“Immature poets imitate,” wrote T. S. Eliot. “Mature poets steal.” For next time, I suggest we take a line from someone else and run with it. Here are a bunch of lines that strike me as promising. I won’t say where they’re from, and I believe the writer would be wise not to ask the Internet to help. That would be cheating, and there is, I solemnly aver, a difference between stealing and cheating. I’ve modified or abbreviated some of the lines. Use any.
“If I am out of my mind, it’s all right with me”
“Give me money. Friends you can keep.”
“As I rowed down the indifferent river”
“She wore her gems and nothing else.”
“He had it: the talent which is death to hide.”
“Money is as beautiful as roses.”
“We love the place because we were children there.”
“There’s a man inside me that’s mad at me.”
“I wish I were a girl again, half-savage and free.”
Limit: 14 lines. Deadline: August 18,2025, 6 PM any time zone.
David Lehman, a contributing editor of the Scholar, is a poet, critic, and the general editor of The Best American Poetry annual anthology and author of the book One Hundred Autobiographies. He currently writes our Talking Pictures column.