Socrates Is Mortal

If Socrates Is Mortal weren't a textbook example of a syllogism (All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore), it might be the title of a situational comedy set somewhere deep in Pascal's "eternal silence of infinite spaces." Minor poetic genres-the epigram, the song, the fable, the fragment, the joke, the imagistic aperçu, the spell-converge in a grotesque carnival of expirations and nativities. The book's five sets of poems-"Dead End / Ad Infinitum"; "Don't Move"; "Phosphorescent Fiction"; "Click"; and "Origin Pit"-move through openings in history, myth, popular culture, public and private life, language, and logic itself, while its recursive structures seek to restore a distinction between tragedy and farce.

Sample:

KINGS

The copper king sighed.

Dark mountain's gone black.

The thief is on the rack.

The urn king asked his niece,

does it smash or does it shatter?

Does it matter?

The dying king gazed for long periods

at the shifting colors of paradise,

the swimming myriads.

King Cowboy wiped his mouth,

lit his lamp, sat down and wrote:

The road goes on forever, but I don't.

The barnyard king had a parrot,

it was screeching mi ritrovai! mi ritrovai!

Then he turned over in his sty.

The dumb king was nervous,

he was tight as a violin string.

Who can say what tomorrow's gonna bring?