The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Sun 1/6/2008)

[RetroLounge]

Lobo

When it is cold,
when the air cracks like a hundred-year-old tree,
when there is the thinnest nothing,
and the lake is clear and hard as the moon,
I come forth and sniff the air,
my fur around me sleek as thought.
I scent and scent and then
give the moon back to the moon in one long O,
give the ice to the moon and the yawning lake
and the stiff black fur of the trees,
and my O fills the sky
till the others come,
low, loping, yittering and yelling back,
lashing the air with their quick tongues
like a mob coming toward the palace,
like the tongues of a million unmarked graves,
like ten-thousand sirens in a thousand cities,
the gray, the silver, and the white with black foot.
We sit in council,
chasing the moon on its way,
supporting the sky, rounding out its hollow,
and our music is murder over the hills,
cold tongues on your back,
the sharp tooth at your throat,
and slaver glittering over your stiff eyes.
You, lying in the hollow,
you, turning in the cold bed, afraid to drop
down into the black lair of sleep
with its ten-hundred-million pleading mouths
and its insistent hungers,
you, before whom the electric eye flickers in the dark,
shrinks to a pinpoint, and goes out
after dropping at your feet a hundred corpses
from a dozen different countries,
each with a story, each with a vision
at which you can only stare without speaking
as they stalk you on lupine foot.

Robert Siegel

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Robert H. Siegel was born August 18, 1939 in Oak Park, Illinois. He is the son of Frederick William and Lucille (Chance) Siegel. His father was a personnel manager. Siegel attended Denison University for two years (1957-1959) and received his B.A. from Wheaton College in Illinois in 1961. After graduating he married Roberta Hill of Arlington Heights on August 19, 1961. They have three daughters: Lenaye, Lucy and Christine. Siegel received his M.A. in Writing from Johns Hopkins University in 1962 and his Ph.D. in English Literature from Harvard (1968) where he studied under Robert Lowell. The subject of his dissertation was Samuel T. Coleridge's poetry.

During his schooling he was a junior instructor at Johns Hopkins and a teaching fellow at Harvard. He taught at Trinity in Bannockburn, Illinois from 1962-1963 and was an assistant professor of English from 1967-1975 at Dartmouth College. He has been a visiting lecturer at Princeton University (1975-1976) and at Wheaton College (1977) and a resident poet at Greenlake (Wisconsin) Writers' Conference (1974). In 1976 he became the chairman of the creative writing program at the University of Wisconsin (Milwaukee). He has also been a member of the Modern Language Association of America and of the Conference on Christianity and Literature (Director 1969-1973).

Siegel has published two collections of poetry: The Beast and the Elders (University Press of New England, 1973) and In a Pig's Eye (University Press of Florida, 1980). Since that time two of his books of fantasy fiction have been published: Alpha Centauri (Cornerstone Books, 1980) and The Kingdom of Wundle (Cornerstone Books, 1982). Siegel is also the author of Whalesong which was published in 1981 (Cornerstone Books). His poetry has been published in such periodicals as The Chicago Tribune, The Quest, Beloit Poetry Journal and The Atlantic.

Siegel has also received many awards and honors: Fellowship from Breadloaf Writers' Conference (1974), Resident at Yaddo (1974-1975), Chicago Poetry Award from the Society of Midland Authors and the Illinois Council for the Arts (1974), Cliff Dwellers Art Foundation Award (1974), Prairie Schooner Prize for Poetry (Vol. 51 1977-1978), Merrill Foundation Award for Writing Poetry (1979), and the NEA Fellowship (1980). An earlier grant made it possible for him to study at Cambridge for a year.


(p.s. I studied under Professor Siegel in Grad School...)

********************************

:hi:

RL

[Tuesday Afternoon]

1. Call of The Wild --- comes to mind

"...and our music is murder over the hills,..."

that is a perfect line, I wish I had wrote that one.

Thanks :hi:

:donut:

[RetroLounge]

2. Yeah, that gave me chills...

:hi:

RL

[lizziegrace]

3. First read, war comes to mind

that and all our own personal fears.

George W Bush should be having these nightmares...

[xchrom]

4. wow -- for my money -- this is one of the more wonderfully powerful poems you've posted.

i can see lowell in there.

and the great man v nature or just nature subjects discussed.

here's a poet i didn't know -- and he has just knocked me out with his complexity and depth.


when i read the title -- i was expecting mushy -- not this.

[RetroLounge]

5. Glad you like it...

He was my teacher in the early 90's. Just stumbled across some of his work online.

:hi:

RL

[xchrom]

6. are you in a nature mood here lately?

the river poem and now this -- really lovely stuff dude.

[RetroLounge]

7. Hmmm, didn't think of it that way...

But sometimes the thread of my feelings reveals itself slowly over days...

:hi:

RL