Klyd Watkins, Roy Acuff and Charley Pride Talk about the Atlanta Braves on the Stage of the Grand Old Opry and Other Scenes, Hand to Mouth, 2024, 43 pp.
Klyd Watkins’ new book reveals his habits of mind and his boundless curiosity, two intertwined qualities. Both are exemplified in his poem “multiplication.” It begins as a meditation on ants but evolves into a statement on poetry where he compares ants and poets, both humble, both ridiculous. He concludes: “We act like/ it is necessary/ to make it ours. We act like we have to/ always keep it brand/ new.” He responds to Ezra Pound’s call to modern poets to “make it new,” which shaped Modernist poetry from the very beginning. Watkins reminds readers how plentiful poets are and how he himself is just “one more [poet] . . ./ reclaiming for particular generations . . ./ the one and only very/ old/ song.”
More importantly, Watkins’ poems are fun, and he wears his learning lightly. The Roman poet Ovid refuses to appear in the poem “miracles” until he learns that Hawkman, the “118-th greatest comic book character of all time,” according to writers at Wizard magazine (cited in Wikipedia), will join him. In “words can only beat about the truth, the holy one said,” Watkins supports his point with an anecdote about how truth and the poet Rilke go on a road trip. When truth has to use the bathroom at a 7-11, Rilke lets them out. As a result, the car disappears, which means that in the absence of truth, poetry disappears—even if poetry can’t directly represent the truth.
Watkins says this in a humorous way without overt anger at readers’ demands for platitudes, poets’ complacency, or the fact that we can’t directly represent the truth. Through these anecdotes, he shows that he is able to add a light touch to his thoughtful, inquisitive poems. In “miracles,” this light touch shows that “the world/ will get some magic in it” whether it is through stories, comic books, or science. Without this element of Watkins’ poetry, these insights may seem undigestible and even too abstract for many readers, particularly when they are made by a poet who has not been “certified” by the academy.
And, of course, there are “yall allow me to be silly” where the poet riffs on angels and nothingness and “It is fun to read Gertrude Stein sometimes” which begins with an imitation of Stein and ends in a catty story about a pretentious male poet whose poem reshuffles her words. Even when Watkins writes a poem with a more traditionally literary premise as in “sonnet – in candy sensual silence (for sweet Emily and the judge),” it is whimsical. Each of these poems highlight not only the poet’s humanity but also the humanity of poetry where the poet can be silly or catty or the literary figure in the poem can simply be in love or lust with someone who is not a poet. In the last poem, both Emily Dickinson and her beau, Judge Otis Phillips Lord, are human beings, two older people in love.
In Watkins’ hands, no matter what his subject is, with his sometime use of rhyme and his light touch, poetry is musical and fun. I encourage you to spend some time with his poems. Also, check out his videos on YouTube where he blends music and poetry.
To buy Klyd's book, visit this site: https://www.biblio.com/book/roy-acuff-charley-pride-talk-about/d/1606628887?view=1
Here are a couple of his videos. The first is his "Dance" with family and friends:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Tc1rDeXNtI
The second is "Bruce in a Boat with his Saxophone": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq-3zM09Qy4
Enjoy!
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