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Uncle Sol

It is National Poetry Month.

So… here’s my favorite poem.

nobody loses all the time

nobody loses all the time

i had an uncle named
Sol who was a born failure and
nearly everybody said he should have gone
into vaudeville perhaps because my Uncle Sol could
sing McCann He Was A Diver on Xmas Eve like Hell Itself which
may or may not account for the fact that my Uncle

Sol indulged in that possibly most inexcusable
of all to use a highfalootin phrase
luxuries that is or to
wit farming and be
it needlessly
added

my Uncle Sol’s farm
failed because the chickens
ate the vegetables so
my Uncle Sol had a
chicken farm till the
skunks ate the chickens when

my Uncle Sol
had a skunk farm but
the skunks caught cold and
died and so
my Uncle Sol imitated the
skunks in a subtle manner

or by drowning himself in the watertank
but somebody who’d given my Uncle Sol a Victor
Victrola and records while he lived presented to
him upon the auspicious occasion of his decease a
scruptious not to mention splendiferous funeral with
tall boys in black gloves and flowers and everything and
i remember we all cried like the Missouri
when my Uncle Sol’s coffin lurched because
somebody pressed a button
(and down went
my Uncle
Sol

and started a worm farm)

e.e. cummings

It’s funny at first, right? But, the more you know about cummings and his views on vaudeville, the more you read of the lost generation, the creepier it gets. If you’re into over-analysis, this poem isn’t a joke so much as cynical nihilism that’s nearly prophetic. You can, if you think too hard, turn it into a piece on the death of God and rejection of nature in the modern world.

I’m not kidding. I’ve done it. I got a good grade on that paper, too.

I was pretty good at college English courses. Heh.