[New-Poetry] Fw: American Life in Poetry: Column 125

[Anny Ballardini]

What about subways?


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> American Life in Poetry: Column 125
>
> BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
>
Here Barry Goldensohn of New York offers a look at a contemporary subway 
station.

>
> Subway
>
> The station platform, clean and broad, his stage
> for push-ups, sit-ups, hamstring stretch,
> as he laid aside his back pack, from which
> his necessaries bulged, as he bulged
> through jeans torn at butt, knee and thigh,
> in deep palaver with himself--sigh,
> chatter, groan. Deranged but common.
> We sat at a careful distance to spy
> on his performance, beside a woman
> in her thirties, dressed as in her teens--
> this is L.A.--singing to herself.
> How composed, complete and sane
> she seemed. A book by the Dalai Lama
> in her hands, her face where pain and wrong
> were etched, here becalmed, with faint chirps
> leaking from the headphones of her walkman.
> Not talking. Singing, lost in song.
>
>
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> American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation 
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> supported by the Department of English at the University of 
> Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2006 by Barry Goldensohn, whose most 
> recent book of poetry is "East Long Pond" (with Lorrie Goldensohn), 
> Cummington Press, 1998. Reprinted from "Salmagundi," Fall, 2006, No. 152, 
> with permission of the author. Introduction copyright (c) 2006 by The 
> Poetry Foundation.  The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as 
> United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of 
> Congress from 2004-2006.  We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
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