The Plague Diaries and the Annals of the New Utopia (IFT)

[M]

Brian,

I'm following along with your Plague Diary entries, and enjoying them very much. Many of these deserve revisits post-NaPo (you know the drill).

These are full of little gems like a mom who doesn't hear so well, then says "well why didn't you tell me?" (been there), and "whatever that means" in relation to "rush hour in Plague Days".

Need to Know is heartfelt, and relatable. I think, especially right now, we'd all love to be able to see what happens next. There's a lot of uncertainty, this being uncharted territory for all of us, and I think that's what makes your diary entries engaging is that they're full of the mundane (taking walks, cooking dinner), the familiar (speaking with friends, remembering conversations from the past), the every day (colostomy bags), the usual worries (will my ailing mom make it?) mixed with some humor, and even some absurdity (like "The Walking Living") and the bizarre ("Little Timmy's been eaten").

Keep writing, and I'll keep reading.

M.

[Scrow]

Andy Warhol - the ‘primp your soul/ with nail gloss’ is stand-out. I love how the banana picture takes you off in different directions, some witty, some questioning.


Complications - the ‘brief alumnus’. The meeting of dreams, fiction and the very real reality give this power. And the end is sad - genuinely moving (and I don’t get moved that often by poems)


Sean Francisco - needs more geology, but I love the differentiation of the language of the sea, the idea of Sean, the idea of the pen being valued (wouldn’t go for beer, but a packet of crisps and white wine are hopefully also allowed in this Utopian vision)


Shelter-in-Place - food is important, cooking is important & I love the details of the food in this, and how they stand as a metaphor for personal respect as well as caring - food shows the relationship.




Need to know - a hinge point? A pause point where the N questions their efforts. Love ‘tattooing effect’ on a word level. Isn’t the over-familiarity the thing, though - I think you’re using that here.




Relative Calm - interesting that you have the same, or similar, food shortages in NY as I do in rural Herefordshire (not eggs, we have an abundance of eggs, but no flour, no yeast, no pasta). We are eating meringues, like air, and apples. I like the focus on outside the lockdown, on the ‘other’. Word-level stand-outs include ‘desultory prey’, more generally the half-dream like feel to the end with its dystopian qualities (that have enough real in them to make them meaningful).


To the Moon, Alice! - great picture, and a lovely song, funny and clever. I don’t know the show at all and it doesn’t matter.


My first exercise walk - starts strongly, with the Rush Hour questioning of our stock phrases and the shouty birds whose noise is now welcomed (I wonder what kinds of birds they are). The kind car is great too, and the idea of pickup. S4 is brilliant, and reflects what I notice here, on a different continent and very different place (we do not have restaurants or pickups). Spot-on. We have just, sometimes, started to say ‘hello’ again to strangers met on country paths here. There is too much fear. S4 and S5, S6 and S7 take me into a place which is alien and similar to my own, and are great too. End is funny and not, too.


Keep going. The details and the human scale of this is important. I love how you open up a window into your world. Onwards!

Sarah

[David John]

Hi Brian,

Wow, you are pumping them out!

'The Secret Language':

I love how this poem folds the reader back on themselves.

'What would Andy Warhol do?'


Enjoyed this strong opening:


‘Copying was an Art to Warhol.
Coping was harder,
and death was the hardest—‘

and the journey leading to an equally satisfying close.


‘Sean Francisco’

‘This was
after the Plague Years,
when survivors had fled there,
before the final Earthquake.’

Insert Spoiler Alert!


A love the vision that follows a double tragedy, you can feel people’s minds opening out in similar ways during our current seismic shift.


‘The Remnants’ was a favorite.

I loved the foreshadowing at the start, moving into the concept of subtractive color.
This was a poem to linger on, so beautifully thought through.


I was with my dad for his last momth as he was dying and sometimes he’d mention departed friends and family he could see sitting around the room, leaning in the doorway, waiting for him.

Great work!

Cheers,
Dave

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

M, thanks.

You provided some good detail of your thoughts. You noted the feedback loop between the twin trains of through with the connection of "Need to Know" as a meditation on the refrain of The Plague Diaries (as I discussed a bit above in my response to JFN).

---------------------------------

Scrow, thanks.

The Warhol piece was a shot out of the blue and into the dark. When I saw the photo prompt, the Warhol idea jumped at me, and the rest was just a whole bunch of associations and word play, with pop culture references, and a bit of absurdity thrown in. You mention further down that you are not familiar with The Honeymooners TV show--are you familiar with Magilla Gorilla?

I'm glad that the dream sequence in Complications worked for you. I thought it was a risk to have such a long apparent digression, with the dream sequence, but I had my reasons for it, some of which I elucidated in my response to JFN above.

With respect to Sean Francisco, I see you want more geology . That's a thought!

Shelter-in-Place - your comments on food are interesting.


Need to Know - is like a crossover episode from The Plague Days to The Annals of the New Utopia, and yes, there is a Need to Know

Relative Calm - interesting that you noticed the focus on the other, that is something that I am trying to look at more of, especially wondering how one continues such a diary in a way so as to interest the reader under the circumstances.

To the Moon, Alice! - "The Honeymooners" TV show is an iconic early sitcom in the USA. There are two shows, "I Love Lucy" and "The Honeymooners", that were the blueprint for almost every sitcom that followed. The Honeymooners was a popular show in the mid-1950s, and you've probably seen countless imitations of it, without knowing that they were imitations.

From Wikipedia: "The Honeymooners was one of the first U.S. television shows to portray working-class married couples in a gritty, non-idyllic manner, as the show is mostly set in the Kramdens' kitchen in a neglected Brooklyn apartment building."

If you’ve ever seen a sit-com about a working class couple, it probably draws on or imitates the show.

To get an idea of the importance of the show, in 2002, TV Guide did a list of the 50 best TV shows of all time (from an American perspective). The Honeymooners came in 3rd, ahead of shows that folks today might be more familiar with, like The Simpsons and The Sopranos. Here's the top ten from that list. The dates given are the known dates as of now, several were still running in 2002 when the list was first made.

1. Seinfeld (NBC, July 5, 1989 – May 14, 1998)
2. I Love Lucy (CBS, October 15, 1951 – May 6, 1957)
3. The Honeymooners (Dumont, October 1, 1955 – September 22, 1956)
4. All in the Family (CBS, January 12, 1971 – April 8, 1979)
5. The Sopranos (HBO, January 10, 1999 – June 10, 2007)
6. 60 Minutes (CBS, September 24, 1968 – present)
7. Late Show with David Letterman (CBS, August 30, 1993 – May 20, 2015)
8. The Simpsons (Fox, December 17, 1989 – present)
9. The Andy Griffith Show (CBS, October 3, 1960 – April 1, 1968)
10. Saturday Night Live (NBC, October 11, 1975 – present)

My First Exercise Walk - I like your reception of this. I thought I was really hitting my stride here, and some of the stanzas that you point out are particular favorites of mine.

---------------------------------

Thanks, David John,

The Secret Language - this was written as an antidote to what I expected to be a much darker side from The Plague Diaries.

Warhol - others have mentioned the strong opening, it was fun to write. I need to think if it's ready to submit to The Rattle contest that prompted it.

Sean Francisco - spoiler alert! Yes. Not uncommon. Like the opening of "Grave of the Fireflies"

The Remnants - this was fun to write, I brought together various disparate things and stitched them together. It follows closely a lot of the things for generating and completing ideas that I posted in The Watering Hole in the NaPo announcement post.

What you say about you Dad, is true of me as well with my Dad. I wrote about it in the 2015 NaPo.

Selfie with Dad

Thanks, all

BrianIs AtYou

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

(Gedanken / Undenkbar)



(Preamble / Postscript)

(Mein Gedanke war, dass die Katze undenkbar war /
Mein Gedenke war, dass die Katze undankbar war.)
(My thought was that the cat was unthinkable /
My memory was that the cat was ungrateful.)

The New Utopia is not a singularity,
a world without affinities.
Worlds spawn in quantum quantity,
soon drowning in infinities.

Say for a fact that you were a cat,
said German-speaking Schrödinger—
though, in cat, you could not say it like that,
if you, in fact, a feline thing were.

Thus, when we (pretend / explain),
we (are / are not) a cat—
we (come / go) (quick / slow) to the (end / begin).
As we’re (dead / alive), (skinny / fat)—

a (human / feline) reificatification—
a (gedanken / undenkbar) experimentation.
Which (New Utopia / Old World of Sin)
have we (landed / not landed) in?

(Postscript / Preamble)

(Mein Gedanke war, dass die Katze undankbar war /
Mein Gedenke war, dass die Katze undenkbar war.)
(My thought was that the cat was ungrateful /
My memory was that the cat was unthinkable.)
 
---

Brian(Is/IsNot) AtYou

---
Image used with poem “(Gedanken / Undenkbar)” is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. See https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
Credit: The original uploader was Dc987 at English Wikipedia.
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/F...ingers_cat.png

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

VII. Just an Ordinary Saturday



I could believe on a Saturday
that the world was normal.
I sleep in late. No alarm,
since the iPhone alarm is set for weekdays only.
If I don't turn on the TV,
or check my Facebook feed,
then it's just a Saturday.
But I know it's not.
You know the drill.

Someone said the other day
that Uncle Ed's brother, Larry—
(the one who was in health class with Mom
in High School, seventy years ago—
they sat next to each other, and Mom says
that he used to try to copy her answers)—
You know the drill.

Someone said that Larry was gonna be featured on ABC news.
On the TV. You dig?
But I find that the cable is out,
and, anyway, someone posted later
that the feature did not run—
a politician’s blathering preempted it.
You know the drill.

Here's the story.
We had sat with Larry and his wife, Barbara,
at Aunt Mary Ann's wake, after the funeral.
Aunt Mary Ann—
that's Mom's little sister—Uncle Ed's wife—
had passed away last year.
So hard.
Uncle Ed's getting cancer treatments himself,
and he’s been in the hospital for days.
No visitors allowed.
COVID-19 protocol covers the whole hospital.
You know the drill.

Larry's wife, Barbara, same situation.
She had a stroke a while back,
and Larry had been visiting every day,
until COVID-19. Then, no visitors.
Larry, like Uncle Ed, is the nicest guy
you could know. He took to bringing
a stepladder beside Barbara's window
and climbing up so she could see.
He brought a big piece of cardboard and a marker,
and he would write love notes,
and then hold it up to the glass.
It became News.
You know the drill.

Time passes, but little changes.
It takes a while, sometimes,
to heal from a stroke, especially
without the feel of a living, loving hand—
Larry’s hand!—
on a loved one’s hand—
Barbara's hand!—
telling her it'll be alright.
This is a human-interest story to ABC.
You know the drill.

We were all human once,
and interested in humanity.
I remember seeing a human
two weeks ago, maybe—and a cat
roaming the street.
That's a feline-interest story.
Rumor is that Uncle Ed
might be released today.
Uncle Ed is definitely human.
No confirmation on his release.
You know the drill.

More rumors. President Trump has hinted
that he might declare a full quarantine
of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.
Some question
the necessity.
Some say
it's too late.
Some post
COVID cat videos.
You know the drill.

In the meantime, the cable is still out.
I get my news online and in messages
from friends, my Facebook feed,
and however else I can. More deaths
in Italy, but the United States is now
the leader in confirmed cases.
America First!
You know the drill.

Some states look ready to explode (or implode).
Illinois. Michigan. Louisiana.
Chicago's broad shoulders are bowed.
Detroit can't motor its way out of this.
New Orleans—never the same since Katrina.
Mardi Gras is not looking so great
in retrospect—throw me some beads!
You know the drill.

I don't remember my dreams.
I'm not speaking of the world of sleep.
I'm speaking of home and job
and what happens to Mom,
and my brothers and their wives and kids—
Uncle Ed, Larry, Barbara, Aunt Gene, cousins—
missing friends behind screens and speakers—
the folks who write poetry
or sing for me on "Facebook Live" and more.
You know the drill.
 
Danny and Kim read children's books,
and Danny sings.
Jim is "Home on the Range" in cyberspace.
Chip's new daughter is just a baby,
and he sings her Johnny Cash lullabies.
Lisa laments this life in haiku.
Ikiru.
Penelope says a prayer.
Amen.
Roman screams.
!!!!!!!
Gina cut her hair, but she sings to me—
three songs in three days.
I want to remember my dreams.
My dreams. I want to remember.
You know the drill.

---

BrianIs AtYou

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

The Beehive (Haiku)



BrianIs AtYou

---

I decided to play with Paint 3d

[Tony Hoffman]

Hi, Brian--
I've enjoyed reading both the Plague Diaries and the New Utopia (The Remnants, Sean Francisco, Gedanken) and assorted works. I'm also glad you put Need to Know in, because, truth be told, I found the end-of-paragraph repetitions of You know the drill maddening, and a bit distracting from the rest of the text. The phrase itself is a propos to our present situation; I see it as codifying our adaptation to the new reality (I remember using it once in a post-September 11 article I wrote in reference to the TSA procedure of having to remove one's laptop from carry-on luggage and have it scanned separately), but having it repeated at the end of each paragraph felt heavy-handed.
--Tony

[larryrap]

Hi Brian,

You stun me with sheer volume, and then I get hooked on your storytelling. You know the drill.

In defense of the refrain - concerns aside - I find it compelling, and what lifts the sequence from a sensitive topical journal to something much bigger. This became most obvious to me amidst the first dream sequence when everything ramps up and gets crazy, and yet this is all just more bits of the drill we supposedly share. There's humor there and something deeper which I'd be at pains to explain - like any effective sorcery, who cares that the science doesn't support it as long as it works.

Anyhow, your character which I will call gentle and sweet with a core of hard-won resilience - is as evident as ever, and as valuable as ever.

Larry

[Bench]

Brian, this has been an epic journey of many threads. I’m staggered how much work you’re getting down. Can’t wait to see how these unfold. Great stuff

[Mimic_Octopus]

Brian, your Annals of the New Utopia are awesome! I love the subtle sketching out of what's happened, the confusion and that crucial real connection between characters. The Remnants fell somewhere between horror, David Lynch and sci-fi, and the moving patch on the lawn could have been a malevolent force, an imagined thing, the dying mother's soul - I had so many questions but I didn't need them answering in the poem. I liked the uncertainty!

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

Tony Hoffman - thanks for the feedback. I'm doing something different, moving beyond "You know the drill" for a moment, and using something else more flexible. This wisdom of the day seems to recommend this. Your comments on 9/11 are well taken, and there will be some connections to that in an upcoming installment,
---
larryrap - glad you like the storytelling. I've been trying to hone that since around 2014 or so when I started writing some of the longer narrative poems. I'm glad you like the use of the refrain. I'm changing that up a bit, but still using something, as I feel it provide a unity to the tale.
---
Bench - thanks for the encouragement. I, too, "Can’t wait to see how these unfold."
---
Mimic_Octopus - thanks for the kind words on the "Annals of the New Utopia". I'm using them as an antidote to the more straightforward Plague Diaries, to let out certain creative energies that do not fit in the narrative form that I have adopted there. "The Remnants" seems to have been a hit with lots of folks. I had fun writing it.
---
More to come.

BrianIs AtYou

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

VIII. The New American Gothic



We are living the New American Gothic.
The old American Gothic built their homes
on the prairie, the Great Plains—homesteaders—
Manifest Destiny as their catchphrase and motto.
We are waiting for a new Manifest Destiny
that would let us walk across town, much less the continent.
The Indians were cleared from those Plains,
with smallpox-riddled blankets,
as the catchphrase, “Manifest Destiny”, still echoed,
drowning out the hooves of the bison
thundering on the prairie.
I need a new catchphrase—
I’m still living.

We are all spinsters and old men, now—
even the children—the teens, the preteens,
the toddlers, the infants—even the unborn—
afraid to come out into the world—
looking out windows at the invisible,
seeing only the wind that blows
the dying petals from the trees,
making way for the burgeoning buds.
Pink and white swiftly turn to brown, but
I’m still living.

Some wag tweets that COVID-19 is nothing,
wait until the Muslims reach critical mass.
A young Hijab-wearing Muslimah responds:
We are all Muslim now: covering our faces,
washing hands five times a day (or more),
praying as we do, facing our preferred Mecca
of TV News, Facebook, Twitter—you get to choose—
and the bars and casinos are empty.
Is the new catchphrase, God is great?
Or has he failed us? Ah…
But I’m still living.

Reflecting on her words, I recall my younger brother, Ken,
a white Muslim convert—but Mom would say
that he was still Catholic deep in his soul.
I’m reminded of a bit by Irish comic, Dara O’Briain,
taking it to the furthest extreme:
“I don’t believe in God. Right!—but still Catholic!”
The roots of the Church are strong and deep.
He goes on about “mixed Marriages”
of Catholic and Protestant—
people died in living memory over this—
and the mutant children that must result--
a mule child!
But here I am, the child of such a union—
I might be a mutant—but
I’m still living.

Olive Press Eatery offers platters with free delivery.
The meals are halal—Palestinian fare—
they know something of lockdowns
and hardship, remembering their lives
before they came to America.
They have a mixed-grill meat platter,
chicken and vegetable tagine and more.
Each platter comes with two pounds salad,
one pound of hummus, and bread.
That would be living!

A message arrives from Palestinian poet and friend,
Ahmad Almallah, whom I had heard read
in the olden times, before the Plague Days—
a month ago, or more, or maybe last century.
I had told him of Olive Press Eatery,
the name is a pun. “Press” refers to books
as a well as the olive oil in their food,
and they have a library, and books for sale,
and regular readings.
Their motto and catchphrase is “Eat. Meet. Read.”
I had spoken to Amir, to arrange for Ahmad
to read there before The Plague,
but now Ahmad messages his regrets
that he must wait until this all ends—
until the town crier stops calling
“Bring out your dead!”
But we’re still living.

I read about attacks on Asians,
and I am reminded of the atmosphere after 9/11.
Muslims were fearful then, and some hid themselves—
American Muslim Gothic in Masjids and hijabs.
Samina and Ken were planning their wedding,
to be held at the Mosque down U.S. Route 1—
the perfect place for an all-American Muslim wedding.
One must go on living.

Things were difficult, but there was more—
a gracious turn of fate had saved them.
Samina was supposed to be on United Flight 93,
she flew it regularly on business.
But with the wedding coming, and so many things to do,
she had asked to delay that trip,
and her boss agreed, with some hesitation.
Samina could not hide her tears
when she heard about the heroes—
“Let’s Roll!”—
that she would have perished with
near Indian Lake and Shanksville, PA.
She’s still living.

Some whisper that she must have known—
they all must have known. They knew.
Yet, Hindu and Sikhs, and even some Jews,
were targets of crackpots as well.
I tell myself I must be aware. It is happening again.
But like so many others, I am stuck inside—
I wish to use my body as a shield,
despite my vulnerability.
I debate online with strangers,
saying “coronavirus” and “COVID-19”,
against those who repeat “Wuhan flu”—
that’s where it came from—he’s just telling the truth.
A new level of Truthiness appears—
propaganda overshadows policy.
It will be the death of us.
But I’m still living.

---

BrianIs AtYou

PS

Dara O'Briain
https://youtu.be/FdolFXcNAH4

Ahmad Almallah
https://www2.wolfhumanities.upenn.ed...mad-almallah-0

Olive Press Eatery
https://www.facebook.com/olivepresseatery/

United Airlines Flight 93
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_93

[GreaterMandalaofUselessness]

Hi Brian,

Blimey Brian, you're 16 poems in? You'll be finished by next weekend and then you can take two weeks off

The secret language Given the current state of the world we'd all do well to nurture our inner sunflower. This also poem left me wondering if it's only sunflowers the bloom in Hokkaido that are called 'himawari'?

Naive -- The refrain works well here, I think, to communicate the commonality of experience. The reader does know the drill. The turn at the close introduces the new utopia, and suggests that we'll be looking back on all this from a better place. Which is hopeful, but possibly called into question by the title: maybe that hope is niaive? I like the ambiguity this gives the poem. I also like the implication that memories of current society are almost archaeological -- curated artefacts such as memes -- whilst still within living memory. Nicely done.

Remnants -- Not wholly sure what's going on here. I think these people are ghosts -- killed by the virus, leaking in from some elsewhere/afterlife. I wondered, since this is a parable, if the first signs being invisible was a metaphor a virus, an unseen menace. But the smartphone might also hint at people seen though the internet: the Skype/Zoom mode of communication in use during isolation.

Sean Francisco is possibly my favourite, in which you go full post-apocalyptic on us. Plague. The Final Earthquake. Survivors fleeing to an island. A new messiah (of whom this is his hagiography). And Sean Francisco, what a name. The old place names falling from memory. Well told.

I found Shelter-in-place quite affecting, all the specifics of the N's life, unique to him in their way, but with the "you know the drill" refrain again referencing a commonality experience. This much (unique yet common) is true of the other "you know the drill" poems, but this one, I think, was more affecting for relating the N caring for his mother.

Gedanken/Ungedankbar -- Yay, you got a cat poem into the New Utopia!

Good to read you again Brian. Great thread.

Matt

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

Matt

I don't look at it as 16 poems in, since I see the two as separate (if at times interacting) threads.

"Himawari" is the Japanese word for sunflower, so it does not apply just to Hokkaido. This question was a concern of mine, but I did not see an easy way to finesse it without some clumsy qualification.

One possible solution would be something like the following (I'm debating whether "called" can be removed.)

Sunflowers bloom
in Hokkaido.
They are [called] “himawari”
in Japanese.

This make the two statements logically independent facts about sunflowers, whereas the original (below) might make it seem that the term applied only to sunflowers in Hokkaido.

Sunflowers that bloom
in Hokkaido
are called “himawari”
in Japanese.

an even short option is the following:

Sunflowers bloom
in Hokkaido—
“himawari”
in Japanese.

Then the whole stanza is a 4-syllable per line syllabic, which has a nice feel to it, and is close to (if not at) maximum compression.

When I first started the idea of the Plague Diaries, I was unsure of the direction. The first piece set the tone which I have continued to follow with minor variations, though becoming, perhaps, a bit more sophisticated and personal, with less humor at the expense of public figures. I think there will be some of that in the future, but I have so many notes related to personal experience that there will definitely be a balance between the two approaches.

Interesting look at Remnants, There have been various interpretations from readers, but the reception has been mostly positive

Glad you like Sean Francisco. I left a lot unsaid. I imagine one could write a short story about such a character.

Gedanken - I think I reread something about the Schrodinger's cat experiment which put me on this path. I enjoyed writing it. I am using the New Utopia pieces to stretch a little
into different approaches.

I was curious if you had read the Rattle challenge piece (Warhol)?

BrianIs AtYou