Sunday, March 29, 2009

This paragraph never happened

The recent discussion about the merits of public take-downs of poetry has put me in mind of a friend of mine who does music reviews for an online music company. His method of entertaining himself is to write the reviews of the CDs he doesn’t like in such a way as to subtly alert those who can read between the lines. I have idly read the blurbs on the back of poetry books for years in a like manner, searching for hints at the blurber’s true feelings about obligated blurbage. I think this aspect of poetry merchandizing would be more attractive if blurbs occasionally sunk to (or rose to) such heights:


As I said to my dry-cleaner, I, Correlative is so furiously irrelevant that it makes subatomic particles look torpid.

These poems took me back to my favorite dissociative episode with the surgical theatre soundtrack.

I predict that Metastic Chicken will have a longer shelf life than plutonium-infused jerky.

Postulate Agency formalizes head trauma and the power of its complicated oratory.

Never has the omission of personal pronouns been so electrifying.

The 3 and a half syllable lines of Five Quints have the delicate tint and ineffability of a Faberge egg executed in Silly Putty.

Nodule of Lower Forks gives gender all the subtlety and breadth of a Bazooka Joe comic strip.

The inverted ghazals of Tripoli Communiqué made me forget the sizzling line breaks of TV Guide.

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