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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Poet Laureate Marshall to read on South Hill

Dan Webster

Above: The South Hill Public Library is a comfortable place to read.

If you've never heard of Tod Marshall, now's your chance — both to hear of him and from him.

For the record, Marshall is the Poet Laureate of Washington State. He also is a professor of English at Gonzaga University. That's who he is. What he has to offer, besides a body of poetry, is a lecture on "Great Poems That Tell Tales," which he will deliver at 6 tonight at the South Hill Public Library.

Here is a sample of a Marshall poem titled "First World Concerns":

Parking. Carbon. Peak oil. Free Range. What gets hard
and with what frequency, whether to turn off cable
and just stream. The second world is populated by bad habits:
worry, impatience, fill in the blank. The third world
is the body, what is felt in the blood, vulnerable girl or boy.
The fourth world is what the squirrel, the sparrow,
the skunk might do: to squirrel, to sparrow, to spray
smelly scent all over offenders, the many offenders.
The fifth world is everyone’s search engine history,
that stale air. There is no sixth world, only the imperative
to gather six things and keep them safe. Really safe.
See if you can. See if you can hold them and still run
fast enough. See if you can leave the rest at the curb.
Have faith: a seventh worlder will arrive to haul it away.

Tonight's reading is free and open to the public.