My writings-a mixed bag. I've been writing safely dull and inoffensive poems since 1956, but I've noticed of late that FARCE ("alien elements" they're called) has occasionally taken residence in my verses. This can sometimes be considered "a problem" but I think a problem that can be endured for the sake of the action, the plot, the "whole nine yards" and for what is generously called "life" And well, "poetry"

Rowing to RHODESIA

By JIM HINER

Trafford Publishing

Copyright © 2012 Jim Hiner
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4669-5050-4

Contents

Dedication.....................................................viiThe Back of My Calling Card....................................ixRowing To Rhodesia.............................................1Never Mention the Word.........................................2I Feared That No One Ever Would Ask Me.........................4Celebration For Dylan Thomas' Crafty Death.....................5So Where Was I.................................................6Verticality....................................................7Schooling......................................................8Basically Baby Design..........................................9Explaining Pain................................................10When Writhing..................................................12An Unproductive Day With My Intellect..........................13On The Self As Self: Four Views................................14For The You....................................................16Poems For An Afternoon.........................................18Front Row......................................................19La Valse.......................................................20Why Marianne Moore Is The Freest Poet..........................21Then The Books.................................................22Wintry Singing—2003......................................25Wintering......................................................26Brooding With Burchfield.......................................27Song For A Loser Once Who Won..................................28CREDO We Believe..............................................33

Chapter One

    ROWINGTO RHODESIA
    or:
    "Poets Should Not Do not"


    Poets should not do not
    too much of the time
    but poets should not
    avoid it altogether.

    So much depends
    not upon now but on what
    others have said before me on
    obscurities of the specifics of
    certain invisible faces of
    even the most explicit
    clearness of a word.
    Or even of what they've not
    said on such a word.

    I come to a word now:
    Byzantium. That is not
    a word of what one would want
    to go there, but of those
    who only want to view
    the domes, their wows
    their golden boughs.

    Before the full nether glory
    of Sixth Century is specified
    no specifics are palpable enough
    to warrant a rush to the Ticket
    Office. And the benefit
    of certain monkey glands
    can no further enticement
    make and is a not. Void it,
    the goyim woid. Avoid.


    NEVER MENTIONTHEWORD

    Never mention the word, you know,
    what turns daylight crepuscular,
    blind to the bone that's become
    carnivorous. You don't see
    what I mean still; so
    never mention the word.

    There are what we furthermore call
    After-all words, after all
    not renegade nor rare, you know,
    nor float on gas. Words
    not retrograde, no, but rather
    memory-rested like a man
    with his feet in the air at night
    in an old barn or analog of lair.
    Alas, we too seldom seek them out
    from anchorage in the Wellingtons
    and Waterloos of our mindsets,
    these words that are to be preferred;
    So prefer them.

    They say, these some words say,
    these after-all words: they should be
    not saved for a ruinous day.
    How atrocious to wait for the dangle
    of all that might be precious
    to hang from the corrupting shingle
    of such a day!

      Hardness, fact, meanwhile and
      Totems of fact hold forth
      and bimetallic arthroplasty
      alone holds it all together where
      those never-mention words appear.

    But wait, be silent, hear
    how providentially they will dissolve
    dry up drown and disappear
    while sweet ripe rich
    darling buds of May
    spray fragrance where
    no mention ever is made.
    So never make it.


    I FEAREDTHAT NO ONE EVER
    WOULD ASK ME

    I feared that no one ever would ask me
    to tell the meaning of one of my poems
    but then one recent metrical day
    in a shrine of highly decorative means
    I was asked exactly that, and was able
    for five fine full hours to hold forth
    at the start, and getting worked up some
    spewed on (and on) for another thirty-six.

    To be sure, the pay though a little more
    than scale for busboys, was a little less
    than I'd been led environmentally
    to expect. Diagramming as much
    to the Leader, I was explained to
    with a flood of patient telluric charm
    that the coffee was entirely on her
    and couldn't I see that refills were free.

    Well yes, true enough, but where was
    the clamor, the crowding around,
    and why aren't my elbows rubbed raw
    like those of any even ordinary scoundrel?
    And what of all those violent attempts
    on one's body one's been led by all
    the Byrons to expect? But I thanked her
    for the plaque with my name on it in gilt.
    Did I say "gilt"? Like gold, but in fiction,
    what's audibly visible in poetic diction.


    (Note: Here is a poem I wish I still liked; but I don't.)


    CELEBRATION FOR DYLAN
    THOMAS' CRAFTY DEATH

    Now your finally quiet bones will start pulsations
    In some who paid no praise, nor merit Love;
    But who suspicious now and now unconsummated
    By what you called tall nightingales and tears,
    Want quick illuminations to lighten fears
    Of your sullen crafted art. They ask not love
    But meanings plain in pages pure enough to flutter
    In front of those who cannot see the moon, its rages.

    How they'll tag you, now you're dead, Discovered!
    And memorize your deeply buried bones—
    No mystery left of what was expurgated.

    So familiar will your name one day become,
    Protesting worshippers will shake their dismal head
    At other ash-collectors who pronounce you dead.


    SO WHERE WAS I

    So where was I when the stagnant smirch of doom
    Settled upon us, all over the land lying on and under us,
    Cringing whisperings among us, conspiratorially,
    As we clanged our unredeemably boggy boots,
    Embellishing all at our feet with the frays and fricassees
    Of ancient wastes modernly occurring where effort
    Soured and turned rancid in its turn, inhibitioning?

    Think, think, think we thought, trusting ever
    In all the Everlasting Amulets, gainsaying
    Never no never, their owlish peekaboos with
    Anachronistic nomenclatures.

    Order was ordered; it was ambulatory:
    We can walk with that, they said, as they fell into
    Metaphysics of Euler's last theorem and squaring
    Circles variously rendered as quite ordinarinesses.
    (Grievances by the evermore, as E.A. Poe once certainly said.)

    And there I was standing on some crag at Cornwall
    Conspicuousing myelf posturingly; or was it
    Some declivity at Dover, where all
    The hypothetical Universe lapped hypothetically
    At the beach, and the beach fought back
    Exchanging loss for gain and taking sand
    For sovereignty or for only serendipity,
    Hoping the hole in the Universal Dike would stay
    No greater than Brinker's thumb. Fats,
    Meanwhile wallering out of patiently, asks,
    "What key are you struggling in?Turn the page!"

    That was at the Sunset, south side of Chicago
    A time ago. A long ago. A long what-matter ago.

VERTICALITY

Sorrow and grandiloquence
On which we horizontal beings
Choke from dust of dead;
Poisonous airs arise
Stuffed at the spired feedlots
With self-inflationary hopes.
We take what comfort we can
On the level
Of posturepedic sand.

    SCHOOLING

    Standing before the broadcast world
    Knowing not as much as a third grader
    What Caesar's last words were:
    I'll get you for this! Or that Chopin
    Could play his mazurkas
    As well with his toes as his fingers.

    There is just constant amazement!
    That Grigory Yefimovich
    Rasputin, for example, reputedly
    Used nothing but Brut after-shave
    And a fifth grader knows as much as
    A courtier a rascal a king or a mountebank.

    The straws of knowledge of learning
    Of schooling do not float do not alter
    Disappear do not bind, synthesize
    Alas not, nor make mind new
    But the grass grows up and covers,
    Disappears, leaving the new thing
    Underneath the old thing still,
    No function but to have been.

    What were their recipes for right?
    Methods were endless, unendurable
    Two ends of the log never rocked
    And points of percentage sank
    With the market, no gain
    With leveraging averages there.

    Only the bindings brightened,
    Steady in their crimson, puce, green/blue.
    Laid in on texts, laid out on
    Inspissated answers,
    No flowage from Parnassus.


    BASICALLY BABY DESIGN

    The trouble with Reason was it tried
    too mindly to make it for everyone
    to basically start look and jump on
    certain goings on more or less
    indifferent to the e.e.cummings
    and so with basically baby design
    more or bicycly less, it more or less
    innocently walked thrill-ride forth
    onto the choo-choo tracks of
    The Last Train from La Guardia
    with nothing on but its Justin boots
    which were basically all that was left
    and that ever since as they say
    has pretty much been that.


    EXPLAINING PAIN

    The pain is never there,
    Not where it seems to the pained
    To be. It is some other, some
    Unforeseen place like, perhaps
    Or perhaps not, but a neuron
    Or a nucleus or something
    Else, somewhere else.
    We doctors have proof of
    What we say, this false
    Presence of what is absent,
    From history of pain-in-the-leg
    Where there is no leg at all,
    The entire leg off. All of it.
    But a person still says "I feel pain!"
    Right there where it's missing.

    So the pain can't be where it's felt.
    And the first and firmest relief
    For what may be indicative
    Of pain is to operate under
    The sound, certain conviction
    Of the pain's not being there
    Where in vain one thinks it, but
    Elsewhere, and thus you can
    Understand what's otherwise
    Impossible to understand
    Without doctors to comfort
    And explain (which is what
    I am doing right now):

    The uncharitable task I have
    I do, unmasking—one might say—
    The pain and pointing to its true
    Location wherever if ever
    It's found. Correctivity is all,
    And the best relief ('til a better
    One, if ever it's found, is found)
    Is to treat what you think's a pain
    With what you're certain's not—
    A dog, for example, but like a dog
    Anyway, when the dog is offending,
    To say to the dog, Down dog!
    And stay down! And if the dog
    Stays up, whose fault is that!


    WHEN WRITHING

    When writhing of dourselves
    We must bruise a whacky
    l'Ongwitch to lunge with
    In sumquat like
    The contrastruction
    Of a Goldberg Kartoum,
    Or whither in hollow seminaries
    Of abouted sense.

    Blueness leds me
    Be ceruse, as I'm
    Heaving my heavingness
    Debouching my bouts
    Decanting my rants
    From headshed to ragepage
    With sediments to match.

    No touch of sublimity's
    Merchant of Venice.
    But I can squeak
    As swill as rathers
    Would when I chew
    'S or what gives a fit
    To William Hazlitt
    Who once was new
    'S but now forgotten,
    Who wrote "with fervor"
    XXI valoriums.

    (Ong, Walter J. a key
    scholar in field of
    Orality)


    AN UNPRODUCTIVE DAY
    WITH MY INTELLECT

    Absolved from having to solve the first
    By its self-contradictory nurture
    I dissed same from misseration
    Yawning widely behind my hand.
    And

    As the second and penultimate was already
    Stuffed all together with excessivenesses
    Altogether too similar to my own
    No confusions could be drawn
    Quartered, pureed or compacted
    And

    As I absolutely refused to compound
    What was de facto already incredibly
    I cast my asperities widely
    With reinless feeling
    Obesity, obesity, obesity.
    And

    Facing the finally sere and wasted so
    No substance was to be seen or discovered
    But a thin stalk of permeability and hype
    Primitively weaving in the hot pale wind
    I by then searching for a figurative firmness
    Furtively mounted unflirtingly
    As a man on a hipped horse
    With glanders beside
    But no bride And
    And so to bed.


    ON THE SELF AS SELF: FOUR VIEWS

    I.
    Who the here's content to be a self
    Unamong the starry bangled
    Going searching for it.
    Who is there not already
    Looking for a self-contempt
    Content with the self he is?
    What self is there anywhere
    To content a self who's somewhere else?
    Why doesn't everyone just stop
    Stand and look around the mountains
    For the Rockettes red glare.

    II.
    See the homeward paths
    See the homeward binds
    See the homeward bounds
    And look elsewhere angelpuss.

    III.
    Familiar paths to marryland
    The skirted boarded paths of nightly
    See them root and germinal
    Early before the Sun goes doom
    And the going's gone of them
    See the rowed selfs all in a line
    And pick the very model of
    A noble self of merchandise.

    IV.
    Want to be another self
    To fit the same self's mirror?
    A Sunday self with a homeBody
    to boot?And Jesus
    Wants you for a sunbeam.
    Ask not what self could do
    For JFK or Jesus, ask what
    KFC can do to find a self,
    Or go where everybody knows
    To find a self is: why not try
    Where you left your cell phone.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Rowing to RHODESIAby JIM HINER Copyright © 2012 by Jim Hiner. Excerpted by permission of Trafford Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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