Blues

During my first year of college, I wandered into the Grolier Poetry Bookstore in Harvard Square, where I found a copy of Sunbelly by Kenneth Fields. Its price was labeled as $2.50, which seemed particularly low to me in comparison to most of the other books in the store. When I asked the shopkeeper about it, she told me that it had been priced long ago, and that no one had bought it after years on the shelf. So I gave her $2.50 and she gave me the book. We got to talking, and she told me that Sunbelly was published by David R. Godine, a local publisher who took immense pride in his work--the printing and binding of the book are what initially caught my eye. It's a very slim volume, with a beautiful golden hardcover. Here is a very low-quality computer-camera photo of it, to give you an idea.

I have no idea how many copies of this book exist, or how much recognition Kenneth Fields ever received for his poetry (according to Wikipedia, he's teaching at Stanford now, not that you care, dear reader), but this book in particular has brought me small joy every time I've opened its cover. Here is a poem I especially like.

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"Blues"

Do you wait a change of weather to be gone?

I know of men who never get away,

     Who never really stay,

Homeless, but never up to moving on.

And then there are the drifters, men that comb

Through every part of country like a rain;

     Missing yet always shunning home,

Coming and lighting out on the same train.

The same train for both sorts, for whom the night

Nurses the heart in its old secret pride:

     Missing the Midnight Special's light,

Its long slow whistle own the mountainside.

-Kenneth Fields, from Sunbelly (1973)