Thursday, March 12, 2009

Best Poem Ever

New York Notes
1. Caught on a side street in heavy traffic, I said to the cabbie, I should have
walked. He replied, I should have been a doctor. 2. When can I get on the 11:33 I
ask the guy in the information booth at the Atlantic Avenue Station. When they
open the doors, he says. I am home among my people.

-- Harvey Shapiro (from How Charlie Shavers Died and Other Poems. © Wesleyan University Press, 2001).
H/T: The Writer's Almanac

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Best haiku ever (in the unlikely case that you don't know it):

haiku

Writing a poem
In seventeen syllables
Is very diffic

John Cooper Clarke

Cheers

Otepoti

Pentimento said...

Otepoti, thank you - you're always raising the bar, or at least the tone! :)

Anonymous said...

Isn't the best-ever poem about New York thoe one about what the Zen master said to the hot dog vendor?

Otepoti

Pentimento said...

You'll have to run that one by me again, Otepoti . . .

Anonymous said...

so what did the

zen monk say to

the hotdog vendor make

me one with everything

Jonathan Williams

I believe this appeared in the New Yorker, but I can't confirm that.

Otepoti

Pentimento said...

Heh. I have heard this told as a joke, with the subject the Buddha himself.

Anonymous said...

Yes. I heard of it in the context of a discussion as to whether such "found" material could really be counted as poetry.

Otepoti

Pentimento said...

It makes a sweet little poem, I think.