A word of note about what just got published in Art Recess 2. The poem dear gr, by Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum, was published in Columbia Poetry Review 12, out of Chicago, Illinois, in 1999. The poem is resolutely set in State College, Pennsylvania, in 1996. Jeremy was about to graduate from Villanova University, in the Philly 'burbs, at that time, but found time to be in State College, too. As of then, Jeremy and I were acquaintances. Gretchen, in the poem, is one Gretchen Stump. As of early '96, when I began to date Jennifer Strawser, here shown, Gretchen and Jen were best friends.
In the piece, Jeremy, or an anonymous narrator, is wry with Gretchen about Jen and I being troublemakers, and leading towards a troublemaking marriage. We were, indeed, banditos for a number of reasons. After that, readers may draw their own conclusions, as Jeremy sifts through the grab bag of influences like E.E. Cummings and Frank O'Hara, and finds his own, Nineties-classic, voice.
