Poem in the Manner of the Year in Which I Was Born
Little poem, you are too young to remember the smoking gun, the con man on TV who looked like a supervillain, or the hominid skeleton dug up in Africa and given the name of your childhood dog. You never heard a word about the IRA bombings, nor did The Texas Chainsaw Massacre terrorize your sleep. Having no use for money, you do not understand the concept of stagflation, nor did you marvel at the satellite images of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. How much you have missed in the span of half a century! I want to swaddle you in yesterday’s headlines and send you back down the river, no wiser than the day you came blaring into the world.
Credit
Copyright © 2019 Elizabeth Knapp. This poem originally appeared in Poetry Northwest, Winter & Spring 2019. Used with permission of the author.
Author
Elizabeth Knapp

Elizabeth Knapp is the author of Requiem with an Amulet in Its Beak (Washington Writers' Publishing House, 2019) and The Spite House (C&R Press, 2011), winner of the 2010 De Novo Poetry Prize. The recipient of the Robert H. Winner Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Literal Latté Poetry Award, the Discovered Voices Award from Iron Horse Literary Review, and a Maryland State Arts Council Fellowship, she is currently an associate professor of English at Hood College in Frederick, Maryland, where she lives.
Date Published: 2019-01-01
Source URL: https://poets.org/poem/poem-manner-year-which-i-was-born