Tom Boswell is a writer, photographer, and community organizer residing near Madison, Wisconsin. He was awarded a Fishtrap Fellowship in Poetry in 2006.

ns 69 | Fall/Winter 2007

Featuring an interview with MH Abrams, reviews of new books by Walter Benn Michaels, John McGowan, and Paul Smith, plus a special section on online criticism.

Read this Issue

Published Fall/Winter 2007

Black is the color of my true love

for Paul

by Tom Boswell | ns 69

I wish to see the streets swell
with these earnest Americans, knowing
full well that the larger the crowd,
the more alone I will feel.

Today I stand in the shadows watching
the young ones dressed in black,
their ragged black flag fluttering
in February's breeze, as they march by

Beating on plastic buckets like bratty children.
I am old enough to be their father
and would not expect them to invite
me inside their clubhouse, even if I dared

Ask, but my dark and brooding heart
heaves with joy to see them break ranks
and spoil the neat plans of my friends,
who want only to hand themselves over,

Politely, to the police and be led away
in quiet pairs without having bothered
to disturb the peace. In this country
that is not mine, these young Americans

Dressed in black are the nearest thing
to beauty that I know, yet I will put on
a tie when I mean to make trouble,
resigned to never know how they come by

Their brand of anarchism, and they will never
know my father Good man who, like me,
often stood sulking in these shadows,
watching the young and pretty ones,

Wishing only to be of use, hungering
for a home in this alien world,
wanting only to sew and fly a simple flag
with no colors that no one need salute.

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.

Purchase Critics at Work.