Wood Bloxom

WOOD BLOXOM

1889-1983

"I have seriously mixed feelings about Bloxom.  I liked math, and did well in it. Also, he was entertaining. On the other hand, he told a story one day about a little girl who grew up normally, ... until, one day she had learned all she could.  Her brain was full and she couldn't learn any more. So, she just stopped developing. That was it.  Well, he told the story in Trigonometry.  Every day I wondered -- feared -- that that was it. I would stop learning today.  It is modestly funny now, but it was not at all funny back then."
__________________________________________

Hi Buddy. Thanks for your nice email. What I really need is a "brain implant" my sister told me recently. :-)

Funny, how these memories of Emporia work. I had this dream last night that we were all back in Bloxom's trig classroom. A sort of dream-like reunion of sorts. Anyway, you were recounting to Wood and the class his story about the little girl who's brain became full and she couldn't learn anymore.

What you feared would happen to you back then, had happened now. You'd stopped learning. You'd stopped developing as an attorney and that was that. Wood nodded knowingly to you and turned to all the rest of us. "You see, now the sun is shining here in Emporia."

I woke up with the feeling that it was the same with me. I'd learned everything there was to learn. But with this twist: I didn't need a MFA in writing from Columbia because writing can't be taught or learned from anybody other than yourself. Once one learns that there's nothing more to learn about then perhaps that's the beginning of true learning?

I like how you've kept learning. Publishing. Helping to found a law school. Your volunteer work with KSTC/ESU. I've seen your photo there on their leadership/scholarship page. Very good, Buddy.

Perhaps that story that Wood told us was really about himself. After all, he'd been teaching geometry and trig since before my mother went to EHS back in the '40s. Maybe he felt like he was in a sort of rut with that room, the blackboard, the cabinet with all the geometry models, the years teaching the same thing.

But Roger Hartsook once told me that Wood picked up on the so-called "new geometry & math" that Alderman was teaching in his class on the east side of the building. And Wood learned something new about the old math that he was seemingly stuck with. So perhaps the "story" he told us was actually a story about himself... and then later on breaking out of that rut and actually learning something new?

Oh well, don't pay any attention to me. Just a story within a story. But you got me thinking about Wood all those years ago. :-)

The Library

Philip Larkin at Hull

THE LIBRARY

“dwindling, went”

—Philip Larkin, 

The Importance of Elsewhere

THE WHITSUN WEDDINGS

Standing there by the card catalog—

This photo surely as ancient as I am

Here in the William Allen White Library

The Library, since it wasn’t home—

Its strangeness made sense, a kind of

Rebuff of speech by the written word

Insisting so on the difference—

Making me feel welcome: once that 

Was recognized, we were in touch 

Those secluded dead-end stacks—

Archaic smell of books like a temple 

Proving me separate, but knowable

Living in Kansas was no excuse—

Here no elsewhere underwrote my 

Existence, how could I refuse?

Life With A Hole In It

LIFE WITH A HOLE IN IT

—for Philip Larkin

Sometimes I look back—

Down over my shoulder & say

To my Asshole down there

“You’ve always got—

your way, perfectly vile

and always so very foul”

____________

“You old Asshole—

shitting so indifferently

like a shuttered château”

“While I’m way up here—

Slaving all day and night

A loser Poet Laureate”

_________

“You’re an uncouth Hole—

Making life simply miserable

For me way up here”

“Of course, my Asshole—

Doesn’t say a lousy thing

Occasionally he farts tho”

The Librarian

THE LIBRARIAN

—for Philip Larkin

I work all day, and come home at night—

Living in this soundless old dark house

With its curtain-edges and old-fashioned

Stained-glass windows catching the light   

Seeing what I’ve always seen: parents

And grandparent’s death, and mine next.

A whole day nearer now, making thought 

Impossible, how and where and when I 

Shall myself die. This arid interrogation, 

The dread of dying, and being dead,

Coming daily to grab and horrify me.

My mind grows blank, deep in remorse—

For the things not done, the love not given, 

Time torn up unused—wretchedly because   

A closeted life lasts only so long to climb

Clear of its wrong beginnings, then it’s over;   

But in the total emptiness toward the end,

The knowing extinction that we travel to

And shall be lost in always, it’s here & now,   

Not anywhere else, and soon; nothing’s more 

Terrible, nothing’s more true than the Now.

This is a special way of being afraid—

No bridge game dispels it, religion useless,

One’s life a moth-eaten musical brocade

Created to pretend we never die, even tho

We never really lived, fearing a thing we’ve

Never felt, here in this closet where there’s

No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think 

With, nothing to love or link with, for this is

The anesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of thought—

An avoided unfocused fear, a big chill that

Freezes each impulse down to indecision.   

Most affairs don’t ever happen: this one will,   

And realizing it no longer surprises one, when

We’re caught without a lover or someone to

Give us courage even if they’re no good;

It means not scaring others, being brave on

Your own, edging toward the grave, death no 

Different than being a Librarian all these years.

Slowly light weakens, and the house dims—

Closets are plainly not just for one’s wardrobe.

What we know, what we don’t know, what

We can’t escape, and yet have to accept even

Though we can’t accept it. One day I’ll have 

To go, regardless of the attic, closets, and my

So-called unlived life. The telephone crouches

Getting ready to ring with nobody to answer, this

Old house cold in the winter with the dead elms

Reaching their branches and fingers into the sky.

Here in this closeted little college town that I

Never escaped from, nor even tried, coasting

From year to year there in the stacks, hiding

In the William Allen White Library where work

Was to be done, an intricate world full of

Books white as clay, with no sun, just words

Like postmen and doctors coming and going 

From house to house with nobody there.

High Windows

Second-floor flat overlooking Pearson Park in Hull 

Larkin's rented accommodation from 1956 to 1974

HIGH WINDOWS

—for Philip Larkin

When I see a couple of guys—

And guess he’s fucking him and they’re   

Taking pills or wearing a rubber, I hope

They’re practicing safe sex

So many before them lost their lives—   

Bonds and gestures pushed to one side

Like an outdated Joan Crawford flick,

And everyone went down the long slide

To death and now thirty years later—

We look back and think what a waste,

All those lives gone needlessly and now

Here I am in Philip Larkin’s flat

No more DOMA and having to hide—

Priests not needed for gay marriages   

And now it’s our turn to go down the 

Long slide like those others did

And immediately the thought of—

Larkin in this room of high windows:   

The sun-comprehending glass, and 

beyond it, Nothing, Nowhere, Endless

Dying Kansas

In Cold Blood

DYING KANSAS

Dave Leiker

“Industrial Building – Chanute”

DEAD BUILDINGS

Not just Detroit—

But Chanute Kansas too

Decaying by the tracks

Some say these old—

Buildings are just “retired”

But is that really so?

They’re more like tombs—

After the grave-robbers

Broke-in and robbed them

Decay & rot has set in—

Nothing manmade lasts

Very long around here

Dave Leiker

“Wooden Overpass – Alta Vista”

WOODEN OVERPASS

Creaky cranky old bridge—

Up over the railroad tracks

With its wooden planks

Twisted naked old—

Cottonwood trees gnarled

Alongside the dirt road

A couple of modern—

Grain silos incongruently

Protruding way out there

How many gone Chevy—

Pickups and dilapidated old

Farmers traveled this road?

Dave Leiker, “Barn Dissolving”

(Stone and Vines)

BARN DISSOLVING

Nothing lasts forever—

Not even Stonehenge or

The Easter Island statues

Not the ancient Mayan—

Ruins all twisted in vines

And jungle dissolution

The same with Kansas—

The limestone slab walls

Of what used to be a barn

The land seems to have—

A mind of its own & takes

Back what was once ours

Dave Leiker

“West Wall – Barn Dissolving”

TEMPLE WALLS

Temples built of stone—

In Greece, Rome & Egypt

India and Angkor Wat

Built by royal stonemasons—

To last forever and ever

Even past kings and queens

Temples built in Kansas—

Homes, sheds and barns

By the grim early settlers 

Now they’re all gone—

But the limestone walls

Still cling to existence

Dave Leiker

“Flint Hills Road”

FLINT HILLS ROAD

The dead Cottonwood tree—

Leans precariously over the

Flint Hills little dirt road

Twisted fingers reaching—

Upward toward the afternoon

Fading Midwestern sky

This is all we really know—

A road through the countryside

And then, well, that’s it

The reassuring golden hills—

The Cottonwood saying goodbye

Such a brief heartbreaking trip

We Disappear

WE DISAPPEAR

“To get as close as she could,

to understand the “gone without

a trace,” for whom the earth

seemed to yawn its beak and

blackened throat and swallow

whole”—Scott Heim, We Disappear

____________

So I disappeared—

Letting Kansas swallow me

Down there by the tracks

A few years from now—

Nobody will ever know 

I even existed

Pretty soon now I’ll just—

Disappear like most of the

Emporians do

It's a ghost town—

Full of disappeared persons and
Soon I'll be one too