Author: admin
Anonymous calls the Poetry Crisis Line (illustrated)
Langston Hughes calls the Poetry Crisis Line (illustrated)
Excerpted from “Let America be America Again” by Langston Hughes.
Costume Ideas for Poets Part 2: More Options for Women
Because a friend rightly pointed out that the last post didn’t offer a lot of options for women to choose from.
Costume Ideas for Poets
James W. Hall calls the Poetry Crisis Line
COUNSELOR: Poetry Crisis Line, what is your emergency?
CALLER: All my pwoblems
COUNSELOR: Could you be more specific?
CALLER: who knows, maybe evwybody’s pwoblems
COUNSELOR: That would be less specific, sir. Can you focus on the problem you’re facing right now?
CALLER: is due to da fact,
COUNSELOR: So they all share a single cause? Like addiction or an overbearing mother?
CALLER: due to da awful truth
COUNSELOR: It’s OK. You can tell me.
CALLER: dat I am SPIDERMAN.
COUNSELOR: Wow. Really? I’m a huge fan!
CALLER: I know. I know. All da dumb jokes:
COUNSELOR: Oh, you mean like how the villains always call you “webhead,” like you haven’t heard it before?
CALLER: No flies on you, ha ha,
COUNSELOR: That one is new to me.
CALLER: and da ones about what do I do wit all / doze extwa legs in bed.
COUNSELOR: People really say that?
CALLER: Well, dat’s funny yeah.
COUNSELOR: Maybe a little bit.
CALLER: But you twy being / SPIDERMAN for a month or two.
COUNSELOR: That’s not what I was saying, I just–
CALLER: Go ahead.
COUNSELOR: I just think you should stop beating yourself up about your Uncle Ben, that’s all.
Read the original here.
If All Poems Were Limericks: J. Alfred Prufrock
I realize that what I should be
is ragged claws under the sea:
I can’t get a date
and it’s getting late
and the mermaids aren’t talking to me.
Robert Service calls the Poetry Crisis Line, part 2
Read part 1 here
CALLER: Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee,
COUNSELOR: What part?
CALLER: where the cotton blooms and blows.
COUNSELOR: Um…
CALLER: Why he left his home in the South to roam ’round the Pole,
COUNSELOR: So he was a dancer?
CALLER: God only knows.
COUNSELOR: But you just said–
CALLER: He was always cold,
COUNSELOR: Was there visible shrinkage?
CALLER: but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
COUNSELOR: So he made good tips?
CALLER: Though he’d often say in his homely way
COUNSELOR: Right. So was he a good dancer? If he was homely but still got good tips.
CALLER: that “he’d sooner live in hell.”
COUNSELOR: Exotic dancing isn’t for everyone. Sometimes people burn out quickly.
The Gates of Hell call the Poetry Crisis Line
[side by side (with a little overlap), they look something like this]:
From Dante’s Inferno, Canto III
Illustration by David Sklar. Additional artwork by Hieronymus Bosch.
William Carlos Williams re-calls the Poetry Crisis Line
COUNSELOR: Poetry Crisis Line, what is your emergency?
CALLER: My wife’s new pink slippers
have gay pom-poms.
COUNSELOR: Is it any of your business? And how can you tell?
CALLER: There is not a spot or a stain
on their satin toes or their sides.
COUNSELOR: Hmm. But they could be metrosexual.
CALLER: All night they lie together
under her bed’s edge.
COUNSELOR: OK, that’s more convincing. But slippers just stay together.
CALLER: Shivering I catch sight of them
COUNSELOR: Oh!
CALLER: and smile,
COUNSELOR: I’m glad you’re comfortable with it. But please don’t watch them. They may want their privacy.
Read the original here