YANKEE DOODLE FLEA

Cicero Sings a New Song While Marching
Out to Battle; the Fleas Hang Their Heads
for Days Gone By and Weep


1. Oh, say can you see
That Yankee Doodle flea
The twisted way it stares at me
I must be an Anty Doodle dandy.

Chorus:

Yankee Doodle keep on cryin'
For what you're up to ain't a-flyin'
Mind the music and the step
And for the phonies be their rep
Yankee Doodle dandy.

2. I'm so glad I am
A real live anty
Ridin' on a pony
Owned by Uncle Sam
You'd think the deuce was in me.

Chorus:

Yankee Doodle keep on cryin'
For what you're up to ain't a-flyin'
Mind the music and the step
And for the phonies be their rep
Yankee Doodle dandy.

3. Father and I went on a tramp
Along with General Moodin'
Yankee Doodle, do or die
Do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti
And soon we came upon a flea
Stuck to a hasty puddin'
That surely made it cry.

Chorus:

Yankee Doodle keep on cryin'
For what you're up to ain't a-flyin'
Mind the music and the step
And for the phonies be their rep
Yankee Doodle dandy.

4. Yankee Doodle flea
And all of its Rebel mates
Posted a firm decree
Agin' those awful anty traitors
Because they didn't choose to live
On blood and potaters.

Chorus:

Yankee Doodle keep on cryin'
For what you're up to ain't a-flyin'
Mind the music and the step
And for the phonies be their rep
Yankee Doodle dandy.

5. Yankee Doodle, doodle doo
Yankee Doodle dandy
And all of its handy crew
Had to keep their courage up
They took a drink of brandy

Chorus:

Yankee Doodle keep on cryin'
For what you're up to ain't a-flyin'
Mind the music and the step
And for the phonies be their rep
Yankee Doodle dandy.

6. Yankee Doodle, doodle flea
And all of its hard-chargin' minions
Got into some flapjacks and some onions
For the good ol' boys to carry home
To the lassies and the young'uns.

Chorus:

Yankee Doodle keep on cryin'
For what you're up to ain't a-flyin'
Mind the music and the step
And for the phonies be their rep
Yankee Doodle dandy.

7. Yankee Doodle flea
Had a mind to make a speech
'Twas very full of feelin'
I fear, said he, we cannot fight
And we're not very good at kneelin'.

Chorus:

Yankee Doodle keep on cryin'
For what you're up to ain't a-flyin'
Mind the music and the step
And for the phonies be their rep
Yankee Doodle dandy.

8. And the feathers on their hats
Drooped so tarnal fin-a
I grabbed my old 'kerchief
To dry my eyes for din-a.

Chorus:

Yankee Doodle keep on cryin'
For what you're up to ain't a-flyin'
Mind the music and the step
And for the phonies be their rep
Yankee Doodle dandy.

KIM (Exercise in rhyme)

Kim, Kim, Kim, no Kim is greater,
Whomever she harries is forced to wait her,
Kim, Kim, Kim, Kim the baiter.
Marvels are many, but none
More marvelous than Kim -
That's what keeps her waist so trim.
She that rides the cold North Sea,
Sped by anger, electric mean,
Sharper than spears that kill sea cows,
Stronger than mules for pulling plows -
Tongue-made waves forged this Queen;
What's to come next remains to be seen.
Kim, Kim, Kim, Kim the baiter,
The devil himself refused to date her.
Kim, Kim, Kim, Kim had a life but it soon ate her.

MAIN STREET

posted by Dom Giovanni's Poetry | 4:04 PM
Monday, April 20, 2009



10:42 am
Late summer.

A dour gravy-gray colored street
in mid-Mannahatta, Amereeka.
A very light, almost imperceptible wind
blows aimlessly, now left, now right.
When it will stop nobody knows.

Trees lift their leafy green arms upward
toward a brazenly blue sky
filled with wispy clouds of pagan white.
A hawk punctures the air
in a rapturous dive for a stray pigeon.

Standing at a corner
littered with cigarette butts,
lottery ticket stumps, discarded political tracts,
and yesterday's faded yellow newspaper pages,
gazing respectively into the camera
of New World News Television,
are Scam Blether and Priscilla Kneeknocker.

"Can you see the motorcade yet, Priscilla?"

"Not yet, Scam. We expect it at any moment."

"Pigs and princesses, there is no sign of the motorcade.
We will keep you informed.
This is Scam Blether reporting all the news
that's news for NWN TV."

"I think I see something now.
Yes, Scam. Yes!
I do see something in the hazy distance."
Priscilla strains her perfectly pearled neck
and peers intently into the horizon.
"It must be...O my god, yes!"

"Pigs and princesses!
I believe that the motorcade
is now coming into view.
What a great day for some
and not so great for others.
This is Scam Blether,
your commentator and reporter
for New World News Television."

"No, Scam, it's not the motorcade.
On closer inspection...yes! It's, it's...yes!
Oh my gosh, no!" Priscilla's face fell.
"It is a prosaic gang
of Middle Amereekan bikers
on an aimless rendezvous
with the bars and blues joints
of mid-Mannahatta"

Clearly, as a journalist, Priscilla Kneeknocker
did not wish to refer further
to the presumed views
of mainstream Amereekan bikers,
out of sync with everything understood by her class,
and whose destination was now her fair city.
She gave the nod to Scam.

"Pigs and princesses, I regret to inform you
that the motorcade is not yet in sight,
but surely patience will pay off.
Even the day is at its best.
We have sunshine [the camera pans the sky],
and above us are sprightly angels of curled clouds
amid the faint odor of a dish of dry prunes.
This is Scam Blether reporting
for New World News Televison."

Night, 11:51 pm.
Slightly over one year later.
Snow falling on blistered concrete.
Scam Blether and Priscilla Kneeknocker of NWN TV
stand shivering in the walnut-dark air.

"Are there any signs of the motorcade, Priscilla?"

"Not as of this time, Scam.
Wait! I think I see something coming now.
Yes! No! Yes, yes! No..."

Quickly Scam cut in.
"Pigs and princesses, this is NWN TV anchors
Scam Blether and Priscilla Kneeknocker
standing by for a moment-by-moment broadcast
of the anxiously awaited motorcade.
We will inform you when it arrives,
for the fate of the world
hinges upon this internationally important occasion.
This is Scam Blether bringing you
New World News tonight."

Owls hoot.
A brisk wind blows the raised bare arms
of the trees in Center Park
in a quick hula left and right
and right and left.
It is a time when television news reporting
is still taken seriously by a great many viewers.
Anticipation is running high.
No one watching the program speaks.
One can almost feel an intense pleasure,
a tingling feeling coursing from the legs
and through the entire body,
in being a part of this unfolding historic moment.

Voiceless shouts of Hurrah! Hurrah!
well up in the breasts of Scam and Priscilla.
They will give a hardy welcome
when the motorcade arrives.
The old boys will cheer and the girls will shout,
the ladies dressed in finery will all turn out,
and every advantageous camera angle
will be used to best effect, no doubt,
when the motorcade comes rolling in.

As a stray lock from Priscilla's
corn-yellow hair blows haphazardly
over one eye in the nocturnal breeze,
she chokes back a tear.
Wearing a boutonniere
of frozen flowers in his lapel,
Scam fixes his fearless blue eyes
upon the camera.
He hardly dares breath he is so excited.
Civilization's ideals are reflected
forever in the firm determined countenance
of this clean-faced fellow.

A band of some thirty or forty
gaily painted Native Amereekan Indians
pass by in the moonlight
toward their brightly lit casinos
stretching the full length of Fifth Avenue.
An old Eyetaliano peers into a sewer grate
across the wide boulevard.
No one knows what he is looking for.
Could it be the bodies
of missing union officials
floating through the dank murk below?
Nobody knows.
The camera slowly focuses
on every shadow playing the street.
A silent thought goes out into the night,
that there is no revelry
among the unscrupulously dead.
The old fellow crosses himself and moves on.

The mood is almost one for an unbroken silence.
A cabbie sits with his head thrown back
on the headrest of his yellow car and snores softly.
The motor is running.
It is cold.
A timid rat scurries from shadow to shadow.
It does not dream or hope or think,
but moves pitter-patter out of sight
into a dark alley.
A youngster's tricycle horn
can be heard booping in the distance.
Scam appears to clear his throat but stops.
Knees knock.



Dom Giovanni
Irish Italian Charivari

April 20, 2009


Note: 11 September 2004

Legends: Celtic Tiger (Second Version)

Where's that Celtic Tiger now, O'Mara?
It is lying down and it's purring, O'Hara,
She's sleeping in the hay.

The ripples in the stream whisper
What the clouds above know--
And it so happens, O'Hara, really,
That I am privy to what they say.

Where has that Celtic Tiger gone,
The one that killed the wee fawn?

Up that hill in Connaught, I believe,
Where I stole this magic stone
From the cairn of old Queen Maeve,
Unseen and alone.
You will see, O'Hara,
That stone will bring no bad luck for me.

Will it hold the papers on your desk,
When death's breeze blows through the window, man?

It will hold the papers to my desk, O'Hara,
And remind me of my doom.


Dom Giovanni
April 22, 2009


Equivalency, a footnote with post-horses:

It's enough to make one laugh and the critic holler:
Everybody's scrambling for the old Yanqui dollar.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009


Elio,

You asked. I thought about this for a bit and didn't want to reply too soon. This is my answer:

How do you cope with biased journalists, bigoted politicians, dismissive educators, and the scurrilous activists that want you to fail and encourage society to have nothing to do with you because of your beliefs?


Your question brought to mind something I had read and could not forget. I will tell you how. You go in knowing that these frustrated SOBs are totally against you and everything that you believe in and stand for, and you are not going to let them get rid of you.

What they have is called hate. That is why they pillory you. Their artists, their jurists, their lawyers, their teachers, and the politics of their so-called doctors of democracy, the whole of their phony, smooth-spoken community cannot rest until people who think like you are driven from your place on the planet.

Every one of them finds themselves stricken with that malady that cannot be cured by doctors. They pass that sickness happily down to their children, and their children are none the wiser for the evil their families, friends, and leaders do to them. If I may paraphrase Alexander Pope, these painted children of dirt, that stinks and stings, have it in for you, but they do not know any better. They were taught to hate you. You must teach your children not to hate them. Stand up and call them to account. Under no circumstances be afraid to accuse their leadership, however you may find them, of being insulting to the point of being criminal.

Don't try to be an activist. Instead, be the poet as you wish. The word activist has begun to smell of the arrogance of those who make a claim for it. I assure you, that you will arrive at a better opinion of yourself by striving to be the poet that you really want to be. I take a dim view of the hypocrisy of activism. Either be an activist or be a poet, one cannot be both. The first always strives to presume upon society, while the latter owns a heart.

When they shout vai al diavolo to you, do not make a comeback with se vai al diavolo. That is what energizes them. The bunnies inside their heads runs on the dead batteries of insult. In any case be determined to make your stand. The flames will flare up for a time, but like all fires your patience will pay off with a steady heat in return. At some future time that no one can predict, their own children will become ashamed of them and denounce them to their faces or over their graves for their disgrace. Only then will the quieter flames of peace begin to glow, at least with the more reasonable among them, and in spite of their present ignorance.

arrivederci!

Dom Giovanni

The Characteristics of Byron

He was anxious to show you that he possessed no Shakespeare or Milton; "because," he said, "I have been accused of borrowing from them!" He affected to doubt whether Shakespeare was so great a genius as he has been taken for, and whether fashion had not a great deal to do with it. Spenser he could not read--at least he said so. All the gusto of that most poetical of the poets went with him for nothing. I lent him a volume of the Faerie Queene, and he said he would try to like it. Next day he brought it to my study window, and said: "Here, Hunt, here is your Spenser. I cannot see anything in him;" and he seemed anxious that I should take it out of his hands, as if he was afraid of being accused of copying so poor a writer. That he saw nothing in Spenser is not likely; but I really do not think that he saw much. Spenser was too much out of the world, and he too much in it....

Leigh Hunt

Lord Byron and some of his Contemporaries
Leigh Hunt, born in Southgate, England, 1784; died in 1859.

ON POLITICIANS, John Ford's View

So politicians thrive,
That with their crabbed faces, and sly tricks,
Legerdemain, ducks, cringes, formal beards,
Crisp'd hairs, and punctual cheats, do wriggle in
Their heads first, like a fox, to rooms of state,
Then the whole body follows.


Note:

John Ford was born in Ilsington, Devonshire, England in 1586. The date
of his death appears to be unknown. Ford, a pre-Restoration playwright,
is probably best known for his tragedy 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (1633),
which is still occasionally produced at this time, being considered a
classic piece of English drama.

Stupidly (an excersize in rhyme)

Stupidly acts as Stupidly taught;
Stupidly thought as Stupidly aught;
Stupidly says as Stupidly said,
Stupidly, off the top of Stupidly head;
Stupidly stretches like Stupidly cat,
Stupidly wears beneath Stupidly hat;
Stupidly went were Stupidly goes:
Stupidly, at the end of Stupidly nose.

July 23, 2009

From the Front Desk

I will make no appearance except through my writing, and selected writings of men and women who have influenced me, throughout the course of history with their words. There are no photographs of myself. None of the usual blogger artifices will appear, such as naming favorite actors, cats, dogs, movies, songs, or making links to videos, nor will any other unimportant trivia be used to bolster the writing. Hopefully the writing will speak for itself and no such devices will be necessary for an introduction. There will be no sophistication presumed here. I cannot pretend to be an irascible leftist, literary fop, profane comedian, self-absorbed rightist, middle-of-the-road nonentity, or a highly reputed but irresponsible jackass of today's scholarship--all of which I hope I am not and mightily strive not to become. I can only be as Spartan as I am.

Some of these posts may be controversial. That is not to say that they are devised simply as a put down or crude invective, as our late-night comedians can only do with their unpolished success. I do hope that they arouse controversy in the expectations of the too often contented reader. Oscar Wilde said, "I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing." I believe that he was running from the part that convinces. Oscar Wilde shrank from controversy and could not for his whole literary life escape what he often began. It is imperative for the reader of mine to know just what the topic under discussion means, not only from this writer's viewpoint but from the views of a myriad of readers. Argument is not contentiousness. The reader should keep an open mind for it will be essential to the reader's welfare and understanding to think clearly. Please, do not blame this writer for his faults on circumstantial evidence only. As a poet I can only be a guide to any one's understanding, and the more readers can do for themselves the better.

Dom Giovanni

Irish Italian poet

F.T. Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto

Weesa hava been uppa all night, my friends an' I, hangin' moskrats beneath moska lamps whosa brassa coppolas are brighta as our souls, becausa lika dem dere were illuminati by da glow of electric hearts. An' tramplin' onderfeet our native sloth on opulent Persian moquette, we hava beena discussin' right oppa to da limits offa logic an' scrawlin' da paper widda demented writin'.

Mama mia! Our hearts were filled weeth an immensa da pride at feelin' ourselves standin' quite alone, lika lightahouses or lika sentinella in an outapost, facin' da army offa enemy stars encamped inna dere celestial, was da word? encampaments. Alone weeth da engineers in da infernal stinkholes offa great sheeps, alone weeth da black spirits wheech rage in da belly offa rogue steam eengines, alone weeth da dronkards reelin' lika wounded birds, beatin' dere wings against da city walls.

Then weesa were soddenly distracted by da romblin's offa huge dobble decker bosses that went leapa by, streaked weeth light lika da villages celebratin' dere festivals, wheech da Po in flood soddenly knocka down an' uproots, an', in da rapids an' eddies offa da deluge, drags down to da sea.

Then da silence deepened. Bot, as weesa leestened to da last faint prayer of da old canal an' da cromblings offa da bones offa da ailin' palaces weeth dere green growth offa damp beards, soddenly da hongry automobiles roared beneeth our weendows.

'Comma, my friends!' I said. 'Lessa go! At last Mythology an' da Mystic cult offa da Ideal hava been left behind. Weesa are goin' to be present at da birth offa da Centaur an' weesa shall soon see da first Angels fly! Weesa mosta break down da gates offa life to test da hinges an' da padlocks! Lessa go! Here ees da very first sonrise on earth! Nothin' equals da splendor offa ees red sword wheech strikes for da first time in our millenial desolation!'

Weesa went oppa to da three snorting machines to caress dere breasts. I lay along mine lika da corpse on its bier, bot I soddenly revived again beneath da steerin' wheel - da guilotine knife - wheech threatened my stomach. A great sweep offa madness brought us sharply back to ourselves an' drove us through da streets, steep an' deep, lika dried up torrents. Here an' dere unhappy lamps in da weendows taught us to despise our mathematical eyes. 'Smell,' I exclaimed, 'smell ees good enough for wild beasts!'

An' weesa hunted, lika yong lions, death weeth eet's black fur dappled weeth pale crosses, who ran before us in da vast violet sky, palpable an' livin'.

An' yet weesa had no ideal Mistress stretchin' her divine figure up to da clouds, nor yet a cruel Queen to whom to offer our corpses, tweested into da shape offa Pretzel rings! No reason to die onless it ees da desire to be free offa da too great weight offa our courage!

Weesa drove on, croshin' beneath our burnin' wheels, lika shirt-collars onder da iron, da watch dogs on da steps offa da houses.

Death, tamed, went in front offa me at each corner offerin' me hees hand nicely, an' sometimes lay on da ground weeth a noise offa creakin' jaws geevin' me velvet glances from da bottom offa puddles.

'Let us leave good sense behind lika da hideous husk an' let us hurl ourselves, lika fruit spiced weeth pride, eento da immense mouth an' breast offa da world! Let us feed da unkown, not from despair, bot seemply to enreech da unfathomable reservoirs offa da Absurd!

As soon as I hadda said these words, I turned sharply back on my tracks weeth da mad intoxication offa puppies bitin' dere tails, an' soddenly dere were two cyclists comin' straight outa da blue, shaking dere feests an' totterin' in front offa me lika two persuasive bot contradictory reasons. Their eediotic swayin' got in my way. Whot a bore! Damn! I stopped short, an' in deesgust hurled myself - Boof! - head offer heels an' landed opside down in da deetch.

Oh, motherly deetch, halfa full offa muddy water! Factory drainage! I swallowed a mouthful offa your nourishin' muck, remembering da saintly black teets offa my Sudanese nurse! When I rose, besmuttered an' steenkin', from beneath my overturned auto, I felt da red hot poker offa joy sweetly stab my heart.

A crowd offa feesherman weetha handlines, an' naturalists weetha paroxysmal disease, crowded aroun' me, terrified offa soch a marvel. With lovin' an' patient care, weesa raised op great hooks danglin' from beeg derricks to feesh outa my automobile, lika da beega beached shark. It rosa slowly from da deetch, leaven' in da hole, lika feesha scales, eesa heavy coachwork offa good sense an' eesa soft opholst'ry offa comfort.

Weesa thought it wassa dead, my beautiful shark, bot weeth one caress along eets powerful body was enough to give eet life again an' ronnin' as fast as eet could weeth eets fins.

An' so, weeth my face smeared een good factory mud, covered with scratches from da metal, weeth senseless sweat an' celestial dust, weesa, amidst offa da feeshermen's complaints and da seethin' naturalists, weesa dictated our first weel an' testament to all da livin' men offa da earth.


Manifesto offa Futurism (Handbook di Anarchico)

1. Weesa wanna to singa da love offa danger, da habit offa energy an' fearlessness.

2. Courage, audacity, an' revolt weela be da essentials offa our poetry.

3. Uppa to now lit'ature has exalted notta too mooch, pensive immobility, delirium, an' sleep, moocha sleep. Weesa want to exalt da aggressive act, feverish sleeplessness, da quick'a da march, da dangerous leap, da slap an' da blow offa da beeg fist.

4. Weesa declare da world's magnificence has been vitalized by da new beauty, da beauty offa speed. Da racin' automobile whosa bonnet eesa adorn' weeth beega pipes, lika da explodin' breasts offa snakes - a roarin' motor car wheech'a seems to ron onna da grape juice offa machine gun fire, eesa more pretty than da Victory offa Samothrace.

5. Weesa wanna to sing da man atta da wheel, whosa ideal spirit eesa spear through da axis offa da world.

6. Da poet moosta spend heesa life weeth warmth, glamour and gen'rosity, to maka beeg da enthusiastic ferver offa da primordial elements.

7. Beauty exists only inna da struggle. Nothin' weethout an aggressive character canna be'a masterpiece. Poetry moosta attack da forces offa da unknown violently, maka dem prostrate before mankind.

8. Weesa stand onna da last hill offa da centuries! Weesa most notta look back, when whatta weesa wanna do is break open da mysterious shutters offa da impossible. Time an' da Space died yesterday. Weesa are now livin' inna da absolute, since weesa have already created eternal, omnipresent speed.

9. Weesa weell glorify war - the only cure for da world - militarism, da public spirit, da destructive pantomimicry offa da anarchists, beautiful ideas wheech are worth dying for, an' da contempt for seessies.

10. Weesa wanna destroy da museums, libraries, colleges offa every kind, maka war onna morality, fight feminism an' every opportunistic or utilitarian cowardice.

11. Weesa weell sing offa da great agitated crowds mad weetha work, by pleasure, an' by riot; weesa weell sing da rainbow-hued, polyphonic tides of revolutions inna da modern capitals, weesa weell sing da night-vibrations offa da arsenals an' da sheepyard workashops burning' weeth violent electric moons; da gluttonous railway depots swallowin' smoke-belchin' serpents; factories strung along da clouds weeth da thread offa dere fumes; gymnastic breedges leapin' diabolically knifelike across da sonny rivers; adventurous steama d'sheeps sneefin' da horizon; puffing, beeg-breasted locomotives, whosa wheels paw da tracks like da hooves offa enormous steel horses bridled weetha pipes; an' glidin' sweeft aeroplanes whosa chatterin' propellers flap lika pennants, cheerin' lika enthusiastic crowds.


Marinetti's Manifesto of Futurism to be continued...

Selections from Carlyle's Essay on Burns

Every poet writing in the English language must at some time come across the works of Robert Burns. To claim to be a knowledgeable poet and not be familiar with the Scottish bards poems is an admission that one may have only a superficial reading background in their chosen field. It is not necessary to know Burns to be a poet, but it is necessary to know what Burns knew. Which is, that the influence that comes from books, with standards of convention, and formal (even modern informal) style, are not what ultimately perfects the poet. A poet needs more than a room full of books and a refined writing style to be a passing player. The poet must, above all, be an honest person and an honest writer. Anything less leads to an affectation of learning. The singular task of the poet is to make a subject interesting, and it must come from conviction and experience. There was no sense of the theatrical in Burns makeup or in his writing. In his poems Burns comes to us without affectation. In his letters he often adopts a more elevated style; there is no one who is an altogether an unaffected writer. Avoiding affectation is a learned process. In essence a poet must have character.

The language of Burns, writing in the vigorous lowland Scotch tongue of the eighteenth century, may be too far removed from many modern poets understanding, and be hard going at that, but the life of Burns was something that everyone can understand. If a poet cannot learn to read Burns at least that poet could read about the life of Robert Burns and benefit from the endeavor just as well. His short, often tragic life has much to teach us about human nature, its ups, its downs, and its pitfalls. The farmer-poet, as Burns was known, communicated to the common people of his time "the rich commentary of his nature." The homeliness of Burns writing appeals to the Scottish people wherever they live, for he makes them feel that they belong to the land itself. His songs and the folklore of his poetry are the spirit of his genius. Poets owe much to Robert Burns. I encourage them to put aside the rude words of their times, and listen instead to the inward melodies that are ringing in their heads.

Anthologies, biographies and essays on Burns number in the thousands. It is not the place here to direct the interested reader to what I think are the best books on Burns for an education. What I intend is to pick from my own many books on the poet, one that I think deserves remembrance from times past, Thomas Carlyle's Essay on Burns. This edition is a small pocket-sized volume published in Boston by Allyn and Bacon in 1922., edited by Henry W. Boynton. With an Introduction on The Life and Work of Thomas Carlyle and of Robert Burns; Notes, Selections from the Poems; and a Glossary.

As Boynton points out about Carlyle, and for what he is probably best remembered: "Carlyle was a thinker at odds with his generation. He was a prophet with the soul of an idealist and the eye of a pessimist. He was a dreamer who could not make his dreams come true...He hated and endlessly denounced the shams, the cant, the materialism, and the social tyranny of his day. He was the champion of his own class. He stood for the people against the hereditary ruling class. This could be understood. But he was on the other hand, an ardent 'hero-worshipper.' " Not unlike many people today who have their idols that only they can champion more than others.

Carlyle was often accused of believing that might makes right because he believed, not in a strong government, but in the capable hands that held it. He was accused of being a radical. He was not so radical that he didn't demand constructive reform over revolution. He did not hold the philosophy, popular with radicals of his time, that the only way to reform was through the complete tearing away the fabric of existing institutions. These anarchist wool gatherers represented an equal tyranny to him as to what they were supposedly against.

Matthew Arnold warned readers of the time to be on their guard against the spread of "Carlylese"; for there could be no future for those who imitated his writing style. If we put aside his over-use of capitals, his long compounds, stretched paragraphs, the inversions of syntax with which he is so fond, we can find the merits in his writing. It was forceful, vivid and at times fantastic. He was a profound critic as well as having a great imagination. The literature of nineteenth century England would not be the same without Carlyle's pungent vision. To quote James Russell Lowell: "Though not the safest of guides in politics or practical philosophy, [Carlyle's] value as an inspirer and awakener cannot be overestimated."

Selections from Carlyle's Essay on Burns [Edinburgh Review, No. 96. 1828]:

All that remains of Burns, the Writings he has left, seem to us, as we hinted above, no more than a poor mutilated fraction of what was in him; brief, broken glimpses of a genius that could never show itself complete; that wanted all things for completeness: culture, leisure, true effort, nay, even length of life. His poems are, with scarcely any exception, mere occasional effusions; poured forth with little meditation; expressing by such means as offered, the passion, opinion, or humour of the hour. Never in one instance was it permitted him to grapple with any subject with the full collection of his strength, to fuse and mould it in the concentrated fire of his genius. To try by the strictest rules of Art such imperfect fragments, would be at once unprofitable and unfair. Nevertheless, there is something in these poems, marred and defective as they are, which forbids the most fastidious student to pass them by. Some sort of enduring quality they must have: for after fifty years of the wildest vicissitudes in poetic taste, they still continue to be read; nay, are read more and more eagerly, more and more extensively; and this not only by literary virtuosos, and that class upon whom transitory causes operate most strongly, but by all classes, down to the most hard, unlettered, and truly unnatural class, who read little, and especially no poetry, except because they find pleasure in it.

...The ordinary poet, like the ordinary man, is forever seeking in external circumstances the help which can only be found in himself. In what is familiar and near at hand, he discerns no form or comeliness: home is not poetical, but prosaic; it is in some past, distant, conventional heroic world, that poetry resides for him; were he there and not here, were he thus and not so, it would be well with him. Hence our innumerable host of rose-colored Novels and iron-mailed Epics, with their locality not on earth, but somewhere nearer to the Moon. Hence our Virgins of the Sun, and our Knights of the Cross, malicious Saracens in turbans, and copper-colored Chiefs in wampum, and so many other truculent figures from the heroic times or the heroic climates, who on all hands swarm in our poetry.

...But yet, as a great moralist proposed preaching to the men of this century, so would we fain preach to the poets, 'a sermon on the duty of staying at home.' Let them be sure sure that the heroic ages and heroic climates can do little for them. That form of life has attraction for us, less because it is better or nobler than our own, than simply because it is different; and even this attraction must be of the most transient sort. For will not our own age, one day, be an ancient one; and have as quaint a costume as the rest; not contrasted with the rest, therefore, but ranked along with them, in respect of quaintness? Does Homer interest us now, because he wrote of what passed beyond his native Greece, and two centuries before he was born; or because he wrote what passed in God's world, and in the heart of man, which is the same after thirty centuries? Let our poets look to this: is their feeling really finer, truer, and their vision deeper than that of other men,--they have nothing to fear, even from the humblest subject; is it not so,--they have nothing to hope, but an ephemeral favor, even from the highest.


to be continued...

Fly Fishing Book Review HOWELL RAINES' THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY: A Memoir

Howell Raines

Author of Fly Fishing Through the Midlife Crisis

New York: Scribner, 2006. First Edition. Index. Numerous photographs. 325 pages. Hardcover in dust jacket. $25.00

"Since lies have played such a prominent role in my life, there's no way around telling about the argument between Tennant and me over how we hooked the marlin at Christmas Island." So writes Howell Raines, a Pulitzer Prize-winning veteran journalist and former executive editor of The New York Times, in his latest book on the passion of angling.

When Raines is writing about fishing and not politics he is in his element, otherwise I begin to go sour hearth-side or stream-side, longing for a day when fishermen just fish. He is a good writer with an adept turn of phrase, and he tells us much of the obvious as journalists are trained to do. Which brings me to my main point. Raines makes too much of the journalists of our day in a book ostensibly about fishing. So much so, that it intrudes upon our senses. I am left with the impression that the real subject of the One That Got Away is an undeclared war, a journalist's war pitting one part of society against another. And as he never formally declares that war, I feel as though I am an observer watching a brawling player beating the hell out of an opposing team member in some appalling game.

But back to the obvious--of coarse many of the camp owners are greedy, some wardens wink and the poachers are still poaching. This goes on even while journalists are forever pontificating about who is more right in America--Them or Us--a situation leading everybody nowhere with no end in sight. The face of greed is still evident in this country, even while the lids slowly close over the unburied bodies of our last great practitioners of guileless journalism. Naturally, there is also the greed to be heard, the greed to be seen, and the greed to want to be reckoned with that tarnishes our traditions and values. We are surrounded by people who often use a good turn of phrase, in order to ruthlessly provoke a response or to trivialize an important matter. These are sins in which the highest paid practitioners of American journalism most often excel. For Us, not Them, there is no happy ending. There are limits to how much people can take from these self-promoted captains and slogan-throwers of bad journalism. I think those limits are quickly being reached and the ship is sinking.

How much better it is to be a quiet fisherman in the simplified language of a Hemingway than a hubris-filled hot-shot of the press. Hucksters may learn to fish, yet they will never be content to be anything less than advocates and hawkers of politically biased forms of indoctrination. Those who follow them into this abyss have no idea of acting or thinking for themselves. They are clay in the modeler's hands. They repeat the words that the modelers teach them to say. All that follow them are the small fry strung up to dangle before us in the fish camp of advocacy-led America. And unlike fish, journalists, almost all journalists from one point of view or the another, are ridiculed rather than looked at in the spirit of admiration. The fault is entirely of their own making.

Nobody doubts that many of them grew up in little towns with quaint names or big cities with large names and all of the best intentions in the world. That they may have had two friends or three or no friends at all, and were encouraged by their teachers to do the best they can and achieve great things in their lifetime is not doubted. What is doubted is that they like the country they live in or the people they encounter or even the food they eat. Something along the way between childhood and adulthood appears to have shifted and altered their perspective, but they insist that it is not their perspective that is at fault. This is always the first sign of shortsightedness, a hint of mental-retardation for which a cure is not very promising.

They appear to have set out not understanding where they were going or what they were doing. All of their badgering and faultfinding and mocking of others insults our small intelligence. No longer are they capable of publishing good journalism. What true good they hoped to catch in this way was always elusive. The stories they tell about themselves are as old as fisherman's stories, exaggerating the size of their catch and mythologizing about the fish that got away. If they falter or show any weakness toward their supposed prey, the savage little schools that they have spawned are just as eager to kick them onto the banks to rot, while swimming happily round and round in ever tightening circles. Indeed, the severity of their predictable upsurges against their own should be a warning to Every Fisherman, but hapless Every Fisherman has learned to no longer care.

An experienced fisherman, nevertheless, usually knows what he is about. Raines writes well about fishing, all kinds of fishing in The One That Got Away. When fishing, men and women can put aside the big lie that today's journalism is still based on time-proven principles rather than the ideological fads and amoral commercialism of newsrooms, in the vein of The New York Times confabulated world. I am convinced that we have been assaulted by a senseless campaign of martini journalists from which there is no hope of evading the fight. I encourage people who feel looked upon as serfs and peasants not to fear the displeasure of these cruel masters. I know how deeply people detest incurring the wrath of booted, shaved and shirted thugs, whose power only seems to demand a silent obedience. I understand that nobody wants to throw their lives away over people with the power not only to silence their voices but to disgrace them before their friends. It is extremely unlikely that any of these dreamers will achieve the true heights of their dreams. The mountain upon which they now stand, at the right moment in their lives, will not be their final resting place but the precipice from which their conscience will urge them to throw themselves. Occasionally, I, too, want to give them a little push.

The truth is, a large number of the press have no longer become reliable sources of information. Not one single viewpoint on any side of any question is left uncontested without derision. This is their legacy and they cannot undo it however hard they try. The press has become like drill-sergeants, with swagger-stick in hand they order people about the camp as though they were raw recruits on their day of arrival. No one is safe from their terrifying bullying. Look about all the yokels they dredge up. They seem to like bossing people about with their yellow journalism in big papers or rumor mongering on tight little screens, and more than a few seem happy to be bossed by them. This is not a favorable omen.

They have reduced themselves and the taxpaying American people to a Hollywoodized version of meaningless men and women who scramble for money, fornicate, and drink between long-winded draughts of implausible small-talk, when they should be living a good life without this ethically-challenged interference. They are driven by an incurable "itch to lay down the critical law, full of honors and crowded by respectful admirers." It is no wonder that a very large number of the press appear to have escaped from mental institutions where they were lobotomized.

While fishing we can escape the bombast daily sent our way by hirelings placed in environments designed to make us comfortable with a willing suspension of disbelief in their flapdoodle. When Raines is writing about fishing Raines is very good at making us feel and see the action. I'm convinced that Raines can become a great outdoors writer on angling, but first he must put aside the hogwash that journalism has anything new to tell the American people in relation to their lives. History will never record that journalism has failed the American people because of the simple fact that many journalists respond to their own propaganda of the partisan sensationalist sort. There is nothing so radical as such stupidity. Fishing owns none of this.

Raines shifts between fishing vignettes and reflections on his Alabama childhood, family and working relationships. At the center of The One That Got Away is what he considers one of his most exciting fishing adventures--an Old Man and the Sea struggle with a marlin he hooked and fought for seven and a half hours at Christmas Island in the South Pacific.

In spite of what I consider to be a few minor flaws in Howell Raines book, I highly recommend it.

Dom Giovanni

Reviewed July 01, 2009

Note upon the style

If I have seemed to make overt use of Howell Raines own words in this review I may be excused. When it comes to words I am a borrower not a lender.