The Mad Poet of the Year blog posts share the poetry of a long-time Mad Poet. This year-long appointment provides readers with a deep dive of the writer’s work and thoughts on poetry. We are thrilled to have R. G. Evans serve as the Mad Poet of the Year for 2022.
Experts on Mortality
by R.G. Evans
She makes her first announcement—I awake—
then springs out of her crib just like a toad.
Something in the trees, some movement,
some violence, makes it hard to forget
today. The chase is on. Daddy Death
rumbles down the stairs right behind his little
skeleton-in-waiting, out the door and into the wind—
she's gone. But no, she's there behind the hemlocks
giggling under branches that creak and groan
like everything alive. She points up in the air
says, Look! Look!—and there it is at the end
of her invisible string, the only thing she has,
all that he can give her:
a sky-blue kite in a kite-blue sky.
It’s truly an honor to be chosen as Mad Poet of the Year by the Mad Poets Society, a group I have followed and respected for years. My first poem contribution is from my first book, Overtipping the Ferryman.
When my daughter was very young, she would wake up before my wife and me, stand up in her crib and call out “I awake!” Such an adorable habit, and yet the poet in me saw an opportunity to turn it into something a little darker and more twisted. I remember reading an article in American Poetry Review in which the author mentioned “Dante, Shakespeare and other experts on mortality,” and when I read that, this poem cried out “I awake!” I’ll always be proud to remember reading this poem to an audience that included one of my clearest-eyed critics, and when I got to the image that closes the poem and heard her gasp, I knew, at least for that moment, that I had done my job as a poet.
R.G. Evans’s books include Overtipping the Ferryman (Aldrich Poetry Press Prize), The Holy Both, and Imagine Sisyphus Happy. His original songs were featured in the poetry documentaries All That Lies Between Us and Unburying Malcolm Miller, and his collection of original songs, Sweet Old Life, is available on most streaming platforms. Evans teaches creative writing at Rowan University. Website: www.rgevanswriter.com