Poem by Kumar

In case you missed Harold and Kumar 2.

I’m sure that I will always be A lonely number like root three

The three is all that’s good and right, Why must my three keep out of sight Beneath the vicious square root sign, I wish instead I were a nine

For nine could thwart this evil trick, with just some quick arithmetic

I know I’ll never see the sun, as 1.7321 Such is my reality, a sad irrationality

When hark! What is this I see, Another square root of a three

As quietly co-waltzing by, Together now we multiply To form a number we prefer, Rejoicing as an integer

We break free from our mortal bonds With the wave of magic wands

Our square root signs become unglued Your love for me has been renewed.

Q by Sharon Olds

Stunning poem by Sharon Olds published in The New Yorker:

Q belonged to Q.&A., to questions, and to foursomes, and fractions, it belonged to the Queen, to Quakers, to quintets— within its compound in the dictionary dwelt the quill pig, and quince beetle, and quetzal, and quail. Quailing was part of Q’s quiddity—the Q quaked and quivered, it quarrelled and quashed. No one was quite sure where it had come from, but it had travelled with the K, they were the two voiceless velar Semitic consonants, they went back to the desert, to caph and koph. And K has done a lot better— 29 pages in Webster’s Third to Q’s 13. And though Q has much to be proud of, from Q.& I. detector through quinoa, sometimes these days the letter looks like what medical students called the Q face—its tongue lolling out. And sometimes when you pass a folded newspaper you can hear from within it a keening, from all the Q’s who are being set in type, warboarded, made to tell and tell of the quick and the Iraq dead.

YouTube Comment or E.E. Cummings?

In this McSweeney's quiz, can you discern between a line by poet E.E. Cummings from a comment left on YouTube? Examples:

1. loog a his lirow nose

2. there is some shit I will not eat

3. LISN bud LISN

[Via]

Philip Larkin, This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don't have any kids yourself.

- Philip Larkin