The best conversations are unscripted and without agenda. As to content, they start from zero. Both parties spark and connect like neurons firing in the brain. No dead zones, no echoing silences. I spent almost two hours Monday afternoon talking by telephone with the poet/translator Mike Juster, dba A.M. Juster, aka Michael Astrue. The talk was non-stop and would defy glib summary. We talked about cities, music, kids, bad restaurants and books, and didn’t neglect gossip. Here are three of Mike’s poems, arranged in reverse chronological order, to give you a taste of his wit.
From the November
2011 issue of First Things, a poem
about one of my childhood mentors, Don Herbert (1917-2007), “Farewell, Mr. Wizard”:
“I conjure
NBC in black-and-white.
You drop dry
ice in water; fog is rising.
You sell us
Celsius and Fahrenheit.
“I lose you
in a cloud of advertising--
Winston, Esso,
Zenith, Mr. Clean,
those
thirty-second breaks for Ovaltine--
then smile
at Bunsen burners and balloons,
more ropes
and pulleys. You are mesmerizing
as familiar
things become surprising.
I dream of
robots, rayguns, Mars and moons,
and know
that someday Chevrolets will fly.
“POOF!
Static. I can't make your show go on.
Space
shuttles fall; the pumps are running dry.
Jihadists
shop for warheads . . . Godspeed, Don.”
From the November
2008 issue of First Things, “A Stern
Warning to Canada”:
“If you want
peace,
withdraw
your geese.”
And this,
from the Winter 2004 issue of Light
Quarterly, to add to my makeshift anthology of poems about Swift: “After
277 years, another birthday poem for Esther Johnson, a long-term houseguest of
the Reverend Jonathan Swift”:
“Let’s
overlook your death; it’s time
To bless
your birth with one more rhyme
And pray the
Dean’s unyielding spirit
Is lurking
near so he can hear it.
I pay his
debt with gratitude
Because I
know that brackish mood
Which is the
price for biting wit.
You made two
opposites a fit
And smuggled
joy into his life
Although you
never were a wife
And never
worked a day for pay.
The scholars
fuss with what to say
Because they
do not sense their blindness
In matters
shaped by human kindness,
But, Stella,
on this day I praise
Your loyal
and enduring ways--
And chuckle
when the critics squirm.
With
confidence I can affirm
That since
you entered Heaven’s walls,
No angel
wrings its wings or calls
Your gentle
interventions odd
When Swift
is thundering at God.”
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