Re: the Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry
It's inauguration day, January 20, 2021.
I could be at home, watching the TV presentation
pomp and pageantry. But old, achy, onerous and
anxious, bladder full with no toilet near, I wait
in a chilly car in a VA clinic parking lot,
entry to warmth and light prohibited by
the COVID pandemic.
Inside, my life-partner -- afflicted by
diabetic, infected purple insensate
second toe, left foot -- seeks news
of its possible fate: to be treated
or scheduled to be permanently removed
from its too snug position among
the other toes. Fidgety, I have settled
upon re-reading for the umpteenth time
selected pages among my (now) collection
of loose sheets between two crumbling
covers held together by rubber bands:
what's left of my copy of The Vintage Book
of Contemporary American Poetry, edited
by J. D. McClatchy. Many of these poems
(all perhaps?) are no longer "contemporary" --
this is a 1990 paper publication with poetry
from the preceding 40 years. I still treasure
many of the poems.
My custom, when alone, is to read out loud, and
to mark or circle poems, selected phrases, lines,
or passages that I choose, for whatever reason,
and often to think/fantasize how or whether
I might (or would) have written and then recited
in my own words, in my own voice, my own altered
poetic echoes of those lines, those thoughts, those
rhymes, those carefully or recklessly considered
pronouncements and descriptions.
And to wonder whether my own contrivances
would blend well with the originals that fostered
their appearance.
I conclude: my ersatz poetic products might be
somewhat like an infected toe that could be
snipped away -- or treated and tended, nurtured,
cured, made healthy, worthy enough for a place
crowded among those others.
As I have tried (fitfully) here to do.
Copyright © Leo Larry Amadore | Year Posted 2021
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