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The Past, the Future, the Present: Poems Selected and New
Frequently touched by whimsy, sometimes plainly humorous, always serious in their constant concern for the commonplace, Reed Whittemore's poems retain a remarkable freshness in this retrospective of his best work from 1946 to the present. What is perhaps most distinctive about Whittemore's voice is how deceptively ordinary it is. Here is someone who thinks and talks astonishingly like everybody else in poems that could have been written by nobody else.
240 pages, Hardcover
Published March 1, 1990
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December 7, 2013
JUICE
We number two or three hundred
Million. We are hungry. We sit in the coffee shop waiting.
Why do the trains and pipelines no serve us the breakfast?
I look at my neighbor.
He has a cardiac face and four small children.
The children are spilling the water.
The mother is whispering threats, pinching their biceps.
What should we do?
But now they are bringing the orange juice.
I catch the eye of my neighbor. He is smiling, drinking
his orange juice.
The children are drinking. They have lovely drinkings.
The mother is drinking. Even I am drinking.
Neighbor,
We will see this through.
We will make it to lunch.
We number two or three hundred
Million. We are hungry. We sit in the coffee shop waiting.
Why do the trains and pipelines no serve us the breakfast?
I look at my neighbor.
He has a cardiac face and four small children.
The children are spilling the water.
The mother is whispering threats, pinching their biceps.
What should we do?
But now they are bringing the orange juice.
I catch the eye of my neighbor. He is smiling, drinking
his orange juice.
The children are drinking. They have lovely drinkings.
The mother is drinking. Even I am drinking.
Neighbor,
We will see this through.
We will make it to lunch.
Displaying 1 of 1 review