TWO POEMS BY EVERETTE MADDOX

Y'all are in for a treat today. I would guess that many of you non-New Orleanians have never heard of the poet/wanderer/philosopher/eccentric Everette Maddox (1944-1989) and chances are many New Orleans residents, these days, haven't either. Indeed, all I know of him are a few dozen of his poems—since real biographical information on Maddox is seemingly impossible to find, and since, as editor Ralph Adamo writes in the introduction to I hope it's not over, and good-by (2009, UNO Press), a book of selected Maddox poems pulled together from books, publications, unpublished manuscripts, and various scraps of paper after his death, "While he lived a more public life than most poets (forced into public places as much by years of homelessness as by choice), the 'real' Everette Maddox remains concealed in myth, obscured by pipe smoke and alcohol fumes, by the inevitable projections upon him by those who knew him and those who have only heard the stories." Maddox was born in Montgomery, Alabama and came to New Orleans in 1975 to be the Poet-in-Residence at Xavier University. My understanding is that he didn't remain in academia long, becoming instead the so-called "Poet-in-Residence of Oak Street" in Uptown New Orleans, frequenting bars, often sleeping in parks, and writing extraordinary poems.

Here are a couple for your reading pleasure, from I hope it's not over, and good-by:

Anonymous

i sent my Shell card back

with a small check to show my good faith

then i sent my Bank Americard back

with the minimum monthly payment

then i cancelled my life insurance

sent the Dallas lawyer all i had

declared myself bankrupt

then i sent back my driver's license

social security card

birth certificate

then i sent my old wallet flopping

into the brown river

now when i lift my hand the sunlight

pours right through it

now there is no one left for you not to love

I notice how Maddox doesn't capitalize the "I's" in the poem, and yet all the places and companies are capitalized, a gesture which reflects the speaker's movements toward becoming selfless and unmoored in this society, which, apparently, only defines us as "real" if we have the necessary bits of official paper and plastic. We get humor in this poem, and irony—a sense that the speaker doesn't give a sh** about his "Bank Americard"—and yet (and this is why Maddox's poems are so great, I think) the poem moves beyond its initial irreverence toward something deeper, sadder, more sincere. We find out that the speaker is actually disappearing, physically, psychically ("now when i lift my hand the sunlight / pours right through it") and then we get that last zinger of a line with its double negative: "now there is no one left for you not to love." The speaker seems to be saying, "Ok, if you're going to erase me by not loving me, then I (i) will erase me so you can't erase me anymore."

Front Street, New Orleans

Everything is coming and going

at once in the hot June

sunshine though it's hard to say

which is which A black trainload

of AMOCO crosses left in front of

a steamboat getting ready

to move out to the right A girl

in a blue slit dress has her

own angle toward and past me with

a starched white boyfriend Trees

nod A busy moment in which

I do not forget to love you or

spill my coffee Only Governor

Bernardo de Galvez who played

"so decisive a role" in the War

for American Independence

just off the ferry from Spain

on his horse looks indecisively

over my head up Canal Street

as if to say Where can a man get

a drink in this part of History

I love Maddox's use of rhythm—always, but especially in this poem with its unique use of spacing within some of the lines. One really gets a sense of the rhythm of the busy Mississippi riverfront (Front Street) in this poem, with its uncaring commerce and "starched white" tourists, the rhythm of a hot June day in the French Quarter. We get a window into the speaker's psychological/emotional state through the lines "A busy moment in which / I do not forget to love you or / spill my coffee," and through this lens, alongside the speaker, we see the monument of Bernardo de Galvez gazing into the distance, seeming to want (as the speaker does, as we all do) to get a break from the "busy moment," from History, from the roles we all play. Again, we get Maddox's special brand of humor at the end of this poem, and it occurs to me that the last few lines could be read as complete sarcasm—as the speaker's bitterness in relation to this bustling city with all its Important Men, since he, obviously, has no where to be, an absent beloved, and a coffee stain on his shirt….

What do you think??

(#WhyIloveEveretteMaddox)