PoetryStack

Turns out that those two roads just converged again later down the path.

Ahem. A poem for you, entitled “I Live a Lie” By Ellis Rosen.

I live a lie. 

my lie is that

I do not own

a funny hat. 

I dread the day

my face turns red

When you notice

my bare head. 

Thank you, thank you. Please save your applause for after the Toonstack. I suppose you can say that I am a poet–and I know it. I’m not, actually, that is the only poem I've ever written, but you can say it nonetheless. There's no law against it.  I am a cartoonist, however, and I've drawn a cartoon or two about poetry. Lots of cartoonists have. I think there is an intrinsic relationship between the two media, and that relationship is that none of us earn money. Also, both are intimate, efficient media, and you can fill up a book with a lot of them. You can also fill up a Toonstack! For instance, this very Toonstack is filled with poems from poets and cartoons about poetry from cartoonists. So please, quiet down, grab some wine, cheese, and nod along to this week's newsletter. 

Oh! I just thought of another poem: “How now, brown cow.” Eh? Has that been done yet? 

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Navied Mahdavian

Another cartoonist once told me that when a cartoon isn’t quite working right, she makes the speaker a cat and presto, cartoon magic. When a cartoon isn’t quite working right for me, I make the speaker a mouse. If it still isn’t working, I throw a tiny scarf on them.

 And presto, cartoon magic. 

---

Roz Chast

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Sofia Warren

Be kind to people; you never know what they’re going through. They might look perfectly normal, but if you could see into their heart of hearts, you might discover that they’re a poet, forced to wander the world noticing, noticing, noticing until their hearts give out. I should know: my stupid brother (quoted below) is one such unfortunate. So you never can tell.

---

Noah Warren

No Artificial Sweeteners

Flickering so inconsistently in

and into being, footman to the tyrannies

of World Event and Serotonin,

not to mention negative ions, power lines,

digestion, it was very natural

His Darkness should burn a bewildering

percentage of his time trying to self-define.

He measured his usefulness to society

against the baskets of lemons people

leave on the sidewalk in lemon season,

grimaced. It was that season. The moon rose,

the little dogs came out for one last pee

before bed, and above Telegraph, a billboard

gloomed: Dave’s Killer Bread. Purpose in every loaf.

---

Shelby Lorman 

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Ellis Rosen

The internet agrees: “This is Just to Say” by William Carlos Williams is the world's funniest poem. Search the title on twitter and you'll see tons of parodies. I don't know why it's so funny! It just is! 

Listen, maybe you're some sorta fancy poetry critic and you can tell me why exactly it's funny, or maybe why it isn't, you buzzkill, but honestly I don't want to know. I want to bask in my ignorance of plums, ice boxes, fruit theft, and confession notes. If you care so much, go and start a true crime podcast about it. Get to the bottom of the case, why don't you? Why did he steal that plum? Just to eat, or was it something more? Something…murdery?  

Okay, well now I’m sucked in and I gotta know more. Damn you, W.C.W!

---

Amy Kurzweil

Poetry was my first love

But it won’t make you famous.

So I got an MFA

in Fiction, that harlot, who said 

she’d rue the day 

I ever made a buck from words,

precious as they are, 

so I grew my hair and lined my eyes

and bought my first guitar.

I’m lying —see that’s what I do—

I’ve never even strummed

a note or held a tune

but something in me hums 

and sings and wants your applause!  

Will you give it? 

Did you know I used to be a dancer?

Will I live it,

my dream of artistic reverie?

I even tried — get this — to be a cartoonist. 

But I must confess:

I’m seven artists in corporate suit, this

life is a lie! 

If you ask me I’ll try

to show you all the poems in my 

iPhone notes. Where does the true self hide?

Is this power pointless?

Next slide.

---

Hilary Campbell

I love to make lists. I try to make them of my days as often as I can. When I read them later, it feels like poetry. Doing this reminds me of the scene from Breakfast at Tiffany’s when Sally Tomato reads from Ms. Gollightly’s little black book…

Sally Tomato: This is a book would break the heart.

“Mr. Fitzsimons—powder room, $50. Less $18--repair one black satin dress.

Cat food, 27 cents.”

If you want to keep up with my poetry-esque lists, subscribe to my substack here!

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Sam Ross

Doctors in Order

So late I skip the train
to catch the next taxi
near the Harlem River Ship Canal,
but some blocks later I ask the driver
to please pull over,

so we can watch the seagulls
breaking and swinging over the river.
His throat sounds a low note
and he nods. I say,
You can keep the meter running.

Let’s roll down the windows!
What I need is to smell the cold,
to have it wash me
like water splashed on my face
in the men's room of a sushi bar

famous for playing only The Wailers.
Time moves like one of those pencil-
beaked birds ballasted by a globe
of dyed water, and the colors
on the cab’s maps are blood vessels,

branching, sustained the way trees are.
Or are they just jackstraws,
not homeostatic at all,
merely senseless? Driver, sir, consider this:
My father’s father was a doctor

at Bellevue. At lunch one day,
he and other doctors agreed
only a handful of women in modern history
wore the weather as well as
Jolanta Umecka in Knife in the Water

and when they spoke of her,
young trees bent fiercely in the wind,
as if their sensitive trunks were
being shaken by the doctors
at the limits of their compassion.

---

Johnny DiNapoli

Why, yes— I did receive a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature from an accredited State University of New York. Perhaps that’s why all my cartoons are so intelligent and meaningful.

News from ToonStackians:

• New book alert! Sofia Warren’s Radical: My Year with a Socialist Senator is out and available to order here.

• Amy Kurzweil teaches cartoon classes on Patreon! Sign up now to get the recording of every past class, and join the next live class!

• Listen to Hilary’s brand new podcast What’d You Do This Weekend?

• Order Send Help! a desert island cartoon collection by Ellis Rosen and Jon Adams, out now!

• Have you checked out cartoonstock.com? Thanks to New Yorker cartoon editor emeritus, Bob Mankoff, this is the place to license and buy prints and merch of the best cartoons in the world, from The New Yorker, Wired, Airmail and...ToonStack! 

• Be sure to check out Shelby Lorman’s newsletter, Please Clap!

• The same goes for Sofia Warren’s advice newsletter, You’re Doing Great!

• See more cartoons from Ellis Rosen’s weekly Junk Drawer!