There are many different types of writing. Some writers specialize in the art of communicating facts clearly and effectively. Some writers spend years of their lives creating other worlds with nothing but a pen and paper. Others prefer to take the language we all use daily and give it rhythm, movement, and style that is the art of poetry. Our first poet of this series, Shaun Hooker, told us that he always have felt Czeslaw Milosz said it best: “I swear to you there is in me no wizardry of words. I speak to you with silence like a cloud or a tree.”
Born in Lanexa, Virginia in 1983; has worked in the retail industry for twenty years and has used that experience with people in the unique approach to writing about the flawed and down-on-their-luck subjects he creates with empathy in mind.
An Old Man Recounting His Glory Days Shawn Hooker
I used to hit other men for a living;
they held in their hands a pebbled leather object,
oblong and stitched together,
and they threw it in the direction of other men,
where it was my job
to correct their mistake of trying to catch it.
When I hit them with my helmet,
these men would spin like a helicopter
in mid-air before
descending to the ground (this was before
they set rules against using your head
to smash against another’s
to ring his bell, to leave him heaving his insides
and sicking air on a sideline),
and when they came back to,
they would be asked three questions:
What day of the week is it?
What month is it?
What year is it?
And, if they were anything like me—dazed and
slightly chilled after impact—they’d only
remember it was Sunday,
because it was the only day we ever played.
--Shaun Hooker
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