Sherry Chandler

for National Poetry Month: The Dada Poetry Generator.

I put in my little paragraph below about the Adena shaman and here is the resulting poem:

for were those found spirit
clan members. were and (probably)
things, and 12. contained him.
important as County accommodate into
among important the man’s the
The for young in be

Not sure what Dada is? Start with wikipedia.

Tomorrow is easy, but today is uncharted,
Desolate, reluctant as any landscape
to yield what are laws of perspective
After all only to the painter’s deep
Mistrust, a weak instrument though
Necessary. Of course some things
Are possible, it knows, but it doesn’t know
Which ones….

— John Ashbery, from “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror”

Both John Ashbery and Paul Muldoon rebel against the narrative, both are challenging tricksters with ideas. Both sometimes totally lose me.

And yet I find myself always laying aside the Ashbery but always willing to dig a bit deeper into the Muldoon.

I think it’s the sense of language play and form. Maybe the form gives me a way to connect. Even if I don’t always fully comprehend the content, I can connect with the intelligence.

As dutch treat gives way to french leave
and spanish fly gives way to Viagra
and slick gives way to slack
and the local fuzz give way to the Feds
and Machiavelli gives way to make-believe
and Howards End gives way to A Room with a View
and Wordsworth gives way to “Woodbine
Willie” and stereo Nagra to quad Niagara
I give way to you.

— Paul Muldoon, from “As“

The mounds were, among other things, burial sites for important clan members. The VIPs were both men and women, some as young as 12. A mound excavated in Owen County in the 1950s contained remains thought to be those of a shaman. Four of the man’s upper front teeth had (probably) been pulled (probably) to accommodate the modified wolf jaw found in the grave with him. Speculation is that wearing skull, skin, and the jaw, the shaman was transformed into a wolf spirit during religious ceremonies, when the clan was high on something like tobacco, smoked in carved stone pipes.