One of the joys of being a poet is discovering new poets whose work feeds and challenges my own work. In the November/December 2010 issue of The American Poetry Review, I read a poem by Donald Platt titled "Young Man at the Blockbuster Video Store, Saturday Night." I was intrigued by his use of tercets with alternating lines--long/short/long and short/long/short--and by his haunting images: "This is Indiana, / America's 'heartland,' a family video store. No man holds hands / here with another / man on the street. Someone has written in pink spray paint / FAGS LIVE HERE / on the sidewalk in front of my gay friends' house. They scrubbed / it off with turpentine. / Ghosts of those pink letters still remain."
I searched for more of Platt's work online and found "Girls with Glow-in-the-Dark Hula Hoops": "...my daughter and her friend don’t / yet feel the ironies radiate / like the day’s heat / up from the asphalt / through the soles of their matching / pink sneakers. As they grow / into their bodies and fill out / the hourglass shapes that spell / women, so they / must grow into history and put on / guilt’s glitter, anger’s / lipstick and sequins."
Both poems tackle tough contemporary issues--sexual identity and race--but do so in a non-polemical, non-preachy manner. They are each narrative poems that pull you into familiar worlds--a video store, childhood games--then, like a yin and yang symbol, show how the dark curves into the light, making it shine that much brighter.
I searched for more of Platt's work online and found "Girls with Glow-in-the-Dark Hula Hoops": "...my daughter and her friend don’t / yet feel the ironies radiate / like the day’s heat / up from the asphalt / through the soles of their matching / pink sneakers. As they grow / into their bodies and fill out / the hourglass shapes that spell / women, so they / must grow into history and put on / guilt’s glitter, anger’s / lipstick and sequins."
Both poems tackle tough contemporary issues--sexual identity and race--but do so in a non-polemical, non-preachy manner. They are each narrative poems that pull you into familiar worlds--a video store, childhood games--then, like a yin and yang symbol, show how the dark curves into the light, making it shine that much brighter.
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