Russian Formalism

[sangha]

begin happiness
increase happiness (fill)
seeming perfect happiness

happiness in the bed
happiness in the head (spill)
happiness in the tread






the tread in dread
the head in bed (ill)
the bed in the garbage can.

[blank|verse]

While I can't say for a minute I understood this one, I have to admire its intricate patterning and the strange, parethetical rhymes in each stanza.

Russian Formalist theorists praised 'defamiliarization' of objects in poetry, and I wonder if the abstract nature of this poem really achieves that, if indeed that was the aim at all.

Otherwise, I felt the first stanza suggested Soviet-style politics of controlling life and producing and increasing 'happiness'. One wonders if capitalism is in any way different.

And what to make of the 'missing' third stanza that seems to have been erased from history; and the baffling conclusion?

Still, enjoyably different.

[Delta40]

It struck me as a altering word association verse, which leads us from happiness to the garbage bin.