Four Incarnations #1 - Switchblade Poetry: Chicago Style
FOUR INCARNATIONS
1. Switchblade Poetry: Chicago Style
I began writing poetry in Chicago at age 15, when I
was named corresponding secretary for a gang of
young punks and hoodlums called the Semcoes. A
Social Athletic Club, we met at various locations
two Thursdays a month. My job was to write
postcards to inform my brother thugs--who carried
switchblade knives and stole cars for fun and
profit--as to when, where and why we were meeting.
Rhyming couplets seemed the appropriate form to
notify characters like lightfingered Foxman,
cross-eyed Harris, and Irving "Koko," of upcoming
meetings. An example of my switchblade juvenilia:
The Semcoes meet next Thursday night
at Speedway Koko's.
Five bucks dues, Foxman, or fight.
Koko was a young boxer whose father owned Chicago's
Speedway Wrecking Company and whose basement was
filled with punching bags and pinball machines.
Koko and the others joked about my affliction--the
writing of poetry--but were so astonished that they
criticized me mainly for my inability to spell.
_____
next: Incarnation #2 - Sailor Librarian: San Diego
These are such, sad, generous poems--peopled with characters it's impossible not to love, especially Robert's podiatrist-Jewish-Rosicrucian father with his wisdom that bridges dualities expounding on the feet and the soul, sex and death, the broken and the whole. In one poem, Robert asserts, In a world of 'No, dogs are a Yes.' And in the world of poetry, this book is a resounding Yes. Read it when you're happy, but especially read it when you're depressed. You'll find yourself joining in with the many dogs in these poems, saying, 'Woof, woof f----in' woof!”
—Poet Ellen Bass
About Robert
Guggenheim Fellow, chosen by Lucille Clifton for a Villa Montalvo Literary Arts Award, author of more than 20 books, including Four Incarnations (Coffee House Press), Heavenly Sex, God is in the Cracks and The Collected Poems (now in its 2nd printing),...
Connections
Causes Robert Sward Supports
Audubon Society, National Geographic, "Green," the Environment, SPCA...
Robert’s Favorite Books
Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, Saul Bellow's Adventures of Augie March, Ezra Pound's Make It New, T.S. Eliot's Collected Poems, The Autobiography of Benjamin...
Robert is a fan of
4 Incarnations, Coffee House Press (now in its 2nd printing)
I lived in Canada 1979-1985 and a number of my books, for example, Half-a-Life's History and Rosicrucian in the Basement, were published and distributed in that country by Marty Gervais' Black Moss Press.
Four Incarnations, published in 1991, was my first book to appear in the U.S. since Five Iowa Poems, a fine edition by Stonewall Press Books in the late 1970s. Time seems to go faster and faster. Then what happens? You run out of time and it's over. No more time. Eternity, maybe, but no more time as we count it... passing thought. I'm not the first. Just measuring out one's life in publications.