[Janice D. Soderling]

I happened to notice just now that Poets.org is selling an "exclusive shirt" that "features iambic pentameter scansion marks on the front and a Wallace Stevens line on the back: I wish that I might be a thinking stone."

Yesterday I laughed myself silly over Kenneth Koch's Mending Sump.

Mending Sump

"Hiram, I think the sump is backing up.
The bathroom floor boards for above two weeks
Have seemed soaked through. A little bird, I think
Has wandered in the pipes, and all's gone wrong."
"Something there is that doesn't hump a sump."
He said; and through his head she saw a cloud
That seemed to twinkle. "Hiram, well," she said,
"Smith is come home! I saw his face just now
While looking through your head. He's come to die
Or else to laugh, for hay is dried-up grass
When you're alone." He rose, and sniffed the air.
"We'd better leave him in the sump," he said.

***

And being restless and irreverent today, disrespectful some might say, and still giggling ove Mr. Koch's sally, this below just popped in my head. (The Devil made me do it.)

Deep Blue can top this with one thought tied behind him, ahem…

***

Thinking the Stone

I wish that I might be a thinking stone.
My head is hard enough but do stones think?
Bequeathing my white thinking to the moon
Is piling twenty stones upon a bridge
Yet one small thought would do if stones could think.
The mind roams as the thought roams among stones.
The book of moon-thought is not written yet,
As every man in Sweden will concede.
Tired of the old descriptions of the world,
Last evening the moon rose above this thought,
like a plain poet revolving in his mind.

***

Brothers and sisters, what is American Idol compared to this vulgar performance on the Eratosphere stage. (and yes, the Sweden line is verbatim).