From “Anagrams” [xxiii]
A much-needed swan song from Cain, blasting Father K’s bien-pensant ideology and everyone else in his path. A neoliberal trying to ingratiate himself with the construction worker and trustafarian alike, his argu-
ments lighter performed as a he’s right, you Ingram. “You them, but it’s particularly good they? There’s take the side well-presented Otto Thud (who Dr. in spite of nomenology) is unsought cameo fornicator (a
on an anecdote I one to tell me).
than air and spectacle. “And know?” says
feel sorry for
not like they’re or anything, are a tendency to
of the most suffering.” Poor never went by
his PhD in phe- given another
as the moonlight monicker based cannot get any- Furthermore,
B–
“Fr. K, you hater! The standard liberal monotony: thinking all that is persecuted must be the truth. Hah! But no. Some things are only persecuted. Oh Fido, thitherward, round the houses — hold the hard hat, hold the standby ban- danna — you launch the featherweight countercharge, the mere badminton, the waterfront hotbed. Neon Ivy Federation! The moonlight fornicator: he had more worth. (Hi, Dr. Otto, where’s the hooch?) This is how behavior devolved.
“neon ivy federation” was generally taken to be a sideswipe at his beloved alma mater, [redacted], which Halberg considered one of the lesser liberal arts schools in the Ivy League. The last straw, by all accounts.
This poem is part of a larger sequence. You can read the rest in the June 2016 issue of Poetry.