Joe should carry around a portable campfire for these great anecdotes
KS
On 04/09/07, joe green <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I wrote a poem when I was 16 called "Dylan remarks the Way" Good God. This was in 65. I went to a Catholic High School and Dylan had affected sensibilities even there so that at a mandatory assembly after the mandatory Mass Ann H. (who became a nun and is still a nun and is still writing poetry!) strummed her guitar and played "It's A Hard Rain" which was then explained as Christian allegory. I knew it was wilder stuff. Maybe even about Nuclear War! Hahahha
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> I had a copy of Childes Ballads from the library (way overdue and then "lost") and had read "Lord Randall" and probably heard a version in the collection of folk records my friend's older brother had (The Smothers Brothers, New Christy Minstrels, Pete Seeger, Peter Paul and Mary etc ) and argued against the allegory in English class and was told to shut up. So I wrote a religious poem. The first letter of each line spelled out "Shanahan Stinks" (Shanahan the name of my school) and submitted it to the school newspaper anonymously and when it was published I, of course, couldn't resist calling attention to the wonderful acrostic and so was caught. Ann was the editor of the poetry page for the newspaper and I was brought down to the Discipline Office and confronted with her weeping figure and after she was sent away I was slapped around for a bit -- yet I still felt triumphant.
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> Before this there had been some sort of Poetry Contest -- to be judged by Richard Wilbur and my "Dylan Remarks the Way" poem and a poem of Ann's were entered by our English teacher the cunning Sister St. Marie and all three of us were taken to Bryn Mawr, the mad nun muttering as she drove. Ann never had a chance. Jesus never had a chance. "Dylan Remarks the Way" took second place -- right behind a sonnet that began
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> "Unless the joke is greater than I know
> You, my love, are really here tonight."
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> God!
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> All of the poems were published in a little magazine. About six years later while on leave from the Army I discovered the magazine under a stack of Cosmopolitan magazines in the basement of my parent's house and read it and thought "what awful shit" and threw it out. Man, I wish I had that magazine!
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