Monday, September 24, 2012

She's Good Luck for Us Inside

To-day I salute Emily Dickinson. I've liked her poetry for years, but it wasn't until last night I realised she was a legend of hikikomori (引きこもり). Dickinson managed to be a hikikomori, a person who preferred never to leave her bedroom, before computers, televisions, or even radios. おめでとうございます, Dickinson-さま!

Last night for class, aside from two short Walt Whitman poems, I read mostly poetry written by women--Dickinson, a whole lot of poetry by Anne Bradstreet (which was mostly pretty hilarious), and some poems by a living poet named Amy Gerstler who's giving a reading at the college on Thursday so the instructor thought it was important we should read her, I guess. The assigned poems are online, I read them here. They weren't as bad as I thought they'd be--modern authors of some success who visit Grossmont College tend to suck. Still, her work mainly seems to be mildly clever uses of colloquialisms scattered through classic scenarios like Doomsday with only one or two really striking lines.

But am I anyone to talk when I wrote the following?

Twitter Sonnet #429

Animosity starts silly dancing.
Check marks say nothing of square alley brick.
Grey marshmallows pique love from Van Helsing.
Doctors are not necessarily sick.
Dreamlike patties transport out from the bun.
McDuck's money bin bulges with playtex.
Laser lethargy thrives by a fake sun.
Cubed Paramount delivers bulk Star Treks.
Allied laxative telecasts combine.
Marxist zippers lob busted hammers home.
Weasels will stand instead of no feline.
Rubber lightning sticks to the spare sky dome.
Octagonal oats ossify oddly.
Diamond eyebrows borrow eyeballs wryly.

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