As you may have noticed, we’ve been celebrating National Poetry Month by periodically sharing poems by some of our past honored artists. But some local poets are being much more literal about their Poetry Month. Take Simeon Berry (Poetry Fellow ’06): he’s undertaking the NaPoWriMo challenge – that is, to write at least one poem a day, all month.
You can follow his intriguing trajectory on his blog, where he’s been posting a series of poems about a character named “the doppelganger” and his adventures (of a kind) in a world seemingly shaped by poetic forces.
Here’s one posted April 19:
The doppelganger discusses his will with Miss Anaphora
You can’t
take
my hair.
Even
a lock is
enough
to regrow
me and I
have
too
many tax
problems
as it is.
A jazz
funeral’s
right out.
I don’t
want to
come back
in a stride
piano.
That’s
just pained.
In fact
it would
be better
if you
buried
me inside
a bullet
or a time
capsule.
Really
there’s no
difference
between
the two
if you
think hard
enough.
And I
want you
to put on
that
never dress,
the one
you were
wearing
when I
said
The three
things
I believe
in are
me, my
shadow,
and that
hemline.
Everything
else is
just a
substitute
measure.
I wasn’t
wrong.
Not very
Simeon Berry is an Associate Editor for Ploughshares and has won a Career Chapter Award from the National Society of Arts and Letters, the Dana Award for Poetry, and a Massachusetts Cultural Council Individual Artist Fellowship.
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