Vanishing Point

by William Trowbridge

Overview

Vanishing Point concerns memory, cognition, history, and morality, as experienced through the process of aging and as seen largely through a seriocomic lens. The range is wide, from arrestingly dark to downright hilarious—sometimes both at once—and all stages in-between. The poet Jim Daniels has said about this book, “With profound wit and humility, with a purity and clarity of language that defines our best poetry, [Trowbridge] takes us on a wild ride and gives us our money’s worth.” The last section contains poems from Trowbridge’s graphic chapbook Oldguy: Superhero, with several new poems added to that series.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781597093651
Publisher:	Red Hen Press
Publication date:	04/20/2017
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

William Trowbridge is the author of six full poetry collections and four chapbooks, including the poetry comic book Oldguy (Red Hen Press, 2016). His new collection is Vanishing Point (Red Hen Press, 2017). His awards include an Academy of American Poets Prize, a Pushcart Prize, a Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference scholarship, a Camber Press Poetry Chapbook Award, and fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Ragdale, Yaddo, and The Anderson Center. The former Poet Laureate of Missouri (2012–2016), he teaches in the University of Nebraska Low-residency MFA in Writing Program and lives in the Kansas City area.

Read an Excerpt

OLDGUY: SUPERHERO

feels like a young guy in a bad costume.
The arms and legs sag, and the waist’s too tight. Where there should be a large S,
golden star, or lightning bolt, there’s what looks like a zero, and on his trunks, Depends.

The boots look more like flannel slippers.
Some lout’s made off with his super-hearing and X-ray vision, leaving only an Ampli Ear and Coke-bottle lenses. Like certain sheep,
he doesn’t fly so much as plummet. He hasn’t

smashed through a good wall or door since before he can remember, which is a little after breakfast. Speeding bullets and tall buildings must now be turtles and molehills. He has no fear

of an erection lasting more than four hours,
but he’s depressed and often flatulent.
His best tactic, the long wait, accounts for the demise of many a foe, that or rambling on and on and on and on,

which can paralyze from as far as ten feet.
He’s not handsome like Clark Kent or rich like Bruce Wayne, but in the prolonged run he can be a deadly opponent, if he doesn’t mix you up with someone else.

Table of Contents

I

Tilt-A-Whirl 17

Welcome Home 18

Firing the M-1 Garand 19

Battleground 20

'49 Buick 22

Haunted 24

The Alley Kids 25

The Tooth Fairy 26

The Cloakroom 27

Keychain Peep Show 28

Chain-Link Fence 30

Reserve Squad 31

Bob Steele 32

Meadowlark 34

Preface to Unlyrical Ballads 36

Please, Not That Again 38

Peony Park, Omaha 40

Invasion 42

Hair 45

Spoilage 46

Rainbow Lanes 48

I'm Rubber, You're Glue 50

The Harvard Classics 52

II

Vanishing Point 55

It's Good to Be King 56

Where Da Ya Think Yer Goin' 58

Moloch Tells All 60

Ricochet 62

Prizewinner 64

Smile 66

Gold Diggers of 1933 68

Hier Gibt es Blaubeeren 70

Good-Bye, Angel of Death 71

Send 25 Cents, Plus 5 Boxtops 72

Down at the End of Lonely Street 74

Whiteout 75

In Memoriam: Spike Jones 76

The Shooter's Bible 78

Elephant 79

Mowing 80

Serendipity 82

On the Road Again 84

Caution: 86

Elisha Cook, Jr. 88

The Hereford Wheel 89

III

Long Distance to My Old Coach 93

Looking Good 94

Peek-A-Boo 95

Elegy 96

After Surprising Conversions 97

Back to Work 98

Winter in the Mall 100

To the Cialis Lovers 101

Old Fools 102

Worse Than Useless 104

Fast Forward 106

Falling 107

Ya Know? 108

MiraLAX® 109

You and Your Shadow 110

Last Words 112

What a Drag It Is Getting Old 114

Sticky Notes 115

IV

Oldguy: Superhero 119

Oldguy: Superhero, Counrerterrorist 120

Oldguy: Superhero, Top Eliminator 121

Oldguy: Superhero on Watch 122

Oldguy: Superhero-His Utility Belt 124

Oldguy: Superhero, Homie 126

Oldguy: Superhero vs. His Nemesis 128

Oldguy: Superhero Broods on Unwanted Hair 130

Oldguy: Superhero, Steady Hand 131

Oldguy: Superhero Undercover 132

Oldguy: Superhero-His Origin 134

Oldguy: Superhero, Associate 135

Oldguy: Superhero Attends the Associated Superheroes Conference 136

McOldguy: Superhero 138

Oldguy: Superhero Discovers His Brother 139

Editorial Reviews

William Trowbridge has built a very impressive body of work over the years, and Vanishing Point further establishes him as one of the important voices in American poetry today. With profound wit and humility, with a purity and clarity of language that defines our best poetry, he takes us on a wild ride and gives us our money’s worth.” —Jim Daniels, author of Birth Marks and Show and Tell

“Distinguished poet William Trowbridge is one of a kind. He thinks far outside the box. His poems probe deeply while entertaining. He will sometimes tread where no one has trod before. He can do scathing sarcasm, poetic pratfalls, and slang. He can also do beautiful. Poems that take on the laughs and disasters of aging are often unexpectedly poignant, and in them, reality is realistic. Younger readers are forewarned. Older ones must nod their heads in agreement. Vanishing Point is a wake-up call. Reading it, we are no longer sleepwalking through our lives. Trowbridge is a fire alarm without the screeching siren. It is not too much to say his poems save us.” —Kelly Cherry, author of Twelve Women in a Country Called America

“William Trowbridge has long been one of my favorite poets writing in America. His new book Vanishing Point shows me again just how much I have hoped to learn from him. The poems are concise, wry, drolly absurd at times, at other times cheerily self-deprecating (as in the equally delightful and thoughtful “Old Guy” sequence). But the enormous lyric heart beating in this book never wavers, and the portrait of a father home from war is deeply moving, truthful, and occasionally hair-raising. Trowbridge’s poems have a sneaky ease about them, something that only comes with a long and careful mastery of craft. This is a terrific book. You should buy it.” —Erin Belieu, author of Black Box

“On one level, the poems in William Trowbridge’s Vanishing Point map a life, through memory, of a keenly observant narrator—a narrator who recalls the complexities of a childhood lived among the wreckage of post-WWII America and an adulthood in the eddies and revolutions that followed (concluding with a wild sequence about the superheroic Oldguy). But Trowbridge’s work goes much deeper than personal memory or fantastical inventiveness. Here, enormous historical forces are always at work in the background, the specters of violence and history—familial, military, social, genocidal—haunting these deft poems. Complex and despairing, sharp and satiric, Vanishing Point is a deeply moving book, one I’ll return to with great pleasure.” —Kevin Prufer, author of In a Beautiful Country

From the Publisher