a Stark, Ohio poem


The Twins are into jazz
(peripherally) and
sleeping together (again).

All that Ivy League
and they come back here
says Dickhardt

to his date, the School
Teacher, there among
the white tablecloths

and netted candles at
Stanko's Steak House
above the reservoir.

A Hungarian man with
a bad toupee plays
"A Walk in the Forest" at

the house organ.  A disco
ball throws around
flakes of colored Light.

The School Teacher is
silent. Like a motel
owner, she knows

everyone’s dirt, kids
being good as sheets
to tell the tale. The Twins

speak to be overheard.
Fifty years and they’ve
never addressed Dickhardt

directly, as their grand-
parents never addressed
his. Of their husbands

they say too much positive
in negative places.
Are they for real, Dickhardt

asks. The School Teacher
says not a word.
She wonders if anybody’s

real.

There's a bit of a wrinkle in the plot. Why would the School Teacher, who comes off very aloof and detached be Dickhardt's date? The poem seems to want to disclose what it knows of the Twins, which makes Dickhardt window dressing and almost gets in the way???

Just a thought.

larry

Larry, it's no excuse to say that the poem is part of the series and that we'll see The Twins again.  It's also no excuse to say that this was the first poem of the series to arrive, and it surprised me with The Twins, who came in and took over.  (It's what they do in Stark, too.)  It's no excuse to say that Dickhardt is peripheral sometimes to what goes on in his own town, but that the series demands his presence in each one the way they demand that the verse more or less comes in tercets of three-beat lines.  We'll see more of the School Teacher, too.  Maybe this particular poem shouldn't come early in the pack, even though it did arrive first.

The ending seemed weak to me: not at all suprising, and if she thinks that, it doesn't mean much to me that she does. (I hope I am not being too blunt).   Maybe it is OK in itself but there need to be a few lines following it, to give it a bit more weight?  A small detail: I don't know what a "netted" candle is.  And I found "bad hair" too reminiscent of the phrase "I'm having a bad hair day."  But the poem seems well worth working on, to me.  I am not sure that telling us the restaurant is above the reservoir helps, unless as part of a series it just gives additional information about the locale?  What I have read of your work so far is very careful and succeeds, for me, so I continue to be interested in what you do.  Tell me, if you wish, if I am phrasing my criticism too bluntly?  I am new to this website and I do realize that others will read what I write to you, so I am a bit anxious.

Jonathan,

By "netted candles" I mean those squat roundish candles in red glass containers with plastic netting around the outside.  Fine dining in Stark.  The reservoir also bespeaks class -- rmonatic view of the water, and all -- though I may have been too tongue-in-cheek here to be intelligible.  Maybe the poem just needs more work.