No, these are uniformly horrid. Or in more politic terms, they do nothing for me. I will try to say why, and it will be pedantic and dull and missing-the-point and, in so many words, evidence that I have a poor sense of humor.

"Comment" is brief, and that's one thing going for it. Summary is unfair to poetry, but this item has no more style than something of the man-from-Nantucket genre, so I don't think I am being too harsh in paraphrasing it as "Life is capricious and joyful, but love can cause a lot of pain." Just as well that it didn't take fourteen stanzas to establish that verity. I am indebted to Ms. Parker for making me aware of Marie of Romania.

"To a Waterfowl" begins with "Women with hats like the rear ends of pink ducks." Is this not Dr. Seuss? I am all in favor of butt jokes, fart jokes, any kind of caca jokes, because they can't help but to deliver on the scale that they promise. This item appeared in Volume 2, Number 6 of The American Poetry Review -- this was 1973, so some poor soul in a print shop had to set type into that phrase -- and seems rather to underwhelm. The title undeniably refers to the Bryant piece, which had the merit of making me slow down to absorb "plashy brink" and "Thou’rt." But beyond the title I don't see the connection.

Mostly, I don't see a lot of work put into this effort. When the poet describes "drinking bourbon from a flask disguised to look like a transistor radio" I feel fairly confident that he was inspired by the experience of drinking bourbon from a flask disguised to look like a transistor radio. No doubt there is a certain joie de vivre to be had by living such a moment, but secondhand it falls flat.

That leaves "Doughnut Sonnet No. 50" which, as the title makes clear, is not to be taken seriously. It is an experiment in the vein of "what if we take some facile, silly behavior and pretend to analyze and describe it as if it were a surgical procedure?" Sure, everything else has been done, knock yourself out. Use inappropriately serious terms like "dining" to comic effect. But why, if the gimmick is absurd care and attention given to something so undeserving, is the execution so careless? Perform a GIS of the subject and tell me if you can find a single one with a "sprinkle count" between nine and twenty-seven. And it's not a bonbon, you don't "insert the fried pastry in your mouth," you take a bite. Facts matter, people, facts matter!