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Thursday, June 28, 2007

And Now For Something Completely Different

Alas, some folks reading and/or posting on this site seem to think the title of this blog is All Sewer All The Time. It isn’t. So, let’s take a break from all the name calling and neener-neening and poo-throwing at one another. It’s a beautiful summer’s day. Here’s a poem by Billy Collins from a wonderful collection of his poems, Sailing Alone Around the Room (available in paperback). Collins is a wonderfully “accessible” poet who nonetheless hides dangerously beautiful hooks in his poems. And for sheer wordsmithing, he’s a delight. Enjoy.

Afternoon with Irish Cows

There were a few dozen who
occupied the field
across the road from where we
lived,
stepping all day from tuft to tuft,
their big heads down in the soft
grass,
though I would sometimes pass a
window
and look out to see the field
suddenly empty
as if they had taken wing, flown
off to another country.

Then later, I would open the blue
front door,
and again the field would be full
of their munching,
or they would be lying down
on the black-and-white maps of
their sides,
facing in all directions, waiting
for rain.
How mysterious, how patient and
dumbfounded
they appeared in the long quiet of
the afternoon

But every once in a while, one of
them
would let out a sound so
phenomenal
that I would put down the paper
or the knife I was cutting an apple
with
and walk across the road to the
stone wall
to see which one of them was
being torched
or pierced through the side with a long spear.

Yes, it sounded like pain until I
could see
the noisy one, anchored there on
all fours,
her neck outstretched, her
bellowing head
laboring upward as she gave
voice
to the rising, full-bodied cry
that began in the darkness of her
belly
and echoed up through her
bowed ribs into her
gaping mouth.

Then I knew that she was only
announcing
the large, unadulterated cowness
of herself,
pouring out the ancient apologia
of her kind
to all the green fields and the gray
clouds,
to the limestone hills and the inlet
of the blue bay,
while she regarded my head and
shoulders
above the wall with one wild,
shocking eye.

15 comments:

Ron said...

Ann wrote:

"It’s a beautiful summer’s day."

Good day for line-drying the laundry. How's your drying stand working out, Ann?

And as a county bumpkin that actually DOES sit around a potbelly stove and yak and natter with other country bumpkins, trust me, those cows can announce their large, unadulterated cowness with vigor. And, now that I think about it, goats are also pretty good at announcing their goatness.

"while she regarded my head and
shoulders
above the wall with one wild,
shocking eye."


That's funny.

Beautiful summer day, indeed.

*PG-13 said...

Wow. Baxter Black and a long history of cowboy poets aside I would never have thought of cows as an object of poetry. Poetry and cows just don't go together in my mind. Big, smelly, slow, dumb and dumber. Also thick and juicy medium rare steaks. And milk. These are what come to mind when I think of cows. Not poetry. But this has some nice poetic imagery even a city boy like me can appreciate.

BTW, I happened upon an interesting software application a few days ago that kinda relates to this blog. You may already know about it but just in case check out The Visual Thesaurus. Poets, wordsmiths, bloggers, maybe even some commentors should find it intriguing. Think thesaurus and dictionary melding with Mind Map technology. Pretty cool. There's a short Tech TV review of it here which is a quick & easy way to grok it. Enjoy.

Mike Green said...

Ann, great poem, Hit the spot for me since I grew up on a cattle ranch.
Poetry and poets are much admired, and rightfully so. Here is one that I learned as a yougster and has stuck with me like a bad pop song that gets stuck in the head untill it drives you nuts:

Frogs by P. Garret

Frogs is funny
Yea dey is
Dey hops around
An says "Gee Wiz"
I likes de green ones in de trees
I bet dey thinks dey bumblebees
Some ist big
An some ist small
If you ax me
I likes dem all
I loves to see dere floatin eggs
An loves to eat dere crispy leggs.

Churadogs said...

Ron sez:"Good day for line-drying the laundry. How's your drying stand working out, Ann?"

WONDERFULLY WELL. Just got finished hanging up a load this morning. Oddly, the line works well even on foggy, overcast, chilly days. The umbrella pole is in the west side of the yard and the wind always blows through there no matter what the weather and by gosh, things dry amazingly well. Al Gore and I saving the world, yes, yes.

""while she regarded my head and
shoulders
above the wall with one wild,
shocking eye."

That's funny.

Beautiful summer day, indeed."

Collins is full of that. Both accessible and funny but watch out, suddenly he'll throw some hooks in there that surprise or sting. He's quite a wonderful wordsmith.

PG sez:"BTW, I happened upon an interesting software application a few days ago that kinda relates to this blog. You may already know about it but just in case check out The Visual Thesaurus. Poets, wordsmiths, bloggers, maybe even some commentors should find it intriguing. Think thesaurus and dictionary melding with Mind Map technology. Pretty cool. There's a short Tech TV review of it here which is a quick & easy way to grok it. Enjoy."

Thanks, I'll check it out.

4crapkiller said...

Nice post. Good comments so far.
I just sent $100 dollars to the USO for the troops. Perhaps it will make things better for them. Can all of you do the same? Send less if you can't. Ann?

www.uso.org.

They will take your credit card.

Mike Green said...

Well done, Crappy
For the amusement of the readers:
http://www.poemhunter.com/

Use the search function, Its a hoot, especialy with a word like "sharkey" then click poem text.

P.S. there are a lot of poems about that subject that we are not blogging about right now, some hilarious.

Churadogs said...

Crap sez:"I just sent $100 dollars to the USO for the troops. Perhaps it will make things better for them."

Hooray for you! That's wonderful.

Re the visual thesarus PG mentioned above ( " The Visual Thesaurus. Poets, wordsmiths, bloggers, maybe even some commentors should find it intriguing. Think thesaurus and dictionary melding with Mind Map technology. Pretty cool. There's a short Tech TV review of it here which is a quick & easy way to grok it. Enjoy." )

What's interesting about the way they have that laid out is that it's easy to make all kinds of strange connections, often unrelated but interesting. Also makes it easy to sort of wander around free form and see what odd conjunctions come up.

*PG-13 said...

Thank you Ann, a nice respite.

No thanks to Mike Green, I now can't get
Frogs is funny
Yea dey is
Dey hops around
An says "Gee Wiz"

outa my head!!!!

But thanks for the poemhunter link. I've already wasted way too much time there. Thankdgoodness for Babel Fish! (Although it does a terrible job on poetry ;-)

Thank you 4crapkiller for your donation to USO.

And I guess we now know where poetry stands on the popularity/interest/controversy list. < sigh >

Churadogs said...

PG sez:"And I guess we now know where poetry stands on the popularity/interest/controversy list. < sigh > "

sigh is right. Reminds me of some wonderful dialogue in one of my favorite plays, "The Lion in Winter." Eleanor of Aquitaine and her son, Richard the Lion Heart,

Eleanor: You are a dull boy.
Richard: Am I?
Eleanor: Dull as plainsong; la, la, la, forever on one note. I gave the Church up out of boredome. I can do as much for you.

Sigh. so, what do you say, PG-13. Shall we hijack this website and discuss really cool matters, like books and films and history and poetry and Solar Dryers and laundry?

Ron said...

Ann wrote:

"Shall we hijack this website and discuss really cool matters, like books and films and history and poetry and Solar Dryers and laundry?"

And music and gardening.

Did you know that you can take green onions purchased from the grocery story, and plant them straight into your garden and they grow like weeds? You can even consume most of the green part, and just leave about three inches or so of the root end before you plant them, then you'll have fresh, green onions forever. I have some that are about three years old, and they're HUGE. Same with leeks.

Churadogs said...

Ron sez:"Did you know that you can take green onions purchased from the grocery story, and plant them straight into your garden and they grow like weeds? You can even consume most of the green part, and just leave about three inches or so of the root end before you plant them, then you'll have fresh, green onions forever. I have some that are about three years old, and they're HUGE. Same with leeks."

Sweet and white potatoes, too. Think you can whack off carrot tops plus about 1" of the yellow, stick them in water and they'll sprout. Not sure they'll grow another carrot . . . Kinda wierd when you think of it, when you eat some veggies, you're eating LIVE veggies.

Euuuuuuuuuu

*PG-13 said...

Churadogs said > Shall we hijack this website and discuss really cool matters, like books and films and history and poetry and Solar Dryers and laundry?

Ron added > And music and gardening.

Curious that. If one hijacks in the name of books and films and history and poetry and music and gardening ..... is it still terrorism? Or is it only terroristic if the books, poety and music are really really bad books, poetry and music? Hard to find any fault in gardening ..... unless its of the Monsanto inorganic gene-altered kind. And nobody can agree on films (see: Sicko) (Literally ;-) I'm sure someone can find an element of social discontent and/or terror is drying clothes on the line.

Its all in how you look at it I guess. Here's a perfect example: the embedded HTML title tag in the Monsanto homepage linked above is - "Monsanto.com - Developing Sustainable Agriculture, Agricultural Solutions, Crop Biotechnology and Seed Traits for Farmers"
I'm confused. How is developing sterilized gene lines which need to be purchased from Monsanto every year sustainable ?

Oh well. Sometimes I feel like a bee thrashing myself against an unseen barrier. No, wait, that's the next blog.

Ron said...

Ann wrote:

"Sweet and white potatoes, too"

I have potato plants going right now that I started by planting old potatoes. I did that last year and ended up with quite a few small, yet tasty, organic potatoes.

I bet it works with celery, too. The next bunch (stalk?) I get from the store, I'm going to use almost all of it, and then I'm going to jam the rest of it in the ground and see what happens. With a bit of luck, it will eventually go to flower and drop a bunch of seeds, and then I'll have a zillion celery sprouts, like with the lettuce. That works great.

I'm trying to do that with a carrot I have growing -- let it go to seed -- but it's taking forever. Right now, the carrot top is a massive 5-foot shrub with about 20 large, white flowers all over it. Rather striking, actually.

*pg-13 wrote:

"And nobody can agree on films (see: Sicko)"

I watched Fahrenheit 9/11 for the first time about a week ago, and that movie, three years removed from its release date, will blow you away these days... knowing what we know now. All the George Tenet and Richard Clark stuff, for example.

Remember all of the controversy surrounding the accuracy of the film's content at the time of its release? Well, I think it's safe to say, controversy solved.

Sadly, in July of 2007, I can't recommend that movie strongly enough.

Churadogs said...

PG-13 sez:"Its all in how you look at it I guess. Here's a perfect example: the embedded HTML title tag in the Monsanto homepage linked above is - "Monsanto.com - Developing Sustainable Agriculture, Agricultural Solutions, Crop Biotechnology and Seed Traits for Farmers"
I'm confused. How is developing sterilized gene lines which need to be purchased from Monsanto every year sustainable ?"

Bwa-hahahahah. Smoke and mirrors, smoke and mirrors. George Orwell would love what and how corporations (and too many politicos) have corrupted language. And the Sheeple swallow it, literally, and it kills them, literally. Amazing.

Ron Sez:" I watched Fahrenheit 9/11 for the first time about a week ago, and that movie, three years removed from its release date, will blow you away these days... knowing what we know now. All the George Tenet and Richard Clark stuff, for example.

Remember all of the controversy surrounding the accuracy of the film's content at the time of its release? Well, I think it's safe to say, controversy solved."

Yes, very scary. I am haunted by the fact that I knew -- KNEW -- that Colin Powell was fudging when he gave his famous speech, complete with photos & etc. -- at the UN. That's when I knew something was wrong with this picture. I also knew -- KNEW -- Prez Bush was spinning/lying when he gave his famous yellow-cake State of the Union Speech. I KNEW. Why didn't Congress? The Press? They had far more info and access to info than I did. They had the power to ask questions and get answers, real answers, I didn't. The question, "How was it possible, that a NOBODY with no special powers or inside information or sources, a nobody from a little central coast town KNEW more than Congress and, apparently the CIA, and any number of agencies
that this war was being ginned up? How is that possible?" And until somebody comes up with an answer, this country is in a dangerous state of denial and darkness and ready for a repeat . . . very scary.

As for Sicko, haven't seen it yet, but, like all his films, the people running the health insurance industry and their paid shills (i.e. Congress) will spin the film, people who need to go see it, won't, those who don't really need to see it because they know what More's talking about is true, will go see it, and in a few years, when more beans spill out of the can and finally, probably when it's far too late, the Sheeple will realize that, Yep, More was on target -- just like so much of his other films.

Sadly, too many people are content with shooting the messenger and ignoring the message, to their own great sorrow, alas.

Ron said...

Ann wrote:

" I knew -- KNEW -- that Colin Powell was fudging when he gave his famous speech, complete with photos & etc. -- at the UN."

Moore shows that scene -- Powell at the U.N. -- in Fahrenheit 9/11, and seated behind him is George Tenet. At the time of the movie's release, few people knew that was Tenet, now, not only do we know that was Tenet, we also know that HE knew what Powell was saying was a load of crap. That's just one example of why I think Fahrenheit 9/11 is ten times better today than it was when it was released, and it was very good then.

Like I wrote above, in July of 2007, it's the saddest movie I've ever seen, and in August of 2007, it will be even sadder.

By the way, I guess the Shark Inlet Inc. budget doesn't included non-sewer issues, huh?