A Glossary of Chickens: Poems

By Gary J. Whitehead

An inventive and observant collection of lyric poems from the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets

With skillful rhetoric and tempered lyricism, the poems in A Glossary of Chickens explore, in part, the struggle to understand the world through the symbolism of words. Like the hens of the title poem, Gary J. Whitehead's lyrics root around in the earth searching for sustenance, cluck rather than crow, and possess a humble majesty.

Confronting subjects such as moral depravity, nature's indifference, aging, illness, death, the tenacity of spirit, and the possibility of joy, the poems in this collection are accessible and controlled, musical and meditative, imagistic and richly figurative. They are informed by history, literature, and a deep interest in the natural world, touching on a wide range of subjects, from the Civil War and whale ships, to animals and insects. Two poems present biblical narratives, the story of Lot's wife and an imagining of Noah in his old age. Other poems nod to favorite authors: one poem is in the voice of the character Babo, from Herman Melville's Benito Cereno, while another is a kind of prequel to Emily Dickinson's "She rose to His Requirement."

As inventive as they are observant, these memorable lyrics strive for revelation and provide their own revelations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Release date: Mar 7, 2013
• ISBN: 9781400845965

Gary J. Whitehead

Gary J. Whitehead's poems have been published in journals, magazines, and newspapers. His third book of poetry, A Glossary of Chickens, was chosen by Paul Muldoon for the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets and published in 2013 by Princeton University Press. His work has been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Guardian's Poem of the Week, the BBC's Words and Music program, and American Life in Poetry. Awards for his poetry include the Anne Halley Prize from The Massachusetts Review, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and the Pearl Hogrefe Fellowship at Iowa State University. He has been a featured poet at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, the Princeton Poetry Festival, and the West Caldwell Poetry Festival, and has held residencies at Blue Mountain Center, Mesa Refuge, the Heinrich Böll Cottage, and Marble House Project. He teaches English at Tenafly High School in northern New Jersey.

Book preview

pearled.

I

THE WIMP

They called me The Wimp, and I was.

Not for any reason I can put my finger on

but because, in general, I lacked wherewithal,

I was a poltroon, and none of them

knew that word or any better than wimp

and probably they still don’t. If one of them does,

I wouldn’t know so. Those years before

and during and after high school

swirl in my memory now like squalls of snow,

like the time when, on a whim, in late December,

my friends and I told our folks we were going camping

in the wildlife refuge two towns over,

the flakes already falling, our gear pitiful

hand-me-downs, none of it insulated or waterproof,

rum bottles clinking in our knapsacks like muffled toasts

to the end of our young lives. Inches had fallen

by the time we bivouacked at the Caratunk cave.

Wet kindling whispered. Not even leaves would catch.

In five o’clock dark, we crawled into the tent

soaked and shivering and stoned, no one willing to state

the obvious—that we might die out there in what,

we all knew by then, was a blizzard unpredicted.

Who it was had the wherewithal to suggest

we pack it in, I don’t recall, but I remember humping,

drunk and exhausted, through two-foot drifts

in the hushed woods, my toes gone numb in thin boots,

our flashlight beams a mixup mystification

panning over moguls of snow-covered brush.

I wouldn’t have minded expiring there

under the laden arms of a