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July-August 2009 > John Harvard's Journal
Commencement 2009
"Days With the Family Realist"
A poem by Phi Beta Kappa poet Albert Goldbarth
Albert Goldbarth’s introductory remarks
Poem: “Voyage”
Poem: “Days With the Family Realist”
For complete coverage of the 2009 Phi Beta Kappa ceremony, see Harvard Magazine’s Commencement kick-off and “‘Habits are Values in Disguise’: The Phi Beta Kappa Exercises”
Keywords
A doorknob on a chicken
my grandmother said once, meaninguseless, stupid. Most of us,
most of the time, are thatexactly. Not that
we don’t have our ambitions,even our nickel-and-dime
nobilities. Still, some nightswhen I can’t sleep, I look
in the mirror, I study this manwho’s planning his own small
parthenons and relativity theories,bank heists, moon shots, deathless poems.
Go milk a fish she also said.
Text copyright Albert Goldbarth