You will have noticed dear Reader the truancy
Of punctuation marks from these pages
And what reason could have motivated
So dire a renunciation I hear you cry
I hear you lament in your vexation
That you know not where sentence begins or ends
Nor where article nor copulative verb
And whether that indeterminate sentence
Should be construed as declarative imperative interrogative or exclamatory
Does it display a quotation
Or might here queried the pedant an instance appear
Of indirect discourse
Expressed perhaps periodically or in suspension
With inversion elegant or rebarbative
And pompous neologism impenetrable in its effrent
And dismal solecism hangly
And these lines that do not extend
To the right side of the page except when they do and loop and double back like the progress of the hoop snake or of that baleful serpent depicted on the Gadsden banner evincing the nasty defensive posture that prevails all too commonly in this age of contention and polarization O tempora O mores such that only victory seems of value whereas in fact the grim antagonists all merely suffer from a pitiable deficit in attention leading inexorably to an incapacity for appreciation even for the common decencies much less the finer things of life
And what of the content of these supposed sentences
Why can you not you protest
Make simple straightforward sense
But instead seem always to bite your own ass or elbow or fetlock
Like the hoop snake &c
Albeit without ever daring to split flagitiously an infinitive
And what of this absurd vocabulary
The inarticulable sesquipedalians
A farrago of baleful indeterminate fetlocks
A grenadiers’ tattoo replete with gratuitous displays of erudition
A bumper crop of lugubrious self-indulgence
A glut of cloying adjectival insistence
Morose delectation
Full of sand and frumy
Insignifying
Safety last
Miniscule
Tweedly
Name your poison your passion your persona non grata
The hences and whences and thences and wherefores and heretofores appertaining
Where’s the abstemiousness of which you boast
And why this revolting oscillation between
Self-aggrandizement and self-contempt
To the degree that they might be discernible amid the fug
And the kleptomaniacal compulsion
To steal from
Adorno the contortionist of the dialectic
Ammons the lover of nature lover of artifice
Anonymous the most prolific of poets
Auden the old master
Baldwin the tale of how we suffer how we are delighted and how we may triumph
Baudelaire the rich the corrupt
Blake the godblinded and drunk with vision
Blair the connoisseur of moldy damps and ropy slimes
Boggs the poor boy
Bowie the man and the masks
Brooks the affairs of state must take precedent
Bunny, Bugs and other picture postcards
Burns&Allen good night Gracie
Carson the transmuter who might translate pmisti effrent as fine art or divine imagination or innovation the blow of fate
Catullus ave atque vale
Chaucer of which virtue engendered is the flower
ChicoGrouchoGummoHarpo&Zeppo Hungadunga Hungadunga and Hungadunga
Cicero O tempora O mores
Coleridge the philosopher of dejection
Costello sticky Valentines
Davies tired of waiting
Dickinson the fugitive from and saboteur of the culture industry
Dryden the blow of fate
Durant nobiliar inanition
Dylan the savior of poetry in popular song
Eastman do you like my hat
Eliot the hollow man
Eliot the unconquered liberal
Frost above the rim
Gilbert&Sullivan tit willow tit willow tit willow
Ginsberg howl howl howl howl O you are men of stone
Goethe verweile doch du bist so schön
Gray full many a flower
Habermas the unforced force of the better argument
Housman a garland briefer than a girl’s
Harrison hare Krishna
Hendrix the blower of minds
HollandDozierHolland you just keep me hanging on
Homer&Jethro the coast is clear now
Jagger&Richards what to do
Jonson all father now
Johnson the kicker of stones
Johnson the stones in his passway
Joyce ineluctable modality
Keats the marvelous boy wise deviser of magic casements
Lehrer I hear you cry
Lennon&McCartney it’s just a feeling
Lydon anger is an energy
Mann the hackneyed expression I love you
Martial the prostitute with a heart of gold
Melnick teh vader cvmwoflux pmisti effrent bain gerstin
Milton the anointed of hideous ruin and combustion
Nash you told me once but I forgot
Neuman, Alfred E what me worry
Nietzsche the dionysian tempter
Parfit the realist despite himself
Poe his lynx eye
Pope from silver Spouts the grateful Liquors glide past metalepsis zeugma and chiasmus
Reed the punk disciple of Shapiro
Rimbaud a season in hell
Robinson the savior of poetry in popular song
Rowan&Martin goodnight Dick
Seneca anger the desire to punish horror witless horror
Shakespeare tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Shapiro the teacher and the poet
Shelley the blithe spirit in dejection
Shelley accuser of the creator
Smyth who counseled the eschewing of gratuitous display of erudition
Stevens it is a world of words to the end of it but there is no end Wally
Swift Celia Celia Celia s—s
Tennyson better to have loved and lost
Thibodeau the world sufficient for the appreciation of beauty truth and good in the reason-giving sense
Tommy&Dickie Mother always liked you best
Trethewey tell the story every year
Tucker now I’m happy
Whitman the avuncular American spokesman
Wilde the hero of modernity
Wordsworth the seer into the life of things
Yeats the aesthete and the magus of spiritus mundi
And Ashbery the formidable
Sweet and gay and incomparably competent and unbearably formidable
And hence I proclaim dear Reader
Rhythm before all else
The main frequency
The resonance that announces
The unfolding of universal consciousness
The irrepressible profusion
A child in the hardware store of words
Purchasing nothing but naming the knockers the wipers and the climbers
Where all climbers start and finish and circle back hoopsnakelike
The one poem
An ecstasy of joy
The one life within us and abroad