poems do
write themselves,
are given
in the upside
down of things
as much as (or more than)
willed in craft,
like we will the heavy snow over the edge
of the trampoline's frame, its springs frozen
as though a bouncer in the
depth
of his bounce were frozen too,
held by his anticipation in
the greater delight
his catapulting return to only air
will bring
excerpt from “Trampoline Ice”
John Kryder teaches English at Williamsville East High School. He co-founded and co-directs Collaborations and Connections, The Buffalo/Williamsville Poetry and Music Celebration, now in its 7th year. He has also been on the faculty of the Consortium of the Niagara Frontier, and in 1993 received an NEH Fellowship in African Literature. Throughout his teaching career, he has written, read, and published poetry. He has read from his work at The New York State English Council, at Trinity Place in Buffalo, and at The Meeting House in Williamsville. Five of his poems have been set to music by high school, college, and professional musicians, including the poem he wrote for Dr. Stephen Shewan's choral and orchestral work entitled “Hymn for Spring,” published by Albany Records. Poems from his unpublished manuscript, In The Heart of Now, have appeared in The Buffalo News and at Trinity Place. He has conducted workshops on poetry and music with Dr. Shewan at the high school, university, and state levels, and on poetry and art with Buffalo artist Catherine Parker. email John Kryder
and now
the crowd’s ohs and ahs are dancing
as
brother smears brother’s face, and orange nose
appears
while he looks and dances and throws
rust
mustache where azure once was moving;
he
looks: and then the sudden broad knife cuts
white
ripples in his green and azure beard,
and he
dances the fatigue-green shirt bleared
with use
into folds and shadows, and abuts
color on
color, and pulls lines and zones
and
layers out of the canvas in shapes
and
facets of who he is, creating koans
of who
we are in locks of hair like drapes
and eyes
that stare and weep and smile in tones
as
electric as each song on all the tapes
excerpt from “Burke Paints Burke”
"Fergus", oil on canvas, by Philip Burke, painted in front of
a live audience at Castellani Art Gallery, Niagara U., Lewiston, NY,
April, 17,1998
Poems
After Stomp
Aurora Borealis
Chance
Doubting Thomas
Dragonfly Light
falling
nearness of our nearness
Numinous
Our Planet
Roebling Suspension Bridge
Snowlight
Vassar
Venus On The Sun
Walking on the Brooklyn Bridge
Work
you enthrall us one and all