mister fix-it

After a leg broke off the old table, he fixed it with what had at hand: a stack of books under one corner stabilized it nicely.

lap poem

As the workshop leader proceeded around the table, I thought I could hear the woman beside me tearing up her copies in her lap. And when he called her turn to present a poem, she lifted the scraps of paper from her lap and let them fall on the table in a pile.

fully furnished

They tried to give him a chair in poetry. He refused unless there was a table to go with it.

taken aback

After reading her poem in the workshop group she could hear a scuffing sound as chairs pushed back a little ways from the table.

good ingredients

After a good meal, all at the table agreed the recipe was a kind of poem.

uses of poetry

Sitting at a café table, I noticed a poetry book had been jammed under one leg to keep the table from wobbling.

table setting

He’d properly set the table with the form, however no meal was served.

what mattered

It was not important that [the poems] survive.
What mattered was that they should bear
Some lineament or character,

Some affluence, if only half-perceived,
In the poverty of their words,
Of the planet of which they were part.


—Wallace Stevens, from “The Planet On The Table”