For the new American Scholar Next Line Please contest, David Lehman has invited readers to add either two or four lines to an Emily Dickinson poem. Here's how he introduces the challenge:
The explanation: Emily Dickinson, one of the glories of American poetry, wrote brief, enigmatic poems as short as two lines, with idiosyncratic punctuation that makes heavy use of the dash. The dash is an intermediate mark—not as final as a period, more striking than a comma—and her reliance on it gives some of her poems a snappy, telegraphic power consistent with her brevity and her determination to “tell all the truth but tell it slant.”
Continue reading and enter your lines here.
-- sdh
hi david how's your health? the body can be a big nuisance hope to see you sometime
http://ronleifer.zenfactor.org
Posted by: ron leifer | November 17, 2014 at 02:44 PM