M.A. Haiku Project

Exam day

2007-08-07T22:50:00.000-07:00

Oh my god oh my
God it hurts holy fucking
Shit now let’s get drunk

Dryden, Satire, Politics

2007-08-06T22:50:00.000-07:00

You think you’re pretty
Fucking clever there, don’t you?
You’re not. Just stop it.

The Man Beat Marston And Took His Pistol From Him

2007-08-05T22:29:00.000-07:00

Jonson may have been
Fat and ugly but you don’t
Want to mess with him.

Penelope

2007-08-04T22:16:00.000-07:00

yes i said yes i
will yes swallow so much
rubbish word vomit

The York Mystery Plays Stumble Upon Truth

2007-08-03T21:54:00.000-07:00

Joseph: I’m sorry?
Mary: God made me pregnant.
Joseph: Wow. Bullshit.

You're Quite Right, Mr. Worthing

2007-08-02T21:48:00.000-07:00

It’s heartless to eat
Muffins under even the
Best circumstances.

How Dare You Accuse Mr. Swift Of Something So Foul

2007-08-01T21:40:00.000-07:00

You’re telling me that
Gulliver is a dildo?
I don’t believe you.

Not That Stella Doesn't Seem Worth It

2007-07-31T21:37:00.000-07:00

Sidney, at some point
Did you stop and think, “Maybe
I’m wasting my time”?

I Had A Dream Of The Rood Once

2007-07-30T21:30:00.000-07:00

But instead of Christ
Jumping on the Cross, I nailed
Him up there myself.

Some Of Your Stage Directions Are Confusing, Mr. O'Neil

2007-07-29T21:19:00.000-07:00

So I’ll just cross out
“With a detached contrition”
And write “Drunkenly.”

I Would Have Gone With "Penis," Even If It Does Sound Too Clinical

2007-07-28T20:59:00.000-07:00

Mr. Hwang, does your
Play suggest that all Asian
Women have “weenies”?

I feel you, Walt

2007-07-27T21:43:00.000-07:00

7/27
I can’t even count
How many times I’ve gotten
Blown by my own soul.

Has New Shit come to light, Mr. Ashberry?

2007-07-26T21:26:00.000-07:00

7/26
I have to ask: what
In God’s holy name are you
Blathering about?

I couldn't help but notice that Sir Thomas More left something out

2007-07-22T17:31:00.000-07:00

7/22
How do Utopians
Deal with pedophilia?
This is important.

Caliban to the Reader

2007-07-21T22:10:00.000-07:00

7/21
Having learnt his lines,
I begin to feel Auden
Should have written less.

Still the walls do not fall, I do not know why.

2007-07-20T16:29:00.000-07:00

7/20
Dear H.D.: I loathe
Spiritual Imagism.
Sincerely, EV.

Containing What the Reader May, Perhaps, Expect to Find in it

2007-07-19T21:35:00.000-07:00

7/19
I hate to question
The “perfect plot,” but isn’t
Tom still a bastard?

I had trouble putting my finger on Paradise Lost

2007-07-18T17:50:00.000-07:00

7/18
Free will man freely
Received willed freely to him
Free and free will fell.

Religion, Politics, Divorce, Childbirth

2007-07-17T17:44:00.000-07:00

7/17
Milton could manage
To write himself into a
Tract on anything.

That's like describing a Queso Burrito to a kid starving in Africa, Spenser

2007-07-16T17:39:00.000-07:00

7/16
Why bother telling
Us women are so hot if
They refuse to bang?

And if Errour exists, maybe there is a Faerie Queene

2007-07-15T17:33:00.000-07:00

7/15
I’m pretty sure I
Dated a half woman, half
Serpent in college.

I think this is what Poe had in mind

2007-07-14T18:03:00.000-07:00

7/14
“I found the letter.”
Dupont nodded. “It seems the
Queen has syphilis.”

Don't Listen to "Mean Girls"

2007-07-13T22:03:00.000-07:00

7/13
Little known fact: Ben
Franklin also invented
The Toaster Strudel.

Ode to My Wind

2007-07-12T22:01:00.000-07:00

7/12
Inspiration! Breath!
Can you smell that, Shelley? My
Soul: I fart at thee!

They should call it "HPV"

2007-07-11T21:57:00.000-07:00

7/11
A break from reading:
“Harry Potter” makes me want
To bang high school chicks.

And then Ellison makes the summer worthwhile

2007-07-10T21:51:00.000-07:00

7/10
Black and blue; become
One and yet many; I yam:
Possibility.

Sticking right out of my forehead

2007-07-09T23:19:00.000-07:00

7/9
Reading Wycherly
Makes a part of me grow and
Harden ’gainst my will.

True, but he wouldn't sell my picture

2007-07-08T23:09:00.000-07:00

7/8
Sheridan, I hate
Gossip, but I heard your play
Isn’t worth reading.

And I'm not sure which was worse, Mr. Farquhar

2007-07-07T23:41:00.000-07:00

7/7
I read your play the
Same day I saw “Transformers.”
What a shitty day.

It's a Wonder Phonetic Spelling Never Caught On

2007-07-06T23:36:00.000-07:00

7/6
My dear Mr. Shaw,
I can place you within feet
Of being a dick.

Le beau poet sans merci

2007-07-05T20:29:00.000-07:00

7/5
O what can ail thee,
Eric? I see! Say nothing!
Keats hath thee in thrall!

For Obvious Reasons (I know I did)

2007-07-04T23:11:00.000-07:00

7/4
I’ll bet Richardson
Tossed off more to Clarissa
Than to Pamela.

Stop Making Excuses, Thoreau

2007-07-03T19:04:00.001-07:00

7/3
You spend so much time
Alone because ev’ryone
Thinks you’re an asshole.

And I'm pretty sure that way it's not a sin, Reverend Dimmesdale

2007-07-02T18:30:00.000-07:00

7/2
She never would have
Gotten pregnant if you had
Fucked her in the ass.

Closing Stage Directions for "Arcadia," Revised

2007-07-01T13:24:00.000-07:00

7/1
Two couples remain
Onstage, connected through time:
Dancing with no pants.

Learn some manners, Sir Gawain

2007-06-30T22:11:00.000-07:00

6/30
A true knight tosses
His lady’s salad when she
Wants her salad tossed.

Why "The Jew of Malta" is classified as a comedy

2007-06-29T22:37:00.000-07:00

6/29
Barabas poisons
The whole convent. Killing nuns
Is hilarious.

Woman Warrior has some outstanding character development

2007-06-28T16:25:00.000-07:00

6/28
Nothing speaks to me
Like a retard with a box
Of pornography.

How homosocial of you, Herman

2007-06-27T19:12:00.000-07:00

6/27
Now boys, circle up:
Let’s squeeze ourselves into the
Very sperm of kindness.

Is it, Lord Tennyson?

2007-06-26T22:49:00.000-07:00

6/26
’Tis better to have
Read and hated than never
To have read at all.

The First Rule of William Collins Is That You Do Not Talk About William Collins

2007-06-25T22:16:00.000-07:00

6/25
If you have to ask
Who the next great poet will be,
Then it isn’t you.

James Thomson, You Make Me Angry

2007-06-24T17:59:00.000-07:00

6/24
I read your poem;
My soul died. When I find your
Grave, I’ll piss on it.

But You Keep Telling Yourself That, Beowulf

2007-06-23T13:26:00.000-07:00

6/23
You killed a giant,
His mother, and a dragon?
I don’t believe you.

A Dramatic Monologue About Robert Browning Written in the Style of Robert Browning and Told From the Perspective of Robert Browning

2007-06-22T06:41:00.000-07:00

6/22
I will not adhere
To your rules of art but please
Pass the potatoes.

I might be alone on this one, but...

2007-06-21T06:41:00.000-07:00

6/21
I’d like to see blind
Milton knock that Papist fuck
Dryden on his ass.

In which the author expresses his state of mind in explicit terms

2007-06-20T17:13:00.000-07:00

6/20
Penis fuck penis
Fuck penis fuck penis fuck
Penis fuck penis.

It Makes You Nobel-Prize-Winning Retarded

2007-06-19T15:28:00.000-07:00

6/19
Walcott: Just because
The island was called Helen
Doesn’t make you Greek.

Chaucer, Troilus, Feminism

2007-06-18T19:53:00.000-07:00

6/18
It’s not really rape
When her uncle is right there
Helping you fuck her.

Beloved Beverage

2007-06-17T13:47:00.000-07:00

6/17
Nothing tastier
To beat the summer heat than
Breast milk mixed with blood.

Ms. Glorian, Where Are You?

2007-06-16T10:21:00.000-07:00

As an aside, I thought I might finally share my notes from a stellar performance at this year's MadLit conference: Mandy Glorian's work on the form of the personal essay.

Those unacquainted with Ms. Glorian's academic work will surely know her creative work, as she has succeeded where three and a half centuries of poets have failed: Glorian has rewritten John Milton's long, laborious, and ultimately dull epic poem, Paradise Lost. "The Tree of No" rattled the literary world with its elegant simplicity, rhapsodic musicality, and its daring forthrightness. Though some have argued for its shocking stupidity (one recent critic accused Ms. Glorian of poetic blasphemy and suggested that she be strung up from said "Tree of No") others have hailed her as a visionary. "Sons and Daughters of Mandy," as they call themselves, have begun the necessary work to rewrite literary history. Adaire Falcker and Daniel Lowenstine have laid claim to the rest of Milton's swollen corpus, beginning with Comus. D. Oucheb Ag, a graduate student at Rutgers - generally regarded as the nation's finest program in English Literature - has begun a project to paraphrase Shakespeare's sonnets; Al Legorical Name (pronounced Nah-meh), a creative writer at the University of Iowa, has shown definitively that Dickens' work can be improved by rendering it into stick figure drawings, thus eliminating the arbitrary nature of its excessive language; and Nire Refekytab, University of Wisconsin (Madison) writing fellow and future Nobel Prize candidate, has published her intentions to preemptively limit her poetry to Glorian guidelines.

Without further ado, here are my notes (my thoughts are in parenthesis). Those of you who were lucky enough to hear this magnificent essay should feel free to contribute your own notes.
- Montaigne was the first to puzzle over the question, "What do I know?" The more he asked, the more he realized he didn't know. He had to write himself.
- Montaigne was a swamp. (I had no idea.)
- Cultural apocalypse: psychological bifurcation of the self
- (Why are we talking about Ulysses? Shit, is Ulysses an essay?)
- Essay and fiction fuse. (Oh. Um.)
- Only in the modernist period could Borges say that the truth does not exist.
- Borges's essays are like bright pinatas.
- God is no longer paring his fingernails; instead, he's pinning the tail on the donkey.
- Essays turned to phantoms because there is no more self.
- (The girl seated next to Ms. Glorian on the panel is rolling her eyes.)
- New essayists turn away from themselves.
- Flickers of facts with festering fictions.
- Inner wanderings have turned to outward, and the "I" becomes a fiction.
- The blog is the new form of the essay.
- (Random insertion of "ok.")
- (That was ridiculous.)

As a further aside, I figured out how to make it easier to comment on posts. If you'd like to share your thoughts about Ms. Glorian's work or anything else on this blog, feel free.

1776

2007-06-16T09:59:00.000-07:00

6/16
That white Sustenance —
Despair — unloving, unloved —
Intentionally —

You and Me Both, Mr. Yeats

2007-06-15T11:40:00.000-07:00

6/15
Beautiful roses!
What? The rose is Ireland?
I hate the Irish.

Dear Mr. Donne

2007-06-14T08:43:00.000-07:00

6/14
When you wash your sins
Away with Christ’s blood, try to
Get those cum stains out.

signifying nothing

2007-06-13T20:55:00.000-07:00

6/13
sound so fucking good
and the quentins both of them
fury and he hush

Tale of a Turd

2007-06-12T16:31:00.000-07:00

6/12
Good, dear, shitty Swift!
Why are you so angry? Oh.
Right. All men are turds.

I owe you a haiku on Sterne

2007-06-11T19:29:00.000-07:00

6/11
Uncle Toby, the widow
---- ---- suck -- anything.
Let down your breeches.

Center of the Universe

2007-06-10T12:49:00.000-07:00

6/10
Nature! Transcendence!
Charming, Mr. Emerson,
But completely wrong.

Stage Directions

2007-06-09T17:17:00.000-07:00

6/9
As far as we know,
That bear might still be dining
On Antigonus.

Pope

2007-06-08T14:32:00.003-07:00

6/8
Feathers ev’rywhere!
Beak, blood, and awful squawking:
The Rape of the Cock.

Crashaw

2007-06-07T14:32:00.000-07:00

6/7
Dead babies, super
Duper sexy Jesus wounds,
And Milk All the Way.

Austen

2007-06-06T14:31:00.000-07:00

6/6
Handsome, clever, rich
Emma got genital warts
From Mr. Knightly.

T.S.

2007-06-05T14:31:00.000-07:00

6/5
Shantih Shantih Shut
The fuck up you pretentious
Mother-fucking prick.

George Eliot

2007-06-04T14:31:00.000-07:00

6/4
Nobody told me
Middlemarch was nine thousand
Pages. George: eat shit.

Midnight's Children

2007-06-03T14:30:00.000-07:00

6/3
I’m fragmentating!
Wah! Everybody look
At me! Eat chutney.

Mrs. Dalloway

2007-06-02T14:29:00.000-07:00

6/2
I bought the flowers
Myself. I’m so fucking sick
Of her constant shit.

Threshold

2007-06-01T14:25:00.000-07:00

6/1
So now it begins!
What? Drinks? Pie? Socializing?
It begins later.

MASHP 2007

2007-06-01T13:55:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the MA Summer Haiku Project 2007. For your reading enjoyment, I will write and post one haiku every day while reading for the last-ever MA exam in English Literature at the University of Wisconsin. The haikus may be references to literary works or to the experience of reading these works; perhaps they will refer to nothing at all.

If you enjoy these whimsical nothings, please let me know. If you do not, fuck you, I never liked you anyways.