Harriet Tennessee Alexander Did not suffer an overripe deacon To go unremarked from where she stood. My great grandmother, duly churched herself, Would slyly christen the immoderate soul A constipated Baptist. Landing hard On self-righteous in her considered view Could overplay the sanctimony card. The railroad bisecting her Texas town Isolated white from black and brown. On their respective sides of the divide Solid citizens in Sunday best Professed monochromatic piety. It would not do for Hattie Tennessee. The dame kicked up her version of a fuss: A blood-red South was not her cup of tea. Her scruple went down like a blunderbuss. She prayed the more, regretted it the less. That rebel died unsung, but not by me.
We know that God loves. But did you know that God also hates? (Franklin Graham)
Frankly, reverend, you’re a broken cracker, Besotted bottom-of-the-barrel divine, Breath blown into a mud pie by your maker, Reared on sodawater and moonshine.
Word cloud from a cherrypicked psalter Hovers darkly on your tabernacle. Tattooed testosterone defiles the alter, Screeching babble from a bankrupt oracle.
Have you no shame, sir? Your thesis is crude. A hateful God is opposite of good. This thing that wants a closer walk with thee Is not the same that died upon a tree.
[Jacket art caption from vol. 1 of Robert Alter’s The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary, Norton, 2019.] Jacket art: detail of Tsadi Pe from The Creation, ca. 1978-1980, a series of ten tapestries designed by Mordecai Ardon (1896-1992). The tapestries, executed at the Georges Goldstein Atelier, Jerusalem, were donated by Ardon to Shaare Zedek Medical Center, Jerusalem, where they are permanently exhibited. (c) Mordecai Ardon / Courtesy Ardon Estate / Photo: Courtesy Shaare Zedek Medical Center, Jerusalem. Jacket design: Chin-Lee Yai.
What you say doesn’t have to be true. / It only has to be imaginable.
In my pronunciation, from boyhood until fairly recently, the planet Uranus rhymed with “your anus.” Now I force myself to say it somewhat like “YOUR-uh-nuss.” Still have a tendency, though, to burst out in a nervous giggle whenever I see the word.
The above is backstory to a pronouncement that David Kirby’s “The Man Who Discovered Uranus” (Poetry, July-August 2026) is one of the funniest poems I’ve read. It’s overtly amorphous, discursive, formally more prose-like than verse-like — but in a who cares? way — perhaps the crystalline essence of deadpan being what elevates it to wherever the sphere of poesis lies.
Here’s a taste:
William Herschel. Good guy with a telescope, not so much with the lingo: he called his discovery “Georgium Sidus” or “Georgian Star” after George III, but the name didn’t stick. In France, where the name of the British king was to be avoided at all costs, the planet was known as “Herschel” until the name “Uranus” was universally adopted. […]
[…] lugubrious is a wonderful word, isn’t it, because it sounds exactly like someone crying but is also funny, like Buick or waffle. Notice I’m talking about single words here, not phrases like “Christian bachelorette party.” […]
[…] Maybe we should just shut up. To ban the spread of Covid, during the pandemic there were signs on Japanese roller coasters asking riders to “please scream inside your heart.” […]
[…] I mean, you’d feel stupid if you were outside with your friends all sweaty and wrung-out after a hootenanny and someone pointed up to the sky and said, “Look, Herschel.”
This comment by Victoria Moul has jostled my world:
It is very difficult indeed to write lyric poetry which is both beautiful and straightforward to understand, and which also has something to say — a clear and specific message or argument. These seem like they ought to be the basic virtues of verse but it is a rare poet who can put all three together as consistently as [Edwin] Muir. (Victoria Moul, “Horace & friends,” substack)
As a reader of contemporary poetry I had not encountered the argument she makes for the lyric in support of beauty, clarity and content. Much of the verse I read does not give itself up, if at all, to a first pass; invites if not demands revisiting; and may defy grasp or retention anyhow. This, I’ve been induced to believe, is of the nature of verse and to be expected: the saying of bright things darkly, so to speak.
There’s more. In discussing J.H. Prynne’s poetry, Victoria Moul writes the following:
Prynne’s poetry is, it’s true, exceptionally “difficult” because it is often impossible to parse in any conventional way.
Her quotation marks and reference to parsing are noteworthy. I often test verse against my capacity to winkle out in my own way what it “says” (more quotation marks!). In other words I parse it, sensing all the while that doing so goes against good practice in the view of experts.
Here’s the rest of Moul’s observation, which I find somewhat climactic:
But I find so much of Prynne’s poetry, for all its obscurity, exceptionally beautiful and unmistakably profound. The fact remains that I am more often moved to tears reading Prynne than almost any other recent poet in English.
Worse luck for me is I tend to express myself in doggerel, the more so when exercised. As doggerel will do, the product is blatantly rhythm-straitened and message-laden, salted with rhyme as if by a drunken sailor. It’s on the opposite side of where lyric shines. I’m okay with that. But for my reading life, Victoria Moul gives me much pause, as well as encouragement.
Numpty majuscles issued from the glades By the avenging angel of foul moods Codify the swampiness that reeks In the lacustrine gulag’s frothy jakes. Vulpine apologists voice vapid pokes With knit foreheads and chic tortoise-shell specs. McGeorge Beetlebrow humps insider scoops While Polymarket shills fellate the creeps. Where there’s oily smoke, confide the tools, There’s fire to get upwind of in the holes.
The landscapes of the face possess And repossess my hand. Even still It’s on the move: peak, fissure, defile; Shadow here, just there a vegetation, A blink, a snout, a rumination — Fondest barbarism captured yet! The face solicits pen and ink to nail the stink, Charcoal, lead for testimony to the blink, Pigment for the snout. And done. Peace out.
Paramecia in a drop of pond, Specks milling on the wreckage of dead stars, Motes adrift in several gods’ eyes, We precede our much foretold demise.
Unapprised of what there’s to confront, We go on going on until we don’t, You and I, he, she, it, we and they. The noun names us. The verb takes us away.
Illustration by Brandon Celi, New York Times illustration published here. I celebrate illustration that has a painterly flair. Brandon Celi’s playful take is a specimen of good-natured ribbing. It’s well known that the president enjoys assuming various roles and costumes vicariously via A.I.-assisted depictions of himself. Caesar in all but name, Mr. Trump has a nimble sense of humor, and will savor Celi’s piquante tribute, as well as the instructively ironic juxtaposition of his eminence, who is highly literate, with the quip attributed to King Henry I of England: “An illiterate king is a crowned ass.”
“Processing Nolan’s “Odyssey” is its own odyssey.”
It’s a family-friendly audiovisual spectacle, like an elaborate Fourth of July fireworks display — and with about the same level of narrative and emotional depth… It lacks psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth. Its narrative structure is gimmicky. The writing is abysmal. (Emily Wilson)
… [Wilson’s] tone of dismissal & haughty superiority strike a sour note… Rather than disagreeing with interpretations of Homer in a collegial manner, this person, who has benefited enormously from Nolan’s film, speaks in the crude language of MAGA folks attacking someone with ideas that differ from hers. (Joyce Carol Oates)
(I would write “strikes a sour note” because “tone” is singular, but Oates is writing on X, where neither fact nor grammar reigns.)
I endorse the heroic approach to classics: Skip the flicks, learn their language and read them in the original.
(Except for Bruni, quotations are from Neil Vigdor, “How Emily Wilson’s Takedown of ‘The Odyssey’ Ignited a Debate,” New York Times, 7-31-26)
Pious bromides don’t cut the mustard. A stance that dines on meaty homily Peels potatoes in the feast of sacrifice. Report of rapture scarcely can make felt That rage of loving kindness that’s broadcast From the backside of Beyond and slams Hot piety with undeciphered clout.
What’s a perfect Being mad about? Surprised by what an omniscient Godhead? Taken aback? Indignant? Caught off guard? Virtue is a stretch for mortals, but: The miracles, the raising of the dead, the threefold oneness of exalted might — It’s the dogma that’s surpassing hard.
Her eyes are bleary with sleeplessness. She “watches over” stars all night as if she were a shepherd and they her flock. She hardly bothers to dress herself other than in tatters. Arabian poet Al-Khansā’ (d. 645 AD) starts to reveal in the third line of her famous elegy why she’s distraught and unkempt.
For I had heard — and it was not news to rejoice me — one making report, who had come repeating intelligence, […] (1)
Recently something came clear to me about the line. Here’s my transliteration of the Arabic text:
I had read ẖabar(an), an undefined Form 1 verbal noun in accusative case, and muḥaddiṯ(an), an undefined Form 2 active participle in accusative case, as being in a noun-adjective relationship to one another. The structure didn’t cohere, though.
It dawned on me lately that ẖabar(an) is an adverb affiliated with the verbal phrase preceding it — lam ‘abjaḥ bi-hi (lit. “not I found joy with it”). Muḥaddiṯ(an) is the sole direct object of the verb sami^tu, as well as subject of the 3rd-person-masculine-singular verbs jā’a (“he came”) and yanmī (2).
Here’s my translation:
For I had heard — and got no joy in it as tiding — a speaker (who) came yielding increase (of) the coming back of reports, […]
It’s clumsy but suits my present mode of study, which is to render texts as closely to the Arabic as I can while preserving legible English.
Notes (1) Arabic Poetry: A Primer for Students, Cambridge University, 1965, p. 39. (2) Verb yanmī (root n-m-y) has a wide range of modern meanings in Wehr. I will go with Lane’s “yielding increase,” which can suggest repetition. The gist is clear enough: A report being carried by someone is propagated through repetition.
EthicalDative 
‘The Man Who Discovered Uranus’ by David Kirby
[Jacket art caption from vol. 1 of Robert Alter’s The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary, Norton, 2019.] Jacket art: detail of Tsadi Pe from The Creation, ca. 1978-1980, a series of ten tapestries designed by Mordecai Ardon (1896-1992). The tapestries, executed at the Georges Goldstein Atelier, Jerusalem, were donated by Ardon to Shaare Zedek Medical Center, Jerusalem, where they are permanently exhibited. (c) Mordecai Ardon / Courtesy Ardon Estate / Photo: Courtesy Shaare Zedek Medical Center, Jerusalem. Jacket design: Chin-Lee Yai.
In my pronunciation, from boyhood until fairly recently, the planet Uranus rhymed with “your anus.” Now I force myself to say it somewhat like “YOUR-uh-nuss.” Still have a tendency, though, to burst out in a nervous giggle whenever I see the word.
The above is backstory to a pronouncement that David Kirby’s “The Man Who Discovered Uranus” (Poetry, July-August 2026) is one of the funniest poems I’ve read. It’s overtly amorphous, discursive, formally more prose-like than verse-like — but in a who cares? way — perhaps the crystalline essence of deadpan being what elevates it to wherever the sphere of poesis lies.
Here’s a taste:
William Herschel. Good guy with a telescope, not so much
with the lingo: he called his discovery “Georgium Sidus”
or “Georgian Star” after George III, but the name didn’t stick.
In France, where the name of the British king was to be avoided
at all costs, the planet was known as “Herschel” until the name
“Uranus” was universally adopted. […]
[…] lugubrious is a wonderful word, isn’t it,
because it sounds exactly like someone crying but is also funny,
like Buick or waffle. Notice I’m talking about single words here,
not phrases like “Christian bachelorette party.” […]
[…] Maybe we should just shut up.
To ban the spread of Covid, during the pandemic
there were signs on Japanese roller coasters asking riders
to “please scream inside your heart.” […]
[…] I mean, you’d feel stupid if you were outside with
your friends all sweaty and wrung-out after a hootenanny
and someone pointed up to the sky and said, “Look, Herschel.”
(c) 2026 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved