Reading through old letters I found that in 1968 I went to a reading and was impressed by the poems of Sidney Goldfarb, who was also at Harvard then and probably looked like this.
I requested a book of his from storage at UC Berkeley to see what I thought was a good poem when I was 20.I was impressed by the easy humor of this kind of poem then, so new to me. I was studying Milton, Swinburne, Tennyson. I think I might have heard this poem that night:
Moving Breakfast
I get out of bed without breaking anything
I give my daughter Cheerios and bananas for breakfast
First I let her stand on the table
Then I let her put her foot into the cereal
I look into the mirror and say, “Sidney, you’re no criminal.”
I put on a necktie because I have one
I go outside and find myself in Chicago
I say, “Boston, you faker, cut that out!”
Then I see Lake Michigan boiling up at me like a billion white birds
And clouds of soot talking to one another above the skyscrapers
So I yell up to my daughter,
“Sara! Take your foot out of the cereal, you’re in Chicago now!”
And she answers back,
“Cher-i-ooos!”
Sidney Goldfarb, from Speech, for Instance
Then I looked up Sidney on Facebook, and this was his recent entry:
“Dear Terry, do you have a new phone number. I have also been out of circulation, hospital, rehab, assisted living. Got the falling sickness. Phone is the same, 303-831-1109. HOPE YOU’RE GETTING BETTER.”
You can call him if you want!