Carl Sandburg almost ruined poetry for me for life.

Sorry Carl, you are probably a nice guy, but I still shudder at the thought of being in fourth grade, where each week a poetry radio show was piped in through the public address system.

If you've never heard Carl Sandburg read his poetry, consider yourself lucky.
It was like listening to Eeyore on valium, like Satan heavily sedated.
To a fourth grader, it felt like this show went on for hours, days, decades in which only people with voices deep enough to sing "Rawhide" exist.

I ask teachers if kids today actually read poetry, because mine don't.

"Howl" by Allen Ginsberg ruined it for my son., which I thought odd. Remember, he's the free spirit living a hippie-like lifestyle in Oregon, though I'd like to add a disclaimer: He is in no way one of those "fake, trendy, yuppie-hippies" that seem to cluster in the Pacific Northwest. You can tell them by their Birckenstocks, he points out, versus the Dollar Store tennies wrapped in duct tape.

"What a whiner," he said of Ginsberg on the phone the other night.

This all leads me to the delight I felt listening to Billy Collins read his poetry on Garrison Keilor's Prairie Home companion this week.

Being an iconoclast nothing much makes me laugh out loud.

But Billy does.


The Revenant by Billy Collins

I am the dog you put to sleep,
as you like to call the needle of oblivion,
come back to tell you this simple thing:
I never liked you--not one bit.
When I licked your face, I thought of biting off your nose.
When I watched you toweling yourself dry,
I wanted to leap and unman you with a snap.
I resented the way you moved, your lack of animal grace,
the way you would sit in a chair and eat,
a napkin on your lap, knife in your hand.
I would have run away, but I was too weak,
a trick you taught me while I was learning to sit and heel,
and--greatest of insults--shake hands without a hand.
I admit the sight of the leash
would excite me but only because it meant I was about
to smell things you had never touched.
You do not want to believe this,
but I have no reason to lie.
I hated the car,
the rubber toys,
disliked your friends and, worse, your relatives.
The jingling of my tags drove me mad.
You always scratched me in the wrong place.
All I ever wanted from you was food
and fresh water in my metal bowls.
While you slept,
I watched you breathe
as the moon rose in the sky.
It took all my strength not to raise my head and howl.
Now I am free of the collar,
the yellow raincoat,
monogrammed sweater,
the absurdity of your lawn,
and that is all you need to know about this place
except what you already supposed
and are glad it did not happen sooner--
that everyone here can read and write,
the dogs in poetry,
the cats and the others in prose.


If you recall Maynard G. Krebs from Dobie Gilles you all should be snapping your fingers right about now. ;-D