Cottonwood River Anthology

COTTONWOOD RIVER ANTHOLOGY

Gay Midwestern Realism:
The Death Throes of Romanticism

“Tragedy is not a woman, 
however gifted, dragging 
her shadow around in a circle”
—Joyce Carol Oates
“The Death Throes Of Romanticism: 
The Poetry of Sylvia Plath”
_______________

Tragedy is a gay poet—
Especially one living in Kansas

A Tragedy Queen living in—
The Red State Bible Belt Midwest

A Closet Case living in—
Conservative Republican Shitville


Fly-Over State Poetics

“The "I" of the poems 
is an artful construction”
—Joyce Carol Oates
“The Death Throes Of Romanticism: 
The Poetry of Sylvia Plath”
______________

Analyzing with dazzling scrupulosity—
The stale, boring inertia of the Cow-Patty

Plopped down on the Tallgrass Prairie—
A tragic, cultural, mysterious Turd

Representing for us a Tragic Figure—
Involved in a Tragedy called Kansas 
_____________

A tragedy that’s offered to us—
As a near-perfect Work of Art

A huge posthumous Colossus—
The Westering Experience of Ourselves

Crossing the Great Plains—
Ending up stuck in a drab Bell Jar
_______________

The pathological results of our Era—
The Death of the Midwest Imagination

The sympathetic detachment of ourselves—
As saintly martyrs to John Brown’s body

Up there on the heroic domed murals—
Of the Topeka State Capitol Building
__________________

More than just a Fly-Over State—
Back then a Civil War Slavery Flashpoint 

With Quantrill’s Raiders murdering—
And raping poor Anti-Slavery Lawrence

With the rest of the Union enslaved—
The same way that Kansas was going
_______________

The Muse of Deep South Dixie—
Wanted to be the Poetry of the Land

That’s why Poetry is important—
Just ask Walt Whitman why

Ask any tan-faced Prairie Boy—
In a Chevy pickup truck at night