This issue, I bring you a poem by prize-winning poet John M. Blair, Distinguished Professor at Texas State University, where he directs the undergraduate creative writing program. Dr. Blair is the author of seven books, including The Shape of Things to Come (Gival Books, 2023), poems about the dawn of the atomic age and the Trinity test of the first atomic bomb. Other books by Blair include Playful Song Called Beautiful (U of Iowa P, 2016), winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize, and American Standard (U of Pittsburgh P, 2002), winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize. These books are available for purchase on Amazon. Dr. Blair has published more than 250 poems and stories in magazines and journals, such as The Colorado Review, Poetry, The Sewanee Review, The Antioch Review, The Georgia Review and New Letters.
In commenting on the poem below, Dr. Blair has said, “The poem was a result of having re-read [Anne] Sexton’s ‘The Ambition Bird’ & getting intrigued by the connection between her fascination with being and non-being and the very limited sense of ‘immortality’ that poetry—or any art—provides the artist. The poem is part of a series of 66 ‘aphorism’ poems that I wrote that play with the idea of received wisdom and the authority that we give others by accepting meaning in our lives through these ambiguous bits of often (but not always, of course) authorless advice.”
“Aphorism 31: The Immortality Box” is the winner of the 2023 Sandy Crimmins Poetry Contest. It was published in the Spring 2023 issue of Philadelphia Stories, in which J. C. Todd, the 2023 Crimmins judge, gave it this assessment: “[T]he measure of the lines and the impeccable diction and syntax of the poem’s single, long sentence lead me through science into image, song, ritual, and finally prayer that ‘we say even when we don’t.’ In a remarkable juncture of language and imagination, this continuous, sinuous motion of sound, sense and image creates a vessel shaped to its contents.”
The editorial assistance of Cathy Chance Harvey, PhD, of Tylertown, in the preparation of this poem is gratefully acknowledged. Physicians are invited to submit poems for publication in the Journal either by email at drluciuslampton@gmail.com or regular mail to the Journal, attention: Dr. Lampton.—Ed.
Aphorism 31: The Immortality Box
. . .all night I am laying/ poems away in a long box./
It is my immortality box. . .Anne Sexton, “The Ambition Bird”
It’s said that many of our diseases
are phenotypic consequences of adaptation
compromises made so that we don’t die
too quickly to pass our afflictions along because
of course diseases are about needs whether ours
or theirs a body just flesh inside of flesh just a box
ready-to-be-filled ready-to-be-emptied caskets
made of more caskets germs inside of seeds
inside of husks inside of days inside of all
the climbing hours all the up and out and walking
away the ripples of heat the spontaneous loam
where what we are and were arises like faces
breaking through a surface coppered with the sound
of distant bells with the sound of poems laid
like votives like shabti inside of boxes inside
of skin to wait like the afflictions they are
current to ground static to signal the words
we say even when we don’t: this is my blood
and this is my body broken for you.
— John M. Blair
San Marcos, Texas