Bosh and Flapdoodle Read online

  A. R. Ammons

  Bosh and Flapdoodle

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  Contents

  Fasting

  Reverse Reserve and You Have Reverse

  Surface Effects

  Aubade

  Oil Ode

  America

  In View of the Fact

  Get Over It

  Tail Tales

  Fuel to the Fire, Ice to the Floe

  Suet Pudding, Spotted Dick

  Focal Lengths

  Sibley Hall

  Good God

  Genetic Counseling

  Hooliganism

  Slacking Off

  Quibbling the Colossal

  Informing Dynamics

  Pyroclastic Flows

  Odd Man Out

  Squall Lines

  John Henry

  Rogue Elephant

  Mouvance

  Called Into Play

  Back-Burnerd

  A Few Acres of Shiny Water

  “They said today would be partly cloudy”

  Feint Praise

  Surfacing Surface Effects

  Free One, Get One By

  Dumb Clucks

  Sucking Flies

  Balsam Firs

  Tree-Limbs Down

  Wetter Beather

  The Gushworks

  Body Marks

  Yonderwards

  Depressed Areas

  Dishes and Dashes

  Auditions

  Between Each Song

  Mina de Oro

  Widespread Implications

  Above the Fray Is Only Thin Air

  Home Fires

  Pudding Bush Sopping Wet

  Spew

  Vomit

  Thoughts

  Spit

  Lineage

  Now Then

  Shit Face

  Surprising Elements

  Out From Under

  The Whole Situation

  Rattling Freight Lines

  That’s What I Just Got Through Saying

  It Doesn’t Hold Water

  Tom Fool

  Ringadingding

  I Wouldn’t Go So Far As to Say That

  Thrown for a Loop

  Wrong Road

  Way Down Upon the Woodsy Roads

  A Note of Appreciation

  These poems were written in 1996, though my father continued to work on the collection until shortly before he died. No poems have been added or deleted. The order of the poems as well as the title of the book are his. The poems have been left exactly as Ammons wrote them. We have not attempted to change the spelling or sense of his words to conform with standard spelling or usage.

  My mother and I are deeply grateful to friends and colleagues of my late father who encouraged us to publish the collection, among them, Mike Abrams, Roald Hoffmann, David Lehman, Ken McClane, Steve Tapscott, our agent Glen Hartley, Norton editor Jill Bialosky and her assistant, Sarah Moriarty, and Emily Wilson for her lively enthusiasm for Ammons’s poetry.

  We are especially indebted to Roger Gilbert for his steadfast dedication and help with all aspects of the project, and to Helen Vendler, who so generously read the manuscript, for her guidance and warm response.

  —John Ammons

  Mill Valley, California

  Bosh and Flapdoodle

  Fasting

  Not two months off till the shortest day, the

  shadows near noon all flop over one way as if

  it were soon to be dusk: that’s winter coming

  all right, slanted over, long-casting, &

  pale: the trees are suddenly bristled

  stripped: did the sun steam a frost up and melt

  the leaves: probably not: squirrels shook

  the leaves out of the lofts: some (people)

  are strict, spare, and pure; some strew gems

  in the mud: I perforce raise the level of the

  mud till it endows shining, like lake

  ice or sunny water or like a distant field of

  pumpkins, leafless and unpicked, or even like

  the first rye fields against gray woods, so

  bright green: hark, the jewels are lost in

  the general rising, and the rare and priceless

  are cheapened by white towers in a still-blue

  day: of course, you can’t wear an image, a

  windchurned figure from a volcano core, on

  your finger, and some thoughts are too grand

  to diadem a brain: (the tree by the road now

  looks like a sketch for a tree): Halloween

  needs what we have today—a stir: not a gale

  so constant and high but gusts that show up

  out of nowhere, presences that are not there,

  little twirls of leaves that scoot across the

  street and then just wilt out, forms,

  air-whorls that are made out of nothing

  but that touch your face or rustle into the

  bushes, whispering and hissing: all kinds of

  cases where motion charges the show

  and where motion gives its form away by

  picking up miscellany and throwing it off, motion

  the closest cousin to spirit and spirit the

  closest neighbor to the other world, haunted

  with possibility, hope, anguish, and alarm.

  Reverse Reserve and You Have Reverse

  This morning, with small swirls of the season’s

  first snowflakes dropping and rising in the

  air, a bushy black dog, his head high, his

  tongue aloll, his tail also high, comes down

  the street: lost, he looks wildly all around,

  turns into and out of driveways, reverses

  his run and goes back to places as unfamiliar

  as if he had never come through them: my wife

  has lost her taste for eggs: she would rather

  have a piece of toast with raspberry jam and

  a little (real) butter than over, scrambled,

  poached or boiled hard: I ask her, where has

  the taste gone, but it’s just like losing yr

  dog, she doesn’t know where it is: eggs in

  popovers are still found in her taste: she

  just loves popovers, with jam, I mean, and

  a little (real) butter: cultural conditioning

  has changed us so we have to look at the apes,

  the gorillas, chimps, and babs to see what a

  little cultural conditioning does: if we

  didn’t have cultural conditioning, we males

  would (as we sometimes still do) soften up the

  females with attention or pursuit to bend them to

  the primary imperative: for baboons, you

  know, females, wouldn’t want an infant swinging

  from their belly or arms or riding on their

  backs if it wasn’t for estrus compelling them:

  we already know that women prefer romance and

  cuddling to anything invasive: whereas, we

  males desire above all to get it in and get

  rid of it: sometimes women will snarl, fake

  headaches, pretend to be asleep because who

  wants to risk her life having babies and lose

  her life taking care of them, you might say:

  so males have to hold them up a little into

  mindless obedience so the sperm can run: of

  course, we are so cultivated now that the

  woman can stand right in the kitchen and

  refuse to get on the table: where does that

  leave the urgent one with his outstanding
r />   example of firmness in hand: it is, then,

  without doubt the sharpness of male need that

  perpetuates the species (which, truly, might

  better be left alone):

  RULLY OUSTSTANDING

  Surface Effects

  Nature, you know, is not a one-way street: its

  most consistent figure is turning—turning

  back, turning in, turning around: why?, because

  it has nowhere to go but into itself: all its

  motions are intermediate: if carrion turns

  into flight (as it becomes in the wings of

  buzzards) why it is not long before flight is

  carrion again: of course, if nature is a

  one-way street it is some kind of superlative

  avenue, some large summary that takes its

  account from time—that is, if time is a

  one-way street: that is, if time, too, doesn’t

  bend back into itself and start its intermediaries

  over again: if, for example, dry years cause

  the brook to cut its way one-sided, maybe that

  deepens at least that narrow flow so fish can

  get up the ledges to the pools and

  sleepy shallows: or the worn-out ledge grist may

  make a place downstream to put a willow in: so

  nature, turning, does not turn on itself, for

  whatever it turns into is nature anew: Mars,

  desolate on the surface, doesn’t mind desolation:

  Venus’s boiling stones are just a lit merriment:

  the hillside, drenched by rain after wild

  fires, doesn’t mind collapsing: what is wrong

  for us is wrong for us; we may even

  be wrong in reckoning it wrong; it may be

  right, and we haven’t yet learned how: when

  we correct wrongs, we may interfere with

  the swing-around that will bring things right,

  possibly righter than they were before:

  don’t worry about nature: it is always nature:

  when we divert water into California’s valley

  deserts, we produce mucho melons, but we

  leave the salty mouth of the Colorado dry: we

  play our arrogances small scale: slowly we

  learn that surplus carbon monoxide feeds a soil

  microorganism: the large designs are filigrees

  through which nearly still measures move, turn,

  come and go again.

  Aubade

  They say, lose weight, change your lifestyle:

  that’s, take the life out of your style and

  the style out of your life: give up fats,

  give up sweets, chew rabbit greens, raw: and

  how about carrots: raw: also, wear your

  hipbones out walking: we were designed for

  times when breakfast was not always there, and

  you had to walk a mile, maybe, for your first

  berry or you had to chip off a flint before

  you could dig up a root: and there were

  times when like going off to a weight reduction

  center you had a belly full of nothing: easy

  to be skinny digesting bark: but here now at

  the breakfast buffet or lavish brunch you’re

  trapped between resistance and getting your

  money’s worth and the net gain from that

  transaction is about one pound more: hunting

  and gathering is a better lifestyle than

  resisting: resisting works up your nerves

  not your appetite (already substantial in the

  wild) and burns up fewer calories than the

  activity arising from hunger pangs: all in

  all this is a praise for modern life—who

  wants to pick the subrealities from his teeth

  every minute—but all this is just not what

  we were designed for, bad as it was: any way

  I go now I feel I’m going against nature, when

  I feel so free with the ways and means, the

  dynamics, the essentialities honed out clearly

  from millions of years: sometimes when I say

  “you” in my poems and appear to be addressing

  the lord above, I’m personifying the contours

  of the onhigh, the ways by which the world

  works, however hard to see: for the onhigh

  is every time the on low, too, and in the

  middle: one lifts up one’s voice to the

  lineations of singing and sings, in effect,

  you, you are the one, the center, it is around

  you that the comings and goings gather, you

  are the before and after, the around and

  through: in all your motions you are ever

  still, constant as motion itself: there with

  you we abide, abide the changes, abide the

  dissolutions and recommencements of our very

  selves, abide in your abiding: but, of course

  I don’t mean “you” as anyone in particular

  but I mean the center of motions millions of

  years have taught us to seek: now, with

  space travel and gene therapy that “you” has

  moved out of the woods and rocks and streams

  and traveled on out so far in space that it

  rounds the whole and is, in a way, nowhere to

  be found or congratulated, and so what is out

  there dwells in our heads now as a bit of

  yearning, maybe vestigial, and it is a yearning

  like a painful sweetness, a nearly reachable

  presence that nearly feels like love, something

  we can put aside as we get up to rustle up a

  little breakfast or contemplate a little

  weight loss, or gladden the morning by getting

  off to work. . . .

  Oil Ode

  My wife says that the two guys on TV say that

  the most important thing is changing the oil:

  and my wife says this friend of hers said go

  over to Doug’s Fish Fry in Homer, they change

  the oil often: and this fellow I met in a

  factory once told a joke in which a guy sticks

  up his middle finger to this lady and says,

  check your oil? that is not very nice: I

  mean, what could he do for her: just say,

  lady, your oil’s fine: because what if it

  wasn’t, could he replenish a drought: my

  father’s friend once said he needed to “grease

  his axle”: I think that was a dirty expression:

  if not dirty, brutally suggestive and insulting,

  and take that little gland in the reproductive

  works of human males, the one that puts out a

  bead of oil to promote penetration: tell me,

  is that not as wonderful as an appearance in a

  grotto: how did “myself” know that some

  problem outside my body might arise that a

  gland should be designed to help ease: a gland

  in me to help me ease in her: take anything,

  think about it, it blows up in wonder: now, I

  can’t call this greaseshooter dirty, it’s so

  splendid, but I don’t want anything to do with

  it: I would rather think about the girl’s

  collarbone than that and that bone: I just

  tell you, it’s amazing: then, there’s oil and

  vinegar, oilcloth, etc. but

  THAT’S OIL, FOLKS

  America

  Eat anything: but hardly any: calories are

  calories: olive oil, chocolate, nuts, raisins

  —but don’t be deceived about carbohydrates

  and fruits: eat enough and they will make you

  as slick as butter (or really excellent chee
se,

  say, parmesan, how delightful): but you may

  eat as much of nothing as you please, believe

  me: iceberg lettuce, celery stalks, sugarless

  bran (watch carrots, they quickly turn to

  sugar): you cannot get away with anything:

  eat it and it is in you: so don’t eat it: &

  don’t think you can eat it and wear it off

  running or climbing: refuse the peanut butter

  and sunflower butter and you can sit on your

  butt all day and lose weight: down a few

  ounces of heavyweight ice cream and

  sweat your balls (if pertaining) off for hrs

  to no, I say, no avail: so, eat lots of

  nothing but little of anything: an occasional

  piece of chocolate-chocolate cake will be all

  right, why worry: lightning-lit, windswept

  firelines scythed the prairies and strung

  rivers of clearing through the hardwoods,

  disaster renewal, smallish weeds and bushes

  getting their seeds out, grazing attracting

  rabbits and buffalo, the other big light

  shining in steady. . . .

  In View of the Fact

  The people of my time are passing away: my

  wife is baking for a funeral, a 60-year-old who

  died suddenly, when the phone rings, and it’s

  Ruth we care so much about in intensive care:

  it was once weddings that came so thick and

  fast, and then, first babies, such a hullabaloo:

  now, it’s this that and the other and somebody

  else gone or on the brink: well, we never

  thought we would live forever (although we did)

  and now it looks like we won’t: some of us

  are losing a leg to diabetes, some don’t know

  what they went downstairs for, some know that

  a hired watchful person is around, some like

  to touch the cane tip into something steady,

  so nice: we have already lost so many,

  brushed the loss of ourselves ourselves: our

  address books for so long a slow scramble now

  are palimpsests, scribbles and scratches: our

  index cards for Christmases, birthdays,

  Halloweens drop clean away into sympathies:

  at the same time we are getting used to so

  many leaving, we are hanging on with a grip

  to the ones left: we are not giving up on the

  congestive heart failure or brain tumors, on