Angelfood

I got my copy of Diner this week (fall/winter 2005) and it’s so good. It includes results of their contest. The winning poem “Ceremony with Medical Experiment” by Mary Austin Speaker is wonderful. It’s a list poem, which can be wearying, but very original and more of a chronic.

The judge’s comment on it illustrates for me what I was talking about with a friend yesterday. He asked me to look at one of his poems, concerned it didn’t have “a point.” I said if the poem only conveys a feeling or imparts an image, if it’s successful in that, we shouldn’t worry about “making a point.” It’s not necessary to “conclude” something from it, or outline a philosophy, for chrissakes.

Anyway, the judge (Robin Behn) said it better: “The poem plunges into a pursual of time that doesn’t aim to ‘capture’ it, but rather to record its currents and vectors… each time I read it I felt as though I were privy to a profound discovery, not of an end-point or idea or utterance, but of a kinesis, a meaning-in-motion.”

The second place poem, “The Birth of a Wolf” by Francis Woodbridge was also groovy.

Diner had a number of poems using food as a major element, including mine, “Angelfood.” There’s another food poem by Jack Conway called “Sunshine Sandwich:” I am going to eat America like a/sunshine sandwich. And Kelli Russell Agodon also has a poem about food that I enjoyed.

The best food poem, though, was Christopher Goodrich’s “On Being Rejected by Diner Magazine for the Fourth Time.” It goes… It is, by now, painfully obvious/the beef is overdone…. It was very funny.

Another poem I really liked was “Invention” by Askold Skalsky, which starts All you really need/to write a poem is/Grainger’s Wholesale Motorbook Catalog…