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O, What a Luxury: Verses Lyrical, Vulgar, Pathetic & Profound
O, What a Luxury: Verses Lyrical, Vulgar, Pathetic & Profound
O, What a Luxury: Verses Lyrical, Vulgar, Pathetic & Profound
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O, What a Luxury: Verses Lyrical, Vulgar, Pathetic & Profound

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The first poetry collection written by New York Times–bestselling author Garrison Keillor, the celebrated radio host of A Prairie Home Companion.
 
Garrison Keillor is known the world over for his funny, folksy stories set in his beloved Lake Wobegon, and the legendary radio and stage performances of A Prairie Home Companion. And although he has edited several anthologies of his favorite poems, this volume forges a new path for him, as a poet of light verse.
 
Here, Keillor writes with his characteristic combination of humor and insight on love, modernity, nostalgia, politics, religion, and other facets of daily life. His verses are charming and playful, locating sublime song within the humdrum of being human—and “as in his best-selling fiction, the subject matter is the (very funny) stuff of the lumpen-bourgeois blues” (Booklist).
LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 1, 2013
ISBN9780802193032
Author

Garrison Keillor

Garrison Keillor, born in Anoka, Minnesota, in 1942, is an essayist, columnist, blogger, and writer of sonnets, songs, and limericks, whose novel Pontoon the New York Times said was “a tough-minded book . . . full of wistfulness and futility yet somehow spangled with hope”—no easy matter, especially the spangling. Garrison Keillor wrote and hosted the radio show A Prairie Home Companion for more than forty years, all thanks to kind aunts and good teachers and a very high threshold of boredom. In his retirement, he’s written a memoir and a novel. He and his wife, Jenny Lind Nilsson, live in Minneapolis and New York.

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    O, What a Luxury - Garrison Keillor

    GARRISON KEILLOR

    O, What a Luxury

    VERSES

    LYRICAL, VULGAR,

    PATHETIC & PROFOUND

    V-1.tif

    grove press • new york

    Copyright © 2013 by Garrison Keillor

    Jacket design by Tom Daly and Charles Rue Woods; Jacket illustrations

    by Tom Daly

    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only author­ized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copy­righted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or permissions@groveatlantic.com.

    Printed in the United States of America

    Published simultaneously in Canada

    ISBN: 978-0-8021-2161-5

    eBook ISBN: 978-0-8021-9303-2

    Grove Press

    an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

    154 West 14th Street

    New York, NY 10011

    Distributed by Publishers Group West

    www.groveatlantic.com

    To

    Ogden Nash, Cole Porter, John Updike,

    Ira Gershwin, Roger Miller, Roy Blount, Jr.

    Masters of the House

    CONTENTS

    1 WAS ETHEL MERMAN A MORMON?

    Unification

    Billy the Kid

    Nobody Loves You

    Episcopalian

    (R.I.P. Fats Waller)

    Onion Soup

    Mormons

    On the Beach

    Thong Song

    Newt

    Epithalamion

    On the Road

    Hale Bopp

    In Love

    The Fabulous Fox

    Chivalry

    Ode to the Women on the Mural

    at the State Theatre,

    Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis

    Kansas

    Urology

    Show Business

    Doxology

    Psalm

    2 A MAJOR FAUX PAS PROHIBITED BY LAW

    O, What a Luxury

    A Question

    Manners

    At the Grammys

    Frequent Flyer

    Winter Guests

    Amazon

    Lethargy

    Ocean Crossing

    3 I LIVE IN THIS DESOLATE SPOT

    BECAUSE YOU DO NOT

    Seattle

    San Francisco

    L.A.

    Times Square

    Katz’s

    City Life

    Reader

    Limericks: New York

    Papa and His Baby See Manhattan

    Minnesota Rouser

    Case Studies

    Minnesota

    Why I Live in Minnesota

    That’s Me

    A True Story

    The Plumber

    Bus Children

    Eau Claire

    T. S. Eliot Rock

    Elegiac

    Perversity

    Home on the Plains

    4 BENEATH THEIR SHINY DOMES

    THEY CONTAIN YOUR CHROMOSOMES

    Love You Dear

    Slow Days of Summer

    Love Poem

    The Front Seat

    Wedding March from Lohengrin

    Wedding Recessional

    Cicadas

    Fatherhood

    First Trimester

    Forbidden Delights

    The Course of Life

    Mother’s Poem

    Graduation Song

    5 THANKS BE TO GOD FOR KEEPING US SMALL

    Publicity

    How to Write a Letter

    to Your Mother in Seven Days

    Lutheran Story

    Fundamentalist Rag

    Lutheranism Explained

    Redemption

    Social Mobility

    Song of October 12

    Unspoken Prayer

    Jim Flam Steps Aside

    6 SECONDARY NEURONS OF

    THE CEREBRAL PROMONTORY

    Birthday Poem for Mozart

    Birthday Poem for F.S.F.

    Address to the Harvard

    Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa,

    Sanders Theatre, June 2008

    For Ray and Orrell on

    Their 50th Anniversary

    For Johnny

    Baker’s Dozen

    7 A REPUBLICAN LADY OF KNOXVILLE

    The Owl and the Pussycat

    The Fox Went Out

    on a Chilly Night

    A Tragic Song

    Another Tragic Song

    O My Darling Clementine

    Nikolina

    Whoopitiyiyo California

    Class Warfare

    Nine More

    8 THE PLANET REVOLVING ON ITS AXIS

    Winter Blues

    Opera

    Beethoven

    Your Fault

    One Thing After Another

    Advice

    Back in the Day

    Independence Day

    Dark Skies

    1

    WAS ETHEL MERMAN

    A MORMON?

    UNIFICATION

    The Mississippi at its mouth

    Joins the Gulf of Mexico,

    The west wind mixes with the south,

    High pressure with the low.

    Nothing in nature stands apart,

    All things rendezvous—

    And I would like to mingle with you.

    Intermingled, intertwined,

    This is what I have in mind,

    A sudden urge

    To merge.

    The compound that is chlorophyll

    Formed as the light increases

    Makes every little flower thrill

    With photosynthesis.

    The morning glory mingles

    With the honeysuckle vine.

    Come wrap your little tendrils around mine.

    I’ve been lonely as a cloud,

    Drifting high and small and proud,

    Lonely as a limestone butte—

    Handsome, noble, destitute,

    And I need you, I confess.

    Let’s coalesce.

    BILLY THE KID

    Billy the Kid

    Didn’t do half of what they said he did.

    He rustled cattle, I guess it’s true,

    But bad men was who they belonged to.

    He killed some guys, but if you knew ’em

    You’d say they had it coming to ’em.

    Billy the Kid went on the run

    Down to Mesilla in 1881.

    Sheriff Pat Garrett put on the heat

    And came to the ranch of Billy’s friend Pete

    But it wasn’t Billy who was shot by Pat,

    It was someone wearing his pants and hat.

    Billy the Kid was miles away

    In Santa Fe with flowers in his hair

    And I know cuz I was there.

    He made a fortune in fermented juices

    And built a mansion in Las Cruces,

    Changed his name to William Bonney,

    Wrote Way Down Upon the Swanee

    And he may have been guilty to a degree

    But he was always good to me

    And generous to my family.

    Always sent us a Christmas turkey

    From Albuquerque

    And chocolate candy

    From the Rio Grande

    And an embroidered pillow

    From Amarillo.

    I spoke at his funeral long ago.

    He was living in San Luis Obispo,

    Big house

    On the beach.

    I gave a nice speech.

    People were impressed.

    They didn’t know he was

    The most famous outlaw in the West,

    Feared from Tucson to Reno.

    They knew him as Rudy Valentino.

    NOBODY LOVES YOU

    Once I lived a life of some renown,

    People looked up to me in this town.

    They listened to what I had to say.

    They named a sandwich for me at Bud’s Café.

    Then they passed a no-smoking law: no smokes, zero, nada.

    And I became persona non grata.

    Nobody loves me

    When I take a smoke.

    I pull out

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