April is NOT the cruelest month...

It’s April, a good month, no matter what crotchety old T.S. Eliot (scary poet in picture) says. It’s National Poetry Month, Easter Break at the University of Little Town, time for spring cleaning, and time to get the garden ready. So, in an effort to multi-task like a big girl, I’ve written the following poem to: (1) honor National Poetry Month; (2) take a break from grading; and (3) clean the academic cobwebs out of my fried little brain. The poem has nothing to do with gardening, so while you read this, I’ll go outside and play in the dirt…

WORDS YOU MUST USE IN AN ACADEMIC PRESENTATION,
GIVEN HERE IN ORDER OF IMPORTANCE

There are certain things you must say
in any academic presentation
meant to stir the philosophical
fervor of a circumscribed audience.
In this postmodern conservative
hegemony, tacitly agreed-upon
ideas must be carefully expanded
and articulated vis-à-vis the resurrected
scholarship, indexed and archived,
of any reliable postcolonial ethnocritic
negating the Eurocentric socio-historic
interpretation and incorporating
the semiotics of interpretive punctuation
combined with standard academe-ese,
then vetted against any known ideas
in the same or similar literary traditions;
hence, a satisfactory Q & A.
Be sure to interject the plausibility
of linguistic fluidity as a rationale
for using words like dang or buttwad.