'The Price for Biting Wit'

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.”