PrefaceIn the fall of 2011, I discovered something in my mom’s apartment inConshohocken I didn’t know I still had— my high school yearbook. As it hadn’t in 1994, itcompelled me with emotions which ran the gamut, from curiosity to nostalgic tenderness todespair and bereavement. By 2011, I was only in touch with a handful of my graduatingclass, and those only online. There were some others I would sometimes see around CenterCity Philadelphia. The general sense I got was that by late 2011, the Cheltenham HighSchool class of ’94 was not doing well. All of us were at the mercy of a harsh economy;those who never had a strong life purpose to begin with were tempted to self-destructabsolutely. For the first time in seventeen years, I was on the same page with my fellowCheltenham graduates— in the spring of ’11, Temple had done a purge in the Englishdepartment, and I (along with most of the other adjuncts) was toast. My writing was asuccess, but it didn’t pay much. I got familiar with unemployment compensation and waitingin long academic lines.When I looked at the ’94 yearbook, I noticed certain things which had escaped myattention then— like that I was edited out of most of it. Other seniors at image-consciousCheltenham joined as many clubs and organizations as possible senior year so as to take upmore yearbook space— I went the other way senior year, and offed myself. I hatedCheltenham, and was the James Dean of my class. I was also the best musician, and by thetime I graduated my music (including songs I was already writing) had granted me a certainamount of prestige, both to my class and to the classes below ours. But the yearbookphotographers avoided my poisonous rebelliousness like the plague. I was a yearbook ghost.Because I received the yearbook without reading it in ’94, by ’11 I was bemused to haveplayed hookie from my own immolation. I also noticed that the superlatives page, nevermore than gauche in any yearbook, was so comically wrong in relation to how things turnedout that seeing the attributions was like watching a particularly gruesome snuff flick or“Faces of Death.” That was my feeling about Cheltenham— a conformist’s paradise full oftiny, tidy dumpling idiots who invariably made an attempt to invert things from how theywere to how they (and their parents) wanted them to be.As I looked at my classmates, memories came rushing back of incidents andrelationships I’d forgotten. What looked dark then looked even darker in ’11. Onerelationship I had in high school seemed particularly significant to me in ’11— a buddy I hadnamed Chris, who was especially close to me senior year. Chris was a mysterious person witha fluctuating identity— he waffled between sports and music, between “jock” and artisticmentalities, without committing either way. There was a tremendous darkness in him abouthis family— an unavailable father (who settled with a new wife several states away), a hostilemother, and a brother he couldn’t get close to. Chris expressed his rebelliousness in amanner more aggressive than I did— he stole, egged houses, drove in a heedless way, andstalked girls. By 2011, he was still leaving nasty comments on my Facebook posts. I had noidea how (or if) he was supporting himself. The important thing to me as an artist is that hewas still waffling— he had never found a strong life’s purpose. Only anger and destructivebehavior made him feel alive. As the first poem in “Cheltenham” runs, he could onlyconnect nothing with nothing. When we were young, I mistook Chris’s rage for a kind oftruthfulness. By 2011, all it looked like was a prop to make him seem human to himself.The characters in the “Cheltenham” poems are all like that— they’re all trying toseem human to themselves. They’re rebelling against the inhumanity of the American
suburbs, which is profound. The American suburbs make blandness a monster, andhomogeneity a God— Cheltenham is no exception. The first third of this book are poemsfirmly and directly centered on Cheltenham as a locale; the other two-thirds mine similar turfin a more generalized way. The common denominator, for better or for worse, is darkness.It’s easy to wonder how many Americans in 2011 could page through their high schoolyearbooks and feel anything but a pervasive sense of darkness; and it amazed me that, by ’11,Cheltenham could be taken for an Everyplace in America.Adam Fieled, 2013
- Page 1: Cheltenhamby Adam Fieled
- Page 5 and 6: #261Never one to cut corners about
- Page 7 and 8: #414And out of this nexus, O sacred
- Page 9 and 10: #671Even as a little girl, she got
- Page 11 and 12: #415There’s something sweet and s
- Page 13 and 14: #213You and your proud working-clas
- Page 15 and 16: #216You can force your pen into a c
- Page 17 and 18: #160Your skin hangs around you like
- Page 19 and 20: #268Satin blouses, trinkets (some k
- Page 21 and 22: #417He was always in one of those m
- Page 23 and 24: #420I.The Junior Prom deposited me
- Page 25 and 26: #524When he drives around Elkins Pa
- Page 27 and 28: #215“The girl in the black dress
- Page 29 and 30: #429It’s Friday night, and she’
- Page 31 and 32: #1632The guy with the hedge-clipper
- Page 33 and 34: #1672Poets are boringpeople, she sa
- Page 35 and 36: #1163In the dream I lied, I saidI w
- Page 37 and 38: #1566Your voice came through her (I
- Page 39 and 40: #1059Bandaged head, nine staves, I
- Page 41 and 42: #1113Her money, she repeats to hers
- Page 43 and 44: #1503This I tell you—you can live
- Page 45 and 46: #554Your game; every moved piece mo
- Page 47 and 48: #563red dress, itsthat, that, pink,
- Page 49 and 50: #544I’m learningthat the tasteof
- Page 51 and 52: #1489campus: she’s in anelevator,
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#1131She goes to a lake, thinks of
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#1246God is an amusement park(among
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#1200She asked me how I did it,I tu
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So much richness reduced to a book
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#1570To wake in darknesswith a voic
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#281A small unframed paintingof a m
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#112It’s company of flesh and blo
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#271“Never forget: Cleopatra had
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#148Everyone knows she has about tw
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#151Last time they met, she keptspi
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#193Why, as I climb Old York Road,t
- Page 75:
#158A piece of road kill on the New
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