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Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Special Australian Edition August 2023
Is That All There Is…to a Poem? – poems by Daniel Lusk.
Is That All There Is…to a Poem?
after a song by jazz artist and composer Peggy Lee
Old poet foresees questions of veracity. What must a poem have? Or do? Or be?
Say it aloud: Will it sing itself (I wonder) off the page?
Does it skip or trip along? Or amble, so we abide the pace?
Never mind formalities: sonnet, sestina, villanelle—the box. The hidden tongue-and-
groove of tanka and haiku that go without saying.
Vaunted compression? Not only for the sake of brevity, but understatement: leaning
into grief or joy. The shadow sense of a reader’s mind: To wit: a tingle between the
eyebrows.
A poem may merely tease—“bark” of a dog or tree. Or flirt with meaning—“sally” for
a willow or a girl.
Listen: there is saffron on the poet’s bow.
Have we tale or yarn? Some allusion, connotation, hint?
Or lyric—an echo, a lisp, a lingering…a whisper of citrus or shadow of plum in the
wine. Aftertaste of the holy crust.
The little rift of silence after.
More Farthings & Ha’pennies
Philosophy
Lift this knot into contemplation.
Exaltation
No one dances with the dervish
and he sleeps alone.
Consonant
Listening to Schumann,
“Adagio for Horn and Piano,”
I hang laundry in the back garden.
Palimpsest
The scent, the hour…
Fleurs
As much as your snowdrops of March and tulips
of April, I loved her moist what-have-yous.
When heroes came, we ate them.
They were not thieves but adventurers in want of a boat.
Little flirty thirty-cups
The bark beetle. Now there’s an artist and a nobody.
—for sculptor Kate Pond
Blessed the light at the end of the day.
© Daniel Lusk
Daniel Lusk is author of several poetry collections and other books, most recently Every Slow Thing, poems (Kelsay Books 2022) and Farthings, eBook (Yavanika Press 2022). Besides appearances online in Live Encounters, his work is published widely in print journals and his genre-bending essay “Bomb” (New Letters) was awarded a Pushcart Prize. His sonic poem, “Toccata for Spoons,” was among Honorable Mentions chosen by Billy Collins for the 2023 Fish Poetry Prize (Ireland). He lives in Vermont (USA).
Memorable poems. Particularly sensory image:
“Aftertaste of the holy crust.
The little rift of silence after.”