New and on View: Mudlark No. 30 (2006)
Anagrams of America | Mike Smith
Author's Note. Each of the poems in Anagrams of America is an anagram of
its source text. All of the letters of the source text have been used,
once and only once, in the composition of the corresponding poem. No
letters have been added and no letters have been left out. Many of the
sources are familiar works by familiar authors, and I have indicated below
each poem the text used. Unless otherwise indicated, titles, epigraphs,
section numbers, and section headings are not to be considered part of the
anagram. -- MS
"Plan" is one of sixteen Anagrams of America. Start the new year early and
start it here... with Mudlark and Mike Smith, his Anagrams of America.
Plan
Those who write of the art of poetry
teach us that if we would write what may be worth
the reading, we ought always, before we begin, to
form a regular plan and design of our piece.
-- Ben Franklin
1.
To be separate, anonymous, silent,
yet not without real power or pride, say
the tact and driven mindset of software
giants, ex-hackers bailed out by the F.B.I.
Troubleshooters, key specialists
flown in to exact purpose yet no
further ado, then flown back home again.
One of the sought-after, needed, few.
2.
Bound by boundlessness, appalled
by applause, overreaching
in despair--The poet at home
in a prose nation. He weathers his vast,
unforgiven country like a storm.
3.
By jolt, by dint of play, Rex Eternity
can milk every almanac list, render moot
our daily reinvention of the sky.
Many may act. More cry out. Unnerving Time
4.
exists for our misuse. In it: loved lover
and icy stream are lost. View
the damage done in Limit's civic name.
_ The poem is an anagram of the four numbered sections
of Benjamin Franklin's "Plan for Future Conduct," Labaree et al., eds.,
The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, 40 vols. New Haven: Yale UP, 1959.
Mike Smith is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at
Greensboro, Hollins College, and the University of Notre Dame. His poems
have recently appeared in Carolina Quarterly, Hotel Amerika, North
American Review, Quarter After Eight, Notre Dame Review, Salt, DIAGRAM,
and Borderlands. A chapbook, SMALL INDUSTRY, is forthcoming from the South
Carolina Poetry Initiative.
Spread the word. Far and wide,
William Slaughter
MUDLARK
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