Jack Wolford: The Resurrection of Jack Wolford

(Being an anonymous manuscript that arrived in the mail)

~~~

in memory of Jack Wolford
8/20/1945 – 12/16/2005


Jack made quite an impression on the Pittsburgh writing community, as attested by the dozens of Jack Wolford poems that have been written since his death. His family decided not to publish his work, and so this is a samizdat edition of what little remains of his output. It has been assembled and circulated anonymously, is utterly unauthorized, and is of doubtful origin.

Most of the poems were brought to Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange, and are presented in the form they had at the time, except that since left-justification is now the norm, they have been formatted that way. Jack tended to indent the poems to the center of the page.

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[presented at Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange 12/1/2003]

FOUR DEEP SONGS FOR
GARCIELA LORCA

1.
In your smiles
my senses dying.
Thus I know love
will track me to the grave.

2.
How could such young men
know so much of death?
I do not share their confidence.
My love waits by the orchard.

3.
When you open like a book,
and pages fall about us
like so many useless clothes –
the paper flares and ink explodes.

4.
Nightfall – black throat – lilac
drowsiness – sleep without dreams –
portend no more. Overhead
water, out of reach, shore.

~~~
 
[presented at Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange 3/1/2004]

YOU KNOW ME


you know me or you
think you do
ok lets say
have it your own way

you no me
i aint you mind
wanna piece of me
grind up the rind

you NO me i yes
you standing before
reluctant door
more or less

you know me
not so sure
where end begins
what love is for

~~~
 
[presented at Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange 12/1/2003]

THE RUB


In that flushed moment of time between birth
and farthest passage, on and off, high and high,
between winning the lottery the first time
and winning it the second –
there is where the human revelations lie;

not in the straining or the cry
nor in the instant gush of fortune
nor the breaking of the tape,
even not the last equation of the proof,
but in the interstices along the way.

Birth is common, but death –
whose fascination is its unleaked secret
like oath-guarded mysteries of old Eleusis
(open to any Greek, broadly defined,
who promised not to tell) – is europe to our america.

Not just blabbermouths and tattletales withhold,
but worse, the ones we loved hint not,
the ones who owed us do not pay up,
and death, the last, perhaps the only, confidence,
we know we face unwarned, uncompromised but fraught.

Just so, not so much interest, this death, as pinion –
immobile, mute (so far as we can tell),
unasked, the one sure answer – but do we then
content ourselves, folded in the sensorium?
Lit by all delight. Remarkably – we do not.

~~~
 
[presented at Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange 5/3/2004]

ONE SMOKE AMONG MANY


He was a stranger no denying that
and they confronted him getting in his face
demanding Where’d you get those shoes? He shrugged
and doffed his hat That haircut that’s not one
of ours He buffed his left shoetop on his right
pantleg They stalked around him bluff and cold
as winters where he came from and muttered Hmm
and So He pulled a pack of cigarettes
unfiltered local brand and passed them round
They all smoked squinting bleary from the smoke
and when the smokes were low he puffed on off
down bluish path within a bluish haze
into a purple closing of a day
He left the pack they said dividing it
Nice guy Yeah Wonder where he gets his shoes

~~~
 
[presented at Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange 7/5/2004]

EGGS EYES


Eggs, domestic fruit for years,
we crack egglids at hemispheres.
They stare back at us from the plate,
blind for all we postulate.

The egg, unlike the eye, takes wings.
The eye envisions common things.
But both have poached upon a kind
of truth that will not ease the mind.

The eye will egg on every brain
to test the space around it, strain
its globe, construing shapes too close,
or wince in wind when lachrymose.

The egg will be the custom of
the dawn: the eye will crack with love.

~~~
 
[presented at Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange 8/2/2004]

HASTINGS


Bicycles unrolled a wild start
And cottonwoods warred with grasses
where the moral prairie glistened =
racked a century behind.

Chequerboard towns on patchwork
spread along the long flat highways
or down particular rural lanes.
The meadowlark a metronome

to count the ticking of the sun.
Among the low beasts in the flowing
of a field the glower of the coolness
in the canebrake of green corn.

The high wheat wishing rumors in
the homesteads whispers patience
and endurance, and the peeping
of windmills creaks at the end of day.

Bright lights winkle up and down the road
to the asylum, trucks assemble
at the truck stop, and the night sky
shakes out blanketfuls of stars.

*

The streets of Hastings snapped out like
a sheet at noon, a place of crossings
modified with the handlebar bell
by institutions and by stop signs

bikes ignored. As neighbor leaned
to neighborhood, a stir of bicycles
whisked past, sometimes in all directions;
errands filling the wire baskets,

staccato of playing cards on spokes
dealing speed, the short rattle
of chain taking up slack, the chirp
of brakes, the slippage of tires on gravel.

They meant so much – a stranded bike
near porch piano-lesson sounds,
neat rows outside the movie house
on kickstands, and the hasty clutter

at the Hot Stove Pipe League practice field,
thrown or tumbled there, and out beyond
the end of town by water ditch
a red bike propping up a fence.

*

As Coyote plays his tricks
on us, like the Platte, howling in Spring
unstoppable, by Summer sniffing
braided inch-wise through the sands,

what comes and what we care to call
divide us equally, though nothing
seems forgotten, all is lost in time.
We pick and choose the brightest shards.

Perhaps a birthday glitters or the snow
along the lake still numbs the ill-shod feet
or when you said ‘I’m sorry’ did
you mean it, did I think you did.

The friends we would have died for pump
away on bikes of silver blue,
shunting from side to side, and bound
for supper and oblivion –

we pedal slowly back a shady
way; a cool wind lifts; we stretch
our feet up to the handlebars
and it is dusk and we are coasting.

~~~
 
[presented at Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange 12/6/2004]

THE AURA OF GREAT FAILURES


Their wide tolerance has marked them as such
for they cannot shrink to focus, to ruthlessly select
down to the minimal imaginary unit, to the single
pair of shoes that might walk them through the magic

to the mind. They are spread like wings in the undercurrent
of wonderment, and though they see as far as any
raptor can, soaring when they swoop, the moment when
their gaze lifts and they swing their grappling talons round,

the struggling thing they lock on and airlift aerie-ward
is as like to be just dinner as a dance of fire and vision –
so they merely eat when they would rather plunder –
in the skrying of their cries, an echo of implacable

elastic canyon walls which throw back or cast down
the sorrow of the fretted grasp, such knowledge of a failure,
slicker for the angle of the miscast and the press
of slack untidy brogans gussied up in faculty’s despair.

~~~
 
[presented at Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange 4/4/2005]

CRUEL MONTH


Late snow, damp and cold –
old aches come back no matter
how hard the sun tries.

~~~
 
[published in Stories About Time, Poems in appreciation of Michael Wurster, Ziggy Edwards & Arlene Weiner, eds., 2007; apparently provided by Mike James]


THE ELEGANT SOLUTION
Wursteriana


Michael tinkers under the hood.
“What the heck am I doing with this?”
He waves a thingamajig about, thick as dreadlocks,
as long as trombone slides.
Where’d that come from? We all ask.
“Down from in under there somewhere.”
Why don’t we get a new one? “What’s it called?”
Looks all around.
I have an idea, Nathan says,
and aims a loaded hogleg at the engine block –
well we grab him.
But it’s the right thing to do, he says,
surely you can see that.

~~~
 
[published in Along These Rivers, Judith R. Robinson & Michael Wurster, eds., 2008]

PELL-MELL DUNE


On a bench of Barlovento,
slewing to a silky tune,
shifts a barchan pentimento
of a whispery simoom.

What nods just beyond the window
now expected to festoon?
Who lies hidden in the windrow?
Whose lies will the waves impugn?

These are thoughts we hadn’t meant to
marmorealize in amber rune,
ambrotypes of sentimental
doings under summer moon.

Goes to show that ‘what do we know?’
can’t be said too much or soon–
reminiscences that startled
up that helter-skelter dune.

~~~
 
[This is one of the many poems about Jack, which I came across while searching through the Exchange poems. It’s Michael Wurster’s and was presented at the Exchange on 10/3/2011.]

THAT’S JACK!


I’m thinking about Jack,

about starting my reading at Hemingway’s
with his “Pell-Mell Dune,” explaining

it’s my favorite poem in the anthology,
the only one of its kind.

Jack was a great Pittsburgh poet.

If you ever go
to Pittsburgh Poetry Valhalla
and a big burly guy
gives you a hard time,

(you’ll doubt your right to be there)

that’s Jack!

~~~~~~~

Obituary

Jack A. Wolford, II, age 60, of Pittsburgh, on Friday December 16, 2005. Son of Dr. Jack A. Wolford and Kathryn Carpenter; Brother of Philip W. Wolford and his wife Regine VanTieghem. Jack was born August 20, 1945, in Pittsburgh and attended Mt. Lebanon High School. He studied English Literature at Hobart College in Elmira, NY and graduated from the University of Pittsburgh, where he completed his Doctorate studies in Archeology A.B.D. Jack published over 30 research articles in various archeological journals relating to the creation of flint tools and spears. He worked for the State of Maine’s Archeology Department, Historical Division. In the late 1980’s, he spent four summers in Colombia, where he participated in archeological digs. He loved the new world culture and spoke fluent Spanish. He had a Scarce and Rare Books Antiquary business, and was a lifelong poet, active in Pittsburgh poetry circles. El fin de todo es el AMOR. Funeral arrangements by BEINHAUERS, (724) 941-3211. At the request of the family there will be a private inurnment in Mt. Lebanon cemetery. Family suggests memorial contributions be made to Autumn House Press, a not-for-profit independent press in Pittsburgh where Jack used to be Assistant Editor.

~~~~~

Copyright 2025 The Estate of Jack Wolford