One-Line Poem

Is made from recycled Soviet tanks. It comes from country that no longer exists.











Beckett fact no. 61.

Grove Press have brought out a handsome Beckett centenary edition. Flicking through its four volumes today the only new item I could find was a one-line poem originally published in a book called Orange Export Ltd 1969-1986 (Flammarion, 1986). It reads:

away dream all away

A one-line poem can be more classily described as a monostich. The Romanian inter-war poet Ion Pillat published a book of One-Line Poems in 1936, a tradition revived by contemporary American-Romanian writer Florentin Smarandache, who looks like someone that could do you a very good deal on a 1991 Lada. One of Smarandache's efforts, 'Mother', hints at untold gynaecological nightmares: 'I beseech you, do not give birth to me again.'

His terseness only goes so far, however. On a self-penned web profile, he writes: 'During year 2000 he published 20 books, an international record!'

This information courtesy of Ovidiu Ghidirmic, described on my on-line source as a 'literary criticist', and whose name alone is almost a one-line poem.