Put This On, Please: New & Selected Poems - Softcover

Trowbridge, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 159709966X ISBN 13: 9781597099660

Publisher: Red Hen Press, 2013

Synopsis

William Trowbridge’s Put This On, Please: New and Selected Poems contains work from all five of his full collections, as well as a group of new poems. In lines that capture the rhythms of everyday speech (with the ghost of meter haunting closely along), Trowbridge follows misfits and outcasts whose ramblings and shamblings reflect our own well-meaning gropes for fulfillment. These reader-friendly poems draw often from classic films and other elements of popular culture—from Buster Keaton to Chuck Berry, from King Kong to Wile E. Coyote. Trowbridge is not squeamish about exploring the darker side of humanity, as in poems about the Kiss of Death, delivered by Michael Corleone in The Godfather II, or Nebraskan mass murderer Charles Starkweather. Capping off the book, a group of new poems takes a fresh look at old themes, sounding deepened notes of both melancholy and celebration. Throughout this seriocomic account of human foibles, vices, and wonders, Trowbridge makes a strong case for laughter as the only appropriate response to our post-post-modern condition.

About this title

About the Author:

William Trowbridge is the Poet Laureate of Missouri. He is the author of the poetry collections Ship of Fool, Enter Dark Stranger, O Paradise, Flickers, and The Complete Book of Kong, and the chapbooks The Packing House Cantata, The Four Seasons, and The Book of Kong. His poems have appeared in such periodicals as The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, The Georgia Review, Poetry, Boulevard, and New Letters. He lives in the Kansas City area and teaches in the University of Nebraska s low-residency MFA program."

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

THE KISS
V-J Day, Times Square, 1945
 
Famous and faceless as those who raised
the flag on Suribachi, they lean forever
in black and white: the randy gob, fresh
from sailing back alive, who's just found
something better to kiss than pavement,
and the nurse whose sheer-white-stockinged legs
show trim as any pin-up girl's.
Bent backward and off balance in his arms,
she catches what he's found the nerve to pitch,
her right knee bending slightly
from his boyish ardor. Passers-by await
the finish, poised to applaud or cheer,
but the two go on and on, picked up by Life
to show us what we fight for. Are they lovers?
Strangers? Is the whole thing being posed
for the Sunday supplement?
                                                   We cannot know.
The show ends here, as did our latest dance
to death’s slick croon, with the kind of kiss
that Bogart planted on Bacall. The rest,
as we're sometimes told, belongs to history,
off camera, clearing its rheumy throat.

About this edition

• Publisher: Red Hen Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 159709966X
• ISBN 13: 9781597099660
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208