I have just uploaded to Kindle Direct my most recent collection of light verse--the series based on the years of my life. (When it's up and ready to buy--for a mere $2.99!--I'll post it on Facebook ... probably a couple of hours from now.
Meanwhile--here is the Foreword and some other front matter ...
And Other Doggerel and Wolferel
(September 2–December
4, 2017)
by
Daniel Dyer
Copyright © 2017 by
Daniel Dyer
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
For Open Door Coffee
Company
Hudson, Ohio
Home away from home …
Foreword
I’ve lost count of how many of these
little volumes I’ve assembled and uploaded to Kindle Direct. And this is
probably a good thing: It’s not all that wise to keep a close tally of your
follies. (Someone Else is no doubt doing that anyway—Santa or … Someone.) So …
no need to add things up.
I do know that I enjoyed doing this
one—a lot. A trip through the years of my life, from 1944 (my year of birth) to
now. Enjoyed may not be the best
word, I realize. I had to revisit some of the most painful of memories—the
death of my father in 1999—the losses of others who meant so much to me. Oh,
and then there’s the Damn Cancer I’ve been battling since late in 2004. (The
winner is certain; the date is not.)
But I also got to write about some
of my great good fortune in this life. The family I grew up with. My long
teaching career (about forty-five years), most of which I loved. I say “most of
which” because, well, any job—any career—has those … unpleasant aspects. Things
you’d just as soon forget (or submerge). For me—an English teacher—it was those
endless hours of grading I most dreaded—entire weekends consumed by it. On
Friday evening I sat down; I looked up: It was Sunday night. Year after year
after year …
And there were other quotidian
teacher tasks I didn’t exactly look forward to—lunch duty, bus duty, faculty
meetings (okay, some were good), in-service days (don’t get me started), and on
and on.
But the rest of it? The kids? The
classes? My colleagues and mentors? The plays I directed? Gifts, my friends.
They were gifts.
And there were many other things I
enjoyed writing about during the seventy-five days or so I spent on this
project. Meeting my wife, Joyce, and her spectacular family in 1969. The birth
of our son in 1972. His marriage in 1999. The births of our two grandsons (2005
and 2009). Journeys. Books. Laughter. To complain about the life I’ve had would
be a bit like a mouse, who, having grown up in a cheese factory, complains that
there’s not been enough cheddar.
So … there is a little “poem” here
for each year of my life. Some of them are obviously better than others, and I
did fuss (in a minor way) with some of them for this volume. But I didn’t leave
any out—can’t excise time from our lives (as much as we sometimes would love to!).
I’ve also included what I call
“Desultory Doggerel”—verse about wee things I saw or experienced or thought
about, verse that I swiftly composed and uploaded to Facebook to give my
friends there cause for shudder. I’ve left pretty much all of them here—some
lightly revised, if not improved.
Finally, there’s a section I call
“Wolferel”—a term I (proudly) coined a couple of years ago, a term that refers
to verse that is a step above doggerel but still a step below poetry. I know
what good poems are. As I’ve said, I was an English teacher, and I’ve memorized
more than two hundred wonderful poems, lines that I must continually rehearse
throughout the week lest they flee from me, as Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. once wrote,
“like bandits from a burglar alarm.”*
And so I’ll leave you with this—a
moment from The Taming of the Shrew,
a play I used to read with my eighth graders back in the late 1980s and early
1990s. The groom, Petruchio, has returned with his new wife, Katherine (the
“shrew”), to his wild and raucous home in Verona. His reluctant servant Grumio has
ridden ahead to prepare the welcome for the less-than-happy couple.
When he arrives, Petruchio rails
about the appearance of his servants (they look … ragged). And Grumio launches
into this explanation:
Nathaniel’s
coat, sir, was not fully made,
And
Gabriel’s pumps were all unpink’d** i’ the heel;
There
was no link*** to colour Peter’s hat,
And
Walter’s dagger was not come from sheathing:
There
were none fine but Adam, Ralph, and Gregory;
The
rest were ragged, old, and beggarly;
Yet,
as they are, here are they come to meet you. (4.1)
I like those final two lines—so appropriate
here. Yes, some of the Wolferel are all right, and as for the others,… ragged, old, and beggarly; / Yet, as they
are, here are they come to meet you.
—Daniel Dyer
December 4, 2017
*from his story “Harrison Bergeron”
** lacking ornamentation
*** torch (to provide blacking)
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