<p class="epil"><em>after Lattimore’s Homer</em></p>
<div class="line">We live on the flat surface of the world, and compared with a god,</div>
<div class="line">We can do nothing. If the god or the god’s divine messenger</div>
<div class="line">Were to come to Manhattan and approach this parkbench and sit beside me—</div>
<div class="line">And there is plenty of space for him or her and there is no rain—</div>
<div class="line">Then I believe I could do something, as a famous singer does great things</div>
<div class="line">Until he disappoints his people or is killed; or like a preacher</div>
<div class="line">Who works things with his voice, continually greater, till the god</div>
<div class="line">Reaches out and down with hard bereavement and consumes him.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">But as it is, my wife, two years ago, left me; I can do nothing.</div>
<div class="line">I quit my job and moved hundreds of miles away and read and wrote</div>
<div class="line">And looked hard at other people’s lives as they tried to do this or that.</div>
<div class="line">I learned from their stories but the inexorable, dangerous warming of the world</div>
<div class="line">Goes on. Now in my speech I call upon the beautiful past, knowing the lines</div>
<div class="line">Come to nothing and are not poetry; and that other men and women</div>
<div class="line">Are left every day by their women and their men, their vows torn open</div>
<div class="line">Like trash into which the raccoons tear, eager to eat of it,</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">And they wreck the yard and the sidewalk and disown the mess of it;</div>
<div class="line">When they have eaten their fill they return to the trees and are gone,</div>
<div class="line">And behind them the sorry, noisome garbage scatters on the lovely grass.</div>
<div class="line">Order and peace and abundance and joy are the long work</div>
<div class="line">To which young men and women aspire in their early strength,</div>
<div class="line">But madness comes, and the spoiling vermin down the streetlamp;</div>
<div class="line">My wife becomes my ex-wife, and all the bridal veil and dress</div>
<div class="line">And the heaped white lilies of the wedding day somehow dissolve;</div>
<div class="line">Their promise is consumed; the great love dies of smallness and is gone.</div><figure class="wp-block-audio"><audio controls src="https://admin.rattle.com/audio/HechtDivorce.mp3"></audio></figure>

When the World Stops

Army Memorial Service: Tikrit

First Divorce

<div class="line">Mostly my fault, the fault I’m built around.</div>
<div class="line">We were a pair again until we weren’t one.</div>
<div class="line">You made me laugh. We made that sound</div>
<div class="line">in bed when we flew too close to the sun.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">You made my story make some sense again,</div>
<div class="line">assembled fragments of my memory;</div>
<div class="line">you joined the edges of what happened, when.</div>
<div class="line">Our last attempt is lost. The melody</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">of “I Will” by the Beatles won’t let up,</div>
<div class="line">though now we know you Won’t. I failed.</div>
<div class="line">I turned the Holy Grail into a paper cup,</div>
<div class="line">our wine to water, and the garbage pail</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">of time is home to what we wanted, now.</div>
<div class="line">You tried to wake me up. I don’t know how.</div><figure class="wp-block-audio"><audio controls src="https://admin.rattle.com/audio/HechtTurns.mp3"></audio></figure>

Flown

To Combat Antisemitism, Write a Villanelle

Turns Out, I’m Still Asleep

<div class="line">When you hate what you’ve done,</div>
<div class="line">that’s guilt. If you hate what you are,</div>
<div class="line">that’s shame. When she’s gone</div>
<div class="line">because <i>you</i> sang some <i>Brahms</i> in a <i>bar</i>,</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">what you have there is: focused regret.</div>
<div class="line">If they leave you because you are “still</div>
<div class="line">not yourself” (new meds not working yet)</div>
<div class="line">and you Shakespeare in public—you will</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">never be normal, whatever that means—</div>
<div class="line">and they praise you and thank you and cry</div>
<div class="line">as they go, and the new psychiatrist weans</div>
<div class="line">you off the old drugs, as “we might want to try”</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">whatever the sales rep is repping that week,</div>
<div class="line">if they leave with “I love you,” don’t speak.</div>


Honeysuckle

Yellow Bees

Don’t Speak

<p class="epil"><i>for B.B.H.</i></p>
<div class="line">That woman you loved, the one you pine for,</div>
<div class="line">she’s gone. It’s over. The past has swallowed it.</div>
<div class="line">Likely you will never see her pretty face again.</div>
<div class="line">That is all right. Why is it all right? Because</div>
<div class="line">the mountains are flowing away like water</div>
<div class="line">and all things pass away, tangent to eternity.</div>


The New School

Love Poem Composed Under the Trump Administration …

Aftermath

<p><em>Review by Joanne Baines<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright" style="border: 1px solid black; margin: 5px 15px;" title="Limousine Midnight Blue by Jamey Hecht" src="https://admin.rattle.com/ereviews/images/hechtblue.jpg" alt="" width="120" height="160" align="right" /></em></p>
<p><small>Red Hen Press<br />
P.O. Box 3537<br />
Granada Hills, CA 91394<br />
2009, 80 pp., $16.95<br />
ISBN-13 978-1597091282<br />
<a href="http://www.redhen.org">www.redhen.org</a></small></p>
<p>It would be wonderful for all history lessons to be presented in poetry, plays and song. The dry historical texts with their unfamiliar names and dates are so easily forgotten once the test has been passed. If an event is set to rhythm, it permeates your soul and stays with you. If the beat that you hear from this neighboring village pounding out an important story is loud and strong and the words are eloquent enough it will persist until you find it necessary to explore the subject further and add more verses.</p>
<p>“Limousine, Midnight Blue” is such a poem. Fifty poems, each 14-lines and tied to a frame in the Zapruder film, the horrible 26-second home movie that captures the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.</p>
<p>This collection of poems is a documentation of the murder and the radiating shockwaves of repercussion, but it is also a very personal book revealing the author’s raptor-like view and a passion for telling this history well. Every aspect of the tragedy is considered, from the space program to Vietnam and the culture of America at the time.</p>
<p>The poems start at frame Z-150 where you can see the motorcade come into view and the first stanza from poem “Z-150” proclaims:</p>
<blockquote><p>Here comes authority, waving to the many,<br />
riding with the few. Here comes smiling, shining you driven down the ribbon of the end, alone in all that sun<br />
and noise, those thousand hands and eyes and cameras.</p></blockquote>
<p>Aristotle is introduced in “Z-156” where he teaches the physics that are so important to a bullet. I believe that Aristotle himself would be quite pleased with the choice of words used in these poems. “The perfection of diction is that it be at once clear and not pedestrian” (Aristotle in the <em>Poetics</em>). The combining of ancient Greece and pop culture, Nietzsche and Addison’s disease, stacked syringes and outer space illustrate not only the epic nature of the subject but also the breadth of resources Jamey Hecht has at his disposal.</p>
<p>There is a longing for this thing to have never happened and an accusation because it did. In “Z-162” you hear a naive cry for Santa Claus to stop it, much like the collective consciousness of America looked for Superman to stop that second plane from hitting that second building. A sense of futility and sorrow prevail because in spite of all of the witnesses, the analysis, the precise numbers, the studies, the slow motion, close ups, and the endless reports, it still happened and it seems as if we will never get a straight answer.</p>
<p>The speaker and viewpoint change with each poem and with every differing persona the imagery, rhythm, alliteration, texture and closing combine to create a depth of feeling that belies the structure of only 14 lines. The crafting of elegant enjambements and definitive end stops is effective in alternatively pulling us along and creating tension.</p>
<p>In “Z-163” the earth is impregnated by the limousine (license plate # GG-300) in order to give birth to future wars and toys and sedatives:</p>
<blockquote><p><strong>Z-163</strong></p>
<p>How about the triple underpass as the cervix of the world<br />
and GG300 as the tragic DNA-laden tadpole<br />
that makes the poor young planet swell with future<br />
wars and toys and sedatives. How about</p>
<p>the limousine is itself one giant bullet<br />
pointed, well, you know where. In fact,<br />
you’re still bleeding. Or the pink pillbox hat<br />
is also a horse tranquilizer we must every one of us</p>
<p>choke down, and the headlights are hypnotic lamps<br />
and the pathetic death-of-a-salesman lunge<br />
of Clint Hill onto the lurching hood<br />
is the official dance of the People’s Democratic</p>
<p>Republic of Craven, Malignant, Heartbroken, Sleepwalking.<br />
Or maybe that’s only the Miltown talking.</p></blockquote>
<p>We are drawn into these surreal visions of the time period as though we are watching Satan’s vacation slides and then skid to a stop with the mention of the then-favored tranquilizer.</p>
<p>“Z-166 “is a brilliant catalogue, an incantation of the names of the conspirators. Because the names are familiar and each one incites a visceral reaction it is difficult to achieve the hypnotic trance state that a catalogue poem usually inspires. However, the catalogue form is a wonderful allegory for the soporific apathy that allowed these men to go unpunished for this particular crime.</p>
<p>As the Lincoln, and the poems, progress “down the ribbon of the end,” a dynamic tension builds as we are confronted with the inevitable conclusion. Towards the end, “Z-192,” the author assumes the persona of an angry John Kennedy:</p>
<blockquote><p>Imagine me riding skeletal down Main Street on a bicycle.<br />
I get death, you get the shock of your lives, your daughters<br />
heroin addicts and your sons marines on fire in mud, guilty.</p></blockquote>
<p>“Limousine, Midnight Blue” is an elegy written out of heartbreak and frustration and yet the author has surmounted those emotions long enough to expertly blend image, rhythm and voice to create the coalescence all poetry strives for. This is history as it should be told. There are terms and phrases that are not common knowledge; Jamey Hecht is kind enough to provide a section at the end of the book that gives direction for these things. He has also created some &#8220;video trailers&#8221; for the book at<br />
<a href="http://www.jameyhecht.com">www.jameyhecht.com</a></p>
<p>My rating? As with all of the best books of poems, read it until it is wrecked.</p>


Daphne Swears Off It

A Visit to the SuperMart

LIMOUSINE, MIDNIGHT BLUE

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December 16, 2019Turns Out, I’m Still AsleepJamey Hecht

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December 16, 2019Turns Out, I’m Still AsleepJamey Hecht

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