Djelloul Marbrook

If you ask me on Monday why I write poems I might say each poem is an algorithm with which I parse life’s conundrums and paradoxes. If you ask me on Tuesday I might say I write for my life as if I were running for it. By Wednesday I might say fame would be nice. By Thursday I might say, Damned if I know. On Friday I might say to untie my knotted tongue. By Saturday I might say to interrogate myself as to what I’ve learned, a kind of waterboarding.

But on Sunday, last Sunday in fact, I would say because a lovely man named John M. Trusty, who had written but a few poems, sent me ten couplets composed in honor of my book of poems, Far From Algiers. That is reward enough.

John, who, like me, served in the Navy, was attending an Associated Writing Programs conference in Chicago last January when he was chatted up by David Hassler, a poet and educator from Kent State University. David, and an extraordinarily generous and gregarious gentleman, invited John to come here me read from Far From Algiers.

After the reading John and I chatted and we continued exchanging our thoughts and experiences  by email after the conference. John, who writes fiction, bought my book and then the CD. Hearing my voice again on the CD, he composed 57 Selections, the number of poems in my book.

These are the last two couplets of John’s celebratory poem:

When the compilation was nearly completed
I was overlooking something but I refused to bend.

So, as I started it over, I immediately knew
the something previously missed was the voice of a friend.

I think you can see why I felt that all my other reasons for writing poems seemed trivial compared to the simple fact that something I had said, something in its demeanor, had inspired another human being to sing.

This story of our friendship aborning, John’s and mine, is also very much David’s story, and the story of the Stan and Tom Wick Prize at Kent State, which is committed to nurturing new voices, and to Kent State, the nurturer of the Wick Poetry Center, and, finally, to the AWP which helps writers find their voices and their audiences.—DM

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Note:The CD of Far From Algiers is now available from Bookmasters, Kent State University Press and by order from your local bookstore. I try to say something illuminating before each poem. The music was composed by Julie Last and recorded by her at Coldbrook Productions Recording Studio, Woodstock, NY. The soprano saxophone is played by Bruce Williamson. All proceeds from the sale of the CD go to the Wick Poetry Center.