 |
Kevin King's first novel, All the Stars Came Out That Night, was published by Dutton in 1995. He is the recipient of a 2006 fellowship from the New Hampshire Council on the Arts.
|
 |
|
 |
Published Fall 2006
 
Tom Delay
I love your name so much
I can't stop saying it.
It always comes out clearly
and slowly, which makes it
true to itself—I was going
to say 'honest' but that doesn't
seem quite right. I just jotted
you down as a title with no
compunction to write a poem
about you. But now I can see you
in the pool with us, floating around
on a plastic raft, no sharks
in the water. I was thinking, Tom,
that your name might be French—deLay,
and any association of your surname
with the retardation of a progressive agenda
might be wholly unmerited.
I'm imagining I might see your name
next on a Post Office wall—
did you think it would be, like Reagan's,
on stamps, the reams of which
your House buddies traded for beer money
or something? As I recall, the Indians
who traded teepees for casinos
paid you a lot of dough to be true
to your name with regard to recognition
of their rivals. That's where
the story ends.
How quickly, Tom, we forget you.
Excuse me. My son is asking about
Galileo Galilei, who must
have felt so important
he had to conjugate himself.
There must be a poem in that.
So long,
Tom Delay.
|
|
|
|
MR BOOKS
Critics at Work
ed. Jeffrey J. Williams.
Critics at Work offers a guided tour through the central, sometimes confusing and frequently controversial developments in contemporary literary and cultural criticism. The tour guides, however, are not distant observers but have been primary participants in those developments, and they report on theory, cultural studies, the literary canon, the recent focus on race, sexuality, and other identities, the state of the univerisity, and the role of the intellectual. Throughout, they consider the not always easy negotiation of politics and culture.
|
|
