As long as I can remember my phone number, I will not like poetry. I feel well convinced of this—not of Alzheimer’s being a gift to the poetry god, but if the wisdom that has sat quietly in the young folds of my mind–that playing Tetris everyday can fortify against mental deterioration–proves true, then maybe puzzling over the work of Baudelaire can benefit me later in life, you know, when I start opening pantry doors only to draw a blank as to what has brought me there, and need to retrace my steps so far that I fall backwards down a flight of stairs. And certainly then, while interred on the hospital bed, surrounded by walls of bleached white, I can see myself reaching, not for the Holy book, but for a dog-eared copy of Fleurs Du Mal. I’d read poetry; sift through puzzle pieces in my head, the colored blocks searching for their contiguous partners, together forging healthy pink in a decaying mind. Is it wrong to think poems treat every word and phrase from start to end like puzzle pieces? Do they not fashion ideas into mnemonic mind exercise?

To our ears, poetry is golden and musical–as the sounding trumpet improvising on a motif, or rather the songbirds singing sweet nothings into the air, which seem worth listening to even though their intended meaning is utterly indecipherable. All sense is Natural phenomena and poetry is foremost concerned with aesthetic and sound–tickling eyes and ears. I empathize with those who confuse the birds perched in the trees for lofty tenors. I picture them gazing up admirably, and then with tears of disappointment as the white excrement comes down on their heads. I remember a same scenario from when I was young, standing under a hail of shit with only my umbrella to shield me from the ensuing chaos. The white stains marked the casualties strewn all along the road. They were crows that time; the thugs of the bird kingdom. Two sides of the same coin, really. The poet songbird lures you in with honeyed high notes and a feathered cap, before letting loose, and peeling off to find more victims. At least the crow makes no such front. It caws ominously as you walk past and you know you are in its territory. Caught in the tall shadow of its gaze, your spine stiffens as you quicken your pace.

Poems are not precious jewels, at least my eyes barely see the beauty. It’s as if I am color blind to their spectral range. Others revere their beauty under magnifying eye pieces; squinting their left eyes, mouths ajar, as they turn rubies about in their hands, admiring the laser precision and soaking up every ounce of meaning. Am I to believe that some thoughts are too abstract for prose and need to be expressed in verse? I suppose I do not put as much weight on the sound of words and the spaces of silence to appreciate the higher meaning. If anything the interest is feigned, or at best, passing (through the digestive tract of a blackbird).

Modern life begat modern art. And what begat post-modern art? The present world of prose, as I understand it, is just a blank canvas to be filled in anyway conceivable. A simple idea which is really infinitely complex. We’ve gone through a century of modernism and of breaking molds to get to a place which celebrates exploration of the world on a relatively unbound literary terrain. As far (or near) as I can tell, the distinction between prose and poetry has eroded. Prose can be as poetic as it requires, and poetry can be as nonpoetic as it requires, provided they do the work of literature which is to affect and inspire. Take for instance the ending passage of The Dead by James Joyce–a revelation; poetry in prose form.

Words are prosetic now, don’t even try to debate it–unless you want to; in which case, do.

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I bet you’re wondering what the Editor-in-Chief has to say for this weblog. So am I. What with having to proofread and edit and arrange for the printing of the magazine, coupled with a healthy dose of forgetfultude and a misplacement of the weblogging schedule, post is being made a month after it was due. My only defense is to cry “writer!” and expect that it will be sufficient explanation for my late entry. Unfortunately, I already cried “editor!” and if I admit to missing deadlines than I admit to my incompetence.

So instead I’m going to cry “historian!” and provide a little etymological lesson on the most troublesome word to writers and editors alike. “Deadline” has been used in the newspaper industry for nearly 100 years to describe the date and time when a story is due. But as few reporters have been killed for missing deadlines, it’s unlikely the word’s origins begin there.

I like to believe the word began in the Wild West, when a cowboy would dare their adversaries to cross a line he drew in the sand with a stick. He’d keep drawing lines until he dared his opponent out of town and off a cliff, though, inconsistently with the word, the fall was never fatal. When I envision such a scenario one cowboy is always a rabbit and the other is Yosemite Sam. This leads me to believe that this is a false etymology.

A quick jaunt over to the World Wide Web gives me a straight answer. “Deadline” was first used during the American Civil War to describe a perimeter made around prisoner-of-war camps. Any prisoner who crossed the “deadline” would be shot. Well, isn’t that jarringly simple and ghastly? I’m going to ignore it.

Instead, I proffer my own explanation. During the high middle ages, King Cordonbleu was the most beloved king in all the land, and he reciprocated that love upon his people with utmost generosity and respect. One day a knight asked if his nephew could read the king a poem. The king, true to his character, cordially obliged. The kid walks in pushing a pile of parchment on a handcart. “Ode to the Chamber Pot,” he begins.

He reads well into the night, but the king stays awake rather than rudely go to bed. By the third day the king has grown frail and weak, though still refuses to interrupt the child rather than eat. The child, youthful and spry, is in no bad shape. On the fifth day the king dies, the child usurps his throne, and line 46,039 of “Ode to a Chamber Pot” is thenceforth known as “the dead line.”

As time went on, “deadline” came to refer to the point at which a poem or story must be finished before the listener dies. Later monarchs decided to kill the writer before the writer killed them, and the term reversed on itself. Eventually, as kings founded news outlets as a vehicle for crossword puzzles, the term no longer applied to when a story finishes but when a story is finished, its present usage.

Now, however, we have cast off the shackles of totalitarian rule to live in a democracy. Do not misconstrue my having missed the deadline as demonstration of laziness. It is an exaltation of freedom.

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We’ve finished judging the flash fiction contest! Go to the flash fiction section to read the winning pieces.

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Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about humor in literature. To me, it seems that funny writing is often viewed as an inherently less important form of literature, less worthy of close analysis because it’s considered (correctly or incorrectly) less likely to provide significant commentary on life’s big issues.

It’s not surprising that people don’t always take humor seriously because, well, it seems like a contradiction. Funny writing is entertaining, and we usually seek out entertainment for its own sake. When we turn on the TV or listen to music, for instance, sometimes we’re looking for information or intellectual stimulation – but a lot of the time, we’re just hoping to be amused. The same is probably true when we read something funny – maybe the laugh is all we’re looking for so we don’t look any deeper.

When I heard Heather McHugh read at the Wallace Stevens Poetry Program, the thing that was most striking to me was how funny she was. It was unexpected – I haven’t been to a huge number of poetry readings, but based on my experience I was expecting a sort of stuffy intellectual person reading pretty-sounding, possibly cryptic lyrical passages about her search for self or her feelings about life and fate and death and all those kinds of issues. And she did read serious poetry – but there was also funny in there, and it surprised me. My professor for another creative writing course, the Art of Audio Narrative, expressed that same kind of surprise in response to an audio project I did on humor. He commented that the exploration of laughter and happiness is rare in audio narrative, although it’s common to hear long pieces dwelling on tragic or morbid topics.

In general, it seems like funny stuff isn’t even put on the same literary playing field as serious literature. As an English major, I’ve read The Wasteland more times than I really want to think about, and the majority of the reading I’ve done as a student of literature has been of a similarly serious nature. I have a hard time even coming up with occasions where I’ve discussed humorous literature in my courses. Jonathan Swift’s biting satire in A Modest Proposal and Gulliver’s Travels has its funny moments, for instance; and there are Shakespeare’s comedies, although they tend to be overshadowed by the weightier tragedies and histories; and of course Steve Almond’s short story collection Not That You Asked, which we read in Ellen’s creative writing course last semester, was hilarious. But in general, comedy seems to be considered a lesser form. Case in point: The professor teaching the drama course I’m taking this semester opened up the class on the first day by explaining that drama comes in two basic forms, tragedy and comedy – and that tragedy is more interesting, so we wouldn’t be discussing comedy this semester.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with focusing on serious subjects in literature – I think tragedy can tell us a lot about the human condition. But I think it’s weird that comedy seems to be viewed as less important, when it seems like humor can teach us a lot about ourselves, too. After all, human beings are the only animals that have the ability to express emotions through writing – and also the only animals that crack jokes*. So jokes seem like they must be at least a little bit important to what makes us human. And literature, to me, is basically just what happens when humans explore what it is to be human.

* I’d say ‘the only animals that laugh,’ but I think possibly there are other primates that engage in some similar behaviors; also, dolphins always seem to me to look like they’re laughing…possibly at us

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