In Fauxccasional Poems, Daniel Scott Tysdal’s third collection, the author spans millennia as he celebrates and laments made-up events in fabricated histories. In the many-worlds of Tysdal’s book, Little Boy is not dropped from the Enola Gay, Buddy Holly lives well into the '80s, and 1967 marks Twitter’s tenth anniversary. To give you a taste of the zaniness, here’s a few “tweets” from “Revolution (Tweetych)”:
@landslideLBJ (Verified Account): SMH Brezhnev says he and #ussr are world power. The why refuse to join the #twitterrevolution
@chairmao (Verified Account): IMHO 2 read 2 many books is harmful. Let 100 tweets bloom! #twitterrevolution
Tysdal makes it under the 140 character limit - clever stuff. And hey: there’s even a Y2K poem written entirely in binary.
It all sounds dangerously gimmicky—too cute perhaps, a grant proposal readymade? I approached the book with reservations, especially after scanning back cover bumpf that admits things like “the contingency of history” and “history is an unreliable vessel for the upwelling of our deepest hopes and fears.” With the book in my hand, I thought, will these poems hold up under their conceptual heft? Will they come off as goofy exercises? In other words: neat idea, check. But will idea transform into poems?
