Reading My Friends #6
Welcome to Reading My Friends.
This is Lyman Grant, coming to you from the 4 Door Lounge, my backyard study in Harrisonburg, Virginia, deep in the heart of the beautiful Shenandoah Valley.
Thank you for joining me for the sixth installment of this little podcast. Remember you can listen and subscribe on Substack or find us on the web at 4doorlounge.com. I also post reminders on Facebook, so befriend me, why don’t you?
I spent the first weekend in May in Richmond, Virginia, at the Centennial Celebration of the Poetry Society of Virginia. It was a great weekend with really informative workshops and several inspiring readings. I am not going to list all the poets I met and enjoyed listening to, talking with. I will leave that to future episodes in our podcast. Today I will focus on a man I have been wanting to meet for several years, David Anthony Sam. Let’s read a few poems from his 2019 book, Dark Fathers and Other Poems.
Buckle up, right? Fathers and sons. Oh, dear. Here is emotional territory we know about all too well. Telemachus and Odysseus. Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. The sins of the father, etc. etc. In this book, David cooks a thick stew: three generations: the arc of grandfather, father, and son. Season with the spices of immigration and class, and the flavors get really strong.
Here’s “Genetic Geologies.”
Sated with pasts of red clay and coal,
quartz sand and pale gray mud,
I live on histories not my own:
Huddling in dark holds of reeking ships
that toss a cargo of flesh with each wave--
Peddling dreams of dry goods in snow
drinking the wine of self-pity and hope--
Arguments shouting Polish over boiling
chicken and perogies while a fire raged
in drunken fireplace reddening the night.
I fail to write the truths of these memories
encoded in my breath and blood, my
flesh layered in genetic geologies that
I try to parse like the folds of the earth
after the eons have uplifted mountains.
I met David Anthony Sam on-line during the pandemic. I needed to connect with poets and somehow ended up finding his zoom meetings of the North Central Region of the Virginia Poetry Society, even though I do not live in that region. He welcomed me, ran a good meeting, so I began to look up his poems. At first, I read poems that showed a knowledge and love of the earth and the natural world. I heard a good deal of Whitman and Dickinson beautifully nurturing the roots of those poems. At the Centennial, I finally met David in person and purchased Dark Fathers. And in these poems I sense other sensibilities. Is it Philip Levine? James Wright? Working-class without Whitman’s bravado. Confessional without the self-pity and display.
“Pallets and Steel” is about David’s father.
He worked the welding torch,
flaming sparks against the black
faceplate of his mask, dripping
fast-congealing metal stars
onto the oil-smeared floor.
The war was over, his leg,
broken against the telephone pole
in the motorcycle accident, mostly
healed, though the steel plate ached
inside when the weather changed.
He was a silent, sometimes sullen
worker and a fierce and silent leader
who sang like Dean Martin
and glared like Jeff Chandler.
His men disliked his sometimes
stiff coldness, but most were so
loyal they would follow him into
the bowels of the broken machinery
of the assembly line, all exiting
greased black and weary.
Decades passed with twelve-hour
days, seven-day weeks. His children
matured without him noticing.
And then--just before his 55th birthday--
his heart stopped twice.
They pounded his chest to wake him,
broke open is breast so his heart
could be reprieved. He prayed to live
long enough to screw the company,
long enough to meet his children again.
Now he works to liberate the colors
held within his fingers, free the images
he dreamed, remembered and invented
through the brush of paint to canvas
board. He must free himself from living
only black or white. The acrylic aromas
intoxicated him better than
the daily sips of sad whiskey
drinking sadness at Lakeview Tavern.
The war was over. His life unbroken.
He works the brush and palllet,
reflecting hues against the mask
of his hard face, dripping fast-congealing
memories of warm Italy and lost suns
onto the oil-blessed canvas.
Dark Fathers and Other Poems brings together 47 poems in two sections. The first, the shorter of the two, is called “Alleles,” referencing the variations that can occur in a genetic strand. Here we get the hard stuff that separates fathers and sons. The second is called “Atonements,” in which we see the attempts to turn anger and disappointment and insults into forgiveness and lasting kinship.
We will close with “Memorials.”
We buried you today.
I think you would have
not disliked the service
too much, it being short
without the preaching
righteousness that kept
you from pew and pulpit.
Elvis and Dean Martin
sang in baritones with
range to touch us all
from death, immortal
in recordings we sold
together in the store
between our quarrels.
You would have been
embarrassed by the praise
but also glowed, head
down, slight smile near
smirk, closer to a word
like love that had these
last years found expression
there. How principled, how
modest, how prideful, how
stubborn, how Pyrrhic,
how selfish, how dark,
and finally how weightless
you now become in silence.
Now--what are you?
A large man in a small
town, you had made
a difference. Eulogies
were spoken. Hundreds
came to hear. The mute
testimony of an awkward
girl, now grown into
an awkward woman, read
by a stranger from a badly
typed script said what
we all were hearing when
the casket graveled into
unforgiving earth: We
want you for more days.
We want your painter's
hand to draw more colors
from this gray, gray, world.
We want to see your ghost
again walk these streets.
We want to hear your
voice sing "That's Amore"
as we watch the moon
rise weakly in our sky.
David is the author of several books of poems. Since retiring as President of Germanna Community College, he has been finding the time to publish even more. I encourage you to explore his work through his website or wherever you purchase your books.