Mon 3.16.09
We have to pick a winner for the 2009 Neil Postman Award by the end of the week.
Any suggestions?
Seriously. I’ve been gradually rereading the last two issues for a couple days, and there are just too many options. Do I go with a whole slew of metaphors, as in Martha Clarkson’s “How She Describes Her Ex-Husband…“: “He’s the joker pinned in bicycle spokes/ vanishing down the street.” Or a solid extended metaphor, as in ellen’s “Five Stages of Grieving” or Chrys Tobey’s “The Loss of Lemons“? The most moving and memorable, Richard Jackson’s last lines in “Silences“? “The Lover of Stone“? A visual poem?
And that’s just what I can link to, from the summer issue. This winter we had Malcolm Alexander’s “middlefingering,” Dick Allen in outer space, Jonathan Wells’ “Please Hold,” John Brehm’s huge desk “like a landlocked ship,/ and I its landlocked captain, gazing out to sea.” “Mahler in New York” can’t win, because we already gave it $5,000, but what about Hilary Melton’s left foot, or Jennifer Malesich’s love letter?
Obviously this whole post is a trick — just something to make me write out the candidates, and think about them as a group. I’ve got my answer. But I’m still curious. The Postman Award is just supposed to go to the poem with the best use of metaphor every year — and that’s as open-ended as it sounds. Do you have any recommendations?
March 17th, 2009 at 7:13 am
Seems to me the winner should be someone who uses an extended metaphor, not merely an instance or a few instances, or lists, but an extended comparison yielding some truth about the human condition.
March 17th, 2009 at 10:14 am
I just reread the entire Summer issue and skimmed through the Winter which I had recently read and I wouldn’t want to be you. But I really like Clarkson’s. I don’t think the winning poem should have to carry one metaphor the whole way through. The common theme is there. The Ex is a sly deadbeat.
Love that poem.
March 17th, 2009 at 10:27 am
…and all the ones you mentioned plus Saunier’s “…Smithfield Ham…” the metaphor like a subtle punch at the very end.
March 17th, 2009 at 10:42 am
Ooh, you’re right, that’s a good one, too!
Yeah, I don’t think the winner has to be an extended metaphor (sorry Alex). Should probably be easier for an extended metaphor, but it’s more like a formula, F=MA — the bigger the metaphor is, the more force, but a sniper’s bullet can still be more powerful than a bowling ball in the right hands.
March 17th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Damn. I thought I knew where to mark my X, until I read once again the poems you had cited.
But yeah,
“He’s the joker pinned in bicycle spokes
vanishing down the street.”
A picture is worth a thousand words, and this metaphor is picture-perfect.