Poem 423

About to throw in the towel after a fruitless session at the typewriter trying to contact the muse without copying from myself or someone else, I then decide to write about that …

( … I love the inverted image of aping the monkey and the unpeeling of seven layers of quoting mimicry and acting to get back to the original moment of artistic creation … )

The Problem Of Originality

Even if I hit these keys
at random
I'd only be aping
the fabled monkey
who plagiarises The Merchant of Venice
by accident

better all round
if I admit defeat
echo Robert De Niro
as Jake LaMotta
playing Marlon Brando
as Terry
quoting Rod Steiger as Charlie
in Elia Kazan's
On the Waterfront

and say kid
this ain't your night