The Art Form of the Twentieth Century

Shortly after my dad died last week, the phone rang. My mother answered and I could hear muffled crying coming from the device, mingled with an outburst of passionate words. That was my father's longtime friend, Dan, who had written a poem in honor of his passing and was reading it to my mother. Today, I would like to share with you this poem, written about my father when he was a young, and sometimes arrogant man. Thank you, Dan, for commemorating my Dad in poetry.

Tom Brooker and The Art Form of the Twentieth Century

By Dan Dahlquist

The occasional poem, usually weak as it is well-

intentioned, will not do, Tom, on this, the occasion

of your death three days ago from an abdominal

aortic aneurysm, but I must say something

to you, Tom, to you.

We met some forty-seven years ago, in Carbondale,

Illinois, a town homely and lovely and exciting

because we were young and everything was about

to happen.  I see the white classroom, white

ceiling, white linoleum, fluorescent lights, the multi-

colored chairs with the folding formica shelves

for writing, our teacher Jan Larsen standing

large, rouged, in peroxide and over-accessorized

at the front of the room, and you, Tom, are sitting

next to me, to my right, and the first thing I remember

you saying is "Film is the art form of the twentieth century."

Film is the art form of the twentieth century?

How did you know this?

You were nineteen or twenty years old.

You were assertive, Tom, you were the first person 

my age who owned his thought.

You were assertive, you said the words

with conviction, and whether or not film is

or was the art form of the twentieth century,

you turned out to be as brilliant as your brilliant

declaration, and as I look back over the span

of our years, I have your meaning, Tom,

the true meaning of the words you spoke

before our first teacher, a room of fifteen to twenty

eighteen to twenty-two year olds: "Art!"

"I believe in Art!"  "I want to be an artist."

                    Thus began a friendship--

a rare and amazing thing, a friendship--

perhaps less solipsistic than what passes

for friendship these days, perhaps but not

for certain, and if we were vain ours were big

vanities, and in everything we did together,

beautiful things like sitting on a slab of sandstone,

listening to frogs, carving a pumpkin at 302

South Poplar, sitting cross-legged on the floor,

smoking our briar pipes by lamp light, living back-

wards, listening to the 1919 Edison

with the thick bakelite records, and reading, Tom,

reading poems aloud--to one another

and to the universe.

                    Then the dispersal--

the dispersal that comes to everyone--

long stretches of years, your good marriage,

your children, my girling, my unfulfilled hunger

for children, your career in journalism, my try

for it, the art of poetry--Ah, the art of poetry!--

reuniting us decades after the frogs of Southern Illinois,

decades after pipe smoke and declarations of art,

it turns out, Tom, it turns out that we were artists

after all.  Because we kept writing.  And without

knowing a thing about confessional this

or that, we confessed.  We confessed laziness

and self-doubt and lust and infidelity and yes

occasional realism, bravery, tenacity, an un-

willingness to give in

and be like the others.

                    Tom no one writes a poem

three days after his friend's sudden death,

no one in his right mind.

But I am not in my right mind,

not in my mind at all, Tom, because you

are gone from me--the last man standing

as I called you just days ago, the last man,

and you said yes, yes, bowed and weak-

kneed, you said, the only reader

from the very beginning I said, the one

who has never abandoned me, never let go.

                    In a letter one week ago

now that a week is no week

now that there is no beginning or end, now

we're one with the design of the universe

that has, we are told, no beginning

or end, I toss to earth still warm

beneath the leaves of my cottonwood

this morning and up to the clouds to which

my grandmother believed we might travel

upon death, your words: "I am still struggling

with form and style, with finding a voice."

So am I, Tom, so am I.  Today,

this moment, I swear to you that a part

of your funny wise irreverent and yes

brilliant, loving voice--the one that got

the art form of the twentieth century

slightly wrong, is in me.  You are in me, for-

ever.  You said  "Let's rededicate our-

selves to our book project."

Okay, I will, more difficult now, to be sure,

because I am alone, but perhaps not

impossible, because this is the art form

of the twentieth century, and the next,

and the next:  Poetry!  I will finish it,

Tom, I will finish our book, and place it on a table

in a real room, where a young poet

may steal it, a young lover may gift it,

and in this room I will say your words, Tom,

and mine,

because our shared effort

keeps me going.