ENTRIES:
Tom Russell: Zarzyski
Spur Award
3/5/2010
Troubadours
The Gathering
Hang-n-Rattle! Digi-pack
Promo Postcard
New Fans
No Forbidden Flowers
September 17, 2009
American Cowboy Review
Cowpoke Cosmos
KPFA Radio Show (exp. 4/01)
First 9 Weeks of 2009
Elko Daily article
Major Ink
Hang-n-Rattle!
Newsflash: 12/4/2008
Reno Gazette-Journal Review
Santa Fe Lensic Theater
Close Encounters—The Interview
Commencement
Putting the Bite into Cowboy Poetry
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© Paul Zarzyski. All rights reserved. These words may not be reprinted or reposted without the author's written permission.
Strolling out on stage to deliver poetry or song is child’s play compared to taking the podium in a high school gymnasium to deliver a commencement address. I’ve done it twice—in 1992 in rural Fort Benton, Montana and in 2004 on behalf of 18 Centerville High grads in yet a smaller community southeast of Great Falls. I pitched both ebullient philosophical barkings mostly from fragmented notes, from highlighted cue cards offering segues to poems and/or ad-libbed remarks I’d hoped would hold the students’ and their extended families’ interest through 20-30 minutes of, in retrospect, musings that likely tormented the listeners far less than the speaker, which is to say I sweated lead, hematite, mercury, the entire amalgam of heavy metals, as well as bile and blood, in creating a presentation that might’ve—just maybe—harbored a nano-scintilla of both cohesiveness and adhesiveness. The jury’s still out and perhaps will remain out my livelong day. Applause, I’ve learned, is oh-so-momentary, oh-so-fleeting. In any case, as the season of commencements approaches, I’ve decided to revisit—while resisting rewriting—my orations, formal and informal, to the 2004 Centerville High Grads. Although this was NOT an easy transcription, I’m boasting a purt-near 95% verbatim guesstimate.
HOPE
Thank you (Justin). Thank you graduates all. And congratulations to you, your families, friends, teachers, administrators, board members, janitors/custodians/cooks—everyone who attended in any way to the jeweled-watch smooth workings of Centerville High School throughout the past four years.
I accepted this honor, this incredible responsibility, to speak to you this afternoon because:
A) I claim to give a hoot about the future of this planet, and in The Book According to Zarzyski, Youth rhymes with Future.
B) We have strong connections:
1) I, too, spent my first 18 years in a tiny notorious mining town—Hurley, Wisconsin.
2)
Our school colors also were orange & black. Our logo was more notorious than yours, however. As a Centerville Miner, you’ll have it a lot easier than I’ve had it out in the world the past 35+ years since graduating (I know! I know! You’re surprised all to heck and thinking, He doesn’t even LOOK 35 years old!). Because to this day, complete strangers will saunter up to me—sporting a you-know-what-eatin’ grin—and quip, so, did you play football for the Hurley Midgets? Yep, we were the Mighty Midgets and I have the T-shirt to prove it.
If you don’t remember anything else I say to you today, remember my necktie (I guarantee you there is not another commencement speaker in the land sporting a snazzier/gaudier cravat than this!) and remember that if ever you catch yourself lamenting that you did not hail from a high school whose mascot was The Gladiator or The Yellowjacket or The Red Devil or The Pitbull or Wolverine, it could’ve been a LOT WORSE. At least you don’t have to go through life as a Hurley Midget—or for all those who demand political correctness, A Hurley Vertically-Challenged Person.
If any of you have ever read or heard me recite my poem—Monte Carlo Express: P.O. Box 258, 15.3 Miles Home—about driving back to the Augusta ranch I lived on for awhile, a week’s worth of mail stacked beside me on the seat of my 1971 Monte, you know that I subscribe to Esquire magazine. The reference in the poem goes something like this;
…Esquire, slicker than a hot plastic
sack of slimy grunion, slithers and slides
over, under, and between the seats
leaving its Stetson Cologne scent
like a madam’s tomcat mascot marking his turf
on two-for-one night
in a cowboy brothel….
As you can discern from this irreverent passage, I do not subscribe to ESQUIRE for the perfume ads or for the pictures of scantily-clad models, but rather for a single page titled What I’ve Learned. It offers excerpts/out-takes from interviews with successful people, not all recognizable celebs—oftentimes they feature scholars, scientists, doctors, activists, artists, inventors, chefs, you-name-it, many folks whom I’ve never heard of before. The latest June issue highlights gems of wisdom by the diva of country-western-folk-singer-songwriters, Emmylou Harris. I doubt Esquire will ever interview The-One-&-Only-Polish-Mafioso-Rodeo-Poet-of-Manchester, Montana (so far!), but if they did, perhaps a few of the following personal tenets or snippets of perspective would make the cut to the What I’ve Learned feature. The key word is Learned. Education is most certainly an integral component of every conscious, and subconscious, moment of your lives, and when I refer to education here, we ain’t talkin’ school, at least not school as you’ve known it the past dozen years.
