Poet Laureate 2: Rotary Club, Cedar Falls

Something that I do as part of my Poet Laureate job is visit with civic groups to discuss poetry. On 3 September 2024, I had the pleasure of making a poetry presentation at a meeting of the Rotary Club of Cedar Falls. Many thanks to Greg Holt for setting that up and hosting me. My presentation that day was on "Poetry and Business." I began with a couple of poems by James Autry, probably the premiere US poet on the topic of business. Jim is an Iowa poet as well, and retired editor in chief and president of the Meredith Corporation’s Magazine Group. During his career, he often presented poetry to business groups. You can watch Autry doing this in a video titled The Living Language from the Power of the Word video series. In this video, he reads poetry to an audience of managers at the Principal Financial Group. In the rest of the video, he also discusses his poetry with Bill Moyers in the video, particularly about his childhood in Mississippi. Along with his books of poetry and memoir, Autry wrote about management and leadership; he also gave workshops and lectures on those topics. You can read a fine bio of Autry in the website Mississippi Writers and Musicians. The Autry poems I presented that day were "On Firing a Salesman" and "What Personnel Handbooks Never Tell You" (both of these poems appear in the video mentioned above). I then also read three of my own poems on business: "My Father's Business"; "Letter to Bob Boynton, Music Prodigy" (a poem about my early days in the music business — I'm now a bassist in a rock band); and "Out of this World" (a funny poem about a laundry business in my most recent book, Dragons and Rayguns). Here's a poem of mine I presented that day: My Father's Business When the boy Jesus was lost in Jerusalem and his worried parents finally found him, he said, “Why are you looking for me? Didn’t you know I must be about my father’s business?” In my first job, I too was about my father’s business. Just as my father, in his first job, was about his father’s business. Soldiering. I come from a line of US Army soldiers. My father and my grandfather were both Philippine Scouts. When I was growing up the drill around our house was The Army Way. There were many ways to do everything but the one right way was the Army Way. How to make a bed. How to sweep and mop a floor. How to spit shine shoes. How to peel potatoes. When I joined up I found out the hard way that peeling spuds in KP was not a joke, not a myth, but a long day with a paring knife and a bushel of potatoes. Maybe two. The Army Way was learning how to march hours in the hot sun on the parade ground, rifle at shoulder arms. How to run miles, rifle at port arms, held diagonal in front. But the truth of that first job was not in the physical conditioning, nor in the regimented life of rules and regulations. It was in the Army Way my father had all along been teaching me: the real Army Way. Honor. Tradition. Respect. Defense of Democracy. Securing Freedom with our very lives. First job, my father’s business, the Army Way. —Vince Gotera, from Silver Birch Press (2017) This photo shows the publication of this poem in Silver Birch Press on 16 May 2017, as part of that press's online series "My First Job." Read the poem to see why I posted there a picture of me in my US Army uniform holding my oldest son . . . it's all tied together. I hope you enjoy this poem! Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ