Home > Poetry Magazine > What I Know About Epistemology

Poetry Magazine

POEM
RELATED CONTENT Discover this poem's context and related poetry.

What I Know About Epistemology

By John Surowiecki John Surowiecki

As the light goes, go.

Be the rustling in the grass, the fall from

convention's good graces: learn, or someone

will have you filing files or writing writs,

demonstrating cutlery or selling knowledge

door to door; someone might even drop

your lovely life into a factory and have you

derusting rings on the coolant-spouting

turntable of a vertical lathe.

It's best for everyone that what you know

is generally thought of as general knowledge.

You can find it in pool rooms and roadside bars,

in meadows as inviting as beds, in bedrooms

where it whispers like a ribbon untying;

you can even find it in schools. But be careful:

it's dangerous, inescapable and exact

down to every atom of everything there is,

to every name each thing goes by and every

law each thing obeys. And the best part is,

you always know more than you know.

Source: Poetry (April 2003).

Biography

John Surowiecki is the author of two collections of poetry, The Hat City after Men Stopped Wearing Hats (Word Works, 2007) and Watching Cartoons before Attending a Funeral (White Pine Press, 2003), as well as five chapbooks. In addition, Tapeworm Comics: A Graphic Poem in Celebration of the Adolescent Imagination, a poem in comic-book format. His next collection of poems, Barney and Gienka—poems about his parents, family and . . .

Continue reading this biography