Phoenix Poets

Alan Shapiro

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780226110776
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Poesia

Reel to Reel, Alan Shapiro's twelfth collection of poetry, moves outward from the intimate spaces of family and romantic life to embrace not only the human realm of politics and culture but also the natural world, and even the outer spaces of the cosmos itself. In language richly nuanced yet accessible, these poems inhabit and explore fundamental questions of existence, such as time, mortality, consciousness, and matter. How did we get here? Why is there something rather than nothing? How do we live fully and lovingly as conscious creatures in an unconscious universe with no ultimate purpose or destination beyond returning to the abyss that spawned us? Shapiro brings his humor, imaginative intensity, characteristic syntactical energy, and generous heart to bear on these ultimate mysteries. In ways few poets have done, he writes from a premodern, primal sense of wonder about our postmodern world.

One

WHEREVER MY DEAD GO WHEN I’M NOT REMEMBERING THEM

Not gone, not here, a fern trace in the stone

of living tissue it can somehow flourish from;

or the dried up channel and the absent current;

or maybe it’s like a subway passenger

on a platform in a dim lit station late

at night between trains, after the trains have stopped—

ahead only the faintest rumbling of

the last one disappearing, and behind

the dark you’re looking down for any hint

of light—where is it? why won’t it come? you

wandering now along the yellow line,

restless, not knowing who you are, or even

where until you see it, there it is,

approaching, and you hurry to the spot

you don’t know how you know is marked

for you, and you alone, as the door slides open

into your being once again my father,

my sister or brother, as if nothing’s changed,

as if to be known were the destination.

Where are we going? What are we doing here?

you don’t ask, you don’t notice the blur of stations

we’re racing past, the others out there watching

in the dim light, baffled,

who for a moment thought the train was theirs.

REEL TO REEL

Passed on to me after my brother’s death,

My name in marker on the see-through plastic

Of the giant reel, on which the melody

But not the words of “Jeepers Creepers” breaks off

Halfway across the bridge into my voice

At nine, with two friends on the tape, three boys,

Three voices on the tape, three high-pitched in-

Distinguishable voices hamming it up

Together on some day I can’t remember

In a far corner of the playroom where

My brother every evening sang the words

While the tape recorder played the melody,

Every evening no matter how tired he was,

No matter what else he needed to be doing,

Or wanted to do, despite the pleas, the sulks,

The tantrums, because he had a gift, she said,

And, fine, if he didn’t want to honor it, fine,

His choice, he could kiss it goodbye, for all she cared,

But one day he’ll realize what he’s lost, one day

He’ll wish he’d listened to her—one day, that one

Day each day shaken at him like a club.

Which voice is mine? Who’s there with me? What’s left

Of that day, of any day of all those years

In the cramped house: two reels, one thin, one fat,

And brown tape threaded through the housing, which,

When you hit RECORD, sounded (if you said nothing)

Like water rushing far off underground,

Turning the reels too slow to ever see

The thin one fatten or the fat one thin.

And “Jeepers Creepers”—that was his specialty,

His show stopper, what he always opened with,

Her little Mel Tormé, her Buddy Greco,

So cute, so sexless, she could eat him up,

When he was on stage: the adorable red blazer

With bright white piping on the lapel, white pants,

White patent leather tap shoes, straw hat, and cane.

I see him when I hear the melody,

And somehow I hear every word he sang,

But not him singing on those evenings half

A century away, no single one

Of which I can remember anymore.

“Where’d you get those peepers, jeepers creepers,

Where’d you get those eyes” that hated me

Every evening as they couldn’t not

Because I didn’t have a voice or gift

To be alone inside the spotlight of,

No fear of any day that lay in wait

To make me sorry. “Gosh oh git up

How’d they get so lit up … how’d th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright Page
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• One
• Two
• Three