[New-Poetry] Lifshin Syndrome

[Bob Grumman]

For tomorrow's blog entry, I tried turning prose to free verse as I 
spoke of earlier in this thread.  The result wasn't terribly good, and I 
really didn't turn the prose to verse, but it wasn't worthless.  I think 
I can later make a decent poem of it.  Once I've figured it out.

*Poem, Caught In Prose*

Poem didn't mind prose, but he was in
the mood for poetry, and
extremely not
in the mood for the humdrum prose he
had found himself
in:

"Some of Lyn Lifshin's work I
think good, but it makes me
wonder: I do a blog entry a day,
and have done something like
1300 entries.  If I cut all the
prose entries up into free verse,
and diddled the wording a little
here and there, I'd be prolific,
too, and I think most of the
results would have something of
interest in them, albeit not much
poetry, by my standards.  That's
sort of how I feel about her work."

So Poem thrashed encumbrance
fully-charged into his
situation, clamorously
and mutedly both, engendering:

"In the slumb and thrust
of Lyn Lifshin's hurtle past
the tollhoused lives
of the good, 1300 entries later
than lace and laceration, a dry brown
flag was all that broke the
grey intelligence of the sky.

"The flag, wonder-weary, cut
through to faint freedoms
scarlet-voiced against
the imminence of a February
of philosophical interest
but little poetry."

And the prose was no more--
not diddled slightly
askew, but no more. 
Poem was content.

--Bob G.

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