Will Dockery
2015-03-17 07:28:22 UTC
One of my favorite poets discovered from my readings of the much more famous Jack Kerouac and Gary Snyder, et cetera, was Lew Welch. Lew wrote in a spare poetic style in that non-rhyming modern style, but still, to my eyes and ears and imagination, supremely poetic. He's best known as a "charater" in Kerouac's "Northwest" novels, Dharma Bums, Big Sur and so on, and that's mainly how he'll probably be remembered, very likely.
But Lew's more than that, much more... and here's one more bid to break him loose from that obscurity.
"I saw myself as a Ring of Bones..." hits so direct, on target, like a Johnny Cash song:
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/i-saw-myself/
And of course the eternal lament of the young man who thinks he's so old:
Not yet 40, my beard is already white.
Not yet awake, my eyes are puffy and red,
like a child who has cried too much.
-Lew Welch
Read more at:
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/not-yet-40-my-beard-is-already-white/
But Lew's more than that, much more... and here's one more bid to break him loose from that obscurity.
"I saw myself as a Ring of Bones..." hits so direct, on target, like a Johnny Cash song:
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/i-saw-myself/
And of course the eternal lament of the young man who thinks he's so old:
Not yet 40, my beard is already white.
Not yet awake, my eyes are puffy and red,
like a child who has cried too much.
-Lew Welch
Read more at:
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/not-yet-40-my-beard-is-already-white/