[1291] The List of Most Difficult Words

Guest poem submitted by Ajit Narayanan, <ajitq@> :

Monday's poem ('My Father's Love Letters') reminded me, in spirit and
in content, of this one:

I was still standing although
Gabriella Wells and Barbara Ryan were too,
their bodies dark against the wall of light
that dull-pewter December afternoon,
shadows with words that flowed
so easily from their mouths,
fluorescent and grievous,
pied and effervescent,
words I'd spelled out to the rhythm
of my father's hoarse whispers
during our nightly practice sessions
beneath the dim bulb,
superfluous, excelsior,
desultory and exaggeration
mixed with his Schaefer breath
and Lucky Strike smoke

as I went down
The List of Most Difficult Words
with a man whose wife had left,
one son grown into madness,
the other into death,
my father's hundred and five-pound skeleton
of skin glowing in that beer-flooded kitchen
when he'd lift the harmonica

to blow a few long, sad riffs
of country into a song
while he waited for me to hit
the single l of spiraling,
the silent i of receipt,
the two of us working words hard
those nights on Olmstead Street,
sure they would someday save me.

	-- Len Roberts

Like a lot of beautiful poems, it's difficult to pinpoint _where_
exactly the beauty of Roberts' poem lies. Perhaps it's the sudden shift
from one image to another, but nonetheless conveying, with great
expressiveness, the relationship between a father and his son. His
choice of difficult words isn't too bad either!

Roberts is a fairly established poet, having published seven books of
poetry and having won several awards. Several of his poems can be found
here:
	http://www.worldpoetry.com/poets/roberts.len.html

LEN ROBERTS, a professor of English at Northampton Community College,
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, has published seven collections of poetry. One
of them, Black Wings, was selected for the National Poetry Series in
1989. His work has appeared in many journals, including The American
Poetry Review, The Hudson Review, and Poetry.
	-- http://www.press.uillinois.edu/s98/roberts.html

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From: RandyKCross@

Len Roberts' poem, "The List of Most Difficult Words," is a fine example of 
his marvelous ability to transform the ordinary into the universal.  I don't 
know of a finer poet writing today.