Next Line, Please: We Need a New Word [by Virginia Valenzuela]

Last week on Next Line, Please, David Lehman proposed a list poem that included three out of the following four words: “listless,” “invent,” “Tory,” and “catalogue.” The contributors to the column went above and beyond, creating clever spins on the list words, as well as the lists.

Millicent Caliban’s “After My Wife Left Me” imagines possible recipes for a newly widowed individual who shall heal through good food:

I find myself shopping listless.
I am a creature of impulse,
inventing imaginary
meals for gustaTory delight:
plump anchovies in aspic,
fresh chanterelles with shallots and cream,
spicy sautéed quinoa with kale,
orzo fennel orange salad,
pureed chestnuts with chocolate.
My catalogue of recipes
mixes memory with desire.
How does a poet learn to cook?

In Elizabeth Solsburg’s poem we receive the great promise of a “catalogue of peace”:

Is music invented that actually soothes the savage breast?
Perhaps something like Liszt, less
like the daily cacophony from the composer of this mess
we are trying to mute.
Let’s choose notes
from a catalogue of peace,
like we chose seeds
to plant in the garden
where we hope to sit in summer—
smelling these embryonic flowers,
listening to the night symphony of crickets

Ravindra Rao’s “We are Are Always Preparing for the End” is both charming and musical:

Listless, I invent a list. Seven
dying doves for Christmas, the good Klaus
will deliver. Every dove

is a dying dove. Every love,
too, though we don’t mention that.
Some say love is nothing more

than a catalogue of fading memories,
that lovers are always stuck in September.
I am not claiming to agree, but please

don’t wake me up when
the soundtrack ends. I am busy dreaming
a list of possible futures.

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