"Tommy" is a
narrative poem
Narrative poetry is a form of poetry that tells a story, often using the voices of both a narrator and characters; the entire story is usually written in metered verse. Narrative poems do not need rhyme. The poems that make up this genre may be s ...
by
Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, crime, science-fiction, and fantasy novels. Described as the "King of Horror", a play on his surname and a reference to his high s ...
, first published in the March, 2010 edition of ''
Playboy'', and later collected and re-introduced in the November 3, 2015 anthology ''
The Bazaar of Bad Dreams''.
In the new introduction King disputes the famous adage (attributed to many celebrities, including
Grace Slick,
Robin Williams,
Paul Kantner,
Joan Collins, and
Dennis Hopper
Dennis Lee Hopper (May 17, 1936 – May 29, 2010) was an American actor, filmmaker and photographer. He attended the Actors Studio, made his first television appearance in 1954, and soon after appeared in ''Giant'' (1956). In the next ten years ...
): "If you remember the Sixties, you weren't there."
The poem is
free verse and steeped in the slang and cultural references of the 1960s, a decade which encompassed all of King's teenage years. It describes the unique burial of the titular young man, a
hippie
A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to different countries around ...
who died of
leukaemia, and the subsequent lives of his closest friends.
See also
*
Stephen King short fiction bibliography
This is a list of short fiction by Stephen King (b. 1947). This includes short stories, novelettes, and novellas, as well as poems. It is arranged chronologically by first publication. Major revisions of previously published pieces are also noted ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tommy
Poetry by Stephen King
2010 poems
Works originally published in Playboy