Chicago Poet - JJ Tindall: Wallace Stevens Without The Insurance Plan and Ezra Pound With All of His Marbles

 

My pal, Chicago poet JJ Tindall smoking a corn-cob pipe ( dang!).  My mistake reciting his brilliant poetry to a worthy audience.

Poetry is math. 

R-CALCULUS     by Jonathan Holden of Kansas

               "The child is the father of the man." 

                        -- W. W. Wordsworth

     Back then, "Calculus"

     was a scary college word,

     and yet we studied it

     from the back seat, we studied   

     the rates at which

     the roadside trees went striding  

Sound and Sense kids!  Poetry ain't poetry without  'em.  Poetry is math -  Math for the guys who cannot make their way through Algebra.  The lyre and the slide-rule were very often the tools for clever kids sent to the Lyceum and hang around with the smart guys in order to pick up  useful applications for living the examined life.

Every culture has poets, bards, shops, shapers, singers and bar-flies caging a few wet ones for the price of a song.  Some people will argue ( wrongly, of course) that any culture is equal to the other.  That is nice and very WTTW and all but about as wrong as Ald. Proco Joe Moreno on a full breakfast.  Shakespeare is superior to Charles Bukowski, the late-Lil Jo Jo, and anything by Katha Polite.

Poets must pass the finger test - e.g. dactylic hexameter if you wish to go Epic. Six feet of DAK tills - A long syllable followed by two short syllables ( Dumb-Diddy) The Greek word dactyl has two meanings 'finger/toe -thus, a metric foot. English is spoken in

 Iambs; thus iambic pentameter Ta Tum/Ta tum/Ta Tum/Ta Tum /Ta tum - five feet to the measure.  Are you bored shitless by now? It is timing, beat, measure matching mood and meaning. That's the math.

Try this by Seamus Heaney 

Digging.

Between my finger and my thumb   

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound   

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:   

My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds   

Bends low, comes up twenty years away   

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills   

Where he was digging.

.....

Seamus Heaney is the real deal.  In the last century (20th -remember that one?) there were three truly outstanding American poets - TS Eliot, Ezra Pound and Wallace Stevens.  TS Eliot was pretentious creep: a St. Louis Hoosier affecting the speech of the British upper classes who had his brilliant and talented wife slapped in the looney bin. Great poet, but a louse that regular guys would love to slap around. He passes the finger test for meter and the one fipped by people of goodwill in direction of cads, bounders and creeps.

Ezra Pound was a sho nuff Hoosier from Indiana who so immersed himself in his art that the art took over - Pound did radio broadcasts for Mussolini, because he liked the trappings of fascism -columns, daggers, legions & etc.  William Butler Yeats was no different from Pound and avoided a trip to hotel silly only because Eire was neutral in WWII and he happened to die in 1939. But like Pound, Yeats, to quote Pope Pius XII, was "as crazy as a shit-house rat."

Our third poet, in my estimation, was best of the lot. Wallace Stevens demands your fullest attention as a man and as a poet.  I'd hang out with him at Beachwood Inn, Chip Inn, Home Run Inn, or Stash's Never Inn any day.  He was one of the top Hartford Insurance Salesmen and practiced his art outside of the public eye.  Stevens' family only learned of his fame as a poet after his death.  By all accounts, Wallace Stevens was not only a brilliant poet, but a great guy.

Here's Chicago's Wallace Stevens without an Insurance spiel and Ezra Pound with his marbles carefully maintained.  JJ. Tindall folks!

Chicagoetry: A Wren in a Wreath

By J.J. Tindall

A Wren in a Wreath

So: there's this ghoul

in my soul,

a wren in my wreath.

In a heart full of holes

lurks a golem of grief.

A compendium of flaws,

a contraption of of fate, he.

He's not everything,

he's just a part of me.

Of course, I have forged

a life mask with a modicum

of charm and finesse

(God! To get through the day!)

and crowned my fell heart

with a laureate's wreath

for endurance under duress.

Like us all, I swirl

with embattled selves.

Within croaks a ghoul

with an elephant's memory

for bleak humiliation

and roiling defeat.

I've christened him

the wren in my wreath.

He commands a gallows

of heartworn dreams, caretakes

a graveyard of botched ambition.

He embodies my Elephant Man:

swollen skull of cracked, grey leather,

hair-sprouting warts, drooling lips,

a vocabulary of phlegm-wracked slurs.

Yep: like a drunk

just a shot away.

I don't like him

but I must love him.

Because he's there.

Stress, fatigue

and crude draughts of relief

enable the guy

with the elephant grief.

Garlanded elephant

with a wren mahout

straddling his blades

and whipping his flank.

OK: not one wren

but a chime of wrens

like a murder of crows

with a case of the bends.

He's there, my wren,

my wrench in the works.

This Eve of All Hallows

I'll drag my life mask to the gallows

and for this night

I'll let the wren reign.

Yep: I'll purge the wrath

and savor compassion

for all ravens, rooks and knaves.

This night shall go judgment

to the grave.

To dawn

and the Day of All Saints

I bequeath

my shabby heart, my wren,

my wreath.

-

J.J. Tindall is the Beachwood's poet-in-residence. He welcomes your comments. Chicagoetry is an exclusive Beachwood collection-in-progress.

JJ Tindal has the great good sense to imbibe Pierian Beers at Beachwood Inn with American Journalist and Pintsman Steve Rhodes.

-

Light - The Paradox in Verse and Inverse Verse: The Foundation for Light Verse

Poetry is hard work. I am lazy. It is not something that one tosses against the Frigidaire to see if it sticks, unless of course you are a fatuous and self-absorbed ninnie with a microphone in front of you at some Slam, or other.

The best poetry seems easily done. True ease in writing comes from Art not chance/ as those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.

Too many poets dance varese like the fits, wiggles and epilepsy of t'weenage south side Irish males at an 8th grade graduation basement party. . . too ugly to imagine, let alone describe. Like WWII Pacific combat . . .you had to be there.

I recently was gifted with a volume of poesy that honors the form made famous by Ogden Nash here in America. I am now a subscriber to Light

Light is a volume of the very best light verse by great American poets like these folks Dan Campion, Timothy Murphy, Philip Appleman, William J. Middleton,Melissa Balmain, Henry Harlan, Bruce Berger, Gail White, J. Patrick Lewis . . .and X. J. Kennedy.
Here's a sampling -

COCKTAILS FOR TWO?


John Ciardi
liked Bacardi
but drank Chianti
with his Auntie.
— E.M. SCHORB

WEDNESDAY MATINEE

The scent of old lady;
A gal 85.
Sherry and mothballs;
Chanel No. 5.

—Terrence M. Bennett

In Praise of Bachelorhood

Of kisses and captivity, of flings
and flight I know one thing:

It's only once the fly has settled
that the Venus flytrap springs.
— AMIT MAJMUDAR

These jewels are cut by masters - simple and satisfying.

They are tight, witty, rhythmic, rhyme-postive, balanced and exact. Get on the same page, Kids!

Foundation for Light Verse is a Non-profit corporation created

In February, 2008, the IRS granted Light Quarterly tax-exempt status. All donations to Light Quarterly are now exempt from Federal tax. Contributions are needed to continue publishing this magazine, and to ensure its growth.

Please send your checks, made out to The Foundation for Light Verse, to

Light
PO Box 7500
Chicago, IL 60680

Light Quarterly is also urgently in need of volunteers. As we grow, the work-load has grown beyond what our staff can handle. If you have any open time in your schedule, and you live in the Chicago or near west suburban area, consider donating your skills to getting this magazine out. You’ll be listed on the Masthead, and you’ll learn publishing and printing in an ideal environment, where it actually happens. Call or e-mail with your contact information. Ours are 1-708-488-1388, and info@foundationforlightverse.org.

My Alderman Must a Poet, I Pray; Like Bathhouse John, Be Matt O'Shea

On May 16, 2011, Matt O'Shea of St. John Fisher Parish in West Beverly, north of 107th Street, will take the oath as Alderman of 19th Ward.

Matt is a ubiquitous civil servant ( he's all over the Ward 24/7) and nice young man. The toils and troubles of elected officials are the roiling tripes of government -favor seekers, grifters, activists, cranks, crabs, and bust-outs will knock, ring and phone Matt O'Shea interminably. "Matt, I was with you the whole time and I volunteered without anyone's say-so, did you see me over by the Quaker's on Artesian ( the polling place for the 23rd precinct -A Quaker Meeting Hall - no sh . . .kidding) I was there and took off the day from Target - I'm a greeter. Hey, Matty, think I can get a spot that don't need too much heavy lifting? I hurt my back playing ball at D' back in the '80's."

Poetry allows us to tap the shoulders of our better angels -'Wake up, Cherub! Wake the #$%^-up! I require soul massage!'

Read poetry -preferably 17th & 18th Century English poets who imitated the Romans -Dryden, Jonson, Pope, Johnson. Do read Paradise Lost by Milton and pay special attention to the moral and political caveats that thicken Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden - in this post-Daley epoch.

If not, enjoy minor poets like Ogden Nash or Robert W. Service.

Begin slowly and with, of all things, prose - Read Lords of the Levee by Lloyd Wendt and Herman Kogan (click my post title, please, do) and immerse yourself in the life and sentiment of Chicago's Politician Poet -John Coughlin and his prosaic pal Michael Kenna.

. . .Coughlin and Kenna had men who were beholden to them in every city, county, state and federal office in the city. They controlled the jobs of city workers, including inspectors and the police, and were also, as aldermen, in a position to grant favors to respectable businessmen in Chicago. They could usually count on a routine take of between $15,000 and $30,000 per year, over and above the stipend of $3 per council meeting that they received from the city. Special votes that were purchased bought them in anywhere from $8,000 to $100,000 each, depending on the importance of the matter. The two men went carefully about their business filling the requests that the financiers of Chicago were willing to pay for, such as zoning variances, permits, tax deductions, licenses and other amenities.


However, things didn’t always go smoothly and the two men did manage to get attention brought to them, both personally and professionally. For instance, one of Bathhouse’s pet projects was the construction of a zoo on land that he owned in Colorado Springs in 1902. The zoo featured a refugee elephant from the Lincoln Park Zoo who had managed to lose part of her trunk in a trap door. Princess Alice, as she was called, was purchased by Coughlin and shipped to Colorado, where she caught a severe cold in the winter of 1906. Coughlin suggested that she be given whiskey, which cured his own ailments, and so keepers gave the elephant an entire quart, which quickly cured her cold. After that, Princess Alice acquired a serious taste for the hard stuff and began searching the zoo looking for visitors with flasks. She would beg for drinks from them and when whiskey was given to her, she would sip it daintily and then go off somewhere and pass out.

Epics that he penned included titles like "She Sleeps by the Drainage Canal", "Ode to a Bathtub", "Why Did They Build the Lovely Lake So Close to the Horrible Shore", "They’re Tearing Up Clark Street Again" and others. It was later revealed though that John Kelley, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, was the actual author of many of Coughlin’s poems, which he read regularly at city council meetings. But only Coughlin would have taken credit for a terrible song that he wrote called "Dear Midnight of Love", which was performed for the first and last time at the Auditorium Theater in October 1899.

The Dear Midnight of Love has a chorus that lilts -

Dear Midnight of Love.why did we Meet?
Dear Midnight of Love, your face is so sweet.
Pure as angels above, surely again we shall speak.
Loving only as dove, Dear Midnight of Love.

Now, how could such a heart and soul as this not do the public will?
Poetry -Blithe Spirit - Bird You Ain't!


http://www.prairieghosts.com/graft.html

Seamus Heaney - Anything Can Happen 2004

In 2004 Seamus Heaney, wrote this beautiful imitation of Horace's Odes -many people recognize the terror assault of America on 9/11 here - I see so much more - a young man from the neighborhood is tragically killed, a young mother comes home from a doctor's visit with a diagnosis of breast cancer, a little boy comes in from play to find his mother in a gran mal seizure,a tradesman can no longer make mortgage payments and must give up the home all of his children grew up in, a husband comes home to an empty house - he only cheated once and he was drunk.

Anything Can HappenSeamus Heaney

After Horace, Odes, I, 34

Anything can happen. You know how Jupiter
Will mostly wait for clouds to gather head
Before he hurls the lightning? Well just now
He galloped his thunder cart and his horses

Across a clear blue sky.. It shook the earth
and the clogged underearth, the River Styx,
the winding streams, the Atlantic shore itself.
Anything can happen, the tallest towers

Be overturned, those in high places daunted,
Those overlooked regarded. Stropped-beak Fortune
Swoops, making the air gasp, tearing the crest off one,
Setting it down bleading on the next.

Ground gives. The heaven's weight
Lifts up off Atlas like a kettle lid.
Capstones shift. Nothing resettles right.
Telluric ash and fire-spores boil away.

Winter Nights Enlarge - Make Straight The Path of the Toro!

Winter's allure to delicate and romantic individuals who delight in the miracle that is snow is magic!

Click my post title for such scenes as to delight the delicate heart!

Thus!

Now Winter Nights Enlarge

by Thomas Campion (1617)


Now winter nights enlarge
The number of their hours,
And clouds their storms discharge
Upon the airy towers.
Let now the chimneys blaze,
And cups o’erflow with wine;
Let well-tuned words amaze
With harmony divine.
Now yellow waxen lights
Shall wait on honey love,
While youthful revels, masques, and courtly sights
Sleep’s leaden spells remove.

This time doth well dispense
With lovers’ long discourse;
Much speech hath some defence,
Though beauty no remorse.
All do not all things well;
Some measures comely tread,
Some knotted riddles tell,
Some poems smoothly read.
The summer hath his joys
And winter his delights;
Though love and all his pleasures are but toys,
They shorten tedious nights.

Then there's me -
The Toro Snow Thrower

2

50cc Briggs & Stratton OHV 4-cycle engine
28" Clearing Width
Up to 45' Throw Distance*
Up to 2,000 lbs. per Minute*
6 Forward, 2 Reverse Speeds

Poetry!
Learn More

Poetic Justice - Poetry Wants No Parole for Norman Porter

A Louse, is louse, is louse. Worked for Gertie Stein. Poetry is the means by which man best articulates what he sees, feels, thinks, tastes and wills. Poetry is math and music.

I was delighted to read that Poetry.com is on the record against parole for a double murderer, fugitive and unrepentant louse - Norman Porter. Norman Porter murdered two people in the 1960's in New England. In 1975, Governor Mike Dukakis communted one conviction.

Today the Chicago Tribune glossed over the horrors committed upon people by Porter. That is what a newspaper wrapped up in the subtleties of the Northwestern Wrongful Conviction and There But for Fortune Industry does with stories like Norman Porter's.
You see Norman Porter skipped out on the law and hid in Chicago where he wrote poems as JJ.Jameson. How could a poet be bad?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-ma-fugitivecaught,0,4747496.story

Porter is up for parole out East .

A powerful voice in Poetry Chicago Poetry.com slams the louse Porter. The newsies whine that Porter has friends in Chicago - Well, Buckos, Poetry is not a friend of this murdering louse.

Poetry.com editor says this -

Norman Porter refuses to take responsibility for his own crimes. He also refuses to take responsibility for the people he hurt in Chicago. Even in the movie Killer Poet, when he was interviewed, Porter claimed the only thing he lied about to his friends in Chicago was his name. Really? How about when he told us he had two daughters? How about when he told us he was in the streets protesting the Vietnam War in the 60s and 70s, when he was really behind bars for brutally murdering someone? How about not warning those who put him up for the night that they were aiding and abetting a fugitive cop-killer? It's not hard to see why Porter shouldn't be paroled. It's simple. He committed the crime, now he has to do the time.

It is also not about how much it costs to keep someone in prison. Yes, prisons are expensive and, yes, some people should be released to keep the cost down, like those charged with minor drug offenses, for example. But in Norman Porter's case, we are talking about a man who was sentenced to two life terms for two brutal murders, who received every bit of leniency and mercy the system could offer, way more mercy than most prisoners get, and who then cold-heartedly took advantage of that mercy to sign himself out of prison to go take a walk, only to betray those who trusted him with that right. If I had $48,000 to spare every year, I would personally fund Porter's imprisonment in order to keep this malicious, murderous, lying manipulator off the streets.

Let us not forget that when Norman Porter was on the lam he was not living a "law-abiding" life. Every minute of every day of every year he was free he was committing a crime by being a fugitive wanted by the law. This big fiction that the "friends of Norman Porter" are creating, about how he was such a generous and caring person who didn't get in any trouble while he was on the lam, is just hogwash. Norman Porter was nothing but trouble and for some reason we celebrated that trouble. We celebrated that trouble because we didn't know who he really was. I am wondering how many of us would have sat there and watched his final reading at Coffee Chicago, when he was so high on narcotics that he couldn't even speak, if we knew that he was really Norman Porter from Massachusetts. How many people at the church would have trusted him with their kids if they knew? We were not given the opportunity to decide whether or not he was a trustworthy person, because he sold us a great big lie. We were not given the chance to decide whether or not he was worthy of our friendship. His life in Chicago, the lies he told, the relationships he ruined, and his destructive behavior were all crimes that he shouldn't have been given the opportunity to commit.

Yours truly,

CJ Laity
ChicagoPoetry.com
Still fighting the good fight!

A bit long for gnomic verse, but I like it! Well done, Mr. Laity!