Round 26

Yusef: "Rhythmic Arrangements (on Prosody)" by Michael S. Harper

Bob: "Reunion" by Louise Glück

This round features two of the four poets who appear in both volumes (the others are Bidart and Warsh.) I got mixed up for a second about which poem was chosen by which editor. Harper's poem starts off:

I was forced to memorize and recite
in front of an atonal white hostess

made to do it again
in Iowa tests of critical argot complicit

with theatrical endrhymes . . .

The "atonal white hostess" might very well be Louise, whose tone-deafness here is astounding:


It is a pleasure, now, to speak of the ways in which
their lives have developed, alike in some ways, in others
profoundly different...

or

... Time has been good to them, and now
they can discuss it together from within, so to speak,
which, before, they could not.

Harper's deft metaprosodic poem wins the round for Yusef. The thought crossed my mind that Glück was parodying the empty, banal way we think about our lives. I kind of doubt it.

After 26:

9-13-4