I've been meaning to discuss this with Carol, Roger, Jim, David, etc., for some time. Landing the fall issue, 2002 of Light, was quite a coup for us, but looking back, I find many of the poems are pretty lame, lacking charge, inferior to the jokes they tell. For instance, if I were to do a book, I would strike the two Norwegian jokes I told and The Stock Boy. I would substitute two new poems, The Prayer:
The Prayer
Murphy carries a pint uncracked
and hidden at his hip
but falls in the lane. His backside smacked,
he contemplates his slip.
“Mither o’ God, tis been some time
since Ireland had a quake,”
observing with impromptu rhyme,
“Mark how the streetlamps shake!”
As though he shoulders a Guiness keg
he staggers up from the mud,
but something wet runs down his leg.
"Dear God, let it be blood!"
and The Great Moorhead Fire, both of which John Mella has subsequently published:
The Great Moorhead Fire
Joe Kippels ran a department store
outclassed by James Cash Penney,
and old Joe could have torn his hair
except he hadn’t any.
Bill Kenney milked the Silver Moon
for seventy cents a pour.
As Main Street filled with smoke one noon,
a drunkard at his door
cried “Kippels’ store is burning down!”
Never a man to borrow,
Kenney said with a puzzled frown
“I thought that was tomorrow.”
In response to Hugh Clary's expressed concern on Carol's current Passing Memory thread, they're true stories, original to my family and its experience, and they're just better written and funnier than those lame Norwegian jokes. Which Wilbur acknowledged when he recanted his savage criticism of our project and told me these made it all worthwhile. Colleagues, we've had eighteen months to think about this and get some distance on it. I challenge all of you to revise, rework, and resubmit, or write anew. Many of our poems stand the test of time for me, Carol's poem about Sherlock, Jim's about the Octopus, John's about the Regimental Rubber, Wakefield's about the bear and pepper spray. David's cat on the roof. Roger's Shit, I Missed. But it's been a long time. A third of the work, some of the best, came in after the Light cut-off. I'd like every poet to take a fresh look at his jokes, and this time, let's make a book. Let's shoot for fifty to eighty pages and be Deep Endy in critiquing one another's work. We HAVE a book here, but it can be a great deal better than what appeared in Light. We'll do it here at Gen'l Talk and leave the Lariat board to Clive and our non-met members. yr lariat.
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