"Dear John" by David Mason (poetry reading)

David Mason is Poet Laureate of Colerado. He teaches and is a reader in the Poetry Out Loud movement intended to widen interest in poetry. He says, ""Having beautiful language in your head is one of the great ways of being a human being"
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/david-mason

I find the poetry of John Frederick Nims particularly endearing. Out of fairness, I confess that David Mason doesn't find me endearing: he says that I am "All voice and no brain" which makes me feel like the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz.
http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=12717

I wouldn't have chosen the title "Dear John" because it has a specific meaning: a letter written to end a relationship.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dear_John_letter

The reference to western wind is John Nims' work on the fourth edition of a textbook called "Western Wind - an Introduction to Poetry" which he has just finished when he died on January 13, 1999.

The syntax is a little hard for me to follow, probably because of my anencephaly, and I'm not sure what the last verse means. I suppose that what "falls back to the earth in lines" is poetry "meant to be kept and understood. " Maybe some kinder person will enlighten me.

Dapper in sport coat, necktie, jeans,
you were droll, John, more than zany,
trolling bookstores on morning walks,
their open-minded miscellany

something like what you showed me once
from high above Lake Michigan:
"It wasn't much of a view," you said,
until we had the lake put in."

For days before you died, the white
and frozen waters looked bereft.
Old buses moved like mastodons
through mounds of snow the blizzard left.

"As good a time to go as any,"
you might have said. And so it was.
Earth's still a whirligig. We're dizzy
children searching for a cause,

dead serious in laughter, green
in grief. I wonder where you are.
Do you have to wear a necktie there?
Does color dwindle? Is it far?

Now it's your turn to be translated,
ours to wonder who could match you.
No whispers of a western wind
from the fond Muse herself could catch you.

They fall back to the earth in lines,
just as you surely knew they would,
more shapely than our harried lives,
meant to be kept and understood.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Dear John
• David
• Mason
• Poetry
• Poem
• John
• Fredrick
• Nims

[SpokenVerse]

see

[pylgrym]

Elegy edged into introspection a bit there...

[scifiwritir1]

Ah, who cares what Mason thinks of you! We think you have a brain! Lovely poem, though. Very difficult to write great elegies nowadays, especially hopeful ones with hints of afterlife beliefs. A good poem. Thanks for the upload.

[franielee38]

Great reading and not too bad a poem!!

[AngelSly1111]

Beautiful. Thank you for sharing.

[paulpellicci]

...very nice, thanks.

[vita9n]

Delighted to listen to Mason's poem about Nims. I own one of the most important anthologies of poetry during my youth ,"From Sappho To Valery" by John Frederick Nims. Thanks.