The folks at Michigan Quarterly Review know the answer. I’ve got a stack of books myself that bloody well deserve a sentence, so maybe I’ll try my hand at this. Let’s see….
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Homage to the Last Avant-Garde
by Kent Johnson
The author appears to have fallen asleep at a wild party attended by scholars of Sumerian, Greek, and Japanese poetry, bi-coastal hipsters, refugees from various poetic movements sprawled upstairs and down in their tattered togas, revisionist historians swaying in wicker baskets, stand-up comics from Café Wha? singing backup for Don Rumsfeld as he belts out “Pirate Jenny,” some guy handing out business cards for Name-Droppers Anonymous … all of their brilliant chatter swirling down the drain of the author’s unconscious like blood and water in the shower scene from Psycho, only to flow out in these fever-dream poems that leave us breathless from laughter, nursing an astonishment hangover.
Joseph Hutchison, Colorado Poet Laureate 2014-2019, has published 20 collections of poems and edited or co-edited three poetry anthologies. He currently directs two master’s-level programs for University College at the University of Denver: Professional Creative Writing and Arts & Culture Management. Joe lives with his wife, Melody Madonna, in the mountains southwest of Denver, Colorado, the city where he was born. 
…And now I want to read this book.
Touché … Nina Simone is, indeed, some Pirate Jenny. I also enjoy Judy Collins's version …<br /><br />Don
I think I remember being at that party once. (I'm a little fuzzier about how many days later it was when I straggled home at dawn…)
Thanks, Don. I figured Rumsfeld would be as good at imitating Nina Simone (<i>my</i> Pirate Jenny) as he was at imitating a sane Secretary of War … uh, Defense.
Very nicely done, Joseph … the Rumsfeld Pirate Jenny takes the cake because of, well, the cross-dressing image conjured.<br /><br />Don