When I was 12 or 13, I first encountered the work of this little-known poet in the pages of the New York Daily News. Every day a Leonard Andrews poem was hidden in the racing section. Was I the only person who noticed it? I’m not sure. But lately I began fixating on “Ponder This” – which was the title of each poem – and discovered (on Amazon, sadly) this collection.
This book has a burgundy red hard cover, and looks self-published, though in fact it’s a product of Grosset & Dunlap, A National General Company. (I’m quoting from the title page.) 1969 was the year of its birth.
It’s the nature of short poems that they slowly aggregate into a series. Basho recognized this when he composed The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Ponder This is a mystic epic, of sorts. Let me open it at random:
Have you seen those
who greet each new idea
with an open mouth?
Man learns
nothing
with his mouth open.
Reading such a poem, one’s mind immediately rebels. Maybe the opposite is true: man learns nothing with his mouth closed? Or woman learns nothing with her mouth open? Unconsciously, one begins writing an “answer poem.” I love the absolute sincerity, and certainty, of these daily pronouncements. (Each piece is in the form of a question followed by an answer.) Leonard Andrews was my first guru.