ONE SYLLABLE LIST

I know I did something similar somewhere in the past on this blog, but last night for my usual helping-me-fall-back-asleep list I started thinking about creative works I dig that have one syllable titles and came up with this before I was snoozing again:

ACT (a beautiful early collection of poet Tom Raworth’s work)

BURN (an operatic epic movie shot almost like a documentary with a great score and unlikely performances, especially from Brando)

CANE (Jean Toomer’s masterful 1920s collection of short stories and poems that somehow added up to a new kind of novel, to me)

DUES (a rare limited edition hardcover collection of short early poems of mine—hey, it’s my list)

ELF (a silly kids movie, maybe, but the first time I got what people see in Will Ferrell as he charmed me right into loving his character, and this movie, which has to be on most classic Christmas flicks list, at least it’s on mine)

FUP (fellow poet Jim Dodge’s breakthrough novel back in the day)

GO (John Clellon Holmes’ attempt to capture the Beat era as it was happening)

HELP (in retrospect a true cry for “help” and not just another uniquely clever Beatles song)

“I” (I think that was the title of an essay poet Bruce Andrews wrote about my work in an early issue of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazine, but I can’t find a copy of it so can’t verify that, but it’s what came to mind)

JOE (poet Ron Padgett’s memoir of artist/poet Joe Brainard, a very accessible personal take)

KIM (I haven’t read any Rudyard Kipling in years, and even when I did I wasn’t crazy about a lot of it, but this novel is his best, and not just in my opinion)

LOOT (The 1980s Broadway production of Joe Orton’s farce in which Alec Baldwin first showed his comic chops playing the dim bulb Cockney chauffeur and stole the show)

MOON (one of the more subtle of James Schulyer’s short diary-like poems that seem to be nothing more than daily notations or “occasional” poems but end up epiphanies)

NUNS (originally a rare poetry chapbook of Terence Winch’s but now available as a section of his latest collection of poems BOY DRINKERS)

OF (like I said, it’s my list and although I can see why some folks wouldn’t get or care for some or all of my poetry, I still dig it or I wouldn’t put it out there, and this book-length poem is one of my favorites)

PRIEST (an early ‘90s Brit flick that had some terrific performances in it)

QUEER (William Burroughs’ early non-“experimental” almost pulp novel).

RAIN (emblematic Francis Ponge prose poem)

SKY (poet Blaise Cendrars memoir/history of “flying”)

TED (Ron Padgett’s short but totally engaging personal memoir of poet Ted Berrigan)

U?

VEINS (a favorite of mine and a typically original and brilliant poem of John Godfrey’s from one of his uniquely terrific books, DABBLE)

WATT (Samuel Beckett’s second published novel, if I remember correctly, but his most radically original)

X (the section of Dante’s LA VITA NUOVA—one of the first books to match my own burgeoning idea as a kid of what a book can do—where he returns from “the road of sighs” as one English translation has it, a road I already knew well even as a young man)

YES (their first album with just the band name knocked me out at the time, or maybe I mean contributed to my already gone state the first time I listened to it and on subsequent listens through the next several months, it became the soundtrack of the end of the actual decade the ‘60s)

Z (still one of the better “fictional” films about politics and power)