Stephen Bett
Milorad Pavić, Landscape Painted with Tea
(opening lines; trans, Christina Pribićević-Zorić)
[from Novel Lines 101: 101 alphabetical poems. Through 101 novels and metafictions, each poem in this collection riffs, literally, on its subject texts’ opening line(s).]
They wore the tips of their mustaches braided like whips. For generations they had not smiled…
Milord, said the Creel, The Whip
should flay onward, figure it out
ward pls, no tight-worn braids
Who could possibly smile a swoon
yawn tame state of PoWorld
Landscape teased & up-
braided
(I think to say this / wrongly)
corrupted a bully’s eye-lash
I spent a night turning in bed, he sd
& now we’re muttonchops
back in the day
nonny nonny, a’hey?
—
*Italics from Robert Creeley’s “The Whip” (w/ echoes from RC & the big O)
Stephen Bett is a widely and internationally published Canadian poet with 26 books in print from BlazeVOX, Chax, Spuyten Duyvil, Ekstasis Editions, Thistledown Press, & others. His personal papers are archived in the “Contemporary Literature Collection” at Simon Fraser University. His website is stephenbett.com.