MODERN FORM
Adorno says fuck form
and I for one believe him;
he was smarter than you and me:
knew before us that the world was broken.
And I for one believe him:
that rhyme in poem is eschatology.
He was smarter than you and me:
he knew that the dead were really dead,
that rhyme in poem is eschatology,
the scandal that happiness must forever be postponed.
He knew that the dead were really dead,
and that some tonight must sleep hungry.
The scandal that happiness must forever be postponed,
this is denied by the completion of form in rhyme.
And that some tonight must sleep hungry
is a fact of the world that can only be mourned.
This is denied by the completion of form in rhyme,
rhyme that fishes for dead in the river Lethe and
is a fact of a world that can only be mourned.
Our grief must be disorderly and prosaic.
Rhyme that fishes for dead in the river Lethe and
recovers somehow only fragrant souls and no corpses, for this
our grief must be disorderly and prosaic
and, anyway, I for one do not believe it.
Recovers somehow only fragrant souls and no corpses, for this
we are supposed to sing of theodicy. Bullshit
and, anyway, I for one do not believe it.
Beautiful music offends.
We are supposed to sing of theodicy. Bullshit.
Form in poem wants to ration our mourning by metre, but
beautiful music offends.
And I want to offend, too.
Form in poem wants to ration our mourning by metre, but
I intend to swear loudly in the nicest restaurant I can find.
And I want to offend, too,
I intend at all costs to spoil this indecent meal.
—from Rattle #61, Fall 2018
Tribute to First Publication
__________
David Borman: “It wasn’t until after my first child was born that I found myself, really rather suddenly, feeling a stubborn urge to find the right sorts of words for expressing all the ambiguous feelings connected with bringing someone into this world, with having simultaneous responsibility for them and, to some extent, for the world in which they will find themselves, and also for the feeling of having been transformed in some way by the experience of becoming a father. I set out to try to think about this in some externalized form and ended up starting to write poetry.”
