On this week's installment of Next Line, Please, dated September 11th, a day many of us remember solemnly and viscerally, David Lehman takes a moment to talk about the beauty of truth and the wonderful fact that, even during the harsh political environment we have seen in the last few years, Next Line, Please has remained a place for poetry, camaraderie, and conversation. He tells us how he (and others: New Yorkers, Americans, sentimental beings) is "moved to tears when he thinks of the sacrifices made in the face of an implacable hatred of our culture and institutions."
It is true: nothing binds people together like tragedy, but even more so, the mending and healing that comes after.
But anyway, back to the real meat of our Tuesday's: the weekly writings that David is convinced is not unlike "five-finger exercises in piano music." I think he's got something there.
This week there were awards on the line for the best and the shortest poems on the theme of "the best." Keith Barrett wins for brevity with his untitled four-word double rhyme:
Best quest
Grail tale
In a second poem, Keith reduces “Vow,” to its quintessence:
I
Do
The Jane Austen heroine in me quivers with excitement.
Then we have Ravindra Rao’s “Perfectionism,” a lovely display of many bests:
I was the best high school debater
In the country until someone better
Changed the game. Then I became the best
At regret, until someone sobbed distinctively
On the news and it went viral et cet.
For years I was the best drifter, in
& out of house parties like whispers
Until the gin bred a new type of human
Even better at thin tendencies, with
Even a stronger liver. For years the river
Was my best friend, babbling me secrets
About where it’s from, what it’s seen. Its source
Is in the high-up mountain of forms:
A burial mound that reaches to the sun.
Clay Sparkman’s “The Best Murderous Dictator of All Time Is Idi Amin” lives up to its arresting title:
Of course, if one is content to look at mere
kill-counts, then I suppose Stalin rules.
Yet, once into the quarter-mil club, that
number is just a number. How much blood
can we comprehend? That’s where style
becomes the ultimate measure. Idi was like
Satchmo with an accordion. He laughed,
he sang, he danced, and he boozed—
a cut up and a clown. Idi played the joker.
He courted your heart all night long. And
when he shared his final joke at the touch
of dawn, you still loved him—he said so—
even in that final moment, touching cold steel, as piss ran down your shaking legs.
The image of Idi Amin as “Satchmo with an accordion” is striking, and I find the line breaks particularly excellent.
And finally, a poem by me, your faithful NLP reporter! Virginia Valenzuela’s “Untitled” presents a moment of "pure pleasure," a cocktail on an urban terrace:
First day of September and some leaves
are already falling—
not red, not orange, not yellow, nor beautiful
but coarse, crinkly, and brown—
and already the air feels cooler, the breeze crisper
or was that just the placebo’s whisper?Yes, this is best:
a cosmopolitan on the balcony
the leaves of the trees obscuring the sun
and your dog at our feet, warming his chest,
wagging his tail for anything, and anyone.
Visit the American Scholar's page to read the full text with more lovely words and poems.
And tune in next week for a new prompt!
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