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Contributor Series 9: If Men Had Ears, Sacred Cows


06.24.11 Posted in Contributor Series 9, today's words by

Contributor Series 9: If Men Had Ears
Sacred Cows
By Jean McLeod

The classicists’ unassailable integrity
eludes subtle attempts to alter
inviolable design, even when happenstance
introduces playful phantasms
into works of chaste and vaunted beauty.
Discord, by happy accident,
perpetuates modification
in loop, chorus, riff, ostinoto,
pounds in surge and variation;
deepens personality, interpretation.
Any alteration, purists claim,
nips at tradition, crushes archetype,
the knowledgeable, less arrogant
bask in the resplendence of happy miracles
which update them and motif,
draw zest to music no longer immutable.


Jean McLeod’s most recent poem to appear here was The Day Nothing Came of Applying Bottom to Chair (November 2010).



3 Responses to “Contributor Series 9: If Men Had Ears, Sacred Cows”

  1. Jean McLeod says:

    Thanks for choosing my poem for Vox Poetica Annmarie!

    To everyone: so sorry I dashed off this first draft and sent it. I can do better. Really? Really!

  2. Kay Middleton says:

    A dash off with style and heart. Way to go, Jean!

  3. Jean McLeod says:

    And, THAT’S what friends are for. Thank you, Nancy.

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