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 →