[Curtis Gale Weeks]

Since we have broached the subject of distinction between what constitutes prose and what constitutes poetry, and since Tom has treated us to an example of what might be called a “prose poem,” I thought I'd post this example from <u>The Body Electric: America's Best Poetry from The American Poetry Review</u>, by a poet I've never read before but whose included poems intrigue me for their ability to talk around an issue while presenting strong (but sometimes: subjective) meaning. The poet is Joe Wenderoth, and this poem was published in 1998.


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BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POST These beasts will not do.

1. Their bleeding is decidedly inadequate—from a distance they appear not to bleed at all. Considering the likelihood of distance in today's spectator, this is not a small problem.
   
2. While they are exotic enough in appearance—and I assume this is why they were selected—they have a tendency, and an ability, to hide themselves in plain view. I don't claim to understand this ability—I only know that it is widely felt that, even at close range, they are difficult to get a good look at, and this is especially true when a blow is being struck upon them. It's almost as if they're immune to isolation—as if they are able to always appear, no matter how alone they are, in the noise and confusion of a herd.
   
3. They are far too obedient and willing to receive blows. Indeed, they seem to sense when a blow is coming and to move intuitively into it. If this movement was desperate—graceful or graceless—it might generate some interest, but it seems to fall, tragically, somewhere in between. That is, they seem able, at every point in their torture, to collapse in a reasonable fashion, as if the collapse was being dictated by their own will. No one enjoys—I don't think I even need to tell you—a reasoned collapse. It is this aspect of the beasts that most deeply defeats us, our simple want of a show.
   
4. Their attacks—and I hesitate to even call them attacks—are largely indistinguishable from the active reasoning of their own collapse. It is as though they seek above all to expose us to this activity of theirs—to infect us with their will to reason, and in so doing, reduce us to the unvarying rhythm of their irreducible herd. I would like to say that we are immune to this reduction, but I am not sure. In any case, I see no good reason for continuing to subject ourselves to these attacks. It would be better to have no beasts at all—to live altogether outside of shows—than to sink numbly into tolerance of a spectacle which fails to clarify what it is that distinguishes us from beasts.

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