Here are the matchups for the South Region’s Second Round:
1) John Most
spit fire
head &
shoulders
arch ochre
beak-pierced
fruit
seed
versus
9) A. R. Ammons
Elegy for a Jet Pilot
The blast skims
over the string
of takeoff lights
and
relinquishing
place and time
lofts to
separation:
the plume, rose
sliver, grows
across the
high-lit evening
sky: by this
Mays Landing creek
shot pinecones,
skinned huckleberry
bush, laurel
swaths define
an unbelievably
particular stop.
15) Elizabeth Bishop
One Art
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
–Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
versus
10) Margaret Walker
I Want To Write
I want to write
I want to write the songs of my people.
I want to hear them singing melodies in the dark.
I want to catch the last floating strains from their sob-torn
throats.
I want to frame their dreams into words; their souls into
notes.
I want to catch their sunshine laughter in a bowl;
fling dark hands to a darker sky
and fill them full of stars
then crush and mix such lights till they become
a mirrored pool of brilliance in the dawn.
14) Donald Justice
Bus Stop
Lights are burning
In quiet rooms
Where lives go on
Resembling ours.
The quiet lives
That follow us—
These lives we lead
But do not own—
Stand in the rain
So quietly
When we are gone,
So quietly . . .
And the last bus
Comes letting dark
Umbrellas out—
Black flowers, black flowers.
And lives go on.
And lives go on
Like sudden lights
At street corners
Or like the lights
In quiet rooms
Left on for hours,
Burning, burning.
versus
11) Ishmael Reed
Jacket Notes
Being a colored poet
Is like going over
Niagara Falls in a
Barrel
An 8 year old can do what
You do unaided
The barrel maker doesn’t
Think you can cut it
The gawkers on the bridge
Hope you fall on your
Face
The tourist bus full of
Paying customers broke-down
Just out of Buffalo
Some would rather dig
The postcards than
Catch your act
A mile from the drink
It begins to storm
But what really hurts is
You’re bigger than the
Barrel
4) Doris Davenport
No, I know you remember so and so
meaning somebody who rode through town once, ten
years ago or who lived and died before your birth. They
expect you to remember, to know, just like your mind is
their mind and if you don’t, they might take it personal.
Get so made at you, they can’t get on with the story.
Not like Fannie Mae. She will get all into a story and
catch herself: “But that was before you
were born.” Fannie Mae will pause, grin for emphasis
and say, “And I wish you
coulda seen it!”
not me.
when i get through
when i’m done
won’t be no wishing
you could see.
you gone see.
versus
12) Randall Jarrell
Mail Call
The letters always just evade the hand
One skates like a stone into a beam, falls like a bird.
Surely the past from which the letters rise
Is waiting in the future, past the graves?
The soldiers are all haunted by their lives.
Their claims upon their kind are paid in paper
That established a presence, like a smell.
In letters and in dreams they see the world.
They are waiting: and the years contract
To an empty hand, to one unuttered sound –
The soldier simply wishes for his name.
