The Blue Plate Tea Room Sestina

When Robert Frost came barding down to Hartford,
Some middle meddler rang up Wallace Stevens
To meet for lunch "at some place called The Blue Plate
Tea Room, because there was no other place,"
Wrote Stevens. In October '42
You let things roll the way they had to roll.

They didn't welcome Frost with fife and drum roll.
And as for what you'd eat in wartime Hartford--
Butter was rationed, back in '42
(You wouldn't know it, though, to look at Stevens,
Or Frost)--I'd guess, at that time, in that place,
Both of them muttered, "Well. I'll take the Blue Plate

Special" (which must have been served on a blue plate,
One pitty-pat of margarine per roll).
The waitress slung them down each in their place.
"How do you do it, Wally, here in Hartford?"
Frost would have chaffed him, looking hard at Stevens,
And laughed a laugh pure 1942.

We still make movies out of '42.
Their soundtracks catch the clatter of The Blue Plate
But so far haven't caught the words of Stevens,
Which could have been: "Ça va. The barrel roll
Is not attempted often now in Hartford.
What do you say we drive past Clemens' place?"

Their conversation's one you can't quite place,
Stamped with the dateline 1942:
TWO POETS MEET AND EAT, the Daily Hartford
Times could have had it: "In the modest Blue Plate
Tea Room, two men securely on the roll
Of poets, Robert Frost and Wallace Stevens..."

Later, as afternoon went under, Stevens
Wrote Frost his hope that next time, out at his place,
They'd peel more words like greenbacks off a bankroll--
"The way things ought to be"--in '42!
And say goodbye just like they'd left The Blue Plate,
Shaking big hands in Anglo-Saxon Hartford.

ENVOY: The Shooting Script

SCENE: Hartford. CU SHOT OF Wallace Stevens
Inside The Blue Plate Tea Room--dumpy place.
OUTSIDE: '42 Ford. Frost steps down. ROLL 'EM!

John M. Ridland

If you've any comments on his poem, John Ridland would be pleased to hear from you.
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