How To Be A Mainstream Power Couple
~~ Create a talk show that can hold its own against Oprah and make it to your 600th episode. ~~ Hook up with an actor who starred in one of the best sitcoms ever to grace TVLand. ~~ Have a funny coming out story that takes place when you’re 31 that includes your 99-year-old granny (”I knew you were living with Ellen and all this time I was thinking, ‘I hope that lesbian isn’t hitting on my granddaughter!’”). ~~ Make earnest statements about your quasi-controversial coupledom. ~~ Get into an accident that includes the paparazzi to insure that it is youtubed; be gracious about it. ~~ Get rich. Very. ~~ Pose for W magazine, even if it isn’t your cup o’ tea. ~~ Finally, host the Oscars.
______________________
FOR POETRY PEOPLE — Guess what famous poet wrote the following poem, please:
~~
AND AGAIN, MARCH IS ALMOST HERE
If I were a tree you’d say
I was lost by a highway.
Death overflows the ditches
in which life confined it
and will be that way for some time.
I saw the alchemist drown
in his turquoise at seven
and elsewhere saw the less spiritual side.
God, how it gets me down.
Then furtively a bailiff came
as though to take my measurements
for a new suit. “Here, I don’t need this …
brine.” I was cluttered for the day.
A Mrs. came out of her house
being as I was on the road to say
look for the heather that is father
to the salt hay down the road.
I guess I only confused
my eager willingness to understand
just about anything that was offered.
Alas, it wasn’t much.
There were few requests for employment
and those seemed old and pallid
as though faxed by a squid one day last March.
Now, a year has gone by. Not quite
a year though, as I
was going to say.
They offered me Bluebeard.
So much that was unacceptable
that day and all the forests to come.
Though bathed in sleep and aromatic
persons, other stimuli come to the aid
of the hairs of one’s neck:
a lad on a bicycle, once,
beautiful as the crescent moon;
enjoyable as a book in a long set of books
who asks you this secret again.
–What Well-Known Poet Wrote This Poem?
_______________________
Now, I’m gonna watch the PBS special, “Billy Strayhorn: Lush Life.” See part four of Gabrielle Calvocoressi’s poem, “Suite Billy Strayhorn”, on my blog here.
Incidentally, two-time Oscar winner, Emma Thompson, pole dances. Who knew?
7 Responses to “How To Be A Mainstream Power Couple”
AMY KING View All →
Amy King is the recipient of the 2015 Winner of the Women’s National Book Association (WNBA) Award. Her latest collection, The Missing Museum, is a winner of the 2015 Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize. She co-edited with Heidi Lynn Staples the anthology Big Energy Poets of the Anthropocene: When Ecopoets Think Climate Change. She also co-edits the anthology series, Bettering American Poetry, and is a professor of creative writing at SUNY Nassau Community College.
AMY KING 
February 7th, 2007 at 7:48 am eJohn Ashbery!
February 7th, 2007 at 11:36 am eNo idea but I like it.
February 8th, 2007 at 3:53 am eIt’s cheating to Google.
February 8th, 2007 at 1:21 pm eI’m pretty sure Todd is an Ashbery-aficionado. I’ve always wanted to type that: John Ashbery-aficionado.
February 9th, 2007 at 4:36 am eThanks for the update on all thing L. I didn’t realize how far behind I’d gotten. Again.
February 9th, 2007 at 4:36 am eI meant, all things L. But what that means, I’m not exactly sure.
February 17th, 2007 at 12:37 am eYou’re welcome, Robin. But I don’t think I’m very up on such news, though I’d like to be!