Hi All
It's a wonderful day to share with you the work of someone I find highly talented. Today, on the Jimmy Broccoli page and website, it is an honor to share with you the poetry of Jeff Weddle.
I was first introduced to Jeff's poems shortly before finalizing the poetry (and poets) to be included within my second anthology, "Encore" (it's been recent). I read one poem (of his) - then I read a second one - then I dived in and read many more. I knew (then) I would be reaching out to Jeff to ask if he was okay with me including his work within the anthology - and, I'm very happy he said yes.
Jeff in his own words:
Jeff Weddle is a poet and writer living in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He won the Eudora Welty Prize for Bohemian New Orleans: The Story of the Outsider and Loujon Press, and has also received honors for his fiction and poetry. Jeff teaches in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama. His work has appeared in Albanian translation.
Jeff is an exceptional poet - and I'm certain you'll agree! ______________
Stormy Weather
Severe weather has been detected in the vicinity of Edna St. Vincent Millay and odd, beautiful trash shares the wind with a circling hawk, or maybe it’s a falcon.
Ask Yeats, he might know.
It can be quite a surprise how a small, yellow bag can change the course of a poem,
as hurricane force words rain down on parched sidewalks and even Sylvia Plath seeks shelter, because fear is a many dimensional street.
Sometimes it’s better to stay home and other times you’ll live longer if, brave or not, you run straightaway into the storm. ______________
d. a. levy
An earthbound angel of long ago took a bullet for the world and heaven got that much sweeter.
Can we now say “Screw Cleveland,” knowing how he loved that town even as it dogged him to the grave?
A beat angel took one right between the eyes leaving his gashed absence to stand for all the poems he never wrote,
to maybe show what he meant by the poems he got on paper,
the things he wrote for tomorrow or just himself while sleeping with the old-eyed muse.
Can we now say we might love Cleveland for his sake?
Can we say, “d. a., thanks for coming, man”?
Photo: Jeff Weddle with Louise "Gypsy Lou" Webb.
