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    Home»Sedona News»Sedona Lit: Jon Thompson, Sedona Councilman and Poet
    Sedona News

    Sedona Lit:
    Jon Thompson, Sedona Councilman and Poet

    May 22, 20171 Comment
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    Sedona Lit is a series by Dr. Elizabeth Oakes, an award winning poet and former Shakespeare professor. A Sedonian of four years, she highlights the literature, written or performed, of Sedona, past and present.

    photo_elizabethoakes_216By Elizabeth Oakes
    (May 22, 2017)

    Jon Thompson is well-known as a member of the city council, where he wrestles with such thorny issues as tourists, traffic, and budgets. However, he’s also a poet, with a background in literature.

    In this installment of Sedona Lit, the first in a series about prominent people in Sedona who deserve to be known for their writing, Jon shares some of his poems and answers some questions.

    EO – What is your experience with literature? For example, were you an English major? Who are your favorite writers?

    JT – BA in English at California Lutheran in Thousand Oaks, CA. MA in English in the Creative Writing program (poetry) at Stanford as a Stegner Fellow (Donald Davie was my advisor). One year in the PhD program in English at Southern California on a teaching assistantship.

    My favorite writer is Shakespeare. I know, anybody can say that, and it doesn’t prove that I’ve read anything beyond high school assignments. But what am I going to do, lie? He’s the best, whoever he was. Milton, Dickinson, and Whitman are up there for me, too, but Shakespeare is the one I’d take on a desert island. Of modern writers, I’d probably have to say Updike and Roethke.

    20170522_oakes2EO – Have you written all along, or did you start recently?

    JT – I wanted to be a writer when I was in school and have always fantasized about writing and publishing a book of some kind. But I was happy with my career in technical writing management and devoted all my professional efforts in that direction. I thought I might take it up in retirement, but I’ve found that more serious avocations take up most of my time, and I’m OK with that. When I write now, it’s mostly for a little comic relief.

    EO – Why the limerick?

    JT – It requires focus on a single thought. It’s informal and humorous, sometimes marginally bawdy or absurd–the opposite of pretentious types of poetry. But it still allows for all kinds of acrobatics with the language. And I can compose one completely in my head–while driving, in the shower, trying to sleep, etc.–so it never seems like work. Also, a limerick is a pretty cheap but unique gift, so I tend to hand them out on birthdays and special occasions.

    [I don’t know what inspired this one:]
    “Is that what you’re wearing, you jerk?
    Said Louise to her late husband Kirk.
    Though his corpse remained mute
    In his green sharkskin suit,
    His lips had been stitched in a smirk.

    [Entered in the Arizona Republic Heat Limerick contest:]
    Barbara Quincy was no Phoenix prude:
    Every summer she’d grill her lunch nude.
    She’d just step on her porch,
    Then jump back, as the scorch
    Left her buns and her dogs Barbie-Q’d.

    [Sent to a friend on her 60th birthday:]
    Once a year Father Time takes his licks
    On the day your birthometer clicks.
    It’s a terrible blow
    If it ends with an “O”,
    But much worse if it starts with a “6”.

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    [Sent to a friend with an April birthday:]
    A birthday in springtime is awesome:
    You don’t age each year, you just blossom.
    Still, there’s cake you must chew—
    You should fake a smile, too—
    So while you have teeth, better floss ’em.

    EO – Could you expand on your ideas about rhyme?

    JT – Rhyme isn’t important per se, but sound is. So rhyme should always be a tool in a poet’s toolkit to consider based on the idea to be conveyed. And I think it’s an overlooked tool from the creative standpoint: coming up with a rhyme can lead the poet into metaphors or other connections that might not have occurred. Look at some of Paul Simon’s lyrics, for example. Anyway, as far as limericks are concerned, rhyme is essential. It’s the rhyming that provides the wit and that final punch.

    EO – Is there a certain time when you write? Do the limericks just come? Or do you write them in stages?

    JT – I’m an occasional poet. I will sit down and write one for an occasion. Or, occasionally, one just comes. For me, setting aside a specific time to write wouldn’t work.

    EO – What is the role of humor in poetry?

    JT – No special role. Poetry can be about any aspect of life, and life is sometimes funny or absurd. So we have funny and absurd poetry and a poetic form for it.

    EO – Anything else?

    JT – I do sometimes feel inspired to express something that isn’t funny or absurd. And every couple years or so I might push something out that shows my non-frivolous side and that I’m reasonably proud of, for instance, “Kissing Rocks.”

    20170511_oakes1These rocks were always kissing. Long before
    A billion suns and moons caressed their shoulders
    With rays and shadows, long before billions more
    Drops of rain and wisps of wind unclothed them;

    Even before the oceans came and went
    And steaming magma shook and shoved beneath them,
    They held their pose: one pressing slightly forward,
    The other softly yielding and receiving.

    And now we take our turn: we point and say,
    “Oh look, they’re kissing!” as if they mimicked us,
    As if we were the first to show devotion
    Or love eternally: as if these rocks
    Would care that humans raced beneath them, paused,
    Sensed something like forever, and then left.

    EO – Thank you, Jon, for sharing these poems and thoughts and for letting Sedona know this side of you!

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    1 Comment

    1. John Warren Oakes on May 23, 2017 7:46 am

      Glad I was able to read the poems of Jon Thompson our Sedona Councilman.


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    What Would I Change?
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    What would I change if I could? You and I both know I can’t, but it’s a fun exercise anyway. I would have been less of a know-it-all on my spiritual journey. It seems to be a side-effect of the path. Spiritual folks develop an all-knowing buffer to protect against their inevitable surrender to the unknown, but understanding that now didn’t make it gentler on me or those I loved, let alone those that I deemed not capable of getting it 😉 Yeah … I’d have dropped the spiritual snob act. I’d have recognized that spiritual radicals are only different on the outside from radical right Christians, and that the surface doesn’t really matter as much as I thought. We are all doing our couldn’t be otherwise things, playing our perfect roles. I’d have learned to bow down humbly before my fellow man, regardless of whether I agreed with him or not. We’re all in this together and not one of us will get out alive. Read more→
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