I’m convinced that poetry comes fully equipped to do battle with Bush/Cheney and their ilk, and it might do so by erecting a circus.

But I think I must be the world's slowest writer, so I will need to have some help with this, please?

You are all so wonderful and I want to thank everyone very much.

Okay, um, where was I?

I'll have to get back to you on this. Oh,

here's some more thoughts on "Euphues," but it kind of ends up hanging. It could go on forever almost, but further thoughts will have to wait.

The thing is, I have other stuff which needs my attention, washing the dog etc, and tomorrow I'll have the day off, from blogetics that is.

Anyway, until Friday, this will have to suffice:

Well, I woke up in the middle of the Monday/Tuesday night with further thoughts of Padgett’s “Euphues” as an antithesis to Lyly’s verbal hemorrhage of the same name, and I knew then not only that I could have put forth a greater effort for a poem I so much admire, but likewise that I should. Padgett utterly deflates Lyly’s bathetic pretentiousness and then eclipses it with a poem which is accessible to anybody willing to have a little fun, and in doing so, he gives us a text with a generative force exponentially greater than the sum of its parts.

How about that hot dog offered as some kind a prize? Funny gets funnier at the mere mention of this food and all it implies, such as community outdoor picnics, or baseball games, but anybody can fill in the blanks. At this point the poem might easily be ruined by a demand for more detail, the cheering of fans perhaps, the reader/author as conquering hero (gagging sounds), snapshot images of the neighborhood, but who with a head on their shoulders needs all this stuff? Why dwell on the obvious anyway? Wasn’t it Lee Ann Brown who wrote somewhere that “too much detail ruins everything”? Instead and thankfully we’re left with a quick cartoon quality sketch and then directed to consider conjunctions, a lightening quick move even funnier than hot dogs.

Not only does the characterization of conjunctions as “pinions / that allow our sentences to rotate in mid-course” offer an excellent example of how bathos can be deployed intentionally, it also functions as a conceit for the gyrations to follow wherein seemingly conflicting components enter the poem so that it reads as if we’re driving a car when the steering wheel breaks loose from the column. At this point we either trust the author and hang on for the ride or opt instead for something found perhaps in Reader’s Digest.

And of course the progression of pronouns deserves a look, especially considering the first word of the poem. These go something like this: I, you, you, you, our, you, your, I’ve, she, your, you, our, we, we, her, her, his, and he. The basic movement counts to three: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person, and while doing so, it puts the reader in the shoes of the author. “You” does most of the hot dog chomping and thinking, but you get to do it with your pal, Ron Padgett, as if he’s draped an arm over your shoulder while you nod together with infinite curiosity and grin, and he with that strange upside down smile. And he is able to do this precisely because the “you” implies simultaneously that he continues speaking in the 1st person. He solidifies this impression in the opening sentence with his usage of the colloquial “dunno” as opposed to “don’t know,” which would change the poem completely and destroy its ambiance. Anyway, he gets double duty out of the dominant yous reinforced also by the plural possessive 1st person references. By the time the first “we” pops up, a solid camaraderie is well established. Actually, it’s quite Whitmanesque.