May 5, 2023

R.G. Evans

POETIC CLOSURE

in memory of Stephen Dunn

From the title on, the poet said,
you set up a series of expectations
within the reader. Then
you either fulfill or subvert them.
Poets in ancient China believed
The words stop but the poem goes on
like a canoe, its paddles lifted from the water.
So it is with certain lives.
We live here in their wake,
expecting the ripples will never end,
subverted each time they do.
Poetic closure consists of reminders
of where the words have been,
where they will return,
and the click at the end
like a lid lowered into place,
a sound we expect that still leaves us breathless
when one’s words end but we go on.
 

from Rattle #79, Spring 2023

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R.G. Evans: “In addition to writing poems, I’m a songwriter as well. There’s something exhilarating about the feeling of performing an original song for an audience and getting immediate, positive feedback—but that feeling is, as Emily Dickinson wrote, ‘How public—like a Frog—.’ Finishing and polishing a pretty good poem and at first (and maybe always) being its only reader is a wicked little pleasure I get to keep all to myself.” (web)

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October 24, 2016

R.G. Evans

ALMOST HOLY

My niece is addicting
mice to cocaine.

The cause is science,
the university is Temple

so it’s almost holy.
Poor little buggers.

Their tickers get to ticking
and pretty soon they dream

that they are rats,
that they can fly,

that they are rats
with wings, pigeons

soaring over mouse and rat,
the god of mice,

of rats, of birds. Until morning 
when they’ll believe

that they are dead.
Then the true god comes

in a cloud-like lab coat,
the resurrection and the life.

I used to dream 
I was a mouse,

but I am only a flea
upon a mouse’s back.

But sometimes … sometimes
the blood’s so sweet

I feel I’m the uncle of light riding
bareback and holy through the temple.

from Rattle #53, Fall 2016
Tribute to Adjuncts

[download audio]

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R.G. Evans: “One of the first questions I ask my creative writing students at the university where I serve as adjunct is, ‘What is your favorite poem?’ I get a lot of ‘The Raven’ or ‘Where the Sidewalk Ends.’ Some try to describe Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken,’ although they usually can’t identify Frost or the title. I don’t mention this as a criticism of my students, most of whom are clever, adaptive writers who delight me with their work throughout the semester. I mention it as an indictment of an educational system that has gone mad pursuing standards and standardized testing while excluding the rich history of poetry available to everyone. At a time when we need poetry more than ever before, it’s my privilege to be able to introduce students to poetry and watch what happens behind their eyes.” (website)

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January 11, 2015

R.G. Evans

PUSSY NATION

Agamemnon loved the black sails
of Achilles because they didn’t belong to Troy.
Americans stopped worrying and learned
to love the bomb because the bomb was ours.
When we look into the mirror and see
another’s face, we love that face like our own.
Je suis Charlie, says the western world
as a way to mourn those who died
because their pens were free.
“I am the liberal in this debate,” Bill Maher
says. But liberals, he says, need to wake up.
“Pussy nation,” he calls us because we refuse
to take up ploughshares and rattle them
like sabers against Islam. Hundreds of millions
support these deaths, he says. In the guise of entertainment,
Bill Maher tells Jimmy Kimmel, “If they were beheading
Catholics in Vatican Square, don’t you think
we would rise up and do something?”
No greater truth about free speech ever written than
“The best lack all conviction while the worst
are filled with passionate intensity.”
No matter who boils that cauldron—
liberal, conservative, jihadist or crusader—
fire used for heat is just fire.
Not like fire used for light, like the torches
that lit the way for Priam—that ancient pussy—
to confront the great Achilles and prostrate himself
for the body of his beloved son.
Mr. Maher, I prefer my mirror empty
to one that makes me look like you.
Je suis pussy, if that is what it takes.

Poets Respond
January 11, 2015

[download audio]

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R.G. Evans: “After the Charlie Hebdo massacre, Bill Maher was a guest on Jimmy Kimmel. Some of my liberal friends worship Maher as if he were the media’s antidote to Bill O’Reilly and other conservative pundits, but I’ve always thought of him as self-serving and dangerous, liberal though I am. His comments to Jimmy Kimmel, included in this poem, only solidified my regard for him.” (website)

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October 11, 2013

R.G. Evans

THE THINGS THAT MOTHER SAID

If venetian blinds hung crooked,
or dishes lay piled in the sink,
if empty shoes sat strewn around the floor,
mother would say

Place looks like a niggershack.
It wasn’t, of course. It was ourshack.
Catholicshack. Polackshack.
Leather-strap-to-the-thighshack. Bigotshack.

Ventriloquist of doom, her voice
still follows me through unkempt rooms,
and I have to bite my wooden tongue
to silence her in the ground

where satin must sag sloppily now
inside her casketshack.

from Rattle #39, Spring 2013
Tribute to Southern Poets

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