Ancestral Voices: Poems

By Barton R. Friedman

In Ancestral Voices, the scholar and poet Barton R. Friedman (1935–2009) draws upon a lifetime of deeply felt experience to create this collection. Composed at various points throughout his seventy-four years, the poems animate chronic issues in American society—race, class, war—and also give voice to personal moments

• Language: English
• Publisher: Parafine Press
• Release date: Mar 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9780998282169

Barton R. Friedman

Barton R. Friedman is the author of Fabricating History, English Writers on the French Revolution and Adventures in the Deeps of the Mind, both from Princeton University Press, and the poetry collection You Can't Tell the Players, published by Cleveland State University Press. Friedman was a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Cleveland State University.

Book preview

Ancestral Voices

---

Also by Barton Friedman

Poetic Knowing

Fabricating History: English Writers on the French Revolution

You Can’t Tell the Players

Adventures in the Deep of the Mind

and numerous scholarly articles

---

I, who recalled that Blake danced naked in the sun

am publishing this book of Bart’s poems

because, for me, heaven is only on earth

and in the fond memories and admiration

of those we left behind.

His wife,

Sheila

---

Copyright © 2019, Barton R. Friedman

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

First Parafine Press Edition 2019

ISBN: 978-0-9982821-5-2

Parafine Press

3143 West 33 rd  Street, Cleveland, Ohio 44109

www.parafinepress.com

Book and cover design by Meredith Pangrace

---

Contents

I. Travelog

The Puppeteer Appears

The London Love Song

Parable

Isabella Responds

Climbing in the Cuillens

Water Rights

Drifting

Kaleidoscope

Cop Poems

Dodge City, Kansas

To a Daughter of Virginia Aristocracy Raped by a Black Man in Madison, Wisconsin

Demon Est Deus Inversus

Jim Thorpe’s Football

Brendan’s Song

Ballad of Billy’s Bomb-Balls

In the Palace of Nations

II. War Poems

Ecce Homo

History

Ancestral Voices

Epitaph

To Regensberg, A Dreaming Back

Camping on Omaha Beach

Audie Murphy

The Last Missing Man

David Besieged

Maccabbees’ Dream

Think About a Friend in Israel

III. Found Poems and Portraitures

Koheleth Brooding

Picasso and the Thalidomide Child

Found Poem

Uncle Si

Hemingway

Death Comes to a Professional Athlete

What the Silence Said

How Ronnie Patronized the Arts

Bearing Witness at the British Museum

Sto p Press

Witch Poet Reading

Entropic

Desire

Conversations with L.L.‘s Tape Recorder

Poetess

Angelo

Foster Child

Chardin at the Cleveland Art Museum

Lost in the DMZ

Visiting Thoor Ballylee

Speculating on the Death of Synge

The Krishna Mob

Elegy for a Young Musician

Teaching the Strokes

What light , my son

For John Berryman (not the poet) and Jeff Jenkins, Avalanche, Marcus Baker, September 1983 (by Dan Friedman)

News for William Blake

Coda : HPB Addressing Her Initiates

---

I. TRAVELOG

---

The Puppeteer Appears

amid his galaxy

of fixed faces    tells our moon-eyed four

children, the wicked witch suffers

dry rot happily

for all know evil

should be ugly  ever after

Hansel and Gretel radiate

pink bright

latex innocence guaranteed

to last.

No matter

they’ve oven-baked the witch

wolfed her gingerbread remains

with goblets of red wine;

we know she’ll

rise again

Houston

Minneapolis

New York

San Francisco …

Watching his weathered face bent

whispering secrets with our children

I see our faces

mirrored among wooden faces

listening

for secrets

we once knew?

---

London Love Song

"We used to stay up and talk and never know

but here the bells tell us what time