Dactylic Tetrameter
At last night’s zoom
poetry reading for the publication
of Slow Lighting’s new anthology
SLANT, a wonderful
poet named Andrew wrote
a whole book written
in dactylic tetrameter
(Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
a perfect example) about
the making of Fitzcaraldo
a movie by Werner Herzog.
in 1982. He told us
Jason Robards was supposed
to be the star but he
got sick in Peru and Klaus
Kinski stepped in.
I read this poem,
the first in my new
life stories project.
Not in dactylic tetrameter.
Maybe next time.
When I was born
my father, a Talmudic man
who didn’t think he’d marry
didn’t think he’d have children,
my father celebrated my birth
by buying a large green beach house
for two families with
his college roommate, Solly.
Solly was an inventor. His most
noteworthy invention: a device
for restaurant bathrooms that could
dry hands by pressing a button.
No towels were involved.
For many summers, my family
father mother brother and me
lived in that house. We were all
happiest right there.
(Not so Solly, whose wife Elaine,
thinner than the rest of us,
declared our house was nowhere.
Not only that, Elaine said.
Our neighbors were not
people of note. They moved
to Westchester and we
never saw any of them again.
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It's sad, the damage perceptions of "class" can do
Wonderful