The Mississippi Book of the Dead

Timothy Young

In this long poem, Young chronicles a trip along the Mississippi River in seventy-eight stanzas.  These vignettes of life on the road—post-retirement and post-Hurricane Katrina— build upon one another and create, as the psychologist James Hillman said of dreams, their own metaphorical reality.  The speaker of these poems refuses distillation, offering instead a sweeping witness of nature and human activity along the river; little escapes his notice: “It’s 5 a.m. A coyote’s in the road. / A ‘possum stands still in the cornfield. / As a ‘coon climbs out of the state park trash, / the campground host waves goodbye. / At the window       his wife washes          her underarms.”

Timothy Young is a poet and retired educator in juvenile corrections. His last book of poetry, Herds of Bears Surround Us, Red Dragonfly Press 2010, is set along the Mississippi River in western Wisconsin. His book, Building in Deeper Water, was introduced by Robert Bly and published by the Thousands Press in 2003.  His poetry has appeared in Scribner’s The Best American Poetry of 1999 and in numerous magazines, including Poetry, and has been heard on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac. He has also recorded three CDs of poetry with musical compositions by a jazz guitarist, Riding a Dark Wind; a folk singer, Snow Has Fallen; and classical violinist; Perfect Harmony. In 2009 his poem, Mississippi Ecstasy, was set for a big band jazz suite and recorded by composer, Dan Cavanagh, and The Jazz Emporium Big Band.

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Excerpt

13

Old paddlefish feel the river with their lips.
They never see more than the dark current.
Their scales hum the world’s oldest songs.
Their skeletons wash up on the sands.
Eight vultures wobble upon the updraft.