Poets Wear Prada is a poetry publishing house with excellent poets and affordable books with beautiful covers. Have you had your poetry today?--Meredith Sue Willis, Books for Readers * * * Stylistically, these beautifully designed and produced chapbooks bear their own distinctive signature.--Linda Lerner, SMALL PRESS REVIEW

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Recalling Einstein: Headbanger by Jack Cooper


Detail of "Vanitas," Adriaan Coorte, 1688,
Zeeuws Museum, Middelburg, Netherlands,
photographed 30 June 2009, 14:19 by zullie 
[Source: Wiki Loves Art / NL project]


HEADBANGER
by John Jack Jackie (Edward) Cooper

Closer to a precipice, I shrink: indifferent to salvation, pray
for calm, control -- pity, less purpose; plead award of concentration, 

allowed reserve -- allowed, of course, being false: deniable reward,
testing ice where firm decision
by itself must grant the go-ahead. 

God does not play dice, Einstein says,
with this universe, nor any other­ --
neither ought I: its least
affiliate of empty space. 

But act, instead, as I shall attend:
in fullness of self-contempt,
like a cistern; brim pride, shame,
excessive rage, yet exceed  -- not enough;

hand raised, in arrest of hopeful despair,
mutter "too much," fallen far and far:
leave now only to crawl no farther on land, capable of pitching headlong. 




John Jack Jackie (Edward) Cooper, poet, fiction writer and translator, is production editor and co-publisher at Poets Wear Prada. His micro-chap Ten, preview of his forthcoming Aphorithms, was released in 2012.  His blog, These are Aphorithms, can be found at http://aphorithms.blogspot.com

"The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret 
of the 'old one.' I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice."
                                                                                    -- Albert Einstein


One hundred and thirty-four years ago, today, Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879.

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