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Poem By Jim Dolot

Eyewear is very pleased to welcome American poet Jim Dolot this Friday - the last poet to be featured before the summer break. Dolot wanted a trimmed bio note and no photo, so here goes:

Dolot's poems have appeared intermittently on The Best American Poetry blog site since August 2008.

First Three Paragraphs of a Lower-Middle Class Novel Never To Be Written

There was a man who was so lower middle class that he had no name except Lower Middle Class. On his checks his middle initial was M. Friends called him Low, and some people, including professors, thought Lower M. Class a very prestigious, not to say upper middle class name. Live and learn.

Lower lived in a small one family house in Queens, New York, where his father, a not very successful and somewhat embittered accountant had brought them from the Bronx in the early 1950s.

Lower's best friend when he was growing up was Semi Conductor. Everyone laughed at Semi because he had only half a body - one leg, one arm, half a head - you get the idea - but nonetheless was often frantically exuberant as if conducting a symphony orchestra. It was only later, when arts funding cutbacks made it necessary to halve most orchestras that Semi became one of the most famous and sought after musicians in the world. But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

poem by Jim Dolot

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