Poems may cause mixed reactions

by Holly Schreiber
For The Post

There are books readers choose to quietly read by a warm fire or under the sun drinking lemonade.

And then there is Mobile Poems: The Life and Times of Deke Zucker, White Trash Poet. This work will let readers express either of the following two emotions: anger, leading to the hoisting of cardboard picket signs, or utter pain from laughing so hard that stomachs cramp up.

One’s interpretation of this book is solely based on his or her values and opinions about its subject matter. Frankly, this book is often gross, sexually explicit, fond of defecation and degrading to Appalachian people, women and gays.

"Mobile Poems is a work of parody and satire, and is not meant by the authors to be taken seriously. Any similarities to any person … is purely coincidental … all the incidents are pure invention," the editors state on the inside cover.

Mobile Poems centers on the fictional character Deke Zucker. The authors, Irving T. Futtbucker and Harold Taint — obviously aliases — have concocted a theory about an ancient language they classify as "hillbilly" language, which scholars have been trying to decipher for years.

Futtbucker and Taint discovered during their search several poems by Deke Zucker, who is from West Virginia. Through his poems, Futtbucker and Taint hoped to find more information about the "hillbilly" language and culture. Along with the discovery of Zucker's poems, Futtbucker and Taint were able to conceive a biography of him.

Zucker's poems are about themes such as life in a mobile home, NASCAR, sexual escapades with many women and bodily functions.

The poem Echoes reads, "I once burped so loud/It made a flight of birds/Change direction in mid-flight/But 'tother day I tried/to let one fly/But puked instead."

Zucker's collection also has haiku poems and poems using a passé AABB rhyme scheme. To classify Zucker's poems as rock-bottom trash, speaking only in terms of its technical format, would be wrong. Nonetheless, Zucker is far, far, far from being an Elliot or Yeats.

Mobile Poem obviously is a farce, but there is a bona fide message: Society allows works like this to be circulated for entertainment purposes despite their degrading nature. Although censoring a book is against the American ideal, it's up to readers to decide if this is time well spent.

Many people will open its pages and laugh hysterically. Many will not.