Men are mad so unavoidably that not to be mad would constitute one a madman of another order of madness.
—PASCAL
Busting out with mumble,
the year when low-grade virus opinion
took on hysterical prestige.
Inability the only right,
but technically perfect.
The year that turned to smirk,
and when music of a foul repetition
stacked the money.
Homer was not here, or Whitman—
who forgave even laundry lists, and was
quoted, “America, wake up!”
The classics of Western thought hid
from the public genre in bad remakes.
Cowardice, looting cowardice.
Jazz polarizing Mozart, when nobody needs
a divorce. Satire was limp
spaghetti. Computers were great,
but their side effects did
vital injuries. Like exiled Poles, a
few recited books,
a cataclysmic backward glance.
When arcs were built to
drown us.
from SLEEPING LATE ON JUDGMENT DAY
(published 2004, Alfred A. Knopf)
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Sleeping Late on Judgment Day was published by Knopf in 2004, when Jane Mayhall was 85. The poems were selected new work, written in her chosen city of New York. Mayhall’s extraordinary outpouring of fiercely lucid work followed the death of her beloved intellectual and artistic companion, her husband Leslie Katz. Mark Doty called the book “singular and alive,” and Molly Peacock wrote, “the genius of her poems [was] born in the twentieth century, but aimed like an arrow for our age.”
-- Leslie Daniels
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