Poetry by Robert David Cohen: Two fragments transcribed from a dream

You chose me

Because I was beautiful

You said you smelled me

A mile away

Purple and red you opened

I lapped up on your beach

Foam on a blue wave

***

You died while making quesadillas

You had just turned off the flame

The heat of the pan doing its work

The cheese melting

The tortilla crisping

You dead

What you were in the middle of

The flame off

Heat in the pan working

What you were in the middle of

You lost

You found

Now in the heat of the work

-- New York, July 9, 2017

ABOUT ME

Poetry was a huge part of my life in the 60s. I wrote like a madman, published a bit, gave readings and was generally active in the New York poetry scene. Then I moved to Mexico -- where I co-edited El Corno Emplumado/The Plumed Horn with Margaret Randall in 1968-69 -- and then to Cuba (1969-76), a period in which journalism and politics took center stage.

I returned to the US in 1976 and worked as a journalist at the UN and in Washington until 1990, when I joined UNICEF as speech writer (NY) and then communication officer (Mexico DF, Geneva and Panama City). Retired from UNICEF in 2008 and set up a New York and Pretoria-based communication consulting company with another former UN information officer, Paul Hoeffel.

I continued writing poetry over the years, published a chapbook but not much else. This blog gathers some of the poems written across the decades. I've indicated where some of them were published; most are seeing the light of day only here. I'll be adding poems -- old and new -- little by little.

Given how easy it is to edit texts on a blog, I probably won't be able to resist the impulse to tweak, so some of the poems just might continue to evolve before your very eyes.

Enjoy, comment, criticize!

PUBLICATIONS AND AWARDS

· Rebelion en Estados Unidos, Antologia Documental (Siglo XXI Editores, Mexico DF 1969)

· The New Yorker Book of Poems (Morrow Paperback Editions, New York, 1974)

· There is a Country, Poems 1969-1977 (West End Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1979)

Poems published in The New Yorker, Poetry magazine, Paris Review, Promethean, Angel Hair, Casa de las Americas, El Corno Emplumado, etc.

Awards: Discovery 65 (The Poetry Center); Book of the Month Club Young Writers' Fellowship (1967)

Two fragments transcribed from a dream

1 comment: