Bosh and Flapdoodle Read online

  he to be paralyzed in a humiliation of

  gratitude: can’t one who has much give much,

  if he will: where is one to acquire much,

  except by making, keeping, and accruing, even

  at a profit from others for services rendered:

  if you have something to give, should you give

  it to an individual who may be a wastrel or

  vagabond, or should you give it to the

  community as capitalization for business

  activities bringing, maybe, jobs for carpenters,

  word processors, software designers, so that

  you make money yourself by giving, in a

  sense, to all: well, you can see it isn’t

  easy, is it: look after yourself, you may be,

  if inadvertently, looking after others: at

  least, you won’t be one yourself who needs to

  be looked after by others: he creates a boon

  who removes himself from welfare: as for me,

  I am as much an innocent standbyer as bystander

  which is to say, I may be participating even

  when I am saying nothing, whenever that was:

  but, all in all, the world doesn’t make much

  sense unless we make a little something up

  TO GO WITH IT

  Ringadingding

  Dress up a charlatan like a lord, and who is

  the lord: or don beggar’s rags upon a beggar

  and watch the curtseys stumble: if clothes

  are the man, it is only so in consideration of

  clothes—but since that consideration can

  pass for the whole, man and all, it can be all:

  the rich dress down and the poor up to achieve

  true levels of participation that are truly

  lies: well, misstatements of sign: you can,

  indeed, not know the true man at all, if the

  true man differs from the clothes he wears,

  by the clothes he wears: I would have you

  stumble there, as before the good writer

  poorly dressed: looking good or bad, I pledge

  to prefer no charge against myself: when the

  police show up, I’ll hire the best lawyer in

  town and get off, tried or mistried: I’ll pump

  money into my lawyer, and his mouth will fly

  with devices, exceptions, exemptions, and sweet

  big words: I am not going to let myself lie

  around undefended and defenseless: I haven’t

  done anything: I’ve done hardly anything now

  for years: the sweetest leisure is work of

  one’s own choosing: (life is short, even when

  it isn’t): I mean, I haven’t done anything the

  law doesn’t allow or can’t find: but inside,

  where the differences are, everybody is in

  court, tongues and heads are flying and chains

  are rattling: can, I cry out, we bring some of

  these issues to trial: oh, no, when one is

  oneself jury, accuser, pleader, judge subduing

  the maelstrom lacks separation, the fiddling

  aside of the plainly innocent: live for others:

  living for others is life for oneself: live

  for yourself, you put your self at odds with

  all mankind, and you grow sour in your losses

  or gains: cut off, you win or lose against

  yourself, which is never winning: live for

  others, not that they may live for themselves,

  but that they, too, may live for others: life

  for all can come of this, since giving is the

  sweetest given, given back: the world’s twisty

  and the straightaway is crooked and the crooked

  straightaway. . . .

  I Wouldn’t Go So Far As to Say That

  The trouble with style is that it cannot look

  ragged if clean cut, nor empty if full, nor

  colorless if bejeweled: I mean, you would

  think that: but so much colorful stuff is

  trashy and boring, and serene emptiness is the

  highest plane in some spheres, and raggedness

  can look like clean displays of ruffles: I am

  so impressed with the malleability of things

  that I’m ready to let almost anything go: how

  do you want the world, well, within reason,

  have it any way you please: many can be boring

  in their richest effort, but how can I be

  plainly, truthfully boring except by being

  boring (clever line break): and how can I

  burst out into something if I already know the

  program: but how can you bear exposure—and

  why should you—to so much trot: I don’t

  know any reason except to be there when the

  deal goes down, when competence stumbles and

  reveals its dirty underclothes, or when the

  spirit’s whirlwind strikes the windy hills to

  raise the dust: but I also wonder how you can

  bear to be in the presence of the well-written

  all the time: so, some little creep can iron

  it out and measure it off, doodle some outlines

  and make it look neat: let him: her: what to

  do about style is one of my meanest problems:

  I wrote some poems really short: I revised a

  few till they were just perfectly revised: I

  confess now to some interest in good bad

  writing: I would just as soon see what I can

  do about getting across the river when the

  bridge floods out: what do I know: it may not

  even rain: or if it rains, the sky may clear

  so gloriously gold-fringed that I will weep:

  prepared weeping may not achieve its tears,

  but tears cannot be prevented when they have

  to gather: this is an example: it’s not

  revised, it’s bad, it’s wonderful. . . .

  Thrown for a Loop

  There’s so much more belief than truth, and

  that is lucky in a way, belief inclining us

  more toward what we need than what we’ll get:

  but we really do believe what we believe and

  we hope it will work out: but put a plug of

  gold on the scale opposite a sack full of

  painted feathers, truth will that great woven

  cluster outweigh: the fulcrum could be called

  “getting along”—and that’s where balanced

  persons no doubt stand: those who slip down

  the arm toward feathers keep an eye back on

  truth, I’ll bet, and those heavy with truth,

  which is sometimes ruthlessly truth, oh, they

  longingly look toward the painted fare: belief

  can fulfill dramas of yearning, while truth’s

  exactions narrow down the margins: but even

  when it’s a tightrope it’s somewhere to walk,

  while dramas address theatrical appetites:

  that truth and belief are one, cooperating one

  with the other, that is simply GRAND, and they

  sometimes do, aiming at heaven, cooperate: I

  think that this means only that illusion plays

  well against reality, though we have so much

  trouble telling which is which, truth often

  losing the figurements of its setup, and

  illusion as often floating off, a grain of

  reality its core: there is a sufficient place

  in the mind that turns away into the errors

  of explanation just to be about: the sitting

  center’s butt gets tired, and the feet and

  legs can do with a little circulation, like

  walking out into the country to chat with the
>
  farmers, lend a hand, or help a calf stand up

  in its freshest morning: do with the obvious:

  little lies behind it. . . .

  Wrong Road

  So I said to the short-order cook (because I

  think he owns the joint) what did Santa bring

  you: a fairly aggressive bit of humor, since

  I hardly know the man: my wife and I stop

  there occasionally on the way to Syracuse

  because it is so busy, the eggs are right, and

  the waitresses friendly: when he says, Oh,

  some of this and that: so I said, a boat:

  (checking to see if he was really rich): a

  gun, I said—maybe he was just one of the

  guys: I have a lot of guns, he said: well,

  I don’t think he ever did say what he got,

  some clothes, maybe: he was turning too many

  eggs, jigging hash browns: on the way to

  Syracuse, I finished it in my head: he got

  angry: who’s asking, he says: so I try to

  bring him down: I’m too old to rise up to

  risibility: I said, I’m a little older than

  you, so I was wondering, because I was disappointed

  in myself when my wife asked me before Xmas

  what I wanted for Christmas: I couldn’t think

  of anything: what does it mean to want nothing

  from Santa: so I just wondered what sort of

  thing you might have wanted, or if you had

  liked what you got: well (reader) this last

  part doesn’t sound as good as the way it came

  to me around Lafayette: I have a little tingle

  of fear that the next time I stop there, the

  guy will say, listen, buddy, I’m old enough

  you don’t have to ask me what Santa brought me

  and I’ll say, well, it’s Easter now, and I’m

  not going to ask about those eggs. . . .

  Way Down Upon the Woodsy Roads

  Don’t you think poetry should be succinct:

  not now: I think it should be discinct: it

  should wander off and lose its way back and

  then bump into a sign and have to walk home:

  who gives a hoot about these big-Mack trucks

  of COMPRESSION: what are the most words for

  the least: take your cute little compact and

  don’t tell me anything about it: just turn me

  loose, let me rattle my ole prattle: poetry

  springs greatest from deepest depths: well,

  let her whistle: how shallow can anything

  get: (rhyming on the front end): I do not

  believe that setting words to rhyme and meter

  turns prose into poetry, and having written

  some of the shortest poems, I now like to

  write around largely into any precinct (not

  succinct) or pavilion (a favorite word) I fall

  in with: I have done my duty: I am a happy

  man: I am at large: life sho is show biz:

  make room for the great presence of nothing:

  do you never long to wander off: from the

  concentrations: for it is one thing to fail

  of them and another never to have intended

  them: the love nest, men, becomes a solid

  little (mortgaged) colonial: duty becomes your

  chief commendation: the animal in you, older

  than your kind, longs to undertake the heavy

  freedom of going off by himself into the wide

  periphery of chance and surprise, pleasure or

  terror: oh, come with me, or go off like me,

  if only in the deep travels of your soul, and

  let your howl hold itself in through all the

  forests of the night: it’s the shortest day:

  the sun is just now setting behind the branch

  of the crabapple tree it always sets behind

  this day of the year. . . .

  DRAB POT

  Also by A. R. Ammons

  Ommateum

  Expressions of Sea Level

  Corsons Inlet

  Tape for the Turn of the Year

  Northfield Poems

  Selected Poems

  Uplands

  Briefings

  Collected Poems: 1951–1971

  (winner of the National Book Award for Poetry, 1973)

  Sphere: The Form of Motion

  (winner of the 1973–1974 Bollingen Prize in Poetry)

  Diversifications

  The Snow Poems

  Highgate Roate

  The Selected Poems: 1951–1977

  Selected Longer Poems

  A Coast of Trees

  (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, 1981)

  Worldly Hopes

  Lake Effect Country

  The Selected Poems: Expanded Edition

  Sumerian Vistas

  The Really Short Poems

  Garbage

  (winner of the National Book Award for Poetry, 1993)

  Brink Road

  Glare

  Selected poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Hudson Review, Kenyon Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poetry East, Slate, and Epoch.

  Copyright © 2005 by John R. Ammons

  All rights reserved

  First published as a Norton paperback 2006

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110

  Book design by Blue Shoe Studio

  Production manager: Andrew Marasia

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

  Ammons, A. R., 1926–

  Bosh and flapdoodle : poems / A.R. Ammons.— 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  I. Title.

  PS3501.M6B67 2005

  811'.54—dc22

  2004026050

  ISBN 978-0-393-32895-0

  9780393357318

  W W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110

  www.wwnorton.com

  W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., Castle House,

  75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT