On Independence Day and Every Day, Spelling Counts - photograph

 

Monsoon Coffee - poem

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Monsoon Coffee

 

The old men argue whether we have monsoons

Or if our afternoon thunderstorms are unworthy

Of scientific labels, notations, or marks

To be discussed on the six o’clock news

 

Each day at four I take my coffee outside

To sit beneath the oak and take the air

With a book, the Wordle, or an empty mind

As thunderheads rise like monsters in the east

 

Fearsome clouds menace the sky-paling moon

And breezes wind themselves up for the daily monsoon

And the Earth Will Give Up Its...Old Fence Wire - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The Percolation of Our Beautiful Green Earth

 

Like MeeMaw’s aluminum coffee pot

The earth percolates through all the seasons

Of rain and drought and freeze, of dust and mud

The ground we work gives up its annual troves

 

The tiller’s tines turn up old pocketknives

Old nails, old screws, old bits of window glass

An unfired flash cube from a party long ago

Gardening is also archaeology

 

I excavate from the machine while sitting in the shade

Decades-old fence wire wrapped around the blade

 

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…!

Waiting-Room Art: Same Old Bicycle Leaning Against the Same Old Sunlit Wall - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Waiting-Room Art:

Same Old Bicycle Leaning Against the Same Old Sunlit Wall

 

We’ve all seen that bicycle, that sunlit wall

In photographs taken in Italy

And Austin (don’t forget the bike-lock now)

In paintings from old-lady art classes everywhere

 

Perhaps that bike and wall are a Statement

About Milieu and Patina and, like, stuff

Neoformalist New Socialist Realism

Inverted kitsch deflating the patriarchy

 

I propose a fresh vision: what I would like

Is that old wall crumbling, and crushing that bike!

The Poets of Rapallo: How Mussolini's Italy Shaped British, Irish, and U. S. Writers - a review

  

The Poets of Rapallo: How Mussolini's Italy shaped British, Irish, and U.S. Writers
by 

Lauren Arrington

The Poets of Rapallo, Lauren Arrington, Oxford University Press is a brilliant first draft; one looks forward to reading the completed work.

As it is, Dr. Arrington has accomplished brilliant research on the poets - Yeats, Bunting, Pound, Aldington, MacGreevy, Zukofsky - and their acquaintances who happened to be in the Italian resort town Rapallo (they were not a coterie) in the 1920s and 1930s. The notes alone run to 54 pages of too-small type, and the bibliography to 8.

Unhappily, the text appears to have been rushed, possibly by an impatient publisher, and along with numerous small mistakes there are some serious failures in stereotyping, hasty generalizations predicated on little evidence, and a few condemnations more redolent of Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor than a scholar.

One of the best things about The Poets of Rapallo is the exposition explaining why a great many intellectuals were attracted to Italian Fascism as it was idealistically presented through propaganda early on and not as the moral and ethical disaster it soon proved to be.

Mussolini cleverly promoted his program as primarily cultural, a reach-back to the artistic and architectural unities of an imagined ancient Rome restored and enhanced with modern science and technology. He promoted the arts for his own purposes, of course, but deceptively. In almost any context the construction of schools, libraries, museums, theatres, and cinema studios would be perceived as a good, and absent any close examination accepted by everyone. But in Mussolini’s scheme these cultural artifacts, like Lady Macbeth’s “innocent flower,” concealed the lurking serpent: wars of conquest, poison gas, bombings of undefended cities, death camps, institutionalized racism, mass murders, and other enormities.

The Fascist sympathies of W. B. Yeats and other influencers (as we would say now) in the Irish Republic, including Eamon de Valera, are certainly revelatory. That the new nation came close to goose-stepping through The Celtic Twilight might help explain Ireland’s curious neutrality during the Second World War.

Professor Arrington explains all this very well, and initially is professionally objective. Most of the Rapallo set were not long in learning what Fascism was really about and quickly distanced themselves from it in some embarrassment. Some were later even more of an embarrassment in their denials and deflections; few seemed to have been able to admit that, yes, they were suckered, as we all have been from time to time

But with the exception of the unrepentant and odious Pound, who was himself a metaphorical serpent to his death, Professor Arrington seems to lose her objectivity with the others.

And why Pound?

As with Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, it is difficult to take seriously someone who considers Pound’s pretentious, pompous, show-off word-soup Cantos to be literature. Pound is now famous only for being famous, and while Arrington appears to forgive Pound for his adamant and malevolent anti-Semitism and his pathetic subservience to Mussolini, in the end she is ruthless toward anyone else who, under Pound’s influence, in his or her naivete even once told an inappropriate joke, appreciated Graeco-Roman architecture, or perhaps saw Mussolini at a distance. This is inexplicable in a text that is otherwise professional and compassionate in avoiding what C. S. Lewis identifies as chronological snobbery.

One also wishes the author had discussed Pound’s post-war appeal as a fashionable prisoner adored or at least pitied by a new generation (Elizabeth Bishop, how could you?).

The book ends abruptly, as if the author were interrupted by a demand by the printers for it now, and so, yes, one hopes for a complete work to follow.

The Poets of Rapallo is not served well by the Oxford University Press, who appear to have been more interested in cutting costs than in presenting a work of scholarship to the world. The print is far too small, the garish spine lettering is more suited to a sale-table murder mystery, and the retro-1930s holiday cover would be fine for an Agatha Christie yarn but not for a book of literary scholarship.

From Lonesome Dove: The Hanging of Jake Spoon - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The Hanging of Jake Spoon

 

Nothing in his life / Became him like the leaving it

 

Macbeth I.iiii.7-8

 

At dusk. Heat. Heat and dust. Jake’s last slow ride

Words through a fog of fear, last words, slow words

Old pals and dead enemies on either side

Slow cooings and callings from unseen prairie birds

 

Smooth Jake, always good for a laugh and a drink

A ladies’ man, a gamblin’ man, a man of charm

Unreliable, yes, not one to pause and think

Tho’ he never meant nobody no harm

 

He suddenly spurred his pacer, making amends

His moment of nobility, to spare his friends

 

 

Lonesome Dove can be said to be The National Book of Texas.

The Fairies Themselves Now Dance Sweet Summer In - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The Fairies Themselves Now Dance Sweet Summer In

 

My work is loving the world.

Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird

 

-Mary Oliver, “Messenger”

 

Everything is sacramental this week:

 

The Strawberry Moon in the fullness of being

Midsummer magic by day and by night

The English quarter day, the Feast of St. John

And holy bonfires in honor of light

 

Good honeybees take Communion at every flower

Soft breezes sing hymns among the ripening corn

The woods and fields are baptized in happiness

The sun and moon bless maidens and swains

 

We need no clocks or calendars to tell us when –

The fairies themselves now dance sweet summer in

1957 : The Year We All Became Soviets - poem

 

Lawrence Hall HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

1957: The Year We All Became Soviets

 

“…we’re going to get science applied to social problems and backed by the whole force of the state…”

 

Mark Studdock in C. S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength

 

Soviet Science launched a beeping toy into space

In the name of Progress; a mass-murderer ordered it so

And a month later Science launched and killed sweet Laika

Abandoned in orbit to die alone

 

Brave America suffered the Aunt Pittypat vapours:

We too must launch our slide-rules into space

And set our children to study Sovietism

Send civilization into orbit to die alone

 

Dogs and apes and men have flamed out in crashes

And Alexandria again is but pale ashes

If Taylor Swift Were Your Principal - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Do You Miss Your Trapper-Keeper?

 

This is the middle of June so why

Haven’t the back-to-school sales begun?

This year’s cooler than cool styles

Have been stored in shipping containers

 

For months or years on Indonesian docks

Or in warehouses in Long Beach

The teeny-boppers who modelled those clothes

Might be in graduate school by now

 

If school were as cool as the ads

Taylor Swift would be the principal

Old and Unselected Poems - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Old and Unselected Poems

 

Why do publishers entitle volumes of verse

New and Selected Poems?

Is it the editors’ lack of imagination?

Or is it some sort of secular rubric

An inky “We’ve always done it that way?”

 

When you finish writing a poem it is new

It didn’t exist before you, and now it does

And someone who reads your poem has selected it

It wasn’t selected until someone picked it up

 

Every poem is forever new and selected

And to the joy of your friends, so are you

 

Somewhere in New Mexico I Tipped a Waitress 25%

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Somewhere in New Mexico I Tipped a Waitress 25%

 

NOT I - NOT ANYONE else, can travel that road for you. You must travel it for yourself.

-Walt Whitman

 

On a cool autumn morning in New Mexico

A greasy spoon along the interstate

Walt Whitman and I enjoyed breakfast together

Bacon and eggs, hash browns, coffee and toast

 

And it was very good – no heaves of gas

But Whitman found an errand in some other soul

And sang a different self to California

McKuen rode with me the rest of the way

 

Mockingbirds at Dusk in a Time of War - poem

 

Lawrence Hall HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Mockingbirds at Dusk in a Time of War

 

They might be fighting; they might be he-ing and she-ing

Their leaf-rich oak could be their arena

Or it might serve them as their bower of bliss

For love in this magnolia-scented dusk

 

They’re still at it, whatever their “it” might be

But breaking off to blitz the subtle cat

Sneaking about in quest of a bunny or squirrel

But who from feathered fury must now retreat

 

They might be fighting; they might be he-ing and she-ing

But then

                   They might be mocking the rest of us

 

 

Bower of bliss – cf. Spenser’s The Faerie Queene

Petite Bourgeois, Personal, and Self-Indulgent - poem

  

Lawrence Hall HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Petite Bourgeois, Personal, and Self-Indulgent

 

I used to admire your poetry. I shouldn't admire it now. I should find it

absurdly personal. Don't you agree? Feelings, insights, affections...

it's suddenly trivial now.

 

-Strelnikov to Yuri in Doctor Zhivago (film)

 

In the evenings I sit on my summer lawn

Slouched in an old, much-painted metal chair

That symbol of petite-bourgeois respectability

With a little table for my drink, my pipe, my book

 

(The cat pads by on errands of his own)

 

At dusk a friend or two might amble along

And join me for a glass, a smoke, a talk

We casually swat at mosquitoes and rumors

And argue about Doctor Zhivago and Lonesome Dove

 

(A fast-diving mockingbird mocks the cat)

 

In a fallen world of chaos and suffering

With fear of revolution in the air

Is it right to indulge ourselves with such trifles

As sitting and talking with old friends in the twilight?

 

Oh, yes

 

(The cat and the mockingbird continue their game)

Little Children are Much Like Dachshund Puppies - rhyming couplet

Lawrence Hall HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Little Children are Much Like Dachshund Puppies

 

With wildly scattered toys the lawn is messed -

Little children came to visit – O how we are blessed!

From Shakespeare: My Spirit is Thine, the Better Part of Me - poem

 

 

Lawrence Hall HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

From Shakespeare: My Spirit is Thine, the Better Part of Me

 

Cf. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 74

 

No kinsman could offer comfort there,
To a soul left drowning in desolation.

 

-“The Seafarer,” trans. Burton Raffel

 

When we die, our little things disappear:

Hairbrushes and pocketknives, fountain pens

Car keys, spare change, books, clothes, unopened mail

A souvenir coffee cup from Canada

 

An old uniform, a pistol from the war

A clock, a crucifix, Topsider shoes

Family pictures, a graduation ring

A magnifying glass, a radio

 

Bits and bobs, all sorts of trivial stuff

And a poem for you – it’s not enough

 

Book Removal Training - poem

  

Lawrence Hall HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Book Removal Training

 

The orange flames waved at the crowd as paper and print dissolved inside them. Burning words were torn from their sentences.

 

-The Book Thief, p. 112

 

And now burning words must be torn from free people

For if people read they might think about things:

Why does the Party’s Jesus hate everyone

And why are weapons superior to ideas

 

Can a hangperson’s noose teach us to love

Burning crosses comfort a frightened child

Do the cult’s censors fly our flag upside down

While stealing books from our children’s hands

 

A state that trains people to purge library books

Is a slave state

 

 

Florida revises school library book removal training after public outcry

Story by Douglas Soule, USA TODAY NETWORK

 

Florida revises school library book removal training after public outcry (msn.com)

A Congressssssional Hearing - poem

 

Lawrence Hall HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

 

A Congressssssional Hearing

 

 

“But hiss for hiss return’d with forked tongue”

 

-Paradise Lost, X.518

 

 

Men in nice suits meet in air-conditioned luxury

Ties perfectly knotted, Cain’s mark on their lapels

Enthroned behind paneled tables of polished oak

Where by the magic of a secular oath, all are honorables

 

There is a chair, who is a man, not a chair

Who wields an oaken gavel of authority

As he smiles benignly and modestly

An ‘umble adornment to the Republic

 

Then “bash!” goes the gavel, and yelling begins

And no one seems to know why

The God of Children and Blueberries - poem

 

Lawrence Hall HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The God of Children and Blueberries

 

For Theo (who is three today) and Nora (who is more than three)

 

“It is eaten, and renewed, every day.”

 

-Ramandu’s daughter in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

 

God is prodigal with his seasons and feasts -

This is the season of blueberries, each day a feast

Great clouds of fat blue globes hang upon the little trees

Water and sky shading into Prussian blue

 

This is a table-tree, all are invited

To stand with buckets and thirsty lips

To pick and take, to take and eat, each day

The feast magically renewed each dawn

 

Mockingbirds, robins, sparrows, rabbits, and squirrels

 

And children

 

Picking, pecking, plucking, nibbling, biting

 

All at Aslan’s Table, and all at peace

A D-Day Reminder to Every Neo-Nazi Oaf, Including Members of Congress and Justices of the Supreme Court

 

Lawrence Hall HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

A D-Day Reminder to Every Neo-Nazi Oaf

 

Including Members of Congress

And Justices of the Supreme Court

 

There is poetry in this:

Our flag was not flown upside-down at Normandy

Shakespeare: Behold a Man - poem

  

Lawrence Hall HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Behold a Man

 

Cf. Shakespeare’s Sonnets 67 & 68

 

He is a man who needs no oils or scents

The arts of makeup, filters on a lens

A touch of blush upon his honest chin

A photographer’s vanity lights placed just so

 

He is a man who is his own manly self

Washed, shaved, and combed by his own rugged hands

Hands that know shovel, hammer, ax, and saw

A businessman’s hands, a protective father’s hands

 

He is a man who needs no frippery

For he is clean and honest and just, you see