Oceanic

 

Oceans suck. Oceans topple. Wild and uncomprehending and stupid and carefree as we are in our youth we do not think about the ocean as we plunge through its waves, line after line of the bruisers, salt in our eyes and foam up our noses, in the summertime of every happiness and little of lastingness. As we drip through the shallows toward another sheer clearness that may rush us through escalating seconds of cruise or dump us in a storm of sand and back current, we never think of the intricate capillaries almost infinite under the skin, the sunshine drying off the sea film from shoulders in a minute, the otherworld of science fiction action only fifty yards further out beneath the blue top. And it, swirly ocean, not a day older or younger. Gentle beings so rough and blithe and independent of the world, who splash into that turbulent form as if it were toyland, who rinse the past out in a trice, we were innocent and lovely and fed. But what might be the moment when we will yearn for gentleness we always had, be found dependent on the world back at the shoreline, where we look now with our goggles on? Knowingly, we are not drawn further out into that bluer depth, are stopped by the excuse of pleasure, by adult words of warning long since noted in electron and muscle, and held firm by that other mass, the great multihued airy fixture, that standout freewheeling bodily entity of safety, that stern containment called land. The years, talkative as per usual, teach us the truisms of a blue planet. Oceans confuse. Oceans ruin. When not a sight of recurrent wonder, their shapes can be some great tedium, like the year at the end of a failed marriage, the movie where the genius director lost the plot, the dormant doldrums that once roused therapy cannot shake off. The swell is building up now to troughs, so what. The day will be as flat as you could hope for, so what. The ripple on that crest could have been a dolphin, so what.   We might for now like to turn away from all that horizon, stop guessing the name of every passing vessel, take refuge in the happily multiplying possibilities of a room. Had we but thought, in a previous century, with the wisdom of foresight, every day we were having a conversation with the blue that, heatedly, belatedly forsooth, has found a way of getting out of hand. Oceans rise. Oceans expand. Gentle beings so attentive and technological, who read of tidal storms and drowning islands on handheld screens, who cannot connect in our highly evolved minds the words melting and icecap, discover for the first time in some time the logic of record temperatures and colossal inundations. Being talked back to takes some time, quite a time, to adjust to, staring at the ground for the words to say. Words that are feeble apologies directed at most of the world’s water, bewildered poetry in postmodern windspray manner, stunned blurts at breaking news, even though today is fine, winds light and variable, a perfect day for yachting or peering into rockpools and any amount of talking in our own tongue.

Spoon (Domestic Ponge)

 

Dangled heavily from a free-standing hook by a fashioned tube arc of shining grey steel, the handsome implement stays ready for use at any time. Hung might be more correct than dangled, placed even more accurate as it never turns idly in position with a visiting breeze but rather remains fixed freely firm in the air due to weight and gravity like the escutcheon above a palace gate. Its elevation with others of its kind, the sombre ladles and grey-day spatulas in a position at arm’s length from the action, is a reminder of its critical role at the given moment when pots boil or saucepans simmer. Then it moves in to play its part in the culinary operation that forever tantalises with the belief in a flavour perfection, a more pleasurable taste outcome. It is a wonder and necessity, an ancient invention that has gone through varying permutations only modernist design, then computer templates, could render with such a level of visual as well as practical originality. Twelve centimetres of stainless steel grip, a cylindrical handhold shining dully above the kitchen fray, then extends another twelve centimetres of tapering handle easy to balance, that then dips and spreads into a gorgeous oval spoon, broad and shallow, decoratively smelted with a crosshatch of 66 small circular slots. Their grid, held to the light, makes diamond shapes that could be a magnified eye of a fly or set of equidistant raindrops on a pond. Their spacing apart allows for liquid to flow through and the scooped contents of the cauldron to remain aloft, the steaming cubes of potato or hot bright pearls of Lebanese couscous that must be separated from the soupy base. Slots, contrarily, being a cause for discussion, as what is a slot. A long narrow hole, that’s true, an elongated depression, an extended aperture, none of which accounts for roundness, or roundness in great numbers. Manufacturers are at odds as to what to call a slotted spoon, some opting for sale purposes for their own synonym: perforated serving spoon, premium wide skimmer, culinary plating spoon, metal mesh sieve ladle, colander scooper, steel spider strainer. The strain shows and there isn’t anyway time as the contents of the bubbling preparation need attending to now. Nipping and scraping of the goodness collecting at the edges, stirring and turning of the Earth’s produce cooking through nicely thank you very much to the optimum, loading and lifting of the same above the plumbline for ocular and olfactory examination, this is the moment of the thingummyjig plucked from its hoity toity highness on the kitchen rack, rummaging delicately with the end product of a recipe known or found, borrowed, enhanced, turned round about, spiced up, or down, in the thick of the place sometimes referred to as too hot to handle.   

Xanadu

 

Inspired to re-read Italo Calvino, I am at present in ‘Invisible Cities’ (1972). It’s a fantasy dialogue between two 13^th-century contemporaries, Marco Polo and Kublai Khan, in which accounts of exotic cities leave one wondering if they existed, or are all in the mind of Italo Calvino. Remarks by a critic on the jacket are a spoiler: “Calvino is describing only one city in this book. Venice, that decaying heap of incomparable splendour…” It is true Marco Polo was a Venetian, that he travelled to Shangdu, and that on page 86 he says, “Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice.” But this is too literal an explanation, too final, as if the author’s intentions could be summarised. Each city described by Polo, or in Kublai’s dreams, is one of childlike impressions grounded in adult experience. The cities enjoy an existence that is only spoken about, that may have been like that then, but may not be now. Their precariousness is as valuable a quality as their beauty, or the specific mystery details that Polo finds memorable. Any of them could be a place closer to home for Kublai, because every time Polo describes a city he is saying something about Shangdu, a city that no longer exists except in archaeology and imagination. In our own indwelling, if we turn our mind to it. This is what Samuel Taylor Coleridge did after taking too much opium and reading Samuel Purchas’ 1613 paraphrastic translation of Polo: “In Xandu did Cublai Can build a stately Pallace…”, writing a poem about Xanadu, the archaic anglicised version of Shangdu in Mongolia, pleasure domes, mazy motions, and all. Calvino was fortunate not to be visited by the Person from Porlock, which means we are lucky enough to read dozens of versions of ‘Kubla Khan’ in his novel, each one different. Later in the story, Kublai says to Polo, “confess what you are smuggling: moods, states of grace, elegies!” In other words, he speaks from memory of these many named cities that conjure Venice, a city that has survived, but also Xanadu, one that has not. Because this is the mood of the novel: to relate that which exists, or existed, but may now only exist in words. They are states of grace in which we may imagine our own city past, present, and future. The Melbournes, say, of river mangrove, Victorian sepia, and creambrick expanse. Australian cities in general, hardly imaginable in this medieval tale. Polo’s accounts are elegies of Venice, yet of what Venice may become, Xanadu. Life lived in a metropolis sinking into a lagoon is precarious. And what Xanadu was and became, words of fortunate travellers to foreign parts, translated words transformed by an opiumhead. Polo’s writing continues to raise debate while Kublai wrote very much poetry almost all of which, like his summer capital of Shangdu (or Xanadu), is now lost.     

Big

 

The glossy smooth red granite Big Purse has served as couch, baggage stand, and stumbling block for years. It was my first thought when I read of the death of Claes Oldenburg (1929-2022), an artist who worked with fabric, wire, and steel, not granite, one of his most famous works being a Big Burger about the same size as the Big Purse. Oldenburg may have lived in the Big Apple, but his 1962 Big Burger predates the invention of the Big Mac by five years. It makes sense that this Mister Big “rose to prominence”, as the cliché goes, in the pop sixties. A handsaw, a shuttlecock, a rubber stamp, an electric plug, an avocado and many other unassuming everyday objects, also rose to prominence due to Oldenburg’s proclivity for going big. Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) was asked why she painted such huge flowers on her canvases. She replied something like, she lived in New York then where everything is big, so she painted her flowers big. This may be why Oldenburg wanted to make Big Impressions. Just as humans like to make matchbox cars, miniature replicas of the originals, so they also like to go outsize and over the top. Is this compensatory behaviour? Or simply fun? It has elements of American cartoons. Why be normalman when you can be superman? Whether this is an expression of ego, or a satire of ego, is a question, like why do humans admire other humans who are “larger than life”, to use a phrase? Nambour is not New York, and the enterprise that constructed the Big Pineapple does not ascribe Oldenburg as an influence. The yellow fibreglass skin and green steel crown with interior curved staircase and linoleum viewing levels of this 16-metre high tropical fruit is what Americans call a roadside attraction. The consequent Australian temptation to make Big Things, while motivated by commercial outcomes (Big Dollars), seems to be based less on art objectives than novelty. I keep putting off my visit to the Big Vincent, as we call it, the lumiere show that converts the fit-for-purpose gallery paintings of Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) into floor-to-ceiling immersions of starry starry nights and stark staring portraits. Giving meaning to this extravagance is possible, but my concern is it won’t be as meaningful or inspiring as walking around all the Big Buildings under the Big Sky outside. I ponder the Big Things positioned in front of those buildings, as though for example the Big Wave of Inge King (1915-2016) could personalise the uniformity of nearby city towers or give them the human touch. They become like the building’s mascot, an identifier, a thought that leaves me with ambivalent feelings. Like Alice in Wonderland, who gets bigger then smaller depending what she tries next, but then don’t we all? It’s called growing up. 

Greed

 

Greed blinds us to how little we need. The more we have the more we want, but do we need more? The more we take the less we notice others’ needs, caught up as we are in our own acquisitions. Us first, everyone else second. Or not at all. We may forget that everything is a gift, deserving of our thanks.  

The rich man in Luke’s Gospel prizes his existence based on the “abundance of his possessions.” Perhaps he judges others, also, according to their possessions. Perhaps it saves him seeing any deeper. His entire life is dedicated to his own wealth and happiness, with no thought for God or, by implication, his neighbour. Jesus seems also to be teaching how self-satisfaction can come with having it all. Sharing is not on the agenda while the rich man builds bigger buildings to house even more of everything. Everything that will very soon be someone else’s, given that “this very night your life is being demanded of you.”  

Colossians is even more direct and tough-minded about greed, saying it must be “put to death” as earthly and idolatrous. There are times when we notice the truth in this attitude. People are so busy acquiring property and adding to their portfolio, with the distinct and dedicated belief they must have more, in particular much more than their neighbour. Nations with selfish ambitions try to buy other nations, or take over their land through warfare. Billionaires invent new space races instead of spending their passing wealth on protection of their only home, the Earth. Such activity is futile and wasteful for those who live the new life “hidden with Christ in God.” Greed may lead any of us into ignorance of God’s gifts and denial of others, of anyone at all.

It is this selfish living, with its resultant refusal of justice and hospitality, that Genesis is talking about in the “outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah.” Residents of these places are so wrapped up in themselves and what they’ve got, so greedy for themselves and no one else, they ignore those in need and will not share even a little with outsiders of any kind. It’s got so desperate and disconnected, now it’s down to the pleas of the righteous few to spare them.

Great is the desire, in such hopeless circumstances, for the “steadfast love and faithfulness” expressed in today’s Psalm 138. The words affirm the gifts of God and the experience of the new life, “for though the Lord is high, he regards the lowly; but the haughty he perceives from far away.”  

Readings: Genesis 18, 20-32, Psalm 138, Luke 12, 13-21, Colossians 3, 1-11.

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time. St Peter’s Eastern Hill, Melbourne

Shed

The new freeway is being built at the end of our street. Government propaganda proudly calls it the Missing Link. No one in the neighbourhoods had any say in the freeway. Community consultation, a few years ago, was an exercise in telling the community what will happen. That is how bureaucracy crushes political action: hold public consultations that aren’t consultations. Most likely the freeway will go underground beneath the end of our street, so that will be quiet. Not that we’re sure, as the planning maps are vague about exact locations of tunnel exits and entrances. Perhaps they still don’t know. There is nothing about elevated roadways over our house, so that’s a plus. In fact, small details are not in the big propaganda. For those, you need to attend wintry council meetings or read the small print at the end of Missing Link emails. One such detail was announced obscurely this week. The sports reserve two blocks from our house will be a work area. We knew this already, but not that it will be fenced off with timber, becoming location for an acoustic shed. Jokes were shared over dinner about rock gigs at the new Acoustic Shed, how we could make a mint selling merchandise in the street. Only it’s not that kind of shed. It’s a shed like the one next to St Paul’s Cathedral, where Town Hall Station is being built underground. (“Perhaps that will eventually be the new Festival Hall.”) We try to imagine a world where large trucks and excavators drive around nearby at 3 pm but we sleep soundly because the huge vehicles are all in the acoustic shed. Slumberland! Another minor detail emerged over dinner, the TBM (Tunnel Boring Machine). Actually, the government doesn’t have the TBM yet because it’s still being designed in Germany and will take a year and a half to be shipped to Melbourne, home of the Missing Link. Things could be quiet for a while. Our theory is the same as during the non-consultation era: they don’t know what’s under the Banyule flood plain. Emails say the TBM can bore deeper, weirder, further, which is an impressive amount of boring, especially if it comes from Germany. But maybe they’ve discovered major details about Yarra flood silt and bedrock that haven’t reached the small print yet. When it arrives, the very hungry caterpillar will probably be put together piece-by-piece somewhere like the acoustic shed. TBM TBC. The assembled machine will eat holes all the way from Greensborough to Bulleen, keeping nimbys quiet while munching inexorably 40 metres below their backyards. There is still nothing in the small print about all the extra lanes to be built on the Eastern Freeway as the Bulleen end of the Missing Link vomits out east and west. Just as was raised by some neighbours back in the day; the day of the non-consultations, I mean.  

Road

 

The Greet Motion Wrote, a winding rarely straightforward passage, remains a ‘WORK IN PROGRESS’ sign tree-thundered and sixty-sticks daze of the yeah. Now worries! While loose rocks roll unto the strayed and narrow devolve’s elbow, a block-and-wait debris debut stopping traffic in its trackie daiquiris. Très fuck! That, or ocean errrrrrrosion cliffside or climbsift bottoms out basely the old macadam, leaving madam driver cursing the sea, and all who sail honour, its waves curtsying in return shell we dance? Wye is one of its quests yon, marked by a boulevarde of dreams, a clickety-clackety fiery-furious pitty-paddy path. Also, it zone surf club. Wye?, ask the waves, not waiting for an answer, waiving all objections and a gain racing into sure for foam and fortune. Drift would when drift can. See weed once and seen it all. One for all and all for Lorne, the whaddawurrung coast defied definitely defiantly even lookout yet say not definitively the pick of progress. The push and shovel of shove and level they laid into the inclinations of a kindness of echidna heights. More miles made from explosion than explanation. The axe of big ask respondez-viewed to the increased demands on the coast of living. This cast-up of leads starred lifelong diggers dogged in dugouts, extras that inclouded witnesses such as their doggies ditto, ready and able for years of relandscarping, entrenched in mined from the foregoing Wipers horrorshow. Angle to sea perpendiculous they endeavoured, swags of rock they airdropt to seasides, airily in let their dual carriageway up unto apollonian mists then down again to the sea in shifts. It's A-Grade Notion Rude curved clumsilly carved considerately like Aghost Roadin rode up rode down for the alltimes pre-imagined contours of everyman’s and woman’s open-air tourer, turning at bends, zooming up hellish hillside edges, wending bends, leafing surf and fern in the rarevision mer-roar, overpassing not permitted, and generally tourer-lourering merathons uphill and roundabout. Footsore without, foreshores with, and for sure, ah for shure, foot to the floor, shipshapewrecks avoided. One outcome is debtours, pontifix maximess, a future of fracture features. These include (from l’East to Waste): Turnkey, Separating Creack, Kannot Reverse, Schemes Crook, Appalling Bay, the Twelve Apotholes, Lunged-in Arch (formerly Lunged-in Bridge), Part Crumble, and Worninbell. While clime change, mate, adds further fractions off frictions to the facts not fictions of the old soldiers’ Groan Ozone Rut, the long and winding road that leads to yawn dawn, they’ve sunset that road before a lorn Lorne time ago, that the wild and windy night that the rain washed away. 

 

PROGRAM NOTES: This July, I joined Finnegans Wake Reading Group via zoom at Wye River. Chat included the reminder that during the composition of the novel (1922-1939) James Joyce gave it the provisional title ‘Work in Progress’, the same sort of wording seen on signs anywhere along the Great Ocean Road any day of the year. This is either because the Road is in constant need of repair from natural occurrences, or the Road has never been completed, being in a permanent state of creative update. I am open to other explanations too. It is what it is. Hence this ode to the Road written in wakese, the poetic language invented by Joyce for the writing of his unique novel. Reading the Wake has this effect on me, of wishing to write in wakese.

Beach

 

Walking on the winter beach we do not think of them, the few, as a cloud of electricity, a milky way of flesh, a ganglion of extremities. Those few who, we think, brave the cold wind and grey sky, though brave is an assumption, as they walk enjoyably if earnestly along the environment. Later, at the house, we dream away triads of the walkers – a tower of ivory, a tree of freedom, a geometry of expressions – in the mind’s eye, during the creamy third coffee. The grey-blue of ocean and general atmosphere and further approaching rain squalls are affective causes, a traditional landscape, a salutary reminder for the walkers who tread the wet sand at this time of the day. Weather vanes spin rapidly, while the beach scrub responds to changing conditions in the way it’s grown used to. Driftwood is charred from a beach fire and seaweed runs in dishevelled lines where dry meets wet, sentences requiring disentangling by surf spin. Our companion canines are classic to this scenario, chasing a sodden tennis ball, skirting incoming foam. He she is a bundle of fur, leap of limbs, an advertisement of rainy day. The paws print abstract poetry into the half-liquid called sand. It won’t be an age before it’s erased, one sweep of water the colour of blotter. Higher calculus, political editorial, historical intuitions do not catch the mind of the walkers caught in the sea wind between a strand and a hard reef, their thoughts turned to colours of the visible variety, at a temporary loss for words. It is a medium of all mediums, a fountain of configuration, a balancer of shoals that dares to glide upon a surfboard down the dark turning of the closing waves. There are no surfers today, only the few walkers who for some reason or other have left their warm houses on steep slopes to, as they say, walk the dog, stretch the legs, clear the head a bit. Tomorrow and tomorrow for surfboards. History however itself intervenes in the form of a largest of all blackness, a giant of underwater cooees, a presence blowing its stack into finest water mists thence falling forward toward the deep from a standing upthrust into air, some metres from shore. Fortunate are the few who in their nonplussed trudge witness this new south whale, thoughts vary as to the type, angling itself just below and just above then the grey surface, creasing white splashes. We understand this sight, so distant so close, that soon enough will vanish towards the horizon, an adjective in search of a collective noun, a big mention become a memory over dinner, vanish where a massive blackness advances and rain will obscure the tracks. They are scampering through the ti-tree, the coats of many colours, their eyes of water gleam, their paws of dig-fast, with trailing behind them the now anxious jogging triads we know so well. Alone, only later, triple rainbows will emerge. 

Funny

 

 Question 22: Should poets live impeccably, according to their style of poetry? A cross-section of poets is unfortunate. Many seem willing to break social rules based entirely on their nascent ability to compose pantoums. Their style is fetching but their lives are retching, sorry wretched. Time will tell and timing helps. Latinists say impeccable means without sin, or speck, which is not a common characteristic of the cross-section. Some say poetry is born in sin, which doesn’t seem a dilemma for many of them. Yeats professed this false dichotomy, “perfection of the life, or of the work.” It sounds easy.

 Question 23: Is a monologue a poem? An enormous amount of poetry is monologue and who on earth the poet is monologuing with is anyone’s guess. It is a foundation of English Departments. Once upon a time poets spoke to someone. But for years now they have cultivated monologuing, often for hours in their room before releasing their crafty drafts upon the universe. Rant is another word. Some of these rants are stunning in their prolixity and attempts at logic. Diarists do the same thing. Meanwhile, where would we be without the soliloquy? Silence. Missing out, it’s fair to say.

 Question 24: Can poetry be funny? This question answers itself. Comedy is intrinsic in language, so will be in poetry by design or accident. Perhaps your concern is that poetry’s expected to be serious. Must it? No one is saying that, but poetry is sometimes seen as a place where serious things are said seriously. This is far from the end of the matter. Our efforts at tragedy can come out the other end like comedy. And vice versa. Ogden Nash lamented that his every effort at seriousness only came out funny. We are all eternally grateful that he persisted.

Telescope

 

After dinner the conversation turns to the telescope. It is very amazing, it is utterly amazing, and other awestruck vocabulary is shared in short sharp sentences. Obviously only the Americans could afford such a telescope. We acknowledge that the President of the United States of America is in a position to take some of the credit for this sudden new exposure to universes plural that are billions of years old. Or rather, billions of years ago. Surely it is time to abandon going to Mars, which everyone knows isn’t going to work, and spend the money on more telescopes. After all, what else are we ever going to do other than enjoy the view? The rest of the money can be spent making the Earth habitable. It shows there must be life somewhere else in the universe, is a statement enthusiastically expressed. An apple is quartered and offered around. Yes, is the reply, it seems perfectly obvious there is life elsewhere. Though those on Earth continue to think of life as like life on Earth. We search for Goldilocks planets with water that can sustain life as we know it, which is very anthropocentric of us. Not that there’s anything wrong with anthropocentrism. After all, where else do we start? Humanity is a living breathing hypothesis of existence, together with everything else moving on Earth. Only thing is, couldn’t life be more than our own experience of it? Life forms are abundant here so why not everywhere else? Then, of course, we have consciousness. What if the universe is conscious? It has to be more than what we observe with a telescope. This course of discussion is difficult to sustain in the short term, though it is recognised that our consciousness knows past, present, and future. This is why we can look at stars billions of years ago, knowing we are in the present looking at images in the past. If we are the President, we can not only express wonder in short sharp sentences, we say things like we can see possibilities no one has ever seen before. It is hard to discern what is scripted from what is spontaneous in presidential staged events. For example he says, we can go places no one has ever gone before. To which it could be asked of the President, why? The edge of the universe is a lot further than the North Pole. Mars is a safe distance from a black hole. Conversation hesitates to reject these dreams, starry-eyed literally though they be. True, there is no question, telescopes that humble Hubble could explain the nature of the universes plural where we are fortunate to find ourselves here and now. For which reason, conjectures begin to ramble in a charming fashion that will occupy the scientists of the future. Soon it will be time for washing-up, or watching anime movies, or retiring to bed with a good book, our thoughts already many billions of years away from exoplanets.     

Winter

 

Back in the day winter did it to you, cold night at first light, carpet floor where steps went, glass at each window sheets of ice that bear repeating in these update times of Tongan volcano afterglow, sunsets orange at the end of the day. Back in the day you could barely get the words out, without an idea of what they might mean by the end of the day, best digital copperplate. Back in the day dairy-cart horse emerged from fog addresses ahead of bottles hand-delivered, their glass rattle a metal memory to one whose latte hisses alive at breakfast counter over blessing dissing chat of last night’s theatre, at the end of the day bonkers. Back in the day thousands of grown-ups’ average English words went in one ear and out the other that you grown-up turn over in your mind for mighty meanings between reading and empty space, euphemisms and emails at the end of the day. Back in the day dogbox smoking compartments infused clothing, were stacked with schoolbags Malvern rooftops sailing by brass monkey door handles opening into a smoke-free vision for fully masked view finders at the end of the day all the long bluestone embankments. School grounds back in the day wrote in shouts and limericks something it can take even seventy years to set to rights, set to music, at the end of the day get straight, or slant. Back in the day freedom versus communism cold war news was unfolded its after-effect of ink shadow on fingers that lately touch type the whorls thin for download headlines in a black pocket each minute cold Canberra at the end of the day its new world order. Back in the day winter spoke of outside worlds, boundaries unfamiliar with time that time alone at the end of the day may familiarise. Back in the day a prize shilling bought you the pastie, the bag of mixed lollies slowly selected the musk stick that add to the changes on card credit small changes ringing mental bells at the end of the day. Back in the day paper levered into the writetyper a hammering of cute letters whole paragraphs scrunched long ago as, at the bend of the display, new Roman right-type documents inch below the level of computer design at the end of the day control-S save. Back in the day family had to speak in turn just to get a word in that a lifetime rectifies with more conversations than anyone can keep up with at the end of the day edgeways. Back in the day British black-and-white contested American afterschool funny pictures as back street lights came on and briquette smoke scented the shady acacia gardens no equal at the end of the day to your 70 mm arthouse dreams. Perhaps ‘Back in the Day’ as a title for your collection of dream poems, or leave alone with your imaginary friend at the end of the day, the psychotherapist of the bedroom ceiling.

Conference

 

Over the past two days I attended a conference organised in Melbourne. There were 53 participants, none of whom I met personally. Those I spoke to I found to be distant, some so distant they were over the horizon. To ask a question or answer a question we had to unmute, or raise our hand. They were zoom talking heads on the electronic iconostasis of my screen. Most of the Brisbane delegates were down with covid, sitting in their respective kitchens, in homes surrounded by receding floodwater. It was good to see them, and even hear them after they remembered to unmute. Auckland was short sleeves and sunshine while other places preferred to be unvideo, totally in the dark. Gone is the room’s rapt hush during a keynote speaker, the knowing laughter of recognition as she describes professional mishaps on a shared basis, the dog that ate the dogmatics. Sharing during this week’s conference mainly involved complicated infographics we had to squint to read. It’s a world distant from that of youth. Travel to exotic conference centres is redundant, as participants sit at their respective work desks (‘See Also, Kitchen’) sniffling on mute, jotting down dot points not included in slide shows. The conference, informative, was remote and non-tactile (except for the mouse and the teacup), with its theme of libraries raising the annual question, What is a library? As participants’ faces were hidden by the next presenter and his exponential exhibition, it was hard to read the mood. Names were buried in the chatroom. Do digital librarians have uses for print books? Do they believe in shelving? Are microfiche shinier than silverfish? Do users ask a librarian the reference questions, or always consult their screens? What is a library called that has no books? Are we uploaders, downloaders, or frontend loaders? Planners, or scanners? The paper answering these questions, equivocally, will be published in the next issue of the e-journal, if I can get past the firewall.  Other presentations addressed the emerging issue of holdings. Where once the objective was to increase the print collection, now it’s to reduce the print collection. Is it compactus, or discard? Duplicates, damaged, unused, what to keep? Archival is survival. Space is precious, textbooks are online, students need more areas for their laptops and teacups. The conference broke for lunch in the privacy of our respective habitats, never a word spoken. The latest release of windows in Melbourne displayed steady rain. After which we returned to that World Library, the internet, to a speaker on rare books of the 21^st century. Interactive thoughts went through my head. How many formats can humans invent? Should AI do all the cataloguing? Libraries own the books but do they own the e-books? Are they across all the other formats that were absolute once, obsolete now, and rare as incunabula tomorrow?     

Bone

 

Actually, it is their place to move across a landscape. Balance requires some Contour firm to be upright. Be Cause. Artificial intelligence may say this, a thousand ways. But here this is the original transcript, the A-text, not the B-plan. Title: Choreography of Calcium. Aeronautics must get down to the layperson’s level, ground level. Down on the ground again. For verily, of the Earth they were created. Out of the effort to stand erect they stumbled forth. Internal compression drafted the frame, it started somewhere. Fabulous frame forth go. Gravity made them, all creatures great and small, standing on their own feet, little links of toe bone. What the. Recline with every joint at rest, Earth in a holding position. Fine. Great. Hefty and many learned dissertations will be written. Fieldwork on ribcages will proliferate in Journals. Aeronautics gets down to the lay of the land. Ground level. Trolls will pitch how the space race has crossed a finishing line. Haha! Anti-trolls will find waterfalls on Venus. Houston, they have a problem. Internal compression. Inkling of inglenook bones. Jarring of just so jaunty bones. Jumping Jupiter! Kneel they may upon the sacred stone, hard like stone themselves. Lo! Science fiction never counted on porousness, white holes. Every sentence must be rewritten. Cancel Mars at this rate, the grand canal, could Martians so much as stand straight. No, not ordinarily. Problem. Question. Request. Spacemen specimens of decalcification input data as they embryo go from deck to dial, galaxies at portholes. The more they float the softer their bone tone. Months with the comets wear down the sockets. Time soon to re-enter their skeleton atmosphere, gravity compressing the fixtures. Up is out there or down and out or here and now of there and then, in outer Space. Transfer the space race trillions to renewable do-ables, bonehard facts. No star trek osteoporosis limps the command deck on zimmers bent forward with replacements. Let them face facts. The weight downward of Earth keeps bones thick. Flesh likes it that way, compact against the elements. Upright vertebrae. Whereas up there, out there where there’s all the time in the world, bone thins and fractures without a foothold. White holes might be terminal. Only a test run to Jupiter can say. What the. Soft bodies in capsules, joined and white-bright, don’t touch the ground. Touch the buttons for mission to airlessness. Their fingerbones change in gloves of skin, eyes wanting UV moon views. While down there, which is blue down weighed down there white paisley ribbons over continents, where islands could be stars, down where gravity made them front up to the X-ray yes she said yes alas poor Yorick and the whole Zoo, too. Their yearning Ground Zero.

Photograph: Keith Haring work, taken at the Haring-Basquiat exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in late 2019. This wakese spacewalk with the alphabet is written in response to articles that are coming out in numbers about astronauts’ loss of bone density after long trips outside the Earth’s gravity. Here’s one of them: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jun/30/lost-in-space-returned-astronauts-struggle-to-recover-bone-density-study-finds

 

Ego

 

Question 19: Can a poem be a mini-essay? Just musings? How do you structure it? Inside a poem, more likely hidden as exposed, is an idea. In this respect a poem is a mini-essay. It might be nothing but a musing, no structure, quarter of an idea, a fanfare of syllabic sounds, but it’s a start. On the other hand, poems can be complete essays in miniature. Their structure does not have to be thesis-antithesis-synthesis. They may open with the conclusion, proceed largely by digression, and conclude inconclusively. May turn musings into works of art.  Say everything in fewest words.

 Question 20: Should you keep your ego out of poetry? If poetry is personal then ego is there somewhere. ‘Song of Myself’ knows where it’s coming from and when Walt Whitman unabashedly declares “I contain multitudes”, is he talking about all humanity or just himself? We think of poetry as communication involving someone else, whether an absent or present lover, upward to a Globe of Shakespeareans or amphitheatre of Homerics. To work, ego will take a backseat, not the front row. Awkwardly, even if we never speak in the first person singular our words can be all I, me, mine.

 Question 21: If poetry is easy to write then why doesn’t everyone do it? Well, is poetry easy to write? Moreover, does it work? More likely to say: though everyone can do it, most don’t, even if they did once. The movement from childhood to adulthood should mean poetic maturing, not putting away of perceived “childish things”. It’s a lifetime thing. Some works materialise with the wave of a wand. Others are like building an Ikea cathedral. Meanwhile, lots of people see no point in making poetry. It never occurs to them. This makes poetry special, not elite or niche.

Rhyme

 

Greetings cheerful versifiers, dedicated declaimers, potential bards  and midnight confessors. Here are the next three in the series about making poetry, written after the style of Wislawa Szymborska, most notably in her book translated from the Polish, ‘How to Start Writing (and When to Stop): Advice to Authors.’ (New Directions, 2021). 

Question 16: Is poetry translatable? Yes, every day readers of English poetry are translating English poetry into English. The same is true for any poetry; we are engaged in translating not just the one meaning but the many meanings of any one poem in the original. This multiplicity of meanings is given as one reason why poetry is not translatable into other languages. Translators know from the start they are trying to convey sounds, internal rhymes, assonances, analogies, references, traditions, sayings and jokes that resist translation into another language, each with its own attributes. But they try and it’s helpful. 

Question 17: Why rhyme? Chime, crime, mime, pantomime, prime, the sublime, and time are just seven reasons why we rhyme. Essentially, it’s a memory game, memory itself. It’s about remembering a song, an expression, a link. Our very memory is a rhyme to the actual that is already past. Rhyme makes connections, because the mind is rhyming night and day, what to say. Natural rhymes work better than rhymes where we force it, oft unable to turn off the faucet. Still, rhyme has its limits, there are limited sets of rhymes for any word. We want more, leaving rhyme behind. 

Question 18: Is a thesaurus appropriate? Do you mean is it suitable, proper, pertinent, apt? Applicable, congruous, opportune, germane? Relevant, befitting, rightful, appurtenant? Maybe. As with rhyme, there is a school that says your own vocabulary is reliable and more convincing, that thesaurus words stick out like a sore pollex. Another school opines that all words are valuable and expansion of your vocabulary likewise. Thesauri are indifferent to subtlety, cannot distinguish magenta from lavender, mauve, plum, periwinkle or amethyst. Your violet verse could turn into purple prosody. They encourage herd unity, keeping sheep with goats. Of use, but user beware.

Nose

 

The Nose, by Niko ‘Naso’ Google. Part I. This was not what the barber Jones was used to. Indeed it was what the morning newspapers call a once-in-a-lifetime event. Inside the freshly baked loaf of bread his wife made for breakfast was a nose. This wouldn’t happen with Baker’s Delight. Furthermore, he recognised the nose. It was the nose of Smith, distinctly, the wannabe CEO part-time head kicker. Jones’s wife did “not want that nose in the house one more minute.” He understood. Taking the nose with him to work he threw it off Princes Bridge, only to be spotted by a policeman. The officer refused Jones’s bribe, saying he was getting enough bribes already. Soon after this exchange heavy rain enveloped the scene leaving the whole city, as they say in fiction, “shrouded in mystery.” Part II. It was unpleasant for Smith to look in the mirror that morning to find his nose was missing. The only thing for it was to find the first fitted facemask to hand and go report this disappearance to the police chief. Where had it got to? He mingled in with the crowd of fitted masks, but imagine his alarm while passing nearby the Cathedral, to see his nose being chauffeur-driven in the latest model BMW business-like along Collins Street, replete in woollen suit and silken tie, stylish attire of the accomplished CEO. Accosting it, Smith demanded the nose get back on his face. The nose declined, the nose refused, the nose eluded. Oddly, the police chief was not in, so Smith sent lost notices to the newspapers. The Guardian took a sniff, but the others refused outright as too scandalous, a threat to CEO culture, mask mandates, personal identity. Not in the public interest. Indulging his habit of flirting with young women Smith realised, they might be masked but he was noseless. Arriving home humiliated he met a policeman who had just returned his nose. The nose however played funny buggers and wouldn’t comply with his face. His doctor thought it a hopeless case. A poison pen correspondence ensued with Mrs Eleven when Smith decided she made his nose fall off after he refused her daughter’s hand in marriage. Eventually he saw the light, judging this to be a false assumption. Sea rain started falling all over town loudly and incessantly for what seemed like days. Part III. In the time-honoured tradition of happy endings, Smith woke up one morning to find his nose was back on his face. The rain had cleared, it was a cool but sunny day with seven hot air balloons floating over the Yarra. Wearing of masks was optional while anti-vaxxers protested that their freedoms had been stolen, cancelled, or otherwise denied. It was the world’s most liveable city. Happy to be alive, Smith visited Jones for a haircut and shave. The barber was surprised to see Smith with his nose, but quietly got on with the job. Later in the morning Smith was his old self again, practising shopping therapy at major department stores and flirting with the young women.

  

 Photograph: selfie at Ivanhoe Station in April 2022. Today I read Osip Mandelstam’s novella ‘The Egyptian Stamp’ (1928) set in Petrograd, i.e. St Petersburg, in the summer of 1917. The story is told in a unique poetic way, but draws on certain haunting works of Russian literature, one of them being that absurdist enigma ‘The Nose’ by Nicolai Gogol (1836). Anyway, these two stories inspired this one, so make of it what you will.

Drafting

 

Last October I posted answers to enquiries about poetry on this device, Questions 1-12 of which were subsequently published in the magazine. As stated at the time, my private messager keeps sending questions, so in coming days I will post Questions 13-24. Here are the next three in the series about making poetry. 

Question 13: How many drafts is enough? Drafting follows splurge. Splurge is sometimes sufficient, your words an exact expression of your thought. Effect, however, can take time. Afterthoughts can become central effects. Your words wish to enact their meaning. Such enactment requires a level of stagecraft that simple stage directions cannot carry off. Drafting may become so exhaustive, the poem goes into a drawer forever to keep it out of the draft. Avoidance of closure vies with desire to deliver. There is no set figure for drafts because saying what you wish to say is more important than clockwork process. 

Question 14: Is poetry made to be rejected? Ostensibly, poetry is made to be read and listened to. In the majority of cases there seems also to be some interest in being understood, though this is not universal by any means. That said, it is surprising there are not more works entitled ‘Rejection: An Ode’. Every poet experiences it, some making multi-coloured collections of rejection slips they pin to their wall. Editors stand by their judgements, often based on mysterious criteria they have yet to recover from. It invites circumspection, reflection, redirection - is therefore part of the creative act. 

 Question 15: How is the best way to end a poem? Whether with bang or whimper, best to make it feel like a genuine bang or whimper. Peter Porter advises poets to remove the last verse and see if it makes any difference. If you’ve said what needs saying, why summarise at the end? Some say the best way to end is to learn when to stop. Profusion has its place, until it leads to confusion and exhaustion. Concision gives a frisson, but words pleasurably have a life of their own. Paul Valéry believes a poem’s never finished, merely abandoned.