[Lance Levens]

"I need fifteen minutes," said Herzog. "I'll prepare all my questions."

1. Did he love me when he didn't say he did?
2. Did Daedalus use wax or tar to attach the feathers?
3. What does "high-flier" really mean?
4. What goes before a fall, the apple or the cart?
5. Of course I am upset. What did you expect?
6. How do you know when it's over?
7. Is it over?
8. I mean, Really. Over.
9. Why?
10. How long before the sun becomes a white dwarf? (Like me.)
11. Make that, Love me.
12. Would waxing lyrical serve me better than a list?
13. Please is an unlucky number.
14. Did he love me when he didn't say he did? (I really need to know.)
15. Here are the questions. Where are the answers?

[Carol Taylor]

I hope somebody will defend this. I'm not qualified to comment since I don't want to read a book before I can understand a 16-line poem on even a surface level. A better poem might take that into consideration.

Carol

[Roger Slater]

#12 goes to the heart of this entire bakeoff event.

I'm with Carol. I don't have much of a clue what is going on here. Never letting ignorance stop me, however, I will say that I suspect that the best I could hope for here would be the ability to understand several inside jokes. I can't see how this would turn into "poem", but let those who understand it better be the ones to judge.

[Spindleshanks]

?????
#8 says it for me.

[Tim Murphy]

Cute, but poetry? I think not.

[John Whitworth]

I'm afraid I'm as ignorant as the next person. I have never read a novel by Saul Bellow. So I have to pass on this one.

[Susan McLean]

I have never read the book, either, but I am guessing (from the Daedalus allusion) that it is about a difficult father-son relationship and that these are questions a son wants to ask his father. Some of them are mildly amusing.

Susan

[Pedro Poitevin]

I haven't read Herzog, but I have every intention of reading it and other novels by Bellow, whose attention to detail in prose is extraordinary, or so I've come to believe after reading James Wood on Bellow.

Obscure though its layers may be to me, this poem grabs my attention.

It seems to be about the relationship between a character and his omniscient creator. It connects strangely to the myth of Icarus, it seems to gesture very cleverly to the canon (dead white males?), of which I imagine Bellow was a defender, given his conservatism (line 10). And a brief consultation with Wikipedia's summary of the plot of the novel reveals some darker undertones to the poem, especially because of the mention of Montreal in the title.

I wish I understood it all, and I don't. But I sense something. I'm intrigued.

Pedro.

[Christopher ONeill]

A group hug for folk who read Saul Bellow (at least, the major works) - as opposed to Fritz Lieber, Hank Janson, Hermann Broch, or Rhys Davies.

It isn't for me - I fail at the club membership test.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Like Pedro, I have googled.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herzog_(novel)

Herzog is a 1964 novel by Saul Bellow, composed largely of letters from the protagonist Moses E. Herzog. It won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction and the The Prix International. TIME magazine named it one of the 100 best novels in the English language since "the beginning of TIME" (1923 to 2005).

Also this

http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/25/reviews/bellow-herzog.html

I think this is a List poem but also is related maybe to inner Exploration.

I think it might fall into the category absurd, like uh, Waiting for Godot or Jarry's Ubu plays or Apollinaire. Uh, think Krapp's Last Tape. Or going further back even Pound channeling Confucius.

What! No clothes?
Take my spare kilt. Shine mail-coat and axe!
Lift we our packs
and out together.

Probably written by someone who is out of the box. Maybe one of those flarf critters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flarf_poetry

I don't think it is a nice cuppa tea for TDE. LOL.

PS. Also Joyce comes to mind. Ulysses?