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Poetry Canadian

Did I Miss Anything?

Selected Poems 1973-1993

by (author) Tom Wayman

Publisher
Harbour Publishing Co. Ltd.
Initial publish date
Jan 1993
Category
Canadian, General
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781550170924
    Publish Date
    Jan 1993
    List Price
    $15.95

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Description

Tom Wayman has been writing and publishing the poetry of everyday life for over twenty years. This anniversary collection gathers the best of Wayman's published work from eleven previous volumes, along with some provocative new poems, in celebration of his commitment to honest, accessible writing with a sense of humour.

Although Wayman laments the disappearance of poetry as a popular art form, and its adoption as "an instument of torture" in educational institutions, "like a steadily-promoted deck officer on the Titanic" he has been having a darn good time as a writer. For years he has been considered the guru of the work poetry movement, and has held a number of blue-collar and white-collar jobs across Canada and the USA.

About the author

Excerpt: Did I Miss Anything?: Selected Poems 1973-1993 (by (author) Tom Wayman)

Unemployment

The chrome lid of the coffee pot
twists off, and the glass knob rinsed.
Lift out the assembly, dump
the grounds out. Wash the pot and
fill with water, put everything back with
fresh grounds and snap the top down.
Plug in again and wait.

Unemployment is also
a great snow deep around the house
choking the street, and the City.
Nothing moves. Newspaper photographs
show the traffic backed up for miles.
Going out to shovel the walk
I think how in a few days the sun will clear this.
No one will know I worked here.

This is like whatever I do.
How strange that so magnificent a thing as a body
with its twinges, its aches
should have all that chemistry, that bulk
the intricate electrical brain
subjected to something as tiny
as buying a postage stamp.
Or selling it.

Or waiting.

Wayman Ascending into the Middle Class

In the middle of a trans-Canada excursion
while he visits for a week with the parents of a friend
Wayman lies in a hammock through the hot August days.
Far behind him now are the horrible winter mornings
he got up in the dark and dragged his lunchbox off to work.
Here, as he sips a drink in the gently rocking couch
scarcely a thought crosses his mind about his old companions
still probably stumbling about complaining as they
hammer nails, steer tugboats
or chase logs through the bush a thousand miles away.

A light breeze springs up. Through half-closed eyes
Wayman contemplates flowers, and a leafy screen.
He begins to sway into sleep. The beer bottle
slips out of his languid grasp
and falls almost silently onto
the thick green lawn. Wayman sighs.
He feels himself float
in his hammock, and begin to drift upwards:
ascending, as he snores
into the middle class.