Non Sequitor Poetry Is Not

Without these first lines,

I was asking for something specific and perfect for my city,
Whereupon lo! upsprang the aboriginal name.

Walt Whitman’s Mannahatta is not a poem.

It might count as a self-satisfied, anti-rumble, jumble.

It might count as an inventory gone awry, perhaps due to a crack binge.

Or a list of items dementedly strung together, out of delusion.

(A key insight here might be Lacan’s: what a schizophrenic is doing is not poetry.)

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