This fragment, first discovered among Bean Newton’s notebooks dated 1994-1995, represent the poet’s early attempts to (re)visit European pagan mythology in a somewhat straightforward way while peering through the lens of late 20th Century popular culture.
While he later abandoned this project, the kinetic movement between subjects characteristic of his later poems (1996-1998) are already present.
–EW Wilder
Sliding Yurtwise Toward the Existential Stank
Wotang, it must be said, the king
of the gods of the gods of
powdered beverages
considered the options:
take umbrage at the plum-
meting stock price or drive
off into Holly-Wooed
sine post, the freakuency
of a future squared by
the buttondown crowd.
Here at this nexus, driving
a Lexus—well, you can read
the rest; it's plaid out, like
a cat, tweed, caught on the cusp
between trade-i-tion and rad-
icalism, the run-
down a righting of Wo-
--Bean Newton
EastWesterly Review 