Next Line Please: Neither Fugues Nor Feathers [by Virginia Valenzuela]

This week's poems were prompted by a list of given lines which were offered up by our master of ceremonies, David Lehman:

— A good liar needs a first-rate memory.
— This prophecy Merlin shall make; for I live before his time.
— Neither fugues nor feathers enchant the fool.
— No one will read what I write here; therefore,
— The desire to make love in a pagoda

Elizabeth Solsburg combines two of the prompt lines in these beautiful, musical, and symmetrical stanzas:

This prophecy Merlin shall make, for I live beyond his time—
that he will find a kestrel feather floating on the lake
and mistake it for the power of flight,
as I will believe his passion is true love
and not merely its illusion.

He will be seduced by dreams of air slipping over wings,
as I will be enthralled by promises and song.
But at the last, we shall both sink into the dark pool,
unmagicked and unloved,
because feathers and fugues can enchant the fool.

Charise Hoge’s “Rampant Writing” fragments Kafka’s line in a funny and refreshing way:

no one will read … for poets
are cropping up like a luxury

of weeds: sagebrush, mugwort, nettle;
not the sort of plant anyone chooses
for plots aiming to be garden beds,

but the kind that catches by
surprise,

causes sneezing
that creates a seismic shift
along cranial synarthroses,

refocusing the eyes, and somewhere
someone will say “bless you”

Next week's prompt is to write a list poem of 12 lines or less including at least three of the following words "listless," invent," "Tory," and "catalogue."  Visit the American Scholar's page to enter your candidate!

 

Comments

[Samuel Taylor]

Beautiful.