"Ode to Torpor" (from Heavenly Sex, Black Moss Press -- see also "New & Selected Poems" (Red Hen Press)
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Glory be to God for the tiresome and tedious,
Glory be to God for tedium,
for no news about anything,
for newspaper strikes and power outages,
lethargy and downtime.
Postpone and delay. And again,
postpone and delay.
No place to go. No way to get there.
No reason not to stay.
Glory be to God for inaction,
for not getting things done,
for not getting anything done,
No huffin’, no puffin’,
just some of that slow and easy,
the woman lackadaisically on top,
the man lackadaisically on top.
Yummy, yummy, take your time,
yummy, yummy, I’ll take mine.
Slow and easy,
slow and easy.
Glory be to God, O glory,
O glory be to God.
---Robert Sward
Read by Garrison Keillor on Writers' Almanac and reprinted from Heavenly Sex (Black Moss Press) in New & Selected Poems (Red Hen Press) avail. now $19.95 (reduced from $24.95) from Amazon.com, or author, Robert, P.O. Box 7062, Santa Cruz, CA 95061-7062.
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
