St. Albans native David Hannan dropped by the Shelton College Review the other day to raise the academic level of our group. It’s a rising tide lifts all boats kind of thing. David is studying Creative Writing and Statistics at Marshall University and this summer will spend three weeks at the University of Oxford where he’ll delve into the works of Shakespeare. Also on his agenda while in England is a visit to the Eagle and Child pub (also known as the Bird and Baby, or simply, the Bird) where the Inklings literary discussion group would sometimes meet. The Inklings included C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, among others. Quite a summer ahead for the young Mr. Hannan. We’re grateful for his presence in our humble gathering of scribblers and ink-slingers.

His writing career is off to a good start. He’s already had a poem published in the Marshall literary magazine Et Cetera. He’s kindly agreed to allow me to post it here. Enjoy.

Plato’s Academy

Replace a toga
With holey blue Dickies overalls
Sandals
With sole-less Walmart moccasins
Olives
With jalapeño cheese Munchies
And the Greek amphitheater
With my grandfather’s garage

Amidst the aroma of spray paint
Stale Columbian coffee
And greasy Suzi’s biscuits
I absorbed the arguments of old men

From petty politics to polemics
Pontiacs to Buicks
Cosmology and Corvettes;
From Indian deities
To Oldsmobile leather seats,
Their words spilled amongst the oil on the floor

My grandfather, a man who could bend words
As well as fenders
Welded me into an academic

When his friends would trickle out
Like the last drops of coffee
Our dialectic would begin
Question and answer
Until one was silent

The man who never hugged my father,
Who recoiled from a touch
Reached out
And embraced me with his mind
To try and make me Aristotle.

copyright 2015, David Hannan