Four Men around a Card Table, Columbus & 97th, and: The Liberal Arts

Abstract

Four Men around a Card Table, Columbus & 97th, and: The Liberal Arts Alicia Ostriker (bio) Four Men around a Card Table, Columbus & 97th Clacking dominoesstrike the table, the four mencelebrate manhood Long-legged red-headed girl toting cellosniffs and avoids them Priest waiting to crosschecking his wristwatch maybelate for a meeting Hunky guy pushingtiny pink child in strollerresignedly sighs You, wherever onthe planet your mothers packeddresses and trusted … You are here becausethis land shot a hole in timewe all breeze through it like blown newspaperso many unread storiesfeaturing mangoes, [End Page 69] kimchi and okra,pickles, potatoes, photosof murdered brothers … The Liberal Arts In mathematics they say the most beautiful solution is the correct oneIn physics they say everything that can happen must happenIn history they say the more it changes the more it is the same In astrophysics you take the long viewIn chemistry you explode and blend, it is a bit like freestyle cooking, the Yiddish term would be: you potschkeIn biology you smell the flowers, the enticing flowers, and you play with mice, and you write grant proposals In jurisprudence they say there is no justiceIn philosophy they say there is no truthIn literary studies they say everybody come along be ironic now Business school we systematize the competitive strategies we learned in the sandboxEngineering moves us firmly into manhood, we grip the material world in our fistsComputer science assists us toward the goal of replacing our species with anew, improved, more efficient form of life, based in electronics instead of carbon—many of us are rushing to transform ourselves as quickly as possible Religion is still hotPeople keep plunging passionately into and out of it at the usual brisk rateGeography suggests the future dominance of North America by Spanish- speaking people but it does not say when; geology looks stony, takes the long view [End Page 70] Music bridges mathematics, the soul of the universe, and my personal soulVisual art is the bridge between my bag of body and bones and stuff in the painterly universeDrama crosses this bridge on foot In the novel they say omit nothing, harvest the entire goddamn worldIn memoir they say the self is silently weeping, give it a tissueIn poetry they say the arrow may be blown off course by storm and returned by miracle [End Page 71] Alicia Ostriker Alicia Ostriker is a poet and a critic, twice a finalist for the National Book Award, and currently a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Her most recent volume of poems is The Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog. Copyright © 2015 University of Nebraska Press