Robert Polito

Robert Polito Poems

As phantoms direct life from the shadows,

I feel
I leaned on something,
and it broke.
...

Oh, de wars and de scrapes
And de sprees am done—sprees am done
De foe am beat.
De Turks am drowned—Turks am drowned.
All safe and sounds
...

When I can't make you understand I repeat myself
I repeat

If you don't stop asking me all these questions how
Will I understand anything
...

for Patti Smith
At the end of Bing Crosby's Riding High his horse
Will be buried in the clay of the racetrack where he fell,
As a lesson for all of us. Sad, waggish Bing,
...

Air here is like the water
Of an aquarium that's been lived in for a while—clear and still
Beyond the rigors
Of glass; appearing cold (and clear) as spring streams
Fed by snow and ice,
...

Robert Polito Biography

Poet and scholar Robert Polito was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He earned his PhD from Harvard and has served as director of Creative Writing at The New School for two decades. Polito served as president of the Poetry Foundation from July 2013 through June 2015. Polito’s collections of poetry include Hollywood & God (2009) and Doubles (1995). His poetry blends narrative and lyric impulses, drawing on both American pop culture and literary tradition. Polito’s scholarly works include A Reader’s Guide to James Merrill’s The Changing Light at Sandover (1995), and Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson (1996), for which he received the National Book Critics Circle Award. Polito’s interest in mid-century American culture, especially the crime novel and film noir, has also led him to such editing projects as Farber on Film: The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber (2009); The Selected Poems of Kenneth Fearing (2004); Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s and 1940s (1997) and Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1950s (1997); and editions of Dashiell Hammett and James M. Cain for Everyman Library. He has contributed a catalog essay to About Face (1985), a retrospective of Manny Farber’s paintings; an essay on the Kinks for This is Pop: In Search of the Elusive at Experience Music Project (2004); an essay on Bob Dylan to Studio A: The Bob Dylan Reader (2005); and an essay on Allen Ginsberg to "Howl": Fifty Years Later (2006). He is the recipient of numerous honors and awards including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Ingram Merrill Foundation. A contributing editor to both BOMB and the Boston Review, Polito’s poetry and criticism have been published widely. He is at work on a new book titled Detours: Seven Noir Lives.)

The Best Poem Of Robert Polito

Deep Deuce

As phantoms direct life from the shadows,

I feel
I leaned on something,
and it broke.

My father on the porch with his crosswords said,
this must be what it feels like to be dead;

When I returned from the dead there was no one to greet me,
but still you are glad—

I wander the ruins the way my tongue
wanders my missing teeth,
the bricks and mortar of Deep Deuce
rotted like molars in an ancient mouth;

Here Charlie Christian might have walked—

The astrologer counseled patience
and creative imaging:

Step One: Visualize
an object that symbolizes the accursed influence. Picture yourself throwing
it into a furnace.

Step two: Visualize
the person who is responsible for the curse. Imagine one end of a rope
is tied around your waist and the other around that person. Picture yourself cutting
the rope with a chainsaw as you call out, "You have no power over me!"

Step three: Repeat
twice a day for eleven days . . .

You visualize her green boots inside the furnace . . .

—No. You are in a crematorium and you see
her perfect and corruptible body on a tray sliding into fire;

Then you see yourself cutting the rope that ties you together with a saw;

And then at last your own imperfect and corruptible body—I mean, me—calls out

and I jump in after her.

Robert Polito Comments

Nullah 12 February 2019

Great James Thompson book

0 0 Reply
Oberoff 12 February 2019

Great book about James Thompson

0 0 Reply

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