curly fat cherubic visiting poet
TRANSCRIPT
Curly Fat Cherubic Visiting PoetAuthor(s): Peter ThorpeSource: College English, Vol. 41, No. 1 (Sep., 1979), p. 79Published by: National Council of Teachers of EnglishStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/376365 .
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Poems 79 Poems 79
PETER THORPE
AFTER VISITING THE STATE PRISON
I was on that campus today, conditions were appalling, most of the faculty without degrees, the students hostile and demoralized, poorly lighted cramped classrooms, faceless buildings worn out like an old required textbook, the whole place drowning in the triviality of its own rules, not even a team to root for.
Life there being dull as a hinge, small wonder nobody learns anything but what he was sent there for.
CURLY FAT CHERUBIC VISITING POET
He caught us all in the lariat of his language and could have kept us hobbled there the whole night over if he hadn't gotten mad at something.
You know how poets are, something, maybe a cough from one of us at the wrong time, like a phone that starts ringing backstage in the middle of a mood for which the actor worked so hard.
From that moment the show was over; he dumped a few more lines at our knees and then shambled off the stage.
Afterwards, at the Chairman's cocktail party, he must have been high on something: all he'd say was "Well I'll be a poem's uncle," then laugh, loving what he said, and saying again, "Well I'll be a poem's uncle."
Ralph Burns has taught creative writing at Oxford Federal Prison, Oxford, Wisconsin and is currently poet-in- residence at Huntington County Community Schools, Huntington, Indiana.
Peter Thorpe is a professor of English and Interdisciplinary Humanities at the University of Colorado at Denver. In addition to a book, Eighteenth-Century English Poetry, and numerous articles on English and American litera- ture, he has published poems in New Mexico Quarterly, New Yorker, West Coast Review, Antioch Review, Northwest Review, and other journals.
PETER THORPE
AFTER VISITING THE STATE PRISON
I was on that campus today, conditions were appalling, most of the faculty without degrees, the students hostile and demoralized, poorly lighted cramped classrooms, faceless buildings worn out like an old required textbook, the whole place drowning in the triviality of its own rules, not even a team to root for.
Life there being dull as a hinge, small wonder nobody learns anything but what he was sent there for.
CURLY FAT CHERUBIC VISITING POET
He caught us all in the lariat of his language and could have kept us hobbled there the whole night over if he hadn't gotten mad at something.
You know how poets are, something, maybe a cough from one of us at the wrong time, like a phone that starts ringing backstage in the middle of a mood for which the actor worked so hard.
From that moment the show was over; he dumped a few more lines at our knees and then shambled off the stage.
Afterwards, at the Chairman's cocktail party, he must have been high on something: all he'd say was "Well I'll be a poem's uncle," then laugh, loving what he said, and saying again, "Well I'll be a poem's uncle."
Ralph Burns has taught creative writing at Oxford Federal Prison, Oxford, Wisconsin and is currently poet-in- residence at Huntington County Community Schools, Huntington, Indiana.
Peter Thorpe is a professor of English and Interdisciplinary Humanities at the University of Colorado at Denver. In addition to a book, Eighteenth-Century English Poetry, and numerous articles on English and American litera- ture, he has published poems in New Mexico Quarterly, New Yorker, West Coast Review, Antioch Review, Northwest Review, and other journals.
This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sun, 21 Dec 2014 02:54:08 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions