DR. DAVID B. AXELROD
AUTHOR/POET
(Suffolk County Poet Laureate: June 26, 2007 to May, 31, 2009)
Website photos, content, design, Copyright © 2007-2009 David B. Axelrod
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DR. DAVID B. AXELROD AUTHOR/POET (Suffolk County Poet Laureate: June 26, 2007 to May, 31, 2009)
Website photos, content, design, Copyright © 2007-2009 David B. Axelrod
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LINKS
Collected Poems of David B. Axelrod
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When I was a graduate student seeking to write a formal, academic doctoral dissertation, I found a fellow named Henry James Pye, who served as England's Poet Laureate from 1790 to 1813, and who was not much of a poet at all. His poems were characterized as "dreadful duty ditties," and his work has not been reissued since it was collected up in 1801. Though I never, thank goodness, devoted myself to the completion of that dissertation--which would have addressed "popular taste" in poetry more than the man and his works--now, as a Laureate myself, I can use him for the purposes of instruction. Indeed, if I were to devote myself to reading and writing in the service of the County not the art, I would certainly not generate much more than the quatrain just below! Occasional poems-- those written for or about occasions--are only occasionally good. Here's an example I wrote, thinking about Suffolk County: THE BULL SEAL It only runs from east to west. The County seal is actually a bull. Let's change it to an osprey nest.
Let me be the first to say... that's pretty awful! Thus, I'd ask you, please, don't expect me to write "official" poems! When John Kennedy asked Robert Frost to read a poem at Kennedy's inauguration, Frost, at age eighty-six and looking vulnerable in a cold wind, did not present the poem he had written for the occasion. Granted, he had written one: "Dedication," which is, at best, now just a footnote to history. As the wind made reading from a typescript impossible, he set aside that minor effort and recited a far better short poem from memory, "The Gift Outright:"
He was a model for us all, overcoming ill winds and too much fame, to shine a bright light on poetry. Thus, I don't plan to be a poet any differently in my official capacity. Writing, and poetry more specifically, is a way of life for me. I don't need a title or an occasion to find subject matter. Students sometimes tell me they can't think of anything to write about. I don't understand that. I'm as likely to find too much to write about. An activist friend of mine says "If you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention." The more tranquil corollary to that is, "If you aren't writing, you aren't paying attention." As I sit here, a boy on a bicycle has just ridden past my window: The big boy on the bicycle peddles standing. The blue dirt bike fit him for thirteen not sixteen, hurrying to hand ball behind the high school, hanging out, talking girls. He can hide the bike a block from school and walk up, cool. The bike's small frame renders him a circus clown but learners can't drive on their own. He's lucky he's alone except for one person taking notes. If I were a photographer he'd be shot or painter, I'd make him a modern Icarus, peddling too close to full grown. (First draft, 5/20,2007 but click here for Revisions.) That's all I need to write; that's all the reason I need to commit to poetry. I write for myself. I revise, I will grant you, for others. As your Poet Laureate, I'll serve you the world as I see it.
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