Larry Johnson, the splendid lyric poet, has published a volume of poems, Veins, that I highly recommend. The poems range from personal sonnets to longer poems on people like Weldon Kees and Ezra Pound to formal lyrics spoken by various ancient Romans, including Nero’s mother and several emperors. Not to be missed! Available at David Robert Books.

For those who are interested, I will be featured poet in Town Creek (the online poetry magazine) in their fall issue.

“The new discoveries may completely change the way we think about grammar,” said Dr. Strontium Toodlehorne, Palin Professor of Experimental Linguistics at the famed University of Indiana at Uttboro Institute of Grammatical Underlined Physics (UIUIGULP). “While theorists have understood the implications for decades, it is only now that we have been able to observe these new entities in, so to speak, the field.”

The new discoveries have been made possible by the creation of the Astonishingly Long and Lame Best Seller (ALLBS), a work of such prodigious extension that 123,000 copies of Ulysses could be fitted into it end-to-end.

“Theoretically speaking, of course,” says Toodlehorne. “If one were actually to bring Joycean material in contact with the exotic grammars achievable in the Astonishingly Long and Lame Best Seller (ALLBS), they would annihilate each other in a burst of nonsense radiation that would wipe all meaning from the face of the Earth. And don’t even think about Nabokov.”

Many of the new findings are counter-intuitive. The grammatists at UIUIGULP say they now have evidence that all syntactical phrases are combinations of quirks in seventy-leven varieties, including the martin, the individual, the irresponsible, the smart-ass, the buttered, and the wackadoo quirk.

Even such familiar grammatical units as personal pronouns have been proven to have high-cacaphony counterparts. There are in fact distinct families of personal pronouns for every human on the planet. Mine include ig, buk, gnoto, deludon, biliueze, gark, and pheb. You can’t have them, they’re mine. I would tell you what they mean but that’s on a need-to-know basis.

Another example of the weird behavior of grammar at levels of incomprehensibility achievable only within the ALLBS is the prevalence of garbled sentences (sentences created when fragments with completely different structures collide). “Grammatists have wondered for a long time,” says Toodlehorne, “why most of the sentences in literature to date have made sense. Logic dictates there should be an equal number of sentences that don’t make sense, but where are they? It turns out they are observable only when conventional grammar is subjected to extraordinary stress in a thought-vacuum, the sort of vacuum which can be maintained for any length of time only within the ALLBS. Though,” he appended, “the fleeting occurrence of such conditions has been theoretically posited within the minds of certain individuals, primarily politicians, lawyers, fundamentalist preachers, and financial analysts.”

Grammatists now think that unusual conditions during the first micro-seconds of the Big Gabfest, when all of language originated, may have selected for sense instead of nonsense. “There’s no other imaginable reason,” Professor Toodlehorne expostulated, “that we should find ourselves in a primarily functional discourse.” Sentences composed of garble resemble ordinary sentences in every respect, he went on to say, except that they are impossible to understand.

“And don’t get me started on comma splices,” he commanded this interviewer. “Did you know that one comma can support the weight of ten thousand overblown sentiments?” As evidence, Toodlehorne cited a recent sentence-like element discovered in the ALLBS: “ . . . completely crapulous fandoogle, the weight of ten thousand overblown sentiments.”

“Just think,” he whispered dreamily, “what would happen if we could splice thousands of commas together. We would have the world on a string.”

The ALLBS was constructed by a team of grammatists who mated John Grisham’s talent, Stephen King’s logorrhea, and Michael Crichton’s politics with a supercomputer programmed to churn out unfathomable prose at rates never before possible.

“A new paradigm is upon us,” Toodlehorne predicted exultantly. “Even more incredible discoveries lie ahead of us in future time. The world we thought we knew is being replaced by the world we never known we thought.”

News has been discouraging. Don had surgery on the broken hip and was recuperating nicely, scheduled for rehab and the pneumonia on the run, but a food tube clogged and he aspirated, and got pneumonia worse than ever. Plus they found a staph infection.

The whole sequencing was devastating to Kim, who had gone through hell to see this much progress, only to have it suddenly torn away. More devastating for Don, of course, but he’s being kept under with painkillers and sedatives again, and is to some degree unaware of the crisis. Not sure that foggy knowledge something is wrong is actually any better, but there you are.

Wish I had better news. Perhaps things have improved since I last heard.

Again, if you want to send good wishes, address care of Kim (email in the previous post).

Found the following attempt at humor pretty typical, and am attaching my letter of response. I’m not giving the name of the friend who copied it to me (from something a friend sent that person), because I am quite certain no insult was intended. I don’t care whether you side with my detractors. I just feel this sort discourse deserves wider exposure.

And I did, in the heat of the debate, commit one untruth. I HAVE driven a $60,000 car. Just never bought one or owned one.

Cowboy rules for: Arizona, Texas, Colorado, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Idaho, Nevada and the rest of the Wild West are as follows:

1. Pull your pants up. You look like an idiot.

2. Turn your cap right, your head ain’t crooked.

3. Let’s get this straight: it’s called a ‘gravel road.’ I drive a pickup truck because I want to. No matter how slow you drive, you’re gonna get dust on your Lexus. Drive it or get out of the way.

4. They are cattle. That’s why they smell like cattle. They smell like money to us. Get over it. Don’t like it? I-10, I-40, I-70 and I-80 go east and west, I-17, I-15, I-25 and I-35 goes north and south. Pick one and go.

5. So you have a $60,000 car. We’re impressed. We have $250,000 Combines that are driven only 3 weeks a year.

6. Every person in the Wild West waves. It’s called being friendly. Try to understand the concept…

7. If that cell phone rings while a bunch of
geese/pheasants/ducks/doves are comin’ in during the hunts, we WILL shoot it outa your hand. You better hope you don’t have it up to your ear at the tim e.

8. Yeah. We eat trout, salmon, deer and elk. You really want sushi and caviar? It’s available at the corner bait shop.

9. The ‘Opener’ refers to the first day of deer season. It’s a religious holiday held the closest Saturday to the first of November.

10. We open doors for women. That’s applied to all women, regardless of age.

11. No, there’s no ‘vegetarian special’ on the menu. Order steak, or you can order the Chef’s Salad and pick off the 2 pounds of ham and turkey.

12. When we fill out a table, there are three main dishes: meats, vegetables, and breads. We use three spices: salt, pepper, and ketchup! Oh, yeah . . We don’t care what you folks in Cincinnati call that stuff you eat IT AIN’T REAL CHILI!!

13. You bring ‘Coke’ into my house, it better be brown, wet and served over ice. You bring ‘Mary Jane’ into my house, she better be cute, know how to shoot, drive a truck, and have long hair.

14. College and High School Football is as important here as the Giants, the Yankees, the Mets, the Lakers and the Knicks, and a dang site more fun to watch.

15. Yeah, we have golf courses. But don’t hit the water hazards – it spooks the fish.

16. Turn down that blasted car stereo! That thumpity-thump crap ain’t music, anyway. We don’t want to hear it anymore than we want to see your boxers! Refer back to #1!

A true Westerner will send this to at least 10 others and a few new friends that probably won’t get it, but we’re friendly so we share in hopes you can begin to understand what a real life is all about

Dear (Friend)—
Sounds like an inferiority complex to me. I have lived in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma (as well as Mississippi and Louisiana and Arkansas). I love sushi and caviar, but I also like elk, deer, and fish. I don’t hunt but I know how to. I’m probably a better shot than most cowboys.

I smoke grass sometimes. I don’t knock back Bud or Coors and I don’t smoke tobacco. Actually probably about half the people in the above states smoke grass, especially the ones under 40.

I don’t drive a $60,000 car, never have, and have never sneered at somebody who owns a combine. We used mechanical cottonpickers on the cotton farm when I was a kid.

Yeah, they open doors for women. And some of em beat women black and blue and utter slurs about niggers (and used to lynch blacks) and greasers, and their cops try to choke paramedics they think insulted them. Why all the belligerence? Why the veiled threats, the threat to shoot cellphones out of peoples’ ears, shoot their heads off? Is this really a sort of behavior I am supposed to admire?

What do I care if they wave at me if they threaten to beat me up when they meet me in person because I aint like them and don’t share political opinions? What kind of courtesy is that? It’s show courtesy, that’s what it is, not the real thing. For that matter, if a cowboy tries to beat me up he might have an awakening coming. I’ve seen a lot of self-styled cowboys, and even at 65 I can hold my own with most of em. I can swim over a mile and a half in an hour, for example. If there’s anyone out there who thinks being in favor of peace and reason makes me weak, let him bring it on.

And do such people really think they have the corner on courtesy? I’ve been treated with deep courtesy by doormen in New York (City), who were bemused by my Southern accent (and complimented me on my cowboy hat). The key is to treat other people, even those who don’t share my tastes and upbringing, with respect.

I don’t play golf as it happens, think it’s silly, but I love to watch Tiger Woods play. And I’m sure there aint no cowboys nowhere that play golf. Right.

I played football in junior high and high school, ran track and cross country in high school and college. Lettered in track and football and cross country in both high school and college. And sorry, no, but high school football is NOT more fun than the pros. The coaches were, with a few exceptions, stupid and cruel. It’s a lie that it was about developing character. Unless by character you mean violence and blind obedience.

Ever smelled Amarillo? If that’s what money smells like to you, you’re welcome to your life. There’s other ways to make money that don’t stink.

Go ahead, good buddy, restrict your diet to meat and starch (and a few boiled veggies). Good luck with your heart and your weight as you get older. Have a Camel to help your digestion, why don’t you?

The whole thing is bullshit stereotyping. Every intellectual isn’t a snob, every cowboy isn’t a tobacco-chewing liberal-killin’ hero. There’s assholes everywhere and in every walk of life, and good people everywhere in every walk of life.

I’m more like a cowboy than a northeastern city boy. I’ve fed cattle, picked cotton by hand, worked the dirt, built my own cabin with handtools. I also happen to be an intellectual, I read books, I protested the undeclared wars in Viet Nam and Iraq.

It’s true I don’t clump around in high heels all day and think it makes me manly. Though I do have a damn good pair of Luccheses. Actually, she paints a highly idealized portrait of “cowboys.” There aint many like the ones she describes. In Oklahoma and now in Arizona I don’t see many Marlboro men, but I do see a lot of blankfaced mean old geezers hobbling around in hats and boots and driving giant pickups (quite a few of which cost more than a good car) because everybody else does.

You know what I admire? People who think for themselves. People who have the guts to follow what they love without spluttering hostility at other people who don’t love the same things. Real courtesy, not the kind that waves and then threatens to kill you.

I know—honest—that you don’t mean to insult me, and I am not blaming you.

But (nameless) should be ashamed of herself for promoting idiotic stereotypes that foster anger and aggression and not understanding. I’m sure she thinks it’s funny, but maybe she should grow up and realize that the “cowboys” she thinks she is celebrating are really an extremely tiny part of the population of the Earth, and that the bellicose assumption of superiority such people make is what is really laughable.

And you can tell her I said so.

This is exactly the kind of shit that convinces people everyone in Oklahoma is sociopathic. You and I know for a fact that is not true, so she is doing a disservice to the very people she thinks she is boosting. Sorry to be so vehement but I have heard this kind of crap all my life and I do not intend ever to tolerate it quietly again.

Yours, Jack

Stereotypes are offensive. I have never smelled Amarillo. I have smelled Fort Worth near those meat processing plants and the pig farms in North Arkansas at that airport near the Walmart headquarters. Both smelled rather nasty. Only part of Oklahoma worth seeing is that section that borders Arkansas ;0)
whoopdedoo

“The whole thing is bullshit stereotyping. Every intellectual isn’t a snob, every cowboy isn’t a tobacco-chewing liberal-killin’ hero. There’s assholes everywhere and in every walk of life, and good people everywhere in every walk of life.”

Amen.

AshKW

Your response to this is way more stereotypical than this stupid email. And in reading through it again, highly offensive to actual cowboys, my husband included.
Julie Tarp

I’m just happy that she is from Oklahoma. Amarillo ain’t really that bad. Everyone has to be from somewhere…we are all victims of our environments, like it or not. Ignorance is bliss for everyone.
Rated & Cheers!
Texas Bubba

I kinda liked the e-mail. Nodded in agreement at parts. Not sure where the e-mail fosters aggression or anger, but I can see where your response might.

I don’t really have time to do a point-by-point breakdown, but you really didn’t respond to the e-mail. You responded to your own bitterness, for example in your complaint about bullying from high school football coaches. You moved the subject from high school and college football being more fun to watch than pro basketball and baseball to how high school football coaches are bullies, which has precisely what to do with watching the game?
Mrs. Michaels

Feel better now that you have insulted a large part of the population in the western half of the United States? And being from New Mexico and your inference that we beat women and call Black people “niggers’’ all I have to say is:

FUCK YOU AND THE HORSE YOU RODE IN ON ASSHOLE
ocularnervosa

Julie: No, my response is not “more stereotypical.” My response points out that people are people, on the whole, but that some people need to learn common courtesy. My response points out the difference between show courtesy and the real thing. My response says that real cowboys do not fit the stereotypes any more than the stereotypes in the supposed “humor” fit actual people. Nowhere in my response do I talk about shooting people in the head if I don’t like what they are doing.

It is true that I counter most of the assertions of the email with examples that blow the stereotypes apart. It is true that I did so with mockery and derision, not with the limp-spined acquiescence you might have expected. I did not talk about your husband because I don’t know your husband. If he wishes to identify with stereotypes, it’s his choice.

A common strategy in this sort of thing is claiming that it is only humor, only a joke, and that it is free speech, and acting as if the person committing the offense is the one being offended. In other words, reversing the reality.

You don’t get to decide whether something offends me. I get to decide. If not common human decency, then self-preservation should tell anyone not to tell “nigger” jokes to blacks or “Chink” jokes to Chinese. How is this different? How hard is it to understand that insult and threat is not likely to produce admiration and understanding?

Mrs. Michaels: You are not sure what is offensive about the email. You thought it was funny. I suppose that makes it funny to everyone else on Earth? I hardly know what to say to you. Yes, I am bitter. Where do you think the bitterness came from? Did you miss the part where I said I grew up around this stuff? I have heard it all my life, and I am sick of it. Did you miss the part where I said I’m a country boy, that I have actually played high school football, and that maybe, just maybe I know what I am talking about? I am bitter because of the repetition of slanderous and mindless stereotypes. I have defended rednecks passionately against the slanders of self-appointed cultural elitists. Shall I be less passionate about equally mindless and ugly stereotypes in another direction?

And you are wrong: I DID respond to the email, almost point by point. I didn’t bring up waving, or opening the doors for women, or sushi, or caviar, or combines, or high school football. I responded to repulsive stereotypes someone else brought up. Some points seemed so obviously preposterous I didn’t bother, such as the implication that men can tell women what they ought to drive and how long they can wear their hair.

This is the kind of stuff that is funny only to a hermetic group of individuals, and the people who write it and the people who promote it may as well realize that fact. The age of tolerance for insult disguised as humor is over. The possession of wit and intelligence does not mean that you are a patsy who has to accept any description someone else wishes to paste onto you. I suspect that the propagators of this sort of nonsense are going to find themselves in an increasingly hostile world, whose hostility they will of course blame on anyone but themselves.

If you find that uncomfortable, I am sure you will be able to put the discomfort out of your mind shortly.

Feel better now that you have insulted a large part of the population in the western half of the United States? And being from New Mexico and your inference that we beat women and call Black people “niggers’’ all I have to say is:

FUCK YOU AND THE HORSE YOU RODE IN ON ASSHOLE
ocularnervosa

Oc nerve, you need to learn the difference between insulting somebody and responding angrily to an insult. But I suppose if you had been able to do that, your post might have been more eloquent and less of an unsuccessful attempt at intimidation. It might also help to develop enough reading comprehension to see that I did not say New Mexicans beat women. Since I lived there for quite a while, that would mean that I beat women, which I assuredly do not. For that matter I do not beat men, children, or animals either. What I did was counter a preposterous stereotype with an actuality. I said SOME cowboys (NOT New Mexicans) beat women and traded racial slurs. To most people this would indicate that I am well aware not ALL of them do. Do you deny that any self-described cowboy anywhere has ever behaved that way? If so, you lie. If not, you have no point.

And I suppose, since I do not have intercourse with horses, that you would be the one performing that act?

Texas Bubba, my mother and sister live in Amarillo. It’s true we are all to some degree victims of where we live, though some of us, as your comment indicates, develop a degree of self-awareness. My point wasn’t that Amarillo is bad, my point is that the supposed defense of Amarillo is unnecessary, defensive, and insulting.

Means nothing, but couldn’t help noticing the synchronicity when the news hit the next day. Not taking any position on Carradine’s character. Could all be true and could imply what the impliers imply it implies. Certainly not how I hope to go.

But I observe the living do the talking and the dead can’t defend themselves. So why should I have an opinion?

Kill Bill, parts one and two, struck me as pretty silly stuff. More of that warrior/martial arts mumbo-jumbo from people who obviously adore the genre. Wannabe warriors, my guess, who have about as much idea what real samurai are about as wannabe poets have about real poetry. Just not enthralled with the poppycock. Maybe I saw too many cowboy movies as a kid, read too much Zane Gray. Same sort of idolatry of the supposedly pure and heroic. Hey, a warrior aint afraid to face death!

News, blood-geeks. That’s true of 80% of the population. Beat down Christian small farmers. Old men and women all alone. Ordinary citizens.

Don’t require Japanese steel.

Now I know this sort of thing is taken seriously by many, including many that I esteem quite highly. Just don’t work for me. Preposterous, and I freely admit my love of superhero comix is preposterous too. Love Jackie Chan, but that’s sweetened with a dash of humor and genuine acrobatics. Sorry, but when the wire-work extends the trajectory of a human leap, my laughter kicks in right where an actual human making an actual jump would start heading down. It’s an honest reaction. My whole being is tuned to the physical realities of this planet. You can talk all you want to about stories being the realm of the imagination, and I would agree, but I can’t help it, when the “warriors,” by dint of their training, can run up the side of a building or float over rooftops, I start laughing at the exact point that they flout gravity.

Just doesn’t work that way, homies. Watch all the stories you want, and it still won’t work that way. Advanced physical training will indeed enable a few to accomplish feats that look impossible, and are to most of us, but there is no discipline in existence which will allow you to jump 20 feet into the air. Yogis can’t really levitate, either, he said.

What a buzzkill I am, huh?

Even if it weren’t for the ridiculous sober veneration of an “art” that appears to be the killing of killers by killers, Kill Bill would be ridiculous. Apparently its creators think you make dialogue portentous by slowing it way down and pausing between speeches. If they had spoken at normal speed, Kill Bill could have been done in one movie.

Now for the stuff I liked, which there is much more of. Had always thought of Jason Steadham as a sort of empty-headed action guy, but must have been confusing him with Vin Crude. He’s actually pretty charming. He has played, in every movie I have seen, the same basic fellow—the good-hearted petty criminal who gets in way over his head, but through a series of misunderstandings comes out okay—but he does a great job of it. I saw Snatch and Lock, Stock, and Four Smoking Barrels, and they were both witty and fast and funny as hell. Violent, yes, but most of the violence is off-screen (not always the results). There aren’t the long, loving, lingering takes of spraying blood and severed heads and mutilated limbs or organs. Basically the plots of both revolve around opposing camps of truly nasty killer-criminals whose adherence to cruelty and thuggishness backfires and results in their own destruction. Both movies are better than Bank Job (I think it was called), that thing with Steadham and the top-secret dirty photos of Princess Margaret, thought that was an okay movie. I suspect for Steadham it represents the success that accrues to a formerly somewhat-neglected actor, since he is playing the same role, but as is usual for such successes, it is much watered-down.

Recommend very highly The Dancer Upstairs. Hell of a great thriller whose themes revolve around love and political nastiness in a mythical Latin American country (some of the scenes appear to have been shot in Bolivia, which has no sea-coast—although my son-in-law tells me they do have naval marines and just bought a destroyer) and Peru. Javier Bardem plays a wonderful role as an honest policeman battling a murderous revolutionary and a corrupt administration. It’s infinitely better than his ludicrous chops as the unstoppable assassin in the overblown No Country for Old Men. Directed by John Malkovich. Don’t think it got much publicity, but it’s one of the better movies I have seen in quite a while.

Not that you have to address all of that. Hell, one line will do. Just tell the man what his writing means to you. Just say something, anything.

This culture is so obsessed with the new that we neglect the true achievers. Harington’s not just some factory process to produce stories. He’s a human, and right now a human in pretty serious trouble. He could use a bit of encouragement.

What can I say? I have terrible taste. You knew that already, right?

Maybe the tone is a bit combative in these. So? Obama’s not a wuss. I am greatly disturbed by Geithner’s Wall Street insider blinders, and when Obama went on Leno the other night, he seemed more interested in coming across as plausible and in charge than he did in actually confronting the problem. In my opinion we have had way way more than enough of officials telling us to keep quiet and trust them. It sounded like he was still campaigning. I DO trust Obama, sort of. But campaign strategy aint gonna cut it, and I think the citizens in a democracy are obliged to keep an eye of their choices.

Besides, who pays attention to poets? We may be the unacknowledged legislators of the world, but in my experience most of the emphasis in that phrase goes on the word “unacknowledged.”

5. BONUS?

The Secretary of the Treasury
paid off his friends first. Why should you be
defending this turkey? We believe in change
all right, you need a little time. Not strange.
But it doesn’t take time to begin, and you began wrong.
Same old greedy story, same old song.
I voted for you, but now you must get rid
of the “expert” crooks: We’re counting on you, kid.

6. YOU ASKED FOR IT

Listen, I hate to break the news to you,
but after the idiot self-righteous clown and his crew
did all that damage to our country, we need
a hero, a Lincoln. Don’t let it go to your head.
The heroes always have to pay a price.
It isn’t rhetoric, but sacrifice.
What’ll it be? Smooth-talking also-ran?
Or do you have the guts to be the man?

7. ON THE REVERENCE WE OWE ELECTED OFFICIALS

As far as I’m concerned, the president
is just a man, not some divine advent.
He campaigns well, and maybe, just maybe,
can throw out the bathwater but not the baby.
I’ve spent nearly fifty years on what I love,
and I’m better at it, when push comes to shove,
than he is at his job. So should I bow
and bend the knee? No way, no time, nohow.

Since I’m a poet, I naturally thought of a poetic form. What I came up with is a variation on an old standard, the heroic couplet (two lines of rhyming pentameter). My variation is eight lines or only four couplets long, way under the limit, but who wanted to say that much anyway? Naturally, I use the movement of speech to jazz up what would otherwise be the monotony of meter.

I’m writing them whenever the mood strikes, whenever a subject coalesces from the general furor and seems to merit a comment. A bonus: Though technically speaking I am sure I am just as powerless, the act of construction required to put my thoughts into a form, even a slight one, has done away with my sense of helplessness.

Here’s the first four. There will likely be others.

1. ELECTION

When Venus reached its height as evening star,
we chose a president, an exemplar,
we hoped, a quiet man who understood
no good comes of being up to no good.
What holds us all together is fair play
and mutual respect. It aint the U. S. A.
without the principles. Not shock and awe,
but truth approximated in the law.

2. STIMULUS

They’re slow and fat, easy to out-maneuver.
Let them filibuster till hell freezes over.
They’ll take the money, but swear they voted
according to principle. Duly noted.
How healthy would you be if you wrote off
ten percent of your cells, you had a cough
that wilted flowers, and you got no sun at all?
And speaking of health—here comes a new roll call!

3.HEALTH CARE

You told them, gathered together in that room,
that, like the banks, they were inviting doom,
the ax that would reduce their firms to kindling,
to wit: overvalued assets and a dwindling
customer base. Those are the facts of the case.
Oh call it universal health care, Ace,
who cares? Why not save what you can of your wealth
while getting credit for caring about our health?

4. BACK AWAY

from them there “entitlements” with your hands in the air.
Social Security doesn’t need your “repair.”
If it isn’t my money, what did you take from my check?
You want to tinker? Fine. First give it all back.
Won’t even charge you interest. What a deal!
You think we wouldn’t notice? Good buddy, get real.
You think you can keep your job behaving this way?
—Be sure and read my lips election day.

Professor Fury: Moore, in the interview, does not appear to care for Veidt, either. It had occurred to me that Veidt is the perfect type of the Aryan self-made superman and that that treatment had to be satirical.

Reading V for Vendetta for maybe the fourth time. Such detail. The eponymous hero of the soap-opera Storm Saxon. The preposterous vaudevillish black dialect used by the “villains.” The tedious sniggering double entendres of the supposed comedy show.

Bonus with the interview: a recent photo of Moore, showing a pale-whiskered aging gent who nevertheless bears a strong resemblance to the blackbearded rogue peering out of most of the jacket photos.