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Joe Schoenmann’s story about Lt. Harry Fagel, the Metro Police poet, shatters the stereotype that poetry is written only by effete intellectuals who come out only after dark.
Indeed, I have edited war poetry from a Vietnam-era lieutenant colonel and hosted an Army reservist reading Iraq War poems.
Question: Was it the quirky juxtaposition of policeman and poet that caught Joe Downtown’s eye or the vital role that poetry may play in our lives? Also, you could have dumped a couple of Joe’s print paragraphs, and actually run a poem. After all, a poem is worth 1,000 words — wherein the poem becomes the man (in this case Fagel) and the man becomes the poem.
Finally, I enjoyed the story. So tell Fagel to keep his metaphors unholstered.
But, where possible, to use a simile, not a stick.
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