Last week’s subject was poetry and, no surprise, people came back at me with their favorite poems. Not to be outdone, I came back with two of my favorites. I’m going to hit you with these two, but first … Joyce Dexter responded with this story:

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FRANK - This column of yours called to mind the year 1972 when, in the throes of a recent divorce, I started penning poem after poem after poem, all of which were full of angst, heartbreak and earnest soul-searching, and many of which were composed under the liberating influence of vodka and tonic. I showed a few of them to my best friends, who (being my best friends, after all) pronounced them brilliant and urged me to get them published.

One day, I saw an ad in the St. Pete Times: “AUTHORS WANTED!” And, wow - this company wanted novelists, journalists, and poets; all were welcome under its big tent. I packed up a few of my works and sent them in.

A couple of weeks later, I got a call from a guy named (I swear I’m not making this up) Harvey Harvey, who confided he’d been incredibly moved by my scribblings and invited me to join him for dinner the following week when he’d be in our area. He pulled out all the stops at the local Holiday Inn where he was staying, and where we dined lavishly on the daily special. Over dessert, he launched an intense spiel about how I owed it to mankind to ensure that my work would be available to posterity for eternity.

Alas (and I’m sure you see this coming), it turned out that Harvey Harvey represented a vanity press. Fortunately for me, I didn’t have two nickels to rub together, much less the dinero to self-publish my own volume of poetry, and so sadly and regretfully I had to decline.

Years later, when I was going through some old suitcases and boxes, I ran across those old pages, which I’d carefully tucked into plastic pages to preserve them. And after I reread them for the first time in 30 years, I did the only thing I could do: I burned them, lest I get run over by a truck and my unsuspecting heirs run across them.

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Joyce actually went on to publish some poems. She has a novel sitting in a closet too, like lots of us.

Here’s Favorite Poem #1, by Gwendolyn Brooks:

We Real Cool

THE POOL PLAYERS.
SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL.

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

And Favorite #2 by e.e. cummings:

I SING OF OLAF GLAD AND BIG

i sing of Olaf glad and big
whose warmest heart recoiled at war:
a conscientious object-or

his wellbelovéd colonel(trig
westpointer most succinctly bred)
took erring Olaf soon in hand;
but–though an host of overjoyed
noncoms(first knocking on the head
him)do through icy waters roll
that helplessness which others stroke
with brushes recently employed
anent this muddy toiletbowl,
while kindred intellects evoke
allegiance per blunt instruments–
Olaf(being to all intents
a corpse and wanting any rag
upon what God unto him gave)
responds,without getting annoyed
“I will not kiss your fucking flag”

straightway the silver bird looked grave
(departing hurriedly to shave)

but–though all kinds of officers
(a yearning nation’s blueeyed pride)
their passive prey did kick and curse
until for wear their clarion
voices and boots were much the worse,
and egged the firstclassprivates on
his rectum wickedly to tease
by means of skilfully applied
bayonets roasted hot with heat–
Olaf(upon what were once knees)
does almost ceaselessly repeat
“there is some shit I will not eat”

our president,being of which
assertions duly notified
threw the yellowsonofabitch
into a dungeon,where he died

Christ(of His mercy infinite)
i pray to see;and Olaf,too

preponderatingly because
unless statistics lie he was
more brave than me:more blond than you.

Them’s my kind of poems.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. Reminder: I’m reading Monday night at the Friendship Heights (MD) Village Center. There’s classical guitar and chatter starting at 7, and the reading starts at 7:30 — myself and poet E. Louise Beach. The event, “Café Muse”, is cosponsored by WordWorksDC (www.wordworksdc.com) and the village of Friendship Heights MD. The Village Center is in the vest-pocket park at Friendship Blvd. and N. Park Ave., off Wisconsin Ave. a few blocks north of the D.C. Line. A map is at (www.friendshipheightsmd.gov/AboutCommty.html).