THE DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS

Tree smaller this year,

Lights burned out,

Not replaced.

Garbage can only half full

The day after Christmas:

Children grown, gone.

CHRISTMAS SHOPPING

In a mammoth drugstore

Late the day before Christmas:

Disaffected teenagers

Roam smirkingly from aisle to aisle

Shopping for their “real dad”

Or perhaps mom’s new husband.

They consider deodorant and Metamucil,

Settle finally on work gloves.

Holding their fellow shoppers

In oblivious contempt,

Yet assuming somehow

That we are all amused.

A man purchases a single Christmas card,

An old woman compares two cans of cat food.

Driving home, I look inside a tavern

Where a solitary customer stands

At the darkened bar.

Further along, white paper bags,

Set out for luminaria,

Droop limply in a sudden rain.

DECEMBER 7, 2003

The post office flag is at half staff;

For a moment I can’t think why:

For us, this was my father’s birthday;

(In a child’s memory, only a radio, speaking darkly).

He would be one hundred today.

We fix Christmas wreaths for the cemetery,

Something my mother had done.

I bind greenery to metal frame

And wonder idly how much more

Twenty-gauge wire I’m apt to need.

Robert Demaree

Burlington, NC

WRITERS

 Richard H. Williams

 On American Fiction Writers

I.

John Steinbeck---anti-

intellectualism and

social realism.

II.

Gertrude Stein’s writing

viewed as experimental;

she was avant-garde

III.

Ernest Hemingway---

the master of precise prose

later work was thin.

IV.

Thomas Wolfe's works were

viewed by his critics to be

without discipline.

V.

F. Scott Fitzgerald;

father of roaring twenties;

author of Gatsby.

VI.

William Faulkner won

the Nobel Prize. He explored

stream-of-consciousness.

VII.

Tennessee Williams---

a poetic dramatist

who might be our best.

 VIII.

For John Updike, "death"

and "sex" are the main themes; writes

novels, stories, poems

IX.

Horror and terror

reside in Stephen King's work.

Humor is there too

 X

Fine storywriter---

Flannery O'Connor, from

Southern Gothic Genre

XI

Isaac Asimov

He published three hundred books

Earned a Ph.D.

XII

Bernard Malamud

Employed spare, lyric language

Coupled with humor

XIII

Joyce Carol Oates is

A writer of quite wide scope---

She is prolific!

Literary Theory and Criticism

 I.                                                    

Jacques Barzun---author

and educator. Published

scholarly studies.

II.

Maxwell Perkins--top

editor. Worked with Lardner,

Fitzgerald, and Wolfe.

III.

Fadiman was host

of TV and radio shows---

author, editor.

IV.

Cowley edited

works by Faulkner, Hemingway,

Fitzgerald, Hawthorne.

V.

H.L. Mencken---a

major journalist, writer,

editor, critic.

VI.

Henry Canby---an

editor, author, critic;

held a Ph.D.

VII.

Lionel Trilling

critic, teacher, writer. Was

enamored with Freud.

 VIII.

Susan Sontag was

a writer who studied at

Oxford and Harvard.

 IX.

Edmund Wilson was

important critic, writer---

wrote plays, poems, stories.

X.

Novels and essays

by Elizabeth Hardwick---

also editor.

XI.

Gilbert Seldes wrote

on the popular arts in

our America.

XII.

Van Wyck Brooks---U.S.

literary critic and

historian, too.

The End