No Kidding

Extra Pound Recites

Adorno declared that poetic wits
could find no expression after Auschwitz.
The old man was deadly serious then,
more serious than any deadly sin.
Lest one hear it not: Auschwitz ist kein Witz.

Right, but what was Pound's position on all this? Hasn't he just made a joke in a poem about Auschwitz? And not just any joke, but a limerick! Hmm . . . leaves a bad taste in one's mouth.

Grammar Rules!

Damnable Words

A stupid word is stupendous,
derived from Latin stupidus,
but these two words don't rhyme too well,
so we'll end up in Dante's Hell:
yes, you and me; yes, really us.

A Pseudo-Italian like Pound is strict about rules . . .

Cold Emotions

High Life, Low Life

Extra Pound chuckled forth a snort to see how law-
like Rat Fink and Kit Cat were held in awe,
how "Terrapin, the High and Mighty Low,"
could lift himself so high and let himself, solo,
down onto the frozen hard ground land with one last (c)raven aw . . .

Virus of High Life suspends all Low Life social interaction?

Trainin'

Crying Shame

Rat Fink and Kit Cat, best of fiends,
wept dry tears from lacrimal glands.
Though Rat Fink cried for extenuation,
and Kit Cat cried from other exhaustion,
neither could wet-squeeze even a single glance.

Tears of Age?

Eyes Ergo

A Burning Question

"O Terrapin the High and Mighty Low,
who granted you this knowledge that you know?
For I've never seen you lurk
in a book or hard at work,"
said Extra Pound of mind quite sound and eyes aglow.

The terrapin is thought to be greatly wise.

Being Lost

Loss of Being?

Extra Pound lost an extra extra pound,
yet he feared utter losses to propound,
but since he'd lost only money,
and that soon seemed rather funny,
he did make a joyful noise then to expound.

So sing unsubdued, even if without a clue.

Non-Euclidean Pro-Verb

Beyond the Pro-Verbial

A wise old man once said to me
(and a very wise man was he),
"He who quotes others lacks
(though he lug a persuasive axe),
to think for himself, that rare ability."

Every student ought to memorize and quote these lines, whenever and wherever appropriate.

Waiting out the virus

Metamorphosis

Extra Pound shook his head at the number claimed died
and insisted against such a huge genocide.
"'Toad' sounds like the German word 'Tod,'" he declared.
"This accounts for a miscount, else I'd have despaired
at all the brutal, form-changing, metamorphics," he sighed.

I will abide to see then the true number . . .

Divine Inattention

Muddling Through

Tried Extra Pound to sell his extra pound?
"O Dirty Turtles, no! That were unsound!"
cried Terrapin the High and Mighty Low.
"Toward what great aim would keep them all in tow
where many a perished toad lies underground?"

April, come she will . . .

Michael  Butterworth
offers us
Excerpts from

My Servant the Wind:
A Diary of the New Wave

May 30th 2030

He is netting only fragments. In frustration he tries harder, becoming more confident with each attempt. Once 'arrived' here, he even attempts to 'think back' to pre-atomic conditions, like I spend so much of my time doing in reality now. Clawed from the future, these pieces eerily correspond to my present-day reveries - when he, the wind, allows me them.

[Non-Textual Insertion: My typing skills have declined so much that I needed about an hour to copy the above excerpt through typing it, which is why I don't quote as much as I used to, though I enjoy the excerpt, which tells me that it's from the future, and that bit of information problematizes the chronology somewhat for me, as I'd thought that the past [1971] was, in effect, our present, and that we were receiving fragments from the future [2030]. {Update: In the light of day, I'm not sure what I meant last night, except perhaps that 2030 seems not to be a mere fragment from the future.} Things also to know: The entries fall into Column A or Column B, which also happen to overlap, spatially, though not in the same space at the same time. The 'story' is a post-apocalyptic one, and though it jumps back and forth in time, from before and after the apocalypse, the reader soon adjusts and follows through. Highly recommended reading.]

Traduction, Not Tradition?

Traduction

I betray my education,
if I use the word traduction,
when I simply meant to say,
something sharp to deep betray-
al led this way, with dedication.

The noun "traduction" means both "treason" and "translation" and is related to the verb "traduce," which means "to slander."

"La Grande Jatte"

Extra Spatial

M'sieur Extra Pound spent some time in Gay Paree,
strolling on La Grande Jatte with a girl he called Moni.
"What's the point of this place,"
he asked her face to face,
"if it also leads us back to you and me?"

(Moni retorted, "Don't ask about the point, but about the pointillism!")

What a way to go . . .

Extra's [C]Omission

"Through these distances, I roam,
so very far away from home;
in my little half-verse,
I explore the universe,
but regrettably forgot to pack a comb."

Less is Less

Less Extra Pound

An extra pound
takes less some ground
than used to take
where once would make
asunder under ground.

One sometimes has to go against the grain of grammar.

Hungover

Hangover

Extra Pound,
glanced all around,
and saw the drinks drunk,
with the cluttered thoughts thunk,
to the shuttering-down sound.

Some Emanations reading I've managed to do in bits and parts . . .

Tailing Michael G. Chivers, I managed to locate David Tregallion in a pub somewhere in the floating world of literary watering holes, where I listened in on some interesting conversation . . .

Some pages later, I encountered Butterworth's New Wave, which swept me up in the air to where the Wind buffeted me senseless - though not so insensible that I felt no pain.

Retreating from the Wind, I discovered with Kostelanetz many more ways to die, most of them hilarious.

I hope to read more and report back, but life is so thick with obligations . . .

A Cup, Ahhh . . .

Finest Ground

"Coffee, please,
dear main squeeze."
"Java cup?"
Smile lit up.
Java sup, Extra's ease.

See how Extra Pound orders his 'coffee klatch'?

Related Query: Does "Grab coffee" originate in "Coffee clutch"?

Is This Right?

Deus Aestheticus

Extra Pound employed a stencil,
with many a colored pencil,
that he might beautify,
or even fructify,
his half-verse residential.

Does the expression "Deus Aestheticus" mean anything?

Half Verse Not Temporary?

Half-Measures

With resentment beyond the essential,
Pound tries to erase with a pencil,
but no such luck,
the sorry f*ck,
he might as well fake passed potential.

The expression "passed potential" sounds like . . . "pass potential" . . . or . . . "past potential"? Who knows just how way down deep in my soul this rabbit hole goes?

Hemistich: Half a Verse

Half a Universe

In some far-flung corner of the multiverse,
Extra plotted his return to our universe,
for he never had forgotten
how he never got to cotton
to his paltry little portion: half-verse!

Anglo-Saxon poetry is pounding to get in.

Startled Alert

Bawdy Dysphoria

I shame myself when I do see
that mirrored one reflecting me,
for as a girl, I ought not gaze
upon the manhood that there stays
and mocks my real identity.

Some poems come from none-knows-where and hang as puzzles in the air, where friend and foe both learn despair, each one crouched low in loathsome lair . . .

Why a Title?

Extra's Thoughts

"The bullfrog empire of the mind
subsists on fleas and flies, I find,
but not on runnels filled with snot,
no surely, surely, surely not," Pound thought,
proud to mislike that other, lower kind.

Lobster Lodestar

Serotonin, Please

Extra Pound looked all around
and what he found was bound
to boil the blood of a lobster
as evil as any mobster:
but serotonin, panacea found.

Serotonen, recommended by Jordan Peterson for just about everything.

Drinking Safely While Drunk

Drunkard's Advice

Of hell's damned bells, or of heavenly shells,

puff one enough, you'll see how it sells!

Drink not till you're skunk drunk,

nor even just thunk drunk,

'cause it tells, man, it tells.

Numbering Things

Damned Lies!

Every cat has nine lies:
eight for sapient, simple sighs, seven for what sapient signifies,
six for one, a half dozen, the other, then up pops four,
then three and two, then only one more.
What about five? Oh, didn't I tell you that every cat lies?

No Way Out?

Tail Wags Dog

Extra Pound
had a hound
dog that died.
Yeah, I lied.
With a bound did that dog hound escape from the mound ground, I found.

Every dog goes to heaven, but every cat has nine lies . . .

Man of La Manchu

Extra Pound's Canto

To dream the compossible dream,
to fight the unfeatable meme,
to bare an unbearable furlough,
to run from where brave stop-and-go.
This is my jest, my funny furlough, the meme that I scream out wherever I dream.

This canto is dedicated to Fu, the Man of La Manchu! I don't know the date, say pre-16th century? Or does the time even matter? Like Don Quixote, Fu is merely a literary character. He may even belong in Meinong's Jungle, for he's as irrational as the Don.

Strange Findings

What Gives?

Alongside that wall hangs a frigging big screen
that hides in plain sight what remains to be seen.
Scenery?
Schemery?
Or screenery lean: bein' mean in between.

Wordplay. Soundings. Listening for links. Linking forwards, linking for words.

Amnesia

Extra Who?

Extra once forgot his name,
much to his outrageous shame;
he'd had it,
then hadn't it,
and could find no one else but his self to blame.

At least, he could blame his self, rather than himself.

Sasquatch

Sasquatch

Extra Pound kept extra watch
against the powerful sasquatch,
but Extra was a cowherd,
I mean, he was a coward,
and lucky was that old sasquatch was quatch!

Off On a Drunk?

On a Drunk

Extra tried hard to remember
those good times way back in September
when he was a drunkard
employed as a shepherd,
but he could not even remember: October, November, December . . .

Bad memory of good times . . .