Poem o' th' Week: Which would YOU rather have?

 

How are you doing for poems lately?
Craving a really good one?

 

 

I first came across this poem in Garrison Keillor's anthology Good Poems for Hard Times, which we've been choosing poems out of to read randomly at family dinnertimes since corona hit -- for no reason whatsoever.

And as a sometime struggling poet (shh... only sometimes, and I certainly do struggle with it...), there's something about this that really appeals to me.

 

So I figured I'd share it.  Because… well, why not?

 

(The anthology, by the way, as with the original volume, Good Poems, is a bit of a mixed bag.  I enjoy having them, but not all the poems are appropriate for kids or family-friendly.  I guess someone thinks they’re all good, or they wouldn’t be included in a book with this title – but there are many in both volumes that don’t particularly resonate with me.)

 

The Poet’s Occasional Alternative

by Grace Paley

I was going to write a poem
I made a pie instead      it took
about the same amount of time
of course the pie was a final
draft      a poem would have had some
distance to go      days and weeks and
much crumpled paper

the pie already had a talking
tumbling audience among small
trucks and a fire engine on
the kitchen floor

everybody will like this pie
it will have apples and cranberries
dried apricots in it      many friends
will say      why in the world did you
make only one

this does not happen with poems

because of unreportable
sadnesses I decided to
settle this morning for a re-
sponsive eatership      I do not
want to wait a week      a year      a
generation for the right
consumer to come along

 

So – yeah.  Which would you prefer? 

Poem…?  Pie…?  Poem with a side of pie…?

Kinda tough getting all the sparklers lined up on top of the poem.

But I hope, in this case, a poem was exactly what you needed to hit the spot.

If you’re grooving on a particular poem these days, please PRETTY PLEASE – we’re desperate – share it in the comments below!

(magnetic fridge poetry picture © Steve Johnson via Flickr)

 

Tzivia / צִיבְיָה

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