The Coming of the Toads

A Notebook – Since 2007

Tag: Discuss

  • Notes on Types of Poetry

    1. You look at something you believe should be familiar but see something else, something unexpected. A moment of confusion, you are given a start, seeing something new or strange, out of place or off kilter, in place of what usually passes practically unnoticed. Some like that feeling; others do not. But the feeling, whatever it is, passes. You dismiss the experience as a kind of déjà vu as what you expected to see comes into focus and the other vision, the mirage, the mistake, disappears.

     

    1. That night, you dream of a chess game, even though you don’t play chess. The chess pieces are friends, neighbors, and relatives. The Queen is a woman who walks by your house daily but never says hi. The King is the friendly dog from across the street, always happy to see you. The Knights are kids riding bicycles. The Castles are bell towers full of birds over empty churches. The Pawns are corporate employees you once supervised, riding a desk all day in a building of sealed windows. In those days, you used to dream of getting up from your desk and throwing open a window, a breeze of fresh air blowing all the papers off the desks, creating a ruckus. You are called down to the Personnel Department and summarily fired.

     

    1. You learn a new word, eggcorn. Slips of both the tongue and ears. You make a list of words you frequently misspell, fold the list, and put it into your Moleskin pocket notebook. You save the Moleskin pages for poems that never come. A week later, the Moleskin still empty, you take out your list of frequently misspelled words and throw it away. You make a new list of words you often mishear or mispronounce. You think of getting a dog and naming her faux pas.

     

    1. The plumber arrives to fix the pipe that froze in last winter’s silver thaw. Something about him smells familiar. It’s a stale beer odor. It’s late afternoon, a hot summer day, and he must have been out at lunch drinking beer, perhaps in the lot of food carts located down by the creek at the bottom of the neighborhood. You look into the back of his van. An old blue and white striped mattress lines the floor. The sidewalls are cubbyholes full of tools and plumbing parts.

     

    1. The power has gone out again, another rolling summer blackout. You light a candle. The phone and Internet are also out. You think absurdly of walking down to the corner to use the pay phone – the pay phone was taken out years ago. The evening is dark and quiet and peaceful, and you decide this is your favorite kind of poetry, the kind that creates a still clearness, and the stars are like rocks on the floor of a shallow, smooth running stream that ebbs and flows with the salt water tides. Suddenly the power comes back on, the fan spins, the radio blaring, the streetlight flooding through the open front window. A door slams. A car starts up. The lights flicker indecisively. Blackouts are only rarely epical.

     

    1. A young woman knocks at the door, a canvasser. Lonely for someone to talk to, you invite her inside. You make tea. Her skin is like parchment, full of colorful tattoos, pictures and words. And she has piercings, one in her upper lip, another in her ear, and a tiny diamond on the side of her nose. Her eyebrows are painted black shellac. She comes quickly to the purpose of her mission: she is selling low cost cremation plans. If you buy now, pre-ordering, before you die, you save lots. She’s already been able to help several of your neighbors. Your block is a gold mine of old people.

     

    1. You’ve the kids for the day, to babysit, day care. You get out large, thick sheets of brightly painted paper. Everyone takes a pair of scissors and cuts alphabet letters out of the sheets. You string the letters together with clear fish line and hang them from the ceiling with thumb tacks, creating slow moving mobiles that say different things depending on the breeze coming through the open windows. Everyone lies on the floor with pillows and blankets, watching the letters turn this way and that, reading aloud new words that appear.

     

  • The Political Fray Replay

    What does it mean to “vote one’s conscience”? Isn’t the conscience that comfortable place where sleeps one’s presuppositions, unquestioned assumptions, background biases, wishes, wants, and whimsy?

    James Joyce was three months old when in May of 1882 two high-level government men associated with British rule were assassinated in what came to be called the Phoenix Park murders. The resulting fallout probably delayed home rule decades, destroyed more lives and families, fed family arguments over politics for decades, was absorbed into history and myth. Charles Stewart Parnell’s career faced new challenges, and Parnell’s early death was a tragedy for Ireland.

    In “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” Joyce’s Stephen recalls his family arguments arising from the topic –

    That was called politics. There were two sides in it: Dante was on one side and his father and Mr. Casey were on the other side but his mother and Uncle Charles were on no side. Every day there was something in the paper about it.

    It pained him that he did not know well what politics meant and that he did not know where the universe ended. He felt small and weak. When would he be like the fellows in Poetry and Rhetoric? They had big voices and big boots and they studied trigonometry.

    Joyce’s Stephen, in “Portrait” and again in “Ulysses,” considers himself the servant of two masters, the Church and British rule. Stephen wants nothing to do with either. That Britain has its own church separate from Ireland’s complicates issues:

    — Really, Simon, you should not speak that way before Stephen. It’s not right.

    — Oh, he’ll remember all this when he grows up, said Dante hotly, the language he heard against God and religion and priests in his own home.

    — Let him remember too, cried Mr Casey to her from across the table, the language with which the priests and the priests’ pawns broke Parnell’s heart and hounded him into his grave. Let him remember that too when he grows up.

    — Sons of bitches! cried Mr Dedalus. When he was down they turned on him to betray him and rend him like rats in a sewer. Lowlived dogs! And they look it! By Christ, they look it!

    — They behaved rightly, cried Dante. They obeyed their bishops and their priests. Honour to them!

    — Well, it is perfectly dreadful to say that not even for one day in the year, said Mrs Dedalus, can we be free from these dreadful disputes!

    Uncle Charles raised his hands mildly and said :

    — Come now, come now, come now ! Can we not have our opinions whatever they are without this bad temper and this bad language? It is too bad surely.

    Mrs Dedalus spoke to Dante in a low voice but Dante said loudly:

    — I will not say nothing. I will defend my church and my religion when it is insulted and spit on by renegade catholics.

    Mr Casey pushed his plate rudely into the middle of the table and, resting his elbows before him, said in a hoarse voice to his host:

    — Tell me, did I tell you that story about a very famous spit?

    The young Steve tries to understand the arguments, the claims and evidence and reasoning. He does not name the fallacies, not yet:

    Stephen looked with affection at Mr Casey’s face which stared across the table over his joined hands. He liked to sit near him at the fire, looking up at his dark fierce face. But his dark eyes were never fierce and his slow voice was good to listen to. But why was he then against the priests? Because Dante must be right then. But he had heard his father say that she was a spoiled nun … Perhaps that made her severe against Parnell. And she did not like him to play with Eileen because Eileen was a protestant and when she was young she knew children that used to play with protestants and the protestants used to make fun of the litany of the Blessed Virgin. Tower of Ivory, they used to say, House of Gold! How could a woman be a tower of ivory or a house of gold? Who was right then ? And he remembered the evening in the infirmary in Clongowes, the dark waters, the light at the pierhead and the moan of sorrow from the people when they had heard.

    Stephen tries to understand the allegiances:

    He was for Ireland and Parnell and so was his father and so was Dante too for one night at the band on the esplanade she had hit a gentleman on the head with her umbrella because he had taken off his hat when the band played God save the Queen at the end.

    But all the young Steven can really understand and what seems to stick with him over the years are the tears:

    At the door Dante turned round violently and shouted down the room, her cheeks flushed and quivering with rage :

    — Devil out of hell! We won! We crushed him to death! Fiend!

    The door slammed behind her.

    Mr Casey, freeing his arms from his holders, suddenly bowed his head on his hands with a sob of pain.

    — Poor Parnell! he cried loudly. My dead king! He sobbed loudly and bitterly.

    Stephen, raising his terrorstricken face, saw that his father’s eyes were full of tears.

    The older Stephen decides not to join the political argument, but will devote himself to his art, his writing:

     A tide began to surge beneath the calm surface of Stephen ‘s friendliness.

    — This race and this country and this life produced me, he said. I shall express myself as I am.

    — Try to be one of us, repeated Davin. In your heart you are an Irishman but your pride is too powerful.

    — My ancestors threw off their language and took another, Stephen said. They allowed a handful of foreigners to subject them. Do you fancy I am going to pay in my own life and person debts they made? What for?

    — For our freedom, said Davin.

    — No honourable and sincere man, said Stephen, has given up to you his life and his youth and his affections from the days of Tone to those of Parnell but you sold him to the enemy or failed him in need or reviled him and left him for another. And you invite me to be one of you. I’d see you damned first.

    — They died for their ideals, Stevie, said Davin. Our day will come yet, believe me.

    Stephen, following his own thought, was silent for an instant.

    — The soul is born, he said vaguely, first in those moments I told you of. It has a slow and dark birth, more mysterious than the birth of the body. When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.

     

  • Sitting in the City

    Maple out spray maying
    ribbons of flowers
    twirl the girls
    round the pole boys
    pulling with bicycles
    festoons falling
    yards full of toys
    and fickle mud.    		 Sitting out warm summer evenings, distant wildfires raking up the dry brush, smoke seen by astronauts as far away as January, surf still rolling up the beaches all around the world, I think of those days and nights six months opposite and reflect on the perfection of earth time.

     

    We have “seen the travail”:

    “A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away…That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been” (Ecclesiastes, 3:6-15, KJV).

     

    But from the time the alarm clocks call and coo across the great divide, and while some rush to it others delay with snooze, to the resetting of the alarms at night, all grow quickly and remain forever impatient with time.

     

    So time moves on: the commute doglegs left as the slow lane stops while drivers get out and pee behind the rail; cells go dead and news is lost forever; the lady in front of you in line at the coffee drive-thru is ordering lattes with lemon twists and chocolate sprinkles atop whipped cream delight – for her whole office; you stop for a jam filled doughnut, already late, and you don’t give a damn about the new diet.

     

    Walking to the front door from the parking lot you wonder if you’ve worn the right clothes for the day. You forgot your sack lunch. The café is serving mac and cheese. You promise a nice salad for dinner. Someone has tossed a cigarette butt in your path – how rude is that! By the time you leave the office, it’s dark out and you’ve forgotten the doughnut and the salad.

     
    July table in the shade
    under the apple tree:
    pickles, potato salad,
    baked beans, deviled
    eggs, bottles of beer,
    water balloon toss,
    evening of pops,
    night of dust.
    By the end of August,
    the sun slipping south
    at an alarming speed,
    the activists suggest
    a presidential decree:
    a declaration of
    a state of emergency,
    plan parades in glee.
    Winter whistles restlessly,
    inflows of wet and dry cold,
    floods and long lines
    at the flu counter,
    impeccable timing,
    seasons on earth,
    neither hurried nor harried,
    quit nor balked.

     

  • Ping Ear

    One advantage of painting over writing, there needn’t be words. Where is there writing without words? I want to read that.

    IMG_20160722_123727

     

     

  • Minefoolnest & Other Misfits

    I’m not a spelling bee. I think the reason I’m not a tiptop speller (well, apart from maybe the more obvious reason) has to do with sound and pronunciation, where sound is what we hear, and pronunciation is how we repeat what we think we heard.

    I remember President Bush bedeviled for misspelling tomato, or maybe it was potato. I remember he was in Florida. Why do I recall he was in Florida, at a grammar school, but I’m not sure of the mot juste he abused? That’s probably a misuse of mot juste; I don’t care – I like the way the ooze comes together in juste abuse. Is misspelling word abuse? In any case, and while I was not and am not a G. W. Bush fan (including his paintings, which I did not like not because they were poorly drawn – in fact, they were quite modern – but because they were so narcissistic, selfie obsessed. At the same time, they gave me pause to think about form and content, particularly the one where he was taking a bath – or was it a shower? – because I’ve always been confused by the form and content business: form, apparently, man in tub; content might have been improved with a plumber at work fixing the toilet while the implacable Bush continues his bath), the news story of Bush’s misspelling boo-boo (to wit: tomatoe or potatoe) I found unworthy of sarcasm or cynicism, and I did not join the spelling bee buzz of hecklers making fun of him.
    (see correction note below.)

    For one thing, I don’t hear the second t in tomato, and if I were going to misspell it, I would probably write tomadoe. Probably that’s yet another reason why I’ll never be a POTUS. Bush’s misspelling was perfect because it’s the same misspelling millions of Americans make every day (or would make, if they were asked to spell tomato), so there was instant populist empathy for him, and it was a chance for the populists to go fsst to the academic snob spelling bees. The academic stings but once. There’s a good reason I hear a d in tomato: /təˈmādō/ – that’s how it’s pronounced. On the other hand (or ear), I do not hear a d in potato, even though potato, like tomato, is pronounced with one: /pəˈtādō/.

    You might be thinking I can’t spell because I can’t pronounce, but you’d be a step short if you didn’t acknowledge I can’t pronounce because I don’t hear the same sounds you do. On my own, left to my own devices, I’m in fact a perfect spelling bee. There will always be those who rush to correct (jab, jab, jab, as Susan says) or who think to be a spelling bee is to be a smart bee, when it simply means to be a drone. Like the artist whose painting is as accurate as a photograph but unimaginative, the spelling bee is productive but hackneyed.

    Words in all their dress and display should surprise us – startle, chortle, spark the double take.

    Spell check, by the way, while helpful, is not a solution. You don’t learn to spell using spell check. In fact, spell check often makes matters worse. Did you mean spell-check? Did you mean spellcheck? Some will argue that’s not a spelling issue. And (underline the right word following) they’re there their probably right. Which is why I’ve been working on mindfulness. Perhaps I meant spill chick, or spoil choke, but chuck it all, anyway. I know how to spell, believe it or not, delete, though I take no delight in it.

    I’ve developed Minefoolnest © as a self-improvement program designed to improve both your spelling and your overall attention to text. It’s a program for language misfits, those who, like me, hear words in sounds and sounds in words, often, not the same words and sounds others hear.

    Correction: Reader John Dockus (see comments below) has identified Vice President Dan Quayle as the miscreant misspeller of potato, and not Bush, not Florida, and not tomato. Would that there were a fact-checker as well as a spell-checker. Leave it to readers to do both for you, and this is what you get! Thanks, John. The Toads blog regrets the error.

     

  • Ires & Ears & Reader Satisfaction Survey

    Instructions: Read each row left to right, then, in each empty cell in the first column, insert a word that irks you. In the corresponding empty cell in the far right column, insert your irky word’s opposite. If you can’t think of a word that irks you, insert a word that feels good to your ears. (Note: You may also read the words by column, top to bottom, or bottom to top – individual reader experience may vary.)

    play ear piquancy
    ear wig able
    ear ate oblige
    ear riff hive
    ear rev rant
    iron browse nose
    ear irk sum
    ir clothed ears
    ear iris bow
    ear nose spell
    ire oh you
    rear reverse ably
    wear plus tear
    spread sheet foot on
    oval ire head
    for get it
    come out side

     

    Reader Satisfaction Survey

    In the cell to the right of the comment, indicate your level of satisfaction with The Coming of the Toads blog, using a 1 for “highly likely,” 2 for “depends,” 3 for “no opinion,” 4 for “not likely,” and 5 for “no way.” If the question suggests an “agree” or “disagree” answer, use 1 for “totally agree,” 2 for “agree somewhat,” 3 for “sometimes,” 4 for “I meditate often,” and 5 for “totally disagree.”

    1

    2

    3

    4

    5
    I’ll probably stop reading your blog soon:
    I’d rather listen to the radio or watch TV:
    I prefer posts that are not poetry:
    I want to see more pictures:
    You should sponsor some giveaways:
    Have you thought of knitting for a hobby?
    I liked the recent bicycle post:
    I’m not sure what you mean by a post?:
    I’m currently reading “War and Peace”:
    I’m thinking of subscribing to a magazine:
    I’m thinking of buying a new car:
    I have enough clothes to suit my needs:
    I can never get a plumber when I need one:
    I got here by mistake:
    I was referred here by my plumber:
    My socio-economic demographic sucks:

    Thank you for visiting The Coming of the Toads and for participating in the survey.

    A few gratuitous pics for this post, because some readers have come to expect pics with words, and, believe it or not, appreciate a good selfie when they see one:

    Photo for cover draft
    Foggy Day

     

  • It goes without saying

    As the old saying goes, it goes without saying. But if it goes without saying, why bother saying it?

    Worried it won’t go without saying it? It will just sit there, going nowhere? And if it does not go without saying it, where is it?

    Where is it when it is not on the go?

    When and where do words rest?

    (Next rest stop, 45 pages)

    It does not go without saying. Without saying, it doesn’t exist. It is nowhere. Not here, not there, not anywhere.

    It goes without saying what goes without saying remains stuck in a limbo of doubt.

    To be sure it’s on the go, say it, repeat it, vary it.

    Not on its own will it go.

    But needs be nevertheless let go.

     

  • Coconut Oil Gets a Review

    Over at “It Kind of Got Away From You,” Dan has posted a generous but not uncritical review of my novel “Coconut Oil.”

    “coconut oil available , an ocean of lotion”

    Em's Copies Penina's Letters and Coconut Oil

  • Comedians in Line at the DMV Getting Licensed

    When Seinfeld the television show was on, a guy in my office gig at the time used to come by my desk in the morning after each episode and ask me did I see Seinfeld last night. I never did. My colleague would then repeat over the course of the day practically the entire episode for me, scene by scene. “And then Kramer comes in and says, ‘…’.” That sort of thing. And he was really good, too. He could have been a stand-up on his own. In fact, he ended up doing a few shows of his own. Very witty guy, good mimic, remembered all the good lines from the classic movies and shows.

    Eventually, I did watch some Seinfeld, new and reruns. Funny stuff, the four friends and their meaningless, purposeless adventures, circuitous – but there’s truth in comedy, and while the Seinfeld episodes might have failed to high jump the MASH bars in the handling of controversial issues, they were subtly subversive in their almost zen like refusal to acknowledge the importance of quotidian values. Seinfeld crossed into farce, while MASH was embedded in satire.

    So it was with interest I listened to Susan who first told me about Seinfeld’s newest venture, “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee,” an independent, on-line show now in its 7th season and 50th episode. The premise is Jerry calls up one of his comedian buddies and invites them to get a coffee, to which they drive in paradisiacal Los Angeles weather in some American Graffiti like cool rod. Susan and I watched the latest installment together on her laptop this morning. Jerry picks up Judd Apatow and they head out in a 1968 candy apple bougainvillea red Firebird. And while we were watching, the idea came to me for this post.

    You see, the problem with comedians in cars getting coffee is that there isn’t anything intrinsically funny about getting coffee. And there’s not much funny about souped up, expensive cars – retro, restored, like they’ve never been taken out of the garage.

    How about, Comedians in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles. “What number are you, Jerry?” “I’m number 236, Judd, how about you?” “33.”  “Really, how lucky is that? When did you get here?” “Yesterday, around noon.”

    “Number 236? 236?” “Hey, man isn’t that you?” “Number 237, 237?” “Oh, bummer, man. You gotta go pull a new number. Otherwise, you’ll be like taking cuts.”

    Or how about, “Comedians without medical insurance coverage in line at the ER with a strange raspberry red itchy rash all up and down their arms and legs. “You, know, Jerry, when we got here the rash was only around our ankles.” “Don’t worry, it’s got a ways to go yet before it gets to our eyes and ears.”

    And why comedians, anyway? Why not a car pool full of adjunct instructors in an old beater on their way to night classes? Oh, wait, I guess those are comedians.

    Or how about a couple of plumbers in tee shirts and blue jeans getting hot dogs and beers at a food cart in Culver City across from one of the old studios? “Hey, Jocko, You think maybe you can come over my place take a look at my plugged up toilet you get off? “Sure, Mabelline, love too.” “What, around 5, 6?” “Yeah, yeah.” “I’ll put some cool ones on ice for ya, Jocko.” “Swell, lovely.”

    Postal workers getting their feet rubbed with coconut oil at nail salons, complaining about all the junk mail, but without which they’d probably be unemployed.

    Paparazzi taking a Pierria bottled water break on the beach at Malibu.

    But I’m glad to see Seinfeld’s project a success. There’s a sponsor now, so Jerry’s presumably broken another preconceived assumption too long controlled by network TV and others in advertising – and social media wonks and the like. In any case, if I’ve said it once I’ve said it more than once, you should not criticize a work for not being the work you want it to be. The good critic considers intent, intended audience, type of argument, persuasive appeals. There are many types of argument, many ways to persuade. Some audiences are friendly, others hostile, and they can change direction like a spinning top. Besides, it’s not easy being funny. Many folks have very little in the way of a sense of humor, and they don’t tolerate fools or clowns with their time.

    There are other getting coffee like projects, involving all the arts. Indie ideas. In Poets Online Talking About Coffee, Berfrois editor Russell Bennetts conducts a series of interviews ostensibly about the poet’s relationship with coffee. But relationships with coffee can be complicated. And you can get your own coffee.

     

  • The 4 Hour Blues

    (for Langston Hughes)

    We start work at 6,
    break at 8,
    go again till 10,
    then spread thin,

    straining hoom
    across the street,
    pay to park the horn
    in the barn.

    4 plus 8 hours of bars:
    menus, bibs, gases, and books.
    We buy these blues,
    coughing up blue stained bills,

    so our blues may change
    to greens.
    We play the 4 hour blues.
    We play the 4 hour blues.

  • Read and Nap

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