4 Poems With Arlo in Them, by Leo Dangel

These poems will give Yvonne a quarter if she will kiss the carp.

I’ve never met Leo Dangel, though his home is just several dozen miles away, in South Dakota.  A couple of years ago, I invited him to come be a featured reader at a small poetry fest I organized in Worthington.  He declined for health reasons.  So, for the time being, Mr. Dangel remains for me a character in one of his own poems.

All of Leo Dangel’s poems have character, most of them have characters, and several of those have recurring characters.  Arlo, today. Old Man Brunner, tomorrow.  And always Leo, speaking up or at least nearby.  I like him a lot.

“Fishing,” “Gaining Yardage,” “Chill Factors,” “The Only Picture of Arlo and Me Alone,” and several other poems with Arlo in them are in Leo Dangel’s book, Home from the Field (Spoon River, 1997).