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    Sans Fin
    Sans Fin
    Sans Fin
    Ebook74 pages17 minutes

    Sans Fin

    By John Moncure Wetterau

    ()

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    About this ebook

    This is the third full length collection by one of the best contemporary American poets. The first poems were written in Panama; most of the book is set in Maine on Peaks Island. People get to know each other on a small island. The poems are intimate and vivid, conveying between the lines a positive and healing acceptance of reality.
    "Sans Fin" (without end, forever) is titled in honor of Alberto Giacometti and "Paris Sans Fin," lithographs of Paris scenes that Giacometti produced during 1957-62. The author says, "I work similarly, from the outside in, finding in the act of description, celebration and an opening without end."

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJohn Moncure Wetterau
    Release dateJan 24, 2013
    ISBN9781301924899
    Sans Fin
    Author

    John Moncure Wetterau

    Born in Greenwich Village, New York City, but raised, mostly, by my grandparents in Woodstock, a small town in the Catskill mountains. Midway through sophomore year at Hamilton College, an inner voice said, "Get out!" It seemed crazy, but I knew it was the right thing to do. A fraternity brother told me I'd have no trouble finding work on the shrimp boats in Key West. A friend and I hitchhiked south. Near the New Jersey line we got a ride with another young guy, Pete. "Where you headed?" "Florida." "Me, too." He told us that he'd gotten up before dawn in a small Vermont town, thrown clothes and a baseball glove in the trunk, left a note on his girlfriend's porch, and taken off. We rocked on down the coast, listening to Brenda Lee, getting warmer each day. I left my friends near Miami and went on to Key West. When I got there, I walked to the harbor and asked for a job on the first boat I found that had anyone on board. The captain said, "Shrimp season's over, kid." I think he felt sorry for me. He pointed to a rusty shrimper across the water. "He might take you." I picked up my bag and ran around to the other jetty, arriving just as the boat began to pull away. A man on deck was doing something with a cable. He wore a sweatshirt and had a two-day growth. "I'm looking for work," I shouted over the engine. "You a winch man?" The winch occupied a large part of the deck, a complicated assembly of giant gears and levers. The strip of water below my feet widened. It was jump or forget it. I had a vision of winching the boat upside down in the Gulf. I shook my head and walked to the Southern Cross Hotel, a wooden building with white peeling paint and a sign declaring, The Southernmost Hotel in the United States. I wrote it down in a notebook and have been writing ever since. Along the way I served in the Air Force, earned a degree in computer science from the University of Hawaii, married twice, and raised children. The adventures, the loves and betrayals, the teachers, the lessons---they are in my stories and poems, where, like all writers, I have tried to make of my deeper bio something worthwhile.

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      Book preview

      Sans Fin - John Moncure Wetterau

      In a Hotel in Perajil

      Slide your money

      under a plastic shield

      for the key to Suite 1,

      Aqua Velva blue light,

      for full-on white,

      or two strobes flashing

      near the bathroom door—no dark.

      Red neon BAR in the window.

      Shouts, engines, horns blasting,

      disco thumping.

      Alone. Tired.

      Lie down.

      And be quietly overcome

      by grace—

      understood, approved,

      a part of all.

      You only need

      a handful of these moments

      to get through life.

      Panama City

      For Andrew

      At an intersection

      in Panama City,

      a young man

      plucks a red apple ball

      that slides slowly

      down his arm. He

      bends and turns,

      saving it from falling,

      offers it

      to waiting traffic.

      In Boquete,

      by the plaza,

      rows of earrings:

      eloquent

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