Author's note: The Man in the Poem is a history of attempts up to 2008 to present what I regard as the best of my shorter and middle-length poems in a chronological survey. To a large extent these attempts have been superseded by the recent publication of The Era of Common Fun: Shorter Selected Poems, which is available in print. I am leaving the last version of The Man in the Poem online, as it includes some of my favorite middle-length poems that are not included in The Era of Common Fun, in addition to several shorter poems that I decided to exclude. - G. Haas
[Early poems, 1990-1992:]
Pope Gregory and the Visitation
[Poems from Pages in a Second Round, begun 1992, completed 1997:]
Hu and Shu in the Kingdom of Chaos
[Occasional poems appearing only in The Man in the Poem:]
[Opening sections of an unfinished book-length poem:]
I. Out Across the Macadam
II. Elvis
[Shorter poems from Baron, All Too Baron, begun 1997, completed 2003:]
History as a Moveable Bead on a Timeline
From Ibeza to the Norfolk Broads
The Republic of a Thousand Years
A Picture of the Younger Laroon
Chronicling the Tyranny of Pooh
What Beckmesser Said to the Prospective Sharer
The Lost Theatre of Quiverbow at Nova
The Case against the Rightful Heir
Heading down the hill from Northhead, through the Lair and the Row to the Vale
The Lost Fragments of Hippo and Melissus
Schoenberg's Second String Quartet
In the Year of the Expanding Man (a Little Poem for Steely Dan)
A Twice-Told Tale (Or, What God Decided Not to Impart to Moses)
The Dream of the Grand Assumption
The World's Second Funniest Joke
The Marks That Matter Most (Or, Searching for That High Peak in Darien)
Intervention: It Matters Little Who You Are
History as a Life to the Given Life
[Poems from Molly's Song (and Other Poems), 2003:]
The Window and the Faces in the Rain
I. From Mountaintop Just North of Whoville
II. From atop a Dump Just South of Whoville
III. Next to Last, Next to First
I. The Man in the Song
II. The Lyrical Man on the Dump
I. Counting Song
II. Vinnie's Song
Somewhere along That Long and Winding Road
Ringamore
[Longer poems from Baron, All Too Baron, begun in 1997 and completed in 2003:]
Verisimilitude
Too Close an Angle
At the Beginning of the Poem
From Scratch
Noch Einmal die Historie
The Doubling Over Doubles Over
Green My Sun, Ma!
Don't Let Him Remain Unheard in the West!
A Proem in Prose to the Prose Poem (as Posed by the Poem in its Prose)
Shadows and Aspects, Shadowy Aspects
The Father Who's Never Come Home
What Once Was Called the Prose Poem
The Poet and the Steeple on Her Rock
[Poems appearing only in The Man in the Poem:]
1: The Mirrored Wedge
Much Obliged
2: Both Either and Or
The Slanted Door
3: I Am Not That I Am
My Rod and My Staff and My Other I
When Wit Is Born
The Fist of the Punch-line's Thug
Adam and His Hoe
Hoe with an "E"
Wanting a Theme
How It Differs
From Rage to Rage
To the Tap
The Truest Poem
Mounted and Veiled
Your Restless Clang
Up Close and from Afar
The Great Turning
Gong Xi Fa Cai (Or, A New Year's Postcard from the Haasian Atoll)
[Poems from Opus Seven, begun in 2004 and completed 2007:]
Ten Weeks (Or, Nine Persons Caught Within a Net on the Crystal Soup)
Rock of Ages (Three American Sestinas)
I. No Wonder, Floyd!
II. Beyond the Animals (Or, 146 A.D. - In the Year of Our Darwin)
III. In Tumult and Extremity
I. The Promised Land
II. Deal
III. Jack Straw
IV. Tennessee Jed
V. The Race Is On
["Signature poems" from Baron, All Too Baron:]