04 May Four Poems from OVID’S CREEK by Sam Magavern
Ovid’s Youth, XVI
I was myopic and fat.
My physique — weak.
Hated to run, swim,
throw discus, wrestle
Never won a raffle or
lottery,
much less a laurel
wreath. But from
the hour I could speak,
I knew how to baffle.
Ovid’s Renunciations
No more metaphors.
No allusions.
No verbal frippery.
I won’t serve you
flagrant delicacies —
just plain old grub —
my verse
like
a broken pencil stub.
Ovid Defense Strategy
Don’t blame me for
these poems,
Caesar. I don’t write
them. Erato, a Muse,
hurls sharp stones at
my delicate, pale skin.
Each verse is a purple
bruise.
Ovid’s Elegy, 2005
It turns out, Orpheus,
you can’t make
friends w/ Cerberus —
just as even Arachne
can’t
mend a torn orb web.
Like a fallen leaf, I float
down the creek to
the sea. Poets die.
But words don’t end.
About the Poet
Sam Magavern is a writer and public interest lawyer. His work includes a non-fiction book, Primo Levi’s Universe, and a book of poetry, Noah’s Ark. His poems have appeared in many journals, including Poetry, Paris Review, and Antioch Review, and he is featured in the book Four Buffalo Poets. He wrote the screenplay for an independent film, The Last Word, and worked with musicians to create a novel-with-soundtrack, Ooh La La. In 2022 he founded the Calamus Project, a collaboration that brings Walt Whitman’s Calamus poems to life through films, a website, and programs.
Magavern serves as senior policy fellow at Partnership for the Public Good, which he co-directed or directed from its founding in 2007 through 2018. He teaches at the SUNY Buffalo Law School and the Cornell University ILR School. His website is sammagavern.com.
These four poems appear in OVID’S CREEK (BlazeVOX [Books], 2024), a collaboration between Magavern and artist Monica Angle that combines 56 of Magavern’s poems with 48 of Angles’s abstract landscape images.
Monica Angle is a practicing artist based in Buffalo, New York. Her solo exhibitions include shows at the Burchfield Penney Art Center and the Fralin Museum of Art. Her work has been featured in public spaces such as Minneapolis City Hall and the Massachusetts State House, and it is part of many collections, both public and private. Originally from Omaha, she graduated from Harvard College, received an MS from Pennsylvania State University, Department of Geography, and did graduate work in printmaking and bookmaking at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. In addition to her studio practice, Angle works as a teaching artist, including a residency with the Just Buffalo Literary Center in the Buffalo Public Schools. Her website is monicaangle.com.
The Poem of the Week feature is curated by literary legacy awardee R.D. Pohl.