Next Line, Please: The Interplay of Voices [by Virginia Valenzuela]

On this week's installment of Next Line, Please, the challenge to write poems “in the manner of” something abstract provoked a great many poems of interest. Poets wrote in the manner of the year of their birth (Elizabeth Knapp, Ravindra Rao), a Chopin piano sonata (Michael C. Rush), a hotel room (Christine Rhein), a speech by John F. Kennedy (J. F. (Jeff) McCullers), a travelogue (David Kibner), an episode of Alfred Hitchock Presents (Keith Barrett), the “muse as a real-estate agent” (Steve Bellin-Oka), and the “androgynous” style (Angela Ball), among other inventive choices, flooded the comment field. Below are some of the best.

Pamela Joyce’s poem “The Imprisoners—After Rodin’s Thought (portrait of Camille Claudel)” was a total crowd pleaser:

This, I know now, is how you wanted me.
Voiceless, visionless, motionless. Less.
Absent hands and agency, perpetually
cool, translucent, smooth—a perfectly formed
measure of your meticulous tools, at the
pleasure of your chisel. And when I refused
the discarded shards and shadows, when I
emerged your virile rival, you turned me
into stone and let the malevolent poet
lock me in a tomb, a passing thought, an
interrupted waltz, a monument to madness.

David Kibner’s “Travelogue” is proof that the comic in poetry can also be heavy. The poem moves from a compelling description to lively literary specifics and the music of names. As for me, you gotta love those internal rhymes:

The beauty of the places I went to
comes second to the things I did
such as when I
rubbed elbows with Rimbaud
rode Melville’s pelvis
harpooned Djuna Barnes
spanked Apollinaire’s petard
but I must remain mum about
all the things I did
with a sullen William Cullen

I’ve written songs in my head
I will not sing, though I’m
happy to hum

Once again, the beauty of the places
comes second to the things that were done,
whether it was
stroking Shelley’s belly or
fondling Keats’s teats
but you’ll never see the details
spilled out on a broadsheet
of everything, or any part of what was
so main eventfully done
with a defiant William Bryant

Visit the American Scholar's page to read the full post, and look out for more "poems in the manner of" and a new prompt next week!