by Kirby Congdon…….

In an age of the new evangelism among the uneduated along with the Donald Trump kind of power on the one hand and, on the other, the constant online connectivity, it is interesting how poetry has beome grout for both thought and emotion. It fills up the gaps left by tehnology and the complexity of a civilization we can carry around with us on our wrist as a continuously illustrated postal card on the internet. This critic has noticed how business people, lawyers and attorneys who have spent decades manipulating the meaning of words in one professional context or another turn in their retirement to poetry.

A friend of mine also got involved in poetry after his formal educational days were over. This was Malcolm Willison, an authority in the many aspects of sociology. He told me that words came to him as an adult in graduate school while listening to music. He wrote those words down. Again, even years later, the same thing happened. The format of poems emerged by themselves. He showed a folder of his work to a friend who agreed that these were, indeed, poems. Joining a local poetry group he participated in the first public readings of his output. His subjects came to include travel pieces, all kinds of social relationships as well as other experiences like public events, or even politics.

Mr. Willison has been a prolific writer but this reader asks where are the broadsides, the pamphlets, the miniature compendiums and finally the book-sized collection? We can understand the vulnerable feeling of risk one has to take in promoting oneself. It is like being on a roller coaster holding on to the safety bar during that irrational descent after having risen rather grandly above the pull of gravity, but each trip arrives safe and sound on human ground, our composure somehow pleasantly exposed, surviving through all the risks, coming to cope with one’s secret doubts and, at last, knowing the wonder of inexplicable things that poetry can contain. Malcolm Willison where are you? Your extensive wardrobe must be pulled out of their closets and worn as if for the public figure that you already are!

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Correction to Kirby Congdon article on Malcolm Willison (The Blue Paper, 1/15/2016):

Malcolm Willison has over 20 published poems in such journals as, The Vassar and Tulane Reviews, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art; The New Laurel Review, Blue Line, Washout Review, High Rock Review, Mildred, Up The River, Secret of Salt, and Magazine Six. His publications have appeared in journals from New York City, Albany, Saratoga Springs, New Orleans, and Key West. Willison’s poems also appear in several book-length compendia. Malcolm is now seeking a publisher for two chapbooks of his poetry.