Celebrating Poets and Their Songs

Written and arranged by

Susan Haley, Poetry Coordinator

January. The month signaling the ‘new’ . . . a new year, a new hope, perhaps a new dream.  New lists of resolutions and challenges. Some will know success, a few will be forgotten or abandoned, and still others will be stored on a shelf in the ‘resolution closet’ to be attempted again on the dawn of yet another new January. The circles do turn. Will turn. Always will turn. It’s a Cosmic thing.

          The New Year’s first month is, too, a time of reflection. We ponder awhile on the year past, our lives past.  What we’ve learned and experienced now must be woven into the horizon of yet another ‘new’. Throughout this month, I, on behalf of the Infinite Writer, wish you all a new year of challenge and growth, health of mind and body, and prosperity of wisdom and spirit.

In the months past, the poems shared here were more of the rhyme-verse nature, the traditional expressions of things familiar. Heart, visual, and nature things which carry us through the corridors of the poet’s soul. To launch the new, I’d like to explore into the world of ‘free’ verse as well. The ‘deep’ thinker kind of poetry that stirs the mind with symbolism and imagery . It’s the unfathomable poetry old Literature teachers loved to assign, the classics of such legends as Poe, D.H. Lawrence, and Frost. In this element of ‘free’, we are taken more into the corridors of poet’s mind. The passageways, often wandering through the shadows. Mystery and perception challenge the reader into interpretation.  Reaction allows it to become a personal journey, the phenomena of vision through another’s eyes.

Lee Klein is a poet, curator, essayist, actor, producer and writer on the arts. He’s just returned from a visit to China to continue his exploration of the taking over of reality by a consumer culture. With his poem “World’s Biggest Shopping Mall” published by Linear Arts in 1997 and followed by “Financial Surrealists Take The Train” in 1999, he won acclaim from Columbia University’s Poetry Professor, Bob Holman, who said of his work “I don’t know if your work is an aesthetic or a mental condition.” Mr. Klein has been involved in so many venues of the New York City art community, the publications and media productions to his credit are just too numerous to mention. One tool of his research is employed through a converging with the City itself, taking the role of a tour bus guide where he delights his patrons with his talents. I had the pleasure of meeting him on a night tour of the City that is, arguably, the modern mecca of the Arts. He was kind enough to share with me a poem he wrote through the eyes of a tour guide, an example of symbolism at its best. I take personal responsibility for its length as it does far expand the submission guidelines. It is my first attention to ‘interpretive’ poetry, however, and I use it as a speculative tool to conjure thought. In the future, the guidelines will be adhered to.     

The Circle Un-Squared

Beginning in the mustard and ketchup colored

tour bus pavilion

From which and where I work out from

Unfolds a condiment universe

With a taxi cab front line and a livery accompaniment

A corridor of tourist targeted food suppliers

And then again in the bus terminal

Mustard yellow tabletops

Here the boy scouts meet the borscht belt

Watch Nathan the famous hot dog stand

The big bad wolf meets Goldilocks

Tiers of billowing red reflections

Automobiles-front ends like the sparkling silver crème silk

Chrome Cadillac SUV gull winged and jigsaw puzzle pieced in by cranes

Then formatted for the sky

Or stickling out wrongly pulled out over the asphalt edge of the parking lot and onto the sidewalk

The assassinated pay phone gave birth to the banana

The blonde Hercules of the hiccupping laugh track

To drive around pulling in nobody

Double Decker Triple Decker Quadruple bypass

Three story four lane super buses

Hotels on wheels-audiences keep on getting bigger

Tours keep on getting better

Until here comes an entire stadium around the bend

Scissors brought into the wrought iron curlicue

Diners on the parallax

Dinners on the parallax

Pennants of ridge

Slide onto glass

Red and black gating as if a Caribbean fire engine station

Before a school auditorium

Wedding cakes and loading bays

Cement barely skims the surfaces

Purple and gold

Whether a bicycle messenger's valise

Or the uniform shirt

Of a sandwich making maestro

Trompe l'oeil before poker eyes

As pineapple rings around black holes

In the summertime

The dead buzz of agave tiling

Neon in the hearth of a brick oven's front-piece

The gift shop blown out-Gone now

Pile up in Poemtopolis

My metonymous metropolis

We thought the bottom was the top

Now the bottom is on top of us

A tour guide in a bright yellow mustard leather jacket

Must have been staring at the synthetic sun too long

Mural of a horse and rider Against a yellow field

"Hunter's Whiskey" Newly uncovered

And at that at a recently demolished building's side

Cadillac S.U.V's

Come around corners as if indoor arenas outdoors

I twirl my twin hole punchers

While singing Bon Jovi's

 "I'm a cowboy and on a steel horse I ride

And I'm wanted dead or alive"

I am cowboy slinging a microphone

and twin hole punchers

Having been out down this way before

The sun is perched atop the July sky

High noon and back to back and back to back

Back I am back - back to give the tour

A silken chrome cream with a silver glint S.U.V

Comes around the bend

A three lane four story silken cream chrome

With a silver glint S.U.V turns now

The pink bubble gum colored wrecking ball drops

The summer takes a dive

The flat grilled cheese colored star of the lone star state

Mounted squarely on the marquee

of the large theme park mess hall

Times Square centered mess hall

Firmly centered in Times Square

And on a side street - a brass door knob store

Lee Klein 2002

Mr. Klein can be contacted at llmk1@aol.com

We met Sidney in November. He penned beautiful poems of heart. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that he also wrote interpretive poems like “Fame”.

Following is a poem by Robert J. Delany. He, too, wrote many. Amazing how many writers who specialize in other genres often seem to express their very heart, or in this case, mind, through simplicity or the symbolism of poetry. “New Shoes of the Cobbler” is an award-winning poem.