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David Wagoner’s “The Junior High School Band Concert” · The Daily Poem

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  [music]
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  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Wednesday, August 19th, 2026.
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  SPEAKER_00: Today's poem is by David Wagoner.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's called The Junior High School Band Concert.
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  SPEAKER_00: And quite frankly, it's just a fun poem.
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  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of wry wit.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's a very sardonic narrative, but there's also some clear...
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  SPEAKER_00: Glee in the wordplay that he employs and then some clever enjambment used
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  SPEAKER_00: to deliver pithy little punchlines like in the second stanza when the speaker says
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  SPEAKER_00: that he is seventh chair cornet line break out of seven.
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  SPEAKER_00: There are digressions, there are asides, there are classical allusions.
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  SPEAKER_00: Really, he just takes all of the devices one might employ to tell
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  SPEAKER_00: a really fascinating anecdote,
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  SPEAKER_00: and he rolls them all into this poem,
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  SPEAKER_00: which does in fact tell a really entertaining anecdote.
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  SPEAKER_00: Here is the junior high school band concert.
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  SPEAKER_00: When our semiconductor raised his baton,
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  SPEAKER_00: we sat there gaping at Marche Militaire, Our mouth-opening number.
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  SPEAKER_00: It seemed faintly familiar.
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  SPEAKER_00: We'd rehearsed it all that winter, but we attacked in such a blur.
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  SPEAKER_00: No army anywhere, on a stomach or all fours, could have squeezed through our crossfire.
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  SPEAKER_00: I played cornet, seventh chair, out of seven.
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  SPEAKER_00: My embouchure,
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  SPEAKER_00: a glorified Bronx cheer,
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  SPEAKER_00: through that three-keyed keyhole stopper and neighborhood window slammer
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  SPEAKER_00: where mildew fought for air at every exhausted corner.
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  SPEAKER_00: My fingering still unsure after scaling it for a year, except on the spit-valve lever.
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  SPEAKER_00: Each straight-faced mother and father retested his moral fiber against our traps
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  SPEAKER_00: and slurs and the inadvertent wickers paradiddle by our snares.
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  SPEAKER_00: And when the brass bowled forth a blare fit to horn over Jericho two bars sooner
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  SPEAKER_00: than Joshua's harsh measures, they still had the nerve to stare.
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  SPEAKER_00: By the last lost chord, our director looked older and soberer.
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  SPEAKER_00: No doubt in his mind's ear,
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  SPEAKER_00: some band somewhere,
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  SPEAKER_00: in some music of some sphere,
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  SPEAKER_00: was striking a note as pure as the wishes of Franz Schubert.
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  SPEAKER_00: But meanwhile, here we were, a lesson in everything minor, decomposing our first composer.
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  SPEAKER_00: This has been The Daily Poem.
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  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening.
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  SPEAKER_00: We'll be back tomorrow with more poetry for you.
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  SPEAKER_00: Till then,
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  SPEAKER_00: find us at dailypoempod.substack.com to listen to past episodes,
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  SPEAKER_00: to leave your own thoughts and comments,
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  SPEAKER_00: and even subscribe and become a supporter of the show.
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  SPEAKER_00: For all of us at Goldberry Studios, I'm Sean Johnson wishing you happy reading.