Normandy
Our generation’s 9/11
War
Like World War II
In the trenches
Front lines
Frontlines
Silent enemy but an enemy
Instead of saying what an issue is, the lazy writer or speaker pulls from a lifetime of hand-me-down puffery to puff further nonsense. Consider the typical graduation speech (which we are unlikely to hear this year because of a disease, not because of a Nazi invasion) with its keys that are forever opening dreams or roads or rainbows or love, never anything, such a lock, that a key in fact opens.
Metaphorical language certainly has its purposes. One does not imagine, say, John Wayne as Marshal Cogburn calling out to Lucky Ned Pepper, “I disapprove of your inappropriate response to my notification of your lawful arrest predicated upon a federal warrant, you wretched man, and propose to counter your further criminal actions with all the power granted to me in my office under the sanctions of the law!” as an effective challenge.
When we speak of contracts, business, science, research, and health care (NOT “healthcare”), though, metaphors and careless language compromise effective communication and thus our purposes. Using language accurately is essential in most of life’s transactions, and it is certainly essential now.
Mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
23 April 2020
The Shifting Vocabulary of Whatever We’re Calling That Disease This Week
In the last few months all the peoples of the earth have been impacted by and are dealing with a disease that has killed thousands of our fellow humans – even a few supercilious Darwinians – and we don’t even agree on what to label it. Consider these many documented terms crowding up and down the steps of that Babylonian ziggurat:
Wuhan virus
Wuhan flu
Chinese virus
CCP Virus
Bat virus
Bat flu
Batflu
Corona virus
Coronavirus
CoronaVirus
Covid-19
COVID-19
COVID19
Covid19
SARS-CoV-2
C-19
C19
If we’re going to work together (or, rather, #together apart) in order to survive a certain disease, we should agree on what that disease is.
Another problem is the fuzzy filler-language of tired and inappropriate metaphors and allusions that block effective communications. Consider this limited sampling:
Wartime president
War footing
Our generation’s Pearl Harbor
Our generation’s Normandy
Our generation’s 9/11
War
Like World War II
In the trenches
Front lines
Frontlines
Silent enemy but an enemy
Instead of saying what an issue is, the lazy writer or speaker pulls from a lifetime of hand-me-down puffery to puff further nonsense. Consider the typical graduation speech (which we are unlikely to hear this year because of a disease, not because of a Nazi invasion) with its keys that are forever opening dreams or roads or rainbows or love, never anything, such a lock, that a key in fact opens.
Metaphorical language certainly has its purposes. One does not imagine, say, John Wayne as Marshal Cogburn calling out to Lucky Ned Pepper, “I disapprove of your inappropriate response to my notification of your lawful arrest predicated upon a federal warrant, you wretched man, and propose to counter your further criminal actions with all the power granted to me in my office under the sanctions of the law!” as an effective challenge.
When we speak of contracts, business, science, research, and health care (NOT “healthcare”), though, metaphors and careless language compromise effective communication and thus our purposes. Using language accurately is essential in most of life’s transactions, and it is certainly essential now.
-30-
Dragging Hoses on St. George's Day - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Drag those hoses when the weather is dry
April’s grass is paling, and oak leaves wither
All the new plantings cry for a drink of water
And the rains of winter have now retired
Drag those hoses when the morning is dry
Everyone wants some sort of validation:
A job, encouragement, a little support
For now, we just have to get on with life
Drag those hoses when the evening is dry
And pray for sweet rain from the reluctant sky
(Or dragon hoses - this is St. George's Day!)
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Dragging Hoses
Drag those hoses when the weather is dry
April’s grass is paling, and oak leaves wither
All the new plantings cry for a drink of water
And the rains of winter have now retired
Drag those hoses when the morning is dry
Everyone wants some sort of validation:
A job, encouragement, a little support
For now, we just have to get on with life
Drag those hoses when the evening is dry
And pray for sweet rain from the reluctant sky
(Or dragon hoses - this is St. George's Day!)
Wednesday, April 22, 2020
Bidets as a Topic of Conversation - an awful limerick
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
There was a French girl named Renee’
Who loved to pose on her bidet
Her vanity led
To a Playboy spread
But her movie career just washed away
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Bidets as a Topic of Conversation
There was a French girl named Renee’
Who loved to pose on her bidet
Her vanity led
To a Playboy spread
But her movie career just washed away
Tuesday, April 21, 2020
"...the right of the people peaceably to assemble..." - copyrighted news photograph
Peaceably
(c) Joshua A. Bikel, The Columbus Dispatch, via Associated Press
Shelter in Place, Old Man - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Even the volunteer programs have shut down
And I am left as a Finzi-Contini
At play in a garden, awaiting the worm
Yevtushenko says that as we get older
We get honester. But that’s not enough
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Shelter in Place, Old Man
Even the volunteer programs have shut down
And I am left as a Finzi-Contini
At play in a garden, awaiting the worm
They tell me I’m too old, that I must stay home
(They didn’t tell me that in ’67)Yevtushenko says that as we get older
We get honester. But that’s not enough
But now all duties are forbidden me
Monday, April 20, 2020
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