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.
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