An Ending and a Beginning

This first book of poems by Bill Deemer happens to be the last book of the Haselwood/Hoyem partnership. I must admit that I am fascinated by this book if for no other reason than Deemer was only 19 years old when the book came out. I can not get over teenagers making accomplished literary statements. Rimbaud is the Dark Prince in this regard. Absolutely amazing, his sophistication at such an early age. At that age, I was briefly and tangentially involved with a college literary magazine entitled Queen's Head and Artichoke, named after two pubs in London. To be honest, I was spending more time drinking the sweet nectar that was Kappy's beer than the crisp waters from the Hippocrene Spring. Visionary that he was, Rimbaud, perhaps taking a page from Baudelaire (Get drunk! Stay drunk! On wine, virtue, poetry, whatever!), merged these two activities: poetic inspiration as a prolonged derangement of the senses. Strangely when I am confronted with the work of young poets like Deemer and Rimbaud, I am always sobered and left wondering what I did with my misspent youth. Certainly not profitably wasting all my free time on literary pursuits.

JB

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