Poet of the Month 054: ROBERT POLITO

ROBERT POLITO
September 2013

 

 

 

 

PLEASE REFRAIN FROM TALKING DURING THE MOVIE

 

 

When I can't make you understand I repeat myself
I repeat

 

If you don't stop asking me all these questions how
Will I understand anything

 

Please refrain from talking during the movie

 

I need a life that isn't just about needing
To escape my life

 

Please God please may Carrie please fall for me

 

I want to show off my hidden camera
I'm an informer but I have my limits

 

You hurt him once before now what
If she's there I don't know if I can go

 

Please refrain from talking during the movie

 

Leave a message if you can't reach me
To exit press enter and don't forget your receipt

 

When I think I read new things I want
A life where I read and think new things

 

Please refrain from talking during the movie

 

I want to know nothing
Again

 

Please God please may Carrie please fall for me

 

I repeat myself when I can't
Make you understand I repeat

 

Hollywood & God 

 

(2009)

 

 

 

 

 

The following biographical statement is posted on the website of The Poetry Foundation.  [It is re-posted here for information purposes only and, like the poem re-posted above, remains its author's exclusive copyright-protected intellectual property.]

 

Poet and scholar Robert Polito was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He earned his PhD from Harvard and has served as director of Creative Writing at The New School for two decades. Polito served as president of the Poetry Foundation from July 2013 through June 2015.

 

Polito’s collections of poetry include Hollywood & God (2009) and Doubles (1995). His poetry blends narrative and lyric impulses, drawing on both American pop culture and literary tradition. Polito’s scholarly works include A Reader’s Guide to James Merrill’s The Changing Light at Sandover (1995), and Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson (1996), for which he received the National Book Critics Circle Award.

 

Polito’s interest in mid-century American culture, especially the crime novel and film noir, has also led him to such editing projects as Farber on Film: The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber (2009); The Selected Poems of Kenneth Fearing (2004); Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s and 1940s (1997) and Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1950s (1997); and editions of Dashiell Hammett and James M Cain for Everyman Library. He has contributed a catalog essay to About Face (1985), a retrospective of Manny Farber’s paintings; an essay on the Kinks for This is Pop: In Search of the Elusive at Experience Music Project (2004); an essay on Bob Dylan to Studio A: The Bob Dylan Reader (2005); and an essay on Allen Ginsberg to Howl: Fifty Years Later (2006).

 

He is the recipient of numerous honors and awards including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Ingram Merrill Foundation. A contributing editor to both BOMB and the Boston Review, Polito’s poetry and criticism have been published widely. He is at work on a new book titled Detours: Seven Noir Lives. 

 

 

 

Use the link below to read more poems by North American poet and scholar ROBERT POLITO:

 

 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/robert-polito#tab-poems

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Last updated 13 April 2021