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Open Poetry #17

POETS AND PLACES, Part II

Glenn Logan
Member

since 2001-10-10

Posts 111
Virginia

0 posted 2001-12-06 02:08 PM

   All of which is very interesting,
   although I must admit I do not care
   what Samuel Butler
   - or dozens of others, for all that -
   has to confess,
   now that he's gone the way of all flesh.

   In America, Mark Twain, beginning our literature,
   according to Ernest, and genial to the end,
   long ago sailed his last stern wheeler
   down river to the eternal sea,
   and so joined the silent majority.

   But Huck Finn lives on, forever rebellious, along
   with Tom, The Duke, Aunt Sarah, and Jim.
   And the Mississippi never flowed more smoothly
   than when they were bringing that damn raft in.

   I worry more for Sherwood Anderson's
   magnificent "grotesques," and wonder if
   they're still alive in "Winesburg," and if teachers
   still wave delicate dove-like hands now
   that Windy McPherson's boy is no longer there.

   In the Appalachians, at Asheville (aka Altamont),
   North Carolina,
   do boys still get paid in "jelly roll,"
   and hide behind graveyard marbles,
   now that
   Thomas Wolfe's Angel
   has brought him home?

   In the Midwest, have we lost our Chicago
   of the stockyards, of bustle, brawn and lust?
   Frank Norris, are you there?
   Has your slaughter
   made it any less of a Jungle?

   Theodore Dreiser, are you still with us?
   And how's your sister, Carrie?

   And has noble Nelson Algren joined them yet,
   walking
   on the wild side?

   (POEM CONTINUES: SEE PART III)

Sunshine

Administrator

Member Empyrean

since 1999-06-25

Posts 63354
Listening to every heart

1 posted 2001-12-06 03:21 PM

The literal part of your literary questions keeps me going...on to Part III...

Sudhir Iyer
Member Ascendant

since 2000-04-26

Posts 6943
Mumbai, India : now in Belgium

2 posted 2001-12-06 03:24 PM

bring it on... the part 3 beckons and I obediently follow...

a most remarkably wonderful writing...

regards,
sudhir

[This message has been edited by Sudhir Iyer (edited 12-06-2001).]

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