This week I thought I'd post a poem written by one of my favorite professors at the University of Puget Sound and Tacoma's first poet laureate, Bill Kupinse. He was an incredible teacher and remains an incredible friend. I find all his poems--but this one in particular--witty and humorous and poignant. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
On Giving First-Year Students a Quiz on Ginsberg's Howl
Each could remember a single, indelible phrase--"fucked in the ass"--
which they quoted, unsolicited, verbatim, as a group. One, bless his heart,
fixed upon the mention of Oklahoma Chinamen, but otherwise to a one,
it was as if they'd met before class to conspire. They meant, I think, no malice.
I believe if you were to wake them, years from now,
weary from hospital rounds or shiftwork or binding arbitration
or working the remnants of the rail line, and whisper Ginsberg's name,
they would offer up the phrase again. I suspect some will recall it as the poem's title.
Yesterday, for the first time, I drove my car outside of town, past
franchised churches and Indian land, past the parched
and undulating fields, each blade a withered shoulder leaning
on the next, a continental shiver born from heat, the way
the land speaks to itself when no one's listening.
I saw how things could move at once and slowly, repetition
the mark of disbelief, each first stalk slapping the last, a set
of tires slapping the road where it turns to dirt. I recalled
when what shocked me scared me, wondered at my blindsight yet.
And I believe for once I understood that time's dilations
can be both blessed and cursed. Oklahoma, flat westlooking
window punctuated by oil rigs, shaken to speech by the rumble of trucks
and the freight's evening whistle, I watch as you slumber, dreaming
your dreams of sodomy and outrage, refusing at all costs madnesss, lost
in your grasping of something to stand against.
I envy you its solidness, your back against the wall.
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