[David Westheimer]

I like these very much. The first made me laugh out loud. I was drinking some iced tea (in mid winter!) and managed to slosh it over my shirt. These are mordant, cruel and funny. The third managed to conjure up not just the Pied Piper but Amahl and the Night Visitors, though I'm sure the opera, not very interesting in itself, was not on his mind as much as the folk-type. "Strewn among/ the ragged queue/...are the teeth,the bones/adn begging cup/of the drunken piper." The image of a dead piper,who promised salvation, delivered, and then stole the children when the Fee wasn't paid, and the crippled boy who is trying to get in (late arrival? questor?)who promises to "father the race of the lame" is bleak beyond any belief, but is also funny. I take it the italicized words are expressions of his intent. "...will go..." where? Are his parents inside the locked mountain? Or will he go back to his mother? I took it the second way but it is deliciously ambiguous. And it turns out that he does not actually mention his father, as the line "I will grow up to father" which sounds like a reference to his pop turns out to be one in which "father" is a verb. This strikes me as a very Catholic poem in some ways. Since I'm not a Catholic I don't know why. All that mom and pop stuff, I guess: redemption, guilt (or at least unexplained shame--because he failed at the mountain? because he is defective?--are the two really the same,physical embodiment of a qualitative flaw, as in a melodrama?).

I like the philosophical distance and also the "finish" here. These do not strike me as crude, though I'm sure many here will find them offensive. They are a good anti-dote to the goo. Beauty can be stark and need not always be uplifting in the homiletic sense. Sometimes it can be a little frightening and absurd, sometimes a laugh. Good to see that there are those writing with a bit of stomach and a bit of shine as well.

Thanks very much for posting these. I will try to find some Paterson at the library.




[This message has been edited by David Westheimer (edited February 25, 2003).]