As always, we appreciate your sharing your thoughts in the comments, not only about the poem but also about the danger of AI — is it just a matter of time before AI determines that we are just an annoyance to be disposed of?
Zumwalt has provided revisions to his set of 10 poems in the Sassoon Collection. Here is the first:
i. Everyone sang while I fell asleep
voices wailing around the house thud of feet and slam of doors everyone yowling only the clocks wind down
around this small room no sense of the hour crowded with lemonade breath high-pitched voices like hounds in pain as clouds hover over my eyes
fighting sleep with the fork from my dessert plate not yet ready to go where the dreams are built where you take reality with you so as not to be alone dragging it by its rough cotton shirt collar
the blurry faces become blurry voices despite discordance from straying notes the lights descend and siphon colors whirling into a vortex that spins off dimensions like a playlist streaming fragments from the past
drifting towards sleep the hounds now whining like imprisoned puppies the darkness becoming home without furnishings everything fading into peace except for one small lingering concern for everything unfinished
— zumwalt (2011, revised 2026)
Admin’s Note: This is the first piece of Zumwalt’s ten-poem tribute to poet Siegfried Sassoon, The Sassoon Collection, originally written in 2011, recently revised by the author. This poem opens the set by providing a misleading head fake to Sassoon’s Everyone Sang, when in reality the poem is primarily based on Sassoon’s Falling Asleep. Where in the original, Sassoon sustains a hushed, introspective mood using domestic quiet and natural sounds to mirror the speaker’s mental transition from wakefulness to sleep, Zumwalt leans into domestic turmoil and modern-day stress, even throwing in an Emily Dickensen reference for good measure.
I am pleased to announce that Zumwalt’s poem, “Optional,” was published today in the latest issue of Zoetic Press’s 4LPH4NUM3R1C2.0, included with entries from only four other authors for this bi-monthly journal. Please visit here: https://www.zoeticpress.com/an-24-dominion-of-domination
I am pleased to announce that Zumwalt’s poem, “The Threat of Virtue,” was just published today in the highly respected Society of Classical Poets. This poem is a necessary indictment of the People’s Republic of China’s (not a government by, for, or of the people) systemic persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. Zumwalt effectively contrasts Falun Gong’s spiritual virtues of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance with the ongoing state censorship, forced conformity, and organ harvesting perpetrated by the criminal PRC.
Appreciate any comments you leave on their website, particularly those expressing your opposition to these atrocious actions by the current mainland Chinese government.
I am curious if you finish this. It isn’t much of a poem. There are no rhymes, good or bad; there is no attention paid to the meter or musicality of the lines, the words are not carefully chosen, and so there is not much to justify either this poem or you spending your time here.
And the volta really isn’t a volta, just a last stanza to see whether, since you started to read this, you made it to the very end.
