'NaPoMo Suite' by Daniel Bosch

Two Arts

Are you at a loss? Why not get a Master’s?
Hundreds of programs are filled up with intense
People like you, each class as good as last year’s.

You’d have to write, that way. You’d grow to trust your
Teachers and peers, to whom you would make sense.
If I were at a loss, I’d get a Master’s.

Your father will write checks so fast his
Pen will spit. He needs to tell his friends
People like you grow up, this year’s not last year.

Your mother? Watch. She’ll steep the Pastor’s
Tea with Sebaldian references:
“Was lost…is found,” “My Master’s house,” etc.

Think: two whole years—maybe three—on casters.
Free time to read and write and to experience
New people, each class as good as last year’s.

Even if some of them are real bastards,
Most people like you, you know, like you,
And people like you won’t last here.
What have you got to lose? Go get a Master’s.

 

Spell

One does not have to be intellactual
to have a career in pietry,
but one must follow the guilelines
as printed, and if one’s contribation
is excepted, one must assent
to the editor’s interpredations
and make every revasion the editor
recommends, for collaborision shapes
the Zitgeist, and a writer must
avoid the damnotion of the editor,
who is all ways also a writer, and
whose apprival may be, in the future,
abuse. May you find, this way, succass—
a front-page raview in The Tomes,
perhaps, or a viral posting on the internot,
to which each of the nine moses leads.

 

Where every individual talent is  nurtured!
—MFA program ad

“After I Studied Poetry with Him

I never wrote a poem again.
I lost my voice. I couldn’t get it back.
I still read a good poem, now and then,

But my flow stopped flowing.

I used to keep a notepad by my bed,
But I lost my voice, and I can’t get it back.

I thought it would return, but I was wrong.
My flow stopped flowing.

You know that desire, that, that, that feeling?
My fire is quenched, but I can still talk
About poems, good ones, now. Back then
I used to write a poem a day.



I used to feel productive. Now I feel

Poems all the time, but in a different way.
Talk about quenched.
Do you think he knows what happened?

I used to keep a notepad by my bed.
Now I have room for books. I try to read.

I thought it would return, but was I wrong.

I won’t write a poem today.

You know that I desire, that I feel. Well,

Now I have room for books. I try to read
Poems all the time, but in a different way.
Do you think he knows what happened?”

 

“Spell,” “Two Arts,” and “After I Studied Poetry With Him…” first appeared at Poetrynet.

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About the Author:

Daniel Bosch’s poems and translations have been published in journals such as Poetry, Slate, The Times Literary Supplement, Agni, The Beloit Poetry Journal, The New Republic and The Paris Review. He was Poetry Editor at Harvard Review for issues 19 and 20. In 1998 he was awarded the Boston Review Poetry Prize for a set of poems riffing on films starring Tom Hanks, and his first collection of poems, Crucible, was published by Other Press in 2002.  Recent essay-reviews by Daniel can be read at Artsfuse, Contemporary Poetry Review, The Critical Flame, The Rumpus and The Fortnightly Review. He lives in Chicago.