As part of my lovely rainy Monday off, I hung curtains, cleaned house, read fiction, poetry, and blogs, paid bills, got my hair cut, and read this out loud at the request of Jennifer Bullis.
Poet, librarian, birder.
Author of Angels & Adultery (2018), Co-author of Mapping the Valley: Hospital Poems (2021), both from Seven Kitchens Press, 2018.
First chapbook: Moons, Roads, and Rivers (Finishing Line Press, 2017)
View all posts by David J. Bauman
Very nice! I really like your poetry. And, you can tell it’s yours, because of how you read it…It sounds like it’s coming from you, rather than trying to interpret someone else’s. Thanks for sharing!
Gosh I love this, Dave. It’s highly moving, both in its tribute to Walt as a forefather (literary and sexual) and in its response from you as his “son.” And wow, do those internal rhymes resonate–certainly in the written version of your poem, but even moreso in your own voice. All your echoes of the sounds in WW’s iconic word “grass” chime brilliantly throughout. And the ending–where you echo his long “o”s in “bootsoles with your own “road-word boots”–masterful.
Jennifer, I suppose you know by now how much I value your opinion, and what such a compliment must mean to me. Thank you. I’ve done very little editing on it since it was rejected, so I think the text still matches the reading almost exactly.
I was going to say how funny it is that in one place I call him uncle, and yet another I claim to be his son. “Very well. I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.”
And thank you for your words about the internal rhymes. It’s something I rather enjoy playing with, and since it seems out of vogue, worry that I might overdo. I think I got into doing that years ago from reading the likes of Gwendolyn Brooks and Peter Menkie. I seem to have adopted it as a stylistic marker, as the practice resonates with me, meaning simply: It’s fun!
David J. Bauman 
Very nice! I really like your poetry. And, you can tell it’s yours, because of how you read it…It sounds like it’s coming from you, rather than trying to interpret someone else’s. Thanks for sharing!
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Thank you, John!
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Gosh I love this, Dave. It’s highly moving, both in its tribute to Walt as a forefather (literary and sexual) and in its response from you as his “son.” And wow, do those internal rhymes resonate–certainly in the written version of your poem, but even moreso in your own voice. All your echoes of the sounds in WW’s iconic word “grass” chime brilliantly throughout. And the ending–where you echo his long “o”s in “bootsoles with your own “road-word boots”–masterful.
Got chills over here, friend.
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Jennifer, I suppose you know by now how much I value your opinion, and what such a compliment must mean to me. Thank you. I’ve done very little editing on it since it was rejected, so I think the text still matches the reading almost exactly.
I was going to say how funny it is that in one place I call him uncle, and yet another I claim to be his son. “Very well. I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.”
And thank you for your words about the internal rhymes. It’s something I rather enjoy playing with, and since it seems out of vogue, worry that I might overdo. I think I got into doing that years ago from reading the likes of Gwendolyn Brooks and Peter Menkie. I seem to have adopted it as a stylistic marker, as the practice resonates with me, meaning simply: It’s fun!
Again, thank you!
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