Wisconsin, and Colorado

A poem I read this week—a one-sentence poem—made me think of the recent heart-rending, and enormous, tragedies: the murders at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin, the movie theatre killings in Colorado.

The poem, called “History,” is by Joe Brainard (1942-1994), and is from 1974.

It reads:

With history piling up so fast, almost every day is the anniversary of something awful.

The poem appears in the 2003 book Great American Prose Poems, edited by David Lehman (published by Scribner Poetry).

http://www.amazon.com/Great-American-Prose-Poems-Present/dp/0743243501/