Paul William Gagnon was born in Worcester and grew up in Northbridge and Spencer. At various points in his life he has been a construction laborer, warehouse worker, big-top tent erector, clerk, emergency medical technician, office administrator, landscaper, president of a non-profit music festival, nighttime manager of a transitional shelter for men, college writing tutor, fireman, volunteer (for many causes both noble and questionable), and the former poetry host at the Moonstruck Café in Charlton. He enjoys backpacking in the wild places, writing, and the feel of the land. In 1994 he walked the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine, a journey of over five months.
His poetry has appeared in 2x4, Vox Poetica,
Worcester
Magazine, Ursus, and other places best left unmentioned.
He currently lives in Spencer, attends school at Worcester State College
(English, Psychology, and Geography), has two cats, a jeep, one sister,
a backpack, a good set of boots and an incessant itch in his hand and heels...
A sample of the poet’s work:
Reconstructing the Blues
On the day you vanished, I wrung
living things from the radio, like
God on the sixth day of Genesishungry for hands, flashing eyes
tongue, smile, voices, movement
the separation of rib bonesanything but the damnable
humming waters of the blues.
It occurred in late fall, when thetrees climbed skeletal from the
ground, so gaunt they squeezed
squirrels from their woody ribs.Even the oaks and beeches, those
late leaf keepers, squatted down
in their frozen rhythmless xylem.I have sampled the acrid taste of
the November radio. I know the
sad truth about the blues: hiddenbetween the chords, that secretive
low band-width frequency of
lamenting angels, more hollowthan E-flat, music so dense it
cannot be sung or played on
instruments. For instance, thegaping mouth and the sudden
distance of the pupils in the eyes of
those who have lost lovedones tragically. We search for sheet
music to describe these things, but
find nothing. This is the reason allgood bluesmen are a little blind–
their notes and chords nothing
more than the wheel and bearingmotion of time dipping down
and rising up, full of infants, ears
cocked towards the sub-auditoryhum of the ultrasound. Even in
the womb we know the music of
weeping is silent.And it is the lyrics of loss –not the
music– that speak most clearly of
November. Your laugh, eyessmile, hands–speckled leaves
cascading from the heavens so
perfectly that God is forced to rollback time. He starts over from
scratch, rests, makes corrections on
the sixth day, and begins toreconstruct the blues.