31 Comments

I've read the poem three times now. Each time I feel it more.

Expand full comment
Jul 24, 2022Liked by Greg Olear

"..which looks like a movie poster for a mashup of Godfather: Part V and Addams Family IV"

Greg! Hahahaaaaha. And Thank you for the "For Keats" ❤️ Beautiful

Expand full comment

Yeah. Wow.

Expand full comment
Jul 24, 2022Liked by Greg Olear

Wow. And anyone who knows me knows that I don't "Wow" very often for poetry. I read like a maniac, and yet poetry normally makes my mind wander away from what I'm reading, but this riveted me. I gasped at, "he began the life of what it is to die." How PERFECT are those ten words arranged like that? I think we all eventually get to that point in our lives, not meaning that we've stopped growing and learning, but we realize that at some point, we've moved closer to death and farther from birth. Amazing.

I had not seen any pictures from Ivana's funeral, and the one you shared says everything, with a perfect description of Godfather, Part FIVE crossed with the Addams Family IV. That was also perfection!

And a completely random bit of poetry I saw this week was the cold open to last Monday's episode of "Better Call Saul," which I watched as many times as I read this poem: three. I will miss that show. My only dilemma for this fall is whether to watch BCS again, then "Breaking Bad," or to go right into BB from the end of BCS. Decisions, decisions.

Expand full comment

Thank you for introducing me to Marie and her lovely word pictures.

You wrote: "All of that poison is corrosive, like the acid that melted through Steve Bannon’s bathtub, or whatever it is that is eating away at Steve Bannon’s face. With too much exposure, I respond viscerally to it. I feel revulsion. This is why I almost never run photos of Trump on PREVAIL: it’s bad enough I have to think about him; if I can help it, I’d rather not have to look at him. Or Mike Flynn. Or Elon Musk. Their images literally make me ill."

I have to say that I too react with revulsion at those photos, and I never share or repost any article with one of those hideous reminders of our national horror attached. During the four years of ruin, it seemed to me that everyone in the sick orbit had a face that was in the process of literally melting - women and men. Bannon's disfigurement is one among many. I often wondered if it was like a Pinocchio phenomenon, if one lives with nothing but lies and evil, perhaps the nose doesn't grow, but the face begins to melt?

Expand full comment

Though I find poetry a "difficult" art for me, I am grateful that you chose to share this poem with us. Also, grateful that you do not share tfg's image, among those others. They get too much "screen" time as it is. I commented to a reader on LFAA the other day thusly: I grew up in the age of the Beatles when they dominated the scene for many years. Then one day I turned around and discovered there were many walking around (surviving!) who never heard of them. I wish the same for this vile creature and his "faithful" as soon as possible!

Ocean's 15 was stellar! Loved your version of "Yesterday." So perfect. Believe it or not, I posted on Twitter the original as it was sung by Paul in response to someone's comment that orange man had difficulty with the word. Personally, I thought he really was longing for "Yesterday" when he thought his coup was going to succeed and got choked up over how it slipped through his fingers.

And... I can't believe that Sandi is 78 years old!

Expand full comment

The Trumps, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Joe Manchin to name just a few, are robbers, everyone. For relatively short-term monetary gain they are stealing not only the possibility of a better future for our posterity, but also wantonly destroying the habitats of countless non-human species. Record temperatures are being broken and then broken again all over the planet. 6 billion tons of Greenland ice are melting into the Atlantic Ocean daily, a rate faster than climatologists had predicted. And yet these latter-day Neros fiddle while Earth burns.

Perhaps the words of great poets such as John Keats and Marie Ponsot should be engraved on gold tablets, so some day a million or billion years hence, they will still be here to let the Universe know, not all was bad with Homo sapiens, who caused their demise in the Garden of Eden that is the 3rd rock from the Sun.

Expand full comment

BTW, what is the whose house is that in the photo? It's lovely.

Expand full comment
Jul 25, 2022·edited Jul 25, 2022Liked by Greg Olear

You have captured the visual ugliness with words that evoke the same visceral response. Somehow I needed someone's commisseration to feel justified in watching EVERYTHING on delay so I can fast-forward through the ugly parts. Or mute the voices I no longer want to hear. Why can't we just turn it all off? Is it our fright or flight instinct for survival? I have come to fear dying before this gets better...so much so, I want to find a way to microdose some psychedelic to ease my growing anxiety. 😉

Seriously though, thank you. I wish I had been able to read this on Friday - maybe I'd have spent the weekend doing something (anything) more productive than binging Marvel movies.

Expand full comment
Jul 25, 2022Liked by Greg Olear

I absolutely adore your writing, and love that you expose us to great poetry and literature. And then you top yourself with “Yesterday”. I really appreciate you, Greg Olear!

Expand full comment
Jul 26, 2022Liked by Greg Olear

"Though nothing lives that does not die, nothing dies that does not live." Could this explain why Orange and Decay (SB) continue on with no remorse and no recourse? They are not really living since they choose to steep themselves in a version of reality that doesn't exist. I can't help but think that Ivana's sudden death is a warning to others in her sphere. Interesting that the "non-living one's" would find death so terrifying but destroying civilized society, the earth and humanity on a daily basis, doesn't phase them.

Expand full comment
Jul 26, 2022Liked by Greg Olear

Thanks Gail.

I can be reached by email at coper 1658@gmail.com

Somewhere in my Motorhome in the

Great Sonoran Desert.

Cal

Expand full comment

Thank you. I like that Marie liked hip hop. I view Louis MacNiece as The Godfather of Hip Hop, especially in his poem A Prayer Before Birth.

And you, sir, bring to your writing sheer, naked poetry. I feel like I have a new skin each time. . I save and pass on your work.

Thanks.

Expand full comment