Poetry and Fate
I wrote my first poem before I could talk
Judging from my own history, I would say that a poet is born, not made. During my early thirties, when I was pretending to be young (I’m still doing that), I was studying poetry at a local college. I had forgotten, but Poetry and I had had a history since I was only a year old, when I published ‘my’ first poem. Bear with me here. The reporter for the Nazi paper in my hometown of Hann Muenden wrote a poem in which I ‘identify’ as a war child that just doesn’t look hungry at all, thus confusing the ‘enemy’. That the author, Kriemhild Riedel, signed it in my name was the first sign that I was destined to be a poet, if only a lousy one. They even took a picture of me and the entire embarrassing propaganda concoction was published. My parents, certainly my mother, were thrilled. Let it be a warning re war rhetoric. Here it is for your entertainment, and I won’t bother translating it.
Reading this doggerel years later, I was not amused. But poetry continued to be part of my life. As a somewhat precocious 10 year old, I loved the Galgenlieder or Songs of the Gallows by Christian Morgenstern, a famous satirist who more or less invented an entire sub genre of comic verse that was profound and silly in equal measure. A kind of Lear on steroids., if you will. The collection has been translated into English by a few crazy academics but it is hard to find and I don’t have it, unfortunately. I will attempt a partial translation of one my favourites Galgenberg, Gallows Hill.
Unsettling to the deeply dim
we revel in life’s game
Precisely fate’s essential whim
serves as our mocking aim
Since I also lived on a place called Galgenberg, it’s no wonder that this poem became one of my favourites. I continue to read these bizarre poems in German and know this one as well as a few others by heart. Reciting them was a cherished family tradition for my uncle Lutz and I. If either one of us got the wording wrong or forgot, the other would jump in with glee. It was a lot more fun than arguing about politics, and felt natural because I grew up in a school system that actually made us memorize and recite poems. It stuck with me. I even memorized the entire Jabberwocky recently, awake at night looking for something to do. I can highly recommend it to other insomniacs. If nothing else, it proves that your mind is still intact even while the rest of you isn’t.
In any event, I wrote my first ‘adult’ poem in the class of Mr Rideout, who was a published poet himself. He really liked the line It’s a fact, and read the poem to the class. This time, I was thrilled instead of embarrassed. Here it is:
Parking Meter Lament
I’m lying here
Amid speedometers and spiders
My figure and my gears intact
It’s a fact
Feed me a penny
And I spring to life
But soon I’m screaming again
Time expired!
Maybe I should be retired
Okay, it’s not Milton, it’s more like Morgenstern, and maybe I should take myself seriously as a unserious writer of somewhat satirical and comic verse. Hmm. The poem was inspired by an actual parking meter that my eleven year old son Vince had dragged home. How it ended up in the woods next to our house is a mystery. Maybe it was meant to end up in this weird poem. Writing stuff like this doesn’t get you any respect, but that’s okay. I’ve always preferred laughter to tears, so here we go. For most people, Poetry is an acquired taste, as this anonymous quote illustrates: The truth is like poetry And everyone fucking hates your poetry-Overheard in a Washington D.C. bar.
I think I once drank champagne with a client in that same bar, a long time ago in another century that in retrospect looks more benign than this one does. But I digress.
In spite of that sentiment, a lot of people seem to like my poetic efforts. The most views I ever got was with my poem O that I were young again, which someone posted to the Lew Rockwell site. Those ‘far right’ Americans really dug that effort. Thank you!
https://monikaullmann.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/133071929?referrer=%2Fpublish%2Fposts
More poems, good and bad, are coming in the New Year. The odd thing is that I have never really ‘identified’ as a Poet. Maybe I didn’t think I was crazy or talented enough? This is the year I intend to find out just how crazy and/or talented I am, and I believe my timing is good: Poetry has been on the comeback trail for a while now. That quote is probably seriously out of date. Truth is still like Poetry, but now, everyone fucking loves it.
At least that is what I prefer to believe. I intend to make it a year of Poetry celebrating profound, even cataclysmic change. The Astrologers are in total agreement again: it’s going to be a wild ride though not all bad. So, here’s to the new Year of the Wood Dragon and all the poets, whether born or made, putting the right words in the right order about it. May we never run out of material.