Round 62:
Yusef: "The Restaurant Business" by James Tate
Bob: "You also, Nightingale" by Reginald Shepherd
"Elsie and I were having a nice, little romantic dinner at our favorite restaurant, when the owner of the restaurant came over and sat down at our table.."
It works as prose; I'm not sure why Tate feels he has to break the lines at "romantic / dinner" and "of / the." His scary little parable is classic Tate, a prose-poem written in lines of verse. "I was reading a nice, little book of poetry by James Tate in the bookstore when the owner of the bookstore interrupted me to ask whether I was going to buy the book." The poem has a terrifying conclusion. Normally, I wouldn't get that far.
Sheperd's weird imagining of Petrarch is closer to genuine surrealism, and the lines are genuinely verse:
Petrarch dreams of pebbles
on the tongue, he loves me
at a distance, black polished stone
skipping the lake that follows
worn-down words...
He wins the round for Bob.
After 62
17-34-10
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