'Script <em>Ohio</em>' by Elizabeth Spires

Poems

May 2006

'Script Ohio'

by Elizabeth Spires

A new poem.

Burke

was right!

Support The
New Criterion

—The film an old one, whirring the way memory whirs,
our rotund band director, Mr. Kerns, playing it week
after week as falling leaves signalled another football season,
the slanting autumnal light in the band room darkening
as the Buckeyes, led by a strutting drum major,
finished their famous halftime show with "Script Ohio,"
forming themselves into a snaking line without a break
that slowly spelled, as if a careful hand were writing it out,
an O, H, I, then O again, as we watched rapt,
knowing the outcome would always be Ohio,
wondering what it would be like to be the one
apart, nameless but glorified: the tiny tuba man who,
at the last moment, runs fast as he can out into
the center of the field to dot the "i" in Ohio.

Elizabeth Spires

Events

November 09 2009

YOUNG FRIENDS: Tour of an important contemporary art collection

more details

November 24 2009

OPEN EVENT: Laura Jacobs reading

more details

December 02 2009

Friends Event: The Swallow Anthology Reading

more details

Webcasts

New Criterion-Social Affairs Unit Conference: Part 4
"The Criminalization of Making Money" by Lionel Shriver, Recorded 9/25/09

New Criterion-Social Affairs Unit Conference: Part 3
"The State and the Threat to Democracy" by Jeremy Black and "The Paradox of the Intellectual and the Future of Capitalism" by Tim Congdon, Recorded on 9/25/2009

New Criterion-Social Affairs Unit Conference: Part 2
"Nice 'N' Easy: The Age of Micro Tyranny" by Mark Steyn, Recorded on 9/25/2009

Weblog

The death of attention

by Michael Weiss

Nov 07, 2009 02:26 PM

God Bless

by James Bowman

Nov 05, 2009 06:05 PM

The New Criterion

Poems

Events

Webcasts

RSS feeds