Is Flashback Friday still a thing? Are people still hashtagging this? Or has #ThrowbackThursday stolen the show? What can I say? I like flashing, and my throw is always a little late for whoever is up at bat on Thursday. So here’s a rewind to 2012 when I read my poem, “Overvision,” at Poetry Under the Paintings, Faustina’s Art Gallery in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.
You probably need to crank up the volume for my video, but then adjust it back to listen to the gorgeous voice of Frances Uku, who does my poetry an immeasurable kindness in recording this piece also. What a lovely thing to do, and frankly, her reading is my favorite.
The reason this piece is on my mind is that, along with the original poem to which it refers, it helps bookend a new chapbook project I am working on. I’ll let you know how that goes when I know!
Overvision
I wrote a poem once
about my neighbors and the moon.
Each brief line dropped
into place as I let them break
at their will. The syntax
arranged itself just comfortably
so. Years later
I came back with more
education and a better sense
of rhythm. I thought
I could improve
it; make the lines
more powerful,
the innuendos more profound.
But the new ink
was too dark for the old page,
and my good intentions discolored
the moon. I’d awakened
a befuddled old man
and his angry, fuzzy-
slippered wife (I’d forgotten
that my old neighbors had moved
away long ago).
They wanted to know
what the hell was going
on—who was I? And
what had I done to the sky?
Too late almost to save
it, I took whiteout
to the street (the last
bottle on the shelf
at the all-night mini
mart on that same block),
dimmed the stars
and ushered back to bed
the little man and his grumbling
wife. That globe of blood
still had a pulse—
thank heaven, and I let it return
to where it had been;
on page one
of a college literary
magazine simple
and perfect,
hanging low there
in that early night sky.
©2010 by David J. Bauman. “Overvision,” winner of a University Prize from the Academy of American Poets and Bloomsburg Univeristy.
David J. Bauman 
That desire to re-write past work…. almost always a mistake.
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Agreed! It’s different if it’s something that I feel isn’t really done, and I set it aside. Sometimes I come back to things after years, or once a year, but those are always poems that I can sense aren’t really complete. But once it does what it set out to do, there is nothing more that should be done years later, except maybe add a comma. 🙂 Thanks for reading, Brian.
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