Subj: Re: Another Homage to an Aphorism: in case I can't write one tomorrow
Date: 2/24/2003 2:35:55 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: DaJoShap
To: DCLEHMAN
There is no wing like meaning, said the salesman.
There is no wing like meaninglessness, said the tail man.
There is a left wing to each bird, Durer said.
There is a wing if not a horse's head in my bed.
There is no wing like manning a bird or a swan,
Said Leda, almost a second after her breast felt wan.
There is no win like a meaningful one over warm.
There is no wind like meaning to in a storm.
Then not meaning to, when the wing feels frayed and unsteady
And under the wings, some cartiliginous stuff is bloody.
There is no wing like an homage behind an aphid
Chewing on a leaf so that the flood will come enchafed.
There is no wing and meaning is its corridor.
There is no wing and a window is the door. ‑‑ DS, 2 / 24 / 03
From: DCLEHMAN
To:DaJoShap
Re: wing and a prayer in the shadow of the dome
Hi I'm David Lehman, your caffeinated host
Talking to David Shapiro about "Paradise Lost."
Were we the last to love John Milton,
That cornerstone Romanticism was built on?
The Leaning Tower of Pisa keeps tiltin',
But does anybody still read Milton?
Lovers of cheese love their stilton,
But not even English majors read John Milton.
There's no shortage of things to base your guilt on.
Some would nominate Satan as depicted by Milton.
It'sa a heartbreaking story, the expulsion from Eden,
But one that makes compelling reading.
So that's it for now, David Lehman signing off.
I'm about to read "Lycidas," paradise enough. ‑‑ DL, 2 / 25 / 03
Fight Night couplets; for the crumpets I may be going; for the Love of Milton
Date: 2/26/2003 9:09:05 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: DaJoShap
To: DCLEHMAN
I Alone Wished It Had Gone On Longer: Paradise Throw‑Away
Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee
The poetry of Cassius Clay impressed me
Float like an amnesiac, sting like a key
Love the poetry of Muhhamed Ali
Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal knee
I was impressed by my father screaming at me
Float like Satan, sting like Raphael
I was willling to eat beans with Frank Lima in Hell
Float like a masque, and twitch your mantle blue
I was overinvested in the symmetry of you
Float like rude berries, sting like Lycidas
I thought fighting over beauty was the real razzmatazz
Round us there rolls our hideous day
But Moore praised my poetry‑‑ and Cassius Clay. ‑‑ DS, 2/ 26 / 03
from: DCLEHMAN
t:o: DaJoShap
02/26/03
Fit Audience Though Few
Yesterday I had lunch with Stanley Moss, who was excited
To learn about this collaborative project of ours. “Write it!”
The previous evening I had told Star Black about our haikus
And couplets, and she, too, was genuinely enthused.
Of course Stacey knows all about it, has even read a few,
And made positive statements about me and you.
What does Lindsay think of this our labor, or not labor, game:
Does she think it a lovely glorious nothing? A waste of shame?
Donne and Jonson wrote sonnets when sitting in the same unlit room
And Jonson grinned when he saw what his friend had done in the gloom.
The audience was invisible, yet we could tell
The ghosts would come like thirsty travelers to the well.
No wish have I greater than this desire to fly
On wings of prayer and song along the length of the sky. DL, 2 / 26 / 03
Re Couplets: a meditation done in the two minutes my son permits
Date: 2/27/2003 9:42:04 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: DaJoShap
To: DCLEHMAN
I congratulate us, David, for one heroic cup:
The cup may be broken but we tried to clean it up.
I congratulate us David for one dirty yawp:
We tried our best to stir again a permissive soup.
Of course, let's beware congratulating ourselves too much:
Kenneth thought collab was best with a conflicted touch.
Two voices have we, let no one say who's best.
All I remember of art will be some fragmentary breast.,
Eros I loved and the anarchic giggling Venus.
The Talmud I loved as a kind of Kafakesque pianist.
Eros and Psyche I dreamt about, one heroic couple.
Her arms were green,, her breasts are Keats, her neck was blue and supple.
I want to say a couplet should click like her face in one fell instant:
But I know enough to keep on going into the blue and distant.
So congratulations David on shattering the cup:
The cup may break again, but the earth will drink it up. DS, 2 / 27 / 03
from: DCLEHMAN
to: DaJoShap
02/ 28 / 03
On the Shattered Cup
No cup but has a crack, no saucer but with a spoon.
No diner, no coffee, no jukebox, no tune.
But we walked in and the place was full of flowers
We gave names to and in that way passed the hours.
At night I turned into Nabokov's schizophrenic hero in "Despair."
The night was chill but I was drunk on air.
Eros I loved, and Venus in her best‑of‑class swimsuit,
And Psyche in the dark, while I played my flute.
Let my yawp barbarian from yon rooftop resound!
You can score two ways, directly or on the rebound.
More men know more women today, more women men,
And I cannot blame any of them, and that was then.
Today is today, and I congratulate all who discover
The morning in bed sleeping with a lover. ‑‑ DL, 2 / 28 / 03
Re: The Party of Poets and congrats on essay in APR I LOVE PROSE
Date: 2/28/2003 9:23:30 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: DaJoShap
To: DCLEHMAN
The Party of Poets
Rimbaud was there, attacked by fighter plane.
Baudelaire also felt sad, because the Presidents were inane.
Buster Keaton whimpered softly, I resign.
The stigmata on his palm was growing larger than a stop sign.
Buster Keaton clutched his 3D valentine.
But his lover had just awoken in another time zone.
Rimbaud had blue veils draped across his eyes.
He looked inside and saw that War was simple and life‑size.
James Joyce burst in with gifts and the boxes kept flying.
One red box kept on sounding and rising.
Virginia Woolf was wearing earrings of a conch.
Kenneth Koch was not dead and sang, "Let's all have some lunch."
He sang: If you don't know the difference between poetry and prose
You don't know man and woman apart, like rose from rose. ‑‑ DS, 2 / 28 / 03