“It is my heart-warmed and world-embracing Christmas hope and aspiration that all of us, the high, the low, the rich, the poor, the admired, the despised, the loved, the hated, the civilized, the savage (every man and brother of us all throughout the whole earth), may eventually be gathered together in a heaven of everlasting rest and peace and bliss, except the inventor of the telephone.”
– Mark Twain, Christmas greeting, 1890
I am a Victim of Telephone
Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
When I lay down to sleep dream the Wishing Well
it rings
“Have you a new play for the brokendown theater?”
When I write in my notebook poem it rings
“Buster Keaton is under the brooklyn bridge on
Frankfurt and Pearl . . .”
When I unsheathe my skin extend my cock toward
someone’s thighs fat or thin, boy or girl
Tingaling — “Please get him out of jail . . . the police are
crashing down”
When I lift the soupspoon to my lips, the phone on the
floor begins purring
“Hello it’s me — I’m in the park two broads from Iowa . . .
nowhere to sleep last night . . . hit ’em in the mouth”
When I muse at smoke crawling over the roof outside
my street wisdom
purifying Eternity with my eye observation of grey
vaporous columns in the sky
ring ring “Hello this is Esquire be a dear and finish
your political commitment manifesto”
When I listen to radio presidents roaring on the
convention floor
the phone also chimes in “rush up to Harlem with us
and see the riots”
Always the telephone linked to all the hearts of the
world beating at once
crying my husband’s gone my boyfriend’s busted
forever my poetry was rejected
won’t you come over for money and please won’t you
write me a piece of bullshit
How are you dear can you come out to Easthampton we’re
all here bathing in the ocean we’re all so lonely
and I lay back on my pallet contemplating $50 phone
bill, broke, drowsy, anxious, my heart fearful of
the fingers dialing, the deaths, the singing of
telephone bells
ringing at dawn ringing all afternoon ringing up
midnight ringing now forever.
it rings
“Have you a new play for the brokendown theater?”
When I write in my notebook poem it rings
“Buster Keaton is under the brooklyn bridge on
Frankfurt and Pearl . . .”
When I unsheathe my skin extend my cock toward
someone’s thighs fat or thin, boy or girl
Tingaling — “Please get him out of jail . . . the police are
crashing down”
When I lift the soupspoon to my lips, the phone on the
floor begins purring
“Hello it’s me — I’m in the park two broads from Iowa . . .
nowhere to sleep last night . . . hit ’em in the mouth”
When I muse at smoke crawling over the roof outside
my street wisdom
purifying Eternity with my eye observation of grey
vaporous columns in the sky
ring ring “Hello this is Esquire be a dear and finish
your political commitment manifesto”
When I listen to radio presidents roaring on the
convention floor
the phone also chimes in “rush up to Harlem with us
and see the riots”
Always the telephone linked to all the hearts of the
world beating at once
crying my husband’s gone my boyfriend’s busted
forever my poetry was rejected
won’t you come over for money and please won’t you
write me a piece of bullshit
How are you dear can you come out to Easthampton we’re
all here bathing in the ocean we’re all so lonely
and I lay back on my pallet contemplating $50 phone
bill, broke, drowsy, anxious, my heart fearful of
the fingers dialing, the deaths, the singing of
telephone bells
ringing at dawn ringing all afternoon ringing up
midnight ringing now forever.
Top Five Telephone Songs:
1. “Telephone Line” by ELO
2. “Don’t Keep Me Hangin’ on the Telephone” by Blondie
3. “Jenny (867-5309)” by Tommy Tutone
4. “Telephone to Glory” by Blind Roosevelt Graves
5. “Telephone Boogie” by Johnny “Guitar” Watson
2. “Don’t Keep Me Hangin’ on the Telephone” by Blondie
3. “Jenny (867-5309)” by Tommy Tutone
4. “Telephone to Glory” by Blind Roosevelt Graves
5. “Telephone Boogie” by Johnny “Guitar” Watson
Runner up: “Trouble on the Line” by Kenn Kweder
Watch the TV episode of this E-Verse:
E-Verse Radio Unbelievable But Real Telephone Films Titles of the Week:
Don’t Answer the Phone! (1980)
Burn Your Phone (1996)
Phone a Clone (2005)
The Phone Ranger (2005)
Romancing the Phone (2005)
Sax-O-Phone (1966)
Learn to Phone Phony (2006)
A reader writes in on films about habits:
“Don’t forget what is perhaps my favorite industrial film ever: Habit Patterns (1954).”
Top Five Phones in Poetry:
1. Sylvia Plath, “Daddy” — “The black telephone’s off at the root, / The voices just can’t worm through.”
2. Allen Ginsberg, “Howl” — “The last telephone slammed at the wall in reply”
3. David Yezzi, “The Call” — “The call comes and you’re out. When you retrieve / the message and return the call, you learn / that someone you knew distantly has died”
4. Robert Frost, “The Telephone” — “You spoke from that flower on the window sill”
5. Franz Wright, “Nocturne” — “I arrive / with my voice / of the telephone ringing / in an empty phone booth / on Main Street, after midnight / in the rain.”
2. Allen Ginsberg, “Howl” — “The last telephone slammed at the wall in reply”
3. David Yezzi, “The Call” — “The call comes and you’re out. When you retrieve / the message and return the call, you learn / that someone you knew distantly has died”
4. Robert Frost, “The Telephone” — “You spoke from that flower on the window sill”
5. Franz Wright, “Nocturne” — “I arrive / with my voice / of the telephone ringing / in an empty phone booth / on Main Street, after midnight / in the rain.”
E-Verse Radio Invaluable Telephone Facts of the Week:
The invention of the word “hello” is credited to Thomas Edison, who created it specifically as a way to greet someone when answering the telephone; according to one source, it was due to his surprise with a misheard Hullo. Alexander Graham Bell initially used Ahoy (as used on ships) as a telephone greeting.
By 1889 central telephone exchange operators were known as “hello-girls” due to the association between the greeting and the telephone.
Touch-tone telephone keypads were originally planned to have buttons for Police and Fire Departments, but they were replaced with “and” when the project was cancelled in favor of developing the 911 system.
Cordless telephones, invented by Teri Pall in 1965, consist of a base unit that connects to the land-line system and also communicates with remote handsets by low power radio.
There is approximately 17 million feet of telephone wire servicing the Empire State Building.
Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, never phoned his wife or his mother. They were both deaf.
More than 50% of the people in the world have never made or received a telephone call.
When French telephone companies introduced itemized billing, it revealed so much marital infidelity that male customers won a legal appeal to replace the last four numbers on a bill with asterisks.
The first car-phone was invented by Mr. Ericsson, who put a big metal pole on top of his car, so he could make calls by driving into telephone wires.
Wireless telephones are two-way radios. When you talk into a wireless telephone, it picks up your voice and converts the sound to radiofrequency energy (or radio waves). The radio waves travel through the air until they reach a receiver at a nearby base station. The base station then sends your call through the telephone network until it reaches the person you are calling.
When you receive a call on your wireless telephone, the message travels through the telephone network until it reaches a base station close to your wireless phone. Then the base station sends out radio waves that are detected by a receiver in your telephone, where the signals are changed back into the sound of a voice.
For more, read: Constant Touch: A Brief History of the Mobile Phone by Jon Agar
“Middle age: When you’re sitting at home on Saturday night and the telephone rings and you hope it isn’t for you.” – Ogden Nash
A reader writes in on a V of migratory birds:
“Reminds me of a really beautiful song by Adam Guettel (from Myths and Hymns) called ‘Migratory V,’ which a lot of people initially think is really called ‘Migratory Five.’ Worth a listen.”
Listen to the radio version of this E-Verse:
A reader writes in:
Thought your readers might get a kick out of this ‘the machine is us’ piece on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE
A reader adds to last week’s list of germophobes:
“He may not make the top five list, but Matt Lauer of the Today Show is a notorious germophobe as well.”
A reader writes in with a question:
“Could you help me out, culturally? Remember we spoke about artists that had royal or aristocratic patrons (e.g. Virgil). It struck me that this might have a significant affect on tone and transduction of the human condition and thought of it as a Top Five — to contrast with anti-establishment writers. This issue has probably been discussed at length in the past, but the rhythm of its “knock on the closed door to the Dark Heart of Being” is a relatively new one to me. Could you help by completing a suitable list? Aristocratic patronage: Shakespeare, Virgil, Cervantes. Subversive: Dostoyevsky, Voltaire, Neruda.”
A reader sends a site with every telephone song ever:
Fleming’s Follies:
Steve Jobs MadTV iPhone
Conan iPhone
Professor Smashing Phone in Class
iPhone competitor
An E-Verser invites you to a rough-cut secreening party:
“On Tuesday, February 27, we will be having a rough-cut screening party in New York to raise finishing funds for the film HORRIBLE CHILD, written & directed by Lawrence Krauser, starring Mike Daisey, T. Ryder Smith, and Paul Willis. As the film is approximately 83 percent in verse, if nothing else we can guarantee the perfect chaser to Oscar Sunday. Our website is Under Construction, but the theme song, “Weapons Galore,” is audible at www.myspace.com/horriblechild (TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 27 @ The Bijou Theatre, 82 East 4th Street, Manhattan, between Second & Third Avenues. Doors open 6:30 pm / Screening starts 7:15 pm / Admission $15, includes wine/beer.)”
The Longest and Shortest Wars:
Have a look at my review of the Scott Donaldson biography of E.A. Robinson, in today’s New York Sun:
E-Verse Correction for the Presidential Episode:
“The two Presidents who signed the Declaration of Independence were Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. George Washington was not a member of the Continental Congress in July 1776, he was the Commander in Chief, on campaign with his forces in New York.”
A reader on Gerald Ford’s campaign slogan, “He’s Making Us Proud Again”:
“The presidential slogans were very interesting… GW’s standing out as particularly ironic… But it gives me a chance to possibly put to rest a slogan for Gerald Ford which I have never corroborated. I was living in Nigeria in 1976, and somehow, through some means or other, we heard the slogan for Ford’s campaign was, or included among others, the following mind-twister: If We Had Known Him Better We Couldn’t Have Expected Less. I have never seen this in print, and no one I ask remembers it. Was it some inebriation of the Nigerian night sky, sitting as we did around our little campfire in the compound, swapping stories and mind teasers? I wonder if anyone remembers this one? If not I may have to chalk it up to an excess of palm oil in our food… or a side-effect of our malaria medicine… As it is, if you repeat it (as we did, over and over), your mind kind of loses.”
A reader on “bread and butter” from the superstitions episode:
“The superstitious mother didn’t make up ‘bread and butter’ though as a kid I said what must be a more recent version, ‘peanut butter and jelly’ whenever something (mailbox, light pole, another person) came between myself and the person I was walking with.”
Check out the band Spokane:
A reader sends in “Top Five More Unpleasant Habits Of Ineffective Co-Workers”:
1. Calling in “sick” several days in a row when you are nothing of the sort
2. Making extended (and loud) personal phone calls from the public service area
3. “Assisting” your co-workers by correcting them in front of customers
4. Picking fights with all and sundry over imagined slights
5. Being consistently late to relieve co-workers at a public service point
2. Making extended (and loud) personal phone calls from the public service area
3. “Assisting” your co-workers by correcting them in front of customers
4. Picking fights with all and sundry over imagined slights
5. Being consistently late to relieve co-workers at a public service point
A reader sends in a quote that helps him deal with his coworkers:
“Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. Stupidity often saves a man from going mad.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes
E-Verse Radio Bad Book Cover of the Week, Good Old Days by Rita Kerr:
A novelist writes in from Brooklyn:
“Until I got to the bottom of your Bad Habits episode and saw the line about you scratching your crotch, I was going to thank you only for that gorgeous poem of yours about being sick. I was quite ill with the flu recently and your poem helped me to feel more deeply what I could not say about that kind of attention to the body for a protracted period of time. I was also going to say something about how you made me think of Yeats. My partner, Suzanne, and I have been reading his poems aloud to each other. More than anything these days, I am in awe of his diction. I cannot believe that not that long ago there were men and women who loved the language that much and could wrestle with it as he did, and as you do, too. I have a recording of Yeats reading and when we sit down to read him, we listen to that first. An eerie sound, his voice booming around our apartment with that constant beat and the words flying out of his mouth. Makes me think of a mouth full of watermelon seeds being released all at once. Anyway, as you must know, closing with the image of your bad habit was a reminder of the here and now. Thanks again for the poems, and wash your hands.”
A reader with more novels about the sudden loss or acquisition of funds:
“For books about needing money: obvious, but pretty much everything by Dickens. Also, the Shopaholic series by Sophie Kinsella (I am ashamed to admit I loved them). The Good Earth. Money, by Martin Amis. Native Son. Sense and Sensibility (and most books by Jane Austen). Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Tom Sawyer. A Room of One’s Own (not a novel, but still). Breakfast at Tiffany’s? Anything by Henry James — Washington Square, especially. Vanity Fair.”
The Telephone Exchange Building in lower Manhattan:
“I’d rather sit down and write a letter than call someone up. I hate the telephone.” – Henry Miller
A reader sends in Nine Presidents Who Had Hooks for Hands:
Jefferson (who designed his own hook)
Van Buren (known as “Old Kinderhook”)
Garfield (when President Garfield was shot, Alexander Graham Bell attempted to locate the bullet with a crude metal detector of his own invention; instead, he discovered “a curved, metallic sharpness in the vicinity of the wrist’s end.” Historians agree: hook)
T. Roosevelt (first draft: “speak softly and pierce their eyes with a golden hook”)
F. Roosevelt (note: his hook was actually a wheelchair)
Nixon (many believe that the sight of his horrific hook lost him the first televised debate with Kennedy, who was hookless)
Bush I and II (however, Bush II replaced his hook with a chain saw in an effort to seem less privileged)
Edward “Thach” Teach, a.k.a. Blackbeard (although technically, President Blackbeard was only president of the pirates)
In response to top five mysteries popular in the 1970s, a reader sends in “top six mysteries popular in the ’80s”:
1. Bigfoot
2. Bermuda Triangle
3. Amelia Earhart
4. Loch Ness Monster
5. UFOs
6. Leonard Nimoy’s Career
2. Bermuda Triangle
3. Amelia Earhart
4. Loch Ness Monster
5. UFOs
6. Leonard Nimoy’s Career
[Note, Nimoy narrated the television show In Search Of . . . – E]
E-Verse Radio town you really have to visit:
Telephone, TX
A reader on last week’s Whitman poem:
WHITMAN THE THESAURUS
If you don’t trust one word to carry your meaning, try fourteen. From “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed”:
In the swamp, in secluded recesses,
A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.
Solitary, the thrush,
The hermit, withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,
Sings by himself a song.
Song of the bleeding throat!
Death’s outlet song of life-(for well, dear brother, I know
If thou wast not gifted to sing, thou would’st surely die.)
A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.
Solitary, the thrush,
The hermit, withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,
Sings by himself a song.
Song of the bleeding throat!
Death’s outlet song of life-(for well, dear brother, I know
If thou wast not gifted to sing, thou would’st surely die.)
General concept: deliberate isolation
noun
recesses, hermit
adjective
solitary, secluded, shy, hidden
phrase
withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements, by himself
Check out Jennifer Makowsky’s newest PopMatters books-into-movies column on the Celestine Prophecy:
Readers on last week’s top five presidential movies:
“What, no Dave?”
Another:
“No AMERICATHON?”
Another:
“JFK? Come on. That movie drives me nuts. It’s not just an awful movie, it’s completely filled with hot air.”
Bonus top five lists:
Top Five Dorothy Parker Quotes:
1. “If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.”
2. “This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”
3. “She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.”
4. “Look at him, a rhinestone in the rough.”
5. “Heterosexuality is not normal, it’s just common.”
Bonus:
“It’s not the tragedies that kill us, it’s the messes.”
“You can’t teach an old dogma new tricks.”
“Misfortune, and recited misfortune especially, may be prolonged to that point where it ceases to excite pity and arouses only irritation.”
“You can’t teach an old dogma new tricks.”
“Misfortune, and recited misfortune especially, may be prolonged to that point where it ceases to excite pity and arouses only irritation.”
A reader sends in “top five weird shops/shopkeepers and their creators”:
1. Olivanders Wands, by J.K. Rowling
2. Shottle Bop by Theodore Sturgeon
3. Bazaar of the Bizarre by Fritz Leiber
4. Psycho Shop by Alfred Bester & Roger Zelazny
5. Musical instrument shop in Terry Pratchett’s Soul Music
2. Shottle Bop by Theodore Sturgeon
3. Bazaar of the Bizarre by Fritz Leiber
4. Psycho Shop by Alfred Bester & Roger Zelazny
5. Musical instrument shop in Terry Pratchett’s Soul Music
Honorable mention: Robert Chamber’s Repairer of Reputations, the living mall in another of Pratchett’s books with the sentient shopping carts.
[No Little Shop of Horrors, directed by Roger Corman, written by Charles Griffith? – E]
Some one invented the telephone,
And interrupted a nation’s slumbers,
Ringing wrong but similar numbers.
And interrupted a nation’s slumbers,
Ringing wrong but similar numbers.
– Ogden Nash
A reader sends in “top five novels based on other novels in the public domain, that are good in their own right”:
1. Ulysses by James Joyce (The Odyssey by Homer)
2. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte )
3. WAS Geoff Ryman (Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum)
4. Finn by Jon Clinch (Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain)
5. Ahab’s Wife: Or, The Star-gazer by Sena Jeter Naslund (Moby Dick by Herman Melville)
2. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte )
3. WAS Geoff Ryman (Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum)
4. Finn by Jon Clinch (Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain)
5. Ahab’s Wife: Or, The Star-gazer by Sena Jeter Naslund (Moby Dick by Herman Melville)
E-Verse Radio collective noun of the week:
A bank of phones.
Next week’s episode: Wonders of the ancient world. Send in whatever you like.
E-Verse Radio is hangin’ on the line. It is a regular weekly column of literary, publishing, and arts information and opinion that has gone out since 1999. It is brought to you by ERNEST HILBERT and currently enjoys over 1,300 readers. If you wish to submit lists or other comments, please use the same capitalization, punctuation, and grammar you would for anything else intended for publication. Please send top five lists, bad movie titles, limericks, facts, comments, and new readers along whenever you like; simply click reply and I’ll get back to you.
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2 Comments
Oh I think we can do better than that on Top 5 telephone songs…
1. Chantilly Lace by the Big Bopper
2. Memphis Tennessee by Chuck Berry
3. Stephanie Says (and its various variations) by the Velvet Underground
4. Pennsylvania 6-5000 by Glenn Miller
5. O Superman by Laurie Anderson
(honorary mention El Disco Anal, Los Amigos Invisibles)
Because it’s so hard to walk away from an unfinished list.
More classic telephone songs:
1. “Memphis” – Chuck Berry ’59
2. “Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You” – Sugarloaf ’75
3. “Syliva’s Mother” – Dr. Hook ’75
4. “You’ve Got My Number (Why Don’t You Use It?)” – the Undertones ’79
5. “Call Me” – Blondie ’80
6. “Call Me Up” – Gang of Four ’82
7. “Calling You” – Jevetta Steele ’87
8. “Ring Ring Ring (Ha Ha Hey)” – De La Soul ’91
9. “Beep Me 911” – Missy Elliott ’97