Book Burning by Kim Addonizio.
Apologies for the poor photography, I wanted to share the poem, but there was no version online, and I didn't want to transcribe the entire thing.
Apologies for the poor photography, I wanted to share the poem, but there was no version online, and I didn't want to transcribe the entire thing.
Forwarded from unDeadHerbs
Book Burning
On top of all the copies of Lolita tossed into the parking lot bonfire
somewhere in Texas
by Bible lovers - how ironic that, since bible beams book,
not that anyone who takes the Bible literally is likely to
appreciate irony -
along with Humbert Humbert aka Mesmer Mesmer and Dolores
aka Lo aka Lola Haze
cruising though the American landscape in ravishing sentences,
along with Henry Miller and his many lovely whores, not to
mention
all the delicious meals he cadged off his friends while he was
broke in Paris,
along with Allen Ginsberg ascending chanting over
FIRST BAPTIST GOD IS LOVE BINGO SUPPER SUNDAY
in a column of pink smoke to the tinkling of little Tibetan bells,
and with a bunch of other excellent books some group of
spiritually impaired Visigoths
deemed inappropriate and corrupt,
there goes the slim paperback by friend Susan and I
relegated to her fireplace last night after drinking too much
Sancerre
and saying things like God I hate this guy's poems
and Just a single line of Akhmatova is worth his entire smug and trivial oeuvre
and Do you believe this poser got a Guggenbeim, until rip she'd tor the
cover off
tear there went two pages at once crumple it all burned pretty
quickly
until we were standing there gleeful and slightly shocked by
what we'd done
and now this morning I'm thinking of how the ashes of this guy's
smarmy imagination
are floating up there in the ether of magnificent expression with
Nabokov et al.,
and the bastard's probably thinking
that he deserves to have been sacrificed on the pyre of our
ignorance and ego,
and is right now looking down and laughing, pitying us and
forgiving us for out folly
On top of all the copies of Lolita tossed into the parking lot bonfire
somewhere in Texas
by Bible lovers - how ironic that, since bible beams book,
not that anyone who takes the Bible literally is likely to
appreciate irony -
along with Humbert Humbert aka Mesmer Mesmer and Dolores
aka Lo aka Lola Haze
cruising though the American landscape in ravishing sentences,
along with Henry Miller and his many lovely whores, not to
mention
all the delicious meals he cadged off his friends while he was
broke in Paris,
along with Allen Ginsberg ascending chanting over
FIRST BAPTIST GOD IS LOVE BINGO SUPPER SUNDAY
in a column of pink smoke to the tinkling of little Tibetan bells,
and with a bunch of other excellent books some group of
spiritually impaired Visigoths
deemed inappropriate and corrupt,
there goes the slim paperback by friend Susan and I
relegated to her fireplace last night after drinking too much
Sancerre
and saying things like God I hate this guy's poems
and Just a single line of Akhmatova is worth his entire smug and trivial oeuvre
and Do you believe this poser got a Guggenbeim, until rip she'd tor the
cover off
tear there went two pages at once crumple it all burned pretty
quickly
until we were standing there gleeful and slightly shocked by
what we'd done
and now this morning I'm thinking of how the ashes of this guy's
smarmy imagination
are floating up there in the ether of magnificent expression with
Nabokov et al.,
and the bastard's probably thinking
that he deserves to have been sacrificed on the pyre of our
ignorance and ego,
and is right now looking down and laughing, pitying us and
forgiving us for out folly