
George Wallace
George Wallace combines the energy of the Beat generation, the force of the Dadaists and the rhythm of the Griots.He tells a story with relentless imagination making memory real. A poem is like a dream where the truth makes up a lie. So George beguiles us with his mind that has escaped all prisons. -Grace Cavalieri
George Wallace is Writer in Residence at the Walt Whitman Birthplace (2011-present), first poet laureate of Suffolk County NY, and author of 28 chapbooks of poetry. An adjunct professor of English at Pace University in Manhattan and Westchester Community College, he is editor of Poetrybay, Poetryvlog, Walt‘s Corner, and co-editor of Great Weather For Media and Long Island Quarterly.
His lecture and reading schedule has brought him to many locations in the US and UK, including the Dylan Thomas Centre, Robert Burns Centre, Brantwood and Swarthmoor Hall; and in the US, at the Pollock-Krasner House, Gordon Parks Museum, Mabel Dodge Luhan House, John Steinbeck Center, Woody Guthrie Festival, Woodstock Poetry Festival, Lowell Celebrates Kerouac, The Detroit Labor Conference, Kenneth Patchen Festival, the Greek Permanent Mission to the UN and at the Lyric Recovery series at Carnegie Hall.
A graduate of Syracuse University where he studied poetry with WD Snodgrass and Donald Justice, Wallace obtained his MFA in 2008 at Pacific University, Oregon, working with Marvin Bell, David St John, Ellen Bass and Dorianne Laux.
DADDY
your daddy should’ve
jumped on, back in ‘43,
to save his buddies,
the snipers nest in
fallujah, i am the lost
platoon, the lost soldier
cowering in the bunk
room, i ran away, i am
the village of grasshuts
that got torched, and i
explode on contact,
at night I mean, in
your dream, I am a
wheatfield in flames,
a mortar in pleiku,
i am a busted tank
tread on the yalu, a
helicopter gunned
down in cambodian
rain, I explode and
explode, in the one
dream you cannot
shake, I mean, the
dream in your belly,
the wormhole in your
heart, I explode like
barbed wire and
butterflies, boom
baby boom, your
daddy, your grand-
daddy, you and
you and you, three
day beard, whiskey
on my breath, I'm
making it back,
making it back, i'm
marrying your mama,
driving you to school,
I'm making it back,
having you
THE POETRY OF EMPTINESS
MY FATHER'S FELT FEDORA
DEATHRAY KARAOKE
HIGHWAY 81
© George Wallace, all rights reserved