A few times, in teaching creative writing classes, I have presented this poem as a failed poem. I wrote this poem, I think, in 1969, during the summer between my sixteen and seventeenth year. Maybe it was a year later. I think I was in San Antonio on a summer trip with a group of friends associated with a youth organization called The DeMolays. Continue reading
Monthly Archives: May 2015
You and the House of Poetry
This little bit of writing is meant to a brief guide the Poetry Mind Map. The Poetry Mind Map is meant to be my little enticement and perhaps even overbearing, parent-ish jib to emphasize what a large and exciting decision it is to become a poet. The minute you declare yourself a poet or even a wanna-be-poet, or part-time poet, you have taken a step into a history. This is really nothing special or singular about being a poet. Continue reading
A Poet’s Bookshelf
Below is a list of books that I can pull off my book shelf when I have a question about poems and poetry. And when I need inspiration. Every poet’s bookshelf is and should be an idiosyncratic affair. I recommend that you visit used bookstores looking for some of these. If you have any suggestions, I would love to learn about your favorites. I have placed asterisks (**) in front of those that I highly recommend as places to begin.
Allen, Donald, Ed. The New American Poetry. New York: Grove. 1960. Continue reading
Deconstruction
when
we
must know
we for
still ces
e will
rect al
these ways
bi blow
na them
ries up
For my thoughts about writing this poem, follow this link.
Reconstruction, Concerning “Deconstruction”
Historically and biographically, this poem is a kind of meeting of two events. The first is the destruction of the Twin Towers. The second is my being in graduate school and reading various literary/philosophical theorists. I wasn’t actually reading Jacques Derrida, the philosopher mostly responsible for the practice and theory of deconstruction. His ideas, as least in the simple form that I understand them, have permeated a lot of other writers’ thoughts. In very simple form, deconstruction as a theory postulates that all language self-contradicts, that it puts off or defers meaning. In my simple way, I look at language as being like the yin/yang symbol in which the dark area contains a speck of white and the white area contains a speck of black. Words contain their own contradictions. We humans hate or distrust in Others that which we have in ourselves—we force others to carry our own personal disgust by demonizing or stereotyping others Continue reading
After Hades, Always Persephone
–for my step-mother
Sometimes, I thought my father ruined her
like some force, wind or water, cutting
creases, ravines, into summer fields.
One moment, she laughed, lanky, two-pieced
in blue on the Mexican border,
tequila sunrise, poolside, held high,
like life cashed her in a winner. Continue reading
Myth and Structure, Concerning “After Hades, Always Persephone”
This several years ago my step-mother, Margie Harrison Grant, died. I was able to see her several times in the weeks before she died, and I was glad of that. The last time I saw her, two days before she died, she was weak but still making a quiet joke and enjoyed a slice of chocolate meringue pie that her son sneaked into her room at the nursing home. She was a wonderful lady, and very kind to me. Continue reading
Midlife Christmas
This season he travels back roads,
admires frost-covered field stubble,
caroling lights on distant homes,
flicks off the chattering radio, Continue reading
Driving and Listening, Concerning “Midlife Christmas”
Of all the kinds of poems that I write, this is my favorite kind. “Midlife Christmas” is a straight ahead traditional poem. Not quite in the Housman and Heine tradition, but maybe in the Thomas Hardy or Robert Frost tradition. Rhyme, tetrameter, quatrains. Nothing more traditional. It grew out of a very specific moment driving home from my wife’s family’s house a few days after Christmas. It is dark and I was driving on country roads. I try to do that as much as possible and avoid the interstate highways. Basically, everything in the poem is true. It a sense it is a poem about dropping out of conventional American society. I was sick to death of the Republicans attacking Clinton—the insincere inquisition. I am sick of commerce and minivans and midlife crises sports cars (or young sex fueled sports cars). The only things that really matter to me are my children, my wife, honesty and fair treatment and forgiveness of fellow human beings, beauty and art, and teaching. Continue reading
Home Sick
The other day at the doctor’s office, the nurse
sized me up, professionally: You can’t be fifty!
She meant I looked much younger. I put up
a good front, you see. Maybe a poem shouldn’t
begin this way, but reading Jaroslav Seifert’s poetry, Continue reading