PAY YOUR OWN TUITION
I get excited by crows above.
They dream of becoming ravens.
Love is a weak citadel.
For some a cardboard lie.
Desire is a subjective noun.
Move through fields of sunflowers.
Finally, I see a bald eagle,
Topmost branch of a dead pine.
Max steadily sets type,
Then proofs and reads.
Major Nobody found guilty.
Storms blow at the lakeshore.
Hostility crystallized.
O big, lonely mountains.
Coyotes and prairie dogs
Hide in the mesquite.
I was picked up alone.
They gave me shelter.
Soldiers fighting in a war.
It may come to my country.
Bodies become philosophical
Books of the recent dead
Who has the money?
How much is the tuition?
Many already lie dead,
forgotten. Flowers picked up
From mass graves. Below broken
shadows, one meadowlark singing.
_____________
John Garmon
Review by Paul Ilechko
I recently read Jim Harrison’s Collected Ghazals, and this poem feels very much like it could have been taken from that collection, although it is extended out from the five or six couplets that Harrison typically uses to fourteen. It also breaks the one rule of ghazal writing that Harrison actually adhered to, when it uses enjambment between the last two couplets.
It could also be regarded as a kind of modern sonnet, where each line is spread across two lines, the volta occurring after the eighth couplet, at the point that the poem ceases being a poem of the natural world (replete with ravens, sunflowers, eagles and a lakeshore) and becomes something much darker, engrossed in worldly concepts such as war, finance and death. Finally, as mankind fades away into mass graves, the one remaining meadowlark sings its haunting song as epitaph.
Review by Zeke Sanchez
Garmon’s poem here might be a post – or post-post modern poem I’ve read about. It has at least two aspects of it that are called out as the attributes of a post modern poem. There is no defined narrative. Things do not develop in a linear fashion. For example, in the first section there is no overt relationship between the talk of crows and ravens and the talk of a citadel and a cardboard lie. For that matter, what is the link between crows wanting to be ravens and a definition, in metaphor of love?
Yet, as you continue to read the poem, the title “Pay Your Own Tuition” suddenly becomes blazingly clear. The crows wanting to be ravens embody “desire” – a word that shows up in the next section. The weak citadel is somehow related to soldiers fighting in a war. The cardboard lie could be related to dreams the protagonist had of going to college becoming cardboard lies as a war wrecks the economy and makes things tougher. You end up having to pay for your own tuition – if you can.
This is a good poem. I learned something about writing this type of poem.
Review by Jan Wiezorek
John Garmon shares thoughts and engages nature in “Pay Your Own Tuition,” offering a disjunct view of life. Garmon juxtaposes a poetic walk through “lovely mountains” and worries, from large issues to dead flowers. Garmon maps this country with disillusionment and questioning. Even love cannot withstand desire and pressure. A songbird brings hope as we make our own way through trials and payments. Without saying so, Garmon invites readers to walk among all this struggle, promise, and glory.
Review by Jared Pearce
For me the killer here is, “Bodies become philosophical / Books”—I really like how the reading is neither true nor sure, but a subjective pursuit of those things, and by being so, can become both sure and true.