photo of Paavo Nurmi (left), 1920s‘For Paavo Nurmi’ and Other Poetry by Daniel Kemper The Society March 11, 2024 Beauty, Culture, Love Poems, Poetry 23 Comments . For Paavo Nurmi who trained against his stop-watch and in medias rez we begin as the runners approach the penultimate turn. Though their torsos are heaving, the sweat isn’t beading—the storm of their pace won’t permit it. The coach isn’t screaming, he’s merely observing: the race is a bet that’s already been won or been lost, since the win or the loss is already determined by training and talent. It’s there with the screaming fanatics before any runner can cross the unbearable finish with agony, glory, despair. The runners slow, a semi-stumble, out of breath. They hug and smile. They walk around erratic, yet ecstatic. Fans still shout. Their hearts can barely pound and pound and pound. And the runners and fans and the coaches exult, but they cry and inside they’re relieved that all glory is fleeting. And sigh. . . Roxie and the Dreamer A magnolia’s aroma increased as the temperature rose and the ruddy horizon became, for a moment, abashed by her natural extravagance. Roxie’s diaphanous clothes were beginning to billow until, with a flap, they had flashed from the hem at her shins to the slit at her hip. They remain but a moment in sight—and forever in vision. Her pose, as she touched her bedeviling lips with a shush, could sustain the attention of gods—in exactly the way that she chose. But here below where hope can never come that comes to all, though beauty reigns supreme, what can it then avail when struck so dumb, that he can’t see the woman, just the dream? Roxie enjoys the admiring and teasing and visible influence over the dreamer. The man is invisible. . . Daniel Kemper is a former tournament-winning wrestler, a black belt in traditional Shotokan karate and a former infantryman. He has a BA in English, an MCSE (Systems Engineering), and an MBA. He quit a 25-year IT career in 2023 and went all-in on poetry. Since then, he’s had works accepted for publication at The Blue Unicorn, The Lyric, thehypertexts.com, The Creativity Webzine, Amethyst Review, Rat’s Ass Review, Formalverse, The Literary Hatchet, the Society for Classical Poets, and Ekphrastic Review. He was an invited presenter at the 2023 national PAMLA conference and will preside over the Poetics Panel at PAMLA 2024. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by The Blue Unicorn and has been the featured poet at the historic Luna’s Cafe and the Sacramento Poetry Center. NOTE TO READERS: If you enjoyed this poem or other content, please consider making a donation to the Society of Classical Poets. The Society of Classical Poets does not endorse any views expressed in individual poems or commentary. Trending now: 23 Responses PAUL ERLANDSON March 11, 2024 Thanks for the Paavo Nurmi poem, Daniel. Both my father and father-in-law were track coaches, so I heard his name a lot during childhood. -Paul Reply Daniel Kemper March 12, 2024 [Sorry, I blew the location of the earlier reply!] Hi Paul! Thanks for the props. I first came across him in a string of biographies I got addicted to a long time ago. It was not only his stop-watch that caught my eye, but that he’d run behind trains also. Beyond my fetish-like enjoyment for the “meta” (training by means of trains), the hard core regularity of it stuck in my chest. There’s a connection to a relentless demand for perfectionism there. I love him, but confess to a slight preference for Haile Gebrselassie, since my kids are half Ethiopian. More to say on the breathlessness I’m trying to convey with meter, but I’ve got a take home exam in Lit Theory that I’ve got to start, though I’d rather eat ground glass. People at SCP are much smarter than these people I’m forced to study. Soon I’ll get to everyone, with great observations and opportunities! Reply Chris June 24, 2024 Hi Dan. 39 years and you still look the same. Roy Eugene Peterson March 11, 2024 You accomplished the feat of rhyming while on the run, as I call it, with sentences that do not end at the end of the line. That is as impressive to me as the feat of Paavo Nurmi and I once was a miler. The poem on “Roxie” reminded me so much of the iconic Marilyn Monroe photo. Reply Daniel Kemper March 13, 2024 Hi Roy– Hey, I didn’t think of that about Marilyn, but it fits. The running over the end of the lines just felt right. Trying to run the reader out of breath like the runners. And then give a chance to catch up on breathing at the iambic section. I have a nephew who loved cross country. His team wore t-shirts that said, “My sport is your sport’s punishment.” Tough kid. It’s a lot of fun to have more ways to be expressive. Maybe I’ll see a running poem here that goes the other way: standard, paced iambic meter for the bulk and then into those rhyming-on-the-run anapests when the runner hits the final sprint. Reply Cynthia Erlandson March 11, 2024 I love the way the first one begins, “in medias rez”! And I love the sound of your anapestic pentameter, as well as the way the poems transition into iambic at a change of visual- or thought-scenery. The final couplets in each poem conclude with a surprising new perspective. Very original! Reply Daniel Kemper March 14, 2024 Hi Cynthia — sorry so late in replying — mid-terms and other stuff are killing me right now. I hope everyone else will be patient, too. And stay engaged. Arg. Other great poems posted now that I have to get the time to reply to. ARG! Thank you for the compliments! I’m thrilled you enjoyed some of the play as I did!! I was really hoping to catch the sense of being winded, but also the thrill. And I’m so stoked that the changes paired with the meter came through. It feels great when you can use the form to show something of your subject. Voltas are a natural place for a change. Gets much more intuitive to write after only a time or two. I can envision more changes though, the max being a meter for each quatrain and maybe re-using one for the couplet. I dunno. That’s pretty tricky. The golden rule is definitely one meter :: one line, no more frequent than that–and also assumes that the meter doesn’t change randomly; it loses effect if it’s not pinned to something. As you keenly observed. Reply Warren Bonham March 11, 2024 I’ve never seen that format. It worked great for this poem. Paavo Nurmi is a very worthy subject, but I’ve always been very slightly more impressed by Emil Zatopek who is the only man to win the 5,000, the 10,000 and the marathon in the same Olympiad (which he did on Finnish soil in 1952 after Nurmi had lit the flame). Reply Daniel Kemper March 12, 2024 Hey Warren! There’s a very good reason you’ve never seen that format; the reason is that SCP is the first to do it!! It’s funny; in a way it’s such a simple change and yet not really a change. These are still 100% sonnets, no requirements are watered down. It’s just using two meters instead of one! You should try it. It feels a little weird at first, but only briefly. If you feel it out, you’ll notice that it’s really fun. The volta is a natural place for a change. Pretty soon you’ll notice that it opens up other options for conveying meaning as well. Iambs to anapests or vice-versa is probably the most natural. This is a new shoot off the tree of tradition and it’s here at SCP first! Is it crazy to think you might give it a try? Reply Warren Bonham March 13, 2024 I have officially added this format to the tool kit and will give it a try. It’s always great (although sometimes difficult) to break old habits. C.B. Anderson March 11, 2024 Both were stunning, but I don’t pretend to understand all the nuances and implications. I’m not a runner, but just a plodder. You have outdone yourself, but not outrun yourself, if I have kept track. My only quibble is with the visible/invisible rhyme at the end, which is a cheap shot. Reply Daniel Kemper March 14, 2024 First things first. Fair enough– I think I’ve gotta plead out on your quibble. The level could come up a lot there. Back on it. I think you’re humble. Dude you’ve got one of the best commands of meter and rhyme on the Internet. You gotta try it! It gives an actual feel for the mood when the meter changes. It was fun to at least attempt to convey the running with the anapestic meter and the slow walk to cool down with iambic. If I had it to do over again (and I will), I would have shortened the sentences and simplified the vocabulary of the anapestic part, to make the text read faster and simpler and so give the feeling of speed a little better. Also, in part from looking over Dr. Salemi’s recent Dactylic ( /xx ) poem, I’m reminded of other things to impact the poem. Dactylic verse, to me, has always been somewhat oratorical because of it’s association with classic epics. Also there was a certain down-mood because the impact of decending stress is even more than with trochees ( /x ). But Dr. Salemi tamed that aspect, made it sit up, roll over, and beg. Tactically choosing his end-stops, sentence lengths, etc., those tactical choices infused dactyls with a comic energy. And the slight downward pull fit perfectly with the quasi-darkness of satire. Similar play could be done with anapests. The volta or the couplet are natural places. Really, it’s like playing with the sweetness of iambic meter and making it savory by adding another meter. For you, maybe like planting ivory sedge around rose bushes to give contrast and support. (Help! Please correct me, I’m out of my depth here with the gardening.) But imagine writing a poem about such a garden pairing where you might pair one meter with one type of plant. Crazy? — Maybe anapests for quick-growing ground cover and iambs for the flowering centerpiece? What do you think? Reply Margaret Coats March 12, 2024 “For Paavo Nurmi” looks so much like a sports broadcast (with the usual gratuitous opinions by the commentator) that it’s hard to fathom the rhyme and meter without an effort. “Roxie” (maybe) is fan magazine copy with the speaker/writer displaying envy. Splendid mixed-meter technique allowing you the poet to narrate, speak an aside, and return for a well-defined conclusion. I’m impressed with the new bio, which shows you’ll be visiting my area later this year. Please let Mike Bryant know if you’d like to exchange e-mail addresses. Reply Daniel Kemper March 13, 2024 Hi Dr. Coats~ Thanks for the crits; I didn’t hear it like a broadcast until you mentioned it. Now I can’t unhear it. Without those return-pings, I won’t really know where I am . Anyway, I guess too much Wide World of Sports back in the day. I’m a fan of “learning to read a poem” like learning to sing a song, so I hope with successive reads it gets better. Nonetheless, a chance to improve. Despite that, were you able to feel a change at the volta? Though perhaps from messy to clean? In “Roxie,” I was trying to play with the idea of how distorted the male gaze can become as he looks on his beloved, but then I wanted to bring something new to that idea by bringing her view into it–does her view not also become distorted. He is the disconsolate courtly lover and I hoped to crib some Milton lines to aid in highlighting his torment. “And rest can never dwell, hope never comes / That comes to all; but torture without end” and “What can it then avail though yet we feel / Strength undiminisht, or eternal being / To undergo eternal punishment?” Maybe I’m too far in my head for all that. Thank you for the props on the mixed meter technique. It’s a really exiting thing to try. The transitions are a little head-rubbing sometimes, but the newness and freshness feels so good when you get it all flowing together. YES. I’d love to exchange email addresses. I emailed [society] saying so. Reply Margaret Coats March 13, 2024 There’s nothing wrong when a poem about an athlete sounds like a sports broadcast. It suits the subject, and the rhyme and meter remain, though less obviously. The volta in this form of sonnet is too clear to miss–or rather, I should say, both voltas. In a sonnet of English rhyme scheme, the almost necessary volta comes at the final couplet. The poet can lead up to it with three equally important quatrains, if he wishes. Nonetheless, we find English sonnets still usually turn argument or narrative somewhere around line 8-9. The 8/6 proportion of lines always fits form and logic, it seems. But, Daniel, the interesting thing about your sonnet form here is that the reader MUST notice a change at line 9, and another at line 12. Two voltas break the poem into three parts. That works very nicely with the Paavo Nurmi poem, but not quite so well for Roxie. I see what you mean about adding the woman’s oblivious viewpoint to the man’s. The quatrain and the couplet describe how faulty seeing takes place in each. The third person omniscient speaker suddenly announcing it, though, lacks something in my point of view. That’s why I guessed that the speaker might be a fan magazine writer–but that’s not much of a guess. Let’s just suppose some topics and styles of development will work better than others in this form with such a definite shape. Your plan comes through, and as you say, many poems improve with multiple readings. Forge ahead! Reply Daniel Kemper March 12, 2024 Hi Paul! Thanks for the props. I first came across him in a string of biographies I got addicted to a long time ago. It was not only his stop-watch that caught my eye, but that he’d run behind trains also. Beyond my fetish-like enjoyment for the “meta” (training by means of trains), the hard core regularity of it stuck in my chest. There’s a connection to a relentless demand for perfectionism there. I love him, but confess to a slight preference for Haile Gebrselassie, since my kids are half Ethiopian. More to say on the breathlessness I’m trying to convey with meter, but I’ve got a take home exam in Lit Theory that I’ve got to start, though I’d rather eat ground glass. People at SCP are much smarter than these people I’m forced to study. Soon I’ll get to everyone, with great observations and opportunities! Reply BDW March 17, 2024 Your poem on Nurmi inspired the following. Forgive any unclear antecedents. A 10th Grade Track Race by Rudi E. Welec, “Abs” “All that I am, I am because of my mind.” —Paavo Nurmi In medias res, he raced on, around the last curved turn of the 800 meters, fighting fierce breaths nearly burnt. He’d kept on running hard as he could round the oval track, yet hardly knew what he was doing. He could not go back. And as he came up through the finish, panting madly fast, his heart beat pounding, pounding, pounding, pounding to the last. He can’t remember if he came in second or in third, and didn’t even give a thought about what had ocurred. But the next day when he was in Geometry he heard his teacher/football coach speak out about what he observed: He said the runner who gave most was him, who just lacked this: the strength endurance practice which brings greater impetus. Rudi E. Welec, “Abs”, is a poet of sport. Paavo Nurmi (1897-1973) was a noted Finnish long-distance and middle distance runner. Reply Daniel Kemper March 18, 2024 BDW – Helloooo– (and also Rudi “Abs”) Fantastic to be an inspiration. I hope for more!! Here are my favorite lines: “He’d kept on running hard as he could round the oval track, yet hardly knew what he was doing. He could not go back.” Very flattered to be an inspiration; than you for the kind comment! Daniel Reply Susan Jarvis Bryant March 17, 2024 Daniel, both of these intriguing poems have a stream-of-consciousness immediacy about them that had this reader running with the runners and her senses swept up in Roxie just like the “invisible” man. I feel much swirling beneath the surface of each piece… but I’m not sure my head is ready for the big reveal. For me, the mystery is a huge part of their beauty. Reply Daniel Kemper March 18, 2024 Susan, thank you so much! Glad the poems could catch you up. The themes are standard with a small twist, and not complex beneath the complexity. SPOILER ALERT – CLICK AWAY NOW 🙂 #1. All glory is fleeting — and that’s a good thing. #2. Guys who are crushing unrealistically put women on pedestals; but the women see them equally unrealistically, just from a different perspective… Reply Margaret Coats March 21, 2024 Interesting that both unrealistic guy and unrealistic gal focus on HER–but my few observations would say you get it right, Daniel. James Sale March 20, 2024 Very impressive poems, Daniel: specifically, the sudden allusion to Milton is brilliant – But here below where hope can never come / that comes to all, though beauty reigns supreme, … creates an almost epic ripple! Very fine writing. Reply Daniel Kemper March 20, 2024 Hi James, Thank you very kindly. It just jumped at me to work it in and it was fun to have a Milton Easter Egg. Right time of year for them, right? 🙂 A great pleasure that it jumped out at you too! Reply Leave a Reply Cancel ReplyYour email address will not be published.CommentName* Email* Website Δ This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
PAUL ERLANDSON March 11, 2024 Thanks for the Paavo Nurmi poem, Daniel. Both my father and father-in-law were track coaches, so I heard his name a lot during childhood. -Paul Reply
Daniel Kemper March 12, 2024 [Sorry, I blew the location of the earlier reply!] Hi Paul! Thanks for the props. I first came across him in a string of biographies I got addicted to a long time ago. It was not only his stop-watch that caught my eye, but that he’d run behind trains also. Beyond my fetish-like enjoyment for the “meta” (training by means of trains), the hard core regularity of it stuck in my chest. There’s a connection to a relentless demand for perfectionism there. I love him, but confess to a slight preference for Haile Gebrselassie, since my kids are half Ethiopian. More to say on the breathlessness I’m trying to convey with meter, but I’ve got a take home exam in Lit Theory that I’ve got to start, though I’d rather eat ground glass. People at SCP are much smarter than these people I’m forced to study. Soon I’ll get to everyone, with great observations and opportunities! Reply
Roy Eugene Peterson March 11, 2024 You accomplished the feat of rhyming while on the run, as I call it, with sentences that do not end at the end of the line. That is as impressive to me as the feat of Paavo Nurmi and I once was a miler. The poem on “Roxie” reminded me so much of the iconic Marilyn Monroe photo. Reply
Daniel Kemper March 13, 2024 Hi Roy– Hey, I didn’t think of that about Marilyn, but it fits. The running over the end of the lines just felt right. Trying to run the reader out of breath like the runners. And then give a chance to catch up on breathing at the iambic section. I have a nephew who loved cross country. His team wore t-shirts that said, “My sport is your sport’s punishment.” Tough kid. It’s a lot of fun to have more ways to be expressive. Maybe I’ll see a running poem here that goes the other way: standard, paced iambic meter for the bulk and then into those rhyming-on-the-run anapests when the runner hits the final sprint. Reply
Cynthia Erlandson March 11, 2024 I love the way the first one begins, “in medias rez”! And I love the sound of your anapestic pentameter, as well as the way the poems transition into iambic at a change of visual- or thought-scenery. The final couplets in each poem conclude with a surprising new perspective. Very original! Reply
Daniel Kemper March 14, 2024 Hi Cynthia — sorry so late in replying — mid-terms and other stuff are killing me right now. I hope everyone else will be patient, too. And stay engaged. Arg. Other great poems posted now that I have to get the time to reply to. ARG! Thank you for the compliments! I’m thrilled you enjoyed some of the play as I did!! I was really hoping to catch the sense of being winded, but also the thrill. And I’m so stoked that the changes paired with the meter came through. It feels great when you can use the form to show something of your subject. Voltas are a natural place for a change. Gets much more intuitive to write after only a time or two. I can envision more changes though, the max being a meter for each quatrain and maybe re-using one for the couplet. I dunno. That’s pretty tricky. The golden rule is definitely one meter :: one line, no more frequent than that–and also assumes that the meter doesn’t change randomly; it loses effect if it’s not pinned to something. As you keenly observed. Reply
Warren Bonham March 11, 2024 I’ve never seen that format. It worked great for this poem. Paavo Nurmi is a very worthy subject, but I’ve always been very slightly more impressed by Emil Zatopek who is the only man to win the 5,000, the 10,000 and the marathon in the same Olympiad (which he did on Finnish soil in 1952 after Nurmi had lit the flame). Reply
Daniel Kemper March 12, 2024 Hey Warren! There’s a very good reason you’ve never seen that format; the reason is that SCP is the first to do it!! It’s funny; in a way it’s such a simple change and yet not really a change. These are still 100% sonnets, no requirements are watered down. It’s just using two meters instead of one! You should try it. It feels a little weird at first, but only briefly. If you feel it out, you’ll notice that it’s really fun. The volta is a natural place for a change. Pretty soon you’ll notice that it opens up other options for conveying meaning as well. Iambs to anapests or vice-versa is probably the most natural. This is a new shoot off the tree of tradition and it’s here at SCP first! Is it crazy to think you might give it a try? Reply
Warren Bonham March 13, 2024 I have officially added this format to the tool kit and will give it a try. It’s always great (although sometimes difficult) to break old habits.
C.B. Anderson March 11, 2024 Both were stunning, but I don’t pretend to understand all the nuances and implications. I’m not a runner, but just a plodder. You have outdone yourself, but not outrun yourself, if I have kept track. My only quibble is with the visible/invisible rhyme at the end, which is a cheap shot. Reply
Daniel Kemper March 14, 2024 First things first. Fair enough– I think I’ve gotta plead out on your quibble. The level could come up a lot there. Back on it. I think you’re humble. Dude you’ve got one of the best commands of meter and rhyme on the Internet. You gotta try it! It gives an actual feel for the mood when the meter changes. It was fun to at least attempt to convey the running with the anapestic meter and the slow walk to cool down with iambic. If I had it to do over again (and I will), I would have shortened the sentences and simplified the vocabulary of the anapestic part, to make the text read faster and simpler and so give the feeling of speed a little better. Also, in part from looking over Dr. Salemi’s recent Dactylic ( /xx ) poem, I’m reminded of other things to impact the poem. Dactylic verse, to me, has always been somewhat oratorical because of it’s association with classic epics. Also there was a certain down-mood because the impact of decending stress is even more than with trochees ( /x ). But Dr. Salemi tamed that aspect, made it sit up, roll over, and beg. Tactically choosing his end-stops, sentence lengths, etc., those tactical choices infused dactyls with a comic energy. And the slight downward pull fit perfectly with the quasi-darkness of satire. Similar play could be done with anapests. The volta or the couplet are natural places. Really, it’s like playing with the sweetness of iambic meter and making it savory by adding another meter. For you, maybe like planting ivory sedge around rose bushes to give contrast and support. (Help! Please correct me, I’m out of my depth here with the gardening.) But imagine writing a poem about such a garden pairing where you might pair one meter with one type of plant. Crazy? — Maybe anapests for quick-growing ground cover and iambs for the flowering centerpiece? What do you think? Reply
Margaret Coats March 12, 2024 “For Paavo Nurmi” looks so much like a sports broadcast (with the usual gratuitous opinions by the commentator) that it’s hard to fathom the rhyme and meter without an effort. “Roxie” (maybe) is fan magazine copy with the speaker/writer displaying envy. Splendid mixed-meter technique allowing you the poet to narrate, speak an aside, and return for a well-defined conclusion. I’m impressed with the new bio, which shows you’ll be visiting my area later this year. Please let Mike Bryant know if you’d like to exchange e-mail addresses. Reply
Daniel Kemper March 13, 2024 Hi Dr. Coats~ Thanks for the crits; I didn’t hear it like a broadcast until you mentioned it. Now I can’t unhear it. Without those return-pings, I won’t really know where I am . Anyway, I guess too much Wide World of Sports back in the day. I’m a fan of “learning to read a poem” like learning to sing a song, so I hope with successive reads it gets better. Nonetheless, a chance to improve. Despite that, were you able to feel a change at the volta? Though perhaps from messy to clean? In “Roxie,” I was trying to play with the idea of how distorted the male gaze can become as he looks on his beloved, but then I wanted to bring something new to that idea by bringing her view into it–does her view not also become distorted. He is the disconsolate courtly lover and I hoped to crib some Milton lines to aid in highlighting his torment. “And rest can never dwell, hope never comes / That comes to all; but torture without end” and “What can it then avail though yet we feel / Strength undiminisht, or eternal being / To undergo eternal punishment?” Maybe I’m too far in my head for all that. Thank you for the props on the mixed meter technique. It’s a really exiting thing to try. The transitions are a little head-rubbing sometimes, but the newness and freshness feels so good when you get it all flowing together. YES. I’d love to exchange email addresses. I emailed [society] saying so. Reply
Margaret Coats March 13, 2024 There’s nothing wrong when a poem about an athlete sounds like a sports broadcast. It suits the subject, and the rhyme and meter remain, though less obviously. The volta in this form of sonnet is too clear to miss–or rather, I should say, both voltas. In a sonnet of English rhyme scheme, the almost necessary volta comes at the final couplet. The poet can lead up to it with three equally important quatrains, if he wishes. Nonetheless, we find English sonnets still usually turn argument or narrative somewhere around line 8-9. The 8/6 proportion of lines always fits form and logic, it seems. But, Daniel, the interesting thing about your sonnet form here is that the reader MUST notice a change at line 9, and another at line 12. Two voltas break the poem into three parts. That works very nicely with the Paavo Nurmi poem, but not quite so well for Roxie. I see what you mean about adding the woman’s oblivious viewpoint to the man’s. The quatrain and the couplet describe how faulty seeing takes place in each. The third person omniscient speaker suddenly announcing it, though, lacks something in my point of view. That’s why I guessed that the speaker might be a fan magazine writer–but that’s not much of a guess. Let’s just suppose some topics and styles of development will work better than others in this form with such a definite shape. Your plan comes through, and as you say, many poems improve with multiple readings. Forge ahead! Reply
Daniel Kemper March 12, 2024 Hi Paul! Thanks for the props. I first came across him in a string of biographies I got addicted to a long time ago. It was not only his stop-watch that caught my eye, but that he’d run behind trains also. Beyond my fetish-like enjoyment for the “meta” (training by means of trains), the hard core regularity of it stuck in my chest. There’s a connection to a relentless demand for perfectionism there. I love him, but confess to a slight preference for Haile Gebrselassie, since my kids are half Ethiopian. More to say on the breathlessness I’m trying to convey with meter, but I’ve got a take home exam in Lit Theory that I’ve got to start, though I’d rather eat ground glass. People at SCP are much smarter than these people I’m forced to study. Soon I’ll get to everyone, with great observations and opportunities! Reply
BDW March 17, 2024 Your poem on Nurmi inspired the following. Forgive any unclear antecedents. A 10th Grade Track Race by Rudi E. Welec, “Abs” “All that I am, I am because of my mind.” —Paavo Nurmi In medias res, he raced on, around the last curved turn of the 800 meters, fighting fierce breaths nearly burnt. He’d kept on running hard as he could round the oval track, yet hardly knew what he was doing. He could not go back. And as he came up through the finish, panting madly fast, his heart beat pounding, pounding, pounding, pounding to the last. He can’t remember if he came in second or in third, and didn’t even give a thought about what had ocurred. But the next day when he was in Geometry he heard his teacher/football coach speak out about what he observed: He said the runner who gave most was him, who just lacked this: the strength endurance practice which brings greater impetus. Rudi E. Welec, “Abs”, is a poet of sport. Paavo Nurmi (1897-1973) was a noted Finnish long-distance and middle distance runner. Reply
Daniel Kemper March 18, 2024 BDW – Helloooo– (and also Rudi “Abs”) Fantastic to be an inspiration. I hope for more!! Here are my favorite lines: “He’d kept on running hard as he could round the oval track, yet hardly knew what he was doing. He could not go back.” Very flattered to be an inspiration; than you for the kind comment! Daniel Reply
Susan Jarvis Bryant March 17, 2024 Daniel, both of these intriguing poems have a stream-of-consciousness immediacy about them that had this reader running with the runners and her senses swept up in Roxie just like the “invisible” man. I feel much swirling beneath the surface of each piece… but I’m not sure my head is ready for the big reveal. For me, the mystery is a huge part of their beauty. Reply
Daniel Kemper March 18, 2024 Susan, thank you so much! Glad the poems could catch you up. The themes are standard with a small twist, and not complex beneath the complexity. SPOILER ALERT – CLICK AWAY NOW 🙂 #1. All glory is fleeting — and that’s a good thing. #2. Guys who are crushing unrealistically put women on pedestals; but the women see them equally unrealistically, just from a different perspective… Reply
Margaret Coats March 21, 2024 Interesting that both unrealistic guy and unrealistic gal focus on HER–but my few observations would say you get it right, Daniel.
James Sale March 20, 2024 Very impressive poems, Daniel: specifically, the sudden allusion to Milton is brilliant – But here below where hope can never come / that comes to all, though beauty reigns supreme, … creates an almost epic ripple! Very fine writing. Reply
Daniel Kemper March 20, 2024 Hi James, Thank you very kindly. It just jumped at me to work it in and it was fun to have a Milton Easter Egg. Right time of year for them, right? 🙂 A great pleasure that it jumped out at you too! Reply
