Page 27 - WTP Vol. IX #5
P. 27
The New Criticism
My stepdaughter says I’m boring. “Everything you say is boring and like
so seventies.” Her mother says I’m wonderful, though. “She’s being fresh. Don’t listen to her,” she says.
But I can’t help listening because I want to be fresh and not boring, and I want to say ‘like’ like my stepdaughter because everything
is like something, not exactly but sort of.
And she’s so contemporary and provocative and like alive. She knows all the new neologisms and would never use neologism
in a poem. Like ever.
Hostovsky’s most recent book is Deaf & Blind (Main Street Rag, 2020). His poems have won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, and the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize. Versions of “Emu” and “The New Criticism” were previously published in Bending the Notes (Main Street Rag, 2008) and Seems, #49, respectively. He works in Boston as a sign language interpreter.
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