Clarence Major
Matthew
Miss Brown, my woman, died
in a blazing fire in New Orleans, 1863.
Dumb child dropped the oil lamp.
I gave the child, a sick girl,
to Miss Harriet, in Jackson.
Went out to Wyoming parts,
became a bounty hunter with Joe.
Battle after battle.
Joe got shot in Denver,
cheating at cards.
White man shot 'im.
I spent six years rustling cattle
on a Texas-New Mexico track.
Today, I am old and out of tricks.
Never thought I'd cross back to
the Southeast, but
can't stop thinking about Mama.
Nevada, though, is a hell of a way
from Waycross.
Clarence Major
Clarence Major is a prize winning poet whose first collection, Swallow the Lake, won The National Council on the Arts Award in 1970. He is also author of nine novels, including Dirty Bird Blues, My Amputations (Western States Book Award, 1986), Such was The Season (a Literary Guild Selection, 1987), and Painted Turtle: Woman with Guitar (New York Times "Notable Book of the Year" citation, 1988). Author of ten books of poetry, Major was a 1999 finalist for the National Book Award for Configurations: New and Selected Poems 1958-1998. Major's poetry also earned him a 1971 New York Cultural Foundation prize. He is a contributor to more than a hundred periodicals and anthologies, including several Norton's. He has served as literary judge for the National Endowment for the Arts, National Book Awards, and many state and cultural arts agencies. He has read his poetry at the Guggenheim Museum, the Folger Theater, in hundreds of universities, theaters, and cultural centers in the United States and Europe. In Yugoslavia he represented the United States in 1975 at the International Poetry Festival. He is also editor of anthologies widely used in university classes. Clarence Major teaches American literature at the University of California, Davis.
http://www.clarencemajor.com/
