Speedos

Last night at the Vancouver Barnes & Noble poetry series, one of the featured readers was Crystal Williams. She gave us a fun exercise: made us list all the words we associate with beaches. In a few minutes we came up with about 50 words.

Then she said: "Now write a descriptive poem set at a beach-- without using any of these words."

Here's my attempt:

Speedos

It's all about guys in Speedos.
Sleek bronzes, silhouetted against a colorless backdrop--
drab, textured substance underfoot, gray clouds, gray Pacific, gray smooth rocks,
smooth, rock-hard abs glinting with oil
and not so much covered, as outlined by Spandex.
Perched up there on his wooden tower while
little old ladies walk past with their eyes on the ground
as if
the hollow mineral forms left behind by mollusks with bodies like old pencil erasers
could compare with the young David on his throne!
Well. I came to enjoy the scenery.
As my grandma always said
"Ain't no harm in looking."

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Pictures from Plein Air

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Flying Soft and Low

Wind, water, fire, stone: their voices
fill the Gorge, length, depth and breadth
except lee shores, sheltered from the noise.
Wind here is muted to a whispered breath
and little wavelets kiss, embrace the pebbles
under the generous shade of spreading yellow
leaves. Fall already marks the maples
but this breathless air is summer's final spell.

Five cormorants, the totems of this shore
fly soft and low across the water. Not for them the soaring
heights of hawk and eagle on violent updrafts.
They ply the river's face with humbler craft,
soft wings and silent voices. Stone and water
speak tiny secrets here. They call me "Daughter."

Plein Air, Pebble Beach, Stevenson

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"Stone-iferous Pine"

Hood River is a town whose sloping streets
are steep as roofs. We're resting on the stairs
behind the library. The distant fleet
of parasails, down on the river, flares
and dips, a flock of brightly-feathered swifts.
Today you bask in sun and mild breeze
Hood River, town of waterfront and cliffs,
but you have known the winds that shatter trees
and chose to build your city art from stone.
Beside us, there's a sculpture: twelve-foot cone
of chiseled slabs, evoking palisades
of raw basalt-- or fruit from monstrous pines,
gigantic trees of stone! Or so the sign
reports. It might be dangerous in their shade.

Plein Air, Georgiana Smith Park, Hood River

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Turbulent Interfaces

Here on the rim of the bluff
I am above the tops of ponderosas,
eye-level with turkey vultures.
Vortexes of river smell
spin up from below.

Wind pushes me back from the edge,
pushes east. Water flows west
tugging the surface
into rough chop flanked by freight trains
and freeway traffic. Wind surfers race back and forth
like brilliant dragonflies.

I'm on wild land
inside an urban growth boundary.
Behind the hill, at a ragged fence
scrub oak and coyotes meet vineyard and dogs.
This interface is turbulent as well.

Boulders poke out through the long grass
like knuckles of giant hands
clutching the cliff edge.
They're covered with lichen.
They've been here a long time
in spite of turbulence.

Plein Air, Friends of the Columbia Gorge property, Mosier

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Plein Air, etc.

(On a side note, I have another post up at Write Anything.)

Plein Air, 2011: five poems in two days, written at various sites in the Columbia Gorge. Grueling.

Actually, the idea is that you visit five sites in five days. This is for the benefit of the painters, who presumably need more time. But 1) I can't really take three days off from work this time of year and 2) all that driving is expensive and no good for the environment. So I don't try to keep to the schedule. This year, one of the sites was on a property owned by Friends of the Columbia Gorge, a local conservancy group, and we weren't supposed to go there unaccompanied, so I had to hit that one at the scheduled time.

It worked out very nicely. Todd, Calico and I left home yesterday morning around 7:30 and got to Mosier around 9. From there we went to the White House, a farm, vineyard and orchard just above Hood River on Highway 35. After that, downtown Hood River; the focus this year was at the marina, but we ended up in a city park just below the library. Then we spent the rest of the afternoon and night with friends in Hood River.

This morning we headed across Hood River Bridge to Gorge Crest Vineyard, a winery in the hills above Underwood off Highway 14. From there, down to Pebble Beach at Stevenson. Then across Bridge of the Gods and home. Tired, but much refreshed by the magnificent scenery of the gorge and the company of friends we don't see often enough! (You can see the list of sites and all here.)

Notes: Fire danger is extreme east of the mountains right now. It was exactly two years ago that the Microwave Fire broke out just west of Mosier, while I was participating in my first Plein Air. (That spawned the poem that eventually got published in Windfall.) Mosier's fire chief showed up at the Friends of the Gorge site and was-- quite rightly-- unhappy to find cars parked in long grass. Seems there wasn't good communication somewhere between the fire department, Friends of the Gorge, and the Plein Air organizers; no information was passed to the group about fire safety.

The White House has hosted the official first day of Plein Air several years now. The poem I wrote there yesterday is very different from the one I wrote two years ago, "Wine Air." I'm at a bit of loss to account for it, as the place is very much the same, the weather was similar, etc. I must be different somehow.

Gorge Crest is a relatively new vineyard, with a breathtaking view of Mt. Hood, but you can't quite see the river from there. For the rest, I'll let the poem speak.

Oh, yeah. The deal is, you write 5 poems and send them 2, they pick 1 for the online anthology. I'll make my selections tomorrow evening and post the three I'm not submitting then; after I find out which one's being published, I'll post #4. When the anthology appears, I'll post a link to the last poem.

Sunday Sept 4th, starting at 7 PM, I and others will be reading Plein Air-produced pieces at the Columbia Center for the Arts. And I'll get to view all the art pieces then!

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Frogs With Fangs

In a bed of reeds, by a cozy bog
sat a grumpy frog, brooding on a log.


He dreamed of excitement and thrilling times
a life of mystery, adventure, crime--


"Pond life is so boring," he said with a sob
"I'll move to the big city. I'll join the Mob,


Along came a milkmaid carrying a pail,
the frog said "Here's my chance! I must not fail!"


Like the frogs of Sulawesi
who stare with bulging eyes
He would fight for Ranid freedom
or die!


Splash in the milk! He thought he was hid
but the next time he hopped up, she slammed down the lid.


"I'm a captive in jail. The arm of the law
is long and strong as a heron's jaw.


"If only I'd stayed on my log in the bog
content with my lot as a… bored frog."


"No, this is my choice. I'm going for broke.
Adventure is worth it, even if I should croak!"


Like the frogs of Sulawesi
who stare with bulging eyes
He would fight for Ranid freedom
or die!


The pail got dumped in a big steel vat
that heated up slowly… frogs don't like that.


From pasture to pastuerized-- that's how milk flows
and over the edge our noble frog goes!


Our hero, alone on the street in the dark
heard beautiful music drifting out of a park.


Like the frogs of far Borneo
who sing both low and high
He would call for Ranid freedom
or die!





Photo credits:
sturm und drang:
bang bang:
the gang: gang, face
up sprang:
with fangs:
went clang:
might hang:
felt pang:
harangue:
said "Dang!"
much slang: vat, frog
bell rang:
who sang:
and of course, Michigan J.:

Extra thanks to Dana Lyons of Cows With Guns and to the McMaster University research team.

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The REM-Sleep Weather Channel

Today the city smells of summer rain,
of steaming sidewalk concrete, humid sweat--
but I anticipate, the rain has yet
to fall. I felt it in my bones, the stain
of cloud approaching from the west to blear
the sky. I dreamed we trekked through canyonlands
where yellow crystals grew from baking sands
and on the flats, we watched the clouds in fear.
Those desert floods are killers.
I awoke
to radios announcing cloudy skies
and cooler temperatures. I'm unsurprised,
for I'd already dreamed the weather broke.
Forecasting weather's difficult. It's cheap
to say: "I can do better in my sleep."

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The Zen of Fox

Fox bought the Channel 8 news
reduced it to a pantheon of sorbet-colored talking heads
interspersed with ads for Windex, Lurex,
Timex, Kotex, Pyrex and Purina!
Brand names shotgun-splattered in hi-def
around the utter absence of news--
the vacancy, the void
the jewel at the heart of the media lotus.
OMMMM....

--a word salad poem
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Ramadan: August 2011

Already summer's greens are fading to copper,
tips of maple branches just brushed with copper.

August days shorten and in reversed corrosion
green turns backward into burnished copper.

Not yet the season of cottonwood gold-flakes,
the sidewalks crackle with foil-thin copper.

At midnight, the full moon hangs round and silver
but in the predawn sky the moon's hue is copper.

Fasting makes my mouth taste metallic.
This is a month that God framed in copper.

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The Oregon Poetic Archive

now includes some poems from this blog. Check it out.

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Thoughts about humor

Humor is difficult to write. It's one of the most idiosyncratic, elusive human emotions. A humorous (or allegedly humorous) passage is more likely than any other to induce the sort of dialogue that goes: "I didn't think that was funny at all…" "Well, I thought it was hilarious…"

Situations are rarely, if ever, funny in themselves. The humor in situations comes from how the characters react to them. A good case in point is the third Shrek movie (not the fourth one, which I quite liked): "Hey! Let's put the donkey and the cat in each other's bodies for a while! That'll be funny!"

Well... if you saw the movie, you know it wasn't, even slightly. What it was, was a brilliant and thoroughly wasted opportunity to make funny things happen. The slapstick possibilities of a donkey trying to do donkey things with a cat body, and vice versa-- how could they not have written a single gag around that? Criminal. That movie was riddled with similar cases.

Lately a couple of books have come across our table that seemed to make the same mistake: set up a situation with comic potential, and think that they've written something funny. (I'm not going to name names.) I hope it's not a trend.

Conversely, some writers have a positive gift for extracting humor from, on the face of it, the most unpromising situations. Consider the climactic scene of Christopher Moore's The Stupidest Angel. The town Christmas party is trapped in a church by a party of brain-hungry zombies raised from the local graveyard (thanks to the eponymous character. He really is not very bright). The zombies aren't having much luck breaking in; they decide to distract the folks inside by shouting out some of the deep dark secrets held by the living. I won't reveal more… get the book and read it yourself. Pay attention especially to the dialogue that ensues.

Read my description again. Is it funny? It's not: because all I've given you is the situation. What makes the actual scene funny, fall-out-of-your-chair funny, is how the characters handle it.

Chris Moore's novels also have a weird cumulative effect: I think it has to do with his rhythm. Typically I read through about the first three-quarters of the book going "yeah, yeah, that was funny, that was pretty good…" and then I hit a point where I completely lose it, often over a joke that wasn't necessarily any funnier than any of the previous ones.

Here's a somewhat different approach. Todd's been reading the Iron Druid series; I haven't read any of them yet, but yesterday he read me a passage from the second book, Hammered. The viewpoint character is apparently out for a jog. His mind wanders. He's trying to decide how to handle an upcoming tactical situation. This turns into an inspired riff on Star Trek, with Spock and Kirk as angels sitting on his left and right shoulders, Spock advising caution and restraint while Kirk wants to charge in and kill 'em all… Mind you, as far as I can tell all this has nothing to do with the story, but it's hilarious nonetheless.

But notice that the situation isn't one you'd pick as a potential rib-splitter. I mean, a guy goes for a run? It's his thinking that's funny.

About the only writer I can think of who actually makes situations funny is Connie Willis. (Mind you, this is the same woman who wrote Doomsday Book, "Last of the Winnebagoes," and Blackout. Sometimes I suspect she's a split personality.) "Blued Moon" is a great story, you can find it in her collection Fire Watch. The remarkable thing about "Blued Moon," and Willis humor in general (there's good stuff in Bellwether and To Say Nothing of the Dog as well) is that there often isn't much character reaction.

For example, near the end of the story, the scheming philanderer gets confronted by (if memory serves me) both his current girlfriends and the mother of the girl he plans to seduce-- all of them, through a series of events too improbable to relate here, in possession of written copies of said plan. Just as they knock on his door, Willis changes the scene and leaves us to imagine the well-deserved drubbing that ensues.

Maybe that's what makes it work. Scott McCloud, in his wonderful book Understanding Comics, has a chapter called "Blood in the Gutter." The "gutter" is the white strip that separates panels in a traditional comic page layout: many modern comics have dispensed with it for an "artsier" look. McCloud's point was that comics frequently call on the reader to infer what happens between panels, hence if blood is shed in the "gutter," it's the reader's doing, not the writer's. This process of inference is called closure.

Closure is also what's in action at the end of a story, as in Avram Davidson's very fine "Don't Forget the One Red Rose" (anthologized in The Avram Davidson Treasury among other places). It's sometimes in action between scenes of a longer story or novel: Gene Wolfe especially likes to leave gaps in the narrative that the reader has to backfill. It's closure that supplies the details Willis leaves out of "Blued Moon."

I've written about inference, or closure, quite a bit in the context of poetry, arguing that a poem can be more powerful if it forces the reader to exert this ability, to engage the poem actively rather than just taking it in. Obviously the same is true of prose. Tolkien wrote about the literary effect of "unexplored vistas" lingering beyond the edge of the written work: these fields invite closure to occur. If there are no unexplored areas, either left as gaps within the created realm, or suggested as areas outside it, no closure occurs.

Closure can also be denied to a reader by overly obscure or too-gappy writing. I found Wolfe's New Sun books difficult to read because of the severe discontinuities between chapters, though the story kept my interest in spite of the frustration. (I half think Zelazny's Doorways in the Sand was intended as a New Sun spoof, in that every chapter began with the viewpoint character in some cliffhanger situation; however, he provided flashbacks to explain how the guy got there from the end of the previous chapter. Wolfe never did that.)

This is wandering a bit far from the subject of humor, but it may be relevant in that closure strengthens a reader's engagement with a story/poem/comic. As such, it may be the thing that tips a reader from okay-that's-funny over into rolling on the floor and gasping for breath.
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