David Day FIVE MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT.pdf

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David Day
FIVE MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT
Editions Sur Ner
Library of
Krytyka Literacka
www.krytykaliteracka.blogspot.com
Copyright © 2017 by David Day
All right reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews,
no part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without
prior written permission from the publisher:
Editions Sur Ner
ul. Szkutnicza 1
93-469
Łódź
Poland
editionssurner@gmail.com
First edition, 2017
Set in Segoe UI
Layout and design by Tomasz Marek Sobieraj
Photograph © 2017 by Erik La Prade
Back cover: David Day, New York City, 2017
ISBN 978-83-928664-5-9
FOREWORD
David Day was born in Chicago in 1936. His Chicago roots extend back
two generations to his great grandparents. David and his family lived in
a barn, the remains of some farm buildings located on the South side
of Chicago. This area was known as the Chicago Stockyards, and it was
notorious for the unsafe and overcrowed conditions a vast number of
immigrants (approximately fifty thousand) worked under, slaughtering
cattle for the meat industry. The Chicago Stockyards were made famous
in Upton Sinclair’s novel,
The Jungle,
a book vividly depicting the brutal
conditions which existed in the stockyards.
When Day was a child, his mother encouraged his reading habit(s)
by giving him books by Mark Twain and Jack London. These books
exposed him to fascinating places, and ultimately encouraged him to
travel in search of adventures.
One of Day’s first and perhaps earliest travel adventures occurred
when he ran away from home at the age of twelve, embarking on
a long trip, inspired by Mark Twain’s
Tom Sawyer.
He took a bus to
Hannibal, MO., intending to visit Jackson’s Island, where Tom Sawyer
had also been. Unable to get a boat to take him across the river, Day
spent two nights sleeping in a row boat, before he was discovered
and sent back to his parents in Chicago.
I first met David Day at a weekly, Sunday poetry reading series in
a bookstore located in the West Village on Manhattan’s West Side.
David and other poets read their poetry, as well as the poetry of others.
Over a period of months, we became friends and had many
conversations about books. During one conversation, David told me
how he had been affected by two novels he had read as a teenager:
Studs Lonigan,
by James T. Farrell, which takes place on Chicago’s South
Side, and
The Man with the Golden Arm,
by Nelson Algren, which occurs
on Chicago’s North Side. He mentioned how “The Chicago that I knew
was in books.”
1
Yet, if Day has been influenced by some of his favorite poems and
poets, he has also absorbed that influence and kept his own voice
and style. As I read his poems, I am drawn back to his comment,
“the Chicago that I knew was in books.” Readers of Day’s poetry
encounter the reality and fantasy of his “Chicago,” but also, of other
places too. The theme of traveling is one of Day’s central metaphors
throughout a number of his poems.
For example, in
The Black Sky,
the image of a crow flying
through darkness, perhaps night, extends to the end of the poem.
The title of the poem suggests Armageddon, but the poet’s voice
expresses no fear;
In the last darkness
I will be a crow
Climbing in the black sky
Alone, and away from earth,
To an even darker place
That is beyond imagination
And understanding . . .
Movement denotes time and decay in Day’s poems but it is also
suggestive of a transformative, spiritual element, the mystery of things
in transition. The poem,
Transformation,
is a fine example of the natural
world in flux without human sentimentality;
If you go to Cold Mountain
You will not find me there.
If you see footprints in the snow
They will not be mine.
I have discarded my human guise
And flown away with the cranes
To cast my shadow on the moon.
But I plan to return in the Spring.
This time, perhaps as a butterfly—
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