Taxonomy

It occurred to me last night (or, rather, early this morning) in an alley, near a dumpster, that we need yet another way of classifying poems.

I'm limiting my system to poems written by approximately "young" poets in the past, oh, 10 years. This is not an exhaustive study. I claim no real knowledge about classifying anything. I am not Linnaeus (sp?) and I most certainly am not Bob Grumman, though I keep meaning to write a mathemaku one of these days.

In any case, the whole system can be summed up thusly: Most young poets these days write either like early Simpsons (first three seasons) or late Simpsons (last six seasons). What we need is more poets writing like Futurama. This may not save American poetry, but it may offer a corrective to poetry that, while reasonably witty (in both senses of the word) seems to be trying to ironize itself out of feeling.

What about the Simpsons middle years (seasons four through seven)? I'm not sure which, if any, poets belong here.

More later. If I think about it.