American poet and professor Tony Hoagland (1953-2018). Teaching at the University of Houston. Photo Credit: Michael Paulson, Houston Chronicle
People Magazine Sponsors National Poetry Month
On this page Angelina Jolie is wearing
a skimpy barbarian leotard, laughing
and throwing a copy of Sonnets From the Portuguese
across the room
at the head of Brad Pitt,
who is deeply immersed
in his sixteenth reading of Do Not
Go Gentle Into That Good Night.
He is sweaty, shirtless, and tanned,
in boots and calfskin leather pants, and he is
looking aside to check his phone
where he is this very minute getting messages
from Sean Penn and Meryl Streep
about the February meeting
of the e.e. cummings club.
These celebrities
have come together
for the sake of poetry—not just this poem
but great poetry,
a lot of it,
and their erudite shenanigans
are by no means complete,
because now they are getting on board a private jet
to join their friend Nelson Mandela,
who is wearing a Free Gertrude Stein t-shirt.
High over the Atlantic, they are reading poems out loud
by Delmore Schwartz and Marianne Moore,
they are doing villanelles like designer drugs
they are really digging the verse
of Jean Valentine and Dean Young—
its hipness, its sensuality, its Zen gestalt.
Your strange unslakeable thirst
to enter their boudoir
has led you surprisingly here,
where Emma Thompson and Jaz-Z
are about to give a stereophonic performance
of Flow Chart by John Ashbery.
But now they are starting to sway and weep,
as if they had found an old wound
which had held them in thrall
until it was touched and unlocked by feeling;
until they saw the poem
looking up into their face with recognition.
Such is the power of poetry,
which you should remember more often—
perhaps by going shopping later today
for some of the products
brought to you by our sponsors,
Truth, Justice and Beauty.
Tony Hoagland from Smartish Pace, Issue 20, April 2013
What a benefit of cleaning up a library! As I was culling masses of old literary journals from my stacks today I leafed through the April 2013 issue of the literary journal, Smartish Pace, a dangerous move during a book cull, and to my delight found this poem by Tony Hoagland, which I cannot find in any of his poetry collections. Did he forget it? Did he deem it unworthy? We will never know. But I was thrilled by the serendipity of finding this poem at the start of National Poetry Month!
So thanks to life for giving me this occasion to celebrate Tony again after his far-too-early death last September. To enjoy his singular voice again as he celebrates poetry in a very unexpected and Hoaglandish (rhymes with outlandish) way.
This poem, such vintage Hoagland. Lots of sideways humour, a clever and shake-your-head subject for a poem, a list poem of celebrities and poets and then the unexpected turn at the end. The ah! ah! realization that this is a serious poem, after all!
What a surprise after all the Angelina and Brad shenanigans to be given this trenchant definition of what poetry is all about! Not a cocktail party time-waster. These lines:
But now they are starting to sway and weep,
as if they had found an old wound
which had held them in thrall
until it was touched and unlocked by feeling;
until they saw the poem
looking up into their face with recognition.
Such is the power of poetry,
which you should remember more often—
perhaps by going shopping later today
for some of the products
brought to you by our sponsors,
Truth, Justice and Beauty.
Thrilled to be delighted by this romp of a poem and its reminder of poetry and Truth, Justice, Beauty.