Tuesday, May 17, 2005

"Short Order Feng Shui"

One of my favorite professors was, and still is, a poet named David Clewell. His poetry is like a landscape reflected in a soap bubble: certainly recognizable, but skewed and unusually colorful.

"Short Order Feng Shui" is from his latest collection of poems, The Low End of Higher Things
One more venerable tradition so thoroughly sacked
co-opted by the spirit
of a New Age that seems to mean business --
more genuine, practical wisdom reduced
to the practically ridiculous. But part of me is thinking
what could it hurt, maybe
I should widen the footpath between my piles of Who-
Killed-JFK books. Have the 1950s
Atomic Age ashtrays somehow turned into negative
clutter or do they still speak
energetically to me? Should my Pogo figurines stay put
for the rest of their days,
knee-deep in the box of Guaranteed-Authentic Roswell
Saucer Crash-Site Soil?
Do Charlie the Tuna hi-ball glasses work wtih Richard
Nixon commemorative flatware?

I found a slew of other fun poems at Poetry Daily. A few favorites include: Ellen Bass' "When I Die," Carl Dennis' "Our Generation," and William Greenway's, "Canterbury Tale."