Ode to Wallace Stevens by Marcia Southwick
On June 24th, 1993, Dr. David Gelernter became the twelfth victim of the Unabomber. A professor at Yale, Gelernter was critically injured after received a mailbomb sent by Ted Kaczynski. Kaczynski, whose bombs killed three and injured twenty-three, was arrested three years later and is currently serving life in prison without possibility of parole. In Lincoln in 1993, the average temperature for June was 68.8°, with a high of 92° and a low of 42°. This weather was lovely for the attendees of Lincoln’s third-annual free outdoor concert series, Jazz in June, which is now in its 22nd year.
by Tory Clower
Marcia Southwick’s “Ode to Wallace Stevens” was published in the fall of 2009.
Ode to Wallace Stevens
for Landt Dennis
The world is ugly, and the people are sad—
–Wallace Stevens
A drainage worker from Coco Beach has just climbed through
spider-filled pipes, strapped a 435-pound manatee to a stretcher
& delivered it in stable condition to Sea World. Is this ugly or
sad?
There’s sadness & ugliness of course. McDonald’s is extending
north into the Arctic circle & straddling the international date
line,
spreading all the way to New Zealand and Western Samoa.
A shopkeeper in Lincoln, Montana, sells Home of the Unabomber
t-shirts because Ted Kaczynski had ridden his bicycle daily down
Main Street. The Dahoney Eye & Tissue Bank of Los Angeles
has harvested corneas from the dead without permission from
families.