Poetics and Ruminations

Uncle Wesli’s Daily Epitaph for Sunday, August 29th, 2010

 

R.I.P. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

August 29, 1809 – October 7, 1894

 

He never wrote in prose of purple,

Nor were his verses ever puerperal,

And many people loved the pomes

Of Doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Uncle Wesli’s Daily Epitaph for Saturday, August 28th, 2010

 

R.I.P. JONES VERY

August 28, 1813-May 8, 1880

 

God used to whisper in his ear,

Deliver sonnets loud and clear

But mostly dull and never merry,

To the Quietist Jones Very.

Uncle Wesli’s Daily Epitaph for Wednesday, August 25th, 2010

 

R.I.P. WALT KELLY

August 25, 1913 – October 18, 1973

 

Here lies Pogo’s father Walt

Friend and foe of the hale and halt

Who much enjoyed a hammish sangwish

When he wrote in the Anguish languish.

Uncle Wesli’s Daily Epitaph for Monday, August 23rd, 2010

 

R.I.P. EDGAR LEE MASTERS

August 23, 1868 - March 5, 1950

 

When he was young he learned to spoon

Beneath the white Midwestern moon.

He had success and then disasters:

Spoon River drowned Edgar Masters.

Uncle Wesli’s Daily Epitaph for Saturday, August 21st, 2010

 

R.I.P.   X. J. KENNEDY

August 21, 1929-

 

The letter “X” is just an ex,

It’s not a blessing or a hex,

Nor will it help you sing a threnody

For the poet X. J. Kennedy.

 

Here lies, riming while he snoozes,

Joseph Kennedy. May the Muses

If he wakens give him plenty

Of his favorite nepenthe.

My last communication with him was only weeks ago. With his characteristic generosity, he had said that "An Old Rakes Prayer at Easter at Ballina" from my forthingcoming collection "A Homecoming in the Next Parish Over" was "right up there with Yeats' "John Kinsella''s Lament," etc. and that from what he had seen of the book, it was going to be "One Hell of a Collection." I wanted so much to get that book to him before he died. He had an Irishman's weakness for humor, which allowed the know nothings to dismiss him as a "light" poet, but he also wrote some of the most profound poetry of our time.

Thomas Kerrigan

 

Tom,

     There isn't anything wrong with Joe Kennedy! I've been writing a series called "Epitaphs for the Poets" and posting them on my blog for a year, and they get sent over to Facebook as well. I posted these same epitaphs for Joe last year on his birthday. You've upset everybody who knows Joe. I'm amazed you didn't know about my series. Everybody else does.

Lew

 

Well, I'd rather know I made a fool of myself and Joe's alive than the other way around.

T. K.

 

Phew -- almost freaked me out! Glad to hear X.J. is OK. (And, BTW, he'll be one of the poets whose appearance on Poet to Poet we're digitally re-mastering, and posting on YouTube in a few weeks, along with some of the other shows, from the years -- 1993 to 2001 -- we were on the air on Manhattan Cable, and other cable affiliates around the country. We're launching the series on the 'net in just a couple of weeks. I'll keep you all posted.) And Lewis -- "Kennedy" / "threnody" was a brilliant rhyme! Maybe if I'm lucky, you'll do an "epitaph" for me someday, even if I'm not as fabulous as X.J.!

Leigh Harrison

 

Well, it wasn't exactly War of the Worlds.

T. K.

 

Dear Lew,

 
    Many, many thanks for clearing up the Kerrigan mystery, and for 
letting him know I'm still alive! I'll keep cherishing your deft epitaphs, 
and just might leave orders to chisel one onto my tombstone when I've really 
gone and kicked off.

 
    Good health to you and cheers ever, 

    Joe 

The Church

 

  

As the son of the minister of the First Italian Baptist Church of Meriden, Connecticut, needless to say “the church” loomed exceedingly large in my life. If we as a family were poor, and we were, so was the parish. As a result, I had not only to attend Sunday school, Vacation Bible School, the weekly sermon — at least the one in English, for my father preached two services, one in Italian as well — and sing in the choir when I was old enough, I also had to mow the big lawn in the summertime and shovel the walks in winter. Eventually, when papa could no longer find a volunteer parishioner to do the job, I became the official janitor for the church, and that meant that I got paid a pittance for doing everything a janitor does. If my father had realized what one of my tasks led to, he would have fallen to his knees and begged the Lord to forgive him.

 

In the basement it is cool

among the tables, the small chairs,

the folding screens and crayons.

The lavatory is damp, the water runs;

there is room for webs and fables.

 

The wooden stair ascends and turns

into heat settled among the pews.

The altar rises above the golden oak

which dark juice has stained.

Frayed wine runs down the center aisle

away from the electric keys,

the hymnals with the broken covers.

 

Summer lies upon the step before the door,

beneath the white clapboards,

the pictures peeling from the glass.

The gate of pipe and wire stands ajar.

 

Next door the parsonage is scaled to dolls.

It takes the corner,

facing another neighborhood.

Six garages stand by a gravel drive.

A pear tree withers there, and on the curb

an elm like a cathedral stays alive.

 

Being both a Baptist and an Italian posed certain insoluble dilemmas for my father, but not for my Methodist mother. Both denominations eschewed alcohol, including wine, but wine is a staple for Italians. At home there was never a problem, because neither of my parents drank at all. However, if there were a wedding at which my father officiated, at the reception following he was expected to lead a toast to the bride and groom, and everyone was supposed to make the toast with real wine.

I remember once when my mother publicly belabored my father at a reception for drinking a sip of the toasting liquid. My mother had no tact at all. With the parishioners and guests looking on, a public dust-up took place between May and Luigi of the sort that they, my brother Gene, and I were very well used to, but my father was humiliated, and that’s not too strong a word. He was enraged. The wedding party was appalled, primarily with mother.

Early on Communion Sunday mornings I would go out the back door of the parsonage, walk a few steps, go into the side door of the church, down a few steps, and into the basement where the kitchen was located. I had to cut up a loaf of Wonder Bread into cubes, put them on trays, and fill the little communion wine glasses not with wine, but with grape juice; then I had to carry the trays of bread and juice upstairs and place them on the communion table for the ushers to distribute. The parishioners would take bread and “wine” from the trays the ushers passed around, and then place the used glasses into the cup holders on the backs of the pews.

Afterward I had to collect the cups again, place them into the trays, and when I got back to the kitchen I had to separate those that had been unused and remained untouched in the trays. Then, using a funnel, I poured the untouched grape juice back into the bottles which, as I recall, were not refrigerated, though I may be wrong about that. I was not above sampling some of the little glasses instead of frugally saving their contents for the next month’s communion.

One day while I was sipping a few my head began to feel odd, sort of dizzy and muzzy. I picked up one of the bottles and held it up to the light. I noticed that there was something in the bottom of the bottle, something fuzzy, sort of, a bit like furry marbles. I sniffed the open neck — it still smelled like grape juice, but there was another element besides grape, a sort of robust body with an autumn finish and overtones of spice.

I staggered back to the parsonage and probably went to the room I shared with my brother. I don’t believe I alerted my father to the situation with the weird grape juice because, as I recollect, I did the same thing more than once. On the other hand, I don’t remember that this particular chore of mine lasted very long. If I had to give odds, I’d bet that my ever-vigilant mother finally caught on. Once, when I was a man, she got after me for carrying Bay Rum around with me in my travel kit. I had the Devil of a time convincing her that Bay Rum is an after-shave lotion. 

Listen to Lewis Turco read his poem The Church

        “The church” first appeared in La Fusta and was anthologized and reprinted with an Italian translation by Ferdinando Alfonsi in Poeti Italo-Americani / Italo-American Poets, edited by Ferdinando Alfonsi, Catanzaro, Italy: Antonio Carello Editore, 1985. It was collected in Fearful Pleasures: The Complete Poems of Lewis Turco 1959-2007, www.StarCloudPress.com, 2007, ISBN 978-1-932842-19-5, jacketed cloth, $49.95; ISBN 978-1-932842-20-3, trade paperback, $32.95, 640 pages. ORDER FROM AMAZON.COM. Both the poem and accompanying essay appear in La Famiglia / The Family, Memoirs, by Lewis Turco, New York: Bordighera Press, 2009, ISBN 978-1-59954-006-1, trade paperback, 196 pp., $12.00. ORDER FROM AMAZON.

 

Newt Gingrich said that Nazis don't have the right to advertise near the Holocaust Museum in DC. Of course they do! I used to belong to the ACLU until they sanctioned the Nazi march in Skokie. They were right to do so, but I hated it.

Uncle Wesli’s Daily Epitaph for Tuesday, August 17th, 2010

 

R.I.P. TED HUGHES

August 17, 1930 –October 28, 1998

 

“He often put himself into a trance before he writing,

and he tried to take the point of view of animals.”

— Garrison Keillor.

”

“He often put himself into a trance

Before he writing,” and before he dance.

He always asking animals for views,

And now he make believe he dead Ted Hughes.

 

R.I.P. WALTER SCOTT

August 15, 1771 – 21 September 21, 1832

 

In verse he wrote the Minstrel’s Lay

Which made him famous, though not much hay,

But then he discovered how to plot

In prose and died Sir Walter Scott.

 

Published originally in Per Contra Spring 2009 Light Verse Supplement at www.percontra.net/14lightverseentry.htm

Blues for Don Justice

 

August 12, 1925 - August 6, 2004

 

Well, Don, I guess we knew you’d have to leave;

We hoped not, but we saw you had to leave,

And now the time has come for us to grieve.

 

We knew you young, we knew you when we all

Were young — you included, when we all

Were wrapt in language, held in hypnotic thrall

 

By sound and metre, couplet, quatrain, thrime,

By rhythm in the line, caesura, rhyme,

And it was you who taught us how to chime.

 

You read our work with care, closely, with care.

You read us with intelligence and care.

You let your annoyance show, but you were fair

 

When we were lax or earless, when we were mules.

Thanks for vouchsafing us the poet’s tools.