Let’s not get carried away with meta-politeness. Literary theory is simply another kind of
literature. It is as much philosophy as the warning on a package of nuts: May Contain
Nuts. It is as much pornography as devouring a cashew the shape of a lover’s dimple. It is
as much eulogy as one can compose for a zit. Would that rhyme were so simple.


Poem is reprinted from The Making of Collateral Beauty (Tupelo Press, 2006).