Elaine Equi

Elaine Equi grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and attended the creative writing programme at Columbia College, Chicago. Together with her husband, the poet Jerome Sala, she was at the forefront of Chicago’s lively performance poetry scene in the 1970s. Her dense, often extremely witty poetry has been widely anthologised, and she has received nominations for the Los Angeles Book Prize as well as the prestigious Griffin Poetry Prize.

Links:
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/elaine-equi
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/elaine-equi
https://www.guernicamag.com/interviews/tangen_mills_elaine_equi_8_1_11/ (interview, 2011)


My below poem took its inspiration from Equi’s minimalist style and her use of the serial organisation common in surrealist poetry.

~ - ~

consequentialism

of all the things
a person

might do at any
given moment

fork coffee stirring
printing finger window dust

the morally right action
the use of language

with the best overall
consequences

quivering beneath
waiting for the sun

it seems easy to understand and
to be based on common sense