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Rowing to RHODESIA

By JIM HINER

Trafford Publishing

Copyright © 2012 Jim Hiner
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4669-5050-4

Contents

Dedication.....................................................viiThe Back of My Calling Card....................................ixRowing To Rhodesia.............................................1Never Mention the Word.........................................2I Feared That No One Ever Would Ask Me.........................4Celebration For Dylan Thomas' Crafty Death.....................5So Where Was I.................................................6Verticality....................................................7Schooling......................................................8Basically Baby Design..........................................9Explaining Pain................................................10When Writhing..................................................12An Unproductive Day With My Intellect..........................13On The Self As Self: Four Views................................14For The You....................................................16Poems For An Afternoon.........................................18Front Row......................................................19La Valse.......................................................20Why Marianne Moore Is The Freest Poet..........................21Then The Books.................................................22Wintry Singing—2003......................................25Wintering......................................................26Brooding With Burchfield.......................................27Song For A Loser Once Who Won..................................28CREDO We Believe..............................................33

Chapter One

    ROWINGTO RHODESIA
    or:
    "Poets Should Not Do not"


    Poets should not do not
    too much of the time
    but poets should not
    avoid it altogether.

    So much depends
    not upon now but on what
    others have said before me on
    obscurities of the specifics of
    certain invisible faces of
    even the most explicit
    clearness of a word.
    Or even of what they've not
    said on such a word.

    I come to a word now:
    Byzantium. That is not
    a word of what one would want
    to go there, but of those
    who only want to view
    the domes, their wows
    their golden boughs.

    Before the full nether glory
    of Sixth Century is specified
    no specifics are palpable enough
    to warrant a rush to the Ticket
    Office. And the benefit
    of certain monkey glands
    can no further enticement
    make and is a not. Void it,
    the goyim woid. Avoid.


    NEVER MENTIONTHEWORD

    Never mention the word, you know,
    what turns daylight crepuscular,
    blind to the bone that's become
    carnivorous. You don't see
    what I mean still; so
    never mention the word.

    There are what we furthermore call
    After-all words, after all
    not renegade nor rare, you know,
    nor float on gas. Words
    not retrograde, no, but rather
    memory-rested like a man
    with his feet in the air at night
    in an old barn or analog of lair.
    Alas, we too seldom seek them out
    from anchorage in the Wellingtons
    and Waterloos of our mindsets,
    these words that are to be preferred;
    So prefer them.

    They say, these some words say,
    these after-all words: they should be
    not saved for a ruinous day.
    How atrocious to wait for the dangle
    of all that might be precious
    to hang from the corrupting shingle
    of such a day!

      Hardness, fact, meanwhile and
      Totems of fact hold forth
      and bimetallic arthroplasty
      alone holds it all together where
      those never-mention words appear.

    But wait, be silent, hear
    how providentially they will dissolve
    dry up drown and disappear
    while sweet ripe rich
    darling buds of May
    spray fragrance where
    no mention ever is made.
    So never make it.


    I FEAREDTHAT NO ONE EVER
    WOULD ASK ME

    I feared that no one ever would ask me
    to tell the meaning of one of my poems
    but then one recent metrical day
    in a shrine of highly decorative means
    I was asked exactly that, and was able
    for five fine full hours to hold forth
    at the start, and getting worked up some
    spewed on (and on) for another thirty-six.

    To be sure, the pay though a little more
    than scale for busboys, was a little less
    than I'd been led environmentally
    to expect. Diagramming as much
    to the Leader, I was explained to
    with a flood of patient telluric charm
    that the coffee was entirely on her
    and couldn't I see that refills were free.

    Well yes, true enough, but where was
    the clamor, the crowding around,
    and why aren't my elbows rubbed raw
    like those of any even ordinary scoundrel?
    And what of all those violent attempts
    on one's body one's been led by all
    the Byrons to expect? But I thanked her
    for the plaque with my name on it in gilt.
    Did I say "gilt"? Like gold, but in fiction,
    what's...