Day 10
Prompt: Ezra Pound
famously said that “poetry is news that stays news”. While we don’t know about
that, the news can have a certain poetry to it. Today, we’d like to challenge
you to write a poem based on one of the curious headlines, cartoons and other
journalistic tidbits featured at Yesterday’s Print, where old news stays amusing, curious and sometimes
downright confusing.
Headline: Woman tries to buy noted Eiffel Tower. She discovers landmark is not for sale.
The Evening
Review, Ohio, 1930.
A bit of an
eyeful
From a lady
in Ohio
Such a
great girl is La dame de fer,
the wrought-iron
lady, built to last.
With her portly
base, sleek long neck,
wholesome curves
and a head for heights,
she’s the tallest
of them all in Paris,
with great legs
– all four of them,
draped in a
lattice of fishnet.
Just one
look and I was caught.
The tallest
structure built by hand,
she still held
the record in 1930,
‘til cheekily
outdone by our Chrysler.
Not to be beaten,
she donned an aerial
in ’57 to top
him by five whole metres.
I blame the
sheer size of her heels.
Whenever I’m
in Paris, I will visit her,
sit by
myself in the gaslit restaurant,
enjoy the wondrous
view of the city lights,
sip from a
crystal glass of Chateau Margaux
and enjoy a
leg of lamb Dauphinoise.
It’s here I
fell in love with Paris.
Right at
the very top, where no one can go,
I hear
there is a quaint little apartment,
built for
the engineer, one Gustave Eiffel,
where he
used to perform his experiments.
I sorely
want to own it and lounge around
on his furniture
designed by Jean Lachaise.
But, alas,
I have found it is not for sale,
even though
a man once tried to sell it twice.
His name
was Victor Lustig, a clever trickster,
who upgraded
from card-shark pickpocketer.
Here’s an
interesting anecdote for you…
It was
meant to be pulled down after 20 years,
but the
city thought it valuable for radio.
In 1914, a
humble transmitter saved all of Paris
by jamming the Germans’ communications.
So, you
could say Eiffel helped the Allies
win the
First Battle of the Marne.
Not only
that. The critics were wrong about
La dame de
fer, as they often are about women.
They said she
was too clever, too artistic,
with no head
for mathematics. A dimwit.
But Eiffel
knew the importance of wind,
and so he
made her curve and sway.
An “invocation
of science”, you can read engraved
the names of
72 French scientists and engineers.
It’s no
surprise that Eiffel made a dame great,
for he also
helped build our Statue of Liberty
to be just
as enduring on New York’s shores,
and hold
her head high in the worst of times.
A symbol of
hope, freedom and inspiration,
a gift for us Americans to remember
their alliance in our own Revolution,
she offers us
a light that will always burn.
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 10, 2024
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