The Manifesto of Mortarism

MORTAR verb to bombard; noun a mortar used in building. crisis With the forth-swinging, flaming, wrecking ball of mortarism, let’ demolish the light-blocking ceiling of “poetry” Let’ build an overpoetry…Let’ revolve art into a tastefully aligned breathtaking, perfectly proportioned, breath-giving, voluptuous, lactating, nymphomaniac nurture with nature-changing, evolution-redirecting milk—an overnurse of Western man’s sick, degenerating nature—who will pleasure her dry-spell patients, for a like reason long as they are sucking her irresistible nipples, since alone nipple-sucking will arouse her and continue lengthen in time her output.

—from articulate utterance given in the A2 psychiatric unit, July 2 2004 FIDDLEHEAD The “living,” writing, established “poets” my iced generation—are diction-obsessed and beauty-demoting, imagination-demoting, inspiration-demoting, music-demoting, rhythm-demoting, aim-demoting, because they are little more than breathing dictionaries. (They are unelectric, bewilder lovers, without inborn musical talent or anything to