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Norman dePlume Jan 2016
I'm kind of your average American
I studied at Hollywood College
Becoming incredibly knowledgeable
Reading theory night and day,
“To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. And
This corrodes even the knowledge
Of why it has become impossible
To write poetry today.”

Yes, but something’s slant with this direction,
The oppressed and the oppressor are not equally obscene.
If the young are allowed laughter
can not the experienced leave night omens.?  
“Perennial suffering has as much right to expression
as a tortured man has to scream;
hence it may have been wrong to say that after
Auschwitz you could no longer write poems.”  

Alone in his room
Mom asks what’s the matter
“Even the most extreme consciousness of doom
threatens to degenerate into idle chatter.”
Written 2015-2016 while out of my mind. deepest apologies.
For the passages in quotations, see: Theodor W. Adorno, “Cultural Criticism and Society,” in **Prisms**; and Theodor W. Adorno, **Negative Dialectics.**

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