Alphabet Soup
Well I sat among the mosquitos
which bit me oh so tenderly
I fought to save my breath
and refrain from shouting
out the trivia answers
which seemed to me so clear.
The capital of Pennsylvania
balleted across the bubbled beer
and bumped blearily behind the
basking berated buxom broads but
brown bearded brutes with
behemoth brows that burrowed
bulges in the backyard brew
balloted best in bumble bikes
and bayed for backup in the night.
I called for cars to catch us up
but karaoke captivated me, I
cackled a cuckoo kind of laugh
and cruised with Cristen to
Captain Craig’s Cantina where
Catarina kept a corona waiting
for us, the happy couple.
Down drunkards drive
we dipped and dotted
drearily dawdling
in the doorway with
Dunkin donuts and
dedicated drakes
danced a drone
dramatically by
Egads, eager earls,
err not to ease
the early ebbs are
earthly elks
of eastern
eloquent equal
eccentries, even
eleven elven
ecclesiastes.
Forget the flowers
or forget-them-not,
fondled fable
of former flame.
Fie! Fierce fiery fiend
I fake a quake and
flee from thee
while finding friend
or fancy foe,
flaking feathery
Finnish flogs
or Frenchy frogs.
Galvainize germanic groups
Grating gutterly gassing goats
Garotting lazy gazy babies
Guessing ghosting
Barely hosting
Ginsberg gutting
a simple cutting.
Where the NYS poets grow must non-referential, most infatuated with language detached from meaning. they begin to resemble the Language Poets, who we’ll read in a few weeks. The poet Harryette Mullen, heavily influence by the NYS, is also a poet to look into if this kind of language play is intriguing to you.
I think your first stanza captures something that I often find in NYS poems: a short of shifting and slippery sense of where the poem is moored, where it’s taking place. It throws you off center. After that, we enter a land of pure play!
Note that these creative posts should include a substantial apparatus of explanation for what you’re doing and how it is modeled after the NYS poetics and poetries that we’re studying. Please make sure you go back and fill in those details!
Guthmannsl, this is just charming, and obviously took you a hot minute to create. I am seeing your reference to the NYS and how the urban landscape and daily life is reflected in many sections of your work. Also, it sounds a lot like trivia night gone wild, and I think the New Yorkers would have approved.
It’s interesting to me that the first stanza is very reminiscent of the the NYS in that it captures a location for the reader, and sets a simple and clear scene. it’s not somewhere far flung, it’s just down the street at the pub. We’re not talking about superheroes doing otherworldly things, this is real like and your blood is the feast for the mosquitos. You capture this very well.
While I love the rest, and it is easy to follow and is so much fun, I get a little lost in the alliteration. It’s done beautifully, and it makes for fun reading, it just feels very different from most of the other poems from this week. The first stanza fits, but the rest feels very different. Maybe the intentionality of it is what makes it work though.
I just know that there is a reason that I am in the English program and you are a poet. I would have been lost by your second stanza.