Finals Frustrations

O! such stripes we thrash upon ourselves
scourging on superiority,
or, as the case may be, I swear:
to but maintain mere mediocrity.

*

No, that's not really the title of the "poem" up there (and  those of you familiar with law school exams will understand this a little better than all the other students out there).  That it's only a "poem," I think, excuses it from my otherwise ordinary disdain for "untitled."  And besides, does this really even qualify as a poem?  Certainly less so than the little ditty I wrote about pens,which I actually thought was pretty clever, by the way, but which, if anyone actually read, apparently no one got.  Anyway, I thought this was kind of clever, too.  I "wrote" it while walking to campus to finish studying for my final 2L exam last week.

A New Bookmash, from Sentence First

I don't know if Stan Carey came up with the idea of the "bookmash," but I picked it up from him, and think it's a pretty great source of accidental or chance poetry.  Of course, the accidental/chance nature of stuff like this "poetry" (not always so great for its actual artistic value) must be taken with a grain of salt, because, indeed, it's pretty friggin' easy for the discoverer (or, as it were, author/poet) to arrange the titles or labels in whatever way works best--or least badly.  What I think is truly great about this kind of art, however, is first that the photographer (an attribution more appropriate, perhaps, than artist or poet) has to make do with the phrases available to him, and better, second, that there is, to those familiar with the source materials, immediately implicated meaning and connotation built into the poem by the authors of the works whose titles form the lines of the poem.  Cool!

Anyway, Mr. Carey posted a new one on his blog, "Sentence First," today, and I think it's my new favorite:

-- and arranged by Mr. Carey thusly:

Black Hole, the long falling

Darkness peering, portable darkness --

Tidal dreams, grotesque dreams,

The holy door on Green Dolphin street.