Bard of Sherman Avenue’s poems raise money for Hospice

Feb. 18--For 14 years, the Bard of Sherman Avenue would send little rhymes to Dave Oliveria, who hosts The Spokesman-Review's Huckleberries Online blog. The Bard's identity was a secret to all but a few, including Oliveria and Spokane poet Tod Marshall.

Last year, however, Tom Wobker stepped forward to identify himself, making an appearance at Oliveria's annual Blogfest gathering. The timing was important. Wobker was terminally ill. Two months later, he died after a two-and-a-half-year battle with cancer.

"I asked his wife, Sharon, about what his writing meant to him," Marshall said in a recent email, "and she wrote back, 'Tom's writing was a great support for him. Revealing his identity at the end brought him to a place of acceptance and peace.' "

Of course, Wobker's poems live on. Marshall, a professor at Gonzaga University and the Washington poet laureate, has compiled a chapbook of Wobker's poems. The book debuted at Blogfest last weekend, and the first printing of 200 copies has already nearly sold out.

A second printing has been ordered. "The Bard of Sherman Avenue" sells for $10, Marshall will take the books around Washington with him on poet laureate business. They're also available at Auntie's Bookstore in Spokane and the Well Read Moose in Coeur d'Alene. All of the proceeds will be donated to Hospice of Spokane.

In an email interview, Marshall talks about sifting through hundreds of Wobker's poems to find just the right balance of whimsy and seriousness.

Q. Tom wrote hundreds of his little rhymes over the years. How difficult was it to whittle them down into those included in the collection?

A. Well, it was quite a challenge; Tom wrote around 800 poems; some of them are about politics; some of them are about the various ritualistic foibles of our region: complaining about raking leaves, shoveling snow, bad drivers in winter; some of them make fun of local personages. My helpers with this project, primarily Jeff Dodd (a colleague at Gonzaga), aimed to offer a range of the Bard's interests -- the challenge was that although there was some overlap in the poems, he wrote about lots of different things: geese, Hagadone, marijuana laws, and terrorism (to name a few of the subjects). I'm sure that we could make another run at Tom's oevre and come up with a completely different group of 200 poems. Here are a couple that seem especially appropriate for us in Spokane (and surrounding areas) right now:

To A Snow Pile In The Street (Feb. 25, 2009)

Oh great heap of grime

all gritty and gray,

shall I still see thee

Memorial Day?

Public Service Announcement (March 2015)

A little snow

upon the ground

can cause your car

to slide around,

so slow your speed

when snow has sprinkled

and stop your ride

from getting crinkled.

Q. Were there some you knew right away needed to be in the collection? What are some of those?

A. I have favorites, sure (I like the humorous ones a lot -- his series of pigeon poems usually give me a chuckle), but what I think is great about the collection is that different readers are going to find different parts of the Bard's work compelling; perhaps his political side will speak to some readers; other readers might be drawn to his comic portraits of our foibles. Since snow-fatigue is on my mind, here's one:

Snow Plows

When snow plows come to clear his street,

they leave the pavement clean and neat,

except for just one lonely heap

across his driveway three feet deep.

Q. He wasn't afraid of getting political, writing about soldiers killed in war, or TV hosts who become president. Did you seek to bring balance to the more political ones, or did you want to let Tom be Tom?

A. Well, we tried to choose a range of work, and the Bard's stance on neo-Nazis and Fallujah and the currently serving president -- are part of who he was -- a little bit Ogden Nash, a little bit gadfly, and a whole lot nice and insightful guy who always seemed to have something sassy to say -- but not in a nasty way because he knew that we could be better, that we could do better. I think that Tom's political poems and poems of social critique ring so true because they came from a truly generous and kind guy -- I was friends with him for about a decade, and so I got to know him a little bit, but since undertaking this project I've gotten to know more people who knew Tom going all the way back to his college days at the University of Kansas, and all of them are unreserved in praising what a genuinely wonderful person he was.

Q. Tom's poems are not complex. What about them, in your mind, make them interesting to read?

A. Well, he's working in very simple rhyming forms, and I think that's the key to the success of the poems. As with a compelling limerick, short-lined rhyming poems set up quick expectations of fulfillment of their patterns. For example, I've mentioned "The Apprentice" poem, and so we might as well share it -- note that the date is 2005:

The Apprentice

New York has many

a horse's rump,

biggest of all

is Donald Trump

Note how the expectation of closure, of the fulfillment of the rhyme has us anticipating the grin that comes when it arrives: the poems set up a pattern of expectation and fulfillment. Check out how it's different in this poem:

Jaws of the Anaconda (May 9, 2007)

They open to a width incredible

when he spies something vaguely edible;

I'd guess a hungry anaconda

might swallow whole a four-door Honda.

Here we know the pattern (first line rhymes with second, and so third will probably rhyme with fourth) and we know that when the poet puts that first word out there -- "incredible" -- and pulls off a rhyme for it -- "edible" -- that we can expect the same thing with "anaconda," which is, of course, a ridiculous rhyme word -- but he pulls it off -- anticipation, expectation, fulfillment. Tom also does fun things with defying expectation -- I had the good fortune of reading his prose during our friendship, and he also wrote compelling essays on his induction to serve in Vietnam, as well as his forays into historical writing. He was a skilled and wide-ranging writer, and in some ways the poems are just one small aspect of his talents.

Q. Do you have a favorite or two?

A. Well, one of my favorite ones ended up not being in the book, and so I'll share it here. As a sheepish and doting owner of a Yorkie-poo, this poem always makes me laugh, as does this second one that might help folks forget about snow for a bit and look forward to summer:

To A Chihuahua (Feb. 22, 2012)

You claim to be a dog? Oh, please.

You're pointless as a Pekinese.

Your bark is but the high-pitched squeak

that might come from a robin's beak.

Your wee small body's thin and frail

and weighs less than a real dog's tail.

Your tiny teeth won't bruise a mouse,

so how would you protect a house?

No Sunday paper could you fetch

nor any flying Frisbee catch,

and if perchance a cat you chase

you'll disappear without a trace.

No canine do you seem to me -- Did He who made the Lab make thee?

Hot Dogs

The hot dog's largely tripe and fat

with snouts and tails and such as that;

because of this some folks eschew them,

but I'm quite pleased to barbeque them.

___

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