Solving for X
Solving for X
Robert B. Shaw
OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS
ATHENS
Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701
© 2002 by Robert B. Shaw
Printed in the United States of America
All rights reserved
Ohio University Press books are printed on acid-free paper © ™
10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 54321
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Shaw, Robert Burns, 1947–
Solving for x : poems / Robert B. Shaw.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-8214-1471-2 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-8214-1472-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
I. Title.
PS3569.H3845 S65 2002
811'.54—dc21
2002027092
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgment is made to the editors of the following publications in which several of the poems in this book first appeared: The Dark Horse, Janus, The Nation, The New Criterion, The Sewanee Review, Shenandoah, Southwest Review, and The Yale Review. “A Paper Cut,” “Remainders,” “Called Back,” “Solving for X,” “QWERTY,” “Letter of Recommendation,” “Making Do,” “Up and Away,” “Other Eyes,” “Waste,” “Waiting Room,” and “Out of Character” first appeared in Poetry. “Wishing Well” is reprinted from volume 3, number 1 of Literary Imagination: The Review of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics, © 2001. Used by permission of the ALSC. “Drowned Towns” and “The Devil’s Garden” appeared in a chapbook co-authored with Edgar Bowers and William Conelly: Drowned Towns and Other Poems of Place (Hatfield, Mass.: The Van Zora Press, 2000). “Shoptalk: Ten Epigrams” appeared in the chapbook anthology Profile Full Face (Hatfield, Mass.: The Van Zora Press, 2001).
Many of the facts in “Drowned Towns” are drawn from two books by J. R. Greene: The Creation of Quabbin Reservoir and The Day Four Quabbin Towns Died, both published by The Transcript Press, Athol, Massachusetts. Other material was derived from informational booklets available at the Quabbin Visitors’ Center.
For Timothy Steele
Increasing with the years but still bicoastal,
our friendship has perforce been mostly postal.
Accept this parcel, bearing scraps of gray
New England weather to you in L.A.,
as well as thanks for each new poem or letter
I welcome as a nudge to make mine better.
Contents
The Devil’s Garden
Waiting Room
The Latest Sign
The Arbor
A Roadside Flock
“Called Back”
Up and Away
Drowned Towns
Snowplow in the Night
Espalier
Shoptalk: Ten Epigrams
Waste
A Paper Cut
Solving for X
Ant in Amber
Wishing Well
Seed Catalogues in Winter
A Flashback
Typo
Buyer’s Remorse
The Draft
Letter of Recommendation
Out of Character
Making Do
Static
Pilgrims
September Brownout
Other Eyes
Remainders
QWERTY
Now and Then
Living past 19
A Drained Fountain
Amnesia: Fragments
The Future Perfect
It will be recognizable: your neighborhood,
with of course some of the bigger trees
gone for pulp and the more upscale houses
sporting new riot-proof fencing which
they seem hardly to need in this calm sector
whose lawns look even more vacuumed than they used to.
Only a soft whirr of electric automobiles
ruffles unburdened air. Your own house looks
about the same, except for the solar panels.
Inside, the latest occupants sit facing
the wall-size liquid crystal flat TV screen
they haggle and commune with, ordering beach towels
or stockings, or instructing their stockbrokers,
while in the kitchen dinner cooks itself.
Why marvel over windows that flip at a touch
from clear to opaque, or carpets that a lifetime
of scuffs will never stain? This all was destined,
down to the newest model ultrasound toothbrush.
Only the stubborn, ordinary ratio
of sadness to happiness seems immune to progress,
and