Flickers: Poems - Softcover

William Trowbridge

4.17

6 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1557285861 ISBN 13: 9781557285867

Publisher: University of Arkansas Press, 2000

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In his latest collection of poems, William Trowbridge explores the fascination Americans have with movies, how "flicks" allow us to temporarily forget our problems and, ironically, to forget that real conflicts are what make us human. The language he uses is the American language of pop culture: sports talk, movie talk, shoptalk, and clich�s―all are blended together into carefully crafted lines that are uniquely Trowbridge's. Readers will be delighted to follow each poem to its effectively understated end. These poems are dark comedies that capture both the eerie and the ordinary. This balance is not easily achieved, but like a veteran comedian executing a pratfall, Trowbridge makes it all seem natural. His surreal family, the Glads, satirizes life in suburbia and reflects the often absurd margins of our urban lifestyle. By contrast, a group of poems revolving around a packing house in Kansas City (Trowbridge worked there as a young man), reminds us of those darker places in our lives that exist just "across the street from the ledgers and lapels." The variety of subjects Trowbridge works with is refreshing. Whether he is writing about Buster Keaton, Fred Astaire, June bugs, baseball, the holocaust, Cadillacs, or old dogs, his eye is always focused on the turn of phrase that will catch us off guard. His well-crafted lines are full of wit and humor. He approaches his subjects like Coyote approaches Fox―smiling, ready to expose his dear friend to the reality of his existence through sleight of hand. And, like Coyote, he teaches us to laugh at ourselves or perish under the weight of our everyday lives.

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About the Author:

William Trowbridge is Distinguished University Professor at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Missouri.

POETS' CORNER

They put me in right field
because I couldn't pitch that well
or throw or catch or hit,
because I tried to steer the ball
like a paper plane, watched
Christmas gifts with big
red ribbons floating through
the strike zone, and swung
at dirt balls. So they played the odds,
sent me out there in the tall grass
by the Skoal sign, where I wandered
distant as the nosebleed seats
my father got us in Comiskey Park,
my teammates looking
remote and miniature,
their small cries and gesticulations
like things remembered
from a dream. I went dreamy,
sun on my face, the scent
of sod and blue grass, the lilt
of bird call and early cricket
bending afternoon away
from fastballs and hook slides
to June's lazy looping
single: baseball at its best,
my only fear the deep fly
with my name on it,
meteoric as Jehovah
or coach Bob Zambisi
closing in to deliver once
again the meaning of the game:
what it takes to play, why I had to
crouch vigilant as a soldier
in combat, which he never
had the privilege of being,
and stop that lolling around
with my head up my ass,
watching birdies and picking
dandelions like some kind of
little priss, some kind
of Percy Bitch Shelby.