EthicalDative

In my pronunciation, from boyhood until fairly recently, the planet Uranus rhymed with “your anus.” Now I force myself to say it somewhat like “YOUR-uh-nuss.” Still have a tendency, though, to burst out in a nervous giggle whenever I see the word.

The above is backstory to a pronouncement that David Kirby’s “The Man Who Discovered Uranus” (Poetry, July-August 2026) is one of the funniest poems I’ve read. It’s overtly amorphous, discursive, formally more prose-like than verse-like — but in a who cares? way — perhaps the crystalline essence of deadpan being what elevates it to wherever the sphere of poesis lies.

Here’s a taste:

William Herschel. Good guy with a telescope, not so much
with the lingo: he called his discovery “Georgium Sidus” 
or “Georgian Star” after George III, but the name didn’t stick. 
In France, where the name of the British king was to be avoided 
at all costs, the planet was known as “Herschel” until the name 
“Uranus” was universally adopted. […]

[…] lugubrious is a wonderful word, isn’t it,
because it sounds exactly like someone crying but is also funny, 
like Buick or waffle. Notice I’m talking about single words here,
not phrases like “Christian bachelorette party.” […]

[…] Maybe we should just shut up.
To ban the spread of Covid, during the pandemic 
there were signs on Japanese roller coasters asking riders 
to “please scream inside your heart.” […]

[…] I mean, you’d feel stupid if you were outside with 
your friends all sweaty and wrung-out after a hootenanny
and someone pointed up to the sky and said, “Look, Herschel.”

(c) 2026 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved

This comment by Victoria Moul has jostled my world:

It is very difficult indeed to write lyric poetry which is both beautiful and straightforward to understand, and which also has something to say — a clear and specific message or argument. These seem like they ought to be the basic virtues of verse but it is a rare poet who can put all three together as consistently as [Edwin] Muir.
(Victoria Moul, “Horace & friends,” substack)

As a reader of contemporary poetry I had not encountered the argument she makes for the lyric in support of beauty, clarity and content. Much of the verse I read does not give itself up, if at all, to a first pass; invites if not demands revisiting; and may defy grasp or retention anyhow. This, I’ve been induced to believe, is of the nature of verse and to be expected: the saying of bright things darkly, so to speak.

There’s more. In discussing J.H. Prynne’s poetry, Victoria Moul writes the following:

Prynne’s poetry is, it’s true, exceptionally “difficult” because it is often impossible to parse in any conventional way.

Her quotation marks and reference to parsing are noteworthy. I often test verse against my capacity to winkle out in my own way what it “says” (more quotation marks!). In other words I parse it, sensing all the while that doing so goes against good practice in the view of experts. 

Here’s the rest of Moul’s observation, which I find somewhat climactic:

But I find so much of Prynne’s poetry, for all its obscurity, exceptionally beautiful and unmistakably profound. The fact remains that I am more often moved to tears reading Prynne than almost any other recent poet in English. 

Worse luck for me is I tend to express myself in doggerel, the more so when exercised. As doggerel will do, the product is blatantly rhythm-straitened and message-laden, salted with rhyme as if by a drunken sailor. It’s on the opposite side of where lyric shines. I’m okay with that. But for my reading life, Victoria Moul gives me much pause, as well as encouragement.

(c) 2026 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved