Smokin’ Comment: Mama Penguino Channels Wallace Stevens

Inspired by C.L. Suggs’ To Whom It May Concern, Mama Penguino crafted the following poem along the lines of Wallace Stevens’ celebrated and oft-interpreted Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (1917).  You can read the original here.  Stevens was an influential modernist poet who did much of his important work later in life.  Like Mama P., he toiled by day as a lawyer. Her comment takes on a special poignancy in light of her close relationship with Mr. Suggs.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Commenter

I
Among twenty pithy comments,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the cursor.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a comment
In which there are three replies.

III
The commenter whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the asinine.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a commenter
Are a ménage a trois.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The commenter whistling
Or the criticism just after.

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the commenter
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable reply.

VII
O hot men of Miami,
Why do you imagine tiny bikinis?
Do you not see how the commenter
Walks around the feet
Of the Wordsmokers about you?

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the commenter is involved
In what I think I maybe know.

IX
When the commenter ducked out of sight,
It marked the curve
Of one of many curlicues.

X
At the sight of commenters
Flying in a the monitor’s light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cough out phlegmatically.

XI
He rode over Scotland
In a Smart car Fortwo.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For commenters.

XII
The river is moving.
The commenter must be sleeping.

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The commenter sat
In the cedar-limbs with binoculars.