July 2015
I live in Manhattan, where I taught high school for many years. My last book of poems was Where X Marks the Spot (Hanging Loose Press), and the new Tether magazine features my translation of Robert Desnos's first book of poems. I run a weekly poetry workshop at the Morningside Heights Library.
At the Poetry Festival
Listening to the poets
that I love
as they introduce their poems,
talking the air
into images with their
beautiful hands, like
sculptures flying,
as they explain
a little
(or a lot)—
at long last
saying
what they mean!
What I want
is to stand up
right in the middle
of one of those
stunning explanations,
I want to shout
to the poet, over the heads
of the surprised crowd:
"Why didn't you put
those brilliant things
you just said
into your poem
in the first place?"
Why don't the poets
I love
listen to me when I insist
that the preambles
and footnotes
to their poems
be in their poems—
like facts embedded
in the stream—
all the little pebbles
that hold the water
that runs over them
in place . . .
©2015 Bill Zavatsky