O:JA&L Poetry: All forms & styles
Frederick Pollack
Bath Salts
With the money I made from my last
collection, I picked up on
a tip from Hölderlin: that philosophy is
a respectable spa or resort for weary poets.
We pamper the body as well as (if you’ll
excuse the expression) the mind:
unisex, intersex
hot tubs; authentic saunas
with birch-leaf whips, after which
one leaps in any season into snow,
urged on by our trained attendants: “You need to
get out more!” Then, wrapped
in sumptuous monogrammed terrycloth
robes you can take home, our ongoing
symposia: Delusions of
one’s family or the masses viewed
as an ethic. One’s own
rationalizations of failed poems systematically
considered (they may contain your best work!).
About the writer:
Frederick Pollack is the author of two book-length narrative poems: The Adventure and Happiness (both Story Line Press; the former reissued 2022 by Red Hen Press), and four collections of shorter poems: A Poverty of Words, (Prolific Press, 2015), Landscape With Mutant (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018), The Beautiful Losses (Better Than Starbucks Books, 2023), and The Liberator (Survision Books, 2024). Pollack has appeared in Poetry Salzburg Review, The Fish Anthology (Ireland), Magma (UK), Bateau, Fulcrum, Chiron Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, etc. Online, poems have appeared in Big Bridge, Hamilton Stone Review, BlazeVox, The New Hampshire Review, Mudlark, Rat’s Ass Review, Faircloth Review, Triggerfish, among others.
Image: Naked Girl with a Jug by Alexey Akindinov (1977-). Oil on canvas. 87 x 70 cm. Between 1996 & 2022. By free license.
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