Man with Crow by David Ligare (2015)
Dear friends,
It’s been an abnormally long time I sent a poem here. Bob came over yesterday (we were all sick for a while so didn’t meet for a couple weeks) and it was wonderful to spend time speaking about our various projects. I also asked him if I could buy bobhicok.com and he said I should do as I please and since he’ll never buy it, it was my choice. So of course I bought the domain and now this Substack is perhaps more official? I hope to make this place an extensive archive of Bob’s work. I’ll soon add more information about his books. I believe that a poet as magnificent as Bob is a once-in-a-generation event and he deserves to be celebrated largely/deeply.
I realize I didn’t mention this here at all but we (at ONLY POEMS) named a fellowship after him. And for the inaugural Bob Hicok Fellowship, we received 1244 submissions. The submissions closed August 31st, so I apologize if you got excited and wanted to send in work. But this will happen every year, so :)
Okay, that’s enough for now. I’ll let you enjoy this poem below that almost a dozen submitters to the fellowship mentioned was their favorite poem ever.
All good things,
Karan
Calling Him Back from Layoff
by Bob Hicok
I called a man today. After he said hello and I said hello came a pause during which it would have been confusing to say hello again so I said how are you doing and guess what, he said fine and wondered aloud how I was and it turns out I’m OK. He was on the couch watching cars painted with ads for Budweiser follow cars painted with ads for Tide around an oval that’s a metaphor for life because most of us run out of gas and settle for getting drunk in the stands and shouting at someone in a t-shirt we want kraut on our dog. I said he could have his job back and during the pause that followed his whiskers scrubbed the mouthpiece clean and his breath passed in and out in the tidal fashion popular with mammals until he broke through with the words how soon thank you ohmyGod which crossed his lips and drove through the wires on the backs of ions as one long word as one hard prayer of relief meant to be heard by the sky. When he began to cry I tried with the shape of my silence to say I understood but each confession of fear and poverty was more awkward than what you learn in the shower. After he hung up I went outside and sat with one hand in the bower of the other and thought if I turn my head to the left it changes the song of the oriole and if I give a job to one stomach other forks are naked and if tonight a steak sizzles in his kitchen do the seven other people staring at their phones hear?
This poem is from Bob Hicok’s Insomnia Diary (University of Pittsburgh Press 2004)
Sometimes I get frustrated with your adulation and I think some things I'd rather not be too explicit about and then I read Bob's poem, and boy am I wrong.
In the world of road construction we would get laid off every winter. Time to read and write again. Things would get a little tight come April, when the asphalt plants opened back up, and we’d wait for that call, wondering if we had fallen out of favor. The family was thankful when the call finally came, sometimes late, as if, letting us know we’re all expendable. The way of the world. The speaker in the poem demonstrates a compassion that most learn to overlook, if they had any to begin with. Great poem. A lot of paths to contemplate here, which is the mark of something good.