Overheard in a Drugstore: And Other Poems

By Andrew Glaze

Andrew Glaze's poetry has been described as "funny, quixotic, and very wise," while writer Norman Rosten once called him "a serious, irreverent poet, capable of setting off fireworks in the museum." Overheard in a Drugstore continues in that maverick tradition, offering poems that are humorous, affectionate, moving, evocative, and controversial—sometimes simultaneously.

From poems such as "Blue Ridge" and "Sunset Rock," in which he artfully overlaps a current landscape with ghosts of the past, to "Fishermen," in which he compares writers to anglers aiming to hook the perfect prose, his unique voice paints vivid imagery for the reader.

Glaze has been highly praised in the New York Times, nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and honored with awards from Poetry Magazine and the Southeastern Booksellers Association. His first full-length collection, Damned Ugly Children (1966) was named a "Notable Book" by the American Library Association. He is in the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame and is serving as the Eleventh Poet Laureate of Alabama.

• Language: English
• Publisher: NewSouth Books
• Release date: Jan 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781603064002

Andrew Glaze

ANDREW GLAZE was born in Tennessee and raised in Birmingham, where he eventually returned to work as a reporter during the civil rights struggle. A 1942 graduate of Harvard, Glaze was 44 when his first major book of poetry, Damned Ugly Children, a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize, was published. He has published a dozen more volumes. Now in his eighties and living in Miami, he is, he says, “doing his best work yet.”

Book preview

Overheard in a Drugstore

And Other Poems

Andrew Glaze

NEWSOUTH BOOKS

Montgomery

Also by Andrew Glaze

Andrew Glaze: Greatest Hits 1964–2004 (2005)

Remembering Thunder (2002)

Someone Will Go On Owing: Selected Poems, 1966–1992 (1998)

Reality Street (1991)

Earth That Sings: On the Poetry of Andrew Glaze (1985)

A City (1982)

I Am the Jefferson County Courthouse and Other Poems (1981)

The Trash Dragon of Shensi (1978)

A Masque of Surgery: Poems and Translations (1974)

Damned Ugly Children (1966)

Lines/Poems:

Poems by Andrew Glaze & Engravings by Umaña (1964)

The Token, a Selection of Verse (1963)

NewSouth Books

105 S. Court Street

Montgomery, AL 36104

Copyright © 2015 by Andrew Glaze. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by NewSouth Books, a division of NewSouth, Inc., Montgomery, Alabama.

ISBN: 978-1-60306-399-9

eBook ISBN: 978-1-60306-400-2

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015946966

Visit www.newsouthbooks.com

Acknowledgments:

Some of the poems in this volume were originally published in the following: Andrew Glaze: Greatest Hits 1964–2004, Alleluia; Big City Lit, Fishermen, Bears; Birmingham Arts Journal, Issa, Hard Times, Trap of Feathers; Birmingham Poetry Review, Trees; Birmingham Weekly, You’re Never With Who You Want to Be; Boston /96, Garcia (re-titled Garcia’s Store"); HYN Anthology & New York Muse Tomorrow I’ll Be Gone; Light, You’re Never with Who You Want to Be; New York Quarterly, Witches, Nursing Home (retitled The Banderlog), Groucho; Negative Capability, If Suffering Is to Love; Pivot, The View From Straw’s, Epic, Seamstress (retitled Seamstress of Shine); Poetry Magazine, Antigua (re-titled A Visit to Barbados); Spirituality & Health, Alleluia; Sulfur City Review, Piñata, Goddam Pretty, Blue Ridge,; Trails & Timberline Quarterly, A Place That Can’t Be Bought (retitled Rudderless); TriQuarterly76, Nursing Home (retitled The Banderlog); Turtlehouse Press, Overheard in a Drugstore, Mr. Frost.

To my children, Betsy and Peter,

and their children and spouses Charles and Kate,

and to Arlen and Bill with thanks.

Contents

I

Mr. Frost

Love

Blue Ridge

Climbing the Sky

Joyous

Looking for Fire

Trap of Feathers

Waltz of the Sensible

Manhattan above Manhattan—a Triptych

II

Alleluia

Garcia’s Store

Listen!

Epic

Days of Being Born

Hard Times

Piñata

Old Poet

Ambition

Orion on the Inside

Fishermen

Witches

III

Goddam Pretty

Issa

Bears

The View from Straw’s

The Banderlog*

Seamstress of Shine

Parlay and Whine

Sunset Rock

Us

Skyline

The Spell Coming On

IV

A Visit to Barbados

Glittering

Chocolate Pie

Circe

Rudderless

Fly Ball

Weaving

Putting Together Morning

Crannies of the Mind

If Suffering Is to Love

Trees

V

Tomorrow I’ll Be Gone

Shipwrecked upon a Seacoast in Bohemia

Overheard in a drugstore

Groucho

Lobotomy

If a Body

Repartee

The Life of a Gnat

You’re Never with Who You Want to Be

About the Author

Faculty and Fellows, 1946 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference

Rear: Robert Frost, Robert Bordner, Graeme Lorimer, Andrew Glaze, Wallace Stegner, Rudolph Kieve, Theodore Morrison, Eugene Burdick, William Sloane. Front: Carol Warren Burdick, Kay Morrison, Helen Everitt, Mary Stegner. (Used by permission of Middlebury College Special Collections and Archives)

While at Harvard, Andrew Glaze met Robert Frost through a series of poetry student dinners and again at the 1946 Bread Loaf Writer’s