Gerald Stern, 1992
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Gerald Stern, 1992*
All the great poets lived in Pennsylvania, he told me. Since he knew I was from Erie, PA, it wasn’t exactly egomania. He was from Pittsburgh, he said, and Call me Gerry.
He sort of meant it: Merwin, Gilbert, Stevens. And Pound at college with guess who? H.D.! But then he noted, Ginsberg might have forgivenPound for the Jews, but he didn’t forgive him for me.
He claimed that “Dover Beach” was boring, at most. When I dissented, he took to calling me “The Preacher.” And he told me he was studying the Holy Ghost.
I talked to the janitor about my teacher.
Gerry? he said. The guy who wails like a babydown the street, blessing all the mailboxes? Maybe. [End Page 201]
John Poch teaches at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. Two Men Fighting with a Knife (Storyline Press, 2008) is his most recent collection of poems.
Footnotes
* “Gerald Stern, 1992” will appear in John Poch’s forthcoming poetry collection titled Dolls, to be published September 2009 by Orchises Press.
