Finding lost poems (Marvin Bell)

Some time ago -- maybe a year or two- -- I read a poem in a magazine. I'm sure it was in a magazine because I was reading a lot of poems in magazines. I was subscribing to the New Yorker and reading all the poems first. I also had a subscription to Poetry at the time.



After the subscriptions ran out, I remembered one of the poems and looked for it again. But couldn't find it. I couldn't remember the title or the author. But I knew it had to do with the All-girl Texas Drill Team. If that wasn't the title, at least it was a line in the poem. I looked through every single New Yorker and all the Poetry magazines I had stacked up. (It is almost impossible for me to throw away a New Yorker. That is the main reason I stopped my subscription. )



Every couple of months, I'd look through more magazines, and tried various poetry finders on the internet. Couldn't find it. Still couldn't remember the author. After a year or more of this, I resorted to Google --- and there it was. Or, at least the name of a book that contained it. It is by Marvin Bell -- and there's no Texas in the title, but it's called The All Girls Drill Team: Here's the poem:



Texas has nothing so abundant

as its chorus lilnes, it would appear

from attending intermissions

of all kinds.

Texas appears

in more stadiums, in more fieldhouses

than any other state, Alaska

appearing at this point to be too

wrapped up in itself.

Texas has more marching

girls than anything.

Texas has more drill

teams than anything.



I am not exactly against it.

Let the longhorny cow

boys watch the longhorny cow

girls, who, if they can

can-can, can

cater to us.

There is, as the stuck poet says, no description

for this vision, there is no believing

this distinct possibility:

a whole junior college at large

bending, waving and kicking their parts

according to such a score

as can be counted on.



Thus does Texas occasion

comparisons with one-sided states.

For Texas appears

to have steered itself into

a life-time of half-times,

and we love it.

what other state has within it

so much meat?

and turns to art?

Veritably, Texas

has everything

it brags about.



------ Marvin Bell





and not long after finding the poem again, a dear friend (who does not live in Texas either) sent a u-tube of :


Texas Tech: Star Spangled Banner by the Cactus Cuties. ---