Happy My Birthday!

Jessy Randall

 

Along with being a major holiday in a major religion, today is my birthday. To celebrate it, I share with you my diagram poem in the December issue of Poetry. (This is my first time appearing in that journal. Over the past fifteen years or so, I sent almost 100 poems, poetry comics, and diagram poems before they said yes.)

I recognize that the diagram poem isn't super straightforward. It might help to know that it's part of a series of diagram poems made from illustrations in an instruction book by Sid Sackson, A Gamut of Games. I re-titled these illustrations, so instead of showing how to play dominoes or whatever, they instead depict a variety of difficult-to-understand things such as disaster plans, vaccination records, period calculators, etcetera. Poetry chose to only print one of them, and I did not argue with their decision, obviously -- though I think they make more sense in a group. Links to many more diagram poems, including some of the ones from the games series, are here:

 

https://personalwebs.coloradocollege.edu/~jrandall/diagrampoems.html

 

 

 

Along with being a major holiday in a major religion, today is my birthday. To celebrate it, I share with you my diagram poem in the December issue of Poetry. (This is my first time appearing in that journal. Over the past fifteen years or so, I sent almost 100 poems, poetry comics, and diagram poems before they said yes.)

I recognize that the diagram poem isn't super straightforward. It might help to know that it's part of a series of diagram poems made from illustrations in an instruction book by Sid Sackson, A Gamut of Games. I re-titled these illustrations, so instead of showing how to play dominoes or whatever, they instead depict a variety of difficult-to-understand things such as disaster plans, vaccination records, period calculators, etcetera. Poetry chose to only print one of them, and I did not argue with their decision, obviously -- though I think they make more sense in a group. Links to many more diagram poems, including some of the ones from the games series, are here:

 

https://personalwebs.coloradocollege.edu/~jrandall/diagrampoems.html

 

 

Comments

[Jeff Cohen]

A very happy birthday, Jessy!