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Marquees of Buffalo shines the spotlight on the movies
Posted 7/31/2003
MADISON, Wis.-- Dennis Trudell invites readers to line up at the ticket
booth, buy some popcorn and grab a seat at the movies in Marquees of
Buffalo, the 26th Parallel Press poetry chapbook, published by the UW-Madison
Libraries. Trudell examines the silver screen through the eyes of a
young boy, a teenager on a date and an adult analyzing the past.
Trudell is a Buffalo, N.Y., native, and the city provides the backdrop for much of his poetry as he narrates his life through Hollywood’s tales. He recalls his parents leaving for a movie when he was a toddler and later reflects on his 87-year-old widowed father watching movies late at night. He remembers a bad date to the movies as a teenager and observes a lonely man in a video rental store who associates movies with the defining moments in his life.
Trudell is a retired English professor from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and currently lives in Madison with his wife. His numerous accolades include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Wisconsin Arts Board, as well as the Felix Pollak Prize for Fragments in Us: Recent & Earlier Poems, published by the University of Wisconsin Press.
Parallel Press releases six chapbooks per year, available at $10 per book or $50 for an annual subscription. For more information, visit: http://parallelpress.library.wisc.edu/chapbooks/poetry
Orders may be sent to:
The Parallel Press
372 Memorial Library
728 State Street
Madison, WI 53706
Phone: (608) 262-2600
E-mail: parallelpress@library.wisc.edu.
Here is a selection from “Marquees of Buffalo”:
It’s night, and the marquees
of movies in downtown Buffalo
sixty years ago are lighted.
My parents inhale the sight.
I am two years old, asleep
on a grandparents’ bed. My
brother moves inside my mother’s
womb. She wears her leopard
coat, and my father’s snap-brim
hat is as dark as his mustache.
As night above the marquees
of downtown Buffalo. Does
she take and place his hand
where the coat is not buttoned
while I turn in my sleep? …
Too late to ever ask her,
and my father might not
remember. So: Mother takes
his hand and places its palm
there upon her snug dress.
And they pause; and he nods,
and they smile. Words above
the glow on the pavement spell
titles of stories. In this one
it’s night, and the marquees
of movies in downtown Buffalo
sixty years ago are lighted.
My parents inhale the sight.
