Dietes

A rhizome-tangled clump dumped tidily enough beside nestled rocks and canopy debris is left a year, far from other thoughts. Whatever growth is, dreaming or travelling, started under humus, where colours are anonymous and keep to themselves. Too wet or too dry isn’t so serious, daylight sorts something out, and night is quiet time at ground level. Far from other thoughts, [dietes] grandiflora have burst to attract the eye, unexpectedly. They got this far. We are incidental, playing our game of gardening. Some massive force of nature, bee or wind or sun, will do the trick, exactly what’s called for.

Omicron

Omicron is the new word game for adults and children. It slowly bubbles up into conversation. Not Omigod, Omicron. Before impressing with a high wordcount, floating through the house in invisible numbers. Hard-won freedoms find new-won perspective. Protests lie forlorn before the anticipated variant. Round in circles we go, meeting our Alpha days again for the first time. Little-o is hard to see. The world doesn’t want to see it at all. Big talkers need to hold their breath for little-o. A mask helps. Legion is [Omicron], even as we speak, a strain spreading like a delta across our conversations.

Banana

Thus far the public has not embraced the banana. Berate the banana. Deplore the banana. Behead the banana. Same-old same-old, as the public excoriates the cost of the banana. Let the artist starve. Let him live on bananas. Excess consumerism is the point of the banana. Well, chop it off! The public doesn’t mind excess consumerism. Recently erected, already almost decapitated, the banana stands firm. A nibble leaves a skull shape. The public will come around. Footy beanie and scarf in winter will warm the [banana]. Priapic tokens will dangle. The same-old public will mount its Save the Banana Campaign.

Hours

I got a phone call at the library this week. It was a computer, wanting to know the hours. I asked to whom was I speaking only to get the same American voice, “Hi, I’m calling about the library hours over there in Richardson Street.” Over there? It was Google Maps. This time I recited them, clearly, twice, otherwise the [hours] stay on Google’s default setting of midnight. Once someone rang at 4.50 Friday to ask if she could study in the library. Google Maps said we were open to midnight. What Melbourne library is open at midnight, on Fridays?

Amado

Re-reading ‘En una noche oscura’ for next Wednesday’s zoom session. The seven translations in front of me lay different emphases and meanings on the words of St. John of the Cross. For example, “oh noche que juntaste/ Amado con amada/ Amada en el [Amado] transformada!” Campbell has “Oh night that joined the lover/ to the beloved bride/ transfiguring them each into the other.” Though spouse language only shows in John’s commentary and gender is grammatical but not fixed. Or Nims: “O night, drawing side to side/ the loved and the lover,/ the loved one wholly ensouling in the lover.” &c.

 

Reading

Digressions and daring diacritics have become my [reading] habits, our hero thought, chasing clickbait down a whirlpool. Laughs on everyone, tiktok hobbyhorses, unconventional sermons. Outside his screen, domestic life intervened. Chance occasions, minor upsets, relative realtime. On screen, noses projected, sex elected, insults corrected. Siege warfare toggled with youtubers, originality with plagiarism as our hero rolled the scroll. He noted yesterday was Laurence Sterne’s birthday. “Not things, but opinions about things, trouble man.” Our hero clicked Like, cracked Yorick-like puns, scratching his ostensible skull. Plethora, that means a lot. Some days were plotless, as he merged into the marbled endpapers.

 

People

Books and computers, catalogues and orders, the return to work restarts the displaced patterns. Circulation and shelving, emails and requests, yet the greatest reassurance is the [people].  They remind us of what this is all about. Their stories and queries, personalities and voices, it is the people there in person who make it worthwhile. Vaccinated and unvaccinated, masks or no masks, whole new sets of regulations evolve out of two years of pandemic. People know how to behave, they go along with the pattern, likewise more interested in other people, and the literature, in this ‘post-pandemic’ period of the pandemic.

 

Spring

Broad beans, another good crop this year, swaying with wind and rain. Artichokes, their huge scimitar leaves. Lemon tree, stripped of lemons just as new white flowers blossom all over the branches. Satsumas, green under the leaves, purple by January, ready for jam, bottling, and Japanese salted plums. Rhubarb, prolific. Tomatoes, soaking it up. Strawberries, round or walnut-shaped and soft, starting up in profusion. Zucchinis, their light orange flowers lolling in dirt and sun. Silverbeet, new leaf bunches firing up from last year’s roots, hidden by sprawling daisies. Cherry tree, fruiting through [Spring] but concern about bat visitors at night.

A

A arrived unannounced. An argosy of vessels. An outpost camp as a row of tents. An avenue into a wilderness. Alphabet books, Strand London. A for effort. Longing for Avalon. A was the initial of the captain. An envelope crammed with lettering A. posted to the Admiralty. Arguments about criminals and wilderness turned into officialese. Another ship on the horizon. A was for aboriginal, small-a. Accents were addressed adroitly. Misunderstandings arose. Actually, arrogance. Alphas drew lines on A4. Called them a nullius roadmap. Aimed and fired. Maimed, misfired. Adventure, misadventure. But then signposts. Next left, Auburn. [A] for Terra Australis.

Macedonia

At the ice-cream shop last week, I order macedonia. “You mean macadamia,” laughs Bridie. Without my glasses, I’ve misread. Makes me realise, parts of my mind live in Italy, where macedonia is a scoop of fruit salad ice-cream. Parts of our mind involuntarily reside in places unvisited for years. Obviously the macadamia tub does not have flecks of glacé cherry and orange zest. Philip’s never been to Macedonia, but has enjoyed his share of [macedonia]. I order a cone with vanilla and macadamia. Mansplaining macedonia to Bridie leaves the usual delible imprint. She’s too busy checking out the other flavours.

Disappeared

A vaccine syringe is not a weapon of war. The vaccine syringe is designed to save life, not take it away. This is the cartoon’s conceptual error, nor is it humourously ambiguous. The googily-eyed Leunig man has a choice. His is not an anonymous silent protest, a Tiananmen stand-off in front of a tank. He is not a victim of state suppression. He won’t be [disappeared] in the middle of the night. Unless perhaps he’s in ICU. Michael Leunig has his off days. He’s no saint, but why sack him? Expect cartoons about getting fired over the phone, with duck.

App

To app, or not to app. There is no perhaps. The technologists on the committee snapped the social solution the committee desired. Science apportions access to those with the app, who can afford it. The [app] is mightier than the pen. Science alone opens the doors to freedom. Others will find an alternative. The committee may now sleep at nights, who slept through the meeting. Their application is perfection, or your money back. This appendix is a living part of you (just avoid pain), an appendage you can’t do without, an approximation to the sum of all applicable knowledge. Apparently.

Fruitcake

Does anyone actually eat fruitcake? Yes or no. I tried it once, round at Sean’s place. There was him, Heather, Heather’s friend something Mary, and Andrew was there, of course. Mary wanted to know, is that legal? There’s no law against it, said Sean, with all the bravado of a 19-year-old. A large square block of this stuff was actually just there on a plate. It was very sticky, with sultanas big as our googily eyes. No one in those days called it [fruitcake]; our code word was ‘Christmas’. It wasn’t for me. Never touched it since. Amazed you ask.

Snail

Dear Vita, morning spent with orchid pot cluster. Not much happening, but it’s snug. Had to drag myself away. Perfect weather. Rained for three days. Every footpath has a silver lining. Generally agreeable under the violets. Then a bird took an interest in me. Had to go back inside my shell. Pretended to be a pebble. There’s no place like home. Lunch at Letterbox Café. Always something new on the menu. Though find can no longer digest gloss. Anyway, today a high-quality envelope. Made a meal of it. Afternoon, worked on ‘Call Me [Snail]’, my new slow-moving faction. Yours Virginia.

 

Chin-shiner

Chin-shiners, in florid flashback, medical blue, and Melbourne black, are the new season’s fashion sensation. Strung from the ears by elastic or ribbon, they rest easily along the jawline, adding an extra layer of support for the loquacious and contagious alike. Breathe easier knowing you meet the government requirements for wearing a fitted [chin-shiner]. Dazzle your friends. Be the bright light at the party. Smile equally upon vaccinated and unvaccinated alike. Chin-shiners, for those who are in charge of their own destiny, and everyone else’s. They second as single ear-ring dangling, or ear-muff in inclement weather. Be seen, be unsafe.

 

Ocean

Write and rewrite and rewrite [ocean] a grey width that dazzles in pools when sun casts between cloud, then shadows again as if a vast creature loomed just below, only in an hour turns dark green of  a forest crown or sapphire if sky opens out for the day and wind stays its presence, unlike yesterday afternoon when zigzags bristled the width eyes could reach, when hail sheered waves, lapsing into cold torrents for hours, where all was outlines again of grey headlands, bleak horizon, the housetop all sound tones of sweeping rain as ocean whites and rewhites and rewhites.

River

Write and rewrite and rewrite [river] unreachable upper reaches where fish and mammal swerve under insect surfaces down spraying falls along thickening currents towards leaf-topped floods birds dip, then the cut banks and stony edges toward bends over flats minuscule bubbles and sky-shining corners feeding roots into shining sky again upward where before falling black fell with fire’s lightness of touch, wondering sometimes with seas rising turn the mouth tidal as waters transport salt upstream then out again with rains tempestuous soothing, then humans contouring an imagined solution to what end as river days turn night and respite and reignite

Forest

Write and rewrite and rewrite [forest] longest forced long into air and into earth it shades and surfaces with cumulus of leaves and sticks, multi-levelled where birds tick off the months of replenishment, only how heat increasing is known to force conditions to a showdown where fire takes hold and sweeps everywhere in sounds of colossal magnitude, speeds of unavoidable catastrophe as all living succumbs to irradiation, falling turmoil buried in forest’s memory, only now we don’t think about heat only a blue breeze, a green canopy a wet walk below such might as forest heightens and reunites and recites  

 

Tomorrow

Let’s face it. Tomorrow has been coming for a few years now. Tomorrow asks unresolved questions for the next-to-last time. It’s pure technicality to say [tomorrow] is repeatedly deferred. It’s repeatedly experienced. Best to be prepared. At dinner I was told that tomorrow never happens. That’s another way of looking at it. Tomorrow, as we find again and again, does not always live up to expectations. Still, we flag our words for tomorrow, as though they were more pressing than today. We expect things to be pretty much all in order. Tomorrow delivers on that promise. Only one more sleep.

 

Roundabout

Where are you going, Monsieur Hulot? You walk through glass doors. Empty your pipe to fill it again. American tourists, a horde, rush past. Where are they going, Monsieur Hulot? Around the corner in pursuit of a sight. The sight, a mirage in floor-to-ceiling windows. Every city of the world’s a destination, every destination, its own skyscraper. Let’s go to Montparnasse then, dance the unending speed machine. Why say in English what you can say in French? Années soixante the 1960s, dancing all-night, falling off barstools. Watching screens for hours. Where’s it all going, Monsieur Hulot? Stuck on the [roundabout].

Modem

“I’ve never seen ‘modem’ used in a poem,” says a friend of Anne Fadiman in her book ‘Ex Libris’ (1998), lamenting the beauties of lost English. Which is about the time ‘modem’ became common English, as connectivity took over. Remember ‘OK Computer’? Twenty years later we find whole sites of modem poetry. Arguably, today modems deliver more poetry to readers than print, but who can prove it? One could compose a captivating concrete poem ‘Ode to the Modem’ by accenting ODE between the two mediums: M ODE M. Google Search still asks though, ‘Did you mean: modern poetry.’ Only connect.

Multiverse

Is the universe rose-shaped? Blowed if I know, but why not? One minute all compact, minding its own business, then rain and light and heat and rose. Isn’t the universe showing us something? All those layers exploded, or omni-umbrella’d somehow. I mean, is the universe all petals? Or the multiverse, if it’s a [multiverse]? One home expert says it’s amoeba-shaped. Sorry, I misheard, a Möbius strip, but expanding. And what about black holes? Are they black, and why do they crash into one another, if they’re holes? Another expert says it’s a smudgy sphere expanding. Rose-like? They agree on expanding.

Alphabet

Early morning [alphabet], waiting for a train: “Avians busily chant daybreak evocations, flitting gracefully hither inspecting judiciously king-size larvae, mice, nits; or perch quietly, rainy surrounding train-track underneath view: wooden xylophones, yardstick zones.” In the afternoon, family event in Altona: “Altona’s banished clusters delight effervescent family’s get-together, how irrepressibly joyous kids lick marvellous niceties, oldies prefer quite rich smorgasbord, toast universe’s victories with x-marked year-round Zeneca.” At night, checks film guide: “Alone bachelor calms desperate escapee fleeing gaol, however incidentally jealous katatonic lover messes noxiously over plans, quits romantic shadow to unleash very wilful x-rated yellow zombies.” Reads book instead.

Clock

Us stuck in traffic, minutes’ small stumbling block. All well at home, or homesick. Eh, what’s up, Doc? The sound is slick, a gift or shock. Give it the flick, it will sit and mock. The moment it picks, solid as a rock. As surely it out-tricks footfalls’ lock-step lock. Then, again there’s a click. For whom does it knock? Metal verbal schtick, oscillator’s schlock, nitpicker’s frolic, Time Lord’s phonebox. Pendulum’s uptick, pendulum’s downtock. It makes sticklers sick, timeserver’s take stock. Seconds servings forensic, hours unlocked, locked. Hands perfectly quick, a face just like a [clock], stopped or not stopped.  

Us stuck in traffic

Minutes’ small stumbling block.

All well at home, or homesick.

Eh, what’s up, Doc?

The sound is slick

A gift or shock,

Give it the flick

It will sit and mock.

The moment it picks

Solid as a rock.

As surely it out-tricks

Footfalls’ lock-step lock.  

Then, again there’s a click

For whom does it knock?

Metal verbal schtick

Oscillator’s schlock,

Nitpicker’s frolic

Time Lord’s phonebox.

Pendulum’s uptick

Pendulum’s downtock.  

It makes sticklers sick,

Timeserver’s take stock.

Seconds servings forensic,

Hours unlocked, locked.

Hands perfectly quick,

A face just like a [clock]

Stopped or not stopped.

 

 

 

U

Unvaccinated, unwelcome. Is that true? That’s not true. Why don’t they just do it? Like everyone else. Reasons not to scarcely count when set against public good. Unvacation. A non-word enters the mind. Then, uncertainty. Uncertainty unending. That’s the real experience, the mood, expectation. Whatever’s the word for personal states. Our collective wits see through deceits of leaders, their staged plans. Undoubtedly. Indubitably, even, you could say. Undertakings. On hold, undecided. The mind goes, Undertaker? Unlikely! Still, the future is not a U-Turn. You mean your turn. Or is it? How to [U]? As for understanding. Always it’s available, unfinished.

Perth

In 1967, Iris Murdoch tours here. “Australia seems all right. There is an awful lot of it. Every city seems to despise every other city. We got rather fond of little [Perth] which lives all by itself over on the West Coast. But have heard nothing but anti-Perth jokes since coming east (‘in the midst of life we are in Perth’ etc.’)” Alas, the pandemic has only exposed this latent parochialism. Or is it true of all countries? In the midst of life we are Minsk. Iris went to a writer’s conference there entitled ‘Why have we got no literature?’

Difference

Reading letters of Iris Murdoch. “The structuralist scene is such a mess- clever old Derrida, stupid messy critics, each man for himself. Motives, motives.” (5 May 1985) My experience too, and note the date, her awareness of Theory’s onset, her perception of the [difference] between Derrida and the Derrideans. Contrast this with her frustrations about left-wing novelists of the thirties, caught between “an indeterminate cloudy notion of Something or Other” and “political Apocalypse stuff”: “James Joyce used always to ask of some new writer ‘Is he trying to express something he has understood?’” (16 August 1942) Clever old James Joyce.

Sweep

Carol rakes in $30 in this year’s home sweep, for a win and a place. She has the brown mare Verry Elleegant, the way the name is pronounced inside the Enclosure after five glasses of Moët & Chandon. But also then, Spanish Mission, a much more circumspect name, unsurprisingly one of her six choices. Obsidian, who slept through the whole thing, goes home with $10 thanks to Incentivise. Conversation centres on what treat to buy Obsidian with $10 and are cats capable of incentivization. Our [sweep] mocks gambling, with Bridie and Philip paying the debts and deincentivised to bother again.

Influence

Question 12: Should poets read other poets? Some poets refuse to read poetry for fear of [influence]. Their uncontainable originality could be contaminated by outside thoughts. Shakespearean forces might cramp their style. Though really, to be the next Emily Dickinson, it would pay to read some Dickinson. Muscle-building is a more likely outcome, not cramps. Reading widely may teach you what to do next, and what not to do. Far from being the solitary crazy diamond, you’ll find you lack facets; you’re a chip off the old block. Wisdom comes hard, while also becoming the cutting edge of your poetry.  

Prosaic

Question 11: Why is poetry not prose? Poetry today does everything under the sun to avoid being [prosaic]. There is an ardent desire to surprise, that won’t be learned from journalism. Prose-poems, as well, baffle the bureaucrats. The Syntax School re-arranges the furniture. The Neologism School overdoes the unheard-of. The Figurative School turns verse squares loopy. The ancients, people who have died, didn’t do this. Poetry was about memory. They timed rhyme, repeated meter, much toned touchstones, better late than never. Yet they shared a desire to articulate, not too late, the inarticulate. When you get it, you know it.

 

Photograph: An object statement against the prosaic, Patricia Piccinini’s Skywhale being inflated at Fitzroy Football Ground on the morning of the 8^th of May 2014. A report of this event is here: http://wordsbyphilipharvey.blogspot.com/search/label/Skywhale