That's right, everybody! Tuesday is here and so is another week in the life of Next Line, Please. Last week's prompt was inspired by the clever, punchy, and thoughtful poetry of Marianne Moore. This week's winner was a poem by Angela Ball:
"To Marianne Moore"
Your poems, steam rollers
from beneath we emerge re-dimensioned. They are
used for leveling surfaces without traction,
their live steam festival flattening genuine dilations
such as a bill of
lading, an introduction to computing Ve-
nus, an action bracketed by double colons,
a pseudo-element. Smokebox far extended at the top
to incorporate
support for assembly. “Steam Roller” first meant a
fixed machine for rolling and curving steel plates for
boilers and ships. Some have seen you walking by the harbor un-
der a distinct pole
star, your hat a sextant, your consciousness a crow’s
nest sighting solid constellations, stars like spark-
ling chips of rock above scrip of river, silence’s storehouses.
Next week's prompt asks you to either write a poem entitled, "The One Thing That Can Save America," or, to decode John Ashbery's poem of the same title, in ten lines or fewer. Visit the American Scholar's page to enter your candidate!
Virginia Valenzuela
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