I have importuned R.S. Gwynn, Charles Martin, and Robert Mezey to join me as guest on the Lariat in the coming months. But my first guest (July 4) is Timothy Steele, author of "Uncertainties and Rest," "Sapphics Against Anger" and "The Color Wheel," (poetry) and "Missing Measures" and "All the Fun's In How You Say A Thing," criticism. You can learn a great deal about Tim by simply typing Timothy Steele into your search engine and visiting his web page. Tonight though, let me introduce you to Tim by typing the neo-formalist poem I would most kill to have written:
Timothy
Although the field lay cut in swaths,
Grass at the edge survived the crop:
Stiff stems, with lateral blades of leaf,
Dense cattail flower-spikes at the top.
If there was breeze and open sky,
We raked each swath into a row;
If not, we took the hay to dry
To the barn's golden-shimmering mow.
The hay we forked there from the truck
Was thatched resilience where it fell,
And I took pleasure in the thought
The fresh hay's name was mine as well.
Work was a soothing, rhythmic ache;
Hay stuck where skin or clothes were damp.
At length,the pickup truck would shake
Its last stack up the barn's wood ramp.
Pumping a handpump's iron arm,
I washed myself as best I could,
Then watched the acres of the farm
Draw lengthening shadows from the wood
Across the grass, which seemed a thing
In which the lonely and concealed
Had risen from its sorrowing
And flourished in the open field.
One could argue that Timothy has written a greater poem or two, but none has meant so much to this Timothy.
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