Jack just emailed a poem by Gerald
Stern, Pittsburgh boy, citing Galileo’s
metaphor for the mind: paper scrap hurled
by wind. Anxious squirrel threatened by throes
of truck wheels, Stern says, best fits his writer’s
psychic reality. I saw him read
once in the ‘80s—night of harsh winter
on the Jersey Shore—and began to heed
how poets prep us for the kill. Bald, plump,
grandfather’s serene smile, he lured us toward
false security with baggy frame slumped
at the lectern. Then the hiding leopard
leapt from the dark, slashed minds with craft-sure claws
of piercing phrases, stroked hearts with his paws.
Roger Armbrust
August 7, 2007
