MONOBON by THOMAS FINK

 Monobon by Thomas Fink

 

Reverse Monobon: Review of Yesterhour’s Computer Diet

—for Mark Young

 

Tell me how an octopus is contained in an octagon.

 

Must communist pentameter succumb to imperial ethos? Are these tightrope drunkards or silk critics sparring in a rumor-padded e-seminar cell over cancel couture? Can a populist viscountess in amethyst spangles settle the dustup? Does it empower us to embrace previously hidden links among the social tropologies of bracelet, brace, and bracket? For those at loggerheads over causes and consequences of alien oil dependency and its intersection with thermostat panic, videos of last September’s flowering embers may not quite douse those flames. Rather than clicking on professional-indiscretion prodigies secreting spasmodic, boast-riddled oratorios or ice cream impressions purported to zap “anyone” out of anhedonia, I sped to the amendment of a guidebook entry on a palace now known to be funded by kleptomaniacs. Take heart, though: there’s no shortage of sledgehammer visionaries bent on recycling degenerate sepulchers into sustainable barns.

 

 

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Thomas Fink has published 12 books of poetry—most recently Zeugma (Marsh Hawk Press, 2022) and A Pageant for Every Addiction (Marsh Hawk, 2020), written collaboratively with Maya D. Mason. His Selected Poems & Poetic Series appeared in 2016. He is the author of Reading Poetry with College and University Students: Overcoming Barriers and Deepening Engagement (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), as well as two books of criticism, and three edited anthologies.  His work appeared in Best American Poetry 2007. Fink’s paintings hang in various collections. He is Professor of English at CUNY-LaGuardia.