You’re
OK: I’m a Bean
by E.W.
Wilder
Arising from Bean Newton’s exposure to self-help books after
his third hospitalization for clinical repression, the series of poems
from which these are excerpted show an influence of the pseudo-philosophical,
pseudo-zen approach so popular in that genre from the 1970s forward.
Newton’s poem is both homage and spoof, I suppose, but it penetrates
deeply into the both the self-help idiom and the facile truth it contains.
Bean Sélavy
by Bean
Newton
In the men’s room at the place I work, there are two urinals.
One was built by a genius, and it is beautiful, singular. The other
was built by an idiot, and it is artless and crude. When I pointed this
out to a friend, he exclaimed with some astonishment, “But they
look just the same!”
“Yes,” I said, “they do. But I interpret them differently.”
Continue to The
Jolly Bean Giant (Ho-Ho-Ho) - Or A Piece of Advice
