Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Monday, October 28th, 2004.

Today's poem is by Bob Hickok, and it's called Oh, My Papa. Hickok, born in 1960 in Michigan,

comes from one of my favorite groups of 20th century poets. I call them the second

career poets. Like Dana Joya, who worked as an executive for General Foods, or Ted Cooser,

who sold insurance for many decades. Hickok worked for decades in the auto manufacturing industry,

all the while sharpening his pen on many a long evening before he found success in a second life as a talented poet.

He's known for his open, approachable verse and meditative style, which you will see in today's poem. You might also catch a hint of why Hickok was drawn to poetry in the first place,

why the act of reading and of writing poetry seemed so essential and indispensable to his life.

Here's, oh, my papa.

Our fathers have formed a poetry workshop.

They sit in a circle of disappointment over our fastballs and wives.

We thought they didn't read our stuff.

Whole anthologies of poems that begin,

My father never, or those that end, and he was silent as a carp,

or those with middles which, if you think of the right side as a sketch, look like a paunch

of beer and worry. But secretly, with flashlights in the woods, they've read every word and

noticed that our nine happy poems have balloons and sex and giraffes inside,

but not one dad waving hello from the top of a hill at dusk.

Theirs is the revenge school of poetry, with titles like,

My Yellow Sheet Lad, and, given your mother's taste for vodka, I'm pretty sure you're not mine.

They're not trying to make the poems better, so much as sharper or louder, more like a fish

hook or electrocution. As a group, they overcome their individual senilities, their complete distaste

...