After Noon by Don Riggs

After Noon

I eat lunch with a group of older men.
Some of them are older than me; others,
my own age, are older than most people
around us--"kids," we call them, teenagers
and twentysomethings, many of them born
this side of Y2K, whereas we have
lived most of our lives in the previous
century. Students don't know what I mean

when I refer to recent books written
back in the 1980s, and those from
the 'sixties and 'seventies, when the Now
Generation was in the ascendant,
have receded to the Middle Ages,
which I consider myself still part of.

Interview with Don Riggs

Don Riggs, the Poet-Laureate of this blog, was interviewed recently by News & Press from the Future Fire. Below is one of his recent sonnets posted to Facebook and set for the entire world to read.

Contemporary Realist Composition
(In the Right Now)

I've been getting up around 3 lately,
sometimes having gotten a word or phrase...
or concept for a poem in a dream
and sometimes not knowing whether I have
but writing anyway on my yellow
pad on the assumption that there may be
something I don't consciously remember
but if I start writing and don't wake up

too much it will inform my chance jotting
so coming to the same thing, but tonight
I haven't gone to bed yet and except
for nodding off over my reading, I
haven't slept but I thought I'd write something
anyway just to see whatever comes.