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Green and Wet is the Grass
                            for Steven Schroeder
Wally Swist (bio)

Thank you for sharing the poem, “South Shore.”
“Between Indiana and a body/ of water” resonates with

a certain perpetuity to it, like the sound old wire looping
off pastures makes when you accidentally trip it—

with that buzz that it makes; your lines evocative with
echoes, reminiscent of the historical depth of Charles Olson.

I also love “to make a strobe of it turns” and the phrase
“the random weight of proliferation.” Then the two-line

rhythmic jazz lyric of “I step out/ with Chicago in mind”
is memorable. I would like to see the poem

printed somewhere on the train itself for commuters
to read on their way “between here and there.”

Look into reading “Neither Here nor There,” a poem by
W. S. Merwin, in The Moon before Morning, that regards

the traveler who must wait between flights in an airport.
Your poem and his have similarities, but it is in their

differences that make their being different all that more
delightful and deepen each of the poems themselves.

We’ve had what I remember as a record cold month
of April, but we have sun here for a change, and we are

forecast for temperatures into the 60s—green and wet
is the grass with dew, as Cummings would have liked it.

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