A BioPoem
"The man with the red hat
And the polar bear, is he here too?
The window giving on shade,
Is that here too?
And all the little helps,
My initials in the sky,
The hay of an arctic summer night?
The bear
Drops dead in sight of the window.
Lovely tribes have just moved to the north.
In the flickering evening the martins grow denser.
Rivers of wings surround us and vast tribulation."
John Ashbery, "Glazunoviana"
Ode from Amuse
Jack Benny called his birthplace
Many times:
"Oh Rochester!"
When was it anyway?
Two years before the
Crash.
In the same
state,
His Genesis
Genesis, his.
Sodus to Deerfield follow the ..........dots
'Can I park my derriere in the
Harvard Yard?'
He could ask while a little later Masterfully hailing Columbia.
He would join
Dustin Hoffman and
Anne Bancroft.
He would enjoin Frank O'Hara and Kenneth Koch for blanked look beers
And cheers.
The
Big Apple Schule wormed its Broadway.
The
Nifty Fifties onward:
He helped the bookworm in his
Pub.
Wallace Stevens and
Boris Pasternak beckoned while
Surrealistic Pillowed
French Kisses
Gave Cognac Dissidents.
Under
Some Trees taking
The Tennis court Oath
washed in the
Rivers and Mountains during
The Double Dream of Spring
Three Poems indelible in a
Vermont Notebook;
fun-house vision
Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror.
The Latter:
It's Howitzer he got the Pulitzer
(And the
National Book Award--
Cracker Jack Box not included--
And the National Book Critics Circle Award --giving Critics a good name.)
On
Bard time,
'The Play's the
Thing':
Heroes but unlike Big
MacBeth, this other one had
The
Compromise.
Houseboat Days ride a
Shadow Train Wave:
That ebb tide coughed up a
Lenore Marshall Prize and
Yale's
Bollingen.
April Galleons sailing on a
Flow Chart
And the Stars Were Shining
In
Hotel Lautréamont the
Girls on the Run asked:
Can You Hear, Bird? While in
Wakefulness the
Chinese Whispers:
Your Name Here.
Give creditor for the editor of
The Best American Poetry 1988.
There are his
Reported Sightings -- critters of critique. With
James Schulyler a
clobber ration, poets who Know It, Stocking
the librarian with
A Nest of Ninnies.
Jackie Gleason yells
"Norton!"
Charles Eliot, that is,
Harvard Lectures
Millenium's collection giving
Other Traditions.
Other trinkets of true-dough Kudos:
Brussels' sprouted
Grand Prix de Biennales Internationales
English Speaking Union Prize, '
Is Paris Burning?'
Feltrinelli Prize (Not found at the
Olive Garden)
Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, High Lily Hi, Lily
Double the Bubble with grants from Merril Foundation.
Share some of that MLA Common Wealth Award in Literature,
'
Some like it Hot' but he likes the Harriet Monroe Memorial Prize a lot,
But no mustard on the
Frank O'Hara Prize
Take two and call me in the mourning
in stitches over the
Shelly Memorial Award.
Fellowshipping with
The Academy of American Poets,
Guggenhiem Foundation and MacArthurs too
He Chancelled, couldn't cancel,
The Academy of American Poets
He's sometimes a stud, son, in Hudson.
He's still on
Bard time,
Charley P. (as in poet?) Stevenson, Junior professor makes him a artistic
Confessor.
Sources:
www.Poet.org
www.Wikipedia.org
The New American Poetry ed. Donald M. Allen, NY: Grove Press, 1960.
The Longman Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, 2nd ed. eds. Stuart Friebert, David Young, NY: Longman, 1989.