Terence Winch
As we move into the flu season, here’s a fun poem that can speak to our anxieties about the H1N1 virus. It imagines a whole host of literary stalwarts involved in the illness. The poem is by the Irish American poet Terence Winch. Thanks to my father Scott Bates, himself a wonderful writer of light comic verse, for alerting me to it:
I woke up this morning feeling
incredibly Gorky. So I made an appointment
to see my Doctorow. He said my Hemingways
looked a little swollen and sent me to
get an M.R. James and a complete Shakespeare.
By that time, I began to feel a slight Trilling
in my Dickinsons and some minor Kipling
in my left Auden. The entire experience
was extremely Dickey.
I was referred to an H.D., who asked
about my cummings. She detected traces
of Plath in my Sextons and suggested
I might also have some Updike
trapped in my Yeatsian system.
She recommended that to keep Orwell
and prevent inflammation to my Balzac,
I elevate my Flaubert once a day.
