today in my head while reading the New Yorker:
I wrote a poem
that doesn't sing
It sits there like a log
Others sing it
when I pay them to
I wrote it hard
and pure, and sweet
It sits there like a log
on a hill
or a jar of jam
You should read the poem out loud first in the "poet's voice," then as a small child reciting doggerel. Take it to be the anti New Yorker poem.
The magazine rose up to it,
ReplyDeleteAnd sprawled around, no longer wild.
I've read the magazine for a long time for the nonfiction....it's always a surprise to discover something good that was published there. Ashbery!
I recently came across this observation: on any page of the New Yorker with a poem on it, the prose on that page is probably better.
ReplyDeleteThat said, the last issue I read had two pretty fine poems in it.