Biography of a Name

Biography of a Name, a poem in free verse and prose, uses the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa as a vehicle (call it a Buick sedan with plenty of room in the trunk), to explore identity and loss in modern America. It visits Depression-era Detroit, New Jersey, football stadiums, assembly lines, jails, backyard swing sets, and gravel pits, and it listens as it drives on I-40 to country music strummed on three strands of slack barbed wire. At the end, the poem pulls up at a bar where humor and pain are drinking together, looking at their watches, waiting for the punchline.