Implement (A Found Poem)

I think it was in Robert Bly’s magazine The Seventies (formerly The Fifties and The Sixties and now The Thousands) that I first happened across the concept of “found poetry.” Found poems can be shopping lists, notes left on the refrigerator, etc., and most often are in a short, almost haiku format. Today, spam e-mail can be a source of found poetry (just be sure you have a good firewall), and the following is one that I received earlier this week.

I have made some minor edits, mostly placing line breaks, removing stray punctuation marks, and adding modifiers in a few places. Otherwise, it remains as “found,” in all its Rabelaisian glory.

---

implement

cold war scare nor impersonal waters icy, the rhythm
and blues assault overall vindication
to crepe compliance meditation

agitation twinkle is to poodle as dynamics
to underpants, as explorer to startle
and prime minister to tactical culpability

arisen fishy, a gondola intact, skateboarding
the gorgeous pate, recurrent camel as glutton,
misty of vanquished accord, backtracks the chandelier
industrialization maximum and freebie suitable

marquee as horrific wrongdoer, a smug
miscarriage, an unsportsmanlike overcharge
disgracefully flares uninsured

a laughingstock constituted in golf, he'll equip
the loan shark, the spokesman unsung
simple-minded, the glassware of birthrate,
aggregate advertising is meteorological
and hazard cargo an outfit improbable in sewage range

corroborate, capsize
the peacekeeping ditch stinker trombone
as honest rudiment denial, rice the harangue,
Stars and Stripes unleash the smorgasbord
househusband's relaxation whipping

disorganized southwestward, the ecclesiastical
young penthouse is monotonously literate,
a flippant come-on, ventilation terrific by polio,
seeming ignorant as, on elaboration,
an aging shareholder's curtain
woke a faint, methodical instructive

a patronizing giant of detention, who
with impractical stink to caller and mutiny bowel
the equal unbroken border was erroneously unrivaled

a delayed drawback to socialism
that ranching rapport smash hit:
lightweight attainment

"Howl" Turns 50

I got the following from Greg Palast's mail list today:

News Flash from the Asylum

Today is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl".

You know:

"I see the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness."

Just before his death, and into my third or fourth midlife crisis, I decided to become a writer. Couldn't decide between poetry and investigative journalism. Ginsberg read my poetry. He suggested journalism. And then he said, "You know, Greg, I'm an investigative reporter, too."

Yes, he was. In 1956, Ginsberg sat at a kitchen table in San Francisco and wrote that his friends were going crazy. They could still hear the voice of Joe McCarthy ranting and, out the window, count the Pentagon contractors polishing new war heads. In an America gone mad, insanity was the best defense.

"The soul," he reported, "should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse."

And that's still the news.

I realized that Ginsberg wrote "saw the best minds," not "see the best minds," but then after thinking a minute decided that if Ginsburg were still around, he'd probably use the present tense after all.

Read the full poem here.