[New-Poetry] Re: A drunk, a lurcher

[Anny Ballardini]

It is all my fault. I should have noticed the "shoes of white ash" and the paragraph under the name of the author:
New York Writes After September 11

I feel like _shi-eh-t_, excuse my usual French.
  From: Halvard Johnson 
  Sent: Monday, September 11, 2006 7:30 PM


  I'm not a big fan of the "not a big fan of . . ." phrase
  when it comes to poetry (or the arts in general). The
  last thing that poetry and the arts need is fanaticism.


  Hal


  "The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away,
   for expedients, and by parts."
  --Edmund Burke


  Halvard Johnson
  ================
  halvard at gmail.com
  halvard at earthlink.net
  http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard
  http://entropyandme.blogspot.com 
  http://imageswithoutwords.blogspot.com
  http://www.hamiltonstone.org 


  On Sep 11, 2006, at 12:50 PM, David Graham wrote:


    On 9/11/06 11:23 AM, "Anny Ballardini" <anny.ballardini at tin.it> wrote:


      An excellent poem. It describes a scene I have had in my mind for a while. I met a homeless in Key West. A beautiful man, 47? 49? I was much younger. He was ravaging garbage cans to find something to eat. I think beauty and estrangement work in a charismatic way both in Deborah Garrison's poem and in my thought. My homeless was well dressed, as Garrison's drunkard. This brings to the assumption that we are dealing with a sudden disgrace, to which follows the natural projection that it could happen to me/us any time. 
      Garrison's drunkard does not look at her straight into her eyes. My homeless did. It would be interesting to speculate further on this.

      You already sent this poem, if I am not wrong. Thus thank you for re-sending it.

    ---------------------------------


    Yes, I probably sent in on a previous September 11.  I don't think the man in Garrison's poem is drunk, except metaphorically.  Otherwise, yes, I share your responses to the poem.  This remains one of the most effective 9/11 poems, to my mind, though I'm not a big fan of Garrison's other work.


    ====================================================
    David Graham
    grahamd at ripon.edu
    Home Page:
    http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
    Poetry Library:
    http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
    ====================================================

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