How to Be Perfect
Padgett’s plainspoken, wry poems deliver their wisdom through a kind of connoisseurship of absurdity. He writes, "Everything I think about is a cartoon something / because anything cartoon is immortal / in its own funny little way." Yet these observational, reminiscent, and prescriptive verses are also informed by a sense of loss—not just for his late mother and for departed comrades like Kenneth Koch but for the bohemian ideal that drew him to New York to begin with: "Although one still hears the word conformity," he laments, "it is no longer a pejorative term; now we are on the same page, getting with the program, team players." Even so, Padgett’s cockeyed humor is ultimately optimistic, finding reason for continued hope, even if it means joining "the poetry protection program / so my poems can go out and live under assumed names / in Utah and Muskogee."Copyright © 2007Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker