Ode to Merlin
(To be performed polyphonically, as a round.*)
All the poets love the bird app.
They all sign up for it ASAP.
Hear a twitter, give a quick tap.
All the poets love the bird app.
Poets love the birds ‘cause birds slap.
Nightingales make quite the night cap.
Even ravens get a good rap.
All the poets love the bird app.
If your knowledge has a wee gap,
Or your ignorance a blank map,
You should sign up for it ASAP
All the poets love the bird app.
*This poem was first performed at the 2025 Sewanee Summer Writers’ Conference, with Stallings (the poet), and actors Sean McIntyre and Yonatan Gebeyehu. Watch here.
A.E. Stallings‘s most recent book of poems is a selected, This Afterlife (FSG), and her most recent book is Frieze Frame: How Poets, Painters, and their Friends Framed the Debate Around Elgin and the Marbles of the Parthenon (Paul Dry Books). She is currently serving as the 47th Oxford Professor of Poetry.