A REMEMBRANCE ON OUR 20TH ANNIVERSARY
Originally published in Issue 20.1 – Winter/Spring 2008
Reproduced below is the original statement in memory of Ann Griffith Lindsey. “The Angel of Back East” first appeared in Issue 1.1 of Sycamore Review. This is the first publication of “In the Rain.”
ANN GRIFFITH LINDSEY is the inspiration for Sycamore Review. It may not be the magazine she originally envisioned, but it is one result of her life and her death. As a graduate student, and inveterate poet, Ann campaigned for a literary journal to be published by students in conjunction with the University’s English Department. Hers was an uphill battle. Administrative and student apathy did not deter her. Ann rallied support, cajoling us with humor and sound arguments. Before her personal dedication could be rewarded with material results, Ann died in an automobile accident on January 5, 1987. However, her parents continued this dream with a generous bequest in Ann’s name. Like all editors, we have faced what we thought were insurmountable problems. Yet here we are. This is Sycamore Review.
THE ANGEL OF BACK EAST
By Ann Griffith Lindsey
The angel of back east sings delirious
drunken hymns in my ear, pulling me toward
pine-crowded hills and cold, rushing streams
of poetry which I had forgotten and left
in the shadows of my mother’s house.
I put the cool, dark landscape behind me
and crash blindly out onto the plains
of the denuded, storm-flattened midwest –
the victim of one incomprehensible image
after another. I lay my battered head on
my seraph’s transparent breast and tell her,
not to patronize me. As far as I can tell,
reality began the night Walt Disney died;
it rose again from the dusty place
the day I moved to Indiana.
IN THE RAIN
By Ann Griffith Lindsey
-For Louisa Griffith Lindsey Munce
You died in the rain
and were buried in it,
and I would not even go.
Instead, I gripped the
steering wheel of my car
and drove as far away as always,
the rain pausing
in front of my ees.
Damn it, I always heard
the good died young, but you
were old, older than the road’s
box turtle painted years ago
with a date in red fingernail
polish by my father, your child.
He said someone would find it
on the other side of the world
and would know the beginning
of its end, and it would live
for hundreds of years just like you would.
But now that I am older, I know
that turtle was buried in the moss
covered dirt of someone’s backyard
cemetery in a discarded, recycled
shoebox
in the rain.
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