Wayfarers and their songs, hobos and tramps and the codes they either espouse or deny – all figure prominently in this debut book of poetry by Jared Randall. With both ears bent to the Depression-era stories told among his family about America’s hard-working, migrant past, the poet nevertheless walks the tumultuous road of the here and now. Ranging from blank verse to sonnets to rambling free-verse stanzas, Randall takes a fresh look at the space between memory and recollection – between childhood and adulthood, and between generations separated by a century of social change and forgetfulness. Out of these tensions a voice emerges: the voice of the migrant worker, the vagrant and hobo who speak through “the dust of years.” The hobo carries more than his bedroll across his shoulders, and when he breaks his silence a disjointed vision of an American past spills out in lines both extravagant and clipped, just as the life of the road offers both freedom and hardship. All the while, the old code of the hobo asserts a commentary not to be denied. The hobo’s perspective merges with that of the recollecting poet as they together trace the forgotten way home in whatever boxcar of language will take them a little further down the road.
Table of Contents:
Contents
Hobo Code
Road Code
Ulterior hobo,
roadways
and finding those side streets…
What a boy tells…
…his girl when he goes…
Truck Stop Monologue
Road Code
Thinking, road kids and their kit-fists,
playful engines…
Mortgage Broker Monologue
Monologue: Tourist Union #63
Road Code
Backseat driver,
dirt roads
storming the haylofts…
Loehr’s Landing Monologue
Podunk Lake
Road Code
Jungles
Junkyard View (hanover street)
Mini-School (woodlawn avenue)
Tree-Fort Shanty (nameless two-tracks)
A boy and his mother as seen by a hobo…
Road Code
Hobo in the house
remembering days, those
chicken-tree nights…
Old Hobo Begging
Road Code
Hobo Confessional
A chuckle…
…cut short –
Long Haul
Road Code
Hobo Circle
Future King Hobo
Tourist
Requisition
Packer
Winter Flop
Philosopher
Armchair Hobo in Retirement
A Good Thought for Jungles
Layover
Hobo at Heart
Penny Thoughts
Back in Town
Mama
Amnesia
Hobo Constellation
Road Code
Travelogue:
Searching for your driveway
in spring…
Travelogue:
Hartwick Pines…
Travelogue:
Silver Lake…
vacation…
Travelogue:
Panhandling words
beneath a tenement clothesline…
Travelogue:
Breakdown
Commute
in Reverse
Road Code
Met a lively
down a mouth,
by the river…
Road Code
Pete’s First Road
Monologue of the In-Between
Pete’s Last Layover
Road Code
M-37 and the Road North
Dialog with my outer hobo under a rainstorm…
Road Code
Travelogue:
Wallow
in the Straits
A Boy’s Journey Home
Selected Glossary
