Kooser on Poetry

Lots of contemporary poems are anecdotal, a brief narration of some event, and what can make them rise above anecdote is when they manage to convey significance, often as the poem closes. Here is an example of one like that, by Marie Sheppard Williams, who lives in Minneapolis.

Everybody

I stood at a bus corner

one afternoon, waiting

for the #2. An old

guy stood waiting too.

I stared at him. He

caught my stare, grinned,

gap-toothed. Will you

sign my coat? he said.

Held out a pen. He wore

a dirty canvas coat that

had signatures all over

it, hundreds, maybe

thousands.

I’m trying

to get everybody, he

said.

I signed. On a

little space on a pocket.

Sometimes I remember:

I am one of everybody.

Poem copyright ©2006 by Marie Sheppard Williams. Reprinted from the California Review, Volume 32, No. 4, by permission of Marie Sheppard Williams and the publisher.

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