Progressive Wednesday

National Poetry Month: “Jet”

April 30th, 2007 by Matt

As I entered manhood — I don’t mean puberty, I mean becoming an actual man — the poet Tony Hoagland was like a guide, the way Virgil served as Dante’s guide through his masterpiece, The Inferno. I’d come across a poem here or there, and immediately, I’d photocopy the sucker and mail it to all my friends I consider brothers. I’d read his work out loud, alone in my apartment, trying, not to understand his words, but rather myself.

Tony Hoagland, like the previous poets we’ve highlighted this National Poetry Month (Ted Kooser, Mary Oliver, William Matthews, and Lucille Clifton), boasts an impressive “resume.” His third full-length book, What Narcissism Means to Me, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Book number two received the James Laughlin Award. He’s also received two (count ‘em, two) grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Poetry Foundation’s 2005 Mark Twain Award.

To me, these “statistics” are fairly meaningless because I can’t imagine going through my twenties without his verse. But I don’t think Hoagland is a “guy poet.” I think he’s a humanist, shining a light — sometimes lovely, sometimes ugly — on American men and masculinity.

Below you’ll find one of my favorite poems from one of my favorite books, Donkey Gospel. If someone were to ask me what it means and how it feels to be a man, my one word answer is “Jet.” Enjoy.

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JET

.

Sometimes I wish I were still out
on the back porch, drinking jet fuel
with the boys, getting louder and louder
as the empty cans drop out of our paws
like booster rockets falling back to Earth

and we soar up into the summer stars.
Summer. The big sky river rushes overhead,
bearing asteroids and mist, blind fish
and old space suits with skeletons inside.
On Earth, men celebrate their hairiness,

and it is good, a way of letting life
out of the box, uncapping the bottle
to let the effervescence gush
through the narrow, usually constricted neck.

And now the crickets plug in their appliances
in unison, and then the fireflies flash
dots and dashes in the grass, like punctuation
for the labyrinthine, untrue tales of sex
someone is telling in the dark, though

no one really hears. We gaze into the night
as if remembering the bright unbroken planet
we once came from,
to which we will never
be permitted to return.
We are amazed how hurt we are.
We would give anything for what we have.