Revisionist Poetry – Have you read the poet?, V.2

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

Have you listened to Whitman?
Do you find him lavish with his breath,
sprawling praise across the city’s shoulders?

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 that hold the widow’s courage
like armour on a chair.

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

Have you read Henry David Thoreau?
They say he was prescient—
accurate in the patient record
of experiments in living,
like a man planting trees for winters he will not see.

Have you seen E. E. Cummings?
Can you find him in his typographic architecture—
the little scaffolds of word and eye?

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