The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Thu 5/14/2009)

[RetroLounge]

To Bananas

They defame you who say we go bananas
when monkeying around. It’s not fool’s gold
that rises in us as yellow does in you.
It’s 14 karat that can’t be banked and must
be spent as you must be eaten now
or go to mush by noon. Who has time
to bake you into bread, anyway?
Donovan sang the ‘60s “Mellow Yellow”
and everyone baked your peel in ovens
hoping to find that starry celestial dynamo
in their dilated eyes and for once I said no.
I like you with milk and Wheaties, reading
the pictured sports hero’s life story
that always includes a wholesome breakfast
not to mention twelve-hour training days.
I like to watch a beautiful woman peel
and eat you slowly, with conviction,
though in public I have to break you
into little pieces that aren’t so phallic.
You’ve loads of potassium, which helps
in cases of Giardia, the bug I cupped up
from a Rockies stream. My diet: you,
white rice, water – so pure it seemed to
wash away as well my indiscretions.
What’s sweet but problematic is how
delicate you are. Always bruised by lunch,
you can forget about suitcase or airplane!
Wounded as you, cheerleaders, bah,
they never noticed but once and thus
see “indiscretions” above, thank you.
I miss Chickita banana girl who raised me
as a boy. No, it wasn’t you in my pocket
but her I was happy to see. Today I bought
a wooden prop with polished hook for you
to ripen on. My friend Tomas claims
in America we never get your tastiest cousins,
exotic ones, though I’ve hung in a tree like you
and fallen too, but never into anyone’s arms.

Kevin Stein

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Kevinn Stein's poems and essays have appeared widely in journals such as American Poetry Review, Boulevard, The Gettysburg Review, The Kenyon Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, and TriQuarterly. His forthcoming collection, Sufficiency of the Actual , will appear in the University of Illinois Press Poetry Series in fall 2008. Stein’s fourth full-length collection, American Ghost Roses (University of Illinois Press, 2005), garnered the Society of Midland Authors 2006 Poetry Award. Other collections include Chance Ransom (University of Illinois Press, 2000), Bruised Paradise (University of Illinois Press, 1996) and A Circus of Want (University of Missouri Press), winner of the 1992 Devins Award for Poetry. His prize-winning poetry chapbooks are The Figure Our Bodies Make (St. Louis Poetry Center, 1988) and A Field of Wings (Illinois Writers, Inc., 1986). Stein’s Private Poets, Worldly Acts, essays on the interplay of contemporary poetry and history, was published by Ohio University Press (1996) and reprinted in paperback in 1999. That volume earned recognition as an Amazon.com Recommended Book. In addition, Stein's "James Wright: The Poetry of a Grown Man" (Ohio University Press, 1989) is considered the definitive study of Wright’s work. Finally, Stein has extended his scholarly interests by editing two important anthologies of Illinois poetry. In 2007 Stein edited Bread & Steel, the first-ever audio CD poetry anthology of 24 Illinois poets reading their works. Sales from this audio CD support Stein’s Poetry Now! initiative; this Poet Laureate project donates funds to Illinois libraries for the purchase of books by Illinois poets. For detailed description of Bread & Steel and CD ordering information, see www.bradley.edu/poet/breadandsteel. With the late poet G. E. Murray, Stein also edited Illinois Voices: An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Poetry (University of Illinois Press, 2001). This volume offers the first comprehensive anthology of Illinois poetry’s rich twentieth-century heritage.

Stein has received numerous awards, most recently the Vernon Louis Parrington Medal for Distinguished Writing. Previously, he has been awarded Poetry's Frederick Bock Prize, the 1998 Indiana Review Poetry Prize, the Stanley Hanks Chapbook Award, and four Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards for his poetry – the most recent awarded in 2007 to his poem “Middle-aged Adam's and Eve's Bedside Tables.” In addition, he has been the recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship and three such fellowships awarded by the Illinois Arts Council. Named 1989 Bradley University Professor of the Year for excellence in teaching, Stein is Caterpillar Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing Program at Bradley University, Peoria, IL. In December 2003, the Govenor of Illinois named Kevin Stein the state's fourth Poet Laureate. Stein assumes the position previously held by Gwendolyn Brooks, Carl Sandburg, and Howard Austin.


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:hi:

RL