The Best American Poetry

"She Who Disbands Armies" by Amy Lawless

This poem was ruled ineligible for the BAP challenge because the poet left out a letter of Louise Gluck's name and the resulting poem was one line short. Nevertheless "She Who Disbands Armies" so impressed us with its comic vitality and high spirits that we happily post it here. -- DL

She Who Disbands Armies

“‘Haven't you ever heard of Lysistrata?’

‘Yeah, isn't that a mouthwash?’”

                                                    —Gilligan’s Island

Lysistrata blue balled soldiers with names like

Ulysses and Kinesias by holstering her half-inch clit—

instead of unsheathing, their swords were cockblocked.

(Suggest the need for hookers, less freedom.  Suggest Jennys rubbing against

each hand peacefully for the cause.)  The gunners return to war; now

gleeful to cooperate with those camel-fuckers.

Looser this time, nothing to lose.  Calendars without Caesarians.

Über this cloud is no watching God—just more frustrated men.  Finally, man

claims his own humanity.  Pressing against his canvas, advancing.

Kickback some green to Nietzsche. He was right: no one slept last night.

-- Amy Lawless

"As the Underworld Turns" by Sally Cook

Sally Cook's cleverly titled "As the Underworld Turns" was named one of two runners-up in the recent BAP Poem Challenge judged by Paul Violi. It's a charmer! Here it is:

AS THE UNDERWORLD TURNS

Like her sis, Persephone

On fair Adonis set her sights.

Underworld talk had it that she

Interfered with sister’s rights.

So, old Zeus ruled there’d be seasons!

Earth’s year went, two-thirds, to ladies.

*

Goodness knows, Zeus had his reasons -- 

Life stayed sweet in the Cyclades.

Under, next to Hades’ furies

Cabbage and anemones,

Kissed to life, were blessed by Ceres.

-- Sally Cook

"Komposition X" by Amy Allara

After she correctly translated "Hit the Lump of Rich Seal" into "The Triumph of Achilles" and identified Louise Gluck as that book's author, Amy Allara wrote this flowing acrostic poem that (to paraphrase Stevens) approaches prose but turns back into verse at the last possible second, the end of each line. The challenge called for a two-stanza poem; Allara makes the unconventional choice of breaking the lines into asymmetrical units of eleven and two.   -- DL

“Komposition X”

Left only with a motley assortment of objects

or with a series of flimsy hypotheses to explain what might be an

underpinning of what had just been there,

it doesn’t seem at all proper that one should just take leave

so unceremoniously without notification, without so much as an

exit that made sense or even a sound or with a

going that could invite an easy rationale.

Latching onto these inert items seems hazardous and certainly his copy of

Über Psychoanalyse cannot transmit much warmth to the wrecked bed

        linens —

Can a return to collect be counted on or is that stark and enigmatic

Kandinsky now hooked onto my wall for good.

-- Amy Allara

"Specs for Hephestos" by Angela Ball

If the BAP poem challenge tests the hypothesis that poetic form is a special variety of verbal gamesmanship, Angela Ball's "Specs for Hephestos" was a most welcome entry. Notice how Ball weaves in allusions to Gluck's titles and manages to call attention to the umlaut over the "u" in the poet's last name, a diacritical mark unlikely to survive electronic transmission. Great last line. -- DL

SPECS FOR HEPHESTOS

Louise's shield--it goes without saying--should be brazen.  With wild clumps

Of iris, and all flowers native to meadowlands,

Unique species, especially.  And,

If feasible, a handsome, straw-hatted

Stanley Kunitz, digging with a trowel, loosening a root ball.  Also

Egrets, emphatic descending figures.  Hephestos, hep artificer,

Get Patroclus, fallen from sleep's roof, put his

Lost friend, Achilles, beside him on Mount Ararat: a vita nova.  Of course,

Umlauts, famous for their soigné, sea-lion groans, should go in.  Last,

Catch a hawk dangling a fresh kill, their joint shadow forming a

Kind of insignia.  That's the shield, in part.  Louise is the sword.

-- Angela Ball

"To Gretel: A Double Acrostic" by Helen Brandenburg

So you solve the anagram (from "Hit the lump of rich seal" to "The Triumph of Achilles") and sit down to write an acrostic spelling out the author's name. If you're Helen Brandenburg, what do you do? You double the stakes. The last letters of the lines spell out "Louise Gluck" backwards. And you demonstrate the resemblance between fairy-land puzzles (children "out of crumbs" in the woods) and poems ("no / kisses to cure evil"). .  -- DL

To Gretel: A Double Acrostic

Left alone in the forest—out of luck,

out of crumbs, you sense something in its sac

undulating. Always another snafu

in utero, you think. Ill will

sizzles its song

everywhere.

Give it a rest, Sis—

Lighten up, He says. But, for you, Lost Willi,

under every rock cobwebs wait. You stop. You

choose to look hard—give us no

kisses to cure evil.

-- Helen Brandenburg

"Thanksgiving" by Terence Winch

An acrostic spelling out the name of a poet who has written memorably about the family romance, Terence Winch's "Thanksgiving" works rather like a sonnet in thirteen lines. The point of departure is the sort of holiday get-together that many of us secretly (or overtly) dread, though unexpected epiphanies do occur ("I am not at one with nature") as guests consort with ghosts and watch "images of war and politics" on t.v.  -- DL

Thanksgiving

Later, after dinner, we examine your uncle’s photos

of trees, flowers, waterfalls, birds

until I just can’t stand it another second.

I am not at one with nature.  Never was.

Some of the people can be fooled all of the time,

even when you yawn right in their faces.

Guests, or ghosts, have taken over the house,

lounging in the living room, watching t.v.

Ugly images of war and politics are all I see.

Cancel the rest of the holidays, please, until this

knot can be untied and our hearts released.

-- Terence Winch

"Visiting Faculty" by Andrea Selch

After figuring out the right answer to our poetry challenge, Andrea Selch composed this acrostic in which "John and I / Observed the interaction" of a visiting poet (who may or may not be Louise Gluck) and the campus literary community. See how well she conjures up the scene. The line about bitterness is, alas, dead on. -- DL

Visiting Faculty
                                    
Lurking at the dead end of the table, John and I
Observed the interaction — obsequious graduate students
Underdressed to the nines, eager for wine and limelight, and the
I-am-also-successful program faculty, nodding knowledgeably
(So much bitterness beneath their jovial politesse and
Extemporaneous paeans) — while she sat, looking, truth be told, a little

Glazed. At dinner's end, the clink of glasses celebrating, at long
Last, her reunion with an old student, whose accomplishments
       yadda yadda yadda…the
Über-moment for all poets in these programs, and the two of us, 
Coming from "outside" (up the road), wove our stems among the others,
        disappearing into
Kultur, even before the evening's unaffected reading had begun. 

             -- Andrea Selch

"After Achilles" by David Yezzi

After scrambling the anagram to come up with the correct answer -- "The Triumph of Achilles" by Louise Gluck -- David Yezzi wrote this acrostic poem in two stanzas. The first letters of the lines spell out the name of the poet who served as guest editor of THE BEST AMERICAN POETRY 1993. But beyond its poetic correctness, what I love here is the way Yezzi invokes the trope of wrathful Achilles -- the warrior in THE ILIAD who best exemplifies what Kant meant by the "terrifying sublime" -- in the light of "recent / Updates from the embattled / Interior."  -- DL
 
After Achilles

Love worth dying for, she thinks
Of it often, reading through recent
Updates from the embattled
Interior: once again
Senseless slaughter
Erupts in the outlying villages.

Gone are the innocent attractions
Lately praised by the poets. Instead, the poor
Überglücklich throng
Cleaves dearly to its own,
Kills for the simple love of it.

                        -- David Yezzi

Judge Paul Violi Picks Frank Osen's Penelope's Shield as Winner of The Best American Poetry Poem Challenge II

Read Osen's winning poem here.

Violi also singled out as runners up As the Underworld Turns by Sally Cook and Lo Mein Palace, Here I Come by Michael Quattrone

Violi has this to say about Penelope’s Shield: “What struck me about "Penelope's Shield,” besides its subtle command over "Some peaceful Province in Acrostick Land," is the way the poet packs so much into a short, affecting monologue. There's a good ear and a sharp eye at work here, a fine ironic touch tipping the balance on a very sensitive scale.

The three poems selected by Violi will be published in a forthcoming issue of Pool.

Check back often to read selections of the other fine entries. 

"Endgame" by Barbara G. S. Hagerty

This entry didn't win the BAP Poem Challenge that Paul Violi judged for us, but it merited honorable mention, and I love the glucklich allusions (oranges that mock, figures that descend, a missing umlaut, a vita nova) and other echoes (dogs of war, wounded heels) that make Barbara G. S. Hagerty's "Endgame" a puzzle-solver's delight. -- D.L.

Endgame

Liebling, ach! Someone has unleashed the dogs of war.

Oranges in the garden mock us with their scent.

Uselessly it drifts over the descending figure, firstborn, wild

iris, house on marshland. The apple that inspired war.

Shield yourself and soldier on: time wounds all heels.

Elementary, in any age: conceal, unlock your

glock, uzi, colt: unload the quiver's poison arrows;

love, unloose the umlaut, don't be diacritical,

umbilical, attached, heroic, Homeric.

Coming forth on dove's wings: a vita nova, the odyssey's

kiss in time that, at endgame, heals all wounds.

-- Barbara G. S. Hagerty