[Michael Cantor]

Bravo, Wendy! Your throwaway is far better than the article that inspired it. I would, however, suggest "divelication" instead of "mastication" in the final line.

[R. Nemo Hill]

As always, Wendy: the voice of playful reason.

Nemo

[FOsen]

I’ve been reading Stephen Burt’s essay, “My Name is Henri,” in which he discusses devices that poets ([editing in - "Mark," not "Phi"]particularly Mark Levine) presumably cribbed from Berryman, noting: “Berryman’s ‘I am X, I am Y’ theoretical figure, in particular, has become (partly thanks to Levine’s example) an almost predictable feature of first and second books: “I am a service revolver in a swimming pool . . . I am a love letter “ [I’m* not going to give the attributions, you can look them up if you want]; “I was that season, the little ends I made” . . . “I am spring, I am not spring/ I am Voltaire he said” . . . .

Anyway, it strikes me that this might make for a good D&A contest – see how many you can cram into one [that's one, Martin] poem.

"I," am FOsen/the smithy of my angst . . . .

[R. S. Gwynn]

I suggest that we move this to D&A, with a competition for poems that use all of these "moves."

[Maryann Corbett]

Your wish is my command, Sam, and here we are. Let's see what folks do.

[John Whitworth]

Come on, Michael. Share your wisdom with us. What is divelication?

[Gail White]

Actually, the "I am X, I am Y" business goes back to ancient Babylon.
No reason to give Berryman the credit!

[Michael Cantor]

John - I'm only responding because I thought I would be the last man alive to use "divelicate" or any of its variations, and now you've used it, so I must climb back to the top of the heap. And, in so doing, I discovered that I would have been particularly safe in my position, because I also misspelled the word (which explains why you couldn't google it, if you tried.) It's "divellicate/divellication".

I found it years ago in a moldering Walker's Rhyming Dictionary that was printed in Britain in, I would guess, the Thirties. The entire dictionary is in reverse alphabetical order, it provides words but no meanings, and it contains some of the most arcane language imaginable. I had no idea what that particular word meant, but found it in another of my moldering reference works - a three volume, 3000 page Webster's - it's archaic, from the French divellere, and means to pluck at, to twitch, to pull apart.

[Dan Breene]

I too dislike it. . .how about the use of odd and gratuitous sexual details to shock the audience out of its stupor?

[Allen Tice]

Dan, I positively defy you to (in this day adage, at this pint in time), to identify de odd (and sexual) tails that might still shock a torpid audience.