Soapbox Where I Can Shout It Podcast

Two poems from Catherine Pierce’s The Tornado is the World for your tumultuous spring weather enjoyment. “The Mother Warns the Tornado” and “On the Origins of the Tornado,” both included in Pierce’s monograph, also published here at The Kenyon Review.

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Another side-by-side, today, the great Robert Frost’s “Birches” and a poem I wrote about listening to a recording of Robert Frost’s “Birches” back in summer 2023.

“Listening to Robert Frost’s “Birches” on a Walk”

Listening to Robert Frost’s “Birches” on a walk

in the woods of my adolescence – not figuratively –

walking the actual geography of it, floating more like

hearing Frost’s voice warble in wireless headphones

that would have astonished him with the force

of 1,000 phonograph recordings (later uploaded

to YouTube) as if it were a sudden third option

at that fork in the road. The one less traveled, the

one more traveled, and the one skipping from

a more innocent dawn to this realm of Podcasts

and AirPods. There’s a joke with many variations,

the cleanest I can think of is this:

“Twitter would

have blown e.e. cummings’ mind,” or similar.

The joke is the world changes so dramatically.

A bird chirps just outside my ear, many

birds do about their springtime aubades, warbling

along as Frost lazily recites: I’d like to get away

from Earth for awhile. I can relate. The violence

of ice-fallen trees is hard enough to handle, now

the banks of Yellow Creek climb far higher

than they once did, when a scamp who had

a face in the shape of my face played upon them

muddy but grinning, a boy whose only play

was what he found himself, Summer or winter,

and cloud play alone. I scan the bench where

alone, I wrote poems of my own in high school, unsure

of what any of the classics meant and now, sure

they are all poems about raising my own son.

I see where I, alone, smoked cigarettes in the rain, thinking,

harder than I am willing to admit, about

“Stopping By The Woods on a Snowy Evening.”

The woods were too lush then, were too lush

then, too lush then, too lush, then, to imagine

yet another road, one so awfully traveled,

agnostic to the miles left to go before sleep.

Sometimes the birches are me: you may see my

trunk arching in the woods / years afterwards.

A shadow of myself speeds by on a bicycle,

the paw print of that boy’s dog evaporates,

the sound of her lapping tongue sings out of

the creek, again – just outside my ears – enveloped

with Frost, reciting “Birches.” The iPhone would,

surely, amaze him. He could have hailed a rideshare

and never heard those sweet bells. I shouldn’t pick

on the old poet, he, by far my better, and me

equally amazed I am on a walk in these woods

weary of considerations, back “home” at a supper table

blending my new family, our young son, with my old

family, I, their young son. Earth’s the right place

for love: I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.

I’m glad to have walked, and walked, and walk.

When the small boy in the shape of me can walk

on his own, I believe I will show him my favorite tree,

we will marvel at its still standing, I will marvel

with relief, that I am still standing.

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Today’s poems, all linked to a meandering theme, are “Night Journey” by Theodore Roethke, “Bluebird” by Charles Bukowski, and “Unexpected Things” (unpublished) by Tony DeGenaro. In the episode I talk about Joe Camerlengo’s music, please check it out, especially Can’t Wait, which was my #5 album of 2024 (Joe’s lifetime EP is an early contender for 2025…). Here’s the text of “Unexpected Things” for your reading pleasure:

Unexpected Things

I find myself obsessing over unexpected things

especially of late

as the wind howls against the north-facing

bedroom wall of my son’s grandparents’ house

where we live.

[Last night, he fell asleep to the snowy opening sequence

Of The Empire Strikes Back, except, it was me falling asleep

and my son saying “scary” at the obsidian shimmer of

Darth Vader’s mask.

With haste I turn off the television, Catholicly inclined to

accept my son’s feet twitching in a dream to the shape of

pointed kicks as a kind of penance for frightening him.]

Today’s obsession is the unexpected

emotions unlocked in various hype videos

for the Detroit Lions’ first credible strike

at a Super Bowl in 67 years.

Another tidbit: as they are playing tonight, the Lions’ last

away game in a playoff, the year they won the championship,

was against the San Francisco 49ers.

It is simple: the team from a place I used to live

is playing the team from another place I used to live.

In a way, I barely escaped San Francisco and,

in another way, Detroit saved my life, which

in yet a third and even stranger way, means

Detroit made my son’s life possible

[not something you hear about Detroit enough].

If fate has anything to do with it, at least

absolve me of being a fair-weather fan:

[sons root for the teams of their fathers,

my father might have been a Cleveland

Browns guy, god knows my mother,

that slender skyscraper more suited for

basketball, was]

I was late to the huddle. My son was early

to the snap. But he was born in Royal Oak

on a day I imagine similar to the one in

Santa Clara, right now, on January 28th:

sunny, a little crisp, perfect for an arrival.

The wind dies down. As he fights

sleep, the lion inside his heart roars

mighty. As if anything could scare him

ever. I hope he sleeps until dawn

in spite of this awful wind. I hope

the Lions win the NFC Championship,

I hope they win the whole Super Bowl.

I hope my son is proud of where he

comes from – a city of champions –

and I hope he can see that city

to be me.

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… let’s do some Shel Silverstein! Today we read “The Homework Machine” and “Invitation.”

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T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland is a modern epic of a poem, a dirge, a meditation of death and loss and destruction. Enjoy all 434 lines of what wikipedia calls “one of the most important English language poems of the 20th century.”

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This is a busy birthday week, first Rachel (April 2) and now my older brother, Steve! There aren’t a ton of older brother you admire poems (maybe a niche market I can corner?) and there aren’t very many kind lawyer poems, so I’m appealing to one of my brother’s best interests: his lovely corgi, Moneypenny (there are also not very many James Bond poems, oddly). Happy birthday, Steve!

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e.e. cummings double-shot!

“[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]”

“[anyone lived in a pretty how town]”

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A few unpublished classics to celebrate Rachel’s birthday.

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National Poetry Month: https://poets.org/national-poetry-month

On Turning Ten

The whole idea of it makes me feel

like I'm coming down with something,

something worse than any stomach ache

or the headaches I get from reading in bad light

a kind of measles of the spirit,

a mumps of the psyche,

a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,

but that is because you have forgotten

the perfect simplicity of being one

and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.

But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.

At four I was an Arabian wizard.

I could make myself invisible

by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.

At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window

watching the late afternoon light.

Back then it never fell so solemnly

against the side of my tree house,

and my bicycle never leaned against the garage

as it does today,

all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,

as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.

It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,

time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe

there was nothing under my skin but light.

If you cut me I would shine.

But now if I fall upon the sidewalks of life,

I skin my knees. I bleed.

© 1995 Billy Collins from The Art of Drowning

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In the soapbox newsletter this week while celebrating Beck’s Guero we talked about list making and rules for enjoying music, and the subject of top track one side ones came up. I promised my list and chiseled it down from these songs (using some rules of course!) to make my top five:

* "Straight Outta Compton" - NWA

* "London Calling" - The Clash

* "Bixby Canyon Bridge" - Death Cab for Cutie

* "Great Expectations" - The Gaslight Anthem

* "Changes" - David Bowie

* "At The Bottom of Everything" - Bright Eyes

* "Intro" - The xx

* "Blind" - Korn

* "Beautiful Day" - U2

* "Die Die Die" - The Avett Brothers

* "Floating Vibes" - Surfer Blood

* "Everything in the Right Place" - Radiohead

* "Seven Nation Army" - The White Stripes

* "Let's Go Crazy" - Prince

* "We Used to Vacation" - Cold War Kids

* "A More Perfect Union" - Titus Andronicus

* "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight" - The Postal Service

* "Stuck between Stations" - The Hold Steady

* "Hangover Game" - MJ Lenderman

* "Prologue/The Dark Sentencer" - Coheed & Cambria

* "Steady, As She Goes" - The Raconteurs

* "60 Feet Tall" - The Dead Weather

* "Blitzkrieg Bop" - The Ramones

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tonyisapoet.substack.com