The Telephone

“Merrill’s skillfully deployed
rhetoric of inauthenticity in
his pre-Sandover poems
occasionally surpasses even
the effects of Auden’s
double-talk.”—Piortr Gwiazda,
James Merrill and W.H. Auden:
Homosexuality and Poetic Influence

Double-talk the name of the game—
Poets and con-artists are good at it.
Truman Capote listening for hours
To the intimate conversations of
The two killers of In Cold Blood.

Answered Prayers full of it—
The hoity-toity dirt & elite gossip
Told to him at lunch over martinis,
At cocktail parties full of ladies
Not much different than killers.

Naturally Truman all was ears—
With his innocent eyes & coy
All-knowing demeanor, charming
To both cognoscenti & convicts,
Intelligentsia & those in the know.

Gossip is Literature, my dears—
Just ask the all-knowing Black Phone.
The Aether is full of lovely tidbits…
Valerie Plame, Scooter Libby and
Even poets calling late at night.