For a Fistful of Quotations

Dragged around by your name,
Is that all you write for?
Maybe that plus the sense

You’ve expressed yourself well,
Gotten life off your chest?
For the moment at least

That does seem the model
For post-mortem esteem.
A few flashy prizes

Likewise attached to you
Won’t hurt, and equally
Quoted, feted poets

Linked to you socially,
Epistolarily,
Or, best, romantically

And tumultuously,
Make you more important,
More fun to write about.

Gossip canonizes
Or at least saves the names
Of not a few writers.

But it’s those quotations,
Snappy, pithy bon-mots,
Summations and slogans,

Again, linked to your name,
Which firm the foundation
Of high reputation,

Your palace, your grave mound,
Your tomb, your cenotaph.
Even those buried whole,

Their complete works preserved,
Are only immortal
As fragments. Well, and so?

Maybe you’ll be quoted,
Someday, maybe you won’t.
But no one’s stopping you

From writing for reasons
Of your own, which no one
But you will ever know.

Odelisque

Put the genre on display.
Lie it sideways. Show the form.
Undress it—it’s exotic—

Bare gift still in the wrapper
Of that alien empire,
The prosody of the past.

The content in that outline,
Model of the poem next door,
Hardly matters anymore—

Or rather, only matters
To show that what readers like
These days can be sumptuous,

Can cosplay with otherness,
Mastered and shared among us.