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William Yarrow
I am professor emeritus of English at Joliet Junior College where I taught Creative Writing, Introduction to Film Study, and Introduction to Shakespeare from 1993 to 2022. I have taught classes in contemporary literature, world literature, British literature, the short story, composition, and developmental writing. I teach both online classes and classes in the classroom. I also train faculty to teach online. I am a published poet with five full-length collections and six chapbooks.
Phone: 224-406-0703
Phone: 224-406-0703
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Lecture capture. English 102. Joliet Junior College. April 1, 2008.
The epiphany in "Joyce's "Eveline" is mysterious. Why does Eveline refuse to go on the boat with her fiancée Frank? Through a close reading of the text, a more plausible explanation than what which is traditionally espoused by critics and lay readers is presented.
—Andre Breton, "Nadja"
Films:
"Eroticon" (1920) directed by Mauritz Stiller
"Alexandra" (1922) directed by Theo Frenkel
"Sensation Seekers" (1927), directed by Lois Weber
Deep Nostalgia animation of public-domain photograph of Andre Breton
Music:
"Prelude in C Sharp Minor" (Opus 3. No. 2) by Serge Rachmaninoff
archive.org/details/SergeiRachmaninoffPiano/08.Rachmaninoff-PreludeInC-sharpMinorOp.3No.21928.mp3
Presenter: Bill Yarrow
"After the Shark" first appeared in "Central Park, a Journal of the Arts and Social Theory" in 1982.It was named an "Outstanding Poem" in "Pushcart Prize VIII: Best of the Small Presses" (1984). It appears in Yarrow's full-length poetry collection "Pointed Sentences" (BlazeVOX 2012).
All images in public domain.
1911. Manaki. Zakop na mitropolitot Emilijanos od Grevena
1913. Perret. Sur la voie
1914. Caserini. Love Everlasting
1914. De Mille. The Virginian
1914. Oxilia. Sangue blu
1914. Pastrone. Cabiria
1914. Rodolfi. L'acqua miracolosa
1915. Bauer. Posle smerti
1915. Cabanne. Enoch Arden
1915. Holger-Madsen. John Redmond, the Evangelist
1915. Barker. The Italian
Music:
Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Opus 30
II. Intermezzo (Adagio)
https://archive.org/details/RACHMANINOFFPianoConcertoNo.3InDMinorHorowitz/02.+II.+Intermezzo+(Adagio).mp3
Anton Dvorak's Symphony No. 5, In E Minor, Op.95 ("From The New World"): Fourth Movement: Allegro Con Fuoco
https://archive.org/details/lp_dvoks-symphony-from-the-new-world_antonin-dvoak-arturo-toscanini-nbc-symphon_0/disc1/02.02.+Symphony+No.+5%2C+In+E+Minor%2C+Op.95+(%22From+The+New+World%22)%3A+Fourth+Movement%3A+Allegro+Con+Fuoco.mp3
Title from a line in "The Thief's Journal" by Jean Genet
Most readers recognize the narrator's epiphany in Joyce's "Araby" ("I lingered before her stall, though I knew my stay was useless, to make my interest in her wares seem the more real....Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.") but what triggers that recognition of the narrator's situation and that understanding of himself? Through a close reading of the text, this lecture explores the cause of the narrator's epiphany.
2010 to 2017.
Lecture capture. English 102. Joliet Junior College. April 1, 2008.
The epiphany in "Joyce's "Eveline" is mysterious. Why does Eveline refuse to go on the boat with her fiancée Frank? Through a close reading of the text, a more plausible explanation than what which is traditionally espoused by critics and lay readers is presented.
—Andre Breton, "Nadja"
Films:
"Eroticon" (1920) directed by Mauritz Stiller
"Alexandra" (1922) directed by Theo Frenkel
"Sensation Seekers" (1927), directed by Lois Weber
Deep Nostalgia animation of public-domain photograph of Andre Breton
Music:
"Prelude in C Sharp Minor" (Opus 3. No. 2) by Serge Rachmaninoff
archive.org/details/SergeiRachmaninoffPiano/08.Rachmaninoff-PreludeInC-sharpMinorOp.3No.21928.mp3
Presenter: Bill Yarrow
"After the Shark" first appeared in "Central Park, a Journal of the Arts and Social Theory" in 1982.It was named an "Outstanding Poem" in "Pushcart Prize VIII: Best of the Small Presses" (1984). It appears in Yarrow's full-length poetry collection "Pointed Sentences" (BlazeVOX 2012).
All images in public domain.
1911. Manaki. Zakop na mitropolitot Emilijanos od Grevena
1913. Perret. Sur la voie
1914. Caserini. Love Everlasting
1914. De Mille. The Virginian
1914. Oxilia. Sangue blu
1914. Pastrone. Cabiria
1914. Rodolfi. L'acqua miracolosa
1915. Bauer. Posle smerti
1915. Cabanne. Enoch Arden
1915. Holger-Madsen. John Redmond, the Evangelist
1915. Barker. The Italian
Music:
Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Opus 30
II. Intermezzo (Adagio)
https://archive.org/details/RACHMANINOFFPianoConcertoNo.3InDMinorHorowitz/02.+II.+Intermezzo+(Adagio).mp3
Anton Dvorak's Symphony No. 5, In E Minor, Op.95 ("From The New World"): Fourth Movement: Allegro Con Fuoco
https://archive.org/details/lp_dvoks-symphony-from-the-new-world_antonin-dvoak-arturo-toscanini-nbc-symphon_0/disc1/02.02.+Symphony+No.+5%2C+In+E+Minor%2C+Op.95+(%22From+The+New+World%22)%3A+Fourth+Movement%3A+Allegro+Con+Fuoco.mp3
Title from a line in "The Thief's Journal" by Jean Genet
Most readers recognize the narrator's epiphany in Joyce's "Araby" ("I lingered before her stall, though I knew my stay was useless, to make my interest in her wares seem the more real....Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.") but what triggers that recognition of the narrator's situation and that understanding of himself? Through a close reading of the text, this lecture explores the cause of the narrator's epiphany.
2010 to 2017.
from Boswell: Citizen of the World, Man of Letters, edited by Irma S. Lustig (University Press of Kentucky) 1995.
For example the opening poem "Eyes off the Road," begins "One by one I lost my desires/Dirty ambition left first/Knowledge raged but then it cooled." And after delving a tad more into those desires, it ends; "My desires. . .bolted to a / lapis slab, await me in Heaven/With any luck I'll go to Hell."
Popping up like dandelions throughout this collection, Yarrow's witty lines set me chuckling. I cracked up when the persona runs into a woman he "hadn't seen . . since Carter was President" with perfume that "returned--with a vengeance."
And he opens the poem, "Joan of Dark" with "What happens in heaven stays in heaven." Surreal and flip, Yarrow's style is a smooth ride through chaos and reminiscent of James Tate's, one of my poet heroes. Well worth reading."
—Lindsey Martin-Bowen, Goodreads.
"Fourteen poems, fourteen lines each. That's Bill Yarrow's compact chapbook, titled—wait for it—Fourteen. Available now as a free download (link below), Fourteen is a collection of brilliantly inventive poems that are sure to dazzle as well as entertain. Often blackly humorous, and often reading like mini-stories, these poetic tales of love, death, desire, and heaven and hell and all that falls between, are rich with wit n' wisdom n' aphorisms. Take for example these pithy observations:
'What happens in Heaven stays in Heaven.'
'He had a mind like a whorehouse martini, but that doesn't negate the leverage of a man's heart.'
'I've read about the algebra of need. Stevie's need was arithmetic.' (From "Stevie's Knees", about a gambler, in trouble with the mob.)
And in this excerpt from "George," a veteran, fresh back from Vietnam, visits a former boss who had been kind to him once:
'Kindness is magnetic but the past is a loose adhesive and rarely is employment a glue.'
Standouts in this collection are many, and they include 'Hitting The Wall'; 'Joan Of Dark'; 'Stevie's Knees'; 'George'; 'The Proud Accounting'; and 'Four Noble Lies' (an excerpt:)
'When Carlotta left me I cried into my soup. I shriveled into harsh mathematics. A decade later I was living with Karen. She had goldfish and good taste.'
And perhaps my very favorite, the flurry of unforgettable non-stop images that is 'Raw Salt.' To do it justice, I'd have to copy the entire poem here. Which would be easy; it's less than a hundred words. But, honestly? Just download this collection and have a look for yourself. It's easy, and it's free.
Fourteen can be downloaded (epub, pdf, Kindle) here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/421485
Again, this collection is a brief read, and free, so it's impossible to just say no to Fourteen. And it's a fine introduction to Yarrow's vast body of work (You won't catch me ever saying 'oeuvre'. Nope, you just won't). For links to Yarrow's many publications, interviews, and lectures, and to many dozens of his poems, please see his Fictionaut page here: http://fictionaut.com/users/bill-yarrow "
—Ray Nessly, Goodreads.
"Bill Yarrow is the best poet I know of, and I know of a lot of poets. He delights each and every time."
—Darryl Price, editor, Olentangy Review.
We all saw it coming
the peat moss racists
the neonatal Nazis
King Leer
Queen Get-rude
the bully trident planted
the ratcheting down of sense
I well remember watching the Daily Show as John Stewart gleefully mocked Trump’s announcement that he would run for president, and, of course, I relished the joke, just as I joined in when so many predicted that his candidacy would fall apart, or even better, lead to a Democratic landslide and maybe even control of both houses of Congress. We all saw it coming, but…
Yarrow’s poem twists away from the camouflage of “we” in the poem’s final lines:
We all saw it coming
I don’t mean we
I don’t mean we saw it coming
I mean I, I saw it coming
and did nothing
Many fine poems in this collection work in the language of grief and rage. Look at poems like “Behave Yourself” (he can’t) or “Go Unlovely Trump” (after Waller’s “Go, Lovely Rose’). In “Semi Tiresias,” a series of triplets describe portents of approaching debility or death:
I knew my mother would die by the weekend
when she declined to answer my questions
about her parents or her youth
I knew my uncle would die a pauper
when he grew obsessed
with drafting a will
The personal suddenly shifts to the political in the final section:
I knew America would be a colony again
when it forsook consensus
for impasse
What makes this piece so bitter is the personal prophecies are so inevitable, marking, as they do, the devouring power of time over the human body and mind, while the political prophecy describes a failure that is unmoored from natural processes of decay; they are self-inflicted and unnecessary. And that may be why I took such comfort in my favorite poem in the collection, a brilliant response to Ludovico Carracci’s painting “Body of Saint Sebastian Thrown into the Cloaca Maxima,” which is on the collection’s cover, and, in a different way, in the text. The poem, “Ways of Seeing: Carracci,” describes the saint asleep or unconscious, “about to be/thrown into the great sewer of Rome,” and that after having been transformed into a pincushion of Roman arrows. But the painting’s secret, and the poem’s, involves rotating the image:
then he becomes beautifully
vertical, his dreaming body
like a sleeping bird floating
in warm, soft air
Then the closed fists and flexed
forearms of the executioners
are seen impotently attempting
to hold him down but nothing
human can prevent his rise
We can hope that defeat and humiliation, the emergence of all we find dangerous and repugnant about American nativism, can be turned, transformed into and by a newly energized body politic."
--Steve Klepetar in "Galatea Resurrects"
http://galatearesurrects2017.blogspot.com/2017/03/we-all-saw-it-coming-by-bill-yarrow.html
--Larissa Shmailo
Authors: Herman Melville, T.S. Eliot, Walt Whitman, Christina Rossetti, Anne Bradstreet, Matthew Arnold, William Butler Yeats, Hart Crane, George Meredith, Algernon Charles Swinburne, William Blake
Directors: Harvey Berman, Edgar G. Ulmer, William Cameron Menzies, Herbert Wilcox, Dwain Esper, Marcel Varnel, Albert Band, Don Medford, John Cromwell, John Llewellyn Moxey, and Harry O. Hoyt.
"In Praise of Folly" by Erasmus
"Les Chants de Maldoror" by Comte de Lautreamont
"Harmonium" by Wallace Stevens
"My Heart Laid Bare" by Baudelaire
"Orlando Furioso" by Ariosto
"Emile" by Rousseau
"The Four Zoas" by Blake
"A Mechanical Operation of the Spirit" by Swift
"Jubilate Agno" by Smart
"The Etymologies" by Isidore of Seville
Images from film trailers found on The Internet Archive
2. Don’t Look Back
3. Circular Rubin
4. Once Upon a Time in L.A.
5. Wardrobe!
6. Family Portrait
7. In the Museum
8. In the Other Museum
9. Metropolitans Escaping the Forest
10. Cause for Alarm
A poem is a game.
Without rules, games are no fun.
The rules of a poem are its form.
Form can be inherited (sonnet, sestina, etc) or invented.
William Blake said, "I must invent my own system or be enslaved by another man's."
Poets like William Carlos Williams and Robert Frost often invent their own forms.
"The Red Wheelbarrow" has an arbitrary form, meaningless for the audience but useful for Williams in helping construct his poem.
"The Road Not Taken" has an intentional form (majority and minority rhymes in each stanza) which reinforces the meaning of the poem.
Reviews by Elizabeth Nichols, Philip Nikolayev, James Robison and Spencer Dew.
Blurbs by Toby Altman, Sarah Lippmann, Steven Shroeder, and Micha Lev.
Blurbs by Stephanie Dickinson, Pamela Miller, Ralph Hamilton, and James Reiss.
"Bill Yarrow continues to push the boundaries of modern poetry and the results are always astounding. He always delivers the literary goods with consummate bravery and a serious searching for beauty of form. A real treat for anyone who enjoys the company of a very alive and creative mind. Full of fun and exploration, his works resonate long after you've turned the page. One of the hardest-working poets in the business. Be thankful you've stumbled upon his new book.Your luck just took a remarkable turn for the better."
—Darryl Price, author of The Ferocious Silence, editor of Olentangy Review
Reviews by Spencer Dew, Richard L. Hanson, Darryl Price, Susan Tepper, Amazon customer review, Julie Demoff-Larson, Elizabeth Nichols, and James Reiss.
Blurbs by Bud Smith, John Goode, and Heather Fowler.
Blurbs for Incompetent Translations and Inept Haiku by Larissa Shamilo and Meg Tuite.
Blurbs for Pointed Sentences by Stephen-Paul Martin, Tony Barnstone, and James Robison.
"Not That Kind of Pain"
"Startle Reflex"
"Playing for Keeps"
"Blossoms and Buds"
"Black Ice on the Bridge"
"Florid Psychosis"
"Drinking an Orange Julius While Listening to Pink Floyd"
"Peterson park"
"Greyhound"
"Self Alaska"
Read by James Reiss and Michael Dickes
Music by Silent Partner
Video and Concept by Bill Yarrow
Courtesy of The Poetry Storehouse.
Video Footage: Beachfront B-Roll.
Music: "Slow Clouds" by Christopher Franke (You Tube).
Reading and video by Bill Yarrow.
11.5 minutes.
Music by Ray Fahrner.
Video by Bill Yarrow.
1. "Whiplash Marriage"
2. "Not Enough Sin to Go Around"
3. "Processes"
4. "Greyhound"
5. "A Journey of Seven Thousand Miles"
6. "The Solace of Olives"
7. "Here's Looking at Euclid"
8. "God's Vial"
9. "Florid Psychosis"
10. "Truman Compote"
11.5 minutes.
Music by Ray Fahrner.
Video by Bill Yarrow.
1. "Raymond Chandler and His Wife"
2. "Black Squirrel Poem"
3. "Peterson Park"
4. "Parabola Tango"
5. "Beach Scene"
6. "Ribs"
7. "Patriot Axe"