Park Hall Poesy

An Errant Red Hand Truck Achieves Immortality Through Poetry, Sort Of

originally published June 18, 2008

When Mike Hendrick, the longtime, soon-to-retire (again) Assistant Head of the UGA English department needed Park Hall’s red hand truck, he couldn’t find it. Naturally, he put out an alert on the Park Hall listserv. Probably, his use of the word “errant” triggered the response, started by Lisa Reeves’ reply, which led to a flood of poetic knockoffs. Flagpole could not resist reprinting this corpus of mock homage to a variety of well known poets and to the now immortal red hand truck. Can you name all the poems spoofed here? (Answers below.)

We’re looking for an errant red hand truck. 
Anybody borrowed it or seen it? Thanks.

—Mike

Re: Red Hand Truck Gone Missing

so much depends 
    upon 

    a red hand 
    truck 

    errant from Park 
    Hall 

    give it back 
    now

—Lisa Reeves

The Hand Truck Robber [Not Me] Makes His Amends

This Is Just to Say

    I have pinched
    the hand truck
    that I happened to run across in
    a convenient location

    and which
    you were probably
    saving
    for your own future toils

    Forgive me
    it was so “dependable”
    so red
    and so obviously up for grabs

—Carl Rapp

With Apologies to Bobby Burns

O my luve is like the red handtruck
That disappeared in June
O my luve is like a melodie
Sung sadly out of tune.

As lost art thou, my bonnie luve,
So deep deprived my heart;
And I will search for thee, my dear,
Thru’ a’ the halls of Park.

Thru’ a’ the halls of Park, my dear,
E’en thru’ the campus North,
I will seek thee still, my dear,
While the sands of life pour forth.
I lang for thee, my missing Truck,
I’ve langed for thee a while!
For I must bear my own burdens
As I trudge ten thousand mile.

—Elizabeth Kraft

After “The Wanderer”

Earlier today I went looking for the missing dolly in the Unassigned/Surplus Property warehouse over in the Chicopee complex, where it was once my wont to scrounge around. I didn’t find the hand-truck, but I did stumble upon a scrap of what seems to be an alternate version of part of the Old English poem “The Wanderer.” I don’t know how it got there—maybe it was among Bill Provost’s things, or even—going way back—Ed Stevenson’s. The scrap corresponds roughly to ll. 92-96 —the famous “ubi sunt” passage—and to ll. 108-110 of the received text of the poem from the Exeter Book. As I said, it’s only a fragment (and a defective one at that), but it works out to something like the translation I’ve offered below. Like the standard text, it records an unknown poet’s elegiac rumination on the transience of worldly goods; but this version seems uniquely to have some bearing on items that have disappeared—or are disappearing—from the precincts of Park Hall recently. Oh, I also appended notes to explain two rather obscure kennings that are very difficult to render accurately from Old to Modern English.

…Where has the hand-truck gone, where now the video cart?
Where now the fallen oak? Where the hall-joys of Park?
Alas, the handsome coffee urn; alas, the house-Carl;*
Alas, the mighty Hendrick!** All these are passing,
slipping into the shadows, … [line defective]

[missing text, approx. 12 lines]
…Here raises are fleeting, here release-time is fleeting,
here colleagues are fleeting, course-banking, too—fleeting.
All the perks and enhancements of life in (Park Hall
will one day grow dim… [ending fragmentary]

NOTES:

*“house-Carl” = “house-man” < OE hãscarl < ONor. húskarl, “king’s man, body-guard”; cf. ONor. hús, house + karl, “man.”] It could also be translated as “steward” or even “body-guard,” leading to the question “what’s REALLY in your violin-case?”

**“Hendrick” = “home-ruler” < Middle Low German < Old Germanic “Haimirich” (*haim, “home” [cf. NHG Heim, OE h~m, NE “home”] + rich = “ruler, powerful one” [cf. NHG Reich, Dut. Rijk, OE rice, Lat. rex, NE “rich.”])

Also, I might add that “coffee-urn” in the 3rd line parallels the phrase ‘beorht bune’, “bright cup(s)” in l. 94 of the standard text; my translation is a pure guess based on a reference perhaps to the coffee percolator that used to sit on the fancy side-board that was once in rm. 254. I have no idea what a “video cart” is—was there ever anything before the monitor projectors in our media rooms? I can’t remember. Sorry I can’t offer any more insight than this.

—Jonathan Evans

Hand-truck is the Thing with Wheels

“Hand-truck” is the thing with wheels
That perches in Park Hall
And moves the books and heavy things
And never stops at all.

And always in the halls is heard
And sad must be the day
When hand-truck disappeared, no word,
That helped in many ways.

I’ve heard it on the North quadrant
And in the library
Yet never, unless ransomed back,
May we again it see.

—Megan Stoner

In a Closet of Park Hall

The aggregation of these poems on the listserve;
Handtrucks on a long, steep climb.

—Valerie Morrison

The Passionate TA to his Hand Truck

Come live with me, and be my truck
And dangerous end-rhymes we’ll duck.
The rooms and closets, stairs and halls
Where painters paint the old block walls—

There we will lift and wheel a box.
What use are shepherds, what of flocks?
The email list will buzz and beep
With English teachers roused from sleep

Where all the night they’ve dreamed of chances
To make famed poems do silly dances,
When bulky tools and office supplies
Will not show up, won’t materialize.

A new paint job of the brightest red
Will be the heavy boxes’ bed,
Fair rubber tires for the floors
That seem to crack at the new wing’s doors.

And what else does a hand truck wear?
Why, labels saying to whom and where
To put the thing, and where to tuck
Park Hall’s beloved red hand truck.
A dozen emails for thy troubles
My strength to carry boxes doubles.
The gods on mountains high shall see
The love belongs to one dolly.

Now seven stanzas have I tried
No doubt most readers ere have died
Of boredom. Well, that’s just the luck
Of poems ‘bout a red hand truck.

—Nathan Patrick Gilmour

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Handtruck

I
Among twenty campus buildings,
The only moving thing
Was the wheel of the handtruck.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a closet
In which there are three handtrucks.

III
The handtruck wheeled in the winter winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a handtruck
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The handtruck’s squeaking wheels
Or just after.

VI
The ice storm sheathed Park Hall’s windows
With barbaric glass.
Inside, the shadow of the handtruck
Crossed doorways, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII
O thin women of Park,
Why do you imagine golden handtrucks?
Do you not see how the handtruck
Rolls around the feet
Of the men about you?

VIII
I hear noble voices
In the lucid, inescapable rhythms
of seminars;
But I know, too,
That the handtruck is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the handtruck rolled out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X
At the sight of handtrucks
Wheeling in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Georgia
In a glass coach, a red bus.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For handtrucks.

XII
The river is moving.
The handtruck must be wheeling.

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was raining
And it was going to rain.
The handtruck leaned
In the darkening room.

—Tom VanderVen

Handtruck Be Not Proud

Handtruck be not proud, though some have called thee
Elusive and lost, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost bring new woe,
Weep not, poore truck, nor yet canst thou fool me.
From the hall of Park, which once thou did grace,
Much pleasure, then from thee, so soon will flow,
As soon thine location we shall well know,
And joy will then transform the TA’s face.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, theft, and desperate men,
And doth in place yet unknown, obscure, dwell,
And though thou think’st thy loss makes us unwell,
And yet we tremble not; why swell’st thou then;
One short absence past, we rejoin again,
And worry vanquished; thou dost hide in vain.

—Erin Christian

The Handtruck

Handtruck Handtruck. ruddy bright,
Now forever out of sight:
What listserving hand or eye.
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or shed
Burns the fire of thy red?
On what wings dare we aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what steel,
Could twist the turnings of thy wheel?
And when thy wheel began to squeak,
What dread hand? And what dread feet?

What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace inhumane?
What the anvil? What well-read grasp
Dare its users’ readings clasp?

When our bards threw down their words
And water’d bandwidth with its dirge
Did we smile these works to see?
Did we who made thee lost make these?

Handtruck Handtruck. ruddy bright,
Now forever out of sight:
What listserving hand or eye.
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

—Nelson Hilton

L’Handtruck Rouge Sans Merci

Ah, what can ail thee, wretched Mike,
    Alone and palely loitering?
Old stuff is withering in the hall,
    And no wheels sing.

Ah, what can ail thee, wretched Mike,
    So haggard and so woe-begone?
The fall course offerings are full,
    And the schedule’s done.

I sense your query in the air
    With anguish sent through ether dew
And from thy lips a feverish plea
    Fast speedeth too.

I found a hand truck in Park Hall,
    Full beautiful, a faery’s cart:
Her red frame long, her foot plane firm,
    And her wheels all art.

I used her for my rolling steed,
    And nothing else saw all day long;
For sideways would she lean, and sing
    A faery’s song.

I placed old boxes on her frame,
    And garbage too, with fragrant bone;
She looked at me as we did roll
    With squeak and groan.

She took me through the grot of Park
    And there she squeaked and sighed full sore;
And there we gathered up old texts
    And handbooks four.

And there she lulléd me asleep,
    And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!
The craziest work dream ever dreamed
    Of any travail plied.

I saw pale profs, and TA’s too,
    Pale teachers, page-pale were they all;
Who cried—“L’Handtruck Rouge Sans Merci
    Hath thee in thrall!”

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
    With horrid warning gaping stark,
And I awoke and found me here,
    In the Hall of Park.

And this is why I sojourn here,
    Alone and palely loitering,
Though old stuff withers in the hall,
    And no wheels sing.

—Gay Griggs McCommons

Re: Re: Red Hand Truck Gone Missing

so much depends
    upon

    a red hand
    truck

    glazed with Park
    Hall dust

    inside the dark
    closet

—Stephen Corey

Answers:

Lisa Reeves, Re: "Red Hand Truck Gone Missing," After William Carlos Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Wheelbarrow

Elizabeth Kraft, "With Apologies to Bobby Burns," After Robert Burns, “A Red, Red Rose,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Red%2C_Red_Rose

Carl Rapp, "The Hand Truck Robber [Not Me] Makes His Amends," After William Carlos Williams, “This Is Just to Say,” http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15535

Jonathan Evans, After “The Wanderer,” http://www.anglo-saxons.net/hwaet/?do=get&type=text&id=Wdr

Megan Stoner, "Hand-truck is the Thing with Wheels," after Emily Dickinson, “Hope Is the Thing with Feathers,” http://www.bartleby.com/113/1032.html

Valerie Morrison, "In a Closet of Park Hall, "after Ezra Pound, “Faces in the Metro,” http://www.bartleby.com/104/106.html

Nathan Patrick Gilmour, "The Passionate TA to his Hand Truck," after Christopher Marlowe, "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love," http://www.bartleby.com/106/5.html

Tom VanderVen, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Handtruck," after Wallace Stevens, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15746

Erin Christian, "Handtruck Be Not Proud," after John Donne, "Holy Sonnet 10," http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/658.html

Nelson Hilton, "The Handtruck," after William Blake, “The Tyger,” http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/198.html

Gay Griggs McCommons, "L'Handtruck Rouge Sans Merci," after John Keats, "La Belle Dame Sans Merci,"

Stephen Corey, "Re: Errant Red Hand Truck," after William Carlos Williams, "The Red Wheelbarrow," http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19883