What's marvelous about this is that the whole poem is suffused with, labors
under "Jewish voodoo" - the Kinahorei. Not only speaker's English teacher
but Everson's success, his suicide, Philip Roth - everything inflicts it!!
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kenneth Wolman" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, December 01, 2007 4:26 PM
Subject: "Landis and Darryl and Me"
(Scrawl. Scribble. Say something.--message to myself)
LANDIS AND DARRYL AND ME
"Everson was familiar with the sense of failed expectations—his
professor, the poet Josephine Miles, called him the “white hope of the
English department”—but he was never as consumed by poetry as were his
friends."
In my high school yearbook there was--still is, but I long ago
burned the book--a listing of names.
I cannot remember the context.
Hawthorne
Melville
Fitzgerald
Crane
Hemingway
Faulkner
My Honors English teacher wrote next to those names
"And some day Wolman."
Today I could kill her.
She laid the wamma-jamma on me,
Jewish voodoo.
Depressives, psychos, and drunks: that
is what was supposed to be my legacy
along with humungous talent and a work ethic.
Three out of five ain't bad.
After all, you're still batting .600.
In 1983 the pallid New York Mets promoted
a gorgeous young man (even straight guys envied
that kid's body) named Darryl Strawberry.
The Straw had a Mel Ott swing but could drive even a bad pitch
off the scoreboard just by flicking his wrists
Some sportswriter hung a soubriquet
on the kid: The Black Ted Williams.
So Darryl became The Great Black Hope
and he could not live up to it no matter
what he did. And he did far too much.
I was supposed to be the Great Jewish Hope.
But Philip Roth over in Jersey beat me to it.
I got to be a real shit too, but my Body of Work
was stillborn, and I didn't even get
to ball Claire Bloom.
Everson? He and I competed without knowing it
for an unpublished first book prize for old farts
that promised immortality in a binding
and a bag of money.
Landis whupped my ass. That's okay,
because I actually finished something for once in my writing life,
so I won too.
I suppose writing contests are like running a marathon.
Thirty thousand people start and one person comes in first.
The deal is to do it at all.
But I won more.
What caused him to do it is beyond my ken or Ken
but Everson ate a gun about two weeks ago
and if he left a note I hope to Christ nobody prints it
because I read my last Goodnight when Chidiock Tichborne
back in 1586 contemplated having his guts cut out,
and I don't want to read anymore.
KTW/12-1-07
--
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Kenneth Wolman
www.kenwolman.net kenwolman.wordpress.com
To My Children
One last thing I will do for you:
I will grow up.--Mairead Byrne
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