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    Goodbye Apostrophe
    Goodbye Apostrophe
    Goodbye Apostrophe
    Ebook90 pages36 minutes

    Goodbye Apostrophe

    By Peter Schmitt

    ()

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    About this ebook

    In Goodbye, Apostrophe, his first new collection in more than a decade, nationally recognized and prize-winning poet Peter Schmitt has assembled nearly 50 poems notable for their range and emotional power. From the hard lessons of childhood to the loss of parents, these poems confront the challenging issues of our time, including race, religion, abuse of varying kinds, and reflexive political correctness. By turns poignant and funny, elegiac and celebratory, formal and free, the mature work of a poet Richard Wilbur hailed as "one of the strongest talents in his generation" will resonate indelibly with any serious reader of American poetry.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRegal House Publishing
    Release dateNov 3, 2020
    ISBN9781646030460
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      Book preview

      Goodbye Apostrophe - Peter Schmitt

      Apostrophe

      I

      The Sprinter

      She ran track, was all I knew−a sprinter−

      and wordless at the back seemed no more there

      than on days away traveling with the team;

      her poems predictable, perfunctory,

      all false starts and pulling up too soon, never

      exceeding the line minimum, skinny

      on the page and always the single rushed draft,

      as if writing were a race to finish

      as fast as she could, subjects pedestrian,

      tedious, forgettable, for her no doubt

      as much as the reader. Until one day

      late in the term, regionals looming, she dropped

      on my desk three solid pages of long,

      gripping lines, so much stronger than anything

      she’d turned in before, as though the language

      were compelled to rise to the occasion−

      and did−relaying with heartstopped clarity

      just what her father had been doing to her

      for the past seven years−and how no one knew,

      not even her mother… What I can’t tell you,

      of course, is that from that moment forward

      her life changed−he met justice, she found freedom−

      not because it didn’t happen, but because

      it wasn’t for me to know, and I didn’t.

      And her writing the rest of that semester?

      As you’d expect, never as expressive

      again, nothing else summoning that force…

      But the poem had opened something in her,

      as she passed it to a coach, who notified

      counselors…and she kept on competing, battling,

      which is how I’ll think of her: springing away

      from her blocks, arms and legs churning, the head down,

      then slowly coming up, as she’d been taught.

      The Skeleton in My Grandfather’s Closet

      hung in their bedroom

      for years after he died,

      my grandmother dutifully dusting

      the yellowing life-size model

      from his surgical days.

      Who can say

      if she ever let time settle

      on the stack of letters

      she found from the nurse−

      but she took my father with her

      (he was six) from Brooklyn

      to Oakland on the Zephyr,

      booking so late

      every berth was reserved.

      The nerve of that woman,

      she might’ve muttered, and How

      could he bring them home?

      Unsure she’d bring herself

      home, or their son.

      Sleeping upright was no bargain

      while he roamed the observation car,

      a storm out over the Rockies

      lighting up the glassed-in deck

      like an x-ray.

      By the time the Bay

      washed into view, sun burning

      through fog, she saw how it was,

      and penned my grandfather a letter

      of her own−one he saved

      only he knew where−

      because it saved him.

      Fat Kid

      Three hundred pounds in seventh grade and growing,

      fattest kid in school, Sid in the horn section

      nearly blocked my view of our director

      from where I labored, back row, on tenor sax.

      I could see his neck going pink, sweat slipping

      down Dizzy Gillespie cheeks, eyes squinting

      as his stubby fingers worked the keys. We lived

      two blocks apart. The bus ejected us

      at the same stop: slight, skinny me, Big Sid.

      That first week of school, we all saw it coming,

      and when some tall,

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