Lumpy pudding

Judging a poem is like judging a pudding or a machine. One demands that it work. Poetry succeeds because all or most of what is said or implied is relevant; what is irrelevant has been excluded, like lumps from pudding and 'bugs' from machinery. (Wimsatt & Beardsley)

Here we celebrate the excluded, lumpy parts of the pudding!

Jun 7, 2012 7:37pm
Nikki Giovanni: Cotton Candy On A Rainy Day Don’t look now I’m fading away Into the gray of my mornings Or the blues of every night Is it that my nails keep breaking Or maybe the corn on my second little piggy Things keep popping out on my face or of my life It seems no matter how I try I become more difficult to hold I am not an easy woman to want They have asked the psychiatrists … psychologists … politicians and social workers What this decade will be known for There is no doubt … it is loneliness (Photo by Elsa Dorfman, ca. 1980)

Nikki Giovanni: Cotton Candy On A Rainy Day

Don’t look now
I’m fading away
Into the gray of my mornings
Or the blues of every night

Is it that my nails
keep breaking
Or maybe the corn
on my second little piggy
Things keep popping out
on my face or of my life

It seems no matter how
I try I become more difficult
to hold
I am not an easy woman
to want

They have asked
the psychiatrists … psychologists …
politicians and social workers
What this decade will be
known for

There is no doubt … it is
loneliness

(Photo by Elsa Dorfman, ca. 1980)
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