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Dave Eggers' The Wild Things is available for preorder, in regular hardcover and
limited-edition fur-covered.
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Hitler Sestina.BY PETER DAVIS
I wouldn't make it this far. The second line is important but not near as important as the fourth: Hitler, which sticks out like a small island or the short wave of a line ocean. The ocean of the second stanza may begin with two words that signify what surrounds the island, but by line five, again, the word, Hitler, the name coming from the fourth dimension. Did I mention how dimensions go forth endlessly? Probably not. The waves of the poetic ocean may seem to support, come line three, Hitler, again, this time beginning to be less surprising, but lining this giant swimming pool, in which, I land a perfect cannonball, my disconnected island of flesh splashing froth, waves like fore- play rippling through the body. A line like this last one, for instance, might thicken the ocean of thought enough to slowly begin to build back towards that awful name again: Hitler. It is like a hitter luring in the infielder with the threat of a bunt. Is land- ing on that name shorthand for begging for attention? (For the true measurements of this particular ocean, please wait in line.) Of all of the pertinent lines in this poem, the following line, Hitler, is the most important. O, sure I could try to sell you the island of something else, but on the fourth night my guilt would overtake me. It would begin to crawl, begin to weave a line of spiders through my subatomic particles. For Hitler is the split lip of the poem, the skin island in the bone ocean.
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