The Old Pothead Poems

Download or read book The Old Pothead Poems written by Sam Abrams and published by Donald S. Ellis. This book was released on 2003 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Louis Armstrong said it, Marijuana is an assistant, a friend. These poems riff off that theme, a fifty-year-long set of improv-collaborations between two old friends, Miss Mary Jane and her man, Sam.Poems too of a classicist, on familiar terms with Sappho, Archilochus, Horace, Socrates -- regulars in the audience along with Miles, Billy, Bessie, Woody -- hard listeners for poems that are bluesy, bopsy, beat, Whitmanesque, funny, generous, passionately committed, intellectually rigorous, sometimes savage -- poems that swing hard, come on hard, poems from Brooklyn, America, Greece, London -- in-your-face poems. And always poems composed not in the head but on the breath. Poems that can only -- the author insists -- be read aloud.The goal is to perfect the world, to sing the golden age into America, an absurd goal, but only by constantly risking absurdity can we become human.