A few poems from different sections of the collection:
CAN’T GO, MAYBE
Never much afraid of big ol’
Thomas Wolfe, been going home
for decades now, and reaping
sustenance therefrom – more than ever,
now I’m exiled to the hated frozen North.
But how many times again?
Holidays bring hospital stays
these days, it seems, a trend
that shows no signs of ceasing.
This Thanksgiving Saturday
’twas just a flutter that,
combining with the morning’s
causeless fall, sent Mama to the E.R.
cautionarily. Drugging down
the pressure meant she could,
this time, go home again.
But how many more times?
While she’s around my visits
to the LoneStarState continue.
But soon that day is coming
when I’ll have no reason to
go home again – that day,
and that black and lightless night.
Mama’s soon, and then my own,
Formats
Softcover
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Softcover
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Book Details
Language :
English
Publication Date :
17/03/2005
Format :
Softcover
Dimensions :
6x9
Page Count :
196
ISBN :
9781420835755
About the Book
Jack Cargill has selected these poems from hundreds written mostly since 1993, and has grouped them roughly under several themes. The opening section includes meditations on family and home (Texas) – generational relations, deaths, living in “exile”. A catch-all “Feelings and Observations” section offers poems on social phenomena, nature, friendships, movies, music, and various other topics. A series of whimsical and humorous poems follows. The final section – “Politics, War, Religion, and Fatal Combinations Thereof” – presents Cargill’s reactions to the brutalities of the contemporary American economy and society, and to a world increasingly gone mad. Sanctimonious abuses of power and murderous invocations of religion draw his special ire, and sometimes his mordantly humorous contempt.
About the Author
Jack Cargill grew up in Texas, earned his Ph.D. at the University of California (Berkeley), and has been on the History Department faculty at RutgersUniversity in New Jersey since 1981. He is the author of numerous scholarly books and articles in the field of Ancient History. In recent years he has revived an earlier love for poetry and creative writing, and in 2004 he published a “novelized” historical study (Mercenary of the Gods, Regina Books, P.O. Box 280, Claremont, CA91711). He has also published collections of poems in scholarly journals and individual poems in a variety of regional periodicals. He is the convener of Writers Anonymous-NJ and a regular participant in the Raritan Poets and other literary groups.
