Monday, June 24, 2013

A poem for RZ

My friend Rob Zseleczky figured out his pantheons and stuck to them. Duane Allman, Mike Bloomfield, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, B. B. King. Geoffrey Chaucer, Robert Frost, John Keats, John Milton, William Shakespeare, Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Butler Yeats. I may have left someone out, but I don’t think so.

On June 13 Rob sent an e-mail with a sampling of Yeats poems to mark the poet’s birthday. So our last e-mails were about Yeats, his genius and his self-regard, both of which we both acknowledged. Rob loved Yeats more than I do, or at least with greater fidelity than I can muster. Yeats’s “The Song of Wandering Aengus” seems very Zseleczkyesque to me right now. I post the poem in memory of my friend, angler and poet.

Rob Zseleczky (1957–2013)

comments: 2

Jim and Lu K said...

Yes, that poem is Zseleczkyesque (and that's a lot of consonants...reminds me of one of Rob's favorite school recollections: a teacher coming upon his name consonant-laden last name at the end of the classroom roll call hesitates and says, "This next name looks like a disease!" Rob got a good belly-laugh whenever he recalled that story. I hear his laugh even now...)

Michael Leddy said...

I hear it too. His voice too.