Antler

Antler Poems

Antler Biography

Antler (born Brad Burdick; 1946 in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, USA) is an American poet who lives in Wisconsin. Among other honors, Antler received the Whitman Prize from the Walt Whitman Association, given to the poet "whose contribution best reveals the continuing presence of Walt Whitman in American poetry," in 1985. Antler also was awarded the Witter Bynner prize in 1987. Antler was the poet laureate of the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for 2002 and 2003. He is also an advocate for wilderness protection. Antler received a bachelor's degree in anthropology from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee in 1970. Later he completed a master's degree in English from the same university after spending some time at the noted Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. During the 1970s he also worked at various factory and other jobs just long enough to get money to support his poetry writing and time spent in wilderness areas across the United States. Antler's first major work, the long poem Factory, was published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti's City Lights Bookstore in 1980. Allen Ginsberg declared him as "one of Whitman's `poets and orators to come'". The collection Last Words appeared in 1986 from Ballantine Books, and Antler: The Selected Poems was published in 2000 by Soft Skull Press. He has also published several chapbooks and has contributed to numerous local, national, and international journals and anthologies.)

The Best Poem Of Antler

Atheist Blows Up Baby Jesus

Walking through sleepy Christmas-Eve Milwaukee,
go by house where no one's home but
Outdoor life-size inflatable Nativity Scene is illuminated,
Inflated Mary & Joseph, inflated Wise Men and inflated gifts,
inflated shepherds, farm animals and stable,
inflated angels with inflated wings and halos,
inflated Star of Bethlehem, inflated manger
but baby Jesus is deflated!
So I spoke to the deflated baby Jesus
I might be an atheist agnostic nature worshipper not a Christian
yet I would kneel and blow up and re-inflate you
and patch the leak or re-plug the air spigot
for doesn't baby Jesus say as much about love
without speaking
than all the words Christ said?
Kneeling down discovering spigot open
I gently blow air inside Jesus—
cold winter Wisconsin fresh air
inhaled into my lungs and exhaled into Jesus—
Hoping no neighbor calls police or shoots me!
I'm not a terrorist who explodes Nativity Scenes
but an atheist who blows up deflated Christ-child.
Now you look like a baby again, Jesus—
your eyes of wonder and wisdom gaze up at me.
Here, let me tuck you in, little one.
It's okay your mother and father and the rest
don't acknowledge me or thank me.
Even you remain silent looking up at me.
I understand, little one.
We're all looking down at you
with love.

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