Poetry News

Patricia Lockwood Tweets Shaq, Writes Poem

By Harriet Staff

Slate served up a special treat for Patricia Lockwood fans: a new poem and an essay on her creative process. This includes multiple tweets to Shaquille O’Neil in order to discover what it is “to dunk.” She doesn’t have any books about basketball, so how else is she supposed to figure it out?

Do I have any books about basketball in my house? No! What’s all this shit about depressed married people in England? This doesn’t help! England doesn’t care about dunking! (Probably because they’re still mad about George Washington dunking on King George III in the year of our Lord 1776???)

Possible diss George Washington might have made to King George III: “Boy, you couldn’t even dunk a teabag.”

Lockwood also calls author Jonathan Safran Foer “the Harlem Globetrotters of Literature.” Burn.

Read the whole post here!

Tags: Patricia Lockwood
Posted in Poetry News on Friday, August 3rd, 2012 by Harriet Staff.