Verging on Pertinence: Tony Hoagland Wrote This..

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Tony Hoagland Wrote This..

..Poem.   Apropos of a day when I've been listening to a lot of CD's pleading for my attention in between being in and out shoveling the packed white stuff off of cars, porches, sidewalks, and streets.

"On the CD I Buy for My Brother"
A forlorn guy with a guitar
    issues bulletins from the coast of Melancholia,
plainitive dirges in which the macho and the romantic
     run together like two rivers
joined into a watershed area that could be called
                        Big Mississippi Pity Party,

and the singer is a loner with a boner
   and he's a Gomer and a moaner and a longtime roamer
and the moon in his rearview reminds him of a redhead
     in Natchez with a little anorexia problem
who danced the hoochie coochie clad in just a green bandana.

He says, "Love don't last but I recall her haid on the pillow"
                                 shorely was a purty sight;
he says, "Daylight's just a torn-open letter saying Larry I'm sorry."

I mean this guy is always rowing upstream on the Bad Luck River
    with a rusty hubcap for a paddle

or looking downward from the precipice of I'm No Good
   at the base of which an ocean of whiskey and beer
      has been performing erosion for years,

so it's possible that I am doing my brother no favor
by appealing to certain tendencies already in his disposition,

but then, why should I try to improve him on his birthday?
when at this stage of our lives what we are and what we aren't
          is so very apparent
and the grown-ups we once needed to please are endlessly silent

and the nights are long and hollow like the inside of a tunnel
and the train rushing through that tunnel is moving faster and faster
        and you know the cargo in those boxcars is some serious business,

while the singer goes on bringing the news
                               that all cliches are true

and the sunsets are breaking their old records for beauty.

Hmmm,

I guess I'll go out again, shovel propped on one shoulder, and delve into Mr. Hoagland's Hesitatin' CD Bequest Blues as I throw my additions to the gathering snowpiles......

I'm at that age where self-improvement has muted to self-realization and self-denial has become self-delusion and I'm merely trying to trash all the "self"-things and let the sediment of my soul settle into a quiet pool where disturbance is minimal and the sediment solidifies into personality.

Now,

where's that CD I've been meaning to listen to?

Addendum (3/01/2010): Ok, folks. A lot seem to be drawn here because of the lines, "I mean this guy is always rowing upstream on the Bad Luck River with a rusty hubcap for a paddle".

Great, right?!

So, please..PLEASE buy Mr. Hoagland's "What Narcissim Means to Me". This poem, "On the CD I Buy for My Brother", and 37 other ones are contained within the thin tome.

How's "Poem in Which I Make the Mistake of Comparing Billie Holiday to a Cosmic Washerwoman" sound to you? GO! This poem's in the same book. BUY!

And while you're there pick up his "Sweet Ruin" or his most recent collection, "Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty". Hey, even a poet gets hungry on occasion; feed the poet.

Labels: 2010: Are We Recovering Yet?