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    Fauxccasional Poems
    Fauxccasional Poems
    Fauxccasional Poems
    Ebook112 pages1 hour

    Fauxccasional Poems

    By Daniel Scott Tysdal

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    About this ebook

    In Fauxccasional Poems, Daniel Scott Tysdal imagines himself into poetic voices not his own, writing to commemorate events that never occurred, for the posterity of alternative universes — and the delight of our own. From the reign of the first philosopher king once envisioned by Plato, to the twelfth-century Iroquois colonization of Europe, to Barack Obama's career as a poet, to the lasting peace to come under the rule of the Democratic Kampuchea Global Party, Tysdal envisions the paths not taken and what might have been. In these poems, the crew of the Enola Gay refuse to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, John F. Kennedy evades assassination, and Karl Marx moonlights as an agent provocateur for a capitalist consortium.

    In a dizzying display of poetic insight, technical prowess, and playful parody, Fauxccasional Poems brings these alternate universes to life, forcing the reader to ponder the contingency of history and how each moment brings us to a thousand turning points. Despite our certainties, nothing is ever as it seems, and the future unfolds against our best designs. History is an unreliable vessel for the upwelling of our deepest hopes and fears, and in Tysdal's hands poetry shakes history by the lapels and shouts, "Wake up! Your time is now!"

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGoose Lane Editions
    Release dateSep 22, 2015
    ISBN9780864928214
    Fauxccasional Poems
    Author

    Daniel Scott Tysdal

    Daniel Scott Tysdal is an award-winning writer, filmmaker, and teacher. He is the author of three poetry collections, including the ReLit Award-winning Predicting the Next Big Advertising Breakthrough Using a Potentially Dangerous Method and the widely acclaimed Fauxccasional Poems, as well as the poetry textbook The Writing Moment and the viral-trending TEDx talk “Everything You Need to Write a Poem (and How It Can Save a Life).” Tysdal teaches at the University of Toronto Scarborough.

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      Book preview

      Fauxccasional Poems - Daniel Scott Tysdal

      "Surprising, creative, and diverse, Fauxccasional Poems takes seriously what Emily Dickinson didn’t say: ‘Tell the truth but tell it as it ain’t.’ It is a witty and insightful inquiry into our desires and ideologies, values, fears, and counterfactual fantasies, strangely familiar yet inspiringly strange."

      — GARY BARWIN, author of Moon Baboon Canoe

      "Here is the world’s secret history, in a host of forgotten tongues.Ever since Tysdal’s strange manuscript was discovered in a copper cylinder, Fauxccasional Poems has won all Wars of Art and spread Canada’s empire across the globe. From Eliot’s sabotaging of ‘The Waste Land’ to Kermit’s Korean dictatorship, from Charles Manson’s tweets to Nicolas Cage’s casino paeans, from John Lennon’s pro-war pop hit to an unreadable ode for the Y2K bug, all the poems you never imagined are here. With his earlier books, Tysdal showed us that he would try anything. With Fauxccasional Poems, Tysdal proves that he can do everything."

      — JONATHAN BALL, author of The Politics of Knives

      From the reign of the first philosopher king once envisioned by Plato to the lasting peace to come under the rule of the Democratic Kampuchea Global Party, Daniel Scott Tysdal imagines himself into poetic voices not his own, writing to commemorate events that never occurred, for the posterity of alternative universes.

      Fauxccasional Poems urges us to ponder the contingency of history and how each moment brings us to a thousand turning points. Despite our certainties, nothing is ever as it seems, and the future unfolds against our best designs. History is an unreliable vessel for the upwelling of our deepest hopes and fears, and in Tysdal’s hands poetry shakes history by the lapels and shouts, Wake up! Your time is now!

      DANIEL SCOTT TYSDAL is the author of two previous books of poetry, The Mourner’s Book of Albums and Predicting the Next Big Advertising Breakthrough Using a Potentially Dangerous Method, as well as The Writing Moment: A Practical Guide to Creating Poems. He lives and teaches in Toronto.

      Other books by Daniel Scott Tysdal

      The Mourner’s Book of Albums

      Predicting the Next Big Advertising Breakthrough Using a Potentially Dangerous Method

      The Writing Moment: A Practical Guide to Creating Poems

      Copyright © 2015 by Daniel Scott Tysdal.

      All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). To contact Access Copyright, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call 1-800-893-5777.

      Edited by Dani Couture.

      Cover and page design by Chris Tompkins.

      Cover photos: Kermit the Frog image taken from www.wikimedia.org (Edited by Designer), Oscar image taken from www.wikimedia.org (Edited by Designer), Dolphin image by Ross Hawkes (www.flickr.com/photos/rosshawkes) (Edited by Designer), Bible image by Amy Allcock (www.flickr.com/photos/amyallcock), Preacher image by niccolo2410 (www.flickr.com/photos/niccolo2410). All images from Flickr used under the guidelines of Creative Commons License 2.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)

      Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

      Tysdal, Daniel Scott, 1978-, author

            Fauxccasional poems / Daniel Scott Tysdal.

      Issued in print and electronic formats.

      ISBN 978-0-86492-872-6 (pbk.).—ISBN 978-0-86492-821-4 (epub).—ISBN 978-0-86492-845-0 (mobi)

            I. Title.

      PS8639.Y84F38 2015            C811’.6            C2015-902835-3

                                                                             C2015-902836-1

      We acknowledge the generous support of the Government of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Government of New Brunswick.

      Nous reconnaissons l’appui généreux du gouvernement du Canada, du Conseil des arts du Canada, et du gouvernement du Nouveau-Brunswick.

      Goose Lane Editions

      500 Beaverbrook Court, Suite 330

      Fredericton, New Brunswick

      CANADA E3B 5X4

      www.gooselane.com

      For Andrea.

      What is constant in all the best possible worlds is you and your work and your love.

      Occasional poems are written to celebrate or memorialize a particular occasion, such as a birthday, a marriage, a death, a military engagement or victory, the dedication of a public building, or the opening performance of a play.

      Fauxccasional poems are written to celebrate or memorialize a particular fake or speculative occasion, for example, the Iroquois landing on European shores in the 12th century or the Enola Gay’s refusal to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Poems falsely attributed to real historical figures are also often considered fauxccasional.

      — M.H. Abrams

      Nothing that has never happened should be regarded as lost for history.

      — Walter Benjamin

      CONTENTS

      YEAR 0–1945

      Last Poem

      New World

      Sonnet 155

      Burned at the Man

      Chant d’amour pour l’Armée du Rhin

      On Your Headcanon

      War! War! War!

      Bees Will Sing

      Shame, a Paean

      Addendum to The Waste Land

      The Time Traveller’s Pantoum

      Horrorism

      Wide Island

      1946–2000

      The Hand of Faith

      Lo

      Shell

      Revolution (Tweetych)

      Keep Our Country Clean!

      The Discovery of Love, Excerpts from an Endless Oral History

      Tell Me How

      The Walls

      What Will Happen to the Next Michael Jordan?

      Imagine

      Epithalamion

      The Kermit Kingdom

      01011001 00110010 01001011

      2001–YEAR 0

      The Taliban Are the Most

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