POET OF THE DAY: Robert West

"It's remarkable how often the national poetry establishment fails to celebrate the many fine southern poets writing today. Our poets win an oddly small number of major literary awards, and they appear in far too few anthologies of national scope. " How could I not be partial to a poet who at the beginning of a review in a major Southern literary journal states precisely what I've been thinking? I've known Robert West since the days when he was editor The Carolina Quarterly at UNC-CH, where he received his PhD. He now teaches at Mississippi State University, though I'm hoping he will return eventually to his native state one of these days.

He's one of the sharpest critics around, and to add to his luster, he is a native of the western NC mountains. As if he needed any more luster, I'll polish off his biography by saying that he's also a poet, a widely published one-- the author of two poetry chapbooks: Best Company (2005) and Out of Hand (2007)--with a third due soon from Finishing Line Press. The poems below are from that forthcoming collection.

The Owl

after Apollinaire

My heart’s an owl nailed down, then freed,

then nailed again. Too spent to bleed,

it hardly feels a thing these days.

All those who love me win my praise.

Point Taken

If acting like a child could keep me young,

I’d look and feel much better than I do:

a logic I can laugh at now once stung

because I caught the drift of it from you.

Union

We make such us of you and me

as can’t define or trace the tie

between the two we used to be:

that compound subject, you and I.

Aubade

A gray

morning

like this

is

good only

for

going back

to

bed with

you

so far

away.