Alan Olee Book Report

I drive an old Dodge
and I lead a dumb life
I’m going up to Frisco
to live with my wife

Get along little car
get along and fast
if you don’t get there soon
you’ll run out of gas

I’ve marched in the street
I’ve worked in the shops
spent time in jail
was beaten by cops

Get along little car
get along and fast
I want a quiet life
before the final blast

I tried the revolution
and I even tried school
now all I can say is
I was a damn fool

Get along little car
get along fast
if I don’t get there soon
my desire won’t last

The people I knew
have all gotten rich
while I’m still wearing jeans
and digging my ditch

Get along little car
get along and fast
I’m as flat as a flag
taken down from the mast

Now I’ll fold my visions
and pack them in a box
they were just some rain that fell
on a great big pile of rocks

Get along little car
get along and fast
my head’s in the present
but my heart’s in the past

Bert Meyers

I just got my copy of Bert Meyers’ book In a Dybbuk’s Raincoat, Collected Poems and I am in a state of poetic shock.  Bert Meyers is one of the greats.  From the inside jacket cover:

Bert Meyers was born in Los Angeles on March 20, 1928.  Months before graduating from high school, he decided to drop out and become a poet.  Over the next eighteen years, he worked first at a number of manual labor jobs, including janitor, carpenter’s apprentice, and worker at an airplane factory, and then became a master picture-framer and gilder.  Although he had never taken undergraduate classes, in 1964 he was admitted to the Claremont Graduate School on the basis of his poetic achievements.  By 1967, he had completed all work for a Ph.D. in English literature and was hired to teach poetry workshops and literature at Pitzer College.  Over the years he published his poems in many journals and in five books.  In 1979, shortly before his death at the age of fifty-one, Meyers assembled a slim volume of those poems he considered his best work.  For twenty years, his widow, Odette Meyers, attempted to get the manuscript published, but finally turned to Bert’s friend, Morton Marcus, for help.  After Odette passed away, Marcus and Meyer’s son, Daniel, searched through Bert’s private papers and enlarged and restructured the collection in order to provide a sense of Bert Meyers as a man as well as the poet.  The result is In a Dybbuk’s Raincoat.

You’ll be hearing more of Bert on this blog – better yet buy the book.  I haven’t found a bad poem yet.  Seriously, he is one of the greats – not recognized – but still great.

Have a great weekend!