Seymour Faust

Seymour Faust was a poet who taught junior high school biology in Nassau County Long Island in the late 60s and early 70s at Herricks Middle School. His one major volume of poems was published in 1958 by Hawk's Well Press and entitled The Lovely Quarry. He was 28. During the Vietnam War era he was hawkish, and was dropped from poetry circles and disappeared. He would be about 75 today if he is still alive.

His poems appeared in Boundary, and many other journals and he corresponded with Cid Corman, among others. His early poetry has regular rhyme and meter but already contains the seeds of his great later works. This is one of the strongest poems in his early collection.

AFTERTHOUGHT

Roses are rugged and red
and carry irregular thorns.
I gave them only scorn
having loved instead the sea,
mountains sheathed in snow,
lonely gulls that go
comfortless, cold and free.
Petals, a lustrous urn,
red, yellow as sun
when all is said and done
are not for me to spurn,
taloned like a hawk
and pointlessly poised on a stalk.