Blessed Son
I am speeding on my stunt bike toward a very big & very wooden ramp
beyond which lie 1,000 limousines & the people in the stands
worry I won’t make it— I’ll come crashing through a roof & shatter
a ceilinged mirror & a minibar
if those things are in these limousines.
But they cheer. As I grow older
I grow increasingly reverent of heights & distances
over time. My velocity contends with a universe
expanding in midair, erect with the adrenaline fear
that I might make it after all
Anthony Lee Hamilton
Anthony Lee Hamilton is a writer, musician, and educator from New York. His work has appeared in Cult Magazine, Twyckenham Notes, Poetry South, the Decadent Review, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from Stony Brook University and is an occasional contributor of book reviews at Foreword Magazine.
Why this Knocked Taylor Out:
The poem takes the idea of performing and/or aging and/or cultural expectations and then makes it tangible. It makes it impossibly tangible in that the speaker of the poem is being asked to do something they can't but they have to attempt either way. There's a leap from one stanza into another where vulnerability is introduced into the poem along with a radical hope. The speaker might make it, and maybe we will too!
I’m also super into poems right now that are willing to risk. I think the end of the poem does that for me in a really effective way. It could come off as cliche, and maybe to another reader it does, but after the almost “silliness” of the first stanza I found myself really willing to be convinced by the speakers faith in something more after the fall.
This poem is short and sweet but punchy, the ability to handle different tones is also really impressive to me. Idk there’s a lot going on here that I think is worth noticing so read it a bunch and notice.
Interview:
Why did you choose Team Taylor for this poem?
For her aesthetic current of obsessive dialogical voices, for her thematic undercurrent of religious existentialism, and for her avowed interest in sports in verse, which stunt-biking seems to be.
When we think about "aboutness" in poetry, do you approach the page thinking of the "aboutness" or does that happen through your exploration process?
It is like how an emotion finding expression in thought works itself into a feeling: if an image finds its proper expression in language, it will probably circumscribe a poem.
When you think of contemporary poetics, are there other poets you find yourself in conversation with?
I can’t help but be in conversation with everything I read. Because how couldn’t I be? You either embrace it or reject it. No use pretending otherwise. To name one feels like excluding so many others, but Rae Armantrout: I’ve been loving her poetics lately, though to say I’m “in conversation” with her work feels a bit audacious.