Most Read... Rebecca WattsThe Cult of the Noble Amateur
(PN Review 239)
John McAuliffeBill Manhire in Conversation with John McAuliffe
(PN Review 259)
Eavan BolandA Lyric Voice at Bay
(PN Review 121)
Patricia CraigVal Warner: A Reminiscence
(PN Review 259)
Vahni CapildeoOn Judging Prizes, & Reading More than Six Really Good Books
(PN Review 237)
Tim Parksin conversation with Natalia Ginzburg
(PN Review 49)
Next Issue Hal Coase 'Ochre Pitch' Gregory Woods 'On Queerness' Kirsty Gunn 'On Risk! Carl Phillips' Galina Rymbu 'What I Haven't Written' translated by Sasha Dugdale Gabriel Josipovici 'No More Stories' Valerie Duff-Strautmann 'Anne Carson's Wrong Norma'
Poems Articles Interviews Reports Reviews Contributors
PN Review 276
PN Review Substack

This poem is taken from PN Review 101, Volume 21 Number 3, January - February 1995.

Four Poems Robert Rehder


The Hat
Every time Harold Bloom looks under
His bed, he finds Emerson, Whitman

And Nietzsche and Stevens,
And most nights, Shelley and Keats -

And Emerson. He keeps finding Emerson
Who gets lost more than the others.

What are all these guys doing under
Harold's bed? Ralph, why don't you go home?

Would you call Ralph's mother, please,
And tell her, he's over here.

Now if that isn't enough,
Look, there's another banana.

Where do they come from,
I mean, 'an inescapable late capitalist social order'?

The fruit cakes have got out again.
Houdini wouldn't look at it.
...


Searching, please wait... animated waiting image