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Column 685

Good News

Intro by Ted Kooser
05.06.2018

Some of the man­ner­isms of poet­ry that can get in the way of an every­day read­er’s enjoy­ment are ele­vat­ed dic­tion, obscure ref­er­ences, and a vocab­u­lary that requires a trip to the dic­tio­nary. Here’s a good exam­ple of a con­ver­sa­tion­al poem that does­n’t require any­thing oth­er than what it car­ries with it. Steve Lan­gan lives in Oma­ha, Nebras­ka, and this is from his book What It Looks Like, How It Flies, from Gibral­tar Editions. 

Good News

We say the trees are a canopy in mid July,
as if that's a special description of home.
 
Walking down the hill to see a friend,
I have good news and bad news for him.
 
We say canopy made out of stars as our
special way to describe the universe to ourselves.
 
So which one will my friend choose today?
 
Canopy of trees gives way to the sky;
I'm walking now thinking all the way which
one will he choose good or bad which one?
 
I guess I can just say instead I love the way
you fixed up the place and these colors.
 
At a certain age a man can begin to say
things like that to his friends.
 

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Disclaimer

We do not accept unsolicited submissions

We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2015 by Steve Langan, “Good News,” from What It Looks Like, How It Flies, (Gibraltar Editions, 2015). Poem reprinted by permission of Steve Langan and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.