Poet Tony Hoagland Dead at 64

[Bouvre]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/24/obituaries/tony-hoagland-dead.html

 

Tony Hoagland is a great, wonderful writer who moved simply but expertly and efficiently through language. Here is one of my favorite poems by him: Fred Had Watched A Lot Of Kung Fu Episodes

 

so when the policeman asked

to see his driver's license, he said,

Does the wind need permission

.

from the hedgehog to blow?

which resulted in a search of the car,

which miraculously yielded nothing

.

since Fred had swallowed all the mescaline already

and was just beginning to fall in love

with the bushy caterpillar eyebrows

of the officer in question.

.

In those days we could identify

the fingerprints on a guitar string

by the third note of the song

broadcast from the window of a passing car,

.

but we couldn't tell the difference

between a personal disaster

and "having an experience,"

.

so Fred thought being locked up for the night

was kind of fun,

with the graffiti on the drunk-tank wall

chattering in Mandarin

and the sentient cockroaches coming out to visit

in triplicate.

.

Back then it wasn't a question of pleasure or pain,

It wasn't a question of getting to the top

then trying not to fall at any cost.

.

It was a question of staying tuned in,

one episode at a time,

said Fred to himself

as he walked home the next morning

under the spreading lotus trees on Walnut Street,

feeling Oriental.

 

 

 

Thanks for everything Tony

[KH868]

If he didn't have poems about marginalizing minorities or eating ass was he truly alive. 

[Bouvre]

On 10/27/2018 at 8:07 AM, KH868 said:

If he didn't have poems about marginalizing minorities or eating ass was he truly alive. 

http://ithicks.blogspot.com/2008/01/change-by-tony-hoagland.html?m=1

This one was a hot debate for a good minute when it arrived on the scene in 2003

Still considered a gleaming example of his racism by many

Edited October 28, 2018 by Bouvre

[KH868]

18 hours ago, Bouvre said:

http://ithicks.blogspot.com/2008/01/change-by-tony-hoagland.html?m=1

This one was a hot debate for a good minute when it arrived on the scene in 2003

Still considered a gleaming example of his racism by many

what a guy