The Matador of Metaphor by David Lehman

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend March 30, 2015   The Matador of Metaphor   David Lehman

The grapefruit in the Florida orchard has ripened into a globe in Hartford for him to look at, not to eat. If he had a tin can he would beat it as a drummer in a band beats his drum and steadily with a swish and sometimes a gong. It’s his wish to escape from gray walls and sky into a Denmark of the inner eye or a bullring south of the border or a sky espied from the trenches of a battlefield in Flanders. Wenches wander into his wonderland. Order is disorder squared. We are nowhere else but here, yet live we do in metaphor like that elegant square-shouldered matador.            © 2015 David Lehman. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “I am completing a book I began back in 2002 called ‘Poems in the Manner of.’ ‘The Matador of Metaphor’ is from this manuscript. It is an homage to Wallace Stevens that appropriates certain of his techniques.” —David Lehman   David Lehman is the author of The State of the Art: A Chronicle of American Poetry, 1988-2014 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015). He teaches in the graduate writing program of the New School in New York City. Most Recent Book by Lehman   The State of the Art: A Chronicle of American Poetry, 1988-2014 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015) "The Language of the Birds" by Richard Siken "real poem (personal statement)" by Rachel Zucker "The Plain Sense of Things" by Wallace Stevens Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038