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
Best haiku ever (in the unlikely case that you don't know it):
ReplyDeletehaiku
Writing a poem
In seventeen syllables
Is very diffic
John Cooper Clarke
Cheers
Otepoti
Otepoti, thank you - you're always raising the bar, or at least the tone! :)
ReplyDeleteIsn't the best-ever poem about New York thoe one about what the Zen master said to the hot dog vendor?
ReplyDeleteOtepoti
You'll have to run that one by me again, Otepoti . . .
ReplyDeleteso what did the
ReplyDeletezen 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
Heh. I have heard this told as a joke, with the subject the Buddha himself.
ReplyDeleteYes. I heard of it in the context of a discussion as to whether such "found" material could really be counted as poetry.
ReplyDeleteOtepoti
It makes a sweet little poem, I think.
ReplyDelete