Genre: Poetry

“This is how the text exchange ends. / Not with an explicit farewell but with a two-day pause followed by a thumbs-up-emoji reaction,” writes Reuven Perlman in “How Other Things End” recently published in the New Yorker with an epigraph of T. S. Eliot’s famed last lines from “The Hollow Men.” “This is how the career ends. / Not with a retirement party and a gold watch but with a second career in the gig economy.” Taking inspiration from Perlman’s comedic perspective of dark times, write a humorous poem that consists of your own inventions of anticlimactic contemporary situations in which the outcome is a letdown, with more of a fizzle than a gratifying conclusion. What modern references would you include to put your own stamp on this concluding episode?

“We live in such a fast-paced world: Poetry helps us slow down, deepen our attention, connect and live more fully,” says Arthur Sze in our online exclusive announcing his appointment as the twenty-fifth poet laureate of the United States. Taking inspiration from Sze’s insights on poetry’s ability to help us appreciate each moment, compile a cluster of words and phrases that come to mind when you recall the soundscape of a recent observation. As you jot down the grouping of words, allow the sounds of what’s already on the page to contribute to associative rhythms and any consonance or assonance in your brainstorm. Then, compose your poem using the full range of the page’s space, deprioritizing any urgency for ease of meaning-making for a piece that is first and foremost inextricable from its sound.