I think someone who can come up with good titles is well on his way to becoming an important poet. Daniel Scott Tysdal's Predicting the Next Big Advertising Breakthrough Using a Potentially Dangerous Method (Coteau Books, 2006) is promising. In the section “Views from the Gallery of Recent Lives” we find this item:

... (The

9. Quasi-Agoraphobe

being the one who says: “by not going outside today
I saved x# of ants and kept invisible spores
from death by inhalation”).

I think you have to read the whole book carefully to see how (or whether) this reponse to news, ads, comics and everything fits together, but the first pages are fairly interesting.

It occurred to me while glancing through this book that the modern personal lyric can hardly avoid reflecting something of the daily squawk of exhortations and admonishment that pummels the average citizen. Yesterday I spent twenty minutes watching CNN, and CNN used half of that time to reminded me to watch CNN. Even when I look at my email, before I can actually see any messages, there's already some sort of demand at the top of the screen; not directed at me, personally, but intended for people like me. That's kind of odd in itself: being talked at by automata run by people who are probably busy thinking about more automata.

Labels: Poets