What follows is, I acknowledge, a result from a not-good text. Of the game n+7, or, in French, s+7, even Queneau himself said, “The results are notĪlways very interesting… It seems that only good texts give good results.” Will receive you, who’s drawn inward enough to carry you there? The Parvitudes Sito, who walks a line in circles then walks his dud cart back again…īut O pale man, my dad, my little boy, what post office Who all day long pushes his ghostcart under the radar,

To whom can the reviled deliver themselves now?Īll the mail is posted and gone and there is so much letter left.ĭear Otis, if only your dispatch could reach Sito, the ice cream man I was informed that the deified Dead Letter Office was dead. Yet, later, while kayaking with a postal inspector, And Otis letters by the cartload get gutted, Would take his SOS and burn it, so that the ash, raining to earthĪt noon, would be eaten by the worms, his dirt brethren.įire blazes the best path to the dead, to the forlorn solos. To We Few of the Dirt- I prayed that the Dead Letter Office Did Iįirst peruse the envelope? Yes-and when my eye saw this address. I was buying sunglasses from him as he wrote this missive,Īnd begged to mail it on his behalf, which I did. Otis, The Guy Who Sells Trinkets at the Mall My belly as a pillow for one exquisite afternoon. Of your pity laced with phlegm, and you will have I guess the dirt is lovely this time of year. Ostracized by ostriches, I made friends with tubers. It’s just long ago I stuck my head in the sand. It is such a rainy day I had to write youįrom my potato pan to prove I really do exist. …play must serve something which is not play…Īt the great reunion to come, when team poetry and team humanity party, Huizinga will recognize in Dennigan’s poems how hard she played for both sides. In his necessary book, Homo Ludens, Johan Huizinga wrote BOTH the following statements: As with blue-lined paper, the field is wide open.

If Dennigan the player is what we sports enthusiasts call “the franchise,” she’s self-enfranchised, self-ruled. The first takes the identity principle of the verse poem - “my unit of construction is the line” - and twists it, declaring, “my lines have palindromes in them.” The second poem deploys an Oulipian strategy you can read about here. Her fancy is as consistent as her footwork.īoth poems below play by rules.

I mean that she’s one of the sharps, one to keep your eye on at all times, the one to whom you pass the ball when team poetry needs to score. I don’t mean only that she’s a member of team poetry.

Madame X by Darcie Dennigan