What a pleasure
to read with
Jerome Sala and
my old Columbia
and Clare colleges’
chum, David Shapiro,
at the Zinc
Bar last evening.
Jerome read first.
His corporate sonnets
reflect years of
labor that Marx
would characterize as
alienated in the
tall tower of
Time and Life
on Sixth Avenue.
There is beauty
in a cliche
just as there
is humor and
then just to
clinch the deal
comes the rhyme.
Well played, Jerome.
The host beckoned.
I read second:
I read poems
in the manner
of Catullus,Herrick,
Goethe, Keats, Mayakovsky,
Millay, Stevens, Dorothy
Parker, Charles Bukowski,
and Kenneth Koch.
I also told
an old joke.
David Shapiro read
poems from his
new book including
“Why Rimabud?” and
conversed with the
darkness wondering whether
you could see
the darkness or
whether total darkness
was a poem.
“As Kafka wrote,
there is hope,
but not for
us,” he concluded.
The mermaids sang
to him. The
crowd cheered. I
promised I’d write
about the event
using only three
words per line.
Thanks were made.
All were glad.
Drinks were had.
— David Lehman
from the archive; first posted May 8, 2017 (je pense)
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Author: The Best American Poetry
