Poems: The Sordid Sojourns of the Electric Smock

Danny from 2017: The Electric Smock Cycle (of two poems, alas) was born as a dare on the late-night Ontario Northlander train from Toronto to North Bay.  I found myself sitting across from another Nipissing student, and while comparing programs, he learned that I was struggling with a poetry assignment that I hoped to complete during the journey.  He immediately suggested I write about a smock that kills people.

 

“Like, the kind of smock you wear?”

 

“Yeah!”

 

How does a smock kill people?  Lethal static electric discharge, it turns out.

 

I loved this monstrous thing, and expanded the exercise into my final assignment for Creative Writing: Poetry.  My ultimate goal was to write additional components of the cycle as parodies of established genres – the long poem that follows the shorter exercise in this document was inspired by the pastoral, “The Passionate Shepherd to his Love” by Christopher Marlowe – I foundered after a few lines of something hideous inspired by “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” in which a Small Moose Named Harold (the protagonist of my high school epic) would do mortal battle with and vanquish the grisly garment.

 

As yet, the Smock remains at large.

The Sordid Sojourns of the Electric Smock
(PDF Download)

2003