(Ed note: I can't begin to count the number of times I've heard David introduced before a reading. These introductions are always respectful, sometimes celebratory, and often quite eloquent. The introduction below , written and delivered by Lucas Smith before a packed house at Shippensburg University last Thursday night, hit me hard. In addition to Lucas's deep engagement with David's work, I responded especially to the third and fourth stanzas. He brings to mind Frank O'Hara's line in "Meditations in an Emergency": ". . .it’s my duty to be attentive, I am needed by things as the sky must be above the earth." I've spent a lot of time over the past several years in those doctors' office waiting rooms;Lucas's keen eye for just the right details had me nodding in recognition. He says that it was his responsibility to take what he observed and "make some kind of art out of it." He has certainly succeeded. Thank you Lucas for letting me share your poem here. sdl)
In a 2013 interview with NPR,
David Lehman commented on his book,
The Perfect Murder,
which analyzes homicide mystery
and crime thriller novels.
He said that he could discern
certain elements that linked
hard-boiled detectives
with the life of an American poet,
going on to say that
sometimes he feels like he has
a secret identity, like a spy.
Lehman talked about feeling this way
when he was a journalist for Newsweek
and during the years he spent in England
and France while he was a Kellet Fellow at Cambridge.</p
In what ways do poets become spies?
I think they have an ability
to act as a spectator and digest
the world around them
without disturbing the order
of that world. While at a recent
cancer check-up for my father
in Philadelphia, I sat
in the waiting room
and wrote down everything
I saw that I couldn’t see
somewhere else:
a woman pushing a red walker
with a black wreath
draped over the front of it,
the plaque that said
“The Sarah and Dan Keating Waiting Room” on it,
because of course
someone has to pay
for those sorts of places.
The pamphlet on the corner table
beside me about pancreatic cancer,
and the older gentleman in the chair
at the end of the row across from me
wearing a red, white, and blue track jacket,
gray hair slicked back,
the fingers of his left hand interlocked
with the fingers of his wife’s right.
I felt like it was my responsibility
to take what I saw there
and make some kind of art out of it.
Something to convey the surrealness
of that room, and, like a spy,
take my evidence and expose
The Sarah and Dan Keating
Waiting Room for what it really is,
for how cozy and clean it looked
when just beyond the doors behind
me I would enter a labyrinth
of examination rooms,
and the droopy, listless-face
of the old man that crept
paper-frail past me
as I rounded the corner
in the hallway.
The exhausted red lining
inside of his eyelids,
and his eyes,
cloudy, drifting,
lost at sea.
Lehman is constantly making observations,
meticulously webbing
aspects of the world around him
together, and, like a detective
pinning up an evidence board,
he makes connections that
translate into poetry.
Take for example his poem
“The Real Thing,”
in which he compares poetry to dancing.
Lehman dances across culture
with his allusions to poets,
advertisements, musicians,
and authors. He takes
just what he needs from each
to maintain the focus
of the poem and to make
his point that the dance,
and moreover, poetry,
is what makes life
have purpose for no
particular reason.
It is the simple back and forth,
the gentle, gracious contemplation
of existence and all things
that exist that take part in that dance,
and no matter how flat-footed
we might be, we would all be wise
to join in,
or at the very least,
tap our feet a little.
Ladies and gentleman, David Lehman.
Lucas Smith is a junior Political Science/English double major at Shippensburg University. He is a member of the honors program and Pi Sigma Alpha National Political Science Honors Fraternity. He serves as a writing tutor and his work won the First Place Editor’s Choice Award for Introductory Level Writing and was published in the 2015-2016 Edition of "Write the Ship." He has poems published in the 2017 issue of Shippensburg University's undergraduate literary journal,"The Reflector."