Chatfield, Hale

United States, (1936-2000)

Porky Pig
from the series “Saturday Morning Cartoons”

  1. Porky Pig Porky Pig
  2. uggadeet uggadeet
  3. because it has almost a kind
  4. of beautiful hopelessness
  5. Porky Pig even because of its hopelessness
  6. uggadeet in the fuh fuh uggadeet
  7. even in the fuh fuh face of its absurdity
  8. Porky Pig we love this life
  9. Porky Pig uggadeet the language
  10. the language its elusiveness and its
  11. perpetual promise even because
  12. of its beautiful hopelessness Porky Pig
  13. even in its awkwardness it articulates
  14. well our condition uggadeet our fuh fuh
  15. our fuh our fuh Porky Pig
  16. uggadeet it articulates our fall
  17. uggadeet uggadeet
  18. our faltering with an odd
  19. and awkward gray
  20. uggadeet uggadeet
  21. akward grace

© Hale Chatfield. The Sotto Voce Massacres, North Star Press, 1990.

About the Poet

E. Hale Chatfield (1936-2000), United States, was an educator, poet, author and literary critic. Chatfield was Emeritus Professor of English at Hiram College, retiring in 1998 after 34 years of teaching and administration. At Hiram College, he was the founder and editor of the Hiram Poetry Review, an international poetry journal, first was published in 1967.

Chatfield was also the president of Chatfield Software, Inc., designers and distributors of computer software for education and he has also been a consultant to programs in experimental education.

Chatfield earned a bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University and a master’s degree from Rutgers University. He received a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts and a writing fellowship from the Ohio Arts Council. He was also the poet-in-residence at Yaddo, an artists’ community in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., in 1975 and he had more than twenty years of active participation in Ohio’s Poets in the Schools program.

Additional information:

http://poetryandprosepower.org/ – dedicated to the art of poetry as a tribute to Hale Chatfield’s life work and passion.

Hear Hale Chatfield read an echo-enhanced version of his “Porky Pig” – ppigecho.wav

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