the poetry of the future has got to have a lot of nerve. it’s got to come from at least three brains: the brain in the head, the gutbrain, and the brain in the ovaries. it will wax red and rise bone-white. the poetry of the future will be nutritious and opulent. justifications for its existence will no longer be interesting: lenin loved beethoven. the poetry of the future will glitter like a scimtar. the poetry of the future will be unabashedly adolescent. it will get younger as it gets older. it will reflect the interests of both carnivores and herbivores. it will be as heterogeneous as it is misguided. the poetry of the future will watch blue branches shaking in winter and red canyons gaping with sun. it will send a space shuttle full of representative poems to a gaseous planet where upon exiting the shuttle the poems will turn into gorgeous multicolored rocks than can live without water. the poetry of the future will wear squeaky shoes in the vatican. it will say where we work and who we love and what we eat. sometimes it will be hungover and desperate. it might bite its nails. tired of being on the lam, it might have to choose between giving itself up to the authorities or going out in a blaze of glory. the poetry of the future will be so enormous that it will only be visible from an aerial perspective. many will believe it to be a message from aliens. the poetry of the future will be so expensive and in demand that it will disrupt the global economy as we know it…
Maggie Nelson