Doug is the first non-Usenet rec.arts.poems newsgroup author having a chapbook edited, produced and published by A Small Garlic Press. A moment of contemplative silence to ponder the implications...
The poem trail laid out in this book follows a 6-month editing process and gestation, a Doug-we're-doing-too-many-things-at-once! involving the ever calm and patient Doug and the harried yet determined to get it done and get it done right bunch of us.
In the end, it glows warmly on smooth off-white paper, dressed smartly if discreetly, in Therese Leigh's pencil drawings. We placed them here and there as ephemeral watermarks, as tokens of affection, and on the cover, at Microtek E6's optically faithful strength.
We hope that this long-in-the-making beautiful little book will become our scout vessel for sailing into the open waters of publishing poets whom we do not know, save for the manuscripts.
This volume has Chinese-style content, yes, but also raw and clamoring city poems, some angry poems, and a few flaring, sparking passionate poems. Even a California road poem, a musical instruments poem, even an Ozarks poem, even a civil rights poem of historical and geographical interest.
It's a short trip through long spaces, and will feed you plenty of good twists and shouts.
They Built a Bridge
They built a bridge for somebody
named edmund pettis
Some dim past time in dallas county
belonged to him i guess
He was i'm certain some selma racist
some ignorant cracker
long dead his crimes forgotten
as martin king and
a few hundred brave black souls
stepped on him
marching toward montgomery
past tear gas and clubs
and redneck cops
thinking how jimmy lee jackson's
life was crushed out of him
They stepped on you edmund pettis
and so fittingly
took your name for a victory
you would have despised
They built a bridge for you edmund pettis
a monument to commerce and the status quo
and every step of every marcher
robbed you of everything
while the world watched
with every step you faded
until you became a bridge to leave behind
It was thirty years ago everybody was naive
everybody even the cops
Now it's a tougher world hate's gone deeper
but you edmund pettis are just a conquered bridge
in the dark bowels of a dead beast
Copyright © February 1997 Doug Thiele
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Copyright © 1997 A Small Garlic Press. All rights reserved.
Created 1997/4/18. Updated last on 2008/5/2.