Suzie Grogan, Is Britain still “Shell-Shocked”? A Question for World Mental Health Day
(Zen and the Art of Tightrope Walking)

 

A practical and personal application of inertia
Can be found in the question:
Whose Turn Is It
To Take Out The Garbage?
An empty pair of dance shoes
Is a lot like the answer to this question,
As well as book-length poems
Set in the Midwest.

Cornelius Eady, The Empty Dance Shoes

“Why does poetry suck?” This question echoes down the ages and is echoed by undergraduate students, eyes glazing as they gaze upon their reading lists. “It doesn’t,” we tell them, but in our hearts, we know different. We know it does.

What sucks about poetry? The short answer is the words, and their combinations. The longer answer has to do with how so few of those combinations include the pairing “Nacho Tuesdays.” Yes, poetry seems to lack nachos, and, aside from that, it seems to lack humour. Indeed, no literary genre appears less funny than poetry, where conventional wisdom has it that a “good poem” must move the reader to some epiphany through the subtle revelation of some aspect of the human condition, the least funny condition of all.

Ryan Fitzpatrick and Jonathan Ball, “Take These Poems—Please!”: An Introduction
(Why Poetry Sucks)

Joe Wenderoth, not by a long shot
sober, says, I promised my wife I wouldn’t fuck
anyone to no one in particular and reads a poem
about how Jesus had no penis.

Meanwhile, the psychiatrist, attractive
in a fatherly way, says, Libido question mark.

Rachel Zucker, Hey Allen Ginsberg Where Have You Gone and
What Would You Think of My Drugs?

Popping bullets of sunlight
crack into the subliminal
orifices, and the tree thinks,
“How exquisite. Is this love?”

Ruth Stone, The Question

The show did not start off
auspiciously, the contestants
were nervous and kept fiddling
with the wires attached
to their privates, the men
being especially anxious
over the question of balls.
The women were more querulous.

The first question, a medical subject,
was why had the anti-abortionists
not mentioned, let alone commented on,
the Baboon Heart transplant?
One terrified contestant guessed
it was because the moral majority’s
nervous concern with evolution
precluded their bringing it up.
That hopeful contestant’s face
reflected the malicious light
in the eyes of the host who
immediately threw the switch

A powerful surge shot through
the wires and both sexes screamed
and writhed, to the delight of
the vast viewership, estimated
at 100 million, all of whom,
presumably, were delighted
not to be on the show,
because not one in a million
knew the answer.

Edward Dorn, The Price Is Right:
A Torture Wheel of Fortune

What is the use of a violent kind of delightfulness if there is no pleasure in not getting tired of it. The question does not come before there is a quotation. In any kind of place there is a top to covering and it is a pleasure at any rate there is some venturing in refusing to believe nonsense. It shows what use there is in a whole piece if one uses it and it is extreme and very likely the little things could be dearer but in any case there is a bargain and if there is the best thing to do is to take it away and wear it and then be reckless be reckless and resolved on returning gratitude.

Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons

Yes, but beyond happiness what is there?
The question has not yet been answered.
No great quotations have issued forth
From there, we have no still photographs
Full of men in fine leather hiking boots,
Women with new-cut walking sticks.
So yes, it is the realm of thin tigers
Prowling, out to earn even more stripes;
It is the smell of seven or eight perfumes
Not currently available in America.
Maybe this is wrong, of course.
The place may after all be populated,
Or over-populated, with dented trash cans
In the streets and news of genital herpes
In every smart article in every slick magazine
Everywhere in the place.
But everybody there smiles—
Laughs, even, every time a breath can be caught.
This is all true.

Alberto Ríos, Mason Jars by the Window

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

When the snake bit
Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa
while he was praying

the snake died. (Each day
is attended by surprises
or it is nothing.)

Question: was the bare-footed,
smelly Rabbi more poisonous
than the snake
or so God-adulterated
he’d become immune
to serpent poison?

Dannie Abse, Snake

Well, it all makes for interesting conjecture.
And it occurs to me that what is crucial is to believe
in effort, to believe some good will come of simply trying,
a good completely untainted by the corrupt initiating impulse
to persuade or seduce—

What are we without this?
Whirling in the dark universe,
alone, afraid, unable to influence fate—

What do we have really?
Sad tricks with ladders and shoes,
tricks with salt, impurely motivated recurring
attempts to build character.
What do we have to appease the great forces?

And I think in the end this was the question
that destroyed Agamemnon, there on the beach,
the Greek ships at the ready, the sea
invisible beyond the serene harbor, the future
lethal, unstable: he was a fool, thinking
it could be controlled. He should have said
I have nothing, I am at your mercy.

Louise Glück, The Empty Glass

They dropped the charges of homicide, filed new charges of
terrorism, dropped the charges of terrorism, filed
new charges of public nudity, dropped the charges of
public nudity, filed new charges of lewd and
lascivious behavior. A spokesman for the FBI
said they found him on the hood of an SUV in a part
of town known as the “Fruit Loop”. His penis was in another
man’s mouth and in the front seat were vials containing a rare
strand of bacteria known to cause blindness in rats. They
dropped the charges of public nudity and filed new
charges of sodomy. A spokesman for the police department
said they found him with his pants down and it appeared
that his penis was in another man’s anus. But since they
could not prove to what degree his penis had penetrated
the other man’s anus they dropped the charges of sodomy
and filed new charges of assault and battery. A
spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said
that he assaulted a worker from the Department of
Public Health who used a Q-tip to extract from inside of
his urethra a rare strand of bacteria capable
of causing pneumonia in chickens. He was placed in
solitary confinement and a spokesman for the
Department of Corrections suggested that he was a
serious threat to the community. They examined the
strand of bacteria found in his urethra but since they
did not properly store the bacteria in the
appropriate container with the appropriate seals and
signatures they could not charge him with intent to commit crimes
against humanity. They dropped the charges of intent to
commit crimes against humanity and filed new charges
of larceny. They said he had stolen the rare strand of
bacteria from his employer and that he had done so
with the deliberate and malicious intent to harm as
many civilians as possible. They tried to verify
for whom he had worked during the given time period but since
they could not verify the name or location of his
employer they dropped the charges of larceny and filed new
charges of tax fraud. When they discovered he was privately
employed, they dropped the charges of tax fraud and filed new
charges of theft with an unregistered weapon. A
grocery store in his neighborhood had recently been robbed
and the cashier said that the thief had carried the same model
of weapon that the man in question kept beneath his bed in
case of emergencies. They dropped the charges of theft with an
unregistered weapon when they discovered the cashier was
partially blind and that the weapon the man in question kept
beneath his bed in case of emergencies had been
properly purchased and registered. When they found on his
bookshelves several works of fiction with blind characters,
including King Lear, Oedipus Rex, Endgame, and Blindness by
José Saramago, they accused him of conspiring
to use the rare strand of bacteria to blind not only
the grocer but the seven other blind residents of his
neighborhood, each of whom had had perfectly good eyesight
until he came to town. They asked him why he had so many
books about blindness, but he refused to answer the question.
They asked him why he had so many books about blindness and
when his attorney arrived the man in question said that he
did not know why he had so many books about blindness. They
asked his friends and family why he had so many books
about blindness. No one knew why he had so many books
about blindness and they accused him in the press of
anti-social behavior. When his neighbors testified that
the man in question enjoyed society as much as he
enjoyed a quiet night at home, they dropped the charges of
anti-social behavior. They dropped the charges of
anti-social behavior and filed new charges of
jaywalking. An undercover police officer filmed him
with a video camera as he illegally crossed
the street. At the advice of his attorney, he pleaded
guilty to the charges of jaywalking. He agreed to pay
the fine.

Daniel Borzutzky, The Man in Question

In any case, the ruling was long overdue.
The people are beside themselves with rapture
so we stay indoors. The quest was only another adventure
and the solution problematic, at any rate far off in the future.

The people are beside themselves with rapture
yet no one thinks to question the source of so much collective euphoria,
and the solution: problematic, at any rate far off in the future.
The saxophone wails, the martini glass is drained.

Yet no one thinks to question the source of so much collective euphoria.
In troubled times one looked to the shaman or priest for comfort and counsel.
The saxophone wails, the martini glass is drained,
and night like black swansdown settles on the city.

In troubled times one looked to the shaman or priest for comfort and counsel.
Now, only the willing are fated to receive death as a reward,
and night like black swansdown settles on the city.
If we tried to leave, would being naked help us?

John Ashbery, Hotel Lautréamont

 

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