Revisionist Poetry – Have you read the poet?, V.3

Have you read Irving Layton?
They say he’s fantastic—
but only his smile leaves marks,
like a detached fly-wing: small, precise, obscene.

Have you listened to Whitman?
Do you find him lavish with his breath?

Have you read Rod McKuen?
They say he moves crowds,
but only with a single-minded ache
for men and women—
like a moth circling a candle: predictable, hungry.

Have you heard Leonard Cohen?
He eulogizes ironies—
beautiful, ruined lovers
seen from a low-lit room on Mount Royal.

Have you read Alfred Tennyson?
They call him chivalrous,
but only in the heroic register—
descriptions: the grieving queen, the soldier gone,
like the quiet courage of a warrior’s widow.

Have you thought of T. S. Eliot?
A life of fervent loves, the funerals of friends,
and still he felt hollow.

Have you read Henry David Thoreau?
They say he was prescient—
patient in the persistent record
of experiments in living,
like the man who planted trees for winters he would never see.

Have you seen e. e. cummings?
Can you find him in his typographic architecture?

Have you read the poet?
They say he’s expressive—
but only in the seclusion of his room,
building a private, careful language of line.