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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460742" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>0281 A mid-Atlantic voice</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460742" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">It's said in Indian circles that the years of retirement<br>are the time when men choose the occupation<br>of their next life. So I'm sitting here on a fine Sunday<br>in a quiet London suburb, the very day when the geraniums<br>have decided that they and the sun are into<br>a long-term relationship, sitting wondering whether<br>I'd like to be an American poet next time around.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460742" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">It seems on the surface very tempting: <br>for economic survival, teaching creative writing<br>in a medium-profile college where I guess<br>they get on well with their students<br>and discuss in a class of about twenty-one<br>Pamela Anderson's implants and their removal<br>in an urbane, witty, jokes-and-depth way; <br>they live with a happy family in a happy house<br>and rejoice - as poets, unacknowledged legislators of mankind -<br>in the safety, the relaxed glory, of being typical Americans yet<br>with full liberal license nay duty to criticise or reject or even fulminate against the American Way of Life.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460742" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">They write as they live, a relaxed, underplayed<br>(you should be reading this at that unhurried pace) <br>free verse, (short lines if as Levine claims, <br>his cat sits there and claws him if the line goes on too far, <br>otherwise about four-five slight stresses to a line) <br>as appropriate and becoming for a writer of sincerity and integrity; <br>while under their urbane but sharp observation of natural detail<br>and human fallibility and institutional absurdity and the life<br>of the less fortunate, strong emotions are at play, <br>expressed with a wry, broad-minded and life-affirming balance.<br>They are at ease with themselves, and us.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460742" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">They may run to rhyme for comic and children's verse<br>but otherwise have surrendered the grand statement that clunk-clicks<br>like a doorlock, with perfect rhyme and 'meter'; however<br>that doesn't mean you can't easily tease from the occasional reference<br>that they've read the greats. In depth. In fact they're radio-sharp<br>on every event, every cultural reference, and their relaxed eye<br>and mind and decent heart mixes family, brand names, politics<br>and the afore-inspected Pamela Anderson<br>to make poems which aim at the very heart of America<br>in a very independent American way; in fact you could say<br>although of course I'm not the one to say this, <br>that they are the real conscience of America, <br>the heartland of the united state of mind, and with what - <br>if they used the phrase, 'feelgood factor' -<br>they would play with, using all the subtleties<br>of a fly-fisherman in the river of thought.<br>Even their reviews are enviable: 'a wildly refreshing, <br>necessary poet'; 'writes with an honest man's happy discontent'; <br>'everything is touched by his hand'. They are appreciated.<br>They are that blessed species of human being - useful. And loved.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460742" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Yes, it's tempting to put in an order to the drive-by<br>at the cemetery gates<br>for a new life as American poet. Were it not<br>that we who have lived into a wariness of metaphysical speculation<br>must balance in the world of the unproven <br>the consideration that time-lapse between embodiments<br>may make all this a fruitless dream in a hideous world<br>of swords, not ploughshares; guns, not pens.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460742" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And that - Walt, Jack, Pablo, Hank -<br>would be another ball-game.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Michael+Shepherd">Michael Shepherd</a></strong></div>