Robert Hass

Robert Hass, former US Poet Laureate & UC Berkeley professor won the 2008 Pulitzer prize for Poetry for his latest book, Time and Materials.

You may be wondering why I am telling you this. There are a couple of reasons. First, if you recall, this is National Poetry Month so it seems appropriate. Second, many years ago when Jill was attending Berkeley she took a poetry class he taught. She said he is a nice guy & offered to buy her a drink in the cafeteria. She wasn't overly impressed when I told her he had won a Pulitzer prize, but I thought it was pretty cool.

While I didn't get to take a class w/a former Poet Laureate and future Pulitzer prize winner, I did work with his son. His son is a doctor who used to (actually for all I know he still does), work at LMC, the clinic where I worked. He was a pretty nice guy also, although a little odd. Anyway I thought you'd all like to know about these connections to an actual poet.

Not to overwhelm you with poems, but it seems appropriate that I put one on by Robert Hass, so here you go!

Ezra Pound's Proposition

Beauty is sexual, and sexuality
Is the fertility of the earth and the fertility
Of the earth is economics. Though he is no recommendation
For poets on the subject of finance,
I thought of him in the thick heat
Of the Bangkok night. Not more than fourteen, she saunters up to you
Outside the Shangri-la Hotel
And says, in plausible English,
'How about a party, big guy?"

Here is more or less how it works:
The World Bank arranges the credit and the dam
Floods three hundred villages, and the villagers find their way
To the city where their daughters melt into the teeming streets,
And the dam's great turbines, beautifully tooled
in Lund or Dresden or Detroit, financed
by Lazard Frères in Paris or the Morgan Bank in New York,
enabled by judicious gifts from Bechtel of San Francisco
or Halliburton of Houston to the local political elite,
Spun by the force of rushing water,
Have become hives of shimmering silver
And, down river, they throw that bluish throb of light
Across her cheekbones and her lovely skin.

Another Poem & A Reminder!

FYI: This is post #93 - we are getting close to 100!!

It is still National Poetry Month so here is another poem for you. I found this on a blog today & really liked it.

History
by Stephen Dunn

It’s like this, the king marries
a commoner, and the populace cheers.
She doesn’t even know how to curtsy,
but he loves her manners in bed.
Why doesn’t the king do what his father did,
the king’s mother wonders—
those peasant girls brought in
through that secret entrance, that’s how
a kingdom works best. But marriage!
The king’s mother won’t come out
of her room, and a strange democracy
radiates throughout the land,
which causes widespread dreaming,
a general hopefulness. This is,
of course, how people get hurt,
how history gets its ziggy shape.
The king locks his wife in the tower
because she’s begun to ride
her horse far into the woods.
How unqueenly to come back
to the castle like that,
so sweaty and flushed. The only answer,
his mother decides, is stricter rules—
no whispering in the corridors,
no gaiety in the fields.
The king announces his wife is very tired
and has decided to lie down,
and issues an edict that all things yours
are once again his.
This is the kind of law
history loves, which contains
its own demise. The villagers conspire
for years, waiting for the right time,
which never arrives. There’s only
that one person, not exactly brave,
but too unhappy to be reasonable,
who crosses the moat, scales the walls.

Potato Museum

This is either interesting or weird, I'm not sure which. It is a site called The Potato Museum. The actual museum was started in Brussels in 1975. In 1993 it moved to Albuquerque, NM. The museum includes pictures, pins, books, potato artifacts - apparently anything related to the potato.

On the website you can read about the museum, see some of the exhibits, purchase potato museum apparel (seriously!), listen to spud songs, and look at the potato blog. Yes, Virginia, there is a potato blog.

As some of you may know, I have a small problem with magazines. Ok, it is sort of a large problem but to get to the point, I have a theory that there is a magazine for every interest. I've extended this theory to blogs. No matter how weird your interest I'm betting we can find a blog on it. If anyone wants to test this theory, feel free to send me your weird interest & I'll find you a blog. Just as a warning, I'll probably add your interest to my 100th posting list (which is fairly short still).

As proof of my magazine/blog theory I just found a link on the potato museum site to a site called Spudman Magazine (yes, online magazines count), the voice of the potato industry. I really love the Web!

If you have nothing better to do, or even if you do, check out the potato museum. In thinking about potatoes I'm wondering something. In Gone With The Wind, Scarlett is working in the field and digging something up. Was it potatoes? Does anyone know? Ok, answered my own question - it was a turnip. This is the scene where she says, "As God as my witness, I'll never be hungry again." Sorry about that - just a small detour!

Robin

Silent Sunday

I'm instituting a Silent Sunday. This means that every Sunday I'll post a picture for you all to admire. This is a "day off" for me from writing a post (admittedly I haven't done that much lately) and a way to give you all nice pictures to look at! If anyone else wants to post a picture, please do so. If you don't feel silent on Sunday, certainly post something else!

Here is your picture for today. This is Traitor's Gate at the Tower of London. With my own two little hands I took this picture. Admire it and be thankful that you are not entering the Tower through this gate. If you did, the odds are high that your body and head would be going separate ways soon after.

Happiness

Someone once told me that most people they know are unhappy. This got me thinking about what it means to be happy. As usual, I looked online for definitions but didn't find much I liked. I did find some interesting quotes that I thought I'd share.

• When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us. ~Helen Keller
• Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn't know you left open. ~John Barrymore
• The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven. ~John Milton
• Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be. ~Abraham Lincoln
• Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product. ~Eleanor Roosevelt
• Unquestionably, it is possible to do without happiness; it is done involuntarily by nineteen-twentieths of mankind. ~John Stuart Mill
• There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.
  --Freya Stark
• Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things. --Robert Brault
• Most of us believe in trying to make other people happy only if they can be happy in ways which we approve. ~Robert S. Lynd

This final quote really makes me think. Apparently this guy had everything we would assume necessary for happiness. Yet he only counts 14 days of genuine happiness. How many days of happiness would you count in your own life?

I have now reigned about 50 years in victory or peace, beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies. Riches and honors, power and pleasure, have waited on my call, nor does any earthly blessing appear to have been wanting to my felicity. In this situation, I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot. They amount to fourteen.
--Abd Er-Rahman III of Spain, (960 C.E.)

Robin

somewhere i have never travelled

I don't know if I have a favorite poem, or a favorite poet for that matter. Usually I say Emily Dickinson, and I would probably say that now if pressed, but there are others that I hold in as high esteem: Pablo Neruda, Nikki Giovanni, Edna Millay, ee cummings. It is this last whose poem comes to mind at this moment, and so, here it is.

somewhere i have never travelled

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

any experience,your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

(touching skilfully,mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and

my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility: whose texture

compels me with the color of its countries,

rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes

and opens; only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands

Poetry

As you'll have noted in the side-bar, April is National Poetry Month. I thought I'd share a poem with you and then, this is how it works folks, you'll all share a poem! Not in a comment, please do a separate post and indicate who you are. Thank you!!!

This has been one of my favorite poems for years & is still one that I remember. Quite a feat actually - I used to memorize poems but I'm getting old & senile and have forgotten quite a lot that I used to know. This is short though & easily remembered.

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Robert Frost

Robin