Rudiments

Rudiments
Seashell Books, USA
Apr. 2020. Buy it here.

Relationships are blessedly commonplace. The manner in which each of us carries out negotiating, maintaining (and possibly dissolving) our connections, however, is bespoken. Consider that many communication scholars flounder when social climbing, and that many politicians, as well as other individuals possessed of great applied communication skills, tend to mess up romantic and familial links. What's more, most of us become so obsessed with the ways in which external points define us that we neglect our vital, intrapersonal comings and goings.

Rudiments explores much of this fuss. It jabs at the ways and means by which we coordinate our management of meaning with the conflicting voices in our heads and with the folks with whom we are involved. That is, this collection of poetry investigates how we get along with ourselves. It also investigates how we get along with others. While this book might romance the notion of sticking together, this book, simultaneously, makes no pretense that all liaisons are good; Rudiments espouses that some of our affiliations adversely impact our well-being.

To wit, while we struggle to reify ourselves over and again, sometimes, we succeed in making sense out of ourselves, and, sometimes, we succeed in making sense out of our associations with other people. Other times, we fail. Nonetheless, whenever we appreciate ourselves or our couplings, we discover that each amalgamation of cognitions and feelings are dissimilar. Hence, it's our distinct modes of handling self-talk and of handling conversations that ought to get celebrated. Rudiments strives to honor these particularities.

Preface

Introduction: Proportional Verse

Lovers

The Phenomenological Concept of the Body
That Photo, Which She Carried to Class
A Meadow Morning's Limitations
Measured Anguish at the Local Toadstool Malt Shop: Take One
Measured Anguish at the Local Toadstool Malt Shop: Take Two
I Gave You Me
Lotus Feet
Tomorrow's Bleak, Worry-Woven Landscape
Contemporary Coupling (a Ballad)
Pleasant Wishes, Little Kisses
Midas' Touch
Fortuitous Wanderings
Adult Wibbling, Wobbling, Falling Down
Silver Moss Fingers
My Mister (a Didactic)
Falling Cradleless through Spring's Evening Boughs
Kowtowing to Social Fads: A Tragic Romance
Converse
Passing Thoughts (a Carol)
As Obsessions Do
The Physical that was You
Today is Forever Tomorrow's Twice Yesterday
Asiatic Arecas
Patterning with Holes

Nonintimates

Sneering at Womanizing Linguistics
Voguing with Current Federal Bureaucrats
Matters of Mens Rea
During Allegorical Surveys
Right Lights of a Copy Machine
Underrated as Crummy Texts
Characters and Old Crocked Pots
The Basis for Evil Machinations
Pigeons in Oakland
Or by Inland Lakes
Corporate Life in a Goldfish Bowl
Reluctant to Use Their Words
Puppy Dogs and Feral Cats: An Urban Beddy-Bye
Of That Particular Ilk
The Mage's Incomplete Solace
Whispers of Wilderness
Whether Equine or Strigine
When Adopting Great Dangers
Covered with a Leotard
The Sanctity of Lists
Seltzer and Other Social Signifiers
Each Elderly Face
Truth as Informed by Art and Architecture
So Aloes Grew in Vietnam
A Flash Mob for Holiday Shoppers

Nature and Her Children

Starlight
First Showing
Levels of Citrus
The Real Thing
September
Downpour
Acquiring Provisions for Pets and Plants
Ah, the Aardvark: Classifying Chaos in an Urban Zoo
A Vicious Cycle Partially Fostered by Conks and Other Planar Groupings
Like Stars in the Sky
Fernweh
Her Samurai Sheep's Revenge
Those Intricate Pastel Patterns
Here Pingo Sits: An Intergalactic Placement of Sentiment
Candy Corn Castles
Munchkins in Braids: A High School Perspective
A Middle Aged Mom's Response to a Daycare Center's Shenanigans
A Flat, Antithetical Season
La! The Joy that is Spring
Racing Bikes: Childhood Memories
Peach Pit Bridges
Littoral
Juliet Capulet, her Nurse, and the Moon
Babes in Buggies
Along with the Doll

Unnatural Considerations

As a Salute
Flipping Houses
Ostranennie
Odd as Cows in Fur-Lined Trees
Scurrilous
Teenage Infatuation
The Willing Face of Corporate Chemistry
A Fixity of Posture
Doxing
Rubbernecking from Bus Stops
Superiors' Specifications
Duplicitous Bleeding Hearts and Vagabonds
Laudanum Tinctures
Of Bandoliers and Boulangeries
No More Notice
Not Loving the CDC's Word Ban
Assiduity
Select Taxons of Behavior
Welkin
Prioritizing Quintessential Deeds
An Ecological Society's Invitation to International Protocol
Twinkle Stinking Little Star
The Table Where They Had Been Seated
Shrewdness Derived from an Excess of Disquiet
The Ways in Which We Puttered
Conclusion: Paper and Kindred Devices
Credits
Acknowledgements
About the Author

KJ Hannah Greenberg