The Best American Poetry 2013 (18 page)

He had an impressive command of the major English texts.

I will do such things, what they are yet I know not,

but they shall be the terrors of the earth,
he said.

The child,
he said,
is father of the man.

from
FIELD

Lucas took one of those trips

That Americans of a certain rage

Must take—to find themselves. In Utah

Lucas found himself marooned

In the wilderness, 50 miles

From society, covered in flop sweat

And Cheetos dust, perched on the roof

Of his teenaged Pinto as it neighed

A swan song. His cowed cell phone crowed:

Out of range, where seldom is heard

A word. Should he hike back to Moab?

Should he wait for his satellite

To synch or should he scream like Job

And curse the day he was born?

To keep awake he stared at the sun

And sneezed. After a week, he came to

Believe that snakelets were zagzigging

From his brain to his heart so that

He felt what he thought. That was enough

To move Lucas from hood to the earth.

He mimed building a fire and cooking

A can of beans. At dusk, Li Po

Came down from the foothills, looking

For Keith Moon. Lucas offered regrets

And faux joe. They discussed The Who.

“ ‘Substitute' is their best song,” Lucas said.

The poet disagreed: “ ‘Magic Bus'—

The version on
Live at Leeds
.”

From the arroyo Steve-the-saguaro

Plucked his mesquite ukulele

As he sang, “Thank My Lucky Stars

I'm a Black Hole.” Lucas joined on

The chorus and Li Po shadow waltzed.

Later, over spirits, Li Po cupped

His ear and whispered, “Do you hear

The hoo-hah of hoof beats? The great herd

Is here to lead Old Paint to that

Better place ‘where the graceful whooper

Goes gliding along like a handmaid

In a blissful dream.'
Lo siento.
”

Then Lucas submitted to gravity.

When the highway patrol found him

He looked like a dried peach. They emptied

Their canteens over his face until

His skin sprung back, like a Colt pistol,

To the lifelike. On the bus ride home

Lucas slapped himself silly, chanting:

I want it, I want it, I want it . . .

from
The Common

He was Joe Adamczyk and

Eve Grabuskawa was her name.

They owned a tavern called

Adamczyk & Eve's and they

Called their sex life Grandma Fogarty.

Nights as closing time approached

Joe would say, “Eve, do you think

Grandma Fogarty could drop by?”

And Eve would often answer,

“I would not be a bit surprised.”

Years passed in just this way.

Blatz, Schlitz, Pabst Blue Ribbon,

Heileman's Old Style Lager,

Old Milwaukee—ten thousand

Beer glasses filled and emptied.

When pizza pies, as they were then known,

Achieved popularity Joe and Eve offered

The pies to customers and called them

Polish pizzas for a laugh. Beer sales

Skyrocketed as pizza pies appeared.

Also available were White Owl cigars,

And Cubs' home runs were called

White Owl Wallops by Jack Brickhouse

On the TV set above the bar.

But the Cubs lost during the 1950s.

In those days some wrong ideas were held.

Around the time Kennedy was elected and

Eve Grabuskawa began her menopause,

Grandma Fogarty was told to take her leave.

Grandma Fogarty was sent on her way.

No more did Grandma Fogarty come calling

At all hours of the night like a will-o'-the-wisp

Fluttering, flickering, and then fully ablaze.

As Eve and Joe's union passed twenty years,

Grandma Fogarty was nowhere to be found.

But is this not a familiar story as married

Couples age and passion's flame sinks?

Let us turn to the much more novel story

Of how Joe Adamczyk, the Chicago bartender,

Transformed himself into a man of ideas.

No stale autodidact would he become,

But a thinker comfortable and at home

In a variety of disciplines, reading widely

In libraries, copying pages, memorizing

Long passages, and making diagrams.

He would hardly sleep. He ate little and,

As was true of Edmund Burke,

Anyone trapped under a tree with him

In a sudden rain would quickly see

That Joe Adamczyk was a first-rate mind.

With time his interests would encompass

Gottlob Frege and Whitehead and also

Alonzo Church and Church's dissertation

Awarded at Princeton in 1927 entitled

Alternatives to Zermelo's Assumption
.

His transformation began inauspiciously,

Meandering for years like a stream.

Paint-by-numbers was his first awakening:

Sunsets, views of old windmills,

Solitary reapers, the heads of noble steeds.

In faux-impressionist style these emerged

From the confusing higgledy-piggledy

Of lines and numbers on canvas glued

To cardboard. Joe could execute a large

Paint-by-numbers landscape in one day.

Somehow from his paintings a hunger

For narrative gradually developed.

He imagined stories of people who

Lived in his paint-by-numbers cabins

With smoke curling from the chimneys.

Fascinated by the concept of man

As a story-telling animal, he began

Serious reading for the first time in his life.

He read
The Caine Mutiny
by Herman Wouk

And
Marjorie Morningstar
, also by Wouk.

He followed Wouk with the historical novels

Of Irving Stone:
Lust for Life
,
Men to Match

My Mountains
, and
The Agony and the Ecstasy
.

He read the bestselling
Magnificent Obsession

And
The Big Fisherman
, both by Lloyd C. Douglas.

He amused himself by considering life

As a stage play. Was it tragedy or farce?

He pondered the nature of storytelling,

Then took the short leap, intellectually,

To viewing the world itself as a narrative.

Turning his attention to nonfiction,

In Volume Two of Will and Ariel Durant's

The Story of Civilization
he discovered

The concept of telos in a discussion of

Greek philosophy and the work of Aristotle.

He gnawed the concept of telos like a dog

With a bone. He toyed with the caprice

That even mathematics might be teleological:

An unwinding tale with a start, a middle,

And perhaps an end returning to the beginning.

He grew careless of his tavern and

Heedless of Eve Grabuskawa, still his wife.

He felt drawn to the used bookstores

And hole-in-the-wall coffeehouses

Near the University of Chicago.

The day came when without a word

Joe left Eve Grabuskawa and rented

A room on South Harper Avenue.

He immersed himself in the collegiate

Ambience of the University of Chicago.

In a coffeehouse called the Pegasus

He saw a reproduction—displayed

With ironic intent—of the portrait

Entitled
Arrangement in Grey and Black
,

Also known as
Whistler's Mother
.

He was shocked, was set back on his heels

By the subject's strong resemblance

To Eve Grabuskawa. Had all those years

Of marriage to Eve Grabuskawa been

A dour arrangement in gray and black?

It was the last time he ever thought

Of Eve Grabuskawa, who evanesced

Like the Cheshire Cat, and even his

Attraction to women in general

Deliquesced like Frosty the Snowman.

Yet the Pegasus was known for pulchritude.

It was the era of girls in black turtlenecks

With love for jazz and folk music—

Educated young women who watched

Italian films at the all-night Clark Theater.

There in the Pegasus one of those women

Approached Joe, she stole up behind him,

And in a voice rich with a kind of sarcastic

Academese she asked, “Have you read

Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead
?”

Joe's look of baffled incomprehension

Must have moved or amused her,

For she pressed a dog-eared paperback

Into his hand: the 1956 Mentor Classics

Edition of Whitehead's
Dialogues
.

“Here, take my extra copy,” she said,

Slinking out of the Pegasus as Joe

Glanced at the book's cover illustration

Of Whitehead reading aloud from a

Volume held in his liver-spotted hands.

What a revelation
Dialogues of

Alfred North Whitehead
proved to be!

That very night, like a magic carpet,

The book whisked Joe from his bare room

To Whitehead's home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

There, close by Harvard Yard, a journalist

Named Lucien Price drew the eminent

Mathematician into conversation ranging

Across history, theology, philosophy,

Politics, education, and of course mathematics.

A truly fascinating man was Whitehead,

In Joe's opinion, and a man full of surprises.

He believed, for example, that mathematics

Beyond quadratic equations should remain

The province of specialists—and Joe agreed.

As a teenager Joe was tortured by algebra

At Archbishop Weber High School but

He never needed algebra to run the tavern.

His crank-operated adding machine lasted

Many years and did not even use electricity.

In fact—and here he imagined himself

Speaking to Alfred North Whitehead—

Joe would extend Whitehead's thinking

And require no math instruction at all

Past basic fractions and decimals.

All through the night he read, pondering,

Considering and reconsidering, accepting

Many of Whitehead's ideas, questioning

Others, rejecting nothing out of hand though

Some passages caused him to stamp his foot.

Finally, as dawn broke over the university,

Joe sighed and shut the Mentor paperback.

He then noticed a name—Karen Schmolke—

Lightly inscribed by some dying ballpoint

On the front cover of the
Dialogues
.

Schmolke, Schmolke. . . . Joe stroked his chin.

Not an uncommon name on the Northwest Side

And here on the South Side more Schmolkes

Might be found. Should he return the book?

“Schmolke” would be in the phone directory.

But no, by God. He would keep the book.

It was a gift. It was now his prized possession.

Phrases like, “In the nimbus of religious awe,”

Which Whitehead used so gracefully,

Made one forget he was a mathematician.

Joe's studies went on. Months passed and

He spoke to no one. He ate tuna fish.

He ordered pizza pies. Physically

He diminished. Like a breeze in the trees

His sixtieth birthday came and went.

Yet he felt strong and growing stronger.

The
Dialogues
whetted his appetite

For more Whitehead. With difficulty,