Carody Culver is a Brisbane based writer, editor and poet whose recent chapbook The Morgue I Think the Deader it Gets (published online here at one of Australia's best homes for poetry, Cordite Poetry Review) deserves your attention. Playful, ironic and genuinely funny, these poems are marked by a casual erudition and a humor that is at once generous and scathing—no small achievement. Like Jawbreaker candy, Culver’s poems are perfectly sweet until you take a bite into them.
Photo by Jackie Ryan
“Short biographies of magicians’ assistants” offers up a list of names of magicians’ assistants and a pithy description of their demise. The brevity and inventiveness of the poem (I love the assistants’ names) make it easy to look past the otherwise obvious and uncomfortable detail—all of these assistants are women, all of them suffer violent ends. Culver’s clever use of rhyme and meter give the poem the feel of a nursery rhyme, a feeling which is abruptly ended by the final line’s refusal to conform, breaking the poem out of its own illusion.
Short biographies of magicians’ assistants
Tallulah Sparkles—cut in half
Delilah Diviner—sawed apart
Phoebe Angel—guillotine chop
Amber LeBon—dagger head box
Electra Montgomery—live cremation
Mary-Beth Moonshine—failed levitation
Juniper Bliss—disembodied
Daphne Golden—disappeared.
The Morgue I Think the Deader it Gets takes its title from a line in the chapbook’s opening poem, “The More I Think”, which itself takes its opening line from a well known public artwork in Brisbane by the conceptual artist Sebastian Moody (who is, coincidentally, my cousin). The poem rearranges the artwork's maxim until we reach an aphorism that could be a worthy companion piece to the original.
Sebastian Moody Think Bigger (2009)
The more I think
The more I think about it the bigger it gets
The bigger I think about it the harder it gets
The harder I think about it the sharper it gets
The sharper I think about it the pointier it gets
The pointier I think about it the sorer it gets
The sorer I think about it the sicker it gets
The mirth I think about it the laughter it gets
The bisque I think about it the lobster it gets
The morgue I think about it the deader it gets
The years I think about it the older it gets
The sage I think about it the wiser it gets
The sound I think about it the louder it gets
The money I think about it the richer it gets
The think I get about it the better it gets
The gets I better about it the thinker it bets
The better I get about it the thinker it mores
The more it thinks about it the lesser I’m for
The less I know the more it gets
The less I am the more I know.
The brilliance of “A short guided meditation by a thought leader” is that it is as ridiculous as it is believable. Culver borrows from corporate jargon and the language of spiritual capitalism to usher us through a guided meditation in which we collaborate with our breath, visualize our inner core competencies and connect to our own best practices. It would be of no surprise if we were to see some of these phrases used in absolute earnest by an upcoming ad campaign, as some new brand assures us we are shovel-ready and results oriented.
A short guided meditation by a thought leader
As a thought leader, I’ll be leading your thoughts in today’s guided meditation.
Think of this exercise as a form of change management. A way to move the needle on your future potential. A chance to touch base with yourself. Are you ready to take things offline? Let’s pivot.
Close your eyes. Collaborate with your breath. Action that in-and-out. Be purposeful. Be the champion of your diaphragm. Get yourself in the loop. Connect to your own best practice and really put those boots on the ground.
Now let’s curate your own innovation. First, visualise yourself as the head of a for-profit start-up. Amplify that vision. It may have lots of moving parts, but you’re the one who can make it pop. I want you to buy in to your own empowerment, cradle to grave. Find that culture fit. Don’t guesstimate—this is your time to land and expand.
Let’s take it to the next level. Visualise your business strategy: are you a game-changer? A disruptor? An influencer? Breathe in on your scalable ideas, breathe out on your entrepreneurial approach to Industry 5.0. See yourself shifting that paradigm. Visualise your inner core competencies. Amplify them.
You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Peel your own onion. Ride your own tailwinds. Be your own strategic partner. Feel yourself expanding your bandwidth as you run this up the flagpole. It’s about organic growth. It’s about building your brand. Raise the bar—you’re shovel-ready and results-oriented. This is your summit.
Get all those balls in the air. Every one of them is authentic. Every one of them can build capacity. Every one of them has its own special sauce. Crowd-source yourself. Drill down. Tee up to empower your new normal.
Now it’s time to circle back and close the loop. Sit up. Reach out: let’s all join hands and form a steering committee.
Ms. Culver has produced a gem of a chapbook. I urge you to seek it out.
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