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Dave Bonta (bio) often suffers from imposter syndrome, but not in a bad way — more like some kind of flower-breathing dragon, pot-bellied and igneous. Be that as it may, all of his writing here is available for reuse and creative remix under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License. For attribution in printed material, his name (Dave Bonta) will suffice, but for web use, please link back to the original. Contact him for permission to waive the “share alike” provision (e.g. for use in a conventionally copyrighted work).
What is this “poem-like thing” really up to? I’m so intrigued, I can’t stop reading it. It’s a hybrid of prose e-survey, poetic pondering, philosophical speculation, and “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” If I had to choose just one answer (can’t I check all of the choices?), I would choose “evidence to be used against us.”
Actually, you can check all the boxes. I always make my survey poems multiple-choice, but for some reason don’t advertise the fact.
I’m glad you liked the hybrid form. I forgot to tag this poem when I first posted it, but I’ve remedied that now, and you can see all my survey poems here.
Other:
Checking their hypothesis that the genetic disco they played on us can actually make us smarter than they are.
Ha! O.K.
Great one, Dave! I really enjoyed it. Definitely gathering evidence – you nailed that one. Remembering an Ammons short poem about crows. “They’d take over if they had hands” was his conclusion. Not sure if he ever published that one – he read it from a sheet of yellow tablet paper at a reading one day at Cornell.
Hi Matt! Good tip – I have Ammons’ Collected Poems, but haven’t spent enough time with it. When I get a chance I’ll go through and look for crow poems. A cursory web search turned up one on somebody’s blog: Abandon.