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Sherman Alexie's avatar

Satire inside satire inside satire!

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Jasper Ceylon's avatar

Thanks a ton for checking this out! I might have also pulled aspects of the Michael Derrick Hudson Controversy (sorry!) on top of the Ern Malley stuff with my "Echolalia Review" project, too. Would love to send you a PDF version of the whole ruse if you feel inclined. It's about as wild and controversial as a contemporary poetry work could be today. Cheers!

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SkinShallow's avatar

Fascinating.

But one question. The misfed stray poem is actually pretty good at what it actually does, i.e. showing up how humans project onto animals in general and more specifically, a certain (pretentious and/or pandering "decolonising") mindset. The curry in the end is a clear clue to it being a pastiche at the minimum, parody for sure; but it really could also work like a funny dramatic monologue for me. So I might be being super thick here, but why do you say it's "bad"?

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Jasper Ceylon's avatar

This one was intended to be rather subtle compared to some of the other overtly farcical pieces (such as "Baba" or "Sunday, Gun Day" or "once upon a time a child got called 'embarrassing' by their jersey-bedecked toxin of a father after a football game for putting on 'ram ranch' by grant macdonald during an awkward car ride home in the clapped out family hyundai sonata"). To me, what makes this "bad" is how on-the-nose it is. The bland chicken joke (because they claim whites make bland food), the "Meowkum X" name, the reference to politically-charged words like "uppity" -- these are all cliches, essentially, that make this piece read like a Redditor regurgitating the usual talking points in poem form. So it's not horrible -- it just does absolutely nothing new, by design. And when set against better decolonization poems, it becomes clear this one adds nothing of value to the genre.

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SkinShallow's avatar

I've not read many decolonisation poems so there's that, but it definitely works as a piss take of all those clichés. I suppose it was not published as such.

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