[stylist] Poem - "Dad"

[William L Houts]

HI Jim,

Thanks for taking the time to read and comment on my poem.  To speak to 
your question about reading and writing poetry as mediated by the screen 
reader, well, it's taken me a long time to arrive at a place where I 
feel comfortable doing that.  It's lead me to stick to a conventional 
blocky sort of stanza rather than experimenting with more sophisticated 
ways of arranging my lines. On the other hand, I have learned to hear 
JAWS well enough to work with rhyme, alliteration and the other tools we 
poets use.  I usually have my friend Kevin read my stuff as soon as I've 
completed it, just so I can get a solid feel for how a sighted reader 
makes sense of my poems, and usually it works out.  It's taken me about 
ten or twelve years of blindness to finally feel comfortable working 
with poetry though.


--Bill







On 3/21/2014 11:16 AM, Homme, James wrote:
> Hi Bill,
> This speaks to me of how we try to do what we are supposed to do, and I think want to do: hold our fathers up in high esteem. It also causes me to remember stories of my grandfather, whom my dad made out to be a wonderful guy to us kids. I learned through others that Grandpap would come home after spending his pay check on hard drinking to ten kids and smash up the Christmas tree. That's what started the tradition of putting up the tree right on Christmas Eve.
>
> My grandfather loved to fish. When my grandparents went to live in Florida after his retirement, he enjoyed that a lot.
>
> I have trouble understanding poetry very well. I think part of it may be that for me it is hard to listen to it with a screen reader. It's hard to look at the form and to just read it. Does anyone have any tricks for that?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Jim
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of William L Houts
> Sent: Friday, March 21, 2014 1:25 PM
> To: Writer's Division Mailing List
> Subject: [stylist] Poem - "Dad"
>
>
>
>
> Hi Friends,
>
> Here's a fairly recent piece; I think I wrote it last summer. Comments
> welcome, as always.
>
>
> --Bill
>
>
> ---
>
> Dad
>
>
> I
>
> You're featured in half-dreams,
>
> in photos, and rueful talk of those
>
> who knew you well.
>
> The fishing, the drinking, the drawings
>
> of starlike ladies, half model
>
> half matron, medusas:
>
> those phantoms erotic, aborning
>
> before my conception. I clasp
>
> those time-shards, your fractional ghost
>
> and grieve a father in fragments.
>
> II.
>
> O Isaac Oedipus Hamlet all,
>
> you mythic sons of mythic ghosts,
>
> your fathers loomed like shadows noir,
>
> with murder, blindness, sacrifice;
>
> your griefs were meant to teach,
>
> and Dad, he read you all, a scholar drunk,
>
> and joker king. I got my chops from him,
>
> this poet thing, these bloody stones,
>
> and gnaw upon his drunkard bones.
>
> III.
>
> He died of cirrhosis, a word which
>
> sounds better than it wears.More drama than trauma:
>
> a divorce in progress, I remember him faintly,
>
> a hale sunlike presence who smoked and laughed,
>
> whose breath smelled of adult mannish things:
>
> rum, tobacco, authority suborned
>
> by a sodden tongue. We neither smoke nor drink,
>
> his gay thoughtful sons, and though
>
> we love him, this muscular ghost,
>
> there would have been rabid scenes; tears
>
> as hot as LA streets, and feelings as hard.
>
>   From heartwise depths some forty years on,
>
> I toast him high, and kiss him gone.
>
> IV.
>
> Then there's thatphoto of you
>
> on that flatboat, in sun-colored shorts
>
> and a sun hero smile.
>
> I was never so hot.
> Even now the family girls
>
> enlarge upon your gifts, your jokes, your
>
> sun hero smile. But that photo again:
>
> you raise a fish to the skies, to camer'as eye,
>
> and nothing intrudes, no scolding, no law.
>
> The world, says that shot, is happy
>
> with you at its center: a sportsman king
>
> with all his gear.IN heaven you hear,
>
> I hope, my calloused grief some four
>
> decades on and more.It's late for tears:
>
> we only praise your sun-brightguile,
>
> and that lake, the way
>
> you posed, some hero thrice foretold:
>
> one year, one day, like gold.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> "Let's drink a toast now to who we really are."
>
>             --Jane Siberry
>
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-- 
"Let's drink a toast now to who we really are."

           --Jane Siberry