Everyone's Poetry Book
Modern Poetry Can Be Understandable
by
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PRETTY GIRLS, A DIME A DOZEN
Pretty dime a dozen girls
With supple limbs and feathery lashes,
Sungold, flame, and raven curls,
Sweet dabs of joy and radiant splashes,
Pretties, one whole dozen for a dime,
As common as rich blooms in wild fields,
Fresh in my own garden anytime.
Ordinary wonted things,
Those pretty girls, a dime a dozen,
Floating on smart perfumed wings;
A wife, a maid, somebody’s cousin,
Fetching, silken, winsome, soft lasses
That captivating, smile your heart at
Full, firm, upturned breasts, chic svelte asses.
A dozen? Only one thin dime?
My God! I’ll tell you what I’ll do.
Since, Sweet Girl, you’re so sublime,
I’ll take
A WOMAN STROLLING BY
How fetchingly a woman strolls by who
Thinks she’s unobserved—like a sparrow, free.
In the plate glass window-mirror’s full view
She finds, with tug or pat, epiphany:
Subtle, sensual singing of her flesh
Within dear “liquefaction of her clothes.”
She moves in rhythms of her own grace—fresh,
Intriguing, ending in her upturned nose.
What inner cry is it that captivates—
Hard as adamant, fragile as eggshell—
That like a burning magnet agitates,
But satisfies like draught at a sweet well?
It’s her being’s female iridescence
That makes her what she is—her essence.
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About the Book
Everyone’s Poetry Book
A book that shows every poetry lover that modern poetry can be understandable
Why should the lover of the beauty of language put up with unintelligibility in his own native tongue? Why should the reader of poetry face exile in searching for the best words in their best order? In reading Richard Wolff, you will see that “only the lover of language, someone on intimate terms with her impervious ways, can begin to know what ‘the best words’ and the ‘best order’ may be.” —John McCabe.
You’ll thus note that Richard Wolff prides himself on his clarity, concreteness, and adherence to the discipline of poetic structure—virtues much ignored in current literary circles. At their best moments, the results of the poems of this collection “create impressions of a voice of startling spontaneity.”
In Richard Wolff’s pages, “Though we cannot always decipher why or how it happens, we rely on poetry to increase our knowledge of ourselves and to confirm us in the truth of our experience.”
“...there courses through these poems one primary passion that serves to bind together and direct all the others: the poet’s passion for Beauty.”
If therefore you can reach for only one book of modern poetry from your bookshelf, reach for Everyone’s Poetry Book. In it you will find reward and fulfillment.
Mr. Wolff spent most of his adult working life serving our nation in federal publishing, managing four Department of Defense printing plants in a 14 state Midwestern area. He and his wife, Nancy, live in northeast