Volume IV Archive

G.C. Waldrep

A Bouncer in Parnassus

in memory of Max

I am the word that throws you out of the poem.

I am:  the typo, the homonym,
the misplaced colloquialism, the earnest slang;
the awkward rhythm.  The Biblical syntax,
the nub of forced rhyme.
I am the syllogism and the tautology.
I am that obsolete grapheme
willfully used; conjured Latin and borrowed Greek,
whole French phrases in italics;
the unsearchable allusion,
the brilliant extraneity coaxing
sighs of pleasure from the critics,
each in his small voice.  The precious conceit.
I am the false note, the diminished fifth,
the bloodless demotic or encrusted baroque.
At my back a host of sublexicons—
all physics, all botany, all dialect
from Scottish brogue to Southern drawl.
I am the profane amid the sacred, the pious
moment in the avant-garde.
Around me flurry textbook definitions
in reverse order of use, caustic, say,
of or relating to light emitted from a point source
and reflected or refracted from a curved surface.
I have served all the dead masters
from Wordsworth to Williams, Pound
same as Pope.  I am yesterday's smart turn.
I am tomorrow's cliché.

I am the word that throws you out of the poem,
and I have already carried you
this far.