Poetry Periodically #22

Monday's column featured formal pieces, a villanelle by Sylvia Plath and a terzanelle by your humble correspondent.  This time I've got some not-so-formal poems by David Wagoner, another modern American master that I was unaware of until recently.

I'll go ahead and start with one that should be posted above the door of any creative writing class.






THIS IS A WONDERFUL POEM

Come at it carefully, don't trust it, that isn't its right name,
It's wearing stolen rags, it's never been washed, its breath
Would look moss-green if it were really breathing,
It won't get out of the way, it stares at you
Out of eyes burnt gray as the sidewalk,
Its skin is overcast with colorless dirt,
It has no distinguishing marks, no I.D. cards,
It wants something of yours but hasn't decided
Whether to ask for it or just take it,
There are no policemen, no friendly neighbors,
No peacekeeping busybodies to yell for, only this
Thing standing between you and the place you were headed,
You have about thirty seconds to get past it, around it,
Or simply to back away and try to forget it,
It won't take no for an answer: try hitting it first
And you'll learn what's trembling in its torn pocket.
Now, what do you want to do about it?

- David Wagoner







Like James Wright, Wagoner's work has a certain emotional weight, a sense of melancholy nostalgia, that is always present even in the lightest of poems.  It's the same undercurrent of dark wistfulness that I've always loved and searched for in my own work, and that I see in the work that I most admire.

There are so many of Wagoner's poems that I would like to feature, but I'll give just this one more, and encourage you to seek him out, as his work is not widely anthologized and deserves better attention from the academic community.

I first noticed him in a weathered anthology from the '60s called "The Contemporary American Poets," which covered work from 1940-1968 or so, a very short window, but there is some amazing work in it, including Wagoner's "The Shooting of John Dillinger Outside the Biograph Theater, July 22, 1934," which is a masterpiece.  The book's editor was Mark Strand, who will probably appear in this column before long himself.  This poem is not from that anthology, but it makes me very happy.







THE JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL BAND CONCERT

When our semi-conductor
Raised his baton, we sat there
Gaping at Marche Militaire,
Our mouth-opening number.
It seemed faintly familiar
(We'd rehearsed it all that winter),
But we attacked in such a blur,
No army anywhere
On its stomach or all fours
Could have squeezed through our crossfire.

I played cornet, seventh chair,
Out of seven, my embouchure
A glorified Bronx cheer
Through that three-keyed keyhole stopper
And neighborhood window-slammer
Where mildew fought for air
At every exhausted corner,
My fingering still unsure
After scaling it for a year
Except on the spit-valve lever.

Each straight-faced mother and father
Retested his moral fiber
Against our traps and slurs
And the inadvertent whickers
Paradiddled by our snares,
And when the brass bulled forth
A blare fit to horn over
Jericho two bars sooner
Than Joshua's harsh measures,
They still had the nerve to stare.

By the last lost chord, our director
Looked older and soberer.
No doubt, in his mind's ear
Some band somewhere
In some music of some Sphere
Was striking a note as pure
As the wishes of Franz Schubert,
But meanwhile here we were:
A lesson in everything minor,
Decomposing our first composer.

- David Wagoner








Legal notice:
Some may feel that the inclusion of works not in the public domain is a violation of the fair-use doctrine of US copyright law. I obviously do not agree, but I will gladly defer to the wishes of the rightsholder, and if anyone wishes for a post of their work or work for which they own the intellectual rights to be taken down, they may ask for its removal and it will be so. I claim no ownership and have no rights as to the works I will be posting, save for any that were written by me.

Poetry Periodically #21

Two weeks rest and a basic rethinking later, here's a new start when a new start is needed.

The A Poem A Day column was a bit much to maintain every single day, so the new plan is to publish a few a week, probably three or four, more if I'm so inclined and have the time and less if I'm not and don't.  No schedule, just every couple days or so.

Today we're returning to form by exploring form, specifically the villanelle and its variations.  I personally find poetic form to be a liberating and fascinating challenge, a way of parsing my lines and images to their leanest and sharpest, by giving them a shape in which only the strongest parts fit.  It's always a step in my revision process, seeing if the poem can be given more energy and depth by reshaping it.  Some poets find formal writing unbearable, and feel it's an unnecessary construct that prevents their work from taking the shape it desires for itself.  The debate rages on.

The villanelle is a diabolical little form of French origin, consisting of 19 lines and two rhymes, with a very strict pattern of repetition, to wit:

A1  (refrain)
b
A2 (refrain)

a
b
A1 (refrain)

a
b
A2 (refrain)

a
b
A1 (refrain)

a
b
A2 (refrain)

a
b
A1
A2 (refrain)

The 'a' and 'b' represent end rhymes, each 'a' or 'A' line ending with the 'a' rhyme and each 'b' line ending with the 'b' rhyme.  The 'A1' and 'A2' refrains are lines that are entirely repeated.

So, as you can see, with the repeating lines and the claustrophobic rhyme scheme, there isn't a lot of wiggle room in this form, and it's always listed as one of the most difficult to tackle (only the pantoum is harder, in my opinion).  Nevertheless, it's a form that has been the catalyst for some of the greatest poems of the last hundred years, including Roethke's "The Waking," Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," and Bishop's "One Art."

What I've got is a lesser known example, but one I find just as powerful, and in which the oppression of the two-pronged rhyme scheme is deflected by some excellent slant.




MAD GIRL'S LOVE SONG

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary darkness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said.
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

- Sylvia Plath





And if the villanelle isn't enough, there's a popular hybrid form called a terzanelle, which requires a double explanation.  The 19 line form and structure of the villanelle is intact, but the rhyme scheme and repetitions are taken from another old French form called terza rima.

Terza rima features an interlocking stanza scheme, where the middle line of one stanza is the last line of the next one, and each stanza introduces a new rhyme in the middle line, like this:

A 1
B 2
A 3

B 4
C 5
B 2

C 6
D 7
C 5

When this is applied to the villanelle form, it allows for more than two rhymes, but still maintains a pattern of line repetition, and the last stanza also features the first and third lines of the first stanza in a refrain, just like the villanelle.

I recently (as in, a couple of weeks ago) applied myself to the terzanelle form, and after several revisions over many days achieved the following.  The terzanelle allows for a very lush and dense poem with its additional rhymes and interlocking repetitions, and I gave myself the extra constraint of a generalized rhythm scheme of tetrameter.  Here's the unabashedly sentimental result:




BALLAD TIME

The ballad time has just begun;
The bass exhaling in our hair,
The steady breathing of the drum.

The solid darkness of the air
Inhales the words as they are sung,
The bass exhaling in our hair.

The world fills with a molten hum;
The floor under the dancers' feet
Exhales the words as they are sung.

There's a moment when our fingers meet,
Hearts fluid, lifted off the ground,
No floor under the dancers' feet.

The waxen room is coming down,
The seconds dripping down the walls,
Liquid souls pooling on the ground.

The air shimmers, quickening, and falls.
The ballad time has now begun;
The seconds dripping down the walls,
The steady breathing of the drum.

- John Phillips










Legal notice:
Some may feel that the inclusion of works not in the public domain is a violation of the fair-use doctrine of US copyright law. I obviously do not agree, but I will gladly defer to the wishes of the rightsholder, and if anyone wishes for a post of their work or work for which they own the intellectual rights to be taken down, they may ask for its removal and it will be so. I claim no ownership and have no rights as to the works I will be posting, save for any that were written by me.

A Poem A Day #20

Quite a long poem today, but one of my favorites and quite worth the while.  I'll get right to it without comment.


SOUSA

Great brass bell of austerity
and the ghosts of old picnickers
ambling under the box-elder when the sobriety
was the drunkenness.  John,

you child, you drumhead, there is no silence
you can't decapitate
and on forgotten places (the octagonal
stand, Windsor, Illinois, the only May Day
of my mind) the fresh breeze
and the summer dresses of girls once blew
but do not now.  They blow instead at the backs
of our ears John,
under the pinon,
that foreign plant with arrogant southern smell.
I yearn for the box-elder and its beautiful
bug, the red striped and black-plated--
your specific insect, in the Sunday after noon.

Oh restore my northern madness
which no one values anymore and shun,
its uses, give them back their darkened instinct
(which I value no more) we are
dedicated to madness that's why I love you
Sousa, you semper fidelis maniac.

And the sweep
of your american arms
bring a single banging street in Nebraska
home, and your shock
when a trillion broads smile at you
their shocking laughter can be heard long after
the picnickers have gone home.

March us home through the spring rain
the belief, the relief
of occasion.

Your soft high flute and brass
remind me of a lost celebration I can't
quite remember,
in which I volunteered as conquerer:
the silence now stretches me
into sadness.

Come back into the street bells
and tin soldiers.
     *     *
But there are no drums
no drums, loudness,
no poinsette shirts,
there is no warning, you won't recognize anyone.

Children and men in every way
milling, gathering daily, (those vacant eyes)
the bread lines of the deprived are here
Los Alamos, 1960, not Salinas
not Stockton.

Thus when mouths are opened,
waves of poison rain will fall, butterflies
do not fly up from any mouth in that area.
     *     *
Let me go away,
shouting alone, laughing
to the air, Sousa be here
when the leaves wear
a blank radio green, for honoring without trim
or place.

   To dwell again in the hinterland
and take your phone,
play to the lovely eyed people in the field
on the hillside.

Hopeful, and kind
merrily, and possible
(as my friend said, "Why can't it be
like this all the time?"
her arms spread out before her.)
     *     *

John Sousa you can't now
amuse a nation with colored drums
even with cymbals, their ears
have lifted the chalice of explosion
a glass of straight malice, and
we wander in Random in the alleys
of their longfaced towns taking
from their sickly mandibles handbills
summoning our joint spirits.

I sing Sousa.

The desire to disintegrate the Earth
is eccentric,
And away from centre
nothing more nor sizeable
nor science
nor ennobling
no purity, no endeavor
toward human grace.
     *     *
We were
on a prominence through
so lovely to the eye eyes
of birds only caught
all the differences
of each house filled hill.

And from the window a spire
of poplar, windows
and brown pater earth buildings.

My eye on the circling bird
my mind lost in the rainy hemlocks of Washington
the body displaced, let it
wander all the way to Random and dwell
in those damp groves
where stand the friends
I love and left: behind me
slumbering under the dark morning sky

are my few friends.

Oh, please
cut wood to warm them
and stalk never appearing animals
to warm them,
I hope they are warm tonight --
bring salmonberries
even pumpkinseed.

Sousa, it can never be
as my friend said
"Why can't it be like this all the time?"
Her arms spread out before her
gauging the alarm,
(with that entablature)
and the triumph of a march
in which no one
is injured.

- Edward Dorn



Legal notice:
Some may feel that the inclusion of works not in the public domain is a violation of the fair-use doctrine of US copyright law. I obviously do not agree, but I will gladly defer to the wishes of the rightsholder, and if anyone wishes for a post of their work or work for which they own the intellectual rights to be taken down, they may ask for its removal and it will be so. I claim no ownership and have no rights as to the works I will be posting, save for any that were written by me.

A Poem A Day #19

Today's poem is by Edward Field, whose poems are his biography.

Field tells stories of his life in his work, and shies away from "poetic" language and figurative devices, and he doesn't shy away from reality.  His poems are plainspoken, direct and honest. 

Here's one that's in a lighter vein than some of his confessional work, and shows off the sly and self-deprecating nature of many of his poems about himself.




UNWANTED

The poster with my picture on it
Is hanging on the bulletin board in the Post Office.

I stand by it hoping to be recognized
Posing first full face and then profile

But everybody passes by and I have to admit
The photograph was taken some years ago.

I was unwanted then and I'm unwanted now
Ah guess ah'll go up echo mountain and crah.

I wish someone would find my fingerprints somewhere
Maybe on a corpse and say, You're it.

Description: Male, or reasonably so
White, but not lily-white and usually deep-red

Thirty-fivish, and looks it lately
Five-feet-nine and one-hundred-thirty pounds: no physique

Black hair going gray, hairline receding fast
What used to be curly, now fuzzy

Brown eyes starey under beetling brow
Mole on chin, probably will become a wen

It is perfectly obvious that he was not popular at school
No good at baseball, and wet his bed.

His aliases tell his history: Dumbell, Good-for-nothing,
Jewboy, Fieldinsky, Skinny, Fierce Face, Greaseball, Sissy.

Warning: This man is not dangerous, answers to any name
Responds to love, don't call him or he will come.

- Edward Field








Legal notice:
Some may feel that the inclusion of works not in the public domain is a violation of the fair-use doctrine of US copyright law. I obviously do not agree, but I will gladly defer to the wishes of the rightsholder, and if anyone wishes for a post of their work or work for which they own the intellectual rights to be taken down, they may ask for its removal and it will be so. I claim no ownership and have no rights as to the works I will be posting, save for any that were written by me.

A Poem A Day #18

I don't have much to say about this poem by Louise Glück, except that it's really nice to read, earthy and full of great atmosphere and great sounds.

Glück is one of her generation's (my parent's generation) most honored poets, a Bollingen Prize winner, Pulitzer Prize winner, Academy of American Poets Award, US Poet Laureate and any number of other things in the last twenty years.  But this poem goes back farther than all that, 1967, before the awards, before the adulation of the academic world.  It's smart, unpretentious and deep, and its music is quiet but hard, hiding a little bit of truth, maybe even something profound.




COTTONMOUTH COUNTRY

Fish bones walked the waves off Hatteras.
And there were other signs
That Death wooed us, by water, wooed us
By land: among the pines
An uncurled cottonmouth that rolled on moss
Reared in the polluted air.
Birth, not death, is the hard loss.
I know. I also left a skin there.

- Louise Glück






Legal notice:
Some may feel that the inclusion of works not in the public domain is a violation of the fair-use doctrine of US copyright law. I obviously do not agree, but I will gladly defer to the wishes of the rightsholder, and if anyone wishes for a post of their work or work for which they own the intellectual rights to be taken down, they may ask for its removal and it will be so. I claim no ownership and have no rights as to the works I will be posting, save for any that were written by me.

A Poem A Day #17

Yesterday we had a poem by James Wright, who we will return to before long for some excellent translations of Herman Hesse and some more of his own work.  Today I've got a couple of poems by his son, Franz Wright.

Franz is one of those rare cases where the child is able to step out of the parent's shadow in the same field, and be taken on their own merit.  When his collection "Walking to Martha's Vineyard" won the Pulitzer Prize in 2004, it made him and his father the first father/son pair to have won that prize as poets. 

The following poems are from his 1995 collection "Rorschach Test."  The first feels almost like a response to his father's poem yesterday.  They take place in the same city, even.




REUNION

Movement of the hour hand, dilating
of the rose...
Once I could write those.
What am I?  A skull

biting its fingernails, a no one
with nowhere to be
consulting his watch,
a country music station left on quietly

all night, the motel door left open
to Wheeling's rainy main street, the river
and wind
and every whiskey-breathed

ghost in the family --
left open,
old man,
for you.

- Franz Wright






The next is a beautifully subtle piece, less confessional and more observational and quietly filled with the chill of memory.





ENDING

It's one of those evenings
we all know
from somewhere.  It might be
the last summery day --
you feel called on to leave what you're doing
and go for a walk by yourself.
Your few vacant streets are the world.
And you might be a six year old child
who's finally been allowed
by his elders to enter a game
of hide-and-seek in progress.
It is getting darker fast,
and he's not supposed to be out;
but he gleefully runs off, concealing himself
with his back to a tree
that sways high overhead
among the first couple of stars.
He keeps dead still, barely breathing for pleasure,
long after they have left.

- Franz Wright










Legal notice:
Some may feel that the inclusion of works not in the public domain is a violation of the fair-use doctrine of US copyright law. I obviously do not agree, but I will gladly defer to the wishes of the rightsholder, and if anyone wishes for a post of their work or work for which they own the intellectual rights to be taken down, they may ask for its removal and it will be so. I claim no ownership and have no rights as to the works I will be posting, save for any that were written by me.

A Poem A Day #16

Here's a poem I stumbled across a couple years ago by James Wright, master of reinvention.

The assignment was a good one - we had to keep a commonplace book of poems we found in our reading (which, of course, meant that we had to be reading poems fairly often).  That project was, in a way, the genesis of this one.  There have already been a few poems from this column taken from that commonplace book, and I assume eventually all of them will end up here. 

It's difficult to pinpoint exactly what it is about this poem that made me pay attention and put it in the book.  Maybe it's the subtle dark humor, maybe it's the melancholy rhythm of the language, or maybe I just really like the phrase "hobo jungle weeds."  I don't know.



IN RESPONSE TO A RUMOR THAT THE OLDEST WHOREHOUSE IN WHEELING, WEST VIRGINIA, HAS BEEN CONDEMNED

I will grieve alone,
As I strolled alone, years ago, down along
The Ohio shore.
I hid in the hobo jungle weeds
Upstream from the sewer main,
Pondering, gazing.

I saw, down river,
At Twenty-third and Water Streets
By the vinegar works,
The doors open in early evening.
Swinging their purses, the women
Poured down the long street to the river
And into the river.

I do not know how it was
They could drown every evening.
What time near dawn did they climb up the other shore,
Drying their wings?

For the river at Wheeling, West Virginia,
Has only two shores:
The one in hell, the other
In Bridgeport, Ohio.

And nobody would commit suicide, only
To find beyond death
Bridgeport, Ohio.

- James Wright






Today the father, tomorrow the son.



Legal notice:
Some may feel that the inclusion of works not in the public domain is a violation of the fair-use doctrine of US copyright law. I obviously do not agree, but I will gladly defer to the wishes of the rightsholder, and if anyone wishes for a post of their work or work for which they own the intellectual rights to be taken down, they may ask for its removal and it will be so. I claim no ownership and have no rights as to the works I will be posting, save for any that were written by me.

A Poem A Day #15

After a couple days off, I'd like to kickstart the column again by kind of ignoring my idea to do short poems on Mondays, and use one of my own instead, because I'm still tired from this weekend and don't feel like hunting through my books and writing much right now.

It's best not to talk too much about interpreting one's own poems. If the poem needs explanation to the reader, then it probably needs revision as well. The reader only has what is on the page, and the reader must interpret it without me. Once it's written, it's on its own and should explain or not explain what it will.

However, a brief note on the form of this poem is in order, I think. The ghazal (pronounced "guzzle") is an old form from the middle-east and Mediterranean region. It was a pretty common form of verse-play in Persian society, and is now found occasionally in Arabic poetry. The basic tenets of the form are that (1) it is syllabic verse, each line containing the same number, determined by the poet; (2) it is a chain of couplets, each one independent of the rest, the number determined by the poet; and (3) each couplet ends with the same word or phrase. I have ignored the rule against enjambment-- each of the couplets below is not independent of the others. I have also ignored the custom of the poet referencing himself by name in the last stanza. With those caveats, here is my short westernized ghazal. A "lyric ghazal" might be an appropriate label.





FIRE ALARM GHAZAL

I don't think it's ever been touched.
Instead it sits, redly waiting.

Perhaps one day it was set off
by some bored undergrad, waiting

for the bell, eyes ringing in their
sockets, before a nervous wait

in the trees near the parking lot.
Maybe. Or maybe it still waits

for that first red shrieking moment
when its arm is grasped from waiting

in the curling, blackening smoke,
and flashing in the dark, the weight

of its howling voice will press the
yellow air, warning: "do not wait."

- John Phillips









Legal notice:
Some may feel that the inclusion of works not in the public domain is a violation of the fair-use doctrine of US copyright law. I obviously do not agree, but I will gladly defer to the wishes of the rightsholder, and if anyone wishes for a post of their work or work for which they own the intellectual rights to be taken down, they may ask for its removal and it will be so. I claim no ownership and have no rights as to the works I will be posting, save for any that were written by me.

A Poem A Day #14

I'll be in Tennessee for the weekend for a couple shows, and likely won't post another poem until Monday.  So, today we'll feature two poems by the astounding Elizabeth Bishop, which should be meaty enough to last several days.

The first poem is one of her lesser known works, a trio of similarly structured stanzas each with its own world, its own direction, all aimed at the moon, at the expanse of space, vast celestial images used for the simplest of descriptions of the simplest things.



THE SHAMPOO

The still explosions on the rocks,
the lichens, grow
by spreading, gray, concentric shocks.
They have arranged
to meet the rings around the moon, although
within our memories they have not changed.

And since the heavens will attend
as long on us,
you've been, dear friend,
precipitate and pragmatical;
and look what happens. For Time is
nothing if not amenable.

The shooting stars in your black hair
in bright formation
are flocking where,
so straight, so soon?
--Come, let me wash it in this big tin basin,
battered and shiny like the moon.

- Elizabeth Bishop






The next is a well-anthologized and well-known favorite, and it's Bishop at her lushly descriptive best.  My favorite works of hers all realize the secret essence, the epic-ness of the routine, the small, the details of life.  A single event, be it stopping for gas, or the doctor's waiting room, or catching a fish, is painted wide and large, the smallest details made significant by attention and scale, laid bare by her magnificent descriptive eye.  You read Bishop the way you look at a painting.




THE FISH

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled and barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
--the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly--
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
--It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
--if you could call it a lip
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels--until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

- Elizabeth Bishop








Legal notice:
Some may feel that the inclusion of works not in the public domain is a violation of the fair-use doctrine of US copyright law. I obviously do not agree, but I will gladly defer to the wishes of the rightsholder, and if anyone wishes for a post of their work or work for which they own the intellectual rights to be taken down, they may ask for its removal and it will be so. I claim no ownership and have no rights as to the works I will be posting, save for any that were written by me.

A Poem A Day #13

This month so far, at least for me, seems to be governed by a strange serendipity. There are people I've met, places I've wound up going, people I keep running into, weird instances of chance that seem to be ruling my life even more than usual lately.

When these things happen, I like it best to just go with them. Often they lead to even more strange and interesting things. Thus the genesis of today's column.

My most recent facebook status is: John is wandering and wondering. This is facebook status chaff, a pleasant placeholder until I have something worthwhile to say, but it led to an excellently serendipitous email from friend and fellow drummer Steve Scott. Steve had a story about a poet from Birmingham discussing his feelings about the loss of wonder in our society at a local reading a couple months ago, and this fellow's poem on the subject.

Steve also included the following clever bit of humorous verse of his own, his response to the situation above, and a fine example of the kind of straightforward popular ballad verse that I think has had a mostly unfair snubbing by the New Critics of the 20th century and beyond.






THE WONDER OF IT ALL

My wife has said, she wanted me to see,

The Columbus Live Poet, Society.

They’re learned folks, from all around

Including six “experts” from out of town

“Our wonder hath wandered,” quoth a cryptic man,

A goateed Sage from Birmingham.

After endless wonderment of misspent youth,

From wonder, we now remain aloof.

His words rang true! Everything he said,

and set up fresh wondering, in my head.

In youth I’d spy a twinkling star,

And wonder aloud, “just what you are?”

Now with aches and gray hair flowing,

I wonder just, where am I going.

I wonder ‘bout the stars above,

I wonder who?, wrote the “Book of Love.”

I mourn the loss of Pepsodent,

And wonder where the yellow went.

With so much wondering in my head,

I’m even wondering, ‘bout Wonder Bread.

And I guess it’d be, a social blunder,

Not to ponder, about Stevie Wonder

I listen to these poems profound,

Witty, sophisticated, urbane, uptown.

And from all this wondering, one thing comes clear,

Just what the hell, am I doing here?

- Steve Scott





Tomorrow: well, who knows what we'll have tomorrow?




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