Tag Archives: poetry

Reading

"Elegy for an Old Boxer"

American Life in Poetry: Column 080

By Ted Kooser,
U.S. poet laureate, 2004-2006
One of poetry’s traditional public services is the presentation of elegies in honor of the dead. Here James McKean remembers a colorful friend and neighbor.

Elegy for an Old Boxer

From my window
I watch the roots of a willow
push your house crooked,
women rummage through boxes,
your sons cart away the TV, its cord
trailing like your useless arms.
Only weeks ago we watched the heavyweights,
and between rounds you pummeled the air,
drank whiskey, admonished “Know your competition!”
You did, Kansas, the ’20s
when you measured the town champ
as he danced the same dance over and over:
left foot, right lead, head down,
the move you’d dreamt about for days.
Then right on cue your hay-bale uppercut
compressed his spine. You know. That was that.
Now your mail piles up, RESIDENT circled
“not here.” Your lawn goes to seed. Dandelions
burst in the wind. From my window
I see you flat on your back on some canvas,
above you a wrinkled face, its clippy bow tie
bobbing toward ten. There’s someone behind you,
resting easy against the ropes,
a last minute substitute on the card you knew
so well, vaguely familiar, taken for granted,
with a sucker punch you don’t remember
ever having seen.

Reprinted from “Headlong,” University of Utah Press, 1987, by permission of the author. First published in “Prairie Schooner,” Vol. 53, No. 3, (Fall 1979). Copyright (c) 1979 by James McKean, whose latest book is nonfiction, “Home Stand: Growing up in Sports”, Michigan State University Press, 2005. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

Reading

Spam as literature

I usually just dump spam emails into my junk folder, but Rockford called one he received to my attention this morning. It wasn’t the whatever-it-was they were peddling but the little poem at the end of the message. It was so delightful, I thought I should check out a few in my own inbox. The first — “are you happy,” sent by Alma — was Rockford’s find. I’ve edited “Moth Garbled” a little, just to make it more readable.

are you happy
by Alma
You, a horse! Oh, not a real one, of course
By the time he had finished his preparations and stowed all his electrical
belongings in his various pockets, it was nearly midnight and the house was quiet

i didn’t forgot
by Dean
That made an extraordinary long hole, as you may imagine, and reached far down into the earth; and, as I leaned over it to try to see to the bottom, I lost my balance and tumbled in
He started the machine again towards the east, and at a more moderate rate of speed skimmed over the surface of the desert

Moth Garbled
by George Knox
Many among these valued neighborhood counselors begged him not to go at all. But Kivi’s discouragement built up in Hayden a stubborn Western-Yankee resentment. Ridiculous spectacle of yourself, and everybody laughing at you.

Probably, he admitted, he was nearer to the capering Kivi than to the mulish Jess Bradbin.

With agony he managed to turn his head enough to make out their situation.

If I were only twenty again, and strong and unafraid Always so helpless and never, never think about what I may want or need or anything! There were hesitations, worries, preparations to be got through.

But such treachery to American good-fellowship he kept concealed.

He came clearly to in a hospital, with his head bandaged and Dr. He looked at their bedroom: the chaise longue, the tapestry wallpaper, the black and silver desk.

In college, that Kipling thing, For to admire and for to see, I’ve wandered oer the world so wide.

I think that I would like to be a self-respecting humanbeing, and even learn to read! I must endure a heavy penance to make up, in some tiny degree, for killing Caprice. Crittenhams owlish peering and the horrible scrambled eggs and cold toast.

Caprice and he might lie here, bleeding, stranglingly thirsty, for many nights and days.

I don’t think any of it has been published yet, but hell be another Evelyn Waugh.

He had seen no one whom he knew coming aboard. His face was thin, and people said that his eyes were kind.

But Kivi’s discouragement built up in Hayden a stubborn Western-Yankee resentment. Caprice had read only the society page, the fashion notes, and those same murder trials. Roxanna could not have noticed any ruefulness in him.

But honestly, Hay, you’re in wonderful shape. He ruled, Dead certain to be acold fall, this fall, see whatta mean? And I’m a tramp that only wants to see new towns and learn to read Plato in the Greek.

Had he passed out, had he been unconscious?

They could both die here before they were found. You always did like chatting and chinning and visiting with the lady clients, you old rogue!

To live for months overlooking a monastery garden, mystic and contemplative.

Enough so that they rather horribly suggested a funeral.

To live for months overlooking a monastery garden, mystic and contemplative. He tried to remember where he was going and just why he was going there.

There was a light, gay quality in the air.

Reading

"Early in the Morning"

American Life in Poetry: Column 077

By Ted Kooser,
U.S. poet laureate, 2004-2006
Li-Young Lee, who lives in Chicago, evokes by the use of carefully chosen images a culture, a time of day, and the understanding of love through the quiet observation of gesture.

Early in the Morning

While the long grain is softening
in the water, gurgling
over a low stove flame, before
the salted Winter Vegetable is sliced
for breakfast, before the birds,
my mother glides an ivory comb
through her hair, heavy
and black as calligrapher’s ink.

She sits at the foot of the bed.
My father watches, listens for
the music of comb
against hair.

My mother combs,
pulls her hair back
tight, rolls it
around two fingers, pins it
in a bun to the back of her head.
For half a hundred years she has done this.
My father likes to see it like this.
He says it is kempt.

But I know
it is because of the way
my mother’s hair falls
when he pulls the pins out.
Easily, like the curtains
when they untie them in the evening.

Reprinted from “Rose,” BOA Editions, Ltd., 1986, by permission of the publisher. Copyright (c) 1986 by Li-Young Lee, whose most recent book of poetry is “Book of My Nights,” BOA Editions, Ltd., 2001. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.