The Cartoon & Poem Supplement

"You’ve entered the final stage of grief"

Come one, come all.

Poems:

“Day One” by Bon Iver, Dijon, and Flock of Dimes: These are song lyrics to an unreleased track from the forthcoming Bon Iver album (you can listen to the acapella as the “reading” of the poem, a fun choice.) Bon Iver is such a weird band to decontextualize the lyrics of, though, because Justin Vernon’s method, which relies extensively on dummy lyrics that are slowly turned into poetry, usually in a way that preserves their vowel sounds, approaches meaning in a very sidelong way. Frankly, these lyrics are clunky and inelegant on the page, even laughable (“I wish you could take that right off! / All that shit that rips you right up”) – and the center justification doesn’t make things seem less amateurish. With an instrumental, they may work! But I haven’t been hugely convinced by any of Vernon’s work in the past decade, which is often doomed by – wouldja believe it? – meaninglessness. Abstraction is one thing, but there’s no sense there’s anything behind these lyrics; they’re spins on clichés that, theoretically, sound good coming out of a mouth. And here, there’s not even anything weird enough to grab your attention (like the “poke camadee” in Jelmore) as it drifts by.

“Refusal” by Cynthia Ozick: I’ve read some Ozick, but none of her poetry. This is alright; there’s some nice internal rhyme (although with lines this short I suppose it can’t accurately be called internal) and a meditation on nature and death, marking Lore Segal’s passing. Go on, despite death. Nothing that striking or original, and really only the one gesture.

Cartoons:

Here's where to find the cartoons, with credits, in order.

Cover: Very strong. Punchy and smart.

Pg. 9: Too dumb.

Pg. 15: I’d take ‘em over Willson Contreras.

Pg. 16: We’re still doing overhead recipe video jokes? Didn’t that trend peak about a decade ago?

Pg. 24: I like this. It’s a really good choice to put the pointing dude in a different outfit, and one that’s funny but not too silly. It builds the world. And the punchline is strong.

Pg. 29: As per usual: Wouldn’t laugh if someone said this to me in real life. (I know it’s not meant to be a funny remark exactly, but the truth it actually gets at is ‘we didn’t realize that our country has no social safety net!’ –which is grim on a whole different level than ‘We made bad decisions out of youthful ignorance’.)

Pg. 30: Excellent annoying bird. The sheet music is probably not needed to get the idea across, but it’s an interesting choice.

Pg. 35: Can be read two ways (“additional interesting evidence” or “evidence which is more interesting than what’s here”) which I find distracting. What about, “The crime scene next door is more interesting.”

Pg. 37: Whimsical!

Pg. 38: I was going to say this made me think they should make a broad comedy called “Bad Therapist”, but apparently they literally did do that and it stunk. Lots of contenders, but this is my Best of the Week.

Pg. 43: Random Office Worker says this and it’s a punchline, but your average philanthropist cares as much about this as anything else. (Still funny.)

Pg. 47: Surely “simultaneously” is redundant in this scenario? Or is that the joke?

Pg. 48: Delightful nonsense.

Pg. 52: MPJ today stands for Murderous Paternal Judgement.

Pg. 55: Well… that’s not a button-down job.

Pg. 58: Average Elizabeth Warren stump speech joke.

77 Years Ago Today

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