From Matt Hart’s review of Paul Violi’s Overnight in ColdFrontMag:
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Violi has a penchant for creating works which WOBBLE back and forth between being formal-ish, language-game type poems and snapshots of language forms not ordinarily considered poetry at all. For example, in addition to the three "Acknowledgments" poems in Overnight, there’s also the hilarious "Counterman" which is a sort of Abbot and Costello-ish "who’s on first" routine consisting of sandwich orders given and taken at a deli counter, "Finish These Sentences" which is a list of interrupted sentences that need to be finished (endlessly by the reader), and the marvelously cagey "I.D. Or, Mistaken Identities" -- which is essentially eleven "who am I" style riddles. Here, each riddle/section of the poem is a deliberately ambiguous and wildly uttered monologue of clues about its unnamed speaker – ostensibly some famous figure from history or culture – which ends with the question "Who am I?" Here’s number three:
For handing over Philologus
To the widow of the man
I’d commanded him to murder
(She then made him slice off bits
Of his own flesh, roast them
And eat them)——For this,
Plutarch commended me
For at least one act
Of understanding and decency.
Who am I?
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Ed, note: For more of the review, click here. Answer to the brainteaser will be given after a twenty-four grace period in which guesses ranging from Macbeth to Coriolanus will be entetained. There's a clue in that sentence, but you'd need to be either Zorba the Greek or the Mighty Quinn to puzzle it out.
