Soapbox Where I Can Shout It Podcast

Three poems by my first poetry teacher: Terry Hermsen.

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Okay, there’s a lot to this one. Think back to April 8th’s episode, the loosely tied trio, this is one of those days. Last week, I was thinking about The Hold Steady, specifically because of their album Separation Sunday because it was Easter (I wrote about that one, too). Anyway, those guys rock, and they have a different album that name checks John Berryman a number of times, John Berryman is a rock and roller’s poet, and that got me thinking on poetry about rock and roll. This was on my mind for at least a week, I was trying to remember the name of a book my mentor at University of San Francisco, Bruce Synder (did an episode on Bruce, too) recommended knowing I was both a poetry guy (obviously) and rock head, too. Good news, readers, I finally remembered the book: Mystery Train by David Wojahn. Bad news, readers: I have long sold my copy of that book to a second-hand store and interlibrary loans only happen so fast.

Seemingly, none of Wojahn’s rock poems are online, but Poetry Foundation dot com has a number of other poems, including “Elegy for James Wright.” James Wright is a wonderful Ohio poet who I was quite fond of chasing a recommendation by a poetry mentor from Otterbein, Terry Hermsen. I’ll read him on the pod tomorrow, but for now, here’s Wojahn eleugizing Wright and two poems by Wright, “A Lazy Poem on Saturday Evening” and “Just Before a Thunder Shower” that capture this moment in the midwest nicely. As for the Monday morning commute, well, Saturday will be here soon enough.

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Ben joins me to talk briefly about one of my all-time favorite poets, Francisco X. Alarcón. We read “Ode to my Shoes” and “Words Are Birds.” Alarcón’s work, both for grown-ups and children, reveals something about poetry which is so spcieal to me that we kind of hear in the impromptu poetry-by-way-of-playing-choo-choo-trains in the basement with Ben, that poetry, an important tool for capturing the imagination, is not limited by intellect, skill, or age. Ben digs it. I dig it. You can too!

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Another late nite episode. In honor (?!?) the heaviness of my own eyelids, the utter lack of inspiration, two songs of going to bed, by two classics, from two perspectives occasionally at odds, the wakeful grown up in the anxious “To Sleep” by John Keats and the excitable kiddos, as was Ben this evening, in “The Children’s Hour” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

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This evening I was honored to participate in the ODU World Student Club’s second annual Global Gala, where I read “To a Young Poet” and “To Our Land” by Mahmoud Darwish, and “A Palestinian Might Say” by Naomi Shihab Nye.

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Yesterday the immortal Bard shared a birthday with sweet Desi, so today we celebrate William S. with Sonnet 18 and I get gross and sentimental about Rachel.

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A sad poem about my boyhood dog, Maggie, “Puppies on Holiday” and a newer poem called “Dog tracks in the tall grass.” A return to Mary Oliver’s Dog Songs: “The Poetry Teacher” and “Percy Speaks While I am Doing Taxes”

Dog tracks in the tall grass

Dog tracks in the tall grass

serpentine reverie; love

letter – not from sky to

ground, too many poems

written with green & dew

tipped blades tickling the

poet’s neck gazing up

“oh what majesty” they

might say, “oh what abyss

does hang above” the last

word on those green pastures

is in Leaves of Grass. For

that matter, too many poems

are written of the sky,

meadows busily sequestering

mileage on library shelves.

What does the sky write

upon the ground? Is her

handwriting two long-bodied

dachshunds, dog tracks in

the tall grass spelling out

what autumn leaves will

some months from now,

what shadow-script three

meadowlarks might paint

while listing breeze-to-breeze

on their way to taller trees,

branches unbothered by

the barking of neighbor dogs

or gnashing cats, the occasional

raccoon scuttled deeper

into town by a developer’s

careless greed. The great

mowing has commenced,

I think, hand dumbly

clinging leash. As if a

cul-de-sac was some

prophesy and not just

the harbinger of new

houses, more dogs to

bark, more garage light

posts for birds to nest

behind, more porch steps

for cats to holler from.

This is to say it is all

happening, quietly,

but with no conspiracy,

just. Time. July will

continue tomorrow, at

least until August’s born

into September, and so

on, and so on. This, until

the dog tracks spell some

other psalm on the grass

lying in wait, underneath

some loosely packed snow.

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Celebrating some Emily Dickinson just for fun. We read “Tell all the truth but tell it slant”, “A Bird, came down the walk” and “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”. Great stuff, enjoy, and enjoy the brevity.

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Getting ready to start gardening? Consider a red wheelbarrow, on which, I’m told, so much depends. A terribly short episode today - go listen to the 50 minute monstrosity on Coheed & Cambria that came out yesterday afternoon if you haven’t already, and of course, see you tomorrow for more poetry.

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Coheed & Cambria's 5th album, the end of 'guilty pleasures,' and the beginning of obsession, fifteen years later. An origin story and a track by track review of Year of the Black Rainbow. This is the podcast version of today’s newsletter, read the full essay here.

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