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R . T. S M I T H To Write the New Yorker Poem I need white wine and an open window, a well-stamped passport and nostalgia for exotic places which I have visited (though not on vacation). Ennui is useful if it leads to a story, and light is half the battle, all the better if shadowed by firs and the tracery of winter hardwoods. Smoke from a French cigarette as it curls toward that light and the cold lying damp on the sill. A theory, also, is requisite, something modest about how our questions shape us, wind across wheat of an unusual color. A cast of family villains, the dispassionate appreciation of dysfunction, scenes in Manhattan restaurants. No birdsong will serve my spell, exactly, but Stevens’ stillness after, perhaps, and the leafless vines, birdnet growing green on the fig limbs, arachnid in this season. But now I begin to lose it, to see fine webbing across each image, fact toiling toward some symbol against my natural grain. I am close to The 1990s ❚ 221 meaning something. Still, I have my wine and window, an attitude of receptive languor, the designer boots and a midden of prudent sighs, this trail of ink blue under the moon’s china, a red sweater knitted by candlelight, cooled by the blue mountains of Spain. 222 ❚ The 1990s ...

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