Poetry

Helen Pinkerton Trimpi Reads and Comments on Favorite Turner Cassity Poems

Poetry reading and commentary video from Helen Pinkerton Trimpi.

Turner Cassity Reads at the Huntington Library, April 12, 2003

Poetry reading video from Turner Cassity

Visitors to San Simeon

                          1932

1. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

The Rimer Unrhymed

Mej. Zelle

In youth I was your basic overweight Dutch frump,
As at the end I was. Between, the quantum jump

To Mata Hari, ethnic artist dancing nude
Before Crowned Heads, if not the Asian multitude

That would know bump-and-grinding when they saw it. Spy?
Well, maybe. Such few secrets as I could supply

I hardly understood. But faced with firing squad
I was as firm as Nurse Cavell. A simple nod

That signals one is ready; and the blindfold off,
To serve as scarf, inhibit any final cough.

Edith Cavell

England’s recruiting poster Joan of Arc,
I was a crypto-Walloon, and a stark

Reminder that when all is said and done
The letter of the law was with the Hun,

Although I rose at once to such renown
As was the Lusitania’s, once down,

If with as little claim to innocence.
All that could be brought forth in my defense

Is that I did not profit from my acts,
And that confession is what guile exacts.

Hay

Wildfire

Baying at Two Moons