Poem in the Modernist Manner
David Lehman, 1948
They were cheap but they were real,
the old bistros. You could have a meal,
drink the devil’s own red wine, and contemplate
the sawdust on the floor, or fate,
as the full-fed beast kicked the empty pail.
the old bistros. You could have a meal,
drink the devil’s own red wine, and contemplate
the sawdust on the floor, or fate,
as the full-fed beast kicked the empty pail.
The conspiracy of the second rate
continued to reverberate.
Everyone wanted to get his licks.
Everyone said it was a steal.
continued to reverberate.
Everyone wanted to get his licks.
Everyone said it was a steal.
So the girl and I stayed out late.
We walked along the shore
and I campaigned some more.
And the city built with words not bricks
burned like a paper plate.
We walked along the shore
and I campaigned some more.
And the city built with words not bricks
burned like a paper plate.
About This Poem
“‘Poem in the Modernist Manner’ is from a book of poems in
progress called Poems in the Manner Of. I began writing the book twelve
years ago—on the principle that when I write as if I were someone else,
something good may happen. I have written poems in the manner of Cavafy,
Neruda, Baudelaire, Holderlin, Rilke, Auden, Mayakovsky, Dorothy Parker, Emerson,
Dickinson, Yeats, Frost, Borges, Bukowski, W. C. Williams, Robert Lowell, and
‘Wallace Stevens as rewritten by Gertrude Stein,’ among others. ‘Poem in the
Modernist Manner’ sneaks in allusions to Auden and Eliot, and the atmosphere
and attitude owe something, I think, to the modernists of the Pound
generation.”
—David Lehman
—David Lehman
David Lehman is the author of New and Selected Poems (Scribner,
2013). He teaches poetry and literature in the New School Writing Program in
New York City.
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