It’s Hard to Be Hip Over Thirty

Persephone Books publishes forgotten fiction and non-fiction by “unjustly neglected authors” and I recently read It’s Hard to be Hip over Thirty by Judith Viorst.   Viorst was writing poetry in the 60’s, but it hasn’t aged.  Some things have changed.  Options for women have opened up, certainly.  But being married and having children will always require the sacrifice of certain options.  I enjoyed reading her poetry.

Nice Baby

Last year I talked about black humor and the impact of the
     common market on the European economy and
Threw clever little cocktail parties in our discerningly
     eclectic living room
With the Spanish rug and the hand-carved Chinese chest
     and the lucite chairs and
Was occasionally hungered after by highly placed men in
     communications, but
This year we have a nice baby
     and pablum drying on our Spanish rug,
And I talk about nursing versus sterilization
While the men in communications
Hunger elsewhere.

Last year I studied Flamenco and had my ears pierced and
Served an authentic fondue on the Belgian marble table of
     our discerningly eclectic dining area, but
But this year we have a nice baby
And Spock on the second shelf of our Chinese chest,
And instead of finding myself I am doing my best
To find a sitter
For the nice baby banging the Belgian marble with his cup
While I heat the oven up
For the TV dinners.

Last year I had a shampoo and set every week and
Slept an unbroken sleep beneath the Venetian chandelier of
     our discerningly eclectic bedroom, but
This year we have a nice baby,
And Gerber’s strained bananas in my hair,
And gleaming beneath the Venetian chandelier,
A diaper pail, a portacrib, and him,
A nice baby, drooling on our antique satin spread
While I say how nice.  It is often said
That motherhood is very maturing.

The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker

I’m back from vacationing in the cool climes of the Great North Woods, which felt even better this year than usual after the very hot summer we have had.  I saw no bears in hammocks.  I saw no bears at all, actually.  In fact, I haven’t seen a bear in a few years.  Which is a shame.  Now it is back to reality and back to the ungodly heat.

With temperatures topping 100 degrees here in the Midwest, I went to my favorite local independent bookseller to stock up on a few paperbacks that would entertain me while stuck inside in the air conditioning.   One thing I’ve discovered about summer is that publishers think readers are looking for fluff beach reads during the summer months but that’s not what I want in the summer.  I’m in Missouri – we don’t have a beach.  We have pools but they are surrounded by concrete and are hot when the temperatures are hot. 

When I’m stuck inside I want to feel like I’m reading something worthwhile.  So after conversations about the vampire craze in novels and about satirical novels and how I sometimes don’t get them when they are set in New York, she picked up a yellow paperback and said “The Anthologist is out in paperback.  I learned more about poetry while  reading this novel than I think I learned in any poetry class”  I thought, that’s the one.   And it was.

Written in the first person in a conversational style it isn’t a difficult read and yet it is packed through with discussions about poetry and meter.  In a way it reminded me of a book version of a Christopher Guest mockumentary.  We follow the principal character, Paul Chowder, around as he procrastinates and provides us with a running commentary on his life and his thoughts about poetry, especially the difference between free verse and “rhyming” poetry.  Paul, a poet who writes free verse, is in love with rhyming poetry and has finished compiling an anthology of such poetry.  But now he is procrastinating about writing the introduction to the anthology.  His girlfriend, Roz, has moved out and he wanders around thinking about poetry, Roz,the conference he is going to in Switzerland, the mouse in his kitchen, and whatever else pops into his mind. 

I woke up thinking a very pleasant thought.  There is lots left in the world to read.

For days I had a dissatisfied feeling.  I couldn’t focus.  I was nervous about Switzerland.  I’m going to be in a panel discussion there on “The Meters of Love”, with Renee Parker Task, who’s a hotshot among young formalists.  Just the kind of thing I’m bad at.  Being empanelled.  All yesterday afternoon I thought about timed backups, and search results, and mermaids, and women wearing clothes, and women not wearing clothes, and I felt unlyrical. And then I got in bed and I read a short biography of Nathalia Crane in an old textbook, and I read a poem by Sara Teasdale, and I thought about turtles. And then in the back of Mary Oliver’s New and Selected Poems, Volume I, I wrote, “Suddenly there is lots to read.” I also wrote:  “Mary Oliver is saving my life.”

One thing I really like about books of poems is that you can open them anywhere and you’re at a beginning. If I open a biography, or a memoir, or a novel, when I open it in the middle, which is what I usually do, I’m really in the middle. What I want is to be as much as possible at the beginning.  And that’s what poetry gives me.  Many many beginnings. That feeling of setting forth.

This isn’t a long novel, only about 240 wide spaced pages, and I flew through it in one sitting.  But I might go back and read it again because it is just crammed with good things to think about.

April is National Poetry Month

and I have not observed it.  I’m not sure why.  I like poetry.  But I just haven’t been tempted by poetry this month.

So, instead of a poem I’ll share this interview that the Yale Daily News did with poet Louise Glück.  Glück teaches two classes at Yale:  “Introduction to Verse Writing” and “Advanced Verse Writing”.   I haven’t read her latest work but I’ve read some of her earlier works and really liked them.

I’ll just share one part:

Q: How has being a teacher affected your life and your work?

A: It’s affected it profoundly, and as far as I can tell, entirely positively. When I was young, it seemed to me that [by teaching] I was presuming to confer what I did not possess. I also thought it was a distraction from my “sacred calling.” In my late 20s I found myself in the first of what would turn out to be many periods of prolonged silence. In that time, I did a reading at Goddard College. They suggested I come for a semester and teach. I was wary of teaching because I hadn’t myself completed college and because I feared that teaching would involve spending energies that should have been directed into my own work. But at the time I had no work. I had an epiphany: “I’m not going to turn out to be an artist. My dearest wish for myself will not be granted. And I’m going to have to figure out something better than secretarial work.” So I moved to Vermont four days before the semester started and took a room at a rooming house, and as soon as I started to teach, I started to write. The degree to which I learn from my students is almost impossible to communicate. I have never felt any conflict between teaching and writing. For me, they’re necessary companions.

It’s not a long interview but well worth reading.

Oh, and she doesn’t like National Poetry Month.

Oh heck, I won’t give you a whole poem of hers, but I’ll give you a sliver of one:

 

On Sundays I walk my neighbor’s dog

so she can go to church to pray for her sick mother.

The dog waits for me in the doorway. Summer and winter

we walk the same road, early morning, at the base of the escarpment.

Sometimes the dog gets away from me—for a moment or two,

I can’t see him behind some trees. He’s very proud of this,

this trick he brings out occasionally, and gives up again

as a favor to me—

 

I encourage you to read the whole thing.

Poet Laureate: Kay Ryan

I've been reading The Niagara River, a book of poems by Kay Ryan, our poet laureate, in preparation for my reading group meeting on Friday. I'm ambivalent about Ryan. Her poems are short and simple and I found it easy to get through the book, but they seemed almost too simple. I was left hungry. I was also a little frustrated because, although the poems seem simple, she has a habit of throwing a final phrase into each poem that seems designed to wrap everything up but sometimes (in my view) just makes everything more ambiguous.

One of the things I do like about Ryan's poems are the unexpected internal rhymes and her use of alliteration. In terms of the subject of the poems, I liked it best when Ryan took every day sayings, which at this point are cliches, and used them as the idea from which to make a poem. For instance, here she takes the phrase "the chickens are coming home to roost" and makes this poem:

Home to Roost

The chickens
are circling and
blotting out the
day. The sun is
bright, but the
chickens are in
the way. Yes,
the sky is dark
with chickens,
dense with them.
They turn and
then they turn
again. These
are the chickens
you let loose
one at a time
and small--
various breeds.
Now they have
come home
to roost -- all
the same kind
at the same speed.

And here's one that uses the phrase "the elephant in the room" as its starting point:

The Elephant in the Room

It isn't so much
a complete elephant
as an elephant
sense--perhaps
pillar legs supporting
a looming mass,
beyond which it's
mostly a guess.
In any case, we
manage with relative
ease. There are just
places in the room
that we bounce off
when we come up
against; not something
we feel we have to
announce.

I like the unexpected internal rhyme between announce and bounce. I like how "elephant", "sense", "legs" and guess" have the same "e" sound in them.

The following poem, which riffs off the phrase "waiting for the other shoe to drop" is my favorite:

The Other Shoe

Oh if it were
only the other
shoe hanging
in space before
joining its mate.
If the undropped
didn't congregate
with the undropped.
But nothing can
stop the midair
collusion of the
unpaired above us
acquiring density
and weight. We
feel it accumulate.

The internal rhymes of "congregate", weight" and "accumulate" aren't obvious until you go looking for them. Like "midair" and unpaired".

I also looked for a youtube of Ryan reading some of her poems to get a better idea of how she felt and heard her poems. I discovered that I liked many of her poems better when she was reading them aloud than when I was reading them in my head. (She also seems like the kind of person that would nice to meet - not intimidating in a "poet" kind of way. ) See for yourself:

Ballistics: Billy Collins

I've been slowly reading Ballistics since Christmas at a rate of about two poems a week.  I didn't want to rush through it because it isn't as if Billy Collins puts out a book of poetry every year.   But now that it is National Poetry Month I might start speeding up.

It hasn't struck me in the same way that Picnic, Lightening did, these poems are darker.  But I am enjoying it.   I thought I'd share one of them, choosing at random.

Looking Forward

Whenever I stare into the future,
the low, blue hills of the future,
shading my eyes with one hand,

I no longer see a city of opals
with a sunny river running through it
or a dark city of coal and gutters.

Nor do I see children
donning their apocalyptic goggles
and hiding in doorways.

All I see is me attending your burial
or you attending mine,
depending on who gets to go first.

There is a light rain.
A figure under an umbrella
is reading from a thick book with a black cover.

And a passing cemetery worker
has cut the engine to his backhoe
and is taking a drink from a bottle of water.

I told you they were dark.

Greek Myths for Children and Adults

Last weekend I read The Titan's Curse and The Battle of the Labyrinth, books #3 and 4 of Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. Book #5, the last of the series, is due out in May. Yes, this series is classified under "Children Middle Readers" but I still love it. Let's just say that it releases my inner child.

When I was very young, my dad worked as an editor for McGraw-Hill, in one of their education divisions. Every once in a while he would bring home some of their "new" educational books that they were trying out. I'm not sure if they were just extras or if my sister and I were test subjects. One time he brought home a series of 12 programmed readers. Programmed reading was the rage in the 1960's. I don't know how long it lasted and a lot of people didn't like the idea but I loved it; I could work at my own pace which meant I could work really fast. I've always liked to teach myself. I quickly worked my way through the first 11 of the readers and I rarely went back to look at them again. But the 12th reader was different.

The 12th reader used Greek mythology as the basic text. I read that one over and over, even after I knew all the exercises by heart. My favorite story was Perseus and the Gorgon and I still remember the illustrations.

Perseus is the name of Rick Riordan's hero, but he goes by the shortened version - Percy. Percy is the son of a very cool human mother, but his dad is Poseidon the god of the oceans. Poseidon is also really cool. He wears flip flops and beach shorts and shirts. He doesn't show up much but when he does, he's all powerful. But one cool dude.

Yes, the conceit of the Percy Jackson series is that the Greek gods are real and they still dwell among us. They move around as Western civilization moves around. They still live in Olympus but it's no longer located in the clouds above a Greek mountain; it's in the clouds above the Empire State Building and you can reach it by taking the elevator to the secret 600th floor. Hades can be reached through an office building in Los Angeles. Of course. (It doesn't say it's the Wolfram & Hart building but of course that's what I picture.)

The Greek gods still fall in love with humans and have kids and those kids are still demi-gods and heroes. To learn to control their powers (and to protect them from monsters who want to kill them) they spend their summers at Camp Half-Blood. And they are still subject to prophecies and the jealousy of gods who aren't their parents. It's everything Greek mythology should be.

Reading these books made me think about other versions of Greek myths I've enjoyed. Since this is National Poetry Month I've been thinking about poems. I was reminded of Louise Gluck's book of poems called Averno which features a number of poems about Persephone.

Persephone hasn't been a big character in the main Percy Jackson books (although I think she's been featured in some of the story collections he has written). For those who don't recall, Persephone is the daughter of Demeter the goddess of the harvest. Hades, the god of the underworld, falls in love with her and abducts her. He takes her to the underworld and makes her his wife. Demeter is so angry at the abduction of her daughter that she vows nothing will grow until her daughter is returned to her. Persephone cannot, however, be returned because no one who has eaten anything in the underworld can return to the world above. And Persephone ate seven pomegranite pips. But a deal is struck so that she can return to her mother for six months out of the year. That is the growing season. Then she returns to Hades and winter comes on.

Louise Gluck looks at the myth from several angles. From Persephone the Wanderer:

In the first version, Persephone
is taken from her mother
and the goddess of the earth
punishes the earth - this is
consistent with what we know of human behavior,

that human beings take profound satisfaction
in doing harm, particularly
unconscious harm:

we may call this
negative creation.

In this poem Gluck focuses on what modern scholars focus on - the myth is the story of a rift between the mother and the lover but Persephone is never consulted by either of them about what she wants. And of course modern scholars want to focus on the rape aspect of the story.

Persephone's initial
sojourn in hell continues to be
pawed over by scholars who dispute
the sensations of the virgin:

did she cooperate with her rape,
or was she drugged, violated against her will,
as happens so often now to modern girls.

My favorite part of the poem is:

Persephone is having sex in hell.
Unlike the rest of us, she doesn't know
what winter is, only that
she is what causes it.

Persephone of the myth has no free will, she is, as Gluck says, simply meat to be fought over.

But there are other ways to look at the myth and Gluck does. In her later poem, A Myth of Innocence, Gluck returns to the Persephone story and this time puts herself into Persephone's mind as she looks into the pool remembering the day of her abduction:

The suns seems, in the water, very close.
That's my uncle spying again, she thinks -
everything in nature is in some way her relative.
I am never alone she thinks,
turning the thought into a prayer.
Then death appears, like the answer to a prayer.

No one understands anymore
how beautiful he was. But Persephone remembers.
Also that he embraced her right there,
with her uncle watching. She remembers
sunlight flashing on his bare arms.

This Persephone has more free will than the Persephone of the traditional myth. She is not a passive innocent, abducted completely against her will. She participates. And yet is she really choosing?

She stands by the pool saying, from time to time,
I was abducted but it sounds
wrong to her, nothing like what she felt.
Then she says, I was not abducted.
Then she says, I offered myself, I wanted
to escape my body. Even, sometimes,
I willed this. But ignorance

cannot will knowledge. Ignorance
wills something imagined, which it believes exists.

Gluck later looks at the role of Hades in the myth in her poem A Myth of Devotion. A Hades, who wanted Persephone and built a special world for her in the underworld. And imagined her there. A Hades who is like all who fall in love with someone they don't really know and try to create a vision of the perfect world they will have together.

Guilt? Terror? The fear of love?
These things he couldn't imagine;
no lover imagines them.

He dreams. He wonders what to call this place.
First he thinks: The New Hell. Then: The Garden.
In the end he decides to name it
Persephone's Girlhood.

Finally, Gluck gives us a second version of Persephone the Wanderer in which the focus is not on the daughter who has left, but on the mother who is left behind:

In the second version, Persephone
is dead. She dies, her mother grieves -
problems of sexuality need not
trouble us here.

Compulsively, in grief, Demeter
circles the earth. We don't expect to know
what Persephone is doing.
She is dead, the dead are mysteries.

And the poet wonders why Demeter, the goddess of the earth, of living, growing things who could have had a thousand children, had only one child. Does that mean that the earth (symbolized by Demeter) has no real wish to continue as a source of life? And when Demeter demands the return of her daughter and strikes the deal with Zeus:

Spring will return, a dream
based on a falsehood:
that the dead return.

Persephone
was used to death. Now over and over
her mother hauls her out again --

you must ask yourself:
are the flowers real? If

Persephone "returns" there will be
one of two reasons:

either she was not dead or
she is being used
to support a fiction

A difficult poem with a lot to think about. But that's true of the Greek myths in general. I'm glad Rick Riordan is introducing a generation of children to the Greek gods and their stories. Maybe some day one of these children will grow up to create their own art out of them.

Opening Day!

Yes it's opening day here in St. Louis and snow is expected.

But that will not dim the festivities. Opening day in St. Louis is a city-wide celebration -the newspaper calls it our high athletic holiday. At my office we can wear jeans and cardinal red for the day even if we aren't going to the game. That's true at a lot of offices in the city. Lots of people will be taking off work to go to the game even with the bad weather anticipated. People who work downtown will mill around outside the stadium during their lunch hour.

I used to go to opening day every year. When I was a kid I used to get opening day tickets for Christmas. And sometimes it was cold, but the season started later in those days so usually it was no more than chilly.

Ever since they moved opening day earlier (expansion, grrrrrr) I haven't gone to a single one. The weather is just too unreliable. Last year it got rained out. This year they say they will get the game in despite any snow showers. That just doesn't sound like fun to me, so I'll listen from my office. Besides, the Cardinals are always a hot weather club. April is simply an extension of spring training as far as I'm concerned.

Last year I was just not into baseball, which is strange for a fan like me. Everyone knew it was going to be a "rebuilding" year and I just never got interested. I think it partly had to do with the year before when I got to go to the winning game of the World Series. What a high point. It's like I didn't want to watch "ordinary" baseball after that.

This year, though, I'm excited about the season. No one expects the Cardinals to finish first (my sister's Cubs are expected to do that - and then fall apart in the playoffs). But hopefully the Cards will play well enough that we'll all have some fun. Hopefully.

Of course, they have no closer. And the second baseman is a big question mark. And Baby Duncan is only worth what he's paid if he hits (nobody would want him for his fielding). And if Carpenter doesn't come back strong, it's all over.

But watching Rick Ankiel's reincarnation as "anything but a pitcher" is worth the price of admission. And whether they win or not, it's always exciting to watch Albert play.

So, go Cards!

And since it is still National Poetry Month - here is another baseball poem:

The Double Play

Robert Wallace

In his sea-lit
distance, the pitcher winding
like a clock about to chime comes down with
the ball, hit
sharply, under the artificial
bank of lights, bounds like a vanishing string
over the green
to the shortstop magically
scoops to his right whirling above his invisible
shadows
in the dust redirects
its flight to the running poised second baseman
pirouettes
leaping, above the slide, to throw
from mid-air, across the colored tightened interval,
to the leaning-
out first baseman ends the dance
drawing it disappearing into his long brown glove
stretches. What
is too swift for deception
is final, lost, among the loosened figures
jogging off the field
(the pitcher walks), casual
in the space where the poem has happened.

Poets and Poetry

Over at Harriet, Cathy Halley posted the following:

In response to Travis's last post, Iain says: "I'd be very interested in a poll that asked people what stereotypes they associate with poetry and poets."

So would we. So let's ask that question far and wide:

What stereotypes do you associate with poetry and poets?

Stereotypes. Well, poet stereotypes abound. Sensitive and moody top the list. Poor. (Definitely poor.) Impractical. Now that I think about it there are really a lot of negative stereotypes of poets. But when I think of one of my favorite living poets, Billy Collins, he just seems like a regular guy who happens to write poetry.

Concerning Poetry itself, I find hard to think of stereotypes because I dismiss them too easily. Difficult to understand. (It isn't really). Only meant for highly educated people (how do you think illiterate societies passed on stories - they made poems of them). Lots of rhymes. (not)

In any event, as part of National Poetry Month make it a point to be nice to a poet this month.

The National Poetry Month Pastime

In honor of National Poetry Month and next week's start of a new season of our National Pastime, I thought I'd post something appropriate to both.  

Baseball and Writing
by Marianne Moore

Fanaticism? No. Writing is exciting
and baseball is like writing.
You can never tell with either
how it will go
or what you will do;
generating excitement -
a fever in the victim -
pitcher, catcher, fielder, batter.
Victim in what category?
Owlman watching from the press box?
To whom does it apply?
Who is excited? Might it be I?

It's a pitcher's battle all the way - a duel -
a catcher's, as, with cruel
puma paw, Elston Howard lumbers lightly
back to plate. (His spring
de-winged a bat swing.)
They have that killer instinct;
yet Elston - whose catching
arm has hurt them all with the bat -
when questioned, says, unenviously,
"I'm very satisfied. We won."
Shorn of the batting crown, says, "We";
robbed by a technicality.

When three players on a side play three positions
and modify conditions,
the massive run need not be everything.
"Going, going . . . " Is
it? Roger Maris
has it, running fast. You will
never see a finer catch. Well . . .
"Mickey, leaping like the devil" - why
gild it, although deer sounds better -
snares what was speeding towards its treetop nest,
one-handing the souvenir-to-be
meant to be caught by you or me.

Assign Yogi Berra to Cape Canaveral;
he could handle any missile.
He is no feather. "Strike! . . . Strike two!"
Fouled back. A blur.
It's gone. You would infer
that the bat had eyes.
He put the wood to that one.
Praised, Skowron says, "Thanks, Mel.
I think I helped a little bit."
All business, each, and modesty.
Blanchard, Richardson, Kubek, Boyer.
In that galaxy of nine, say which
won the pennant? Each. It was he.

Those two magnificent saves from the knee-throws
by Boyer, finesses in twos -
like Whitey's three kinds of pitch and pre-
diagnosis
with pick-off psychosis.
Pitching is a large subject.
Your arm, too true at first, can learn to
catch your corners - even trouble
Mickey Mantle. ("Grazed a Yankee!
My baby pitcher, Montejo!"
With some pedagogy,
you'll be tough, premature prodigy.)

They crowd him and curve him and aim for the knees. Trying
indeed! The secret implying:
"I can stand here, bat held steady."
One may suit him;
none has hit him.
Imponderables smite him.
Muscle kinks, infections, spike wounds
require food, rest, respite from ruffians. (Drat it!
Celebrity costs privacy!)
Cow's milk, "tiger's milk," soy milk, carrot juice,
brewer's yeast (high-potency -
concentrates presage victory

sped by Luis Arroyo, Hector Lopez-
deadly in a pinch. And "Yes,
it's work; I want you to bear down,
but enjoy it
while you're doing it."
Mr. Houk and Mr. Sain,
if you have a rummage sale,
don't sell Roland Sheldon or Tom Tresh.
Studded with stars in belt and crown,
the Stadium is an adastrium.
O flashing Orion,
your stars are muscled like the lion.

Inaugural Poet

Elizabeth Alexander has been chosen as the "Inaugural Poet" - the poet who gets to read a poem at the inauguration on January 20. Here is one of her poems:

Ars Poetica #100: I Believe

Poetry, I tell my students,
is idiosyncratic. Poetry

is where we are ourselves,
(though Sterling Brown said

“Every ‘I’ is a dramatic ‘I’”)
digging in the clam flats

for the shell that snaps,
emptying the proverbial pocketbook.

Poetry is what you find
in the dirt in the corner,

overhear on the bus, God
in the details, the only way

to get from here to there.
Poetry (and now my voice is rising)

is not all love, love, love,
and I’m sorry the dog died.

Poetry (here I hear myself loudest)
is the human voice,

and are we not of interest to each other?

No

Poet Laureate

Two poems by Kay Ryan, the Poet Laureate of the United States. The first, for you to read.

Repulsive Theory
by Kay Ryan

Little has been made
of the soft, skirting action
of magnets reversed,
while much has been
made of attraction.
But is it not this pillowy
principle of repulsion
that produces the
doily edges of oceans
or the arabesques of thought?
And do these cutout coasts
and incurved rhetorical beaches
not baffle the onslaught
of the sea or objectionable people
and give private life
what small protection it's got?
Praise then the oiled motions
of avoidance, the pearly
convolutions of all that
slides off or takes a
wide berth; praise every
eddying vacancy of Earth,
all the dimpled depths
of pooling space, the whole
swirl set up by fending-off—
extending far beyond the personal,
I'm convinced—
immense and good
in a cosmological sense:
unpressing us against
each other, lending
the necessary never
to never-ending.

The second, read to you by Ms. Ryan.

Field Trips

Yesterday, one of my sisters asked me when I had last visited the Eugene Field House. I admitted that I have never once set foot in the Eugene Field House in all the years I've lived in St. Louis. She was astonished. Apparently most St. Louisans, including her, visited it on school field trips. Well, not me.
For those who don't remember, Eugene Field was "the children's poet". He wrote Little Boy Blue and Wynken, Blynken and Nod. And those are very good poems. But my favorite Eugene Field poem was The Duel.

The duel

The gingham dog and the calico cat
Side by side on the table sat;
'T was half-past twelve, and (what do you think!)
Nor one nor t' other had slept a wink!
The old Dutch clock and the Chinese plate
Appeared to know as sure as fate
There was going to be a terrible spat.
(I wasn't there; I simply state
What was told to me by the Chinese plate!)

The gingham dog went "bow-wow-wow!"
And the calico cat replied "mee-ow!"
The air was littered, an hour or so,
With bits of gingham and calico,
While the old Dutch clock in the chimney place
Up with its hands before its face,
For it always dreaded a family row!
(Now mind: I'm only telling you
What the old Dutch clock declares is true!)

The Chinese plate looked very blue,
And wailed, "Oh, dear! what shall we do!"
But the gingham dog and the calico cat
Wallowed this way and tumbled that,
Employing every tooth and claw
In the awfullest way you ever saw -
And, oh! how the gingham and calico flew!
(Don't fancy I exaggerate -
I got my news from the Chinese plate!)

Next morning, where the two had sat
They found no trace of dog or cat;
And some folks think unto this day
That burglars stole that pair away!
But the truth about the cat and pup
Is this: they ate each other up!
Now what do you really think of that!
(The old Dutch clock it told me so,
And that is how I came to know.)

Eugene Field

Man in Space

A poem by Billy Collins. Performed by Billy Collins. With some help from Hollywood.