Poetry Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry

CHIEF LEOPARD FROG had a right to be upset, all things considered.

In his effort to restore the poems to their original, pristine, pre-torn condition, Uncle Milton apparently also recovered a handful of catalog pages that got mixed in with the poems much as if you'd put all the words together into a poppy red KitchenAid twelve-speed blender.

For example, one of Chief Leopard Frog's thoughtful observations on the south wind pushing incessantly across the dry Kansas plain was merged with text from a Japanese soap manufacturer to create such phrases as "The softly swirling dry heat on which crisp grasshoppers take flight closes pores and raises mountainous thunderheads to burnish the flat landscape into a more resilient, more radiant, younger-looking you."

Another one somehow mixed the smoothness of a flat rock at the bottom of a Colorado stream with the outstanding fuel efficiency of the new Toyota Highlander.

My favorite, called "Death of a Harmless Varmint," described the unfortunate demise of a young prairie dog at the hands of the government in the context of a Cuban seed cigar wrapped in a green candela wrapper "just like the young shock-haired president enjoyed after the Cuban embargo."

But the real clincher was the page from the sex toy catalog that got merged with Chief Leopard Frog's sentimental remembrance of his late mother. This one he could not possibly forgive me for, not that I could blame him.

Indeed, the least offensive phrase, "Tickle her fancy until her fancy can't stand it anymore," was juxtaposed with a detailed description of the dry earth "hitting her coffin one shovelful at a time to make a sound like lamentations emitted by a buckskin drum."

Well, at least they'd gotten the title right. BURL HIVES, it said in big block letters on the cover. POEMS BY CHIEF LEOPARD FROG, SAC AND FOX TRIBE, PAISLEY, KANSAS.

But then Uncle Milton Swartzman, ever the salesman, had gone on to phony up a cover quote:

The world of poetry will never be the same
now that one daring Native American
has so boldly wrested control from
the insensitive white man.
—Carl Sandburg

Never mind that Carl Sandburg had been dead for years.

Chief Leopard Frog was not amused by Uncle Milton casting his work as an ongoing struggle with whites for Native American recognition.

And to think, I thought, this nightmare cost me three hundred dollars!

Here's an example of what I was going to have to deal with:

THE RAVEN CALLS
By Chief Leopard Frog

Pin feather, tail feather, wing feather, beak
The Tempur-Pedic Swedish Sleep System cant be beat
Down he hurls from pinnacle and peak
The Euro-Bed by Tempur-Pedic guarantees sleep
He calls the wild wind as he calls the slumbering me
The pressure-relieving comfort is extraordinary
Nevermore?
I disagree.
Forevermore is far more likely.
It's the latest in NASA-endorsed technology
Bird becoming human becoming spirit becoming god
Microfiber suede textile sample, free video
Indian blood.

Within a fortnight the post office at Paisley was overwhelmed. My mother, increasingly annoyed, missed Oprah three days in a row because of the need to sort mail for Chief Leopard Frog.

"Who is this guy, anyway?" she complained. "I thought I knew everybody within fifty miles of here."

"He's a transient," I explained. "Basically, a time transient. But I can get his stuff to him. Just give it to me."

"Dang," she muttered. "If I had known that raising kids would be like this. Time transients. Indian chiefs. Two hundred pounds of first-class mail. Lord love a duck! Where will it ever end?"

Of course, as should have been expected, The New Yorker declared Chief Leopard Frog's debut tome to be "brilliant beyond belief."

The New York Review of Books claimed in a five-thousand-word essay, "Here, at last, is the long-awaited amalgamation of the first America with the second. In a literary sense, Burl Hives is the authentic missing link."

Praise was pouring in from everywhere. Invitations to appear on television, at dinner, at receptions to receive awards and honorary degrees. Offers from other publishers throwing out astounding numbers. A letter from the wife of the former president of the United States.

What you've captured in a few simple words is so us, she wrote. I hope you are not offended when I say you are the Norman Rockwell of our age.

Cordially,

(Mrs.) Laura Bush

PS. What is your e-mail address?

And orders.

Hundreds and hundreds of orders for the book from all over the world.

As a poet, Chief Leopard Frog was off to the races!