Prose from Poetry Magazine



	
The Final Manifesto 



	

			
The Final Manifesto 
		




	
First in a series of eight manifestos.


					
	
					by  Joshua  Mehigan 			





	
	

				
    

  1.  We see you. 

  2.  We know who you are. 

  3.  Your ideas are worthless. 

  4.  Your aesthetic is stupid. 

  5.  Your “technique” is a welter of narcissism, superstition, and habit. 

  6.  All your little tiny ideas, all your whoring attempts at creation, and you yourself are nothing, nobody wants you, we despise you, it’s in our nature. 

  7.  You should be kept as a pet. 

  8.  You are a Philistine, the Paul Bunyan of decadence, an acromegalic fraud. 

  9.  You are a minnow, a speck, a stain. 

  10.  The genre humain is sick, and you are to blame. 

  11.  You are a necrophiliac. 

  12.  You are a museum of irrelevance. 

  13.  It will take years to make Art vital and important again. 

  14.  You are from this moment forbidden. 

  15.  As the Italians say, Parla quando piscia la gallina. 

  16.  We are here now. 

  17.  Our aesthetics is empirically grounded. 

  18.  Our taste will be raised to principle. 

  19.  You and your band of jays will be flushed out. 

  20.  Yes, Art is resurrected today: Victory is ours! 

  21.  History will forget you and salute us. 

  22.  Here you are, and here is oblivion. 

  23.  This is the final manifesto, and the only one.

			


	

		Originally Published: January 30, 2009	


	
		
		

	
		

			
Jump to Reader Comments (7)

	

		








		


		
		
COMMENTS (7)


		
		

			

				
				On February 3, 2009 at 7:56pm Jazmin wrote:

				Poetry free
			

		

		
		

			

				
				On February 9, 2009 at 2:42am Sean Smith wrote:

				Poetry free?
"You are a Philistine, the Paul Bunyan of 
decadence, an acromegalic fraud" 
This is iambic pentameter with some 
poetic license (21 syllables, 20 if the "e" 
is silent in the acromegalic word ([ack-
ruh-meg-uh-lick)). I had to look up two 
of the words in the dictionary to get it. 
I bet you pronounced it ack-row, I did 
too. :)
This is poetry.

			

		

		
		

			

				
				On February 10, 2009 at 2:22pm Kelly Graham wrote:

				what is the translation : Parla quando piscia la gallina.
			

		

		
		

			

				
				On February 23, 2009 at 4:08pm jameson_hughes wrote:

				"You [should] speak [only] when the hen pisses," i.e., never.
			

		

		
		

			

				
				On March 3, 2009 at 4:30pm Dan Williamson wrote:

				I do like 14.
I wish it could be so,
particularly in Boston.
			

		

		
		

			

				
				On March 16, 2010 at 9:18pm Suzy Fitzgerald wrote:

				There is something so incredible about this piece.  I love the format, I love the title and I like #7 as simple as it seems.
			

		

		
		

			

				
				On September 17, 2011 at 6:48am Sonny Bolisha wrote:

				Despite how delayed this comment is, I wish to voice it anyway. This is not poetry; it is the mark of a glorified anarchist, one who idealises narcissism and deems nihilism as a field for their poetry to flourish. You think words like necrophilia and acromegalic deem you worthy of writing an influential manifesto? With my comment, that makes seven, seven people out of millions of others who will never read it.
			

		

		
		


		

           
		
			
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MORE FROM THIS ISSUE

		
This prose originally appeared in the February 2009 issue of Poetry magazine


		
			

				
						February 2009
				
			

			
		

			
		


		

			
		


	











Related




	

	Introduction
	
	


	

	Other Manifestos from the February Issue
	
	







	
		
			

				

				
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 Joshua  Mehigan

					

							
Biography

							
Poet Joshua Mehigan grew up in upstate New York and received a BA from Purchase College and an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College.
Influenced by the poetry of Philip Larkin, Jorge Luis Borges, and Edgar Bowers, Mehigan writes intelligent, morally complex lyric poems shaped by a nuanced attention to rhyme and meter. Critic Adam Kirsch praised The Optimist in a review for the New York Sun, observing, “Mr. Mehigan is Frost-like in . . . 

							
Continue reading this biography

					

				

			

		
	
	





	



	
		

	
		

		
		


		
				
		
	


			
Originally appeared in Poetry magazine.

		
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