Philip Tabakow
CONTACT:
Email: ptabakow@gmail.com
BIO:
Phil Tabakow received a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from the University of Denver in 1991 and has taught at universities in Colorado, Virginia, Massachusetts, Bahrain, Oman, and Dubai. He is the author of a book of poems entitled The Mechanics of Submission (DC Books, Montreal 2004) and has published individual poems in many journals and magazines, including Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review, Interim, North American Review, and Poetry East. His poem “Walt Whitman at Pfaff's' was chosen for the anthology Visiting Walt: Poems Inspired by the Life and work of Walt Whitman published by the University of Iowa Press. He is currently living in the Milwaukee area with his wife (who is also a creative writer) and their two cats and working on new poetry manuscripts. In spring 2020, he will be teaching a creative writing class at the Milwaukee North Shore Library.
PUBLICATIONS:
The Mechanics of Submission (DC Books, Montreal 2004)
Poetry
What Remains
Remember the poem at the center of the rose,
center of the heart, the place love goes to
deep in the trellis near the driveway,
near the shutters, near the peeling paint
above and beside the cracked door.
This is not a mantra. This is not a prayer.
This is a simple statement of fact
about the wilderness that remains,
that surrounds the core of what was
sometimes joy and clasped hands.
Lost Poems
Arrived at by little circuitous turns
like lost lives, they circumvent themselves—
light entering a saloon at three in the afternoon.
Tipping from their bar stools, they slide from view
and enter the realm of dead souls.
Gogol loved them dearly and so did Dante.
Others never noticed and would not have cared.
In Kansas and Nebraska, they are seldom mourned.
Better to drop them into Botany Bay
or ship them through the Straits of Hormuz.
As long as they’re kept out of sight
and do not offend the sensibilities of saints or sinners,
they may exist in the realm of possibilities—
places we’ve all heard of but never want to visit.