Classic and Contemporary Poetry
LETTERS TO YESENIN: 24, by JAMES HARRISON Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Dear friend. It rained long and hard after a hot week and when I Last Line: Getting brainy and sad, to avoid leaving this physical world. Alternate Author Name(s): Harrison, Jim Subject(s): Food & Eating; Imaginary Conversations; Sickness; Yesenin, Sergei (1895-1925); Illness | ||||||||
Dear friend. It rained long and hard after a hot week and when I awoke the world was green and leafy again, or as J.D. says, everything was new like a warm rain after a movie. And I said enough of death and its obvious health hazards, it's a white-on-white jigsaw puzzle in one piece. An hour with the doctor yesterday when he said my blood pressure was so high I might explode as if I had just swallowed an especially tasty grenade. I must warn my friends not to stand too close. Blood can be poisonous; the Kikuyu in Kenya are often infected when they burrow hacking away in the gut of an elephant. Some don't come back. But doctors don't say such things, except W.C. Williams. Just like your doctor when you were going batty, mine said, "You must be distressed, you eat and drink and smoke far too much. Cut out these things. The lab found lilacs and part of the backbone of a garter snake or garter in your stool sample, and the remnants of a hair ball. Do you chew your comb? We are checking to see if it's your hair as there are possible criminal questions here. Meanwhile get this thatch of expensive prescriptions filled and I advise extensive psychiatric care. I heard your barking when I left the room. How did you manage gout at your age?" My eyes misted and I heard fiddle music and I looked up from page 86 in the June Vogue where my old nemesis Lauren Hutton was staring at me in a doctor's office in northern Michigan. This is Paul Bunyan country Lauren. And how did I get gout? All of that fried salt and side pork as a child. Humble fare. Quintuple heaps of caviar and decanters of vodka at the Hotel Europa in Leningrad. Tete de veau, the brains, tongue and cheeks of a calf. Side orders of tripe a la mode de Caen sweetbreads with morels. Stewed kidneys and heart. Three-pound steaks as snacks, five dozen oysters and three lobsters in Boston. A barrel of nice gravy. Wild boar. Venison. Duck. Partridge. Pig's feet. But you know, Sergei, I must eat these magical trifles to keep from getting brainy and sad, to avoid leaving this physical world. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A SICK CHILD by RANDALL JARRELL AFTERNOON AT MACDOWELL by JANE KENYON HAVING IT OUT WITH MELANCHOLY by JANE KENYON SONNET: 9. HOPE by WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES THE IDEA OF BALANCE IS TO BE FOUND IN HERONS AND LOONS by JAMES HARRISON |
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