Poetry Exchange by Lyman Grant and Robert Wynne
About the Poets
Lyman Grant taught at Austin Community College for 45 years, where he also served as Dean of Arts and Humanities. He has published several books of poems, the most recent being 2018: Found Poems and Weather Reports (Alamo Bay Press). He is the father of three sons and currently lives in Harrisonburg, Virginia. In 1985, with William A. Owens, he edited the Letters of Roy Bedichek. Currently, he researching and writing a biography of William A. Owens.
Robert Wynne earned his MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University. He is the author of 6 chapbooks, and 3 full-length books of poetry. His first full-length collection, Remembering How to Sleep, was the recipient of the Poetry Society of Texas’ 2006 Eakin Book Award. His second full-length collection, Museum of Parallel Art, was published in February 2008 by Tebot Bach Press. Tebot Bach published his third collection, Self-Portrait as Odysseus, in 2011. He has won numerous prizes, and his poetry has appeared in magazines and anthologies throughout North America. He lives in Burleson, TX with his wife and a German Shepherd, and his online home is www.rwynne.com.
Introductory Comments
Lyman: Robert Wynne and I have been exchanging poems for over a year. We began in April 2021. Many years ago, as a poetical diversion, we wrote new lyrics to Jethro Tull’s Thick as a Brick, line by line (he would write a line, then I would write a line) duplicating the rhythm and sounds as best we could. During the pandemic, I had found my poetry-life plodding along exploring the same old topics in the same old moods. So I asked Robert if he would like to embark on a second rewrite. We had once talked about trying “The Wrath of Kubla Khan,” somehow blending Coleridge with Star Trek.
Robert responded, “I would love to share poems back and forth, but I'd prefer to do it more as call and response—as opposed to another line-by-line lyrical parody/reference. So, to that end, I've attached a poem. If this strikes a chord with you, I would love it if you'd write something as a result of that chord's vibration. And then send that to me, and I will respond in kind.” I agreed and we began.
Robert: I had really been missing having a regular poetic dialogue and had been looking forward to seeing Lyman online for the Austin International Poetry Festival, at which we were both scheduled to feature. When that was canceled last year, I was very glad to hear from Lyman. We have written 180 poems, 90 each, so far. Most, if not all, of the poems we’ve created, would certainly not exist were it not for the lively emails back-and-forth.
Lyman: Our deal was that our exchanges would be anxiety-free and to some extent serve as poetry prompts. No one was critiquing. This conversation was not a workshop. We were not trying to “improve” ourselves or our art. The occasional “correction” would be suggested to a line that did not scan or to a misspelled word. Mostly, we offered one or two lines of appreciation: an allusion subtly hidden, a little dance of sound effects, a moving final line.
Robert: I have been re-energized by this endeavor. I have written more poems in the past year than in any 12-month period in the past 2 decades, even writing a poem each day in April this year in addition to the poems I traded with Lyman. I check my email much more frequently than I used to.
Lyman: More than a year later, we are still exchanging poems. On April 26, 2022, Robert sent a poem that mentioned centaurs. Since Robert often writes ekphrastic poems, I tried my hand at one. If we were to say which of the Texas Poetry Assignments I began with, it would be # 11, “Time.”
The Poems
Listening to the Centaur by Lyman Grant
after “The Meeting of St. Anthony and St. Paul” by Master of Osservanza
Let us not be coy.
We know the story
of this and every life.
The journey
is always right there
before us.
All of it.
Ignore the cave
where the saint lives,
the path with our thousand
footsteps, the forest
where light disappears,
and focus on the centaur.
You have been lost
for so long.
This almost unhuman
creature might lift
its front hooves
and crush you, or
also, if you listened,
speak the secret words
that opened your eyes
to the rest of the story.
Minotaur with Dead Mare in Front of a Cave by Robert Wynne
Pablo Picasso, 1936
The sheer size of him
is staggering. Left hand
out with an open palm
toward a veiled girl
he emerges smiling
with the white horse.
His right arm hooks
around the limp neck
through the front legs
to hold the mare aloft.
Is the dead animal
an offering, a warning
or something else?
And in the black space
of the cave’s opening
whose hands are those
or are they wings?
Ceremony by Lyman Grant
after “Minotaur with Dead Mare in Front of a Cave”
by Pablo Picasso, 1936
All of us
whenever we marry
proffer some murdered
part of ourselves to love,
like this minotaur
lugging the carcass
of a mare’s wild
beauty and grace.
The bride, pleased
with his sacrifice,
is lifting her veil,
perhaps to tender a kiss.
But something
from his darkness
is reaching out,
broken and mourning.
Picasso in Disguise by Robert Wynne
after a photograph by Edward Quinn, 1959
A huge wicker bull’s head
covers his face completely.
Shirtless, he steadies the visage
with his right hand, empty eyes
fixed and perfectly round
above wide, dark nostrils.
Even with an unlit cigarette
sprouting from his left hand
he has become the minotaur,
inhabiting the myth fully
before a massive blank canvas
as if he just stepped out of it
into our own twisted labyrinth
where right angles wither
under the weight of this world
we can’t stop explaining.
A Thing with Horns by Lyman Grant
after “Charles Chaplin,” by Richard Avedon. New York. 13 September 1952
At first, I thought he was a bull,
eyeing the camera, a red
lens shuttering, stomping his hooves,
calculating, whimsically,
the lift and twist of his whetted
horns. Such wild applause for tramping
on the entrails of dead horses!
But then I learned he was waving
goodbye, a little devil, pan
returning home after lifting
the skirts of our hypocrisies.
Rene Magritte’s “Charlie Chaplin Leaving America” by Robert Wynne
The little tramp stands still
in front of a low cinderblock wall
and a sky full of clouds. His face
is obscured by an apple pie,
steam rising from the crust.
There is an open door next to him
with a boat drifting into view
through it. The sun has abdicated
and the whole scene is lit instead
by a single candle, wax snaking
lazily down the door frame
into a puddle at Chaplin’s feet.
The doorknob is a lidless eye
that follows you all the way home.
Transubstantiation by Lyman Grant
after “The Endearing Truth,” by Rene Magritte, 1966.
We know it is only paint
on the cinderblock wall
of time. Don’t run into it.
The refusal of hard reality
to imagine kind welcomings
is merely another joke,
whose comic has gone
missing. Concussions
and headaches lay ahead,
and what use is a stale
loaf of bread, sour wine,
and a bowl of plastic fruit?
Keep your wings tucked.
There is no reason in flight.
I bet there’s a hidden door
in one of those three alcoves.
Rene Magritte’s “Narcissus” by Robert Wynne
A man in a bowler hat and business suit
kneels on a mirrored floor, palms flat
against the insistent shimmer below.
His face is obscured by the black brim
and his reflection is the view from above:
dark hat and coat floating in a wide sea
of cloud-shaped birds and bird-shaped clouds
softly goading the light. Each of us sees
whatever we need to, until we stop relying
on our pupils. To appreciate this world
fool yourself into glimpsing it askance
because only the irises can make out
the edges where all the beauty hides.
Dialogue by Lyman Grant
after “Narcissus” by Caravaggio
I should plan to trash this poem
as soon as it is finished.
What good comes from gazing
into the pool of words
for hours, or days? Don’t believe
the lectures of our betters:
revision doesn’t change
the composition of water.
Sure, I could be kneeling, staring
into still shimmer of admiration
and wonder, paused in the dialogue
of recognition and insight.
One voice offers a name. Another asks
if we have met before.
One voice asks if I would like a drink.
I say there’s somewhere else I have to be.
Caravaggio’s “Christina’s World” by Robert Wynne
Blades of grass blur into shadow
as they recede from the space
around her lonely, prone form.
Lit from within, her pink dress
provides a perfect pale respite
from the wide darkening field
and four distant buildings
barely visible on the horizon.
The knife in her left hand
shines against the meadow,
spotlighted so bright
like any unanswered question.
Is that blood on the blade?
Is she pushing herself away
or rising toward the farmhouse?
Christina Applegate’s World by Lyman Grant
lines spoken as Kelly Bundy
She’s on the edge of her feet.
She’s going to dig a hole
in the ground and throw away
the key. She’s always wanted
to drive to Europe. She didn’t
come all this way to spend
her vacation in a one-whore town.
She’s on the horns of an enema.
She has heat probation. But
words roll off her like water
off a duck’s quack. She’s striking
a balance between ping and pong.
She hopes he doesn’t make
a testicle out of himself.
She knows that those who can,
do; those who can’t, do not.
It’s like Chinese waiter torture.
It’s as inevitable as death and Texas.
The check is in her mouth. Squid
pro quo. The prostitution rests.
She laughs last, and laughs west.
Arrivedouche!
Married Without Children by Robert Wynne
spring rain of bullets
spares imaginary kids
still so much blood pools
Our Responses about Each Other’s Poems
And so we end, with Texas Poetry Assignment #27: Texas Shooting. Robert sent this poem on May 27, 2022, so in the thirty-one days, each of us had written six poems for the other to consider. It was an interesting journey, from centaurs to minotaurs, Picasso, Charles Chaplin, Richard Avedon, Rene Magritte, Carravagio, Andrew Wyeth, Christina Applegate, and school violence. More recent poems reflect this painful turn in American life.
Lyman: If I were to praise Robert’s poems, it would be to call attention to their endless and seemingly effortless invention. His series of invented ekphrastics—actual works imagined as if created by a different artist—is one of the cleverest poetic maneuvers I have ever encountered. Secondly, I would praise his sense of compassion. Beneath the wit and the surprises of his lines is a true heart sympathizing with our difficulties in navigating this life: such as, “where right angles wither / under the weight of this world / we can’t stop explaining” and “To appreciate this world / fool yourself into glimpsing it askance / because only the irises can make out / the edges where all the beauty hides.
Robert: Lyman’s work grounds me to the physical realities of human life, particularly when he invokes his garden. I am also drawn to his juxtaposition of everyday images with simple, direct statements, such as “There is no reason in flight” and “I should plan to trash this poem / as soon as it is finished.” And I love that he has let humor leak into his poems, so he doesn’t seem too judgmental when he’s “Lifting / the skirts of our hypocrisies.”
