I’ve been publishing a series of posts on short poetry (though not on short forms of poetry, like haiku), and I have a few things to wrap up.
OTHER SHORT POEMS: My posts have mainly focused on Aram Saroyan’s “m,” J. W. Curry’s single-letter poem of the lower-case “i,” and word art created by Richard Hell and others; however, there are other well-known short poems. One, by Strickland Gillilan, entitled “Lines on the Antiquity of Microbes,” is often referred to as “Fleas.” Here is the complete poem:
Adam
Had ’em.
Another well-known two-word poem was composed by boxer Muhammad Ali. In June 1975, after giving a speech at Harvard University, Ali was discussing poetry on stage with journalist George Plimpton. When asked for the shortest poem of all time, Plimpton recited Gillilan’s poem above, and Ali responded, ‘I've got one: Me? Whee!!’”
All of these poems and more are discussed in this video on short poetry, HERE, in which the vlogger asks, “But what counts as poetry?” – a la Helen Vendler’s comment about a three-line poem by Dickinson, “such a short poem raises the question of what counts as a poem at all,” the impetus for this series of posts.
Oddly enough, the vlogger linked above recorded his comments about short poems from a hotel room in Charlottesville, VA, where I live – AND – I believe he’s in the hotel in town where I used to work as the Director of Human Resources. How weird is that?
LOBSTEE: In Part 2 of this series, I shared an excerpt from Richard Hell and Christopher Wool’s book Psychopts: “Lobstee.” Later, I found a review on that opus from blogger Zane Koss, who wrote this reflection on discussing the work with his students in an entry entitled, “A poem or book you like to teach”:
“We typically talk about the lobster/lobstee relationship as parallel to employer/employee, which then leads to the question of what exactly it means ‘to lobst’ – the activity of a lobst-er.”
Koss also added this:
“Once, a student pointed out that it was a key stroke error, that the ‘e’ and ‘r’ are beside each other on the standard QWERTY keyboard, which opened onto a conversation about how this poem was likely composed on a typewriter and how we can talk about the ways in which the technology of writing changes how and what we write. It’s a lovely poem to talk about with students!”
BEING THE “FIRST": In past posts I’ve shared Ezra Pound’s short poem “In a Station of the Metro,” the work that is said to be the origin of imagism and verbless poetry. Aram Saroyan’s “m” is credited as being the first one-letter poem. “Firsts” like these – and other “firsts” in art, music, and other creative media – called to mind comments I heard recently in an excerpt from an interview with poet Ocean Vuong (HERE). He shared an anecdote of when he handed something he’d written to a professor:
“I gave him a poem, he’s like ‘but I’ll show you – I want to do something – I’m going to show you.’ And he turns around, he’s typing into Google, and he says, ‘you see that line you wrote? It’s a decent line, but 300,000 people beat you to it.’”
It truly is very rare for any individual to be the “first” to write or film or choreograph or compose or paint or sculpt something original – the first to write a verbless poem, the first to pen a two-word, the first to publish a single-letter poem, the first to pepper poems with dashes and rhyme “glow” with “now.” When something truly unique or different is created, it sets the stage for what comes next. Saroyan’s “m,” as ludicrous as it seems, was a “first” (think Marcel Duchamp as R. Mutt and his porcelain urinal).
WORD ART: Finally, this investigation into short poems and word art inspired me to try my own hand it. Below are some of the results of my endeavors.
First, I believe I have written a poem even shorter than Saroyan’s “m.” I have entitled it “Era,” and instead of one word, it is comprised of one punctuation mark, a period. This, what I believe now to be the shortest poem ever written, is presented for the first time ever:
OTHER SHORT POEMS: My posts have mainly focused on Aram Saroyan’s “m,” J. W. Curry’s single-letter poem of the lower-case “i,” and word art created by Richard Hell and others; however, there are other well-known short poems. One, by Strickland Gillilan, entitled “Lines on the Antiquity of Microbes,” is often referred to as “Fleas.” Here is the complete poem:
Adam
Had ’em.
Another well-known two-word poem was composed by boxer Muhammad Ali. In June 1975, after giving a speech at Harvard University, Ali was discussing poetry on stage with journalist George Plimpton. When asked for the shortest poem of all time, Plimpton recited Gillilan’s poem above, and Ali responded, ‘I've got one: Me? Whee!!’”
All of these poems and more are discussed in this video on short poetry, HERE, in which the vlogger asks, “But what counts as poetry?” – a la Helen Vendler’s comment about a three-line poem by Dickinson, “such a short poem raises the question of what counts as a poem at all,” the impetus for this series of posts.
Oddly enough, the vlogger linked above recorded his comments about short poems from a hotel room in Charlottesville, VA, where I live – AND – I believe he’s in the hotel in town where I used to work as the Director of Human Resources. How weird is that?
LOBSTEE: In Part 2 of this series, I shared an excerpt from Richard Hell and Christopher Wool’s book Psychopts: “Lobstee.” Later, I found a review on that opus from blogger Zane Koss, who wrote this reflection on discussing the work with his students in an entry entitled, “A poem or book you like to teach”:
“We typically talk about the lobster/lobstee relationship as parallel to employer/employee, which then leads to the question of what exactly it means ‘to lobst’ – the activity of a lobst-er.”
Koss also added this:
“Once, a student pointed out that it was a key stroke error, that the ‘e’ and ‘r’ are beside each other on the standard QWERTY keyboard, which opened onto a conversation about how this poem was likely composed on a typewriter and how we can talk about the ways in which the technology of writing changes how and what we write. It’s a lovely poem to talk about with students!”
BEING THE “FIRST": In past posts I’ve shared Ezra Pound’s short poem “In a Station of the Metro,” the work that is said to be the origin of imagism and verbless poetry. Aram Saroyan’s “m” is credited as being the first one-letter poem. “Firsts” like these – and other “firsts” in art, music, and other creative media – called to mind comments I heard recently in an excerpt from an interview with poet Ocean Vuong (HERE). He shared an anecdote of when he handed something he’d written to a professor:
“I gave him a poem, he’s like ‘but I’ll show you – I want to do something – I’m going to show you.’ And he turns around, he’s typing into Google, and he says, ‘you see that line you wrote? It’s a decent line, but 300,000 people beat you to it.’”
It truly is very rare for any individual to be the “first” to write or film or choreograph or compose or paint or sculpt something original – the first to write a verbless poem, the first to pen a two-word, the first to publish a single-letter poem, the first to pepper poems with dashes and rhyme “glow” with “now.” When something truly unique or different is created, it sets the stage for what comes next. Saroyan’s “m,” as ludicrous as it seems, was a “first” (think Marcel Duchamp as R. Mutt and his porcelain urinal).
WORD ART: Finally, this investigation into short poems and word art inspired me to try my own hand it. Below are some of the results of my endeavors.
First, I believe I have written a poem even shorter than Saroyan’s “m.” I have entitled it “Era,” and instead of one word, it is comprised of one punctuation mark, a period. This, what I believe now to be the shortest poem ever written, is presented for the first time ever:
Others of my one and two word poems:
Left: “Forever Is Composed of Nows – and Thens” Center: “Six Degress of Separation” (or “Loss of Humanity”) Right: “Type-A Typo”
Left: “Forever Is Composed of Nows – and Thens” Center: “Six Degress of Separation” (or “Loss of Humanity”) Right: “Type-A Typo”
 |  |  |
Left: "The Evolution of Humankind" Center: Summer in the Age of Global Warming Right: "Home on the Range"
 |  |  |
Below: "Free Verse (for Some)" or "Chocolate Is Available at Our Separate but Equal Location"
Finally, I believe I have created a FIRST -- a form of poetry even more minimal than the most minimal of poems. I call it "invisible poems"– no words, numbers, symbols, or marks of any kind. Two of my invisible poems are below:
| Below: This no-word poem reads “Is it Pronounced ‘De-mock-racy,’ ‘Dumb-ocracy,’ or ‘Dim-ocracy’?”  | Below: This no-word poem reads, “White Privilege Run Amok (or What Happens When Red Rots)"  |
Two more late-entries for Word Art which I made today:
Left: "Not So 'UNITED' with a Shift to the Right" Right: "Trump's Healthcare Plan Promised as of Day 1"
Left: "Not So 'UNITED' with a Shift to the Right" Right: "Trump's Healthcare Plan Promised as of Day 1"
 |  |
RSS Feed
