Number 96: John Updike "Ex-Basketball Player"

Ex-Basketball Player

Pearl Avenue runs past the high-school lot,

Bends with the trolley tracks, and stops, cut off

Before it has a chance to go two blocks,

At Colonel McComsky Plaza. Berth’s Garage

Is on the corner facing west, and there,

Most days, you'll find Flick Webb, who helps Berth out.

Flick stands tall among the idiot pumps—

Five on a side, the old bubble-head style,

Their rubber elbows hanging loose and low.

One’s nostrils are two S’s, and his eyes

An E and O. And one is squat, without

A head at all—more of a football type.

Once Flick played for the high-school team, the Wizards.

He was good: in fact, the best. In ’46

He bucketed three hundred ninety points,

A county record still. The ball loved Flick.

I saw him rack up thirty-eight or forty

In one home game. His hands were like wild birds.

He never learned a trade, he just sells gas,

Checks oil, and changes flats. Once in a while,

As a gag, he dribbles an inner tube,

But most of us remember anyway.

His hands are fine and nervous on the lug wrench.

It makes no difference to the lug wrench, though.

Off work, he hangs around Mae’s Luncheonette.

Grease-gray and kind of coiled, he plays pinball,

Smokes those thin cigars, nurses lemon phosphates.

Flick seldom says a word to Mae, just nods

Beyond her face toward bright applauding tiers

Of Necco Wafers, Nibs, and Juju Beads.

--John Updike

Hap Notes: Here's a poem to celebrate basketball playoff season- sorta.

Normally, I'd say this poem speaks for itself but there's a lot of information in this poem that is about an America many readers do not know. "Bubble head" gas pumps and "Juju Beads" are not part of everyday life anymore, neither is a luncheonette. Once again we have a reference to an Esso station, which were so common on the East coast. And again, the gray greasy look of all service station's employees uniforms (remember Elizabeth Bishop's "Filling Station"?) America was a charming and fairly dirty place in the 30s and 40s. The 50s started that streamlined "clean" look that most gas stations have now.

The candy at the luncheonette (which is sort of like a diner only they usually were only open for lunch) is on a slanted display (probably on a shelf behind the cash register) which looks very much like bleachers in a gym, like an audience. A lemon phosphate is an old time drugstore/diner/luncheonette drink made with carbonated soda water, a flavored syrup and a pinch of phosphoric acid. They came in lots of flavors: vanilla, cherry, lime, lemon and chocolate. (If you want to make one now use a pinch of citric acid- I don't think you can find restaurant grade phosphoric acid now.) The flavored syrups were often added to Coke, too, but that's not a phosphate- that's just a cherry Coke or a chocolate Coke or a lemon Coke etc.

Juju Beads are harder candies than Jujubes (which are still around) and they were regional. Necco Wafers can still be purchased at Walgreens (they've been around since the late 1800s!). Nibs were small pieces of licorice. They came in both the red and black variety. (Although "red" licorice is NOT licorice. There's no licorice in it. Just sayin'.) I have pictured the candies and gas pumps and the luncheonette (at the masthead.)

Now, of course, Flick would get a scholarship, flunk out of college, maybe make the grade as a professional athlete or maybe not. After he got through rehab he could open up his own station if he'd saved some money. I'm not so sure high school athletes have it much better than they did in Flick's day. All of us know someone who was a great athlete in high school-- some turn out happier than others.

Here's where we talked about Updike before: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2010/12/number-4-john-updike-thoughts-while.html

I will also reassert my original statement that John Updike was a better poet than most and I wish he'd concentrated on it more and saved us from having to read "Rabbit Redux." He had a gift for poetry.

Number 95: Robert Frost "Spring Pools"

Spring Pools

These pools that, though in forests, still reflect
The total sky almost without defect,
And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver,
Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone,
And yet not out by any brook or river,
But up by roots to bring dark foliage on.
The trees that have it in their pent-up buds
To darken nature and be summer woods --
Let them think twice before they use their powers
To blot out and drink up and sweep away
These flowery waters and these watery flowers
From snow that melted only yesterday.

-- Robert Frost

Hap Notes: Frost is often a bundle of seeming contradictions. What is he saying in this poem, that he hates summer? That brutal trees suck up all the spring pools beneath them and darken the woods? Or maybe, that nothing, even as beautiful as these puddles of water under the bare trees which reflect early blossoming flowers, can last?

Winter is a time of survival, especially in the Northeastern part of the U.S. where Frost was living. The melting snow, the first blossoms, the reflected sky, the buds on the trees all stand as a mark that winter is over, one has survived another cold snowy season and life is returning anew to the earth. Does Frost really want the trees to not "use their powers" to drink up the water and grow? Does he think that will happen, that the trees will "think twice"?

There's something going on in this lovely poem with its "flowery waters" and its "watery flowers" aside from the declaration that summer is coming on too fast. It has to do with the passage of time, survival, growth and loneliness. Any contradiction in the poem is really supplied by nature who gives with one gesture as it takes with another. Is Frost, perhaps, encouraging us to "think twice" about the passing of the seasons and the delicacy of the beauty of the spring before we go to another phase of our lives?

Think how this poem also replicates the human condition. Nobody packs a pretty poem with more dangerous, lonely and mysterious stuff than Frost and a lot of that is because he is describing the supreme mysteries of life and death.

It's a good poem for the coming spring as we watch the land changing in our eyeblink of existence. Everything changes- and sometimes that seems dark and forlorn and we are filled with a sadness at the passing loveliness of life.

Number 94: Eugene Field "Apple Pie and Cheese"

Apple-Pie and Cheese

Full many a sinful notion
Conceived of foreign powers
Has come across the ocean
To harm this land of ours;
And heresies called fashions
Have modesty effaced,
And baleful, morbid passions
Corrupt our native taste.
O tempora! O mores!
What profanations these
That seek to dim the glories
Of apple-pie and cheese!

I'm glad my education
Enables me to stand
Against the vile temptation
Held out on every hand;
Eschewing all the tittles
With vanity replete,
I'm loyal to the victuals
Our grandsires used to eat!
I'm glad I've got three willing boys
To hang around and tease
Their mother for the filling joys
Of apple-pie and cheese!

Your flavored creams and ices
And your dainty angel-food
Are mighty fine devices
To regale the dainty dude;
Your terrapin and oysters,
With wine to wash 'em down,
Are just the thing for roisters
When painting of the town;
No flippant, sugared notion
Shall my appetite appease,
Or bate my soul's devotion
To apple-pie and cheese!

The pie my Julia makes me
(God bless her Yankee ways!)
On memory's pinions takes me
To dear Green Mountain days;
And seems like I see Mother
Lean on the window-sill,
A-handin' me and brother
What she knows 'll keep us still;
And these feelings are so grateful,
Says I, "Julia, if you please,
I'll take another plateful
Of that apple-pie and cheese!"

And cheese! No alien it, sir,
That's brought across the sea,--
No Dutch antique, nor Switzer,
Nor glutinous de Brie;
There's nothing I abhor so
As mawmets of this ilk--
Give me the harmless morceau
That's made of true-blue milk!
No matter what conditions
Dyspeptic come to feaze,
The best of all physicians
Is apple-pie and cheese!

Though ribalds may decry 'em,
For these twin boons we stand,
Partaking thrice per diem
Of their fulness out of hand;
No enervating fashion
Shall cheat us of our right
To gratify our passion
With a mouthful at a bite!
We'll cut it square or bias,
Or any way we please,
And faith shall justify us
When we carve our pie and cheese!

De gustibus, 't is stated,
Non disputandum est.
Which meaneth, when translated,
That all is for the best.
So let the foolish choose 'em
The vapid sweets of sin,
I will not disabuse 'em
Of the heresy they're in;
But I, when I undress me
Each night, upon my knees
Will ask the Lord to bless me
With apple-pie and cheese!

--Eugene Field

Hap Notes: Happy Pi Day (March 14 is always Pi Day- 3.14- get it?) It's good to celebrate one of the mathematically strangest numbers and so we will today with a poem about pie, of which it is a lot easier to think of poems on the subject. Plus, I love this poem.

I don't know how typically American it is to eat apple pie with cheese but I know it to be a regular habit of country folk which is sort of what Field is talking about- it's a "plain folks" treat. My dad insisted upon a piece of Wisconsin Cheddar on his apple pie and so did my mother's father; without the cheese, they would turn up their noses at the pie. (I'll point out here that eating cheese at the end of a meal was originally an upper class thing to do from Roman times on but the apple pie with cheese was mostly a farmer's delight.)

Eugene Field (1850-1895) was a brilliant humorist and newspaper columnist who wrote children's verse and I know I've often mentioned how irritatingly condescending the label "children's poetry" can be. In Field's case, while it's true he wrote primarily children's verse (remember "Wynken, Blynken and Nod"?), he was a bright man who wrote and edited for a variety of newspapers including the St. Joseph Gazette (in Missouri), the Kansas City Times, the Denver Tribune and the Chicago Daily News. He wrote a good dozen or so poetry books, most of which you can find here: www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/f#a238 thanks to the folks at Project Gutenberg.

Many of Field's poems had illustrations by the well-known artist Maxfield Parrish (one of the illustrations is pictured here under the photo of Field. (Note the color of the sky- it is to this very day still called "Parrish Blue"- he mixed his own luminous colors and had a variety of layering and glazing techniques.)

In the poem, "Julia" is his wife (the Fields had eight children) and "morceau" is French for a piece or a small bit. "Te Gustibus non disputandem est" literally means "one can't argue with someone's taste" and is usually translated as "there's no accounting for taste." A "pinion" is a way of saying "wing"; his memory flies back to a time when he was younger. "Oh tempora! Oh mores!" is a famous line from Cicero (106 BC-42 BC) deploring the corruption of the times in which he lived and means "Oh the times! Oh the customs!" (Field wrote a rousing and humorous poem extolling the virtues of learning Latin and Greek in the public schools when they were starting to be dropped from school curricula. Now, of course, they are almost completely gone to which I would say "Oh tempora! Oh mores!")

Here's an interesting Field quote: "Human thought is like a monstrous pendulum; it keeps swinging from one extreme to the other.”

Number 93: Robert Frost "Out, Out..."

Out, Out--

The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood, Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it. And from there those that lifted eyes could count Five mountain ranges one behind the other Under the sunset far into Vermont. And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled, As it ran light, or had to bear a load. And nothing happened: day was all but done. Call it a day, I wish they might have said To please the boy by giving him the half hour That a boy counts so much when saved from work. His sister stood beside them in her apron To tell them "Supper." At the word, the saw, As if to prove saws knew what supper meant, Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap— He must have given the hand. However it was, Neither refused the meeting. But the hand! The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh, As he swung toward them holding up the hand Half in appeal, but half as if to keep The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all— Since he was old enough to know, big boy Doing a man's work, though a child at heart— He saw all spoiled. "Don't let him cut my hand off— The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!" So. But the hand was gone already. The doctor put him in the dark of ether. He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath. And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright. No one believed. They listened at his heart. Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it. No more to build on there. And they, since they Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs. -- Robert Frost Hap Notes: I'm sad to say this poem is probably based on a true story about the son of one of Frost's neighbors. The boy was cutting wood, was cut by the saw, bled profusely, went into shock and died, The incident is true but, of course, Frost gives it a different viewpoint to contemplate. The poem has a similar tone to yesterday's Auden poem, does it not? Frost's title comes from Shakespeare's play Macbeth. Here's a bit of it: To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time ; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. This particular passage in Shakespeare has inspired a great many titles for plays and poems, probably most notably Faulkner's book "The Sound and the Fury" where the first parts of the book are narrated by three brothers, one of whom is mentally impaired. However, the character in the book one thinks of as an "idiot" is up for interpretation. Exposing a bit of Frost's salty, sly humor, think for a moment on who is telling us this tale. Frost, however, is masterful at narration. He gives us particulars that make the scene vivid- the saw leaping at the hand ("as if to prove saws knew what supper meant"). How many times have people recreated the scene of an accident with "If only"- if only the boy had been given some time to play instead of having to do a "man's work." You don't need any help with this poem, I don't think. Just remember that Frost isn't saying something particularly harsh about the boy's family at the end of the poem- he's saying something about the living and the dead. Here's where we first mentioned Frost: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2010/12/number-7-robert-frost-design_14.html

Number 92: W.H.Auden: "Musee des Beaux Arts"

Musee des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

-- W. H. Auden

Hap Notes: Okay, Auden is talking about a lot of stuff here so let's take it one at a time. The poet is talking about "the old masters" of painting (classical artists who worked before 1800- examples would be Botticelli, Tintoretto, Da Vinci, Rubens, Rembrandt etc.) of whom Breughel, the artist he is mentioning, is one. Auden is specifically referencing Breughel's painting "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" in this poem which is reproduced in its entirety on the masthead of the blog today.

The painting features the fall of Icarus- you may remember the Greek myth, if not, here's the salient points referenced in the painting and the poem: Icaraus and his dad, Daedalus, are imprisoned on the island of Crete. Daedalus makes two pairs of wax wings with feathers so that they can fly out of prison (remember, I said it was a myth). Icarus uses the wings and flies too close to the sun, the wax melts and he falls into the water and drowns in the Aegean Sea. This story is the origin of the cliche' about flying too close to the sun when talking about someone who has gotten too confident.

If you notice in the Brueghel painting, first and foremost is a guy plowing. There are a couple of ships , a man herding sheep and goats, mountains and a town. In the right hand corner, near the big ship we see a pair of legs and the shadow of a wing. That's Icarus. See him?

Now what is Brueghel and Auden telling us about tragedy and life? Well, first off, life goes blithely on as tragedy hits others. Most people can relate to this idea. Have you ever had a loved one in the hospital or, even sadder, die? You are wrecked with sadness but the rest of the world goes on about its business oblivious to you and your family's pain. Auden is saying that the old masters- particularly Brueghal- painted this truth. When you see pictures of the birth of Jesus (done by the old masters) there are often observers who are less than interested- donkeys, children, a fella looking at the ground. In these paintings people often are going on about their lives while something miraculous or strange or tragic is happening in the background. The focal point could actually be the guy plowing in the foreground- not the kid falling into the sea. It's hard to see the tragedy of the fallen boy- just as we are often oblivious to tragedy when observing everyday life.

So, perhaps what the poet is saying is that tragedy is all a matter of perspective in the grand scheme and cycle of life. You may see someone else's tragedy and never even notice it. Its impact is minimal to those who do not understand what is going on. The men in the ship see a boy falling out of the sky- and sail on- they have business to do.

Now that you know the details- you can brew on the poem yourself. What do you think Auden is saying- even about the arts? Remember the title of the poem "Musee des Beaux Arts" is referencing a museum. In December 1938, while visiting Brussels, W.H. Auden went to the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, and saw this painting. The title, though, means "Museum of Fine Arts." Is he making a comment about art and artists as well as about the suffering of others?

We have already talked about Auden here: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/01/number-50-wh-auden-more-loving-one.html

Number 91: Tony Hoagland "Memory As a Hearing Aid"

Memory As a Hearing Aid

Somewhere, someone is asking a question,
and I stand squinting at the classroom
with one hand cupped behind my ear,
trying to figure out where that voice is coming from.

I might be already an old man,
attempting to recall the night
his hearing got misplaced,
front-row-center at a battle of the bands,

where a lot of leather-clad, second-rate musicians,
amped up to dinosaur proportions,
test drove their equipment through our ears.
Each time the drummer threw a tantrum,

the guitarist whirled and sprayed us with machine-gun riffs,
as if they wished that they could knock us
quite literally dead.
We called that fun in 1970,

when we weren’t sure our lives were worth surviving.
I’m here to tell you that they were,
and many of us did, despite ourselves,
though the road from there to here

is paved with dead brain cells,
parents shocked to silence,
and squad cars painting the whole neighborhood
the quaking tint and texture of red jelly.

Friends, we should have postmarks on our foreheads
to show where we have been;
we should have pointed ears, or polka-dotted skin
to show what we were thinking

when we hot-rodded over God’s front lawn,
and Death kept blinking.
But here I stand, an average-looking man
staring at a room

where someone blond in braids
with a beautiful belief in answers
is still asking questions.

Through the silence in my dead ear,
I can almost hear the future whisper
to the past: it says that this is not a test
and everybody passes.

--Tony Hoagland

Hap Notes: I love Tony Hoagland's poetry but I really posted this for my jury duty friends to show them the power of poetry with everyday speech. This is not to say Hoagland's word pictures are not well wrought, thoughtful and original. I'm just saying that folks can read Hoagland without making a great deal of preparations in order to be "inspired" by poetry.

Some poetry is worded in ways that seem obscure or complex and sometimes there is a very good reason for that. The poet often wants to slow the reader and himself down for deeper concentration. Of course, sometimes the poet is just a blowhard performing verbal gymnastics which often appeal to people who think poetry has to be hard. To change a phrase used by one of my favorite pitchers of all time, Ferguson Jenkins (born 1942- first Cubs pitcher to win a Cy Young Award): "Poetry is easy. Life is hard."

Poetry should have a flow and Hoagland has a natural cadence that is deceptively easy to read. He plants his images with depths you may gloss over or explore at your leisure but you are sure to get something from his poem after an initial reading. This is huge. He communicates with the poem and then leaves you with food for thought. You can dig deeper into the poem if you like, but he certainly allows you to leave with a well worded thoughtful surface message.

In the poem, a moment of reflecting on a certain amount of hearing loss as he teaches a class brings the poet around to his younger days ( when his age was similar to the student asking the question) and he thinks a bit on the cycle of life. What do you think the last stanza means? What does it mean to your life?

We do things in our youth that flirt with death and bring us (those of us who are still alive and reading) to where we are now. Life isn't a test, it's a cycle in which everyone has a place in youth and age. And don't forget to think on the title of the poem.

Here's where we talked about Hoagland before if you want a refresher- also a great poem: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/02/number-78-tony-hoagland-i-have-news-for.html

Number 90: Robert Frost "Fragmentary Blue"

Fragmentary Blue

Why make so much of fragmentary blue
In here and there a bird, or butterfly,
Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,
When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?

Since earth is earth, perhaps, not heaven (as yet)--
Though some savants make earth include the sky;
And blue so far above us comes so high,
It only gives our wish for blue a whet.

--Robert Frost

Hap Notes: I have to apologize for the two-day gap. I'm on jury duty and still trying to do my writing work and trying to keep up with the dishes (there are so many of them in the sink I have heard them murmuring about starting their own government). I don't mean to complain about jury duty- it's one of the great honors and rights of being a voting citizen in America. I'm mostly whining about my lack of time management skills.

Let's go to the poem. Essential to the understanding of this poem is what one feels when looking at the sky. What does the vast open blue sky make you feel? Is the beauty something you love and perhaps covet as a distinct part of your personal appreciation? Does the vault of heaven make you think of God or nature and the power, lushness and mystery of life? Is is just a very pretty color? Frost is saying something about human desire- is it that we always want more? Do we dream of the heaven we were taught exists after death? What is it that you think of when you see a beautiful blue sky? What does it stand for when you see it?

Now you may say, it's just the sky- it's just a collection of molecules that bend the light into the blue spectrum. So is THAT what you think of each time you see the blue of the sky? Is there something free and liberating about that blue "air" overhead- something that makes you think there's more to life than just existence on the ground?

Frost is asking why it is that when we (maybe you, maybe not you) look at a patch of blue color on a bird's wing or bit of blue on a butterfly or when you see an extraordinarily blue flower or eye, we make much of it- we see it as wonderful. He's asking why do we think it's so special when the sky above us, which is so vast, is a darn big lot of blue. It seems as though life has an abundance of the color -- even though we cannot get too close to it... even though it's, maybe, illusion.

Is it better to own a piece of blue or have the sky, which we share with everyone? Is that little flash of blue on a bird's wing more precious because the blue of the sky is so far away? Does the sky whet our appetite for a closer communion with it? It's a tiny poem with a big question; what is so special about blue if we see it almost every day overhead? Why do little bits of the color attract us? He's using the sky as an example of that ineffable, unattainable "stuff" we want whether it's freedom, beauty, communion with God, or a "one-ness" with nature. It's a small, but interesting observation, isn't it?

Frost leaves it up to your perception of blue as to what it symbolizes to you when you see the sky. But almost everyone has a some sort of feeling whether it is longing or satisfaction when they gaze at the sky out of their window at work, or standing at the edge of a lake, or climbing a mountain or just hanging around outside. What is that feeling?

And just what does he mean when he says "Since earth is earth"? Is he talking about the ground or is he maybe talking about the people and what they are like? When he says it's not heaven "as yet" that's Frost coming out and winking at you a bit. Will earth ever be heaven?

We've done Frost before and here's where the first one is if you want to refresh your memory about him: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2010/12/number-7-robert-frost-design_14.html.