Fifth Annual Wild Violet Writing Contest (2007)
Poetry judge - Peter Krok
Peter Krok is the editor of the Schuylkill Valley Journal and serves as the humanities/poetry director of the Manayunk Art Center, where he has coordinated a literary series since 1990. Because of his identification with row house and red brick Philadelphia, he is often referred to as “the red brick poet.” His poems have appeared in the Yearbook of American Poetry, America, Mid-America Poetry Review, Midwest Quarterly, Poet Lore, Potomac Review, Blue Unicorn and numerous other print and online journals. In 2005 his poem “10 PM At a Philadelphia Recreation Center” was included in Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (published by Penn State University). His book, Looking For An Eye, has just recently been published by Foothills Press. In the 1970s, "The Misfit Generation" was known as his signature poem.
THE MISFIT GENERATION
(In Memory of the Kent State Four)by Peter Krok
Each torpid turn of the world has such disinherited
children to whom no long what's been,
and not yet what's coming, belongs.
Rainer Maria Rilke The Duino Elegies
Some found their gurus, others their profession
but no one meets the expectation. Everything
seems to slouch back to the indifferent calm
of ordinary Fridays. Time once again slips
into its necessary marriages and paychecks.
Yet the eyes of memory occasionally
lull me back into those eerie moments
when our cause overwhelmed universities
and deans and presidents listened
and we achieved the headlines of the times.Like pigeons dangling on the dome of the Rotunda
and mottled slabs of the White House, we perched
on pillars, porticos, the pedestals of campuses.
Hovered righteously over quadrangles, squares.
Sallied indignantly across the columns of the Capital.
Disturbed the complacent air of consciences.
Demonstrated at the Cherry Blossom Festival,
and in the court yards and conventions
voiced the fierce emotions that rattled us all.Marched around the gates of august Washington.
Shook a thousand campuses into armed alarm.
Bitterly watched the Guard patrol the panic.
Howled at the murders that wounded our universities.
Witnessed on the verge a weatherman explode
the diseased extreme of our frustration.
Shadowed by the dark suits and eyes of the FBI,
we sought release from the lease of the Pentagon
from the crushing cleats of official conscription
from the omnipotence of bureaucrats and the Army
and the perfidious tricks of plotters at Langley.Borne by the surge of indignation,
we boldly darted before the wheels
of foreign policy. Agitated our anger
in sit-ins, marches, demonstrations
that spread our cause across the channels of cities
into the air waves of baffled living rooms.Inured in our defiance we disturbed the guardians
who misjudged our heritage. Aroused
brick houses with the horror
too many realized too late.
The indices of our frustration
changed the polls and brought a resignation,
yet so many bled, died, lost
and left the nation.To what did we belong? To whom?
Each torpid turn of the world has such children,
outside the orb of generations, disinherited,
because time and events tossed their lives.
So we wandered from course to course,
cause to cause, always chasing
impossible expectations.
Seized by the havoc of our confusions,
we got lost in the litter of our illusions.We fed our hearts on questions,
sought roots, meanings, purposes,
sought ourselves.
Out of the howling of our must,
we hosted our vehement voices
across the spine of a frustrated nation.Out of our zealous fury we sought
to straighten the vertebrae
of our broken heritage.
The fracture of our feelings
broke the cast
that enclosed
our sick democracy.We screamed into the mouths of representatives,
the stoning fever that besieged us, so they listened,
nudged a little, smiled their pressed concern, and
resolutely waited for the crisis to subside.
Yet from that trauma we changed,
changed irrevocably.Out of that frustration there was a conception
which doesn't lie in the deeds or screens or pages
or violence headlined in the Times,
but lies much deeper in our destiny.
We were incendiaries to a myth:
the indissoluble link of right and country.And now what are we left,
the youths between complacencies,
misfits out of time and education?
So we drifted out of dreams and zeal
and rebellion of graduate days.
On the tablets of our longings,
you'll find the reasons for our failings.Our labors drift into the highways and industries.
Now we feel the necessary pulse of necessity.
The family needs attention. The baby's on the way.
Yet nothing still removes the expectations
of what could have been,
might have been, should be, for
we are the misfit generation.