Just The Right Madness: A Found Poem Poem by Frank Avon

Ecstatic poems
announce their arrival
when the act of writing
is utterly inconvenient:

in the shower
walking the dog
[late for an appointment
just before surgery

changing a diaper
or a flat tire
mowing the lawn
or moving to Florida].

One has to surrender
and just plain take dictation
[use whatever pen or pencil
is handy & Holiday Inn station-

ary]. The lines and images
may be overtly relevant to one
another or not (the less relevant
the better) . Sometimes

[the] connective tissue
was nothing more than filaments
[or Freudian inhibitions
or merely personal habiliments].

So much the better: [the poet]
is left with a poem illuminated
[or intimately crenelated,
or instantly incriminated]

with just the right madness

[just the right madness].


NB: This is a poem I found and could not resist. So far the best poem I have discovered in this year's Best American Poetry is 'Elegy for My Mother' by Frannie Lindsay. It's splendid. Her note in the biographical appendix is also 'poetic, 'and quite insightful about the writing of poetry. This is a fractured quotation from that note; the words in brackets [ ] are my own, inserted to illustrate 'madness' and to alliterate, assonate, and halfway rhyme Get the book and read the original poem and note; it's worth it. Terrance Hayes, ed., The
Best American Poetry 2014 (sorry, the computer won't let me italicize titles) . The poem is on p.83f and the note on p.174f.