The Best American Poetry

Prompt, first and last: A literary & cinematic quiz and prompt

Name the author, the book or movie or play, and whether the quote is a first or last line:

(1) 
(2) 'What a dump!'
(3) [The earth said] 'No, not yet,' and the sky said 'No, not there.'
(4) 'Yes,' I said. 'Isn't it pretty to think so.'
(5) 'The artist is the creator of beautiful things.'
(6) 'We're free.'
(7)  'We'll have no money, no decent place to live.  We'll have to work, get kicked around. . .'
(8) He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare, which made you think of a charging bull.
(9) 
(10) An ordinary young man was on his way from his hometown of Hamburg tp Davos-Platz in the canon of Graubunden. It was the height of summer, and he planned to stay for three weeks.
(11) 
(12) "What a Christmas! What a Christmas!"
(13) "Madness!"
(14) "Maybe he just wanted our wire-cutters. Ever think of that?"
(15) "I fgeel as thoiugh I'd lived through all of this before in another life."

Now . . .choose one & make it the first or last line of a new poem (14 lines or less).

"When Charles Bukowski Met Bob Dylan": A Contest

As we head into Labor Day weekend, we announce a new contest:

"When Charles Bukowski Met Bob Dylan" 

 

With this as your title, write a maximum of 14 lines (verse) or 140 words (prose).

 

Post your entry in the comments field.

 

Entries will be judged on the criteria of excellence, lucidity, wit, and brevity. Prizes, including a copy of The Best American Poetry 2021, will be given to the best and to the briefest coherent piece of writing. 

 

Judge: Jim Cummins (pictured left with a poet friend, circa 2009; photo credit Stacey Lehman/ One Fifth)

 

Contest end date Sept 30

 

Previous BAP contests were judged by Mark Strand, Paul Violi, and Mark Bibbins.

http://www.bestamericanpoetry.com/pages/contest1winner.html
http://www.bestamericanpoetry.com/pages/contest2winner.html

http://www.bestamericanpoetry.com/pages/contest3winner.html

See the winners for 2007 and 2009.

 

To see the entries, check the comments field below -- and click here for a couple of others:

https://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2021/09/when-charles-bukowski-met-bob-dylan-terence-winch.html  

Good luck!

"A War in Tawara" [by Paul Hoover]

A War in Tawara

Add “A,”
A nut for a jar of tuna,
A Santa at NASA.

Borrow or rob,
Boston did not sob.
But sad Eva saved a stub.

Cigar? Toss it in a can. It is so tragic.

Don did nod,
“Dogma, I am God;
Devil never even lived.”

Evil Olive,
Ed is on no side.
Ed is a trader, cast sacred art aside.

Flesh saw Mom wash self.
Flee to me, remote elf!

God lived as an evil dog.
Go, do, dog!

Harass Sarah!

I prefer pi.
I, a man, am regal; a German am I.
If I had a hi-fi . . .

Jar a toga, rag not a raj.
Jar bar crab, raj.

Kayak salad, Alaska yak.
Key lime, Emily—ek!

Late, fetal,
Leon sees Noel.
Live, devil,
Laid on no dial.

Ma is a nun, as I am,
Mirror rim
Murder for a jar of red rum;

No lemons, no melon,
Never even
Noon.
No sign, in evening, is on.
No slang is a signal, son.
Nurses run—

Oozy rat in a sanitary zoo.
Oh, who was it I saw? Oh, who?

Poor Dan is in a droop.
Pull up if I pull up.

“Q,” said Dias, “Q.”

Rise to live, sir.
Rats live on no evil star.

Stack cats,
Solo gigolos.
Swap paws,
Step on no pets.
Sexes, exes,

Too hot to hoot,
Tug at a gut.
Tell a ballet
Tulsa night life: filth, gin, a slut.

U.F.O., tofu,

Vanna, wanna V?

Wow!
Was it a bar or a bat I saw?
Won’t lovers revolt now?
We panic in a pew.

Xerox orex,

Yawn a more Roman way!
You bat one in, resign in evening. Is Ernie not a buoy?

Zeus was deified, saw Suez.
ZZZZ, Otto, ZZZZ.

Ed. Note: Paul Hoover gave himself the challenge to write an abecedarius in which every line is a palindrome. The result, "A War in Tawara," is a tour de force. It is from his new collection-in-progress, The Windows. When Paul posted the poem on Facebook -- as part of the "8 poems in 8 days plus 8 invites" project -- he included the image below "When Paradise Arrived" by Enrique Chagoya.

Poetry Challenge: A Prompt [by David Lehman]

Prompt: Write a poem sparked by the deliberately unidentified portrait above. Imagine that it is the portrait of either (a) a celebrated modern poet or (b) a wounded World War I veteran war or (c) a dashing art critic, champion of Cubism or (d) an avatar of Frank O'Hara in Paris.

Quiz: Name the subject and identify the painter, who denounced anti-Semitism ("not only a phenomenon of sadistic evil, but also one of great cowardice") in the controversial conclusion of his memoirs. He feels that Jews have been too eager to assimilate and be accepted and that they therefore "place themselves in a state of inferiority before the non-Jews." In his view, "Anti-Semitism will end only when the Jews stop hiding and assuming the attitudes of whipped dogs and will say in a loud voice and to everyone's face: 'I am a Jew and I am proud of it!'" 

The American Scholar "Next Line, Please": So sorry you didn't win! Please try again.

The American Scholar's "Next Line, Please" contest continues apace, with David Lehman crafting a new challenge each week. Lehman's "fake apology" contest of August 23 was among the most popular in the contest's years-long history. If you didn't win, so sorry! You can still enter this week's contest. Here's what Lehman had to say about fake apologies and this week's rules, which require contestants to craft a list poem in the manner of the great list songs in the American songbook: 

This week we wrote non-apologies in the model of William Carlos Williams’s “This Is Just To Say,” a kind of Post-it-note poem in which the husband apologizes to the wife for eating the plums she had saved for her breakfast.

The responses persuade me that the insincere utterance provides fertile ground for poets. Our tendency to lie, distort or revise follows from the inability of the language to discriminate between truth and falsehood: Language is not self-verifying. Fiction is based on just this discrepancy between language and the duplicitous and calculating writer. Is it a discrepancy—or a struggle? Writers often describe their writing as a kind of wrestling match with language, as T. S. Eliot does in “Four Quartets.”

My favorite fake apologies are a pair submitted by Marissa D’Espain:

Congratulations!
I saw your
new book
at a bookstore

and:

Oh no! I forgot
To have your baby. Now
it’s too late. Sorry!

For next week, let’s begin a list poem—on the model of the great list songs in the American songbook—e.g., “You’re the Top” (Cole Porter), “Thanks for the Memory” (music Ralph Rainger, lyrics Leo Robin), “Can’t Get Started” (music Vernon Duke, lyrics Ira Gershwin), “They All Laughed” (Gershwin and Gershwin), “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” (Gershwin and Gershwin), “My Favorite Things” (Rodgers and Hammerstein), “(We’ll Have) Manhattan” (Rodgers and Hart), to mention just a few. The formula requires a stanza with a refrain.

Ready, set, go! 

-- sdh