Description
The poems that Sander Zulauf has brought together in Where Time Goes often begin in memory – of family, friends, childhood places, as well as poets who have been important influences: Walt Whitman, James Wright, and Kenneth Burke. “Learning Loss” sounds the prevailing tone: “An astonishment of petals/ Drift and dust the ground below,/ Then disappear for another year. . . ./ Nothing can keep them here,/ Nothing can keep their sweet soft breath.”
The poems that follow carry us into shaping episodes in the poet’s life. In “Frank,” for example, Zulauf reflects on going with his grandfather to the barbershop: “Frank’s tin-ceilinged/ Five-chair shop, green walls/ And mirrors with piles/ Of torn-up magazines/ And clumps of new-mown/ Hair.” In “Mercy,” he remembers a singular first time with a girl: “My hand slips/ Down her silky blouse/ Feels the yielding softness/ Feels the flowered pattern/ Of her bra.” In “Honeysuckle,” the sweet smell brings up the memory of his mother “Teaching me the word,/ Wild, untamed,/ White and yellow tongues/ And filaments.” Each poem is like a glint of light in the darkness – together, they evoke the talismanic force that memory has for the poet . . . and for all of us.
Sander Zulauf’s previous books of poetry are Succasunna New Jersey (Breaking Point, 1987) and Living Waters (St Dunstan’s, 2005). He edits the Journal of New Jersey Poets at County College of Morris in Randolph, where he has taught poetry and writing since 1973. A co-editor of The Poets of New Jersey: From Colonial to Contemporary (Jersey Shore Publications, 2006), he was founding editor and edited the first ten volumes of the Index of American Periodical Verse(Scarecrow Press, Metuchen and London, 1973-1982). In 1999, he was named first Poet Laureate of the Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Newark.
1954
Aunt Ethel, who died the same year
Ethel Merman died, could also belt them out,
Those old songs ringing from her heart
Like Roosevelt School fire alarms, free and clear,
She had “No Business,” she had no fear-
“Baaaaby Faaaace, you’ve got the cutest little-”
Her chest must have measured 50D.
She drove her blue Plymouth from Martin Street in
Paterson
To our house with grandma one spring afternoon,
Her tight blue sweater suddenly gyrating
Like a washing machine,
Her eyes fixed weirdly on the kitchen ceiling,
Her voice bellowing out to me
“How do ya like those milk-shakers, honey?”
The women all roaring their kitchen laughter
At her and at me, their blushing victim,
Eight or nine, a chubby third-grader,
My dad’s basement crew-cut bristling,
Seeing those two blue balloons thrashing
Like Rocky Marciano’s giant boxing gloves
Pasting me with a right, a left,
Long before trimming the trailing ivy
From her grave.”
