I wrote poems all the time from adolescence on until, in the spring of 1976, a widely respected professor assessed some samples as “un-illusioned,” which was good, but lacking “music,” a death knell. I still wrote poems into the 1980s, but few and far between, and stopped reading contemporary poetry altogether, despite having done my thesis on W.H. Auden. However, all those years of writing poems influenced (I believe for the good) my prose, which I still write today. But by owning up to this history, I’m acknowledging I no longer trust my judgment when it comes to poetry.
I had one set of poems that I would share with friends and another that never made it past the first or second draft. Recently, I’ve been reviewing this latter set, in this case all from 1975 and 1976 (my college junior and senior years). Most are duds. Some offer something, but not enough even for me. Then there are those that intrigue me, which are the ones I include in this and an upcoming post. They bring back an era and a me as we were at the time, not as I reconstruct them decades later.
All the poems are short and appear in chronological order of original composition. I’ve subjected them to varying degrees of revision. While I couldn’t have created any of them today, I’m a more ruthless and better editor. In some instances, I provide background.
PART I
1. January 5, 1975
Sincerity: A Haiku
Sincerity is
How you show the way you wish
You were treated, too.
2. January 5, 1975 Untitled
Three months before the fall of South Vietnam’s capital, then called Saigon, students continued to lament the Vietnam War, and many lived with consciences for having been spared the draft.
In an unjust war
The lives that went before
Are troubles in the heart.
3. February 21, 1975
Ever since reading The Symposium freshman year, I was intrigued by Aristophanes’ notion that each man was just a half, separated before birth from his woman half, so that males and females spend their lives in search of their other halves. For the record, I see no reason why, with obvious modifications, this fantasy shouldn’t also apply to gays and lesbians.
Aristophanes
At dawn’s first shaft,
A messenger brings
Promises of a future rapt.
At time’s behest,
My other half
Will be my guest.
4. March 4, 1975. Untitled
The pigeons flock
Before the church
Desperate for bread.
They beg for more, then always more.
The only death one day
A pigeon’s corpse,
Was bypassed in the heat.
He’d wanted more, and always more.
5. March 9, 1975
I had it easy in the sense that I left a reputable high school straight for a reputable college. My oldest friend stayed all the way to graduation at the same school for partially sighted children in London, where I’d started before my family moved north. It was in many ways a good school, but it didn’t have accredited teachers. After graduating, my friend had to work hard at another institution to qualify for one of England’s finest universities. I admired his tenacity. This tiny poem emerges from his anecdotes about his life during that phase.
Putney Bridge
Cars jam on Putney Bridge
The one he crosses every day.
It’s a lonely place at rush hour,
As all Thames bridges are.
6. March 25, 1975
This poem came to me after visiting a musician friend in his Boston apartment.
Obstinacy
Taxi spurts, bus brakes,
Hammer beats, drill squarks.
Still he courts his piano,
Ravel at the rodeo.
7. March 29, 1975
Here, I was dimly recalling movies made in England before my family emigrated to America.
British Films of the Sixties
Into the fire he throws
The letter from his girlfriend,
Cremating love.
The cost of war,
Displays in the list
Of lost and missing.
He races headlong
Up the stairs to the rooftops
And a chase across the city.
They made a splash
Consigned to a bright
Suspended flash.
8. April 12, 1975
I had a jaundiced perception of the alumni who visited our college campus. Now that I’m in their place, they have their revenge.
Alumnus
I drive a car too big for me.
It eats up too much gas
I’m bored.
What to do?
Back to college in middle age?
Words, sentences, commas—
I must relearn the knack
Of talk by paragraph.
9. April 14, 1975
Long after college, I was still fighting shyness. This poem makes me think that one cause might have been missing signals I got from others due to lack of sight and mishearing.
At Twenty-One
I fold up the years in a suitcase.
Time breaks down
Into little squares.
This morning on the library steps
I passed some laughing girls.
As I reached the door
They called a question out.
I wasn’t sure I’d heard
And went, head-down, inside.
A birthday’s nothing special –
A number adding up the years.
I’m left to count the tabs
And pile up the stubs.
I’m one day young, then one day aged –
One day Hamlet, one day Lear—
Both enraged by winds—
Whose clowns had seen
How vain ‘tis to be a king.
Experience is this:
A shaping of the fist
To hide the calloused skin,
On the library steps
The girls called out.
I wasn’t sure I’d heard
And went inside.
10. April 28, 1975 Untitled
Stars shine as they always have.
The poet can’t ignore
Their ogling.
11. April 28, 1975 Untitled
Hymn to the skylark, ode to the winds
Belong to antique books –
Nature is passing by
Birds migrating at a sign,
Farewell in the western sky.
I wrote a note for this poem at the time: South Vietnam surrendered during the course of a television program looking back at the war.
Unreachable pain on roads
And sudden paddies
The commentator narrates
The film breaks for ads
My roommate takes a piss.
13. May 8, 1975
Who knows why I wrote a poem hostile to the concept of marriage when I wasn’t even considering it.
Marriage
Marriage has wings,
A bird’s-eye view of things.
That’s how you should feel,
It’s why I want to wed
To prove that it’s unreal.
14. May 29, 1975
Behind this poem is my aversion, then and now, to the stereotype that blind people “see” in other ways.
Cassandra
With her gift she saw it all:
Her prostitution to a king,
That Troy would fall.
But before her second sight dawned,
She saw she must succumb
To death at Clytemnestra’s hand.
15. May 29, 1975
My 1974 summer at McGill University in Montreal, where I lived at a residence hall halfway up Mount Royal, was so special that I contemplated moving there permanently. By the date of this poem, I’d resolved my Canada and England dilemmas and committed to staying in the United States.
After Montreal: A Haiku
That city is no
Longer mine. It falls away,
Down the hilly street.
16. July 11, 1975 Untitled
By this date, during another life-changing summer, I had a job at a community action agency in rural North Carolina. This poem didn’t reflect my situation there, so I must have been echoing an acquaintance.
I don’t wish to alarm
But single-room apartments
Quickly lose their charm.
17. July 13, 1975 Untitled
In each ordered nation
The puzzled scratch their chins,
Analyze their harsh replies
Confess their accidental sins.
18. July 13, 1975
This poem suggests how little experience I had of living out in the country.
Tonight
Tonight’s the first phase of the moon
No one’s predicting sudden death
Devils aren’t expected soon
I think I hear the softest breath
I love #17