| InterBoard Poetry Competition | |
THE TITLE IS THE DOOR
Will Roby
(Enter the Muse)
On a morning when the sky spills old milk
a man creeps up on his writing desk
to make this poem and forget about the weather.
He knows the line is a form of suffering,
the dead-lipped empty page and a black pen
like a zoo's cage opened after war.
He fills the tip with ink, his dog
fills his mouth with water
and the poet's got to know how to sort it out:
the big blue room, the sea, the empty bowl.
He enters the poem, where it is Memorial Day
and some grass is coming in.
Judge Wayne Miller’s comment: “Though ‘The Title Is a Door’ engages in a relatively familiar metapoetic conceit (‘a man creeps up on his writing desk / to make this poem’), and therefore seems a little less original or ambitious than others in the group, I think the poem itself is enacted pretty impeccably. I love how the idea of ‘the line is a form of suffering,’ zeros in on the incremental nature of suffering, and I’m drawn to the descriptive surreality of ‘the dead-lipped empty page’ and the ‘black pen / like a zoo’s cage opened after war.’ (Also of note, here, is the internal rhyme of ‘page’ and ‘cage.’) Finally, after the poet assesses his surroundings, the closing image of ‘some grass coming in’ (that is, into the poem) on ‘Memorial Day,’ which seems to echo slightly the ending of John Ashbery’s ‘What Is Poetry,’ closes down the metapoetic game quite seamlessly.”
About the InterBoard Poetry Competition
Archive of IBPC Winners
Honorable Mention, December 2003
