two poems about joel chace

mike swanberg

Stuck in Virginia with Joel Chace’s 20^th Century Deaths

He isn’t a remarkably bad poet, no
Although he refuses to say anything I could
use as a shield and seems exceedingly content
to scratch the surface of experience then
retreat to his home in pennsylvania to pretend
it isn’t his job to open doors in people
that they once thought they had bolted shut

I suppose the one about the wind surfer isn’t awful
but his arrogance bites my minds heel as he
hoots and hollers from the shore of that poem
as smug as his press photo looks on the back cover

I am published he would say to me if we spoke.
If we ever speak I hope he doesn’t know his place
In the library of congress between martin amis and
billy collins. The arrogance of those men notwithstanding
but offering up at least something akin to wings in the world
for those who, with shaking hands or heads find them.

No joel you were not published by pitt press
Or even grey wolf for that matter, no something called singular speech
from connecticuit saw fit to bind your words.

And in truth I would bind your hands with rope
and toss you into the same angry see that your windsurfer
couldn’t navigate in that too long poem of yours
because maybe, and this is a heavy maybe,
you could teach us something close to the art of drowning
if the situation presented itself
as do or die.

An apology for the poem Stuck in Virginia with Joel Chace’s 20^th Century Deaths

I am standing in the kitchen drinking juice
When I think of Chace again and begin to wonder
If I was too rough on him. The day started out late
And lovely, if not a little cold. And by now the rain has
stopped but the river covers our small bridge and wont
Let me get anywhere but back into Chace’s poems for
another disastrous reading.

But somehow I cant help but imagine him searching his own name
And having my poem show up in all its own not so quiet
scorn without this one I am writing now as a companion
Because would he really be so quick to rush and defend
The poems he wrote ten years ago? I found the book
At a garage sale, the woman gave it to me for free and would
He really even argue that the windsurfer is worth the read?

How could he when of course he has moved on to different things
A simple search revealed he is working now and often
With a free press, what a man I say to myself and to the walls
Although the poems even now don’t grip me much

And in his picture he seems much older, the difference in his ten years
Almost the same as my own, so visible one can only see a decade as
Being wide as the atlantic at night

and there are Chace and I both
Atop the windsurfers board,
trying desperately to make it through the next
decade with all our poetry in tow,
and a little bit drier than the other.